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10 ABY, Yavin IV
“Are you sure?” One of the voices says, now close enough for him to make out not only the suspicious undertone but also the meaning of the words.
“I know things have been rough. But if you just need me to pay more attention …”
“I’m not lying, Papa!” the other voice says, impatiently. “I’m telling you. It’s a gray Stormtrooper and a frog with giant ears.”
“A frog with giant ears?” the first one repeats, sounding even more incredulous now. “That sounds …”
He trails off. “Huh.”
“See?” the second one, the young one, says. They are close now, far too close. He should probably be doing something about that, any moment now. If only he could get his leg to cooperate.
“Yes, I see,” the older one agrees. “You told me. But that’s not a Stormtrooper.” There is a brief, heavy pause. “That’s a Mandalorian.”
“A Mandalorian?” There is a hint of awe in the boy’s voice. “I’ve always wanted to see one.”
The boy – it must be the boy – knocks on his helmet then, like he’s trying to see if someone is home. The sound echoes within the helmet and deep inside his head, making him grit his teeth in pain.
With some effort, he forces his eyes open. A young curious face is staring back at him, surrounded by a shock of untamed dark curls; a human face, maybe six, maybe ten years of age … he is not good at guessing children’s ages.
The boy gives him a speculative look, then curiously reaches out again.
Apparently, some of his reflexes are still functioning after all, because his gloved hand shoots out to grab the boy’s skinny arm before his fingers can touch the helmet again.
Caught, the boy freezes, eyes wide. Behind the child, a man raises his heavy blaster and points it straight at Din.
“We mean no harm,” the man says firmly. “But if you hurt my kid, I’ll have to shoot you.”
Din releases his hold, and the boy scrambles backwards. There is no point in telling them that he could kill them both easily, even without a weapon in reach. It’s not like he has any intention of hurting them. And there is that trace of doubt in the back of his mind whether, in his current condition, he could actually take them down.
Come to think of it, he isn’t feeling all that great. It probably has something to do with the way his femur bone is sticking out at a weird angle from his thigh.
“Hey look,” the boy says now, staring at the space to his right. “The frog is walking on two legs!”
“That’s not a frog, son,” the man says, in something like wonder, and lowers his blaster.
“I’ve never seen a young one before, but I think that’s – “
Din would really, really like to know what the man is going to say next. Unfortunately, this is the moment when the world around him narrows down and the sun goes dark, and he passes out before he can hear another word.
Yavin IV had been an accident. He had been following a lead to Raxus, but he’d been running low on fuel, so they had stopped on Vandyne to fill up. That had turned out to be a mistake – they were attacked by space pirates the moment they left orbit again.
He was able to shake them off eventually, but not without taking a hit to the engines that made an emergency landing inevitable.
Yavin IV just happened to be the nearest surface generous enough to break their fall.
He jerks awake in an unfamiliar room, his heart racing. The first thing that registers is that the helmet is still on his head, and he breathes a sigh of relief at the realization. The second is that someone has removed the armor and boot from his right leg. He pushes himself to sitting on the narrow bed, reaching for his thigh.
Someone appears to have set his leg while he was unconscious, and stabilized it with an improvised splint. It still hurts like a herd of blurrgs has stampeded across his thigh, but at least the bone isn’t sticking out through the skin anymore, which seems like a significant improvement.
He glances around the small room, mostly empty except for the bed he is lying on. There are windows, but the blinds are lowered halfway, the sun falling in through the gaps casting the room in a dim warm light.
A sturdy cane is leaning against the bed, and Din is struck by the thoughtfulness of the gesture, when another realization makes his blood run cold.
He searches the room with anxious eyes, frantically digs around in the sheets, then tries to lean over the edge of the bed to check the narrow space underneath.
The Child is nowhere to be seen.
He nearly breaks his other leg in his haste to get up, just barely catches himself against the door frame. He pushes the door open with his elbow and limps into an open kitchen area, leaning heavily onto the cane while he is squinting against the sudden brightness.
As his eyes adjust to the light, he realizes that the man from earlier is standing at the counter, cutting vegetables with a large knife. At Din's appearance, he looks up in concern.
“Are you sure you should be standing up?” he frowns; then, when there is no immediate response: “Would you like a glass of water?”
“The child,” Din asks urgently. His voice sounds scratchy and uneven, far from the threatening growl he is trying for.
“Yours or mine?” the man smiles, unfazed, then shrugs and points with his knife.
“They are under the tree.”
Din clears his throat. “The tree?’
“Go,” the man says, nodding towards an open door that seems to lead outside. “You’ll see.”
The man turns back to his cooking, apparently having concluded that the strange injured Mandalorian in his kitchen is not a threat. The gesture of trust seems foolish to Din, but he is grateful for the lack of attention, because it takes him an embarrassingly long time to cross the room. By the time he steps outside into the warm afternoon, he is dripping with sweat, his fingers cramping around the handle of the cane.
Surrounded by farm buildings and the thick lush forest, the young tree seems nothing special at first. But at second glance, there is something strange about the way the feathery leaves reflect the light, the way the crown seems to be swaying in a gentle breeze, despite the fact that the air rests heavily over the farm, humid and almost entirely still.
Taking another laborious step closer, Din sees the boy sitting under the tree, legs crossed, his back propped against the slender trunk. Next to him is the Child, who seems … to have grown, and for a moment Din wonders, irrationally, if perhaps he was asleep for far longer than he thought, but then he realizes that the Child is not taller than he remembers, but floating in the air, about a foot above the ground.
Din stares, but he doesn’t have time to process what he sees, because that’s when his left leg starts to give out underneath him, and he cannot suppress an anguished groan as he struggles to keep himself upright without putting weight on his broken thigh.
The younglings stare up at him in alarm. The Child lowers himself to the ground, looking shifty, as if he was caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to do. The human boy jumps to his feet and runs over to put a supporting hand under Din’s arm. The kid isn’t strong enough to carry any of his weight, but the touch at least allows him to regain his balance.
“Here,” the boy says, and carefully guides him the final steps into the shade of the tree. “Sit down. It’ll help.”
Din doesn’t argue, if only because he isn’t interested in passing out more than once in one single day. Awkwardly, he lowers himself to the ground, arranging the injured leg carefully in front of him.
“Help?” he asks, dazed and confused, and the boy points up at the branches above their heads.
“The tree,” he says. “It’s the Force. Can’t you feel it?”
No, he is about to say, except that the moment he opens his mouth, he realizes that would be a lie. Yes, he can feel it, whatever it is. He is still in pain, he is still tired, but the excruciating agony he felt just a moment ago is now muted somehow, and there is an unfamiliar lightness in the general vicinity of his heart that he hasn’t experienced in a very long time.
“The Force?” he asks suspiciously. “What is it?”
The boy stares in surprise. “The Force,” he repeats, as if that is enough of an explanation. “Like him,” he finally adds, pointing towards the Child, who seems to take the gesture as an invitation to climb clumsily into the boy’s lap. “Like the Jedi.”
“The Jedi,” Din repeats, now on high alert. “You know of the Jedi?”
The boy frowns. “Everyone knows the legends,” he says, clearly offended that the Mandalorian seems to be doubting his knowledge. “But my parents fought with Luke Skywalker himself,” he continues proudly. “He is the one who gave this tree to my mother.”
Din glances down at the Child, who has settled down comfortably against the boy’s chest. For months now, he has been following misinformation and cold trails across the galaxy in an attempt to uncover the origins of the Child.
And here, in the middle of the jungle, under a strange magic tree, a chance encounter in the wake of a disastrous crash landing is suddenly offering him the kind of information he’d almost given up on ever coming across.
“I would like to speak with her,” he says, trying not to sound too eager. “I need to ask her some questions.”
The boy’s face tightens. “You will have to talk to my father,” he says quietly. “My mother is dead.”
“Oh,” he makes, his excitement disappearing as quickly as it came. “I’m sorry,” he offers awkwardly, feeling pathetically ill-equipped to provide any consolation.
The boy shrugs and looks away. The Child makes a cooing noise and rubs an ear against his face. The boy laughs, a wet sound that is more tears than mirth but laughter nonetheless.
“I lost my parents when I was very young,” Din hears himself say, aghast at his own willingness to reveal so much about himself to a child he doesn’t even know.
Yet it does seem to work as a distraction. The boy stares up at him, wide-eyed. “What happened?”
“They were killed by battle droids.” He coughs. “They managed to hide me before they died.”
The hug is as brief as it is unexpected, just a momentary flutter of two small arms, barely tight enough to even be felt through the thick layers of leather and metal.
It probably shouldn’t leave him as shaken as it does.
He stares down at the boy, but the kid is steadfastly not looking at him, seemingly fully immersed in watching the Child catch bugs out of the air with his tongue.
He is still casting around for something to say when the father appears in the doorway to the house.
“Poe, can you run and pick some fruit before we eat?”
“In a moment, Papa,” Poe says, sounding cheerful and entirely normal, and Din realizes then that the boy’s brave façade is as much for the father’s sake as for his own.
“I assume you are staying?” the man asks, looking at him.
It’s clearly meant to be a rhetorical question, and yet, Din’s first reaction is to say no. He wasn’t even supposed to be here, they are getting too close, and he should be picking up the little runt by the neck and get away from this place as fast as he can.
Except – well. Except that his ship is a smoldering wreck in the jungle, and his leg is still broken, and these people seem to know something about the Child’s species that he doesn’t, and that is, after all, what he’s been searching for all this time.
He sighs, looks down.
Two sets of impossibly big dark eyes stare up at him, one more hopeful and deceptively innocent than the other.
“For now,” he says, and the father nods, apparently satisfied.
“I’ll put out two more plates for dinner then.”
18 ABY, Kijimi
One of the downsides of having been among the very best bounty hunters on the rim is that sometimes his reputation precedes him – even now that he hasn’t been a bounty hunter in quite a long time.
“Don’t move,” the young woman says, pointing her blaster at him.
“Who sent you?”
She radiates anger and nervousness. He could easily kill her, and so could the Child on his arm, but it would mean losing his access to the information he needs, so he files the option of attacking her away under last resort.
He raises his free arm to signal his peaceful intentions.
“I’m not here for you,” he says. “I just need to find this Babu Frik to discuss a potential job.”
“Right,” the woman says sarcastically, shifting her stance. “Then why does my informant tell me that you are a famous bounty hunter from Nevarro?”
“I think your informant is operating on outdated information,” he replies. “I’m not – “ he continues, but at that moment, another person barrels down the narrow stairs, taking two steps at a time.
“Zorii,” the man says, sounding frazzled and out of breath, “do you have any idea why Lord Sikka –“
He comes to an abrupt halt at the bottom of the stairs when he notices Din, reaching for his blaster. Then he does a double-take, reeling back with an audible gasp.
“You?” he says incredulously, running a hand through his wind-swept hair.
The Child squeals.
Din looks down at the Child on his arm, then up at the young man across the room. A years-old memory crystalizes in his mind.
“Poe?”
And yes, now that he remembers, there is no doubt that it is him. Same dark eyes, same messy curls, even if he has shot up in height since they last met and filled out a little in the shoulders.
The woman is looking back and forth between them suspiciously. She hasn’t lowered her blaster. “You two know each other?”
Poe nods, a little distractedly. He is still staring at Din.
“Yes,” he says slowly. “They were on Yavin IV some years ago, and the Child …”
“Kip,” Din throws in.
Poe raises his brows, clearly appalled. “You named him Kip?”
“Hey,” Din says defensively. “He named himself Kip.”
“Kip,” the Child repeats proudly and points at himself.
“Well,” Poe says doubtfully. “I suppose it’s better than Child.”
“Poe,” Zorii interrupts sharply, and Poe finally gives her his full attention.
“Can we trust him?”
Poe glances at him from the corner of his eye. “Yes,” he says confidently, and Din is glad that he is wearing a helmet; otherwise he would be tempted to slap a hand against his forehead in exasperation over Poe’s demonstration of blind faith.
“But we do have a problem,” Poe continues, his face shifting into a grimace of worry.
“Sikka and his goons are on their way here. I actually came to warn you.”
Din curses under his breath. “They are coming for me,” he says grimly. “They want the information I’m carrying. Just tell me how I can find this Babu Frik and I’ll get out of your hair. No need for you to get mixed up in this.”
“Too late, I’m afraid,” Poe says mournfully, and sure enough, there are sounds of shouting and heavy footsteps traveling down the stairs.
“Is there another way out of here?” Din asks without much hope as he casts a look around the small windowless storage basement.
Zorii looks a little sheepish. “No,” she says. “That’s why I led you down here. Didn’t want you to get away.”
“Alright,” he nods, not particularly surprised. “So we will have to kill them.”
“I like the way you are thinking,” Zorii says, sounding grudgingly impressed.
“Great,” Poe says hastily. “Glad you are getting along. You guys should step back and hide over there. I’ll distract them to give you a better shot.”
“Wait, what?” Zorii asks, but they are out of time – Din can hear the men storming down the stairs. Zorii steps backwards, pressing herself flat against the wall, and he mirrors her actions on the opposite side of the room, wielding his rifle with one hand, tucking the Child against his chest protectively with the other.
Too late he realizes that this means he doesn’t have a hand available to pull Poe away from the stairs and slap him over the head.
Which means he cannot do anything but watch in horror when the kid steps right into the path of the first two men rushing down the staircase.
“Hello there,” Poe says cheerfully, as if he’s making small talk at a cantina. “Are you looking for something?”
The two men falter, staring at him in confused annoyance.
One of them opens his mouth to speak, and Din has a moment of thinking that Poe’s reckless plan might actually work, when another, older man appears at the bottom of the stairs, takes one look at Poe, and shoots him in the gut.
Poe gasps and stumbles backwards, one hand grasping at his midsection, where blood is already staining the fabric of his shirt.
“Fuck,” Zorii curses, giving herself away, and Din takes a breath and starts to shoot.
There’s only six of them, well-trained but no assassins, and he does have the element of surprise, so it is only a couple of minutes before he tucks away his rifle and prods the nearest body carefully with the tip of his boot to make sure she is actually dead.
The Child makes a tiny distressed noise, and Din turns, the familiar satisfaction he feels after a successful fight quickly giving way to dismay.
Poe is on the ground where he fell, still conscious but fading quickly, weakly clutching at his stomach as he struggles for air.
“What did you do that for, you lunatic?” Din growls, falling to his knees, the Child sliding from his arm to the ground as he reaches for Poe.
“Did you miss the part where I’m wearing Beskar armor and you are wearing a flimsy shirt?”
“That’s Poe for you,” Zorii says, fond exasperation clearly audible underneath the distress. “Stupidly heroic and self-sacrificial.”
Poe seems to be too busy trying not to pass out from the pain to answer, but that doesn’t stop him from shooting angry looks at them both.
Then Din pushes the simple linen shirt up to his chest, and Poe turns white as a sheet, his eyes fluttering shut. Zorii takes one look at the hole underneath Poe’s ribcage and presses a hand against her mouth.
“What are we going to do?” she asks, more than a trace of panic in her voice. “The next medic is at the other end of the quarter. He will never make it that far.”
“We can take care of him here,” Din grits out and reaches for the medpac he carries in his belt.
He isn’t quite sure how successful he is at hiding the doubt in his voice. He has bacta patches and a blood clotting spray, but the wound is bigger than he’s entirely comfortable with, and he can barely tell if Poe is even breathing anymore.
A small hand on his arm stops him in his tracks. When he turns, a sharp dismissal on his tongue, Kip stares at him with a pointed look. Din takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. Are you sure, he considers asking, but who is he kidding, it’s not like he is any more ready than Kip to let Poe bleed out here on the floor.
“Go ahead,” he says, and the Child curls up against Poe’s flank and raises his hand.
“What is happening?” Poe whispers without opening his eyes, moving as if to lift an arm.
“We are just taking care of you, kid,” Din says and carefully puts his hand on Poe’s shoulder as he wills the Force to take mercy on them.
“Hey,” Zorii says as she steps out of the backroom into the living area.
They are at the smuggling crew’s headquarter now, a tiny shed tucked away in a hidden corner of the Thieves’ Quarter, a couple of blocks away from the basement where they met. Different people are coming and going, all armed and for the most part looking far too young to be in this business, in this part of the galaxy. They don’t ask questions, just eye Din with a kind of respectful curiosity while he is watching Babu Frik, who is busy cracking the encryption on his client’s precious microchip.
“How is Poe?” he asks, and Zorii smiles, the first real smile he’s seen cross her face.
“Awake,” she says. “Wants to talk to you.”
Din hesitantly glances at Babu Frik. Without looking up from his task, Babu mutters something uncomplimentary in Anzellan that Din interprets to mean Go away and let me work, you idiots.
“He’ll work faster without you looking over his shoulder,” Zorii points out.
“Alright,” he nods and gets up from his seat. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Hey,” Zorii says as he passes her. “That armor of yours. Is it really made from Beskar steel?”
“All Mandalorian armor is,” he confirms.
She grimaces. “I wouldn’t be able to afford it, would I?”
He shakes his head. “Unlikely. And no Mandalorian armorer would make it for you.”
“Oh well,” she says, deflating a little.
He tilts his head. “You get into fights with mud horns often?”
“Mud horns?” she asks. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“Regular steel will work just fine for your needs,” he says, and pulls a couple of ingots from his belt. He does owe them for the information and the rescue.
“Maybe a chromium finish. Any decent smith in Kijimi City should be able to craft something suitable for you. The shape of our helmets is strictly traditional,” he adds. “If I were you, I would consider something with a movable visor.”
“I’ll look into it,” she says, sounding pleased, and steps aside to let him pass.
In the backroom behind the heavy curtain, Poe is curled up on the floor, in the same pile of old threadbare blankets that Din had dropped him into earlier when they arrived. He looks almost normal, if a little pale around the nose; the blood splatters on his shirt the only reminder of his recent brush with death.
Kip is fast asleep on a pillow next to him, the gentle rise and fall of his chest a comforting reminder that he is only resting. Even after all this time, it is still a little disconcerting to witness the deep sleep he falls into after using the Force to heal.
“How are you feeling?” Din asks, and folds himself into a seated position on the floor.
“Much better,” Poe says, and pushes himself up to sitting. “Thank you for saving my life.”
Din grunts and points his chin towards Kip. “You should tell this guy.”
Poe rolls his eyes. “And I will, as soon as he wakes up.”
He pauses, his face taking on an expression of concern. “He will wake up, right?”
“He always has so far,” Din nods. “He just needs to rest.”
He furrows his brow, a little annoyed that Poe won’t actually be able to see it through the helmet.
“Don’t do something foolish like this again, by the way. What would your father say if –“
“My father,” Poe interrupts, his eyes stormy, “my father is a hypocrite.”
“Hm,” Din says, as some puzzle pieces are starting to fall into place. “Is that why you are here?”
Poe scowls and crosses his arms over his chest. “You know that my parents had me during the war?”
“I remember,” he nods. “You and your father both told some stories.”
“So you know what happened,” Poe continues angrily. “They had a baby, and they left me with my grandfather and went back to war. Who does that anyway? I barely saw them until the fighting was over. They could have died any day, and they still went and fought, over and over again. Finally, I got them back, and then my mom got sick.”
He swallows thickly.
“Long-term effects of radiation poisoning. Common in fighter pilots. And now my father has the nerve to think he can ask me to spend my entire life on a farm raising goats, because he wants to keep me safe.”
Din huffs. “And you are trying to prove him right by almost dying from a blaster gut shot?”
Poe grimaces and looks away.
Din sighs. “I hear,” he says carefully, “that overprotectiveness is a common trait among parents.”
“Oh yeah?” Poe replies, turning back towards him with defiant eyes. “You bring your child into all your fights.”
He laughs at that, surprising himself. “Yeah, well,” he says. “He was an asset before he was a child. And by the time he wasn’t, I realized that he was more likely to save me than the other way around.”
“Whereas I just need saving, is what you are trying to say?” Poe responds, seemingly aiming for snappish but mostly sounding tired and sad.
Din shakes his head. “None of us are invincible, Poe,” he says. “It’s not a weakness to admit that.”
He climbs to his feet with some effort. “It’s not my place to tell you how to live your life,” he says. “Just remember that next time Kip here might not be around to use the Force on you, and I don’t want to see you die.”
“Oh,” Poe says, a little surprised, as if somehow that thought hadn’t occurred to him. He lies back against the blankets, his eyes drooping.
“Hey,” he suddenly says, when Din is already reaching for the curtain. “Are you sticking around?”
Din looks down at the sleeping Child. He could grab him as soon as he gets the information from Babu, let him sleep it off on the ship. But the little one looks cozy and peaceful curled up on his pillow, and somehow it seems wrong to pick him up now.
Besides, Poe and Zorii could likely both use a lesson or two in self-defense.
“For now,” he says, only a little grudgingly.
“Good,” Poe smiles, and closes his eyes.
31 ABY, Somewhere other than Sorgan
The next time they end up on Sorgan, the Child decides to stay behind. Omera’s daughter Winta is all grown up by now, and recently bonded, but she and her husband remember their childhood playmate fondly and are delighted to take him in for a while.
Din can’t think of anything that might have prompted this choice, beyond the fact that Kip liked it here when they first arrived on the planet, over 20 years ago. Part of him wonders if this is not a kind of belated payback for being ready to abandon the Child here at the time.
Kip, on his part, seems to imply that he is doing this for Din, although he refuses to explain what that is supposed to mean. “This is the way,” he says, infuriatingly, nonsensically, and Din doesn’t know how to argue with someone who seems to have, at the same time, the emotional maturity of a toddler and the infinite wisdom of an ancient sage.
Back on his ship, alone, he finds it difficult to adjust. There are dark days, and even darker nights, and at some point he finds himself toying with the thought of taking up the bounty hunting business again, if only because the familiarity of the practice seems like a tempting prospect in his current state of mind.
His contact sends him a list. The New Republic Navy is looking for a group of deserters who joined the Resistance and took their ships with them when they left.
The first name on the list is Poe Dameron.
Din blinks, and closes the message, and picks up a job transporting meds across the rim instead.
35 ABY, Ajan Kloss
At first, Din barely recognizes him. It must have to do with the fact that he’s grown up – no, Din corrects himself, he’s grown old.
But no, that isn’t right either. He’s not old – not like Din, who now spends a few minutes every morning categorizing every twinge and ache in his aging body before he gets out of bed. But old beyond his years. Weary. Tired. Holding himself carefully, as if the weight of the world rests on his back.
And yet, he is making the rounds, shaking hands (or paws, or tentacles) with as many of Lando’s ragtag army as he can, offering a seemingly genuine smile to everyone he passes.
“It’s an honor, General,” Din hears someone say, and that warrants a raised brow. The title is unexpected, and yet, if he is honest with himself, not really that much of a surprise.
He is trying to stay in the background, for now just happy to observe, but apparently Poe isn’t just a general, he’s a good general, because he makes a beeline for Din the moment he spots him hiding behind a group of celebrating Twi’leks.
“I’m Poe Dameron,” he says, bestowing another of his smiles on Din. “Thank you for saving our lives today.”
Well. That answers the question whether Poe recognizes him.
Din swallows the unexpected stab of irrational disappointment and takes the offered hand. “No need to thank me,” he says. “Just repaying a debt, Poe.”
Poe tilts his head, puzzled. “Have we … “
He pauses, stares. “Din?” he tries, almost as if he’s half convinced that he’s wrong.
“So you do remember me,” Din says, trying for a smile.
“Of course I remember you,” Poe says incredulously. “I just never …”
He gestures at his face, and his look of astonishment turns into one of concern. “What happened to your helmet?” he asks, “Your armor?”, and then, increasingly distressed: “Where is Kip?”
Din shakes his head. “He is fine,” he says, and suddenly feels very tired.
“It’s a long story. I –“
“General!” A young woman in uniform with tight blond braids is walking towards them. “Poe, we –“
She trails off, looking back and forth between them. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”
“It’s alright, Kaydel,” Poe replies, then glances at Din. “I’m –“
“Go,” Din says, gruffly. “You’re a general. Do your job. I’ll be fine.”
Poe nods, a little reluctantly. “Are you going to stay?” he asks.
“For now,” Din nods, and a corner of Poe’s mouth lifts in response.
“I’ll hold you to that,” he says, and disappears in the crowd.
A few hours later, Din is starting to regret his promise.
There are too many people. Drunk people. Injured people. Laughing people. Crying people. The base looks like a tight fit under regular conditions, but now, with a good part of the rescue fleet crammed into the cave and the landing zone, it is bursting at the seams.
He is used to being alone. Well, or alone with another person, but even as he got older, the Child never spoke much and didn’t take up a lot of space, and anyway, for the past four years, it’s been just him again, on his own. He wouldn’t even be here, now, if Kip hadn’t sent him a cryptic holo message that for some inexplicable reason he hadn’t been able to ignore. The Rebellion, the Resistance, that has never been his fight, not back then, thirty years ago, and not now.
Except, of course, that he is here, and that he fought, and is now trying not to suffocate under the rolling wave of the victorious survivors.
He gets up, not entirely sure where he’s going, just trying to escape the crowd. Briefly, he thinks about leaving, but his ship needs fuel and repairs, and it’s not like he’s going to get very far on foot.
“Are you looking for Poe?” someone asks, and when he turns around, the blond woman from earlier is smiling at him, kindly and a little curiously.
“Yes,” he says. He hadn’t been, not consciously anyway, but now that she’s asking, he isn’t sure what else there is to say.
“I think he went to his quarters,” she says. “Behind the command center?” she adds, when he just stares at her, and points towards the cave.
‘Command center’, he soon realizes, is somewhat of an exaggeration. As is ‘quarters’, for that matter – he finally finds Poe in the furthest corner of the cave, hidden from view by a natural wall, where two cots and some scattered items indicate that two people are apparently sleeping here. Poe is sitting on one of the beds within a small pile of medical supplies, flight suit rolled down to his hips, cursing quietly as he is trying to remove a makeshift bandage from his left arm.
“Need a hand with that?” Din asks, and Poe flinches violently, then relaxes when he recognizes him.
“Please,” he says, smiling helplessly. He sounds very tired and a little resigned.
Din sits down next to him on the cot and starts to pry open the knot holding the cloth in place. It looks like it has not been removed for days, and the fabric is covered in a sticky layer of sand, dust, ash, and sweat – pretty much like the rest of Poe, as he realizes now that he’s looking more closely.
“How long ago did this happen?” he asks as he finally manages to dig a fingernail into the knot.
Poe opens his mouth, then blinks, and slowly shakes his head. “I don’t even know,” he says, sounding a little dazed.
Din bites his tongue and keeps his thoughts to himself, focusing instead on removing the loosened bandana from Poe’s arm.
“Huh,” he says, staring at the open wound. “Blaster shot?”
Poe shrugs and looks away. “Just a graze.”
“Hm,” Din makes and carefully prods the edges of the injury with a finger. Poe flinches and hisses through his teeth.
“Sorry,” he apologizes. “Doesn’t look too bad. Not infected in any case, which is a miracle considering that this rag looks like you dragged it through the mud for two days before wrapping it around your arm.”
Poe ducks his head. “I might as well have,” he says. “It’s been …” He exhales a tired sigh. “It’s been a long couple days.”
“A long couple years, from what I gather,” Din says dryly, and Poe doesn’t make any effort to deny it.
Din reaches for the disinfectant spray. “Last time I saw you, you were smuggling spice on Kijimi,” he says. “Now you are running the Resistance. What happened?”
Poe shakes his head and swallows. “I – “ He pauses. “I’ll tell you, but not now, alright?” He laughs shakily. “If I start talking about it now, I might cry. And if I cry, I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop.”
Din chooses not to mention the lone tear that is already trailing down his cheek. He presses a sterile dressing against the wound, then casts around for something to hold it in place.
“Bandage?” he asks, and Poe blinks slowly, as if it takes him a while to fully process the word.
“I think we might be out … “ he finally says, distracted. “There were a lot of injuries. Is it cold in here?”
“Not really,” Din shrugs and pulls a clean cloth from a pocket in his belt. By the time he’s done winding the scarf around Poe’s biceps, the man is shivering, and his face is gray.
Din presses a hand against Poe’s forehead, finding the skin cool and clammy. No fever then.
Poe sighs and leans into the touch, his eyes fluttering shut, and Din feels a sharp twinge of concern.
“You are crashing,” he says, reaching for the thin woolen blanket on the cot to wrap it around Poe’s shoulders.
“Thank you,” Poe says with some effort. His teeth are chattering now.
“I think I’m a little …”
He trails off mid-sentence, and Din just has enough time to put out an arm before Poe suddenly tilts to the side and passes out against his chest.
Din puts a finger against his exposed neck, but the pulse seems normal, and Poe’s chest is rising and falling steadily. Assured that Poe is not at immediate risk of dying, he shifts slightly to shake out his leg and removes the blaster from its holster, trying not to jostle Poe as he moves.
He is still trying to figure out what is stopping him from simply lowering Poe onto the cot and leaving him to sleep, when a man walks around the corner and comes to an abrupt stop at the sight.
“Uh,” he says, his eyebrows raised. “Never mind. I’ll find someplace else to sleep.”
“I can leave,” Din says hastily, feeling awkward and not entirely sure why. “He was just …”
“No,” the man says. “It’s fine. He needs the sleep. And to be honest, you look like you could use some sleep as well. Feel free to take my bed.” He pauses. “Or not.”
“Where will you sleep?” Din feels obligated to ask.
The man shrugs. “I have other options,” he says. “If Poe wakes up, tell him Finn is fine.”
That name rings a bell. He hasn’t spent several hours listening to the chatter in the landing zone for nothing.
“You are the Stormtrooper,” he says.
The man grins. “Used to be.” He frowns, tilts his head. “You are the Mandalorian.”
Din tries not to react at the realization that word about him has gotten around.
He shrugs. “Used to be.”
Finn nods gravely, as if he understands (and perhaps he does), then quickly grabs a towel hanging over a wooden crate before he leaves.
Din sits still and stares down at the sleeping man in his lap.
It’s possible that on a certain abstract level, he’d always been vaguely aware that Poe was good-looking, but it had never really registered before – probably because, above all other things, he had always remembered Poe simply as kind and brave and very, very young.
Now, though, when he looks at Poe, he sees the fine lines feathering out from the corners of his eyes, the first bit of gray in the stubborn curl falling into his forehead, the strong jawline darkened by a hint of stubble, and it occurs to him that something important has shifted today.
With some trepidation, he realizes that he might be in a tiny bit of trouble when he doesn't even consider moving while his left arm is slowly growing numb under Poe's weight.
He wakes up the next morning, stretched out on the cot, a blanket covering him from his chin down to his socked feet.
He doesn’t remember taking off his boots, but when he moves his stiff aching neck to peek over the edge of the cot, they are on the floor, lined up neatly side by side.
He jumps in surprise when an orange ball-shaped astromech rolls around the corner. Instinctively, he fumbles for his blaster, cursing himself for taking it off, until the smell of caf hits his nose and he realizes that what the droid is carrying, in his pincer arm, is not a weapon but a metal cup.
The droid eyes the way his hand is hovering over the blaster, bleeping suspiciously.
“Alright,” Din says and raises his hands, trying not to feel ridiculous as he’s demonstrating that he is unarmed.
The astromech makes a pleased sound and carefully offers him the caf.
It’s hot and sweet and tastes surprisingly good for something whipped up on a provisionary military base, the day after a major fight.
“Thank you,” he says, because the droid is still lingering, watching him carefully from his round black camera eye.
The droid beeps again, apparently satisfied, and proceeds to roll out of sight, back to where he came from.
Din stares after him, and sips his coffee, and wonders quietly what the hell he has gotten himself into here.
Still 35 ABY (Still Ajan Kloss)
It takes only a good night’s sleep and a bowl of stew to restore him back to his old self. It takes two days, some spare parts from General Calrissian, and the help of Poe’s droid and a woman named Rose to fix his ship.
Which means that he has no good explanation for why he is still here, two weeks after the Battle of Exegol.
Most of the others have left by now, dispersed into all directions, returned to their home planets, set out on new adventures. The handful of people left are those who have nowhere to go and those who feel like they need to stay till the end – people like Finn, Connix, Kanata, and, well, Poe.
Poe, who is currently pushing the leaves of an enormous fern to the side as he steps into the small clearing.
“Here you are,” he says, his smile easy as he looks at Din, then up at the trees.
“This is nice,” he adds approvingly, and sits down on the mossy tree trunk next to Din.
“Yeah,” Din nods and squints into the light.
Without really meaning to, he continues: “Reminds me of –“
“– of Yavin IV,” Poe nods. “Yes.”
“Hm,” Din makes, feeling weirdly caught out. “Is that where you are going to go after this?”
Poe shrugs and draws circles into the moist soil at his feet with the tip of his boot.
“I need to go see my father.” He glances at Din from the side. “How about you?”
“I have not made a decision,” Din says, which he thinks sounds significantly better than I have no idea.
The truth is, he has nowhere to go, nowhere to be, as it has been for much of the time since he left Kip on Sorgan, and perhaps this is part of the reason why he still hasn’t left: perhaps he is just waiting for someone, something, to tell him where to go.
“You could come along,” Poe says, his voice deceptively light.
Din stares.
“To Yavin IV, I mean,” Poe adds and bites his lip. “I’m sure my father would love to see you."
“Your father?” Din asks skeptically. “I doubt he even remembers me.”
“Of course he does,” Poe says, as if there is no doubt. “He knows that you and Kip saved my life on Kijimi too. Besides,” he adds, a faint blush spreading across his nose and cheeks. “I like seeing your face.”
Din feels his neck grow hot. “My face, huh?”
Poe glances at him from underneath long lashes, somehow managing to look embarrassed and unapologetic at the same time.
“I like that you are terrible at hiding what you think,” he says. “And I did have to wait for 25 years to find out what you looked like.”
Din chuckles, a little self-conscious. “I looked a lot younger 25 years ago.”
Poe fondly rolls his eyes at him. “I’m also 25 years older than I was back then.”
“Yes,” Din says. His mouth is dry. “You are.”
Poe reaches out, then, with careful fingers, as if he’s worried that Din will bolt. His fingers trace a gentle line along Din’s cheekbone.
“I don’t – “ Din starts. “I’m not –“
“Shh,” Poe smiles. “You are talking too much.”
Din huffs. “That is the first time anyone has ever told me that.”
“Can’t imagine why,” Poe says, and kisses him.
It’s a careful kiss, so tender he can barely stand it. But Din has rarely backed away from a challenge and he isn’t going to start now, so he responds by pushing his fingers into those lovely curls, tilts Poe’s head backwards with a bit of force, and deepens the kiss.
Poe shudders and groans and lets himself be manhandled, and there is something about his conscious surrender of control that pushes Din to let go of his as well.
He fucks Poe right there, pants around their knees, on a blanket of soft moss and drying leaves, the late afternoon sun warm on their backs.
As it turns out, perhaps he isn’t so old yet after all.
Afterwards they end up lying on their sides, facing each other, only a hand’s width of space between them. Din focuses on Poe’s eyes and doesn’t think about the fact that he’s been shielding his face from the world for most of his life, and here he is lying in the forest with his ass on display for anyone unfortunate enough to pass by.
But there is no one, and anyway, perhaps the point is that there isn’t really anything to hide.
“So are you coming?” Poe asks. He’s got bits of fern stuck in his hair, and his smile is hopeful and hesitant.
For now, Din is about to say, but he stops himself before the words pass his lips.
Maybe it’s time to stop running. He’s forgotten years ago what it is he’s supposed to be running from. And after all, it looks like life is determined to bring him back to Poe again anyway. He might as well save fate the trouble.
“For as long as I’m welcome,” he says instead, and Poe’s smile widens.
“So that might be a while,” he says and kisses him again.
A soft breeze passes through the clearing, cooling their skin.
Faintly, in the distance, Din is almost certain he can hear the Child laughing to himself.