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You and Din had decided to check up on your friends on Nevarro for a few days. The child was getting restless on the Razor Crest, and the last time Din had taken him there the planet had been transformed into a bustling city where the inhabitants were thriving.
After a bumpy landing, you picked up the Child and followed Din out of the ship. Din introducing you to his two friends, Cara and Greef Karga. You smiled warmly as Cara clapped you on the back, welcoming you to the city she kept safe.
“Have you eaten?” Cara asked you, but her focus was on the child, a finger reaching over you to stroke the hairs on the top of his green head.
“Yeah, but I could do with a drink,” you replied. You held the child up towards her to hold, but she shook her head.
“I don’t hold children,” Cara chuckled, “let’s go to the cantina, get drinks, catch up,” she suggested.
“Talking of cantinas,” the tinny voice of Din interrupted, “is the school still here?”
“Ah yes, of course it is. We will get the child in on a class whilst we’re drinking,” Karga said, leading the way towards the school.
When you stepped inside the door, you saw a droid up front giving a history lesson, pointing at diagrams on the board. There were around twenty children sitting quietly at small tables, concentrating on their lesson too much to notice the new arrivals.
It looked normal compared to the adventures you went on in the Razor Crest. Travelling from planet to planet, getting into fights, shooting at Imperial ships all made you forget that ordinary life went on living in these small corners of the universe.
You turned to Din whose helmet was already facing you, wishing you could gage his reaction. You hadn’t been with him long enough to know the small reactions, gestures, flinches, that gave away his true feelings. He nodded to an empty table near the front of the room, assuring you that he was happy to leave the Child here.
“We won’t be long, will we?” You asked, hesitant to be separated for too long.
“No, we won’t,” Din assured you.
You moved through the tables, the children turning to look at you in a mixture of confusion and intrigue at the tiny bundle you held in your arms. Placing the Child at the empty table, you gave him a smile that told him he would be safe. He didn’t so much as look in your direction when you began to walk away, clearly comfortable to be left in this room. You made sure to stroke his ear as you left though.
-
It was around two hours later when you began to get anxious about leaving the Child. Cara was on the other side of the room challenging an enormous man with hands the size of your head to an arm wrestle. You didn’t particularly want to stick around to hear bones break, even though you had your suspicions it wouldn’t be Cara’s bones breaking.
Greef Karga was recalling the last time Din had landed on Nevarro, just before you had joined Din and the Child. When Karga got up to get another drink from the bar, you softly poked Din between the gaps in the beskar on his arm.
“We should get back to the Child,” you suggested, downing the remaining dregs of your drink.
“You worry about him too much,” Din grumbled, although you suspected he wasn’t really chastising you.
“You don’t worry enough,” you retorted, remembering the many times Din had allowed the Child to wander into all sorts of trouble in his ship. Din chuckled, the sound reverberating through your chest, warm and surprising as he didn’t laugh often.
“Fine, we will go-“ Din was interrupted by the sound of high pitched screams and tiny feet stampeding into the cantina, followed by the horrified shouts of the owner trying to shoo them back out.
“Excuse me,” one boy ran over towards you, paying no mind to the Mandalorian next to you who usually scared people away, “come quick, your child needs you.”
The words were barely out of his mouth before Din was pushing the table out of his way and running out of the cantina. You could hardly keep up, but the thought of the Child being injured or, maker forbid, kidnapped was making you move faster.
Din’s hulking frame and frantic jogging created a pathway for the both of you, people jumping out of his way, not wanting to get on the receiving end of an angry Mandalorian. As you reached the school, you saw the children that had been taking a lesson a couple of hours ago were huddled around what you could only assume was the Child.
When you finally got to the crowd you gasped when you saw what was going on.
The Child was sat on the floor with three other children, all of which had crumbs of various colors around their mouths and handfuls of brightly colored cookies that they were ramming into their mouths as though they were starved. The Child was the only one who had thrown up the contents of his stomach.
You tried not to laugh when Din let out an exasperated sigh and reached down to pick him up, but it erupted out of you before you could stop it. The Child looked so innocent, and you were just relieved nothing bad had happened.
Din slowly turned to you, shaking his head at your antics.
“I don’t mean to laugh,” you said between giggles, “but come on, it’s adorable.”
“If it’s so adorable, you can clean him up,” Din responded, but he made no move to give you the Child, instead holding him closer to his chest, protective and caring. You smiled at the two of them, forever grateful that they were now a part of your life.