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On the small screen of the console, Din watched the stranger whirl and dance his way through the onslaught of Dark Troopers with a brutal grace, cutting through them with his lightsaber, crushing and moving and manipulating their bodies with nothing more than the slightest turn of a hand. It should have been alarming, given the circumstances, to be confronted with this new intruder who was clearly so capable – and perhaps his suspicions would have been heightened if it hadn’t been for the child.
Grogu watched the screen in fascination, clearly mesmerized by the fight unfolding. As a child who had been hunted by others for so long, it would have been natural for him to shy away from the arrival of yet another stranger. But there was no hint of alarm in his expression, no fear or anxiety or revulsion, and when he turned to look up at Din, his gaze held only a question.
Din knew with absolutely certainty that there was no reason to fear this man.
He also knew that he would rather face a dozen Dark Troopers than face what this man, clearly a Jedi, was going to require of him.
For a split-second, he was overcome with the instinct to run, to take Grogu and flee, to head for the nearest hyperspeed lane and get lost in the endless vacuum of space.
Instead, he heard himself say, “Open the doors.”
No one moved.
Fennec, her blaster still trained on the door of the command bridge, muttered a question as he strode past her with the child in his arms. “Are you crazy?”
Din put the child down on the chair and pressed the release button.
The doors pulled apart and a thick fog spilled into the room with a dramatic flourish. For a moment, the only thing that could be seen was the blinding green glow of a lightsaber. Then a figure stepped forward out of the fog. He wore a heavy black cloak that hid his face and Din watched as he collapsed his lightsaber and clipped it to his belt, then pulled back his hood.
He asked the obvious question. “Are you a Jedi?”
“I am.”
He swallowed and turned to the child, his heart beating wildly in his chest. He knew what he had to do.
“Come, little one.”
Grogu peered up at Din from behind the back of the chair.
A brief glimmer of denial-riddled hope sparked in him and he turned back to the man, speaking in as neutral a tone as he could muster. “He doesn’t want to go with you.”
“He wants your permission,” the Jedi countered readily, and Din felt a rush of scorn at his words. This newcomer had only just arrived. He had spent less than a minute in the company of the child. He couldn’t possibly know what he wanted.
The man continued, “He is strong with the Force, but talent without training is nothing. I will give my life to protect the child. But he will not be safe until he masters his abilities.”
He spoke with a quiet confidence, as if he knew that his words would be accepted as truth by a group of strangers who had no reason to trust him.
Shut up, Din wanted to say. Stop talking.
Behind him, the members of his hastily gathered team were silent and still. They would let him navigate the next few moments and they would respect his decision, he knew – even Cara. They had all been guided here by their own motivations and purposes, and they were all reasonably invested with what would happen next, but this was his life, and they knew it. Additionally, they sensed, perhaps, what he did – the inevitability of it all as one door after another closed in rapid succession, propelling him toward a single course of action.
Hadn’t he always known this day would come?
He approached Grogu and the child reached out for him. Din picked him up and held him close, caught up in a surreal and conflicting sense of time moving both too slowly and too quickly all at once. He turned away from the rest of the group, seeking what little privacy there was to be found in the sterile and cramped quarters of a ship that was not his own.
“Go on,” he said quietly, desperate to make him understand. “That’s who you belong with. He’s one of your kind.” And then, more for his own benefit than the child’s: “I’ll see you again. I promise.”
It would almost have been easier if Grogu had understood right away. If he had felt some immediate bond with the Jedi, if he had sensed the truth and the right of going with him – because Din couldn’t find those feelings within himself. All he felt was a terrible loss. An irrational sense of abandonment.
But Grogu didn’t seem to understand. Instead, he stared up at him and reached out for his helmet. No, he seemed to be saying. And, show me.
A tiredly insistent part of Din rebelled at the thought of revealing his face once again, and so soon after the last time – but that voice was barely a whisper in comparison to the emotions coursing through him. He had taken his helmet off in front of Mayfield, in front of a battalion of Imps. Why shouldn’t the child see his face?
After all, it had all been for him.
Din reached up and pulled off his helmet. He half-expected to feel that same startling sense of panic that he’d felt back on Morak, that feeling of self-conscious rawness, of being split open and left bare before a hostile audience – but instead, he felt a quieting calm that was as strange as it was soothing.
This felt natural, this locking of eyes without the barrier of the Beskar, this feeling of mutual acknowledgement and understanding. Of…love. Of a love that he had only just found but had already lost.
Grogu cocked his head, eyes widening with fascination as he studied Din’s face, absorbing this new information.
Din knew that he was trying to memorize every feature. He knew because he was doing the same.
When the foundling reached out with a tiny claw and gently touched his cheek, his vision went blurry and he had to clench his jaw against a painful swell of emotion. No one had touched his face since he was a child, but the novelty of the sensation was dwarfed by the bittersweet pain of imminent loss.
This was wrong. He had promised to protect him. He couldn’t do that if he wasn’t with him.
Grogu needed him.
He needed….
Din felt himself shutting down – there was just too much happening – but he fought the urge to retreat. He knew he needed to be fully present. He needed to be here. Because he would be replaying these moments in his mind for a long time to come, and the memory needed to be as vivid as the image of his mother’s tear-streaked face on the last day she had been alive.
“Alright, pal,” he said, and his voice was as hoarse as if it was still being funneled through his helmet’s modulator. “It’s time to go.”
Grogu made a small sound of protest.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said.
Don’t be afraid.
He set the child down on the floor and immediately a small white droid came around from behind the Jedi. It rolled toward the child and issued a series of strange chirping noises, and the child cocked his head in a way that made Din realize that he understood what the droid was saying.
The Jedi met Din’s gaze and gave a brief nod of acknowledgement before bending to pick up the child, and Din fought the urge to wrestle the child from his hands.
He said, “May the force be with you.”
Din didn’t respond to that. He couldn’t. Spoken by a Jedi to a Mandalorian, it was nothing more than a platitude. He would have shot the man on the spot not so long ago.
Now, he was giving him everything.
So he simply stood there, rooted in place, and watched the Jedi turn and leave with the child. He kept his eyes locked on Grogu until the very last moment, and when he disappeared from view, when he felt a hand fall gently on his shoulder in an attempt to comfort, he could almost convince himself that his world hadn’t just imploded.