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I’ve given everything I need
I’d give you everything I own
I’d give in if it could at least be ours alone
I’ve given everything I could
To blow it to hell and gone
Soundgarden, Blow Up the Outside World
Boba Fett watches the Mandalorian wander through the ash.
The remains of the ship aren’t even a pile of ash. They are a crater of ash.
He watches Mando drift back and forth, head bowed, scuffing his feet every now and then, cinder puffs kicking up with each step to drift off on the breeze with the rest of the smoke.
The thing about hyperdrive fuel is that when it ignites, it doesn’t just burn. It detonates. When a substance used to turn space inside out for the purposes of violating the laws of physics lights up, it vaporizes everything in its path in a volume a thousand times greater than its own, reducing matter to its basic elements. Solids, liquids, gasses, plasmas… the molecular bonds for all of them wink out in a fiery maelstrom of annihilation lasting mere moments.
And the Razor Crest had been fully fueled before it left Nevarro.
The one benefit to such a catastrophic level of explosion is that it cools quickly. After the initial flash, no further matter remains to burn or generate heat. Only the outer and deeper-buried edges of the crater smoke, leaving the rest of it cool enough for the Mandalorian to shuffle through it without burning through the soles of his boots.
Not that Din would mind evaporating on the spot at the moment, anyway.
He blocks Grogu’s loss from his mind by cataloging everything else he has lost with his ship. He can only process so much at one time. Later, once his audience has left, he’ll return to the mountaintop and grieve for the baby. When he can give his memory of Grogu the time and attention, and… possibly the volume… he deserves.
This moment is for the Razor Crest.
The thing about nomadic life is that when you lose your method of transportation, you don’t just lose your mobility. You lose your livelihood. You lose your world. Every last possession that hadn’t been strapped to him or leaning forgotten against a rock the moment the Razor Crest was vaporized is gone.
Forever.
His home is gone. His one place of refuge in the entire galaxy, the one place he could feel safe once wrapped in the envelope of hyperspace, is gone. The utilitarian familiarity of the small ship, the sparse simplicity of a space that was all his own is no more. The little boy who once found safety in a concrete bunker has grown into a man who found safety in a metal box. He has asked so little of his life, has been satisfied with such a meager existence, and yet the galaxy has decided even an old military surplus ship is too much for him and has taken it away.
Bits and pieces litter the crater, having survived through the random vortices often found in hyperfuel detonations. But nothing of value.
He finds no trace of the Amban. He’d used the weapon to save his own life a hundred times over, ending the lives of others several times that. He’ll never be able to replace it; a custom model built by an Armorer fallen during the Purge. All of his other weapons, an armory built over a lifetime of purchases, trades, or looting of dead bodies, and all of his ammunition, is similarly gone, no doubt contributing to the radius of the crater he is standing in.
He’d kept the safe not too far from the weapons locker, in a space behind a hull panel that even the Jawas hadn’t found on Arvala-7. He finds no trace of that, either. The sizable earnings from the job to spring Qin from the prison ship, his share plus all the rest of the team he’d abandoned or killed, gone with it. The small savings he had started with the few jobs he’d taken once reinstated with the Guild are gone as well. And with it, any chance of replacing everything else he had lost. The carbonite freezing equipment. A few changes of clothes. A month’s worth of rations. A cabinet full of real food. A meager library of language lessons and bedtime story books he’d picked up for-
He stops in his tracks, shakes his head, and switches to what he can’t replace even if he had any money.
His notes. He’d written volumes and volumes of notes. The languages he’d encountered on every world he’d set foot on. The currencies most used and most valued in every village he spent money at and was paid in. The weather and corresponding season for each planetside layover. The local foods that best survived takeout. The local beverages that wouldn’t explode all over the place after getting jostled and opened. The local flora and fauna he could eat in the field while tracking. The local flora and fauna that might try to eat him. Card game rules. Traffic rules. Conversational rules. All the bits and pieces of knowledge he’d collected over the years and galactic travels of his mercenary and bounty-hunting careers that came in handy whenever he circled back. All gone.
He’s never had holorecordings of family or friends. He’s never had comms from other people worth saving. No keepsakes or mementos of personal relationships. These things don’t even cross his mind. These things have never existed for him.
Until one thing catches his eye.
The ball.
Oh, good god the lever ball is half-buried in the ash.
He brings his aimless wandering to a halt and stoops over to pick it up. He rolls it in his fingers for a few moments, desperately trying not to think about-
Don’t… Not yet…
He wants to throw it. Wants so much to throw the memory of his astounding failure away. You had one job, Djarin. He’s failed. The sight of Grogu’s eyes wide with terror as he was carried away slaps Din in the face and he grits his teeth to suppress a scream. He closes his eyes against the memory, closes his fist around the ball. He wants to throw it away but he knows he’ll regret it. He remembers admonishing the kid about keeping it on the ship, and now it’s the only recognizable piece of it that is left. He wants to throw it away, but he puts it in his pocket instead.
He looks to the sky and bites back a scream. Two near-complete demolitions and re-builds of the ship in a little over a year. All of the battles fought. Nearly an entire covert dead. All of the blood and sweat and effort of keeping the kid safe. All of the meals he’d skipped so the kid could eat. All of the nightmares that came with caring for a magical baby. All of the searching for enemy sorcerers. All of the training the kid to recognize danger and hide. All of the nights spent reading Grogu to sl-
Don’t… Not yet…
All for nothing.
Fucking hells, he doesn’t even have a door to slam. A hull plate to drive his fist into.
Not even a band of Jawas to take it all back from.
He has nothing.
A line in the ash catches his eye. He walks to it, stoops over again, tosses a piece of scrap out of the way, and gets his hand around a shaft.
The beskar spear.
He pulls it free, holds it aloft, and just looks at it for a moment, not really sure what he should think. Not really sure if it even fucking matters anymore.
He brushes it off and ponders it for a little while longer. Feeling the weight of it in his hands. Somehow, it seems familiar, as if an echo of a prior life lived and died long ago speaks to him. As if he had wielded it before with the same practiced ease that he wields a blaster today. As if it had been part of his undoing.
Vengeance, it whispers.
Be careful, it whispers again.
He’s pretty sure he’s losing his mind.
He turns to see Fett and Shand standing at the edge of the crater. He’ll see them off, then drag himself back up to the mountaintop. There he will wait. He will not sit upon the stone. He will not desecrate it with the weight of his failure. He will stand with the spear in his hands until he can no longer keep his eyes open. He will sleep under the sky. And then he will get back up and stand and do it all over again until someone arrives or he dies of thirst. And if Grogu had managed to make contact, if someone arrives before he dies, he will offer them his confession of failure. He will tell them who has taken the baby. He will tell them what little he knows of Gideon’s plans. Then he will offer them the spear, offer them his life as payment for his error, and let them decide his fate.
He walks up the edge of the crater and he feels light. Empty.
He has nothing but the spear to carry.
Fett explains the lineage of his armor. Din takes a small amount of solace in having returned the beskar to its rightful owner. Even that victory leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. Once again, the price of beskar has been paid with Grogu’s life.
And then, the impossible.
Fett and Shand name Grogu’s safe return as the price of the armor. It makes no sense, really. The armor was Fett’s by rights. But it’s a lucky break and he’ll take it.
His grip tightens on the spear as something in his gut lights up.
He doesn’t dare call it hope. Not yet. But something burns in him.
Nearly all his worldly possessions are annihilated. The bonds of their molecules broken. Their energy released.
He has nothing left to lose, but something inside him still burns. Some bond inside him still has energy to give. Something he will kindle until the time is right.
Until the time is right to blow it all to hell and make it all right again.