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He is fast asleep by the time Din spins around in his chair to find the tiny green body curled up in his own rags of clothing, wide eyes squeezed shut.
Din picks him up, looks down at him. He’s half expecting those large, brown eyes to open up and stare back at him, but apparently the kid is too tired for that.
The kid.
The child.
Din does not know his name. And he is not going to name him, either – that is not the way.
Instead, he climbs down the ladder of the spaceship, using only one hand to balance himself, the other hand cradling the tiny body against his chest. The child must trust him an outstanding amount, because he does not wake, he does not even stir. Either that, or he’s simply knocked out cold from exhaustion. He is resilient, but even the most resilient of creatures on this galaxy have their limits. Din knows he’s exhausted himself, barely keeping awake.
But even with the child placed peacefully at the little makeshift crib Din has built for him, the day is not over yet for the Mandalorian.
There’s maintenance to do – of the ship, and of himself. So once he’s done checking the engines and the armory, and almost half-asleep by that point, Din presses the button that slides the door of the sleeping compartment down and, safe from preening eyes, takes off his helmet. Takes off his armour. Eventually, he’s only dressed in his undergarments and steps into the tiny washing room of the spaceship.
And he does what he does every day, sometimes twice every day. He looks up and looks into the mirror.
The face looking back is not a stranger’s, but it’s not familiar either. Ever since donning on his helmet his body has not stopped changing. His face, too. Fat and muscle alternating on the surface of his skin, occasionally interrupted by scars and bruises and, recently, deepening wrinkles.
The ageing process.
He had not thought of being afraid of it, until it was happening. He was in the middle of growing old before even having made terms with the fact that he had grown up.
So it went.
He grooms his hair, his moustache. He barely had any facial hair when he first enveloped his body in Beskar; now he needs to shave every day.
The battles and the fighting catch up with him faster now, too. Wounds take longer to heal, long-mended bones still hurt. Just this morning he woke up still shore and tired from last night’s fight.
He thought he should have lost count by now, but he knows his exact age. He cannot forget, as if a part of him is still finely tuned to his home planet, still turning around that sun, there, growing old with its days and nights.
Species age differently, the droid had said on that first day.
The child was fifty years old. They were about the same age.
Sometimes Din forgets he truly is that old – both of them.
This whole time, his whole life, the child was somewhere out there in the galaxy. It took only half of Din’s life to meet – and yet, the kid is going to live on, and on, and on. He’s only at his beginning, while Din is finding his armor heavier by the day.
He presses the button to slide up the bunker’s hatch up once more. The child is comfortably bundled up as Din left him, and for a terrifying second shifts a little in his sleep. But then he is still again, only his breathing, and the hum of the engine, interrupting the galactic silence around them.
Din can only stare at him, just as he had that first day, the droid dead at his feet. Dozens others dead at his feet. And he would do it all over again, just as he would raid cities and underground covens again and again and again. To keep him safe.
This child, so small, and fragile – although it turns out, not as fragile as he seems. And yet, the only time he had used his power, this terrifying power he possesses, the kind of which Din has not encountered anywhere else in the galaxy, he used it to protect Din. A man he, by then, he barely even knew. A man who was bound to betray him. A man who did betray him.
Din sighs, then regrets it – what if this wakes the child? But he does not shift. His eyes, so wide and brown, remain shut. He knows it’s a dangerous game, that the child could wake up any moment and see him, helmetless, really see him. This was not the way.
And yet, though Din should be pressing the hatch shut again, should be turning away, pulling his helmet back on, there is no rush. He has not had many moments of stillness in his life in the Guilt, and he has not had many moments of stillness in his life before that, either. This is one of those rare, still moments he can afford. A sunny day in a peaceful planet. A moment to catch his breath. A moment to watch the child sleep.
If the child’s species – whatever his weird, green womp rat species is – lives up to millennia, the child will outlive Din and everyone Din knows. He will outlive the children in Sorgan and the children that will be born after them.
Who knows. Maybe there’s a planet in a solar system out there that revolves in time to reflect his aging process. If it does, Din has not found it. Din hasn’t found a planet that revolves in time with his own pace, either.
What will the galaxy look like at the end of your days? Din wants to ask the child, but he should not wake him. He is but a kid, after all, and he has been through a lot. Din lets him rest.
If there is something Din laments the most, though, is not the time that will separate him from the child once he has passed and the child lives on and on. It is the present moment. It is that the child does not know Din’s eyes are also brown, same as his. When looking into the child’s eyes it was easy to become lost in the large, black pupils, to lose the brown altogether. And yet, there it was. As alien as their species were for each other, their pupils were almost identical in color.
The child will never see Din without his helmet – this is not the way.
Din lets the compartment’s hatch fall shut again, shielding the child from his view. And he pulls his armor back on, his helmet back over his head, and walks back upstairs. He will sleep in his chair, so he can be there if anything goes wrong. The child does not have to worry, though. Din lets him sleep.