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The visit wasn’t going to be all fun and games; Din could tell that much as soon as he stepped off the docking ramp and saw the look on Skywalker’s face — grave and wizardly, the same way all Jedi seemed to look at people when they had bad news to deliver. Din hesitated with one boot on the ground, rotating his head to search for signs of Grogu. Or signs of attack.
“What is it?” he said reluctantly.
Skywalker gave him an innocent look that didn’t fully erase the ‘grave’ or ‘wizardly’ parts of his face.
“Some sort of Jedi curse?” Din guessed, still not stepping forward. He kept his voice light to hide the fact that his gut was twisting. “Kidnapping again? The Empire came back to life?”
“Your hand’s on your blaster,” Skywalker said, voice gentle.
Din stared at him for a moment, then slowly moved his hand away. It hadn’t been meant as a threatening gesture — it was just instinct, and he considered apologizing, felt genuinely bad about it, but couldn’t force the words to come out. Skywalker didn’t seem too miffed anyway; theoretically, if he was upset about the blaster, he could probably just wave his hand and make it turn into a bouquet of flowers or some shit. He forced himself to put both feet on solid ground and approach Skywalker, though he still staked out the temple as he came forward.
“Where’s the kid?” he asked when he reached Skywalker’s side.
He didn’t like the look Skywalker gave him at all; soft and sad and amused all at the same time, almost affectionate. It wasn’t an expression Din was familiar with; it set his hair on end.
“He’s playing,” Skywalker said, indicating the courtyard behind him with a jerk of the head.
“Playing?” asked Din levelly. “Not training?”
“Every kid has to play,” Skywalker said, but there was something wrong with his smile. He turned, avoiding Din’s eyes. “Come on. I know you want to see him.”
Well, Din wasn’t going to argue with that. He followed Skywalker to the courtyard. The temple was full of people — students, acolytes, Force-sensitives and regular people — with the students marked by their plain robes. Din could see them clustered together in a meadow at the end of the yard, meditating beneath some sort of giant probably-Jedi-related tree. But Grogu wasn’t among them; he was in the courtyard with a group of small children in plain clothes, all of them kicking a ball around. Or, well, the children were kicking a ball around; Grogu, being quite a bit smaller and stubbier than the others, was doing his best to keep up.
“That doesn’t seem very…” Din started.
Mystical? Jedi-ish? Magical? Skywalker didn’t help him fill in the blanks. He waved to Grogu, who looked up with a chirp, his ears lifting at the sight of Mandalorian armor. Din took a step forward, stopped himself, told himself not to interrupt the game.
“It’s alright,” Skywalker told him. “Go to him.”
Din turned his head, studying Skywalker through the slit in his helmet.
“We’ll talk later,” Skywalker assured him, and Din let himself be convinced. He couldn’t hold himself back any longer, anyway — not when Grogu was watching them with his head tilted to the side, his ears slowly drooping.
Din was halfway across the courtyard when Grogu met him and climbed into his arms.
The temple cleared out by sundown, leaving only the true Jedi students behind. There were fewer of them than Din expected; he held Grogu in his lap as he slept, watched the civilians and various non-Jedi instructors straggled out. Three students, all of different ages and species, cleaned the courtyard floor when everyone was gone. There were no droids to be seen, just these three students, their faces worn but relaxed, the cool night air helping them along a little as they swept dust from the cobblestones.
Din looked down at Grogu, tightening his grip on him almost self-consciously as the students cleaned up and filtered out. The sun was down below the trees by the time Skywalker joined him, the sky a dark blue overhead. He sat down next to Din on the garden wall, ran a callused hand over Grogu’s head so gently that it didn’t wake him.
He must have noticed the way Din tensed when he sat so close and reached for the kid. But there was no hint of caution in Skywalker’s face, or even the half-judgmental look of bewilderment Din got from some people — there was only placid calmness and relaxation. Like Grogu was part of his family, and by extension, so was Din — and thus there was no need for discomfort or awkwardness.
Din let it go for a moment, then shifted away. Skywalker’s hand fell a moment later, resting on the stone wall between them.
“Guess it’s time for that talk,” he said.
Was it bad that part of Din almost wanted him to say Grogu couldn’t cut it? He looked down at the kid, resting against Din’s cuirass like it was the most comfortable piece of beskar in the world. It wasn’t sustainable, he knew; he couldn’t keep dragging the kid around the galaxy with him, couldn’t stunt the kid’s growth just so he could have some companionship, pretend to have a family. But still, there was part of him that hoped.
He remembered what Ahsoka had told him — something about fear leading to the Dark Side. Well, Din wasn’t exactly an expert on Jedi stuff, but he didn’t need Skywalker to tell him that Dark Side wasn’t the sort of thing you wanted your kid dabbling in.
“Let’s hear it,” he said, voice flat, hands covering Grogu’s ears. “What’s wrong?”
Skywalker tipped his head back and stared up at the darkening sky instead of directly at Din. “Grogu’s got a lot of natural talent,” he said, his voice light. “He could make a great Jedi. But he’s been through a lot, too — first at the Jedi Temple, when he lived through a massacre—”
Beneath his armor, Din’s chest went still, his lungs no longer pulling in air; it was the natural instinct of a hunter or a soldier making himself part of the scenery, waiting to run or attack. He pulled Grogu a little closer to him, a protective gesture that required only the barest shift of his left arm.
“—and then in the years since, which are a complete blank in his mind,” Skywalker continued. “He’s blocked it all out, turned it into an opaque shadow inside his brain. He can remember it; he just doesn’t want to, and so long as he’s unwilling to think about it, no one else can coax it out of him, even through meditation. It’s like — well, you know how it is.”
Din bristled at that, but he said nothing. He could feel Skywalker studying him out of the corner of his eye. Eventually, when Din didn’t respond, Skywalker looked away again.
“I can help him,” said Skywalker softly. “There’s a technique, but … it can be scary. I’d have to connect with his mind, and we’d experience his memories together. Until he processes what happened, he won’t be able to connect with the Force the way he used to.”
Din turned his head, staring out at the trees. The leaves rustled in the wind and Grogu was sound asleep, his quiet, even breaths blending with the sound of wind naturally, the same way they’d blended with the roar of the Razor Crest’s engines, with the noise of every inn and cantina they stopped at during their various quests to get Grogu here. It was hard to believe there was anything he couldn’t adapt to.
“Here’s the thing,” Skywalker said, then hesitated as Din turned to look at him. “It — it might not scare him as much if he sees a trusted adult go through the same thing. Process his trauma, that is.”
There was nothing to fill the silence but the sound of the wind. Skywalker’s expression changed subtly, his caution and awkwardness taking on a hint of sympathy that Din didn’t like at all.
“His father, maybe?” Skywalker suggested.
Din stared at him a moment longer, let the blankness of his helmet say everything. With most people, it worked; they bore the stare for a moment, then changed the subject as fast as they could, intimidated by his silence. Skywalker, though, just kept staring back, like nobody had ever taught him he was supposed to be cautious of Mandalorians.
Probably Boba’s fault.
Din huffed out an unimpressed sound from deep in his throat and rocked Grogu slightly. “And you’re supposed to be some sort of expert on trauma?” he asked.
Skywalker swallowed a laugh. “Well,” he said, “Darth Vader was my father. So yeah, you might say I’m kind of an expert.”
Din made a mental note to check his datapad later and find out who the hell Darth Vader was. He eyed Skywalker through the slit in his helmet, noticing the way his smile twitched and fell, false amusement becoming strained the longer he sat with his own statement. Okay, so, Darth Vader = not a great guy. At least Din could tell that much.
He looked down at Grogu, hesitating, glad that the helmet hid his face.
“You think it would help him?” he asked.
Skywalker’s face softened. “Immensely,” he said. “It might be the only thing that can help him. Whether it’ll make him into a Jedi someday … that’s another matter entirely.”
This, Din knew, should have been a dealbreaker. Theoretically. But he found himself sagging a little, against his will, like Skywalker’s words had lifted an invisible weight from his shoulders. So Grogu might not become a Jedi someday after all. But where Ahsoka had said those words like they were some kind of grim fate — her eyes haunted, her tone dark — Skywalker said them lightly and with the faintest of smiles, like it was no big deal.
Din glanced at him, wondered whether to question it or not. Skywalker seemed to sense the question before he could ask it.
“My sister, Leia Organa — you may have heard of her—”
Din had not heard of her.
“—she’s Force-sensitive, too,” said Skywalker, his smile widening a little. He gestured to Grogu — an affectionate, nonjudgmental flick of the wrist. “People don’t always follow the same paths in life. If Grogu decides someday that this training isn’t for him, he can walk away from it.” The smile flickered, disappeared. “But whether he becomes a Jedi or not, he needs to process what happened to him, and we can help him do that.”
He looked at Din. Heart thumping, Din looked away.
“If you’re willing,” Skywalker said.
When Din swallowed past a tight throat and forced himself to speak, his voice came out hoarse.
“I’m willing,” he said.
They slept in the ship that night, and Din could only hope Grogu was still too young to notice it wasn’t the Razor Crest. And more importantly, that Din had painstakingly recreated their sleeping quarters there, with Grogu’s hammock swinging over his own narrow bed — even though by the time he got this ship, Grogu was already safely ensconced in the new Jedi academy with Skywalker.
Then again, who was he kidding? The only things Grogu could reliably tell the difference between was a frog and an egg. Din’s choice in decor was probably safe.
...And even if it wasn’t, even if Grogu did notice, Din couldn’t bring himself to care. He’d had trouble sleeping the past month, but somehow, with Grogu curled up in the hammock over his head, he found himself falling asleep as soon as his helmet was unlatched.
He woke in the morning to a three-fingered paw smacking him in the nose and a familiar voice saying, “Bah.”
“I’m awake,” Din said, his eyes still closed.
He got smacked again. “Bah,” said Grogu, more insistently this time. Din scrunched his eyes closed and pulled his helmet on, forcing Grogu to briefly move his hand away (the hand went right back to Din’s cheek as soon as the helmet was in place, though now with a layer of beskar between Grogu’s skin and Din’s).
“So what’s the deal?” Din asked, still reclined on his back. “They feed you here? Some sort of communal breakfast thing every morning?”
Grogu tilted his head, ears twitching.
“Baby spiders?” Din asked. “Scrambled frog-person eggs?”
“Bah.”
Din sat up with a sigh, hooking his hands under Grogu’s arms and lifting him as he went. He made it to the edge of the bed and then stopped, stretching out his back with Grogu held at arm’s length.
“Did you tell them what a little carnivore you are?” he muttered, face pressed against his knees. “Or is that Dark Side stuff?”
“That’s Dark Side stuff,” said an amused voice from the hatchway. Din went still, then turned his head slowly to look Skywalker in the eye.
“It’s polite to knock,” he said, his voice flat.
“Grogu knew I was coming,” said Skywalker with a shrug. “I told him to let you know.”
Oh, so that was what ‘bah’ meant today. Din gave Grogu a sour look, hoping it was somehow conveyed through the blankness of his helmet. Maybe ‘seeing through helmets’ was a Jedi power Skywalker would teach him someday, after he leveled up.
“As for your question, yes, there is a breakfast spread,” Skywalker said as Din stood. “Our students are all from different species, but we do our best to supply for all tastes.” He cocked his head as Din rooted through his armor. “I like your body glove, by the way. Post-Empire chic.”
It wasn’t a body glove. It was long underwear. Din elected not to tell Skywalker this, on the off-chance that he wasn’t being sarcastic about the whole ‘post-Empire chic’ thing. He muttered a ‘thanks’ as he climbed into his armor, so hyper-cognizant of Skywalker’s eyes on his back that he stumbled putting his knee guards on. Skywalker finally looked away at that; he knelt down and picked Grogu off the floor before turning to face the hatchway.
“I figured we’d all eat together,” Skywalker said to the wall, “and I’d get the students started for the day, and then we could get started.”
Din paused in the middle of adjusting his vambrace. His fingers hovered over the clasp for a long moment, but when Skywalker turned and glanced at him, Din forced them to keep moving. He said nothing, offering neither encouragement nor argument.
“Is that alright?” Skywalker asked.
Din gave a rough half-shrug. Why Skywalker was asking him, he didn’t know. They’d already established it needed to be done to help Grogu; there was no backing out now. He pulled his gauntlets on with a bit more violence than was necessary and brushed past Skywalker, taking Grogu from him on his way out.
He made it maybe five steps before Skywalker stopped him, putting a gentle hand on Din’s arm. Din turned, found Skywalker standing closer than he’d expected.
“You don’t have to if you’re not ready,” said Skywalker softly.
Din stared at him, his mouth suddenly dry. He studied Skywalker’s face for a long moment, searching for signs of judgment, insincerity — or signs that this was some kind of fucked-up Jedi test. He didn’t find anything of the sort, but he supposed that didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t there. He shifted Grogu into the crook of his arm and hesitated.
“It’s fine,” he said, not sure if he meant it. “I’m ready.”
Skywalker’s expression didn’t change.
“It doesn’t matter if I’m ready,” Din amended, lowering his voice. “He needs it.”
He watched Skywalker’s eyes shift down to Grogu, watched his face soften into a smile. It was an expression Din recognized even though he’d never seen it before; it twisted his gut to see it on someone else’s face for the first time.
“Alright,” Skywalker said finally, holding his forefinger out to Grogu. A tiny hand curled around it. “Then let’s go.”
The courtyard was empty, the cobblestones warmed by the sun. Skywalker had sent his students elsewhere and kept everyone else out for the day, ensuring no one would see the ritual but Grogu. He sat opposite Din now, his legs crossed beneath him and his hands on his knees, looking the picture of serenity.
Across from him, Din felt not-quite-so-serene. He took his helmet off reluctantly and held it in his hands, his eyes fixed almost defiantly on Skywalker’s face. He’d never been great at hiding his expressions — never developed the need for it — but he was trying his best to stay blank, and he could tell from the subtle look of sympathy on Skywalker’s face that he wasn’t quite pulling it off. His palms were sweating beneath his gauntlets, and the only thing that might have calmed his nerves was glancing down at Grogu, perched comfortably in Din’s lap. But even that wasn’t really happening; if he flubbed this somehow, he’d be putting Grogu’s entire future on the line.
“It’s not actually scary, right?” he muttered to Skywalker out of the side of his mouth, keeping his eyes on Grogu.
Skywalker chuckled. “It’s not scary,” he promised. “Trust me. It’s just a little…”
Uncomfortable? Painful? Din studied Skywalker’s face, his eyes darting back and forth in minute movements as he waited for the answer.
“Intimate,” Skywalker said.
Intimate?
Intimate was worse than painful.
“I’ll need your hands,” Skywalker said, gesturing for Din to put the helmet down.
“My hands … bare?” asked Din. His fingers twitched against the helmet.
“Not if you don’t want to,” Skywalker said. His voice was gentle, nonjudgmental. After a moment of hesitation, Din decided to keep them on — but he set the helmet aside, feeling simultaneously like he was falling off a steep cliff and like a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He watched as Skywalker extended his hands, palms up. Waiting.
Din didn’t move.
“What we’re going to do,” said Skywalker softly, “is form a connection, and together, we’re going to explore the things that neither of us want to think about. Things like what Grogu went through in the years he blocked out. It’s not going to hurt; it’ll be a little washed-out, not all-consuming. You won’t forget where you are or who you’re with, it’ll just … force you to address it, that’s all.”
“Right,” said Din. He swallowed, his mouth dry, almost asked one of the hundreds of questions piling up on his tongue. Instead, he just forced himself to nod. “Right. Okay. So I…”
Skywalker reached up slowly, his hands finding Din’s face. His palms were dry and rough from years of hard work, his skin warm and startling against Din’s cheeks. His head was bowed, his eyes closed lightly, waiting for Din to reciprocate. With a harsh swallow, Din reached for him. He stared at his gauntlets, his bare fingertips and thumbs lit up with the sensation of someone else’s skin against his own.
Heart thudding, he closed his eyes.
He was a child again, flinching away from the sound of blasterfire.
He was a young man, the acrid smell of smoke and burnt flesh searing his nostrils as he came home for the night.
His father held his face in his hands, cradled him close to him, whispered goodbye before helping him into the bunker.
He held his father, took his helmet off for him, cradled him as he died.
A flash of light.
An explosion.
The wail of lasers, the rasp of a ventilator, the overwhelming, unending, ear-shattering noise of war.
He opened his eyes to find tears rolling down his cheeks, unhampered by self-consciousness, unhidden by his helmet. Across from him, with Din’s hands still on his cheeks, Luke was crying, too. Softly, silently, with a dignity that meant he’d faced the images from his past a thousand times before and would do so again and again, whenever necessary, until the day he died. Din’s breath caught in his throat — one of Luke’s teardrops hitting his thumb — and then pulled back, brought fully back to the moment when Grogu shifted on his lap and turned around, reaching for Din with a quiet coo of concern.
“It’s alright,” Din murmured, his voice broken. He reached for Grogu, scooped him closer to his chest, felt little fingers curling in his collar. He was only aware that he kept his other hand on Luke’s face when Luke’s hand covered his, gently pulling it down and squeezing it.
“It’s alright, Grogu,” Luke said, shifting closer, leaning against Din with the bone-weary exhaustion of a man who’s seen entire worlds burn into dust. He put a hand on Grogu’s back, smiled at Din even as he cried. “He’s okay,” he said, and suddenly, with that reassurance, Din found he couldn’t speak. He lowered his head, squeezed his eyes closed as he buried his face in Grogu’s shoulder, his throat painfully tight. He felt Luke’s weight against him, supporting him, keeping him upright.
“He’s okay,” Luke said again, to Din as much as to Grogu. “We’re here.”