Work Text:
Anakin wanted to lodge a complaint, but the only people he had to lodge it with were Obi-Wan and Yoda, and he would rather die a second death than for either of those two bastards to hear even one of his inner thoughts.
He decided to write his complaint a safe distance from the old coots instead. Surely several hundred yards and a cave would be safe, surely.
If it wasn’t, then he’d just die again or something. Everything was pointless now anyways and he had the right to lodge a complaint.
He hunted down a rock formation while Obi-Wan invaded Luke’s privacy the way that only old ghosts could. There was one a ways away from the school. It was tall and imposing and its top was cracked. The broken teeth and crevasses that resulted filled with dead leaves and water and insects, but the spaces between them were flat enough for bodies to settle on.
Luke came here to meditate sometimes; other times, he came here to make himself very quiet and very small and to let the water in his eyes slosh over their edges.
Anakin hated these damn rocks for giving his son more solace than he could.
That made them an ideal place to lodge a complaint.
He found a sharp rock to scratch against the stone and then hunted out a place covered with damp moss. It took extra concentration to make his fingers solid enough to disturb the grubby blanket of it and then even more focus to start tearing it away. Dirt got stuck under his fingernails, but it didn’t stay. There was no skin for it to cling to anymore.
Once the large stone was shoddily divested of its green blanket, Anakin started scraping with the sharp rock.
The letters he scratched were hard to see through the damp, but that didn’t matter. This wasn’t a complaint meant to be read. It was merely one needing expression.
He was the only one who needed to know what it said and what it said was, “What is the point of being a ghost if you can’t fucking do anything to anyone?”
It was that simple. And Obi-Wan and Yoda were bound to have a wise-cracking answer that Anakin didn’t need to hear right now.
All he wanted was an answer. Something marginally more satisfying than, ‘well, you should’ve thought of that before you went and died, kid.’ Something preferably poetic and along the lines of ‘death is not the end of a journey, but merely the beginning of a thousand other paths.’
Something in the middle even would be grand.
But all this nothing and silence?
Not cool, man.
He threw down the rock and flopped around to set his elbows on his knees and gaze out at the landscape that Luke fed his tears to. It was…fine. Totally fine. Lush and green and misty and fine.
It reminded Anakin of a more temperate version of Dagobah, which was emphatically not fine and which made this place not only fine, but also tolerable.
He didn’t understand why Luke remained here. Jedi temple or no, he was clearly unhappy and no one seemed to notice. Except Anakin, obviously. But he’d lost the right to have any say in his son’s emotions. He’d done that himself, and death offered no consolation or reconciliation there.
Perhaps this was punishment for all the lives that he had taken. If that was the case, then he was disappointed in the cosmos. Watching Luke be sad surely was not equivalent to all of the blood spilled before and after his birth.
Actually, maybe the frustration was the punishment.
That felt more right.
Watching Luke be sad was one thing, not being able to do anything about it was agonizing.
Yeah, Anakin sort of got it now. But even still, was it really necessary to rend the son to punish the father?
Luke’s quiet was growing hollow enough that his staff and students had begun to notice it. He’d started stopping in doorways and the centers of rooms and staring for seconds, minutes on end at nothing. When the others slept, he slipped away and stood in the dirt beyond the school’s gate on his own, waiting with hands loose at his sides. Listening. Looking around through the night’s mist for something that even ghosts couldn’t see.
Yoda and Obi-Wan noticed but said nothing. They told Anakin to stop nattering when he tried to bring it up. He understood that they were both still displeased with him (emotionally and astronomically), but he couldn’t help but want to grab their shoulders and just fuckin’ shake ‘em.
It wasn’t about him, he yearned to say.
Nothing was about him anymore.
He was dead. He had died. His punishment clearly was to remain and watch his legacy destroy the lives of those who mattered more than himself.
This was about Luke.
The child. The boy.
Obi-Wan loved Luke. He absolutely adored him and even still followed him around the school, smiling at the little ones who trailed after Luke, calling his name and calling him ‘teacher.’ Obi-Wan should want to help Luke. Yoda, too. He was their student, was he not? He was their hope. He was everything that Anakin was supposed to be and somehow more.
But they remained silent. Detached.
The taste of bile did not leave with the disintegration of the body, it turned out. It was just as bitter and sour in death.
“Someone needs to do something,” Anakin told the haze that hung over the mountains and jungle in the distance.
Someone had to. Or else Luke would lay down one day and close his eyes and lose the will to open them again.
He decided to start by trying to make the kid nostalgic. Nostalgia was good for some things. It brought back warm memories, and Luke was cold even in all this humidity.
He had a particular cloak that he was fond of. He hadn’t worn it in a while; it was black and heavy and almost velvety. It suited him—and Anakin was not biased in that. Not at all. Black was a becoming color on everyone. He would maintain this until the Force finally consumed him.
The cloak hung on the back of Luke’s bedroom door and had done so for months now. It was gathering dust. It needed brushing and airing before it started to gather mold, too. Anakin held his hand in front of it while Luke was in the main teaching room, speaking in low tones to the children and hushing their jabbering.
Anakin set his brow and stretched his fingers beyond their shape.
He imagined the brush of a thousand fibers. He pictured their soft gleam and heard in his mind the swish and rustle of all of those individual strands slipping over each other. One by one, they moved in undulations, like a sea of darkness.
A moon of flax lit them as they rippled.
He closed his eyes and felt the cloak move. He opened them when coolness flooded the mounds at the base of his fingers.
The inside of the cloak was brushed so that it became slick to the touch and shiny to the eye.
It was heavy in his hand.
He concentrated on holding it as he took careful steps closer and closer to Luke’s fraying, sagging mattress. He let go of the Force when the fabric was more or less suspended above the old, rumpled blanket laid over the bed. It collapsed there like its power had been cut and the bed was plunged into darkness.
Anakin grinned at it and then hurried out of the room before Obi-Wan caught him ‘playing tricks.’
Luke found the cloak on his bed in short time; Anakin watched him around the edge of the door. He peered in closer as Luke went still over the bed, over the cloak. His hands flexed at his sides. He knelt with effort and bent his back into a languid curve, like the side of a shallow basket, until he his elbows laid on the mattress and his fists crumpled the fabric beneath them.
The blaze of hope in Anakin’s chest stuttered. At the sound of Luke’s first sob, it blew out.
No. This wasn’t suppose to happen. This was supposed to be about nostalgia.
“Anakin.”
He jerked his head over his shoulder and found Obi-Wan stood there, looking infuriatingly regal with his neat hair and skin finally free of its deepest worry lines.
“What?” he asked. Obi-Wan blinked slowly and then lowered his face and sighed. That blaze of hope’s embers flickered in a color more red than it had been before. “He’s upset,” he pointed out stiffly.
“And now he is more,” Obi-Wan pointed out. “I told you not to inter—”
“He’s upset,” Anakin repeated, because apparently the point was again being lost in the neverending rehashing of Anakin’s own sins.
“I understand that,” Obi-Wan said slowly, as though Anakin was a child. “But he wasn’t until now.”
Bullshit. He’d been upset for weeks.
“Anakin. You share your anger now, remember?”
Ffffffffuck.
Oops.
“Big oops,” Obi-Wan said. “Yoda has lost patience, I’m afraid.”
Well, that sucked for him, then.
“It’s in my personality,” Anakin said. “But more importantly—”
“Have you forgotten your feelings towards Padme?” Obi-Wan interrupted.
“With you constantly reminding me of them? No, actually, I’m afraid I didn’t have the chance,” Anakin said, gritting his teeth at the sound of Luke trying to muffle his shaky breathing behind him.
“Try reflecting on them a little more,” Obi-Wan said. “Without murderous intent, preferably.”
Or?
“There is no ‘or.’”
There was always an ‘or.’ Anakin was making an ‘or’ right now. He liked it. The bit that came after it sounded like ‘how about you go choke?’
Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow.
“Is this helping Luke?” he asked point blank.
The flame blew out again.
“No,” Anakin admitted.
The bitterness was back. This time it tasted like shame.
“He misses his family,” Obi-Wan finally said. “He’s homesick, that’s all.”
“Homesick for what, though? Tatooine? Leia? The one with the vest?”
“I believe his name is ‘Han.’”
“Vest-guy? He misses Vest-guy?”
Obi-Wan snickered.
“I think it’s an all-encompassing kind of situation,” he said. “Vest-guy is part of Tatooine which is part of Leia which is part of being among others who are not children and who don’t work for him.”
…right.
“He’s just lonely, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said. “And he’s trying to wait it out because, unlike you, he knows that there will be an end to it.”
Okay.
Obi-Wan smiled.
“It’s sweet that you’re trying to keep him warm,” he said. “I’m sure if he knew, he’d light up this room.”
Ew.
Obi-Wan snickered, and left Anakin in the doorway; he walked the few paces to Luke’s side and knelt down next to him. Luke dabbed at his eyes with his sleeve and sucked in a big breath to let out shakily. He did it again with less quivering this time.
Obi-Wan stroked his hair, and Luke’s shoulders dropped a little, even though Obi-Wan’s fingers held no weight or pressure.
“They’re safe,” Obi-Wan told Luke softly. “You kept them safe. No Mandalorian laid hand on them.”
Luke stood up and gathered the cloak in his arms haphazardly. Obi-Wan stood and watched him as he made for the hook on the back of the door again. But then, all of the sudden, he stopped with his arms lifted to replace the fabric.
His elbows lowered.
He stared into the darkness and flax-moon lit patches.
“They’re safe,” he said as Obi-Wan’s grin became the widening crescent shape of a moon, too.
“I kept them safe. No one touched them. No one will,” Luke told the cloak firmly. “I did it.”
“You did it,” Obi-Wan whispered as his echo.
“I did it,” Luke said. “And I will do it as many times as it takes.”
“Yes, you will,” Obi-Wan said.
Luke let the body of the cloak fall and held the thing stretched out before him between his two hands. His eyebrows sunk and his red-rimmed eyes sharpened.
He swung the cloak in a wide arc and trapped it just in time for it to spread across his shoulders. His hands clutched it to his chin as the hood settled into place.
Obi-Wan looked back and held Anakin’s gaze.
“We’ve still got you,” he told Luke without looking at him. “There’s nothing to fear.”
It was so easy and so fucking difficult to hate Obi-Wan when he did shit like that. God, it was painful. Maybe that was also part of the atonement. It wasn’t just watching Luke hurt; it was endlessly suffering the yearning for Obi-Wan and Yoda’s approval at the same time.
TERRIBLE.
That was true hell. Surely that was it.
Anakin flicked irritably at his middle index knuckle while he watched Luke blow bubbles at the Yoda-child in front of his wide basin of laundry days after the cloak incident. The Yoda-child’s eyes grew impossibly huge at the size of the bubble Luke had managed to extract from the circle of his hands.
This child’s name was ‘Grogu.’ He was nothing like Yoda. His Force energy bounced around all spry and delighted and curious where Yoda’s liked to sneak up on people and trip them for a cheap laugh.
Grogu cooed at the bubble and started to reach up to touch it before catching himself. He wasn’t ready for it to pop yet. He was enthralled by the dancing colors on its surface.
It shattered and the baby jumped in surprise.
Luke laughed.
“Here, come try,” he said as he urged the child over to sit between his knees on the stool. He lowered his hands back into the laundry water and Grogu struggled to make his baby fingers into a circle for a moment before following suit.
Luke slowly lifted his makeshift wand and blew steadily into the soapy mirror that latched onto its edges. Grogu watched him in awe and when the big bubble popped, jumped once again. Luke helped him lift his hands gradually and then encouraged him to ‘blow, blow, blow!’ into the soap ring.
The resulting bubble was hardly impressive, but Grogu’s light exploded through the Force. Luke cheered with him.
Obi-Wan perked up a ways away and turned around to see what had caused the ripple in the Force.
Anakin sighed.
Yes, he was grateful that Luke was in high spirits today, but he couldn’t help but feel that the other shoe was seconds away from dropping.
Luke’s highs were high and his lows were abysses. Voids. They were so low and so heavy they eschewed gravity. His success in overcoming his apparent trepidation over wearing his cloak again was sure to be short-lived.
“Ever the pessimist, aren’t you, Ani?”
“Go away, I’m brooding,” Anakin said without turning around.
Obi-Wan crooned at Grogu blowing a bubble for Luke unassisted.
“He’s so cute,” he said. “Makes you wonder if our guy was ever so innocent.”
Trick question. They all knew Yoda thrived on mischief and frogs and those things only.
“I wonder when his father will return this time,” Obi-Wan said.
“Admit that you’re a crow already,” Anakin told him. “Only birds like shiny shit as much as you do.”
“He’s sweet,” Oni-Wan said. “And he makes Luke happy, which should make you happy, no?”
Hhhhhh.
“Are you hissing at me?”
Begone, foul beast.
“Are you going to bite next? Here, bite this.”
Anakin shoved the sleeve out of his face and scowled.
“The Mandalorian is a mistake,” he said. “He’s a problem, Kenobi.”
Obi-Wan stuffed his first sleeve into his other one and locked his arms crossed over his chest.
“Someone’s got a complex,” he said.
Luke stood up before them and set Grogu on the stool so that he could move his current batch of laundry into another tub for rinsing.
“Is it the helmet? Are you jealous?”
“Children, you are.”
“He deserves it,” Anakin said of Obi-Wan’s doubled-over moaning.
Yoda squinted at him until he begrudgingly shut up.
“In the afterlife, still separating you two, I am,” he scolded. “Hard to find peace, it is.”
“Don’t pretend you’re looking for peace, Yoda,” Anakin snapped. “You’re just here to watch me suffer.”
Yoda arched a sparse, hairy brow. Obi-Wan rubbed at his gut and pouted.
“If we wanted to watch you suffer, we’d have left you to follow Leia around,” he said. “This is a kindness.”
Whatever.
“Ungrateful,” Yoda said.
Yeah, they’d talked about this; it’s a personality trait, old man.
“And rude. About the Mandalorian, this is?”
“No,” Anakin said. “It’s about principle.”
Yoda blinked at him like an aged turtle and then rolled his eyes. He set off to go find more frogs to terrorize on the edge of the school’s boundary without saying another word. He didn’t have to, Anakin’s jaw already ached with denial.
Obi-Wan slithered up behind him and rested some aggravating elbows on his shoulders.
“Sounds like Daddy wants to give a shovel talk,” he cooed.
Anakin caught him in the gut a second time and still didn’t feel bad.
The Mandalorian returned to the school a fortnight later. Grogu was ecstatic to see him. Luke looked up when the ship’s engine roared to a halt a hundred or so yards from the school. His hands stopped moving on the rag he was attacking R2 with. R2 chirped and bumped into Luke’s knees in his attempt to see what Luke was staring at.
The Mandalorian’s ramp came down and the sun exploded off the surface of his helmet. Grogu shrieked and scrambled out from under Luke’s knee at max-Grogu speed towards the gate. Luke stood up.
“Welcome back,” he called.
The Mandalorian dropped to a knee and held his arms out patiently as Grogu hurried towards him. He swept the little guy up and set him on a shoulder. His armor was so well-fitted that it barely rattled as he began approaching the school.
Luke left R2 to meet him halfway.
The Mandalorian stopped when Luke did, and Luke subconsciously leaned forward onto his toes. The Mandalorian bent his neck and shoulders so that his helmet could meet Luke’s forehead.
It was amazing how the Force had decided that pain receptors could stay in its patrons’ bodies.
Anakin’s jaw was about ready to snap.
Luke smiled up into that visor like the break of fucking dawn. The Mandalorian straightened and tilted his helmet to the side.
“You look well,” he said flatly.
“Better now that you’re here,” Luke said. “Anything good?”
“All bad,” the Mandalorian said over Grogu’s excited squeaking and clawing at his helmet.
“I love bad,” Luke said. “Tell me everything. Have you eaten?”
UGH.
Luke, honey. No. At least try to save face here. If you keep this up, you’ll have no leverage when the time comes to—
“Anakin.”
Anakin’s shoulders came up unbidden. He could feel Obi-Wan’s smug gaze writhing along the line of his shoulders. He covered the nape of his neck.
“These aren’t loving feelings,” Obi-Wan informed him. “We like when Luke’s happy, remember?”
“That guy’s going to manipulate him. Look how he’s already got him just sitting around like a sick puppy, waiting for his return,” Anakin snapped, gesturing at the unfortunate couple as they ducked inside the school’s shelter.
Obi-Wan drummed a few fingers across his lips and moustache.
“It appears that you’ve mixed up manipulation and affection again,” he said.
“I haven’t.”
“You have.”
“I haven’t.”
“I suppose we could ask Yoda,” Obi-Wan mused.
Foul, foul man. That was playing dirty.
Obi-Wan cackled.
“When have I ever played clean?” he asked. “Did they already kiss? I love when they kiss. It’s so intimate; makes me almost wish Satine had a—”
LALALALALALALA. Anakin couldn’t hear shit. He was getting old. Going deaf in these ears.
Obi-Wan smirked.
“You know, you could steal the helmet,” he pointed out. “Luke would never forgive you, but if it bothers you that much, then it is an option.”
“Can you drop the helmet thing?” Anakin hissed. “I don’t envy his helmet. I never envied his helmet. This is serious. He’s a Mandalorian.”
“And?”
Right, Anakin had forgotten who he was talking to.
“How does he know Mando’s not going to stab him in the back?” he asked. “How did you know?”
Obi-Wan pointed at himself in mock surprise, then dropped the façade and tucked his hands behind his back to watch the still shelter. Luke and the Mandalorian had no doubt retired to Luke’s room.
“It’s a little thing called ‘trust,’” Obi-Wan said.
Anakin scowled and crammed his arms over his chest.
“I hate it,” he said.
“We all know,” Obi-Wan hummed. “But Luke doesn’t.”
That Mandalorian was going to kill him, then. Anakin would prove it.
He wasn’t going to lie; proving the extent of the Mandalorian’s deceit was a challenge. The guy was so unbearably plain and boring that by the end of the third day of tracking his every move, Anakin was starting to feel like that his personality (or lackthereof) was the greater crime here.
Luke was, for better or worse, an explosive, impulsive type of person. Anakin understood him. He too could not escape that siren’s call to find drama or make it.
What was existence without excitement anyways?
But Mando? Flat as a board.
He ran like clockwork in all things but combat. Grogu seemed to appreciate this about him, but that was to be expected. Children liked routine. Luke already had routine. Routine was slowly killing him. He needed stimulation and challenge and space to run and grow and explore.
And this guy?
He ain’t it, kid.
“Din?”
God, even his name was boring.
“What’re you doing under there?” Luke asked the Mandalorian, who had lodged himself half into the engine carriage of his ship.
“Welding.”
“Welding what?”
“Stuff.”
Luke squatted down next to the Mandalorian’s head on the outer side of the engine carriage’s wall.
“Important stuff?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
“Do you want help?”
“…can you fit?”
Luke was only too happy to contort his skinny self into the tight space between the engine and his living mistake.
Anakin glared at them both from outside the craft.
“Oh,” Luke’s voice said, echoing a little.
“Yeah,” his Mandalorian said as boringly as possible.
“That’s. Uh. I dunno if welding’s gonna do it here.”
“Yeah.” At least this time, the Mandalorian sounded somewhat disheartened.
“Not to worry,” Luke said brightly. “I’ve got just the guy.”
The Mandalorian took aim at R2. Repeat. The Mandalorian took aim at R2.
“DIN, NO.”
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan warned with both of Anakin’s wrists trapped in a death grip while his knee shoved hard into the small of Anakin’s back.
“Din,” Luke said, “Apologize.”
The Mandalorian looked from him to R2, then back to him.
“No droids,” he said tightly.
Anakin snarled. Obi-Wan put more weight into the middle of his back.
“R2 is my family,” Luke defended. “And he was only trying to help.”
“No. Droids,” The Mandalorian rumbled, in a move that actually made Anakin pause in his death plans for the man.
It had been months now, and the Mandalorian had yet to use a tone like this in Luke’s presence. It was so out of character that even Luke appeared taken aback. His hands lowered slightly and his brow drew into lines.
“Are you—Din, are you scared of him?” he asked.
The Mandalorian didn’t drop his blaster or his gaze from R2.
Anakin stopped struggling for long enough that Obi-Wan let go of his arms and made a curious sound.
“Now this is interesting,” he said.
“Hey. Din, look at me,” Luke said as R2 chirped quizzically behind him.
The Mandalorian’s helmet flickered Luke’s way briefly before latching back onto R2. Luke relaxed his stance and began to approach the Mandalorian. He got close enough that the blaster scraped the place over his heart and Anakin’s whole body lit up like it was full of electrical current. He scrambled up, but Obi-Wan grabbed a handful of the back of his robe.
“Wait,” he ordered.
Luke put both of his hands on the gun.
“He’s okay,” he said quietly. “He’s my friend. He was my father’s friend. My mother’s friend. He’s saved my life countless times.”
The Mandalorian allowed Luke to take his blaster. His helmet didn’t move, though.
“Their kind killed my mother.”
Anakin’s breath caught.
“My father.”
Luke stared up at the side of the Mandalorian’s visor.
“My whole village,” the Mandalorian said almost too quietly to be heard. “They killed them all.”
Luke dropped his chin and eyes.
“I thought your buir was still alive,” he said.
“I was a foundling,” the Mandalorian said. “We are not born. We’re made.”
Obi-Wan’s grip on Anakin’s robe slackened.
“There’s only one of them I have ever trusted, but it is long gone,” the Mandalorian said.
“They’re all I had,” Luke said.
Finally, the silver head turned his way. Luke rubbed a thumb across the barrel of the blaster.
“There weren’t many children where I grew up on Tatooine,” he said. “There wasn’t much of anyone. You know this, you’ve been there, but we had droids here and there. And my father used to build them. People said that he could speak to them, too. It was always something that I felt that I could relate to him through, you know, if nothing else.”
Repentance was standing out in a cold rain for hours. Cold trickles across skin.
R2 told Luke that it was okay and that he could leave if the Mandalorian was upset. Luke shook his head.
“He’s asking if he’s upset you,” he told the Mandalorian. “He’s willing to leave.”
The Mandalorian’s shoulders rose and fell visibly. He put his gloved hands on Luke’s shoulders suddenly and pushed him back.
“I’ll go,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
His cape swung when he turned around and left Luke standing at the base of the craft.
Anakin was torn now. On the one hand, Luke had climbed up the rocks and was hugging himself, staring out at the horizon again. Anything putting him there was worthy of maiming, of course.
But on the other hand, the Mandalorian had not returned from his ship and that was strange. He was refusing contact.
This was uncharacteristic, much like the earlier reaction. While the Mandalorian was scheming (almost positively) and boring, he had never before been so outwardly noncommunicative. His negotiating abilities and tolerance of Luke’s outbursts were two of his few merits, so this was uncomfortable.
He and Luke had not disagreed like this yet.
Obi-Wan made about thirty different expressions in the space of five seconds, then announced that he was going to go check on the Mandalorian. Luke, he was sure, would be fine. The landscape would soothe him, and if it did not, then the Force would.
Anakin wanted to go check on Luke; he did. But he couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps Obi-Wan had the right idea here. They had clearly found a chink in all that beskar armor. And what happened next was going to be important in Mr. Armor and Luke’s future together.
For better or worse.
For better or worse.
Anakin followed the professional snoop into the Mandalorian’s ship.
The inside of the ship was mostly empty; this was not the first time Anakin or Obi-Wan or hell, even Yoda, had been inside it. Luke travelled with the Mandalorian every now and then. He couldn’t be left alone; in fact, when Luke was traveling was when he needed the most support and supervision. He had a tendency to, how shall we say, get distracted. So Anakin had already had a good poke around the Mandalorian’s ship a few times now—maybe three or four.
This time was different because, this time, the Mandalorian was not sat in the cockpit.
He was tucked into a corner of the craft, between the ladder down to the hold and the weapon’s cache. He seemed to be breathing rapidly. His hands twitched every now and then and he kept flinching and trying to check over his shoulder, even though it was pressed up against a metal wall.
He shook his head at himself and folded his legs. He let his helmet dip forward farther and farther until the crown of it touched one of his knees.
He said something in the language of his people.
Obi-Wan frowned and crept forward until he was crouched right at the Mandalorian’s side. The Mandalorian swore and reached up for his helmet.
“I wouldn’t,” Obi-Wan said with the Force.
That hand went still.
The Mandalorian’s helmet lifted slowly, slowly, slowly, until its eye slit was staring right into Obi-Wan’s face.
“Hi,” Obi-Wan said.
The Mandalorian jerked back so harshly, he cracked his head against the wall of his ship.
“Hey, hey, hey. Easy now,” Obi-Wan said with both hands in front of him. “Let’s just take it easy.”
“WHO ARE YOU?”
“My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Obi-Wan said. “And this is Anakin Skywalker, my padawan.”
Anakin closed his eyes and let the Force rock through him. Its weight pulled him back and then forwards until his body was left with the impression of drying mist on his skin.
He knew now he was visible.
The Mandalorian appeared to be having a heart attack.
“You’re—you’re??” he stammered.
“How dare you,” Anakin snarled. “R2 is the most honorable—”
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said sharply. He turned to the now silent Mandalorian. “You’ll forgive him. He’s protective of his droids,” he said. “I just wanted to ask you if you were alright. You appeared distressed just now.”
The Mandalorian didn’t know where to look. He eventually settled on Obi-Wan.
“Don’t touch me,” he said. “Get away from me. What are you? Are you a ghost?”
“Yes,” Obi-Wan said. “More or less a ghost. But a friendly one—I heard you met Yoda; I’m eons nicer than Yoda.”
“Get out.”
“Your name is Din, is it not?” Obi-Wan asked. “Where was your home village, Din?”
The Mandalorian’s shoulders started to come up.
“You speak Mando’a with a Naboo accent,” Obi-Wan told him gently. “Where you born on Naboo?”
He got nothing. The Mandalorian was getting only more rigid by the second.
“We mean no harm to you,” Obi-Wan tried to assure him. “We only want to—”
“Get the fuck out. I’m not asking again,” the Mandalorian said in a low, dangerous voice. “And if you ever set foot in here, I don’t give a shit if you’re a ghost, I’ll kill you twice.”
Anakin scoffed.
“It’s cute that you think you could do damage to a Force Ghost,” he said. “That’s like fighting the wind.”
“Then I will fight the goddamn wind,” the Mandalorian rumbled.
Wow, touchy, touchy. Someone was sensitive.
“Okay, we’re leaving. I’m sorry that you’re upset, Din,” Obi-Wan said with open palms in front of him. “But know that no one here meant to bring up old memories. R2 especially. He only wanted to help.”
The Mandalorian stood up so abruptly that Obi-Wan almost stumbled back. He didn’t say a word. He walked right past both Obi-Wan and Anakin towards the cockpit and shut the door behind him.
Obi-Wan didn’t go immediately to Luke out on the rocks. Instead, he shoved his hands into his sleeves and argued with himself in silence while staring at the ground behind the school. Anakin looked between him and the ship in the distance.
“S’not worth it,” he told him.
“No one isn’t worth it,” Obi-Wan replied without turning around. “Perhaps Ahsoka could get through to him better.”
Or not? How about not?
“You stay here. Go mind Luke,” Obi-Wan said.
Okay, but consider: how about not getting Ahsoka?
“Your message has been received,” Obi-Wan said. “You’ll have to wait five to ten business days for a response.”
Corvus was in terrible shape these days.
“You fuckheads. You can’t just Force Ghost your way into people’s lives—and especially not people’s panic attacks. Everyone has a right to a panic attack in peace,” Ahsoka growled with a curling lip.
Obi-Wan nodded sagely.
Soot-crusted trees towered around them. The stones between them were marked with blaster fire and scorch marks. The only hope for the planet came in the distance where needles had begun to fill out the space between rows of blackened tree skeletons.
“This is wisdom,” Obi-Wan said.
Ahsoka gaped slightly at him.
“So apologize?” she said.
“He’s not interested,” Obi-Wan sighed.
“Yeah, probably because you Force Ghosted your way—”
“We get it,” Anakin interrupted.
Ahsoka narrowed her eyes at him and then resumed pretending that he didn’t exist.
“Djarin isn’t your typical Mandalorian,” she said. “A few times now, he’s come to my aid without being asked. He does the same for his companions all over the Outer Rim, and for his loyalty, all his asks is respect for his boundaries—not that either of you would know what those are.”
“More wisdom,” Obi-Wan agreed. “Such wisdom.”
“Faults. The word you’re looking for is ‘faults,’” Ahsoka informed him.
Obi-Wan hummed gamely and, as was typical, agreed and disagreed to nothing at all.
“We shall apologize,” he said.
“You’ll do no such thing,” Ahsoka told him. “I’ll talk to him.”
Anakin rolled his eyes.
“And pray tell, what will that do?” he asked.
Ahsoka stood from their circle and tossed her lekku behind her shoulders.
“Fix shit,” she said. “As usual.”
In the morning, Luke wore a cloak out to the Mandalorian’s still, cold ship. He laid a hand on the side of the engine’s metal compartment. Anakin watched him and, in a moment of impulse, laid his hand on top of it.
Luke didn’t register the whisper of Force energy across his knuckles.
Of course, he didn’t. This hand was a prosthetic.
“Din?” Luke asked the engine. “Can I come in?”
There was a creak on the other side of that wall and Anakin was shocked that he hadn’t noticed the Mandalorian holding dead still on the opposite side of the metal.
“I’m sorry about your droid,” the Mandalorian said with no prompting.
“I’m sorry I made you relive something terrible,” Luke returned in the next breath. “Agree to disagree?”
“No,” The Mandalorian said.
“No?” Luke asked.
“No,” The Mandalorian repeated. “You have helped me look for my family. You’ve accepted them without knowing them. It’s only fair that I try, too.”
Anakin just about had to reach up and drag his eyebrows down from his hairline.
“You don’t have to,” Luke said. “I won’t ask you to be uncomfortable.”
“You don’t have to ask,” the Mandalorian said. “Tano tells me that this droid is not like others anyways.”
Luke peeked through the gap between the metal walls; the Mandalorian’s helmet was just visible there in front of the right wing’s engine.
Luke blinked.
“You know Leia?” he asked.
The Mandalorian scoffed.
“I know your sister,” he confirmed.
“R2 used to be her babysitter,” he said. “Except he’s bad at it.”
Anakin was almost keeled over at the sound of an actual, real laugh inside the engine block.
“I know that feeling,” the Mandalorian said.
“You guys can bond over being bad at babysitting,” Luke told him, reaching an arm in-between the metal sheets. “He only speaks droid though, so I’ll have to translate, which means that anything he ever tells you about me is going to be heroic.”
That laugh happened again. The Mandalorian took Luke’s hand in his own and fit the orange tips of his gloves into the spaces between Luke’s own knuckles.
“Everything you do is heroic,” he said.
Luke remembered then how to raise the dawn. The sky appeared pinker in the face of his bright smile.
“Can I get that on record?” he asked.
Luke lured his Mandalorian out of the engine compartment and down the ramp of the gunner ship. By some miracle, he even lured the man right into his arms. He tucked his head against the space where the beskar ended on Djarin’s front-facing shoulder and closed his eyes.
Djarin lifted a hand and stroked it through Luke’s hair like Obi-Wan had tried to the other day. His hand actually made contact with Luke’s haphazard waves and flyaways.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I am now,” Luke said, rubbing his forehead against the rough-looking flightsuit under his cheek.
“You seem subdued these days.”
“I missed you.”
“Have you spoken to your family?”
“Mmmmmm.”
“Luke.”
“MMMMMMM.”
“Solo has been messaging me for two weeks, Luke. He’s convinced you’re depressed. Answer his damn messages, you monster.”
Luke snickered.
“But what if you answered them for me?” he asked.
The Mandalorian caught ahold of his cheek in a pinching grasp.
“You think you’re so cute,” he deadpanned.
“I am cute,” Luke slurred.
“You’re exhausting,” Djarin informed him. “And a pain in my ass.”
“The light of your life?” Luke offered him.
“The light of my ass.”
And just like that, the tension was broken. Luke burst into giggles and flattened his ribs happily into Djarin’s.
“I love you, too, buckethead,” he said.
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH.
Obi-Wan patted delightedly at the apples of his cheeks while Yoda drummed his fingers against the top of his cane.
“An improvement, this is,” Yoda said.
“I still hate him, don’t misunderstand,” Anakin said before anyone here started to get wrong and slanderous ideas. “He’s fine for now. Only fine and only for now. The second he fucks up again, I’m drowning him.”
Obi-Wan made a series of squeaky sounds that themselves were deserving of enormous suffering. Anakin looked pointedly away from him to avoid having to witness his conceit for any longer than strictly necessary.
“A boon to future jedi, the Mandalorian is,” Yoda said. “And a good heart he has.”
Perhaps.
This changed nothing, though.
“Deny your son happiness, you should not, Anakin,” Yoda tacked on there at the end slyly. “And perhaps more interesting than you think, Din Djarin is. Find out through patience, you must.”
Anakin stopped busying himself with refusing to look at Obi-Wan and frowned.
“Is that a threat?” he asked.
“Just a thought,” Yoda said. “But be warned: if the child Grogu you harm through your reluctance, it is you who will suffer most dearly.”
Yoda didn’t wait for a response. He took the silence as confirmation and acceptance and left Anakin and Obi-Wan by the school’s gate for the building, no doubt to watch the younglings in their morning studies.
“Now that was a threat,” Obi-Wan said.
“Yeah, I got that, thanks,” Anakin groaned.
He glanced back at the school and the Force flared in his chest. His eyes blew wide. Outside on the clothesline was the black cloak again. It fluttered in the early morning breeze.
The flare puttered out into embers.
Baby steps, he told himself.
It wasn’t all punishment so long as there were moments for atonement.