Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time Grogu saw the Shiny Man, he knew that everything was going to be better now.

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Everything had been bad for a long time. Longer than everything had been good, before. The people Grogu saw either hated him and tried to hurt him, or didn’t care about him at all, even when they were feeding him and helping him. Sometimes people who didn’t care about him tried to hurt him, which were the scariest kind of people. And no matter whether a person was helping him or hurting him, they got worse whenever he used the Force around them.

The people Grogu was with now didn’t try to hurt him, but they weren’t really nice either. They didn’t like it when he made noise or chased frogs, and they made him take naps way more often than he was tired. None of them could feel the Force, so they didn’t understand him when he said so. They just felt annoyed at him when he tried to stay up.

Grogu was lying down in his pram during one of these naps, pouting and restless because he wasn’t tired at all, when things changed. He felt the people in the courtyard in front of the building get really focused all of a sudden, and then he felt them start dying.

Grogu hated when people started dying. It usually meant he was going to be with different people, and sometimes the new people hurt him. He got really quiet and huddled under his blanket, and a moment later his pram moved. He knew the person who had moved it was putting something over the top, but then the person went away really quickly. They joined a group of people on the roof. Grogu stopped listening to people with the Force as soon as he felt that, though. He pressed his hands over his ears and tried not to hear the blaster fire outside.

It only took a few minutes for the noises to stop. They had stopped a couple times in the middle, but Grogu could tell that this time was different because he heard a loud noise like something big fell down. There were two more quick blaster shots, and then Grogu knew for certain that he would be with new people, because he couldn’t all the way stop hearing the people he was familiar with, and they were all dead now.

A voice came from the room outside Grogu’s pram. “Anyone else?” it said. It was a mechanical voice, but not a droid voice. Grogu took his hands off his ears and blinked up into the darkness. It was a nice voice. It sounded like it belonged to a nice person.

“The tracking fob is still active,” said another voice after a moment. This one was definitely a droid voice. “My sensors indicate that there is a lifeform present.”

There were the sounds of footsteps and beeping, and then Grogu’s pram moved forward and up. The top slid down, one half to either side. Grogu blinked in the sudden light, and the nice voice spoke again.

“Wait. They said 50 years old.”

“Species age differently. Perhaps it could live many centuries.”

The nice voice sounded kind of confused, but the droid voice was completely flat. Grogu sat up, pushing his blanket aside, and that was when he saw the Shiny Man for the first time.

The Shiny Man was shiny! He was wearing armor that gleamed on his head and shoulder, and armor that was shiny where it wasn’t painted red on the rest of him. And he was shiny in the Force, too! Grogu hadn’t felt anyone like that since the good times, and that was forever ago. He didn’t remember what it meant when people were shiny in the Force, but he liked it.

“Sadly, we’ll never know,” the droid voice continued. Grogu looked towards the voice and saw a weird droid. It was tall and all dull metal and red lights and holes, and it tried to point a blaster at Grogu but the Shiny Man hit its hand so it put it back down.

“No. We’ll bring it in alive.” The nice voice was coming from the Shiny Man! Grogu knew right then that the Shiny Man was going to help him, and not like the people who were dead now had helped him. The Shiny Man was going to make things good.

“The commission was quite specific,” said the droid. Grogu turned to look at it again. “The asset must be terminated.” It raised the blaster, pointing it straight at Grogu’s head – but before Grogu had the chance to be scared again, the Shiny Man had pulled a different blaster from a holster on his hip and shot the droid straight through the chest!

The droid collapsed, and the Shiny Man put his blaster back. His helmet had a dark visor that was shaped like a T, and the visor was pointed right at Grogu. The Shiny Man hadn’t even looked at the droid while he stopped it from hurting Grogu. He stretched out one finger, slowly, towards Grogu. Grogu reached back, reaching out with the Force at the same time. Their fingers didn’t quite touch, but Grogu felt the Shiny Man anyway.

Grogu didn’t understand the feelings that were coming from the Shiny Man. There were a lot of them, more than Grogu had known one person could feel at one time! But none of the feelings were cold. Grogu knew that cold feelings were bad for him. They meant that the person might hurt him, or forget to feed him, or do bad things. All of the Shiny Man’s feelings were warm, and some of them were confused, but none of them made Grogu feel bad.

Grogu made a happy sound with his mouth and tried to say hi to the Shiny Man with the Force. He said it as loud as he could, straight at the Shiny Man’s head, but the Shiny Man didn’t seem to hear. He just stood there for another few seconds before dropping his hand and turning away. Grogu made a quieter sad sound, but he wasn’t too disappointed. He hadn’t had anyone he could talk to in a long time anyway. It didn’t matter, since the Shiny Man was definitely good, and was definitely going to help Grogu.

The Shiny Man pressed some buttons on the red armor on his arm, and then pressed a button on the front of Grogu’s pram. When he turned and walked out of the room, over the door that was lying on the ground for some reason, Grogu’s pram followed along a few feet behind. Grogu cooed in excitement and stood up. He had some trouble, because the pram was moving, but he got right up against the front and stood clutching the rim, looking all around. He hadn’t been outside the building since he’d been with different people, and it had been a long time.

This whole planet was colored red, just like the Shiny Man. There were big cliffs all around the building, and the Shiny Man walked right into a ravine between the cliffs. Grogu looked all around at the blue sky, and the red rock of the cliffs curving overhead, and the red dirt in the ravine, and the grey back of the Shiny Man. He had a cape! Grogu thought it looked cool, swinging along behind the Shiny Man, with those little holes near the bottom.

Grogu was excited to be outside, but the Shiny Man kept walking for a long time, and the ravine didn’t change at all. Sometimes there would be an intersection with other ravines, and the Shiny Man would look up at the sky and down at his red arm armor and pick a way and keep walking, and the new ravine wasn’t ever any different. Grogu was just starting to get really bored when he noticed something moving out of the corner of his eye.

He turned his head and spotted a lizard, about the size of a frog, following Grogu and the Shiny Man. It was a dull yellow with brown spots, and it blended into the red everything really well. Grogu thought it looked like it would be really good to eat, especially because it was frog-sized. Nothing could be as good as a frog, though. Grogu was just thinking about how to maybe get down from his pram while it was moving when he saw another lizard – and another one! And another one!

Grogu babbled in excitement as a whole swarm of lizards came running out of the rocks and down onto the floor of the ravine. There were so many of them! If Grogu focused, he could feel them with the Force, tiny little specks of life like stars but on the ground. They were all following Grogu and the Shiny Man, until suddenly they all scattered and the Shiny Man abruptly stopped walking.

There was a different feeling coming off of the Shiny Man now – not the confused feelings from the building or the contemplative feelings from the long walk, but a tense sort of feeling that Grogu was familiar with from other people in other places. The Shiny Man slowly turned his head to look backward, and while he was looking away Grogu saw some people jump across the top of the ravine. By the time the Shiny Man had turned back, though, they were gone again. Grogu huddled in his pram a bit and whimpered.

Grogu only felt the new person a second before they jumped down from the top of the cliff and tried to hit the Shiny Man with a big axe. The Shiny Man seemed to also know the new person was there, though, because he turned and tried to point his blaster at them. Their big axe knocked it out of his hand, and then the Shiny Man made a gesture like he was pushing Grogu’s pram backwards and the pram went. Grogu wasn’t ready for the movement, and when it stopped by the side of the ravine, he fell over backwards.

By the time Grogu had struggled upright again, there were a lot of people lying around in the mud. But not the Shiny Man! One person was running right at Grogu, big axe hoisted above their head, and the Shiny Man calmly raised his rifle and disintegrated them right before they reached Grogu. Then he just stood there, his chest rising and falling like he was panting, and stared at something that had fallen out of the disintegrated person’s clothes. Grogu looked down and saw that it was a squareish thing with a little triangle antenna. There was a red light flashing on the front.

After a few moments, the Shiny Man flipped his rifle over his shoulder and did something that attached it to the strap across his chest. He was feeling complicated things again, although Grogu couldn’t feel them as clearly as he had in the building. What Grogu did feel loud and clear was a tiny seed of anger beginning to grow in the Shiny Man’s chest. That was scary. Nothing good ever happened when the people Grogu was with got angry. Grogu huddled down in his pram and watched with wide eyes as the Shiny Man found and smashed every little rectangle with a flashing light, then made another gesture towards the pram and stalked off. The pram followed.

It took a very long time for anything to happen after that. Long enough that Grogu stopped being so scared of the Shiny Man’s anger, which had gone out of focus anyway, and started paying attention to the world around him again. They had left the ravines behind a short while before, and now they were just on a big flat red muddy dusty plain. The sun was also starting to go down. There was a ridge of rock far off in the distance in front, but it seemed like the Shiny Man didn’t think he could walk that far tonight, because it wasn’t long before he stopped and got a lamp out from… somewhere… and sat down with it.

Now that the Shiny Man was sitting still and concentrating on it – he got out something that sparked at one end and started poking at it – Grogu could feel that he was injured. There was a wound on his left arm, below where the red shoulder plate ended, that Grogu could see through a rip in the Shiny Man’s clothes. The Shiny Man also radiated pain, that spiked in little bursts whenever the sparky thing sparked. Grogu spent a few seconds thinking about it, but he decided that he was going to help the Shiny Man not hurt any more. The Shiny Man was good, and he hadn’t done anything bad when he was angry, and he shouldn’t be hurt.

Grogu carefully climbed out of his pram and dropped to the ground. He made a little thump when he hit the dirt, but the Shiny Man didn’t seem to notice. He had taken a break from using the sparky thing on his wound to look in the other direction, panting a little. Grogu walked up close and reached out his hand and started to close his eyes and reach out with his mind, but then the Shiny Man’s helmet turned and the T-visor landed on Grogu and the Shiny Man batted Grogu’s hand down and picked him up and put him back in the pram.

Grogu pouted a little, because didn’t the Shiny Man want to stop hurting? Plus, wounded people had trouble fighting. Grogu knew this. The Shiny Man didn’t seem to, though, or didn’t care, because he just went and sat back down and picked up the sparky thing again. He didn’t start using it on his wound again – he picked up his chest armor that he must have taken off when his back was turned earlier and started using the sparky thing on that instead. That was good because he wasn’t making himself hurt more, but it was bad because it wasn’t helping his wound. Grogu resolutely got out of his pram again and went over to heal the Shiny Man.

Once again, the moment the Shiny Man noticed Grogu standing on the ground, he picked him up and put him back in his pram. Grogu felt a flash of annoyance from the Shiny Man, and then he pressed a button on his arm armor and the pram’s top slid closed.

Grogu pouted again, at the dark inside of the pram and the closed top and the feeling of the Shiny Man outside doing things. He thought maybe the Shiny Man hadn’t understood what Grogu was trying to do, since he couldn’t feel the Force. Grogu thought about trying to use the Force to press the right button to open the pram up again, but he could feel that the Shiny Man was already lying down and starting to try to sleep. Grogu hadn’t had a nap all day and he was pretty tired, so he decided that the Shiny Man had the right idea. He got under the blanket that was still in the pram and laid back and closed his eyes, and before he knew it he was asleep.

Chapter Text

When Grogu woke up the next morning, the pram was already moving. The top was down again and Grogu could see the blue sky stretching like a big bowl over the whole planet. That was new! Grogu hadn’t seen anything like that in a long time. He cooed happily up at it, and then the pram stopped and the Shiny Man’s helmet appeared in front of the sky.

“You’re awake,” the Shiny Man said. “You must be hungry. Here.” His hand appeared, brown glove with orange fingers holding something blocky that smelled like food.

Grogu sat up fast and grabbed the food thing from the Shiny Man. He was hungry! He hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch yesterday, right before the nap-that-wasn’t, and that had just been the boring baby food that those people had thought he should eat. Grogu didn’t know what this food was, but it wasn’t a bowl of tasteless mush, and that meant it was better than anything Grogu had eaten since the people before the baby food people. He bit down on the blocky food thing.

Actually, maybe the baby food would have been better.

Grogu made a noise that clearly signaled his disgust and wrinkled his nose, looking up at the Shiny Man. “I know,” the Shiny Man sighed, “I don’t like ration bars either. But they’re all I’ve got. Eat up.” He turned, cape flapping behind him, and walked away. The pram gave a little jerk as it started to follow.

Grogu looked down at the… ration bar… and made a sad noise. But he was still hungry, and he didn’t see any frogs or lizards around here, so he started gnawing on it. It was slow going; Grogu had to keep stopping to make disgusted faces and let the taste out of his mouth before taking the next bite.

As he ate, Grogu looked around. They were still on the big plain from last night, but that ridge in front was way closer now. It was close enough that the Shiny Man was walking up a slope that led up the ridge by the time Grogu finished the ration bar, and it wasn’t long after that that they reached another slope going down into a little valley.

When the Shiny Man saw what was in the valley, he stiffened and walked a little faster until he got to the top of the slope, where he got down on one knee and took out a little scope. Grogu felt a bunch of emotions wash over him, anger-fear-distrust-despair-resolve, all in one big wave. Grogu looked down into the valley too. There were two ships down there, one big one that was covered in dust and mud and one smaller one that was just as shiny as the Shiny Man – oh, that must be the Shiny Man’s ship! Except there were a bunch of people down there too, and they were taking all the shiny bits off the shiny ship and bringing them into the muddy ship.

The Shiny Man didn’t seem to like that. He flipped his rifle off his back, attached the scope to it, aimed carefully, and disintegrated one of the people carrying a ship part. Then, as the people who hadn’t been disintegrated started yelling and running around, the Shiny Man reached down to his right boot, pulled a rifle shell off of a strap on the outside, reloaded his rifle, aimed again, and disintegrated another person carrying a ship part.

As the Shiny Man reloaded again, one of the people in the valley pulled out a blaster and started shooting wildly at the top of the hill where the Shiny Man and Grogu were. The Shiny Man’s next shot sent that person’s cloak fluttering emptily to the ground.

Grogu watched all of this with wide eyes, turning back and forth between the Shiny Man and the people in the valley. He had seen a lot of people shoot a lot of other people, but he didn’t think he’d seen anything like this before – especially because, a moment later, the whole front of the muddy ship swung up like a door closing and the Shiny Man got up and started running down the hill as the muddy ship started driving away.

The Shiny Man felt less like angry and more like scared the second the muddy ship started moving, and he stopped again once he reached the bottom of the valley to aim at the back of the muddy ship and shoot again. It didn’t do anything to stop the muddy ship, but more than angry or scared the Shiny Man was all over determined and he took off running again, chasing the people who had taken his shiny ship parts. He ran so fast he managed to jump up and grab onto part of the muddy ship and start climbing right up the side!

The pram sped up to follow the Shiny Man, and then sped up more to follow the muddy ship. Grogu didn’t think he’d ever gone this fast on a planet before. The wind blew his ears back and made his eyes sting, but he kept his eyes wide open so that he could watch the Shiny Man climbing up the side of the muddy ship. The Shiny Man was so cool. Grogu had never met anyone before that was willing to climb a ship to get their stuff back! And the Shiny Man was smart, too, and strong, and he didn’t fall off when the side of the muddy ship scraped a ridge of rock right where the Shiny Man had been a second before and he didn’t fall off when the people on the ship opened panels in the sides and threw things at him and he didn’t fall off when a person slammed a panel on his fingers and hit him with something that sparked and –

And he was on the top of the muddy ship! He had tossed two people off the side on the way but Grogu was pretty sure they were okay, and he had shot some kind of cable out of his arm armor to help the last half, and – but no, now he was falling, and there were blue sparks dancing over his armor and his blaster was falling next to him, and then he landed in the dirt and he stayed lying there for a long time even after Grogu’s pram finally caught up.

Grogu stood at the front of his pram and stared at the Shiny Man. He wasn’t even awake and Grogu could feel how much that landing had hurt. Grogu still thought the Shiny Man was very good and cool, but Grogu also thought that maybe the Shiny Man should stop doing things that made him hurt. Grogu was just thinking about maybe trying to heal him while he was asleep and not able to put Grogu back in his pram, when the Shiny Man grunted and woke up.

The first thing he did was make a noise like he was noticing how hurt he was. Grogu sympathized. Noticing how hurt you were was the worst part of being hurt. But then the Shiny Man turned to look at where the muddy ship was long gone, and turned again to look at Grogu, and Grogu stared as the Shiny Man made his hurt go away.

It wasn’t gone gone, Grogu could tell the Shiny Man still felt it, but it was out of focus the way feelings were when you stopped thinking about them. Grogu hadn’t felt anyone do that before, not on purpose at least, and he chewed on the feeling as the Shiny Man stood up and retrieved his blaster and started walking back up the muddy ship’s tracks, towards the shiny ship.

By the time they reached the shiny ship – or, what remained of it – Grogu had decided that this just meant that the Shiny Man must be the best. He was shiny inside and out, and he didn’t do bad things when he was angry, and he did really cool things like climb the side of the muddy ship while it was moving and protect Grogu from people who wanted to hit him with axes and make his own pain go away. And now he was inside the shiny ship being angry, but not doing bad things. He made some loud sounds and made the engines cough smoke, but Grogu didn’t think those counted, especially because he had specifically left Grogu outside while he did those things.

Grogu kind of wanted to see the inside of the shiny ship, actually. Was it like the Shiny Man, shiny on the inside, too? He climbed out of his pram and toddled up the ramp just as the Shiny Man sat down on something Grogu couldn’t quite see. His angry was settling down into tired and resigned, which was another thing Grogu hadn’t felt before. Grogu reached the top of the ramp and looked around. It wasn’t very shiny in here, but maybe that was because those muddy ship people had taken so many parts. There was definitely a lot of sparky stuff that Grogu thought a ship probably shouldn’t normally have.

Grogu turned and looked at the Shiny Man. The Shiny Man was looking back at Grogu, sitting kind of slumped. Grogu made a curious noise, because what was the Shiny Man doing now? The Shiny Man just let out a sigh, then heaved himself up and grabbed Grogu by the back of his tunic to carry him down the ramp. Grogu made another, angrier noise. That was uncomfortable! But the Shiny Man only set Grogu back inside the pram and walked away from the shiny ship.

The Shiny Man walked away from the shiny ship for a long time. He gave Grogu another ration bar for lunch, but didn’t stop walking. Grogu wondered if the Shiny Man ate all his meals while walking. Standing in the pram for that long was boring, and then tiring, so Grogu lay down and took a nap for a little while. When he woke back up, the Shiny Man was still walking, and the sun was going down again. They were on another plain, and far, far in front of them Grogu could see a tiny bump that was maybe a house.

Grogu was less bored now, because he could feel some big animals near that maybe-house! It turned into an actual-house as they got closer, with a big pole outside that had a person on top doing something that sparked. Grogu wasn’t paying attention to that, though. The big animals were sleepy, except for the ones that were hungry, and Grogu hadn’t gotten to feel big animals doing things for a long time. And then Grogu’s eyes widened and he gave an excited babble – there were frogs here! He could feel them! He bounced up and down in the pram impatiently as the Shiny Man finally drew near the big pole and stopped, looking up at the person at the top.

The person said something, and the Shiny Man said something back – Grogu wasn’t listening. He was focused on the possibility of frogs. And then the Shiny Man was lifting Grogu down to the ground, and the person on the pole came down too, and Grogu saw one of the frogs! He squealed in excitement and started chasing it, although he did pause to look up at the pole person when he passed by. The Shiny Man had called this person Kuiil, so Grogu would too. Kuiil was saying more things to the Shiny Man, who was saying more things back while he did something to an open panel on his arm armor.

Grogu didn’t listen to any of that. There was a frog right there! He wanted to eat it. It would be so much better than the ration bars! He took a step closer to it, and it hopped one hop away. He took another step, and it didn’t move. He lunged forward and landed with both hands on top of the frog, squishing it into the ground. He had caught it! He made a bunch of happy sounds and carefully shifted his grip so he could lift the frog without it getting away, then shoved it in his mouth. It was so good! Just like he’d thought it would be!

“Hey!” came the Shiny Man’s voice. “Spit that out!”

Grogu ignored him. The Shiny Man was good, but eating a frog was better. He tilted his head back and swallowed it whole, then grinned up at the Shiny Man.

The Shiny Man’s helmet dipped, then turned towards Kuiil. Do you see this, his entire body said. Grogu was impressed. The Shiny Man could talk without saying things or using the Force! Grogu didn’t understand why the Shiny Man was upset, though. Frogs were good.

The Shiny Man sighed and got down on one knee in front of Grogu. “Guess you don’t need dinner after that, huh?” he said. “No more frogs.”

Grogu squealed at the Shiny Man. The frog had filled him up, but he was sure he could fit another one if he could catch it! The Shiny Man shook his head and turned away, going to help Kuiil do something. Kuiil had brought out a big flat hover-thing, and the Shiny Man helped him attach it to one of the big animals that Grogu had felt earlier. It was almost taller than the Shiny Man! Kuiil and the Shiny Man called it a blurg, which Grogu thought was a good name. The Shiny Man wouldn’t let Grogu go say hi up close, though, and eventually Grogu plopped himself down on the ground and just pouted.

Kuiil loaded some things onto the seat on the blurg’s back, and then the Shiny Man picked Grogu up and set him back in his pram, which was sitting on top of the flat thing. It wasn’t hovering, which meant it was a little tilted to one side. The Shiny Man sat on a box at the front of the flat thing, and Kuiil climbed up on top of the blurg – which was impressive, the blurg was so much taller than Kuiil! - and the blurg started walking… back the way the Shiny Man had come with Grogu earlier.

Grogu groaned. He didn’t want to go back this way again! He looked pleadingly up at the Shiny Man, but the Shiny Man didn’t say anything, just looked back at him. Grogu pouted some more, and then it started raining.

That was too much for Grogu. He liked rain, usually, but he was tired from eating a whole frog and upset that he hadn’t gotten to say hi to the blurg and that they wouldn’t be going anywhere new. He burrowed under the blanket in his pram and shut his eyes tight. A second later, he heard the top slide closed, and it only took him a few minutes to fall asleep to the sound of rain pinging rhythmically on the pram and the big flat thing.

Chapter Text

At some point during the night, the rain had turned into a thundering, flashing, roaring storm, and Grogu had not slept well. He woke up grumpy and still tired, and he almost threw the ration bar that the Shiny Man gave him for breakfast right back in the Shiny Man’s shiny face. The only reason he didn’t was that the Shiny Man had been sitting out in the rain all night and both looked and felt just as grumpy as Grogu, and considerably soggier.

Kuiil had somehow escaped the storm completely untouched, and from the top of the still-moving blurg he calmly handed the Shiny Man some food that was not gross ration bars before Grogu had even worked up the strength to bite into the bar the Shiny Man had given him. Grogu tried to drop it off the side of the flat thing into the mud, but the Shiny Man caught it and carefully wrapped it back up and tucked it away. Grogu wondered where the Shiny Man kept his supplies. He always had his back turned when he took stuff out, and his cape covered his movements.

Then the Shiny Man handed Grogu the food from Kuiil, and Grogu took a bite. He squealed happily. This was the best food he had eaten in maybe forever! Except for the frog of course. It was some sort of dried meat, maybe? Grogu didn’t care, he just ate it as fast as he could. He didn’t feel grumpy at all anymore – who could be grumpy when there was dried meat to eat? The Shiny Man didn’t have any though, he just turned around so he was facing front again. Grogu thought that maybe he wanted to be grumpy, or else why wouldn’t he have some?

When he looked up past the Shiny Man, Grogu saw that they had come a long way overnight. They were in a valley, but if it was the same valley that the shiny ship was in then it was really far away from the shiny ship. Very, very far in the distance in front, Grogu could just barely see a lump that might be the muddy ship. As soon as he had finished eating, he clambered out of his pram and scrambled to the front of the flat thing to look. There was a raised lip which was the perfect height for Grogu to lean on, which he did immediately.

The muddy ship got steadily closer. Grogu kept thinking they had almost reached it, and then it would get bigger, and Grogu would remember that the muddy ship was really big, and that they weren’t anywhere near close yet. At one point, the Shiny Man stood up for long enough to tuck Grogu’s pram inside the box he had been sitting on. When he sat back down, he took his rifle off his back and held it across his lap.

Eventually, they got close enough to the muddy ship that the people who lived on it noticed them. Grogu could hear them distantly, speaking in a language that he didn’t know. Kuiil raised a hand above his head in greeting and yelled something, also in that language. The people from the muddy ship seemed agitated, and Kuiil turned his head slightly to comment, “They really don’t like you, for some reason.”

“Well, I did disintegrate a few of them,” the Shiny Man said. His visor lifted to look towards the top of the muddy ship, where he had fallen off the day before. Grogu looked too, but not for long. There was nothing interesting up there. The people from the muddy ship had set up a sort of open-air market, and there were all sorts of ship parts and droids and other weird metal things to look at!

“You need to drop your rifle,” Kuiil said. He brought the blurg to a gentle stop alongside the muddy ship.

“I’m a Mandalorian,” the Shiny Man said tersely. “Weapons are part of my religion.”

“Well, they’re not getting your parts back.”

The Shiny Man sighed. “Fine,” he said. Grogu was busy looking at the muddy ship people, some of whom were holding weapons and all of whom were moving in very interesting ways, but a moment later he heard the Shiny Man’s rifle hit the flat thing. The Shiny Man and Kuiil climbed to the ground.

One of the muddy ship people said something else, and Kuiil told the Shiny Man, “And the blaster.” The Shiny Man turned to look at Kuiil, and Grogu thought his body language said, seriously? Kuiil stared him down, then turned and walked forward, talking some more in that language that Grogu didn’t know. The Shiny Man radiated annoyance as he dropped his blaster on the flat thing and went to join Kuiil.

Grogu was impressed. Kuiil had stared down the Shiny Man! Grogu could tell that nobody could make the Shiny Man do anything if he didn’t want to, but Kuiil had just looked at him, and the Shiny Man had done what he’d said! Grogu wondered what it was like to be so powerful. Kuiil didn’t feel powerful – he felt just like a normal person in the Force – but obviously he was, or he wouldn’t have been able to do that.

After that, everyone was too far away for Grogu to hear what was being said. It was probably all in that language that Grogu didn’t know, anyway. But he could absolutely still feel the emotions that everyone was putting off, and it didn’t take very long after the Shiny Man and Kuiil sat down in front of the muddy ship people for the Shiny Man’s annoyed to turn into angry. And then a second later, there was fire coming out of the Shiny Man’s arm armor! It made the muddy ship people shriek and duck and run away, and Kuiil was very fast to grab the Shiny Man’s arm and make him stop.

Two of the muddy ship people came up to stand next to the flat thing, one on either side of Grogu. They were strange people – Grogu was right next to them and he still couldn’t see anything under their hoods except for their orange and red glowing eyes. Grogu didn’t like the feelings coming off of them. They were cold in a way he recognized.

Suddenly, the Shiny Man was shouting - “Get away from it!” - and Grogu looked over to see him twisted around, looking towards Grogu and the cold muddy ship people. They jumped and scurried off. Grogu would have left fast too, if the Shiny Man had been yelling at him. He felt very smug that he wasn’t.

The Shiny Man continued to feel annoyed and angry, but he twisted back to face the people he and Kuiil had been talking to, who had all gone into a huddle. After a few moments of what seemed like very intense discussion, they all turned to face the Shiny Man and Kuiil again. The leader said something, and then all the muddy ship people were chanting a word that Grogu didn’t know. Kuiil rubbed at his forehead with one hand, feeling exhaustion into the air. He stood and gestured the Shiny Man back over to the blurg.

“The egg they’re talking about is a mudhorn egg,” Kuiil said quietly. “It’s a Jawa delicacy. They don’t get it very often, because it’s very dangerous. You need to either sneak past or defeat the mother. Jawas are not warriors.”

Jawas, Grogu thought.

The Shiny Man rolled his shoulders and felt resolve. “I can get it.” He paused. “They’ll really give my parts back?”

Kuiil nodded and gestured back at the Jawas, who were packing up their market just as fast as they could move. “They may be scavengers, but they are also merchants. They’ll honor an agreement. They have to, or nobody will trade with them.”

The Shiny Man nodded. He picked up his blaster and put it back in its holster, then slung his rifle back over his shoulder. “Where is this mudhorn?”

Kuiil laughed shortly. “Nowhere close. Wait here while I arrange transportation.” He walked off towards the Jawas.

The Shiny Man heaved a sigh, then tilted his head towards Grogu. “Did they touch you?” he asked.

Grogu said no with the Force a moment before he remembered that the Shiny Man couldn’t hear him. It was fine, probably. The Shiny Man seemed to take his silence to mean that he was okay, which he was, so it was fine! Grogu should probably try to remember that the Shiny Man couldn’t feel the Force.

The transportation that Kuiil arranged with the Jawas turned out to be that he, the blurg, and the flat thing would ride in the cargo hold of the muddy ship – which he called the Crawling Fortress – while the Shiny Man and Grogu rode in the cockpit. Other than the hold, the whole interior of the Crawling Fortress was Jawa-sized, which the Shiny Man was very much not. He was all hunched over to fit, even sitting down in the cockpit. Grogu thought it looked really silly, and couldn’t keep himself from giggling about it every time he looked over at the Shiny Man.

The Shiny Man didn’t seem to enjoy being squished up at all, though. He radiated discomfort and annoyance the whole ride, which Grogu thought was too bad. The cockpit was near the top of the Crawling Fortress, which meant the view out the windscreen was from really high up. Grogu loved it! But the Shiny Man was too busy being unhappy to even notice. Grogu was really disappointed when the Crawling Fortress finally stopped and the Shiny Man hurried outside.

Grogu had been in his pram the whole time they were in the cockpit, and apparently the Shiny Man didn’t want Kuiil to watch him, because the pram kept hovering along behind the Shiny Man as he started to walk down the big, big ramp out of the Crawling Fortress’s hold. Or maybe the Shiny Man just didn’t trust the Jawas – Grogu sure didn’t. Their cold feelings were bad. So Grogu was happy, actually, that the Shiny Man had decided to bring him along to fight the mudhorn. Not that Grogu knew what a mudhorn was. It sounded like it was maybe kind of small and sharp. Grogu was sure that this would be a very quick fight.

The Shiny Man didn’t have to walk very long at all before they came to a slope down into a big depression in the ground, like a big sports arena. The sun was setting and one wall was in shadow, which was why it took Grogu so long to notice that there was also a big hole in that wall, leading down into the ground. The Shiny Man walked up to it and stopped. He made a gesture at Grogu’s pram, then patted at the ammo on his bandolier and checked all his weapons. Including a knife in his boot, which Grogu hadn’t even known he’d had. Then the Shiny Man took a deep breath, pulled his blaster out, and advanced into the hole.

Grogu’s pram stayed behind. He watched the Shiny Man disappear into the hole, then reached out with the Force so he could keep watching. The Shiny Man’s feelings were all very quiet and focused, and he kept walking for a few seconds before stopping. Grogu felt him turn, and then his feelings got very loud very suddenly. There were some flashes from blaster fire, and then a loud roar that Grogu did not know the source of until he felt around the Shiny Man and oh the mudhorn was not small at all actually! It was very big and a second later it collided with the Shiny Man and the Shiny Man was suddenly moving very fast towards Grogu and then he came flying out of the hole and landed on his back and slid a little. His chest armor was all bent and sparking and the Shiny Man’s thoughts were one big oof.

The Shiny Man sat up kind of slowly and while he was doing that the mudhorn emerged from the hole. It was, in fact, very big! It was covered in mud and had one big horn, which Grogu guessed was why it was called a mudhorn, and it was also very angry. Grogu huddled down in his pram, eyes wide and ears low.

Finally, the Shiny Man made it upright. He was covered in mud too now, and so was his rifle when he raised it to his shoulder and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened – the rifle just made a sad sort of click. The Shiny Man looked down at it and pulled at something, but then the mudhorn was roaring again and it ran across the field and slammed its horn into the Shiny Man. He went flying and his rifle went spinning off to one side and Grogu winced at the way the Shiny Man’s chest felt.

And then the mudhorn turned and looked at Grogu. Grogu stopped being able to do anything except be afraid as the mudhorn ran towards him and he was going to go flying like the Shiny Man but he was smaller so it would hurt more and – and right before the mudhorn reached him, Grogu’s pram hurtled sideways and the mudhorn slammed into the wall where it had been. Grogu’s wide eyes landed on the Shiny Man. He was not very shiny right now, all covered in mud, but his arm was extended like he had just thrown something over his shoulder. Had he just saved Grogu?

The mudhorn spun around, making smaller but still very scary frustrated noises like tiny roars. Its eyes landed on the Shiny Man and it charged, and there was fire coming out of the Shiny Man’s arm armor again but he didn’t have time to get up before the mudhorn slammed its horn down on top of him, squishing him flat. The fire didn’t seem to be doing anything except baking the mud on the mudhorn’s face. It backed up a step and roared again into the fire, and then the fire was gone and a cable shot out of the Shiny Man’s other arm armor and attached itself to the mudhorn’s face. It turned and galloped across the field, dragging the Shiny Man behind it. The Shiny Man’s feet slid in the mud the whole way until suddenly there was a snap and he rolled to a stop.

The mudhorn turned and charged again, and this time when it sent the Shiny Man flying Grogu felt the Shiny Man go all out of focus. Not the way feelings went out of focus when you stopped thinking of them, but the way everything went out of focus when you stopped being able to think. Grogu was still scared of the mudhorn, but feeling the Shiny Man that hurt made his scared-of-the-mudhorn not matter nearly so much as his scared-for-the-Shiny-Man. He forced himself to his feet while the Shiny Man came back into focus, and walked to the front of his pram as the mudhorn began to charge, and stretched out his hand as the Shiny Man pulled out his knife, and then -

There was a moment, before Grogu had grabbed hold of enough of the Force to stop the mudhorn, when he felt everything with crystal clarity. The mudhorn was running hard at the Shiny Man, angry at the incursion into its lair and the challenge to its home, and the Shiny Man was… calm. He held his knife out in front of him in both hands like a prayer, blade vibrating up his trembling arms, breath rattling in his aching chest, and bowed his head, and knew that he was about to die. He was all right with that. He had lived a good life, always done his best for his Tribe, and he was going to die a warrior’s death. He really couldn’t ask for more.

And then Grogu had enough Force, and he told the mudhorn, NO.

The mudhorn stopped like it had run into a wall. Grogu felt the Shiny Man’s stupefied surprise as he gathered the Force together and grabbed the mudhorn by the soul and lifted. And lifted. And it was hard, Grogu could feel himself shaking with the strain, but he wouldn’t let the mudhorn hurt the Shiny Man any more, so he held on. Until, all of a sudden, he couldn’t.

He fell back into his pram, unable to hold even himself up. He felt the mudhorn drop back to the ground, off balance and confused. He felt the Shiny Man stab his knife into the mudhorn’s head, and he felt the mudhorn’s life slip away. And the very last thing Grogu felt, before he passed out, was the Shiny Man’s wonder.

Chapter Text

Grogu woke up among the stars.

He blinked. The last thing he remembered was helping the Shiny Man kill the mudhorn in a glorified hole in the ground. But now he was… in a ship? A transparisteel viewport stretched overhead, and the stars were visible with the sort of clarity you only got in space. How had he gotten here?

Grogu pushed aside his blanket, which he was pretty sure had been underneath him when he had passed out, and sat up. He was in the cockpit of a ship with lots of glowing buttons and gleaming levers, and – oh, there was the Shiny Man! He was sitting in the pilot’s seat, hands on the controls. His head had twitched towards Grogu when he’d sat up, but he didn’t turn. He just punched something into the terminal and flipped a few switches, and the ship leapt forward into hyperspace.

Grogu reached out tentatively with the Force. He was pretty sure that, if his ability to use the Force was a limb, it would be hurting pretty badly right now, the way that muscles hurt when you use them too much. As it was, it just gave him a little bit of a headache to feel that the Shiny Man was relieved that Grogu was awake, and concerned about the state of his ship.

Grogu stopped trying to feel things with the Force and sat back to wait for the headache to go away. So they were on the shiny ship, then! The Shiny Man and Kuiil must have fixed it up. This was good. Grogu had given it some serious thought, and he had decided that any planet that had a mudhorn on it was one he didn’t want to be on. But there wasn’t much to do in space, especially when he couldn’t use the Force, and Grogu almost immediately decided that he was bored. He looked around for something to do, and his gaze landed on the Shiny Man.

The blue of hyperspace reflected off of the Shiny Man’s helmet in a way that Grogu liked. He lost track of time for a bit staring at it. Then he noticed that there was a shiny ball on one of the levers on the console that reflected light just the same way that the Shiny Man’s helmet did! Grogu decided that he wanted to have a shiny thing too, and started plotting how to get the shiny ball. It was right up next to the Shiny Man, so Grogu would have to wait for him to be distracted, and he would have to be fast.

The Shiny Man’s helmet turned slightly towards Grogu, then back towards the front. He did something with the controls where Grogu couldn’t see, and then Grogu was knocked backwards into his pram as the ship dropped out of hyperspace! Lying on his back, Grogu huffed in annoyance. But this was good, maybe! The Shiny Man would be busy actually flying the ship now that they were wherever they were going, and Grogu would have a straight shot to the shiny ball.

He poked his head up above the rim of his pram. The Shiny Man was facing forward. So far, so good! Grogu climbed out and dropped to the floor. Oh, his pram was sitting on a seat! That was nice. People didn’t often let Grogu use actual chairs. Grogu turned around and looked up. The Shiny Man had turned on a holo of some sort, and oh perfect watching it made him turn his head away from the shiny ball! Grogu used a tiny bit of the Force to help him jump up to the console and ignored the small headache as he crept forward until he could reach the lever with the shiny ball, then stretch forward and unscrew it.

Victory! He pulled the shiny ball in close to his chest and started gnawing on it thoughtfully. This was a good ball. He looked up at the Shiny Man just in time to see him switch the holo off, then turn his head and notice Grogu. The Shiny Man immediately reached over and pulled the ball out of Grogu’s hands, and Grogu watched him set it on the console with drooping ears.

“This is not a toy,” the Shiny Man said, in a vaguely annoyed tone that reminded Grogu unpleasantly of… some previous people that he’d been with. Then he grabbed Grogu by the back of his tunic again, turned, and set him back in his pram. He turned back towards the console and flipped some more switches.

Grogu looked up at the Shiny Man. He wished he could use the Force right now to find out what the Shiny Man was feeling. As expressive as the Shiny Man was when he wanted to be, right now the helmet just made him inscrutable. He turned his head to look at Grogu after a moment, but he didn’t do or say anything else before facing front again and starting to land the ship.

That was too much for Grogu. He didn’t care about the headache, he needed to know what the Shiny Man was feeling right now. What if Grogu’s desire to have something shiny just like the Shiny Man had made him angry? What if he was so angry that he was going to do a bad thing after all? Grogu reached out with the Force towards the Shiny Man and felt -

Well, he felt a headache, mostly. He didn’t feel any anger, which was good! He did feel like the Shiny Man wasn’t even sure what the Shiny Man was feeling. There were a lot of different feelings swirling around, some of them about – duty pain desire – and some of them about – protective apprehensive curious – and some of them about – dislike distrust fear – which was a lot for Grogu to feel all at once, especially when his head hurt. He let go of the Force, and his sense of the Shiny Man faded away. He wondered if feeling all those things at once made the Shiny Man’s head hurt too.

Feeling all that out had taken a lot of time, and the Shiny Man was already guiding the shiny ship to land on the ground, right next to – Grogu perked up. That was a lot of people! There was some kind of market out there, with more people than Grogu had seen all in one place in a long time. Sometimes a lot of people was bad, but Grogu was mostly excited about it this time, because it had been so very long.

The Shiny Man finished landing and shutting down the ship and stood. He pressed a button on his arm armor and Grogu’s pram started hovering again. It followed the Shiny Man as he climbed down a ladder into the belly of the ship, and Grogu looked around avidly while the Shiny Man waited for the ramp to swing down. He hadn’t seen the shiny ship when it was all put together and functioning yet! It looked much more like a ship should look. There were more boxes and walls, and fewer sparky things hanging out of the ceiling, and an interesting machine down at the far end that Grogu didn’t know what it did.

The ramp finished lowering. The Shiny Man headed out, and the ramp closed up again behind them. Another ship was landing next to the arch as the Shiny Man and Grogu passed by, and the wind was so strong that it blew Grogu’s ears back. He watched it land, then turned his attention to the market. The Shiny Man strode through as if he’d seen it a million times, but to Grogu everything was new and he wanted to see it all.

Wow, there really were a lot of people here! He could see a couple Jawas off to one side arguing with someone, and there were lots of droids around, and people leaning up against stalls and buildings, and – Grogu turned his head and saw someone short with a helmet on! It looked different from the Shiny Man’s, though. Grogu looked up at the Shiny Man and made a questioning noise. Had he seen the short helmet person?

The Shiny Man wasn’t paying any attention to Grogu. He was just walking like he had somewhere to go. After a long moment, Grogu looked down. The Shiny Man hadn’t felt angry on the ship, and none of his feelings had been particularly cold, but something was wrong. The Shiny Man seemed different, here. Did he not like crowds? Grogu didn’t like crowds either sometimes. The best way to deal with that was to get out of the crowds, so it seemed like the Shiny Man had the right idea, but. Still. Something was wrong.

Eventually, the Shiny Man turned down a less-populated side street, then wound his way through a series of alleys. There was no one around by the time he stopped in front of a door and knocked on it, hard. Grogu watched intently as some sort of droid eye extended out of a small port next to the door. The Shiny Man held something up to the droid eye, and then the eye retracted and the door opened.

The Shiny Man tucked the thing he was holding away and out of the door stepped two… oh. Grogu’s heart sank. Those were stormtroopers. Their armor was covered in some sort of red dust, but the white plastisteel showed clearly underneath, and the helmets were the right shape. They didn’t say anything to the Shiny Man, but one of them jerked his head and stepped back inside like he expected the Shiny Man to follow.

Grogu looked up at the Shiny Man, mind whirling. The Shiny Man looked back, but only for a moment. He made a gesture, and Grogu’s pram went in the door first. That left Grogu looking down a long dark hallway and at a stormtrooper’s back. What was the Shiny Man doing that meant there had to be stormtroopers? Stormtroopers had never, ever meant anything good for Grogu. Did they mean something good for Grogu-and-the-Shiny-Man? What was going on?

Partway down the hallway, the stormtrooper in front grabbed Grogu’s pram with one hand, making it sway alarmingly. “Easy with that,” the Shiny Man said.

“You take it easy,” said the stormtrooper. Grogu did not like the stormtrooper’s voice. He sounded mean.

They reached the end of the hallway and the door there slid open, revealing a big room and an old man sitting at a table and a younger man with big glasses standing nearby. The stormtrooper who had ahold of Grogu’s pram walked forward to meet the old man, who immediately stood up and walked around the table. “Yes!” he said. He had one of those rectangular things in his hand – the things that had made the Shiny Man mad back when they got attacked by the people with axes in the ravine. “Yes yes yes,” he continued, bending over Grogu and holding the rectangular thing up. It was beeping.

Grogu didn’t know what was happening here at all, but he was pretty sure it was bad.

The old man said “yes” one more time. Was that the only word he knew? The glasses man had joined him in front of Grogu’s pram, and they exchanged a look. Glasses Man held up some sort of scanner, which was really bright and made Grogu squint and look away.

“Very healthy,” Glasses Man commented.

“Yes,” said the old man. Glasses Man stayed bent over, examining Grogu, as the old man straightened up and addressed the Shiny Man. “Your reputation was not unwarranted.” He had an… accent?… that Grogu didn’t recognize.

“How many fobs did you give out?” The Shiny Man sounded – Grogu couldn’t put his finger on it, but it wasn’t happy. He wished he could use the Force right now. This seemed important.

“This asset was of extreme importance to me. I had to ensure its delivery.” The old man moved back towards the table and pulled a camtono from underneath it. “But to the winner… go the spoils.” He pressed some buttons and twisted the top and the camtono swung open, revealing stacks of something just as shiny as the Shiny Man.

Glasses Man pressed a button on the front of the pram and started walking around the table. The pram followed. Grogu twisted around to be able to see the Shiny Man, who had walked up to the open camtono and was examining some shiny blocks that he had taken off the stack.

“Such a large bounty, for such a small package,” the old man said. Glasses Man turned and walked towards a door. Was he taking Grogu away from the Shiny Man? What were those shiny blocks? What was happening? Grogu cried out as his pram hovered towards the door, staring pleadingly back at the Shiny Man. The Shiny Man’s visor turned to follow him, but he didn’t move. Grogu… understood.

He had been stupid to hope that the Shiny Man would be different, just because he was shiny all over and felt warm and helped Grogu in a good way instead of an angry or indifferent way. The Shiny Man must have been angry after all, when Grogu tried to take the shiny ball back on the ship. Obviously shiny things were really important to him. He must have decided that it was better to trade Grogu for more shiny things than let Grogu have anything shiny for himself.

Grogu’s gaze lowered as his pram followed Glasses Man out of the door. The door slid shut, taking Grogu’s last glimpse of the Shiny Man with it. He stared at the inside of his pram and didn’t pay any attention to where Glasses Man was taking him. What was the point? This would just be another place like all the places Grogu had been, with more people just like all of the people who had taken care of him. He couldn’t even tell if this would be better or worse than normal, because he couldn’t feel what other people were feeling right now.

Eventually, the pram slid to a halt. Grogu looked up to see that Glasses Man had taken him to a room with a med droid and a weird bed. Grogu did not like that the med droid was all round and black and had a big needle sticking out of it. Glasses Man carefully lifted him out of the pram and set him on the bed.

“This will hurt a little. Sorry,” Glasses Man said, looking nervous. “But after that you’ll go to sleep, and – well, you might be asleep for a while. I’ll try to make sure… I’ll make sure you’re okay.” He paused. “It won’t hurt any more, at least.”

That didn’t sound very reassuring to Grogu, but he didn’t have time to do anything about it, because the next second he felt the med droid’s needle poke into his neck, and then the room started spinning. It spun faster and faster until suddenly it was black, and Grogu slipped away to sleep.

Chapter Text

Din was… conflicted.

This was a new feeling for him. He’d known exactly who and what he was since he was 13, when he’d sworn the Creed. This had only been confirmed through 20 years of bounty hunting, half of which had been spent funneling all his extra credits to the Tribe. He followed the Creed, and he provided for the Tribe, and he kept the code of the Bounty Hunters’ Guild. He knew exactly what each day would bring, and how to respond to any surprises. But this job? This job was making Din think.

The kid was – well, it was a kid. That was the whole problem, wasn’t it? Din had never been asked to bring in a kid before. Well, okay, there was that one teenager who had jumped bail, but that had been a spoiled rich kid who was well old enough to know what he’d gotten himself into. This kid – the Child – was a toddler, at most. And the Imps left a bad taste in Din’s mouth. How had they even gotten that much beskar? What did they want with a baby?

Din thought in circles the whole way back to Nevarro from Arvala-7. The Child was too young to be anything but protected. The Child was his bounty, and 50 years old, and he was honor-bound to bring it to his client no questions asked. His client was a pack of Imps, who Din both hated and feared. The Imps had a whole camtono of beskar from the Imperial forges, which Din wanted with his entire being. It was wrong that the Imps had it. But the only way to get it was to give the Imps the Child, and the Child was too young.

Complicating the whole mess, not that it needed to get any more complicated, were the Child’s… abilities. Even putting aside the fact that Din probably technically owed the Child a life debt – Din didn’t know exactly what the Imps planned to do, but anything they wanted from a toddler with the ability to lift a mudhorn with its mind was probably something that Din would hate. A kid like that needed someone who could protect and train it, and Din was willing to bet that the Imps wouldn’t do either.

Was he willing to bet a whole camtono of beskar?

Din wrestled with himself every single step of the way from the Razor Crest to the Imps’ hideout. He bristled at the stormtroopers’ rough handling of the kid’s pram, and he was torn even as he stood with two ingots of beskar in his hand, watching the Imp doctor take the kid through a side door. He was so rattled by the whole thing that he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “What are your plans for it?”

“How uncharacteristic,” the Imp officer said, “of one of your reputation.” He was staring straight into Din’s visor. Menace started to radiate off of him. “You have taken both commission and payment. Is it not the code of the Guild, that these events are now forgotten?”

Din tracked two new stormtroopers as they entered the room from the same door through which the Child had disappeared. He slid the beskar in his hand back into the camtono.

“That beskar is enough to make a handsome replacement for your armor. Unfortunately finding a Mandalorian, in these trying times, is more difficult than finding the steel.” The Imp officer continued to stare Din down. Din could take the hint. He twisted the camtono’s handle to close it and got the hell out of there.

Completing the bounty had not lessened Din’s internal turmoil, but dank farrick it was good to have the beskar in hand. That Imp was right about one thing: beskar belonged with Mandalorians. Din didn’t even really mind the crowd it drew in the Covert, although he was a bit peeved that Paz Vizsla would assume he was friends with the Imps, and he could have done without the brief but intense battle over his helmet. All the bacta patches in the galaxy couldn’t undo the hammering his chest had taken from the mudhorn in only a day and a half, and that wasn’t even considering the electrocution and fall from the Crawling Fortress the day before.

Still. He had returned the beskar to the Covert, and he had reserved some for the Foundlings, and he even got nearly a whole new set of pure beskar armor and some Whistling Birds out of it. And he couldn’t stop thinking about the kid.

“Mar’ey’ade cuyi ven’cuyot,” the Armorer had said. Foundlings are the future. It kept echoing in Din’s head. It was part of the Creed, and it was part of him. The Child wasn’t a foundling, exactly, but it was a kid without a caretaker, which was close enough to itch. And he had just handed that kid over to Imps? The same people who had turned Mandalore to glass and killed every Mandalorian in the system and chased the rest into hiding? The same people who would, Din had no doubt, absolutely wipe out the Covert if they had the chance?

When Din walked into the cantina, decked out in his gleaming new armor, Greef Karga was effusive about Din’s success. The news that every bounty hunter who used Nevarro as a base had gotten a fob for the kid was unpleasant, and that plus Karga showing off two ingots of beskar like they weren’t sacred fed Din’s dislike for the man. There were other things in life than money. Din got a new puck as fast as he could and stood to go, but then… he stopped.

“Any idea what they’re going to do with it?” he asked, back still turned.

“… With what?”

Din turned, propped his amban rifle against his boot. “The kid.”

“I didn’t ask,” Karga said sternly. “It’s against the Guild code.”

He wouldn’t get anywhere with that. Din passed his rifle to his other hand and leaned forward, changing tacks. “They work for the Empire. What are they doing here?”

“The Empire is gone, Mando!” Karga said, as if speaking to a child. Din straightened up. “All that are left are mercenaries and warlords, but if it bothers you – just go back to the Core, and report them to the New Republic.”

“That’s a joke.” The New Republic could barely keep the peace in the Core and the Inner Rim. They were iffy in the Mid Rim and worse than useless in the Outer Rim.

“Mando. Enjoy your rewards! Buy a camtono of spice. By the time you come out of hyperdrive? You will have forgotten all about it.” Karga smiled as if he had just imparted to Din all the secrets of the universe. Din scoffed, too quietly for the vocoder in his helmet to pick up, and left.

It wasn’t until he was back in the Razor Crest, preparing to leave, that Din’s thoughts crystallized. He had stowed everything that needed to be stowed and was sitting in the pilot’s seat, powering the ship on – but when he reached for the motivator power lever, the knob wasn’t there. He slowly picked it up off the console, where he had left it after taking it away from the Child, and screwed it on. He pushed the lever forward and then just… sat there, arm still extended.

The Child had strange powers, and Din had never seen a species anything like it before. But when it wasn’t lifting mudhorns with its mind and eating live frogs, it really was nothing more than a kid. A kid who had never been anything less than good-natured, in the brief time Din had known him, and a kid who looked at a knob and saw a toy, and immediately tried to play with it. A kid who Din had just handed over to people whom he was certain would not treat the kid well. People who Din was diametrically opposed to on a deep level. People who, critically, no longer had the leverage of a camtono of beskar.

Kriff the Guild, Din thought. Some codes were more important than others. He was going to go take the Child back. Serim’nare. This is the Way.

Chapter Text

Grogu floated somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. He thought he was dreaming, maybe, because he could see the Shiny Man. Actually, he could see a lot of shiny people, with helmets like the Shiny Man’s and armor also like the Shiny Man’s only every person had different colors. One of them had a golden helmet with little horns coming out the top like a crown, and Grogu wondered vaguely if she was in charge. The way everyone listened to her, he thought maybe she was.

He couldn’t really tell what was happening with all the shiny people. They all seemed very excited, but they were all speaking a language that Grogu didn’t understand. It was different from the Jawa language, or any others that Grogu had ever heard. Sometimes the Golden Lady would say something, and everyone else would repeat it back – suhreem naray? Sehreem naray? Something like that. And everyone who addressed the Shiny Man used the same word for that too – it sounded like beroya. Was that the Shiny Man’s name?

The scene slipped away from him, and he didn’t have the strength to even really think about holding onto it. He just existed, for a while. Eventually, though, he started to feel himself being pulled out of sleep. He was wrapped up in something, and someone was holding him in the crook of their arm, and they kept jostling him. They were making a lot of really sudden movements, and sometimes they squeezed him kind of hard.

Grogu blearily pulled his eyes open into a squint. Directly in front of his face was what looked like the Shiny Man’s arm armor, only much shinier, spewing fire off to the right. When he turned his head to the left, he saw a big, gleaming silver plate of chest armor. Then Grogu looked up, and… there was the Shiny Man’s helmet. The Shiny Man was holding him and fighting someone. The Shiny Man was holding him and fighting someone? That… would definitely explain the rough ride. Grogu had seen the Shiny Man fight.

He let his eyes slip closed again. This was probably another dream. He was too tired for it to be real. He had really liked the Shiny Man, so a dream about him was good, even if it was also a dream about fighting. The Shiny Man was good at fighting. Grogu was sure his dream Shiny Man would win.

He wasn’t sure how long it was later that he started waking up. For real, this time, not just partly the way you wake up to turn over in bed. The first thing he noticed was the sound of blaster fire. That didn’t seem quite right, somehow. The second thing he noticed was that he was bundled up in a blanket and lying on something hard. That wasn’t right either. Hadn’t he been on a bed, or something? Finally, still groggy, Grogu opened his eyes.

The Shiny Man’s helmet hovered above him, the visor tilted down toward his face and blaster bolts flashing past in the darkness above it. His helmet seemed to be attached to the rest of him, propped up on his elbows. Grogu made a sleepy noise and started to reach out with the Force, before he stopped. Wait a second. Hadn’t the Shiny Man given him to the stormtroopers and the old man and Glasses Man? Why was he here now? And where was here?

There was a loud noise like a spaceship engine and the Shiny Man’s head snapped up. The noises coming from all around – blaster fire, mostly – changed. There was still lots of blaster fire, but now there were little roaring noises too, like lots of little engines. Were those… missiles? Grogu finally reached out to feel the Shiny Man through the Force and was immediately hit with overwhelming shock and relief. Wow, that was how Grogu felt too! After a second, the Shiny Man picked up his blaster from where it had apparently been lying next to Grogu – Grogu’s field of vision was very narrow right now – and started shooting as well.

A person in lots of armor like the Shiny Man’s that was painted blue flew by. He had a jetpack on his back and a really big blaster of some kind in his hands. Grogu felt a little more awake now, and he felt around. It didn’t seem like the stormtroopers were anywhere near, or the old man, or Glasses Man. There were definitely a lot of people, though, all fighting each other and getting hurt and some of them were definitely dying. Did that mean… had the Shiny Man come and taken Grogu back?

“Beroya, ke’ba’slana – mhi arana!” yelled somebody close by. There was that language from Grogu’s dream! Had that not been a dream?

“Liniba shaadla Haaranov,” the Shiny Man called back. It must have been a Force vision! So the Shiny Man’s name was Beroya. Grogu gave a little trill at the discovery.

“Serim’nare,” came the other voice. The Shiny Man – Beroya – dipped his head.

“Serim’nare,” he repeated. He shoved his blaster into its holster, strapped his rifle onto his back, picked Grogu up, and clambered off… whatever they’d been lying on. Grogu could see a bit more of Beroya now as he hurried off between more armored people shooting at other people who Grogu couldn’t see. Beroya was even shinier now! None of his armor was painted red any more, and it was all polished really bright. The blaster bolts flying around kept reflecting off of it, and Grogu could even kind of see himself, just a big pair of eyes peering out of a blanket-wrapped bundle.

Grogu wasn’t really sure what was happening, but he was really really happy about it. Beroya had come back for him! Maybe he hadn’t been mad at all – maybe he had always planned to come back, but he just really wanted to get those shiny things from the old man first. Maybe he had used the shiny things to make his armor look shinier! And if Beroya had always planned to come back, that meant that Grogu would be with Beroya maybe forever. Grogu snuggled happily closer to the chest armor that Beroya was still clutching him against.

It wasn’t long before they left the battle behind, and then emerged from the cluster of buildings they’d been in and headed towards – the shiny ship! The fight must have been happening in the market from before. The ramp was already down and the lights inside were on. Beroya hurried inside, and he had almost made it to the ladder up into the cockpit when someone spoke.

“Hold it, Mando!” they said. Who was Mando? Beroya turned around, and Grogu saw a person standing inside the ship, pointing a blaster at them. How had they gotten in?

“I didn’t want it to come to this,” the person continued. They looked and felt angry. “But then you broke the Code!”

There was a moment of silence. Beroya felt calm. His helmet twitched to the side, towards that weird machine that Grogu had seen when they left, and then a cable came shooting out of the armor on the arm that wasn’t holding Grogu and hit the glowing control panel on the machine’s front. The machine started spewing some kind of weird cold smoke and Beroya immediately moved to the side while the angry person started shooting wildly. Grogu watched intently as Beroya pulled his blaster from its holster, took careful aim, and shot the angry person in the chest so hard they fell backwards down the ramp and out of the ship.

Beroya stood still for a moment, then lowered his blaster. He was breathing kind of hard, and holding Grogu kind of tight. Grogu squirmed a bit. Beroya looked down at him and loosened his grip. “Sorry,” he said, and then he put his blaster away again and swung himself and Grogu up the ladder into the cockpit. He put Grogu down on the same chair the pram had been on and crouched next to it, carefully unwrapping the blanket.

Grogu sat up and cooed up at Beroya. “You all right, kid?” Beroya asked. Grogu considered. He still felt kind of tired and way more sluggish than he felt like he should, but he didn’t actually hurt anywhere, so he just blinked happily up at Beroya.

Beroya sagged a little. “That’s good,” he muttered. He felt relief and tired for a second. Grogu got a flash of pain, too – it felt like Beroya had been doing a lot of fighting. Then he took a deep breath, got up, and started flipping switches.

It turned out Beroya could get his ship off the ground really fast when he wanted to. It was only a few minutes before they were flying through the clouds. Grogu watched those for a while, because he didn’t get to see them up close very often, and then watched Beroya for a while after that. Beroya seemed different from before. In a good way, Grogu thought. His helmet kept turning towards Grogu, and he seemed more... settled. He was feeling fewer things at once, at least.

After a while, Grogu’s attention strayed to the shiny ball. It was back on that lever, up on the console next to Beroya. Grogu didn’t really want to climb up there himself to get it, but he wondered if maybe Beroya would just let him have it this time. He turned himself around so he was on his knees, then slid backwards off the chair. When he turned back around, Beroya was looking at something out the viewport and feeling satisfaction and gratitude. “I gotta get one of those,” he said, facing front again. Grogu didn’t think Beroya was talking to him.

Grogu toddled up until he was standing next to Beroya’s leg and tugged on his boot a little. He stretched one hand up toward the shiny ball. Beroya’s helmet tilted down at him, and then he was reaching forward and unscrewing the shiny ball from the lever. A second later, he dropped it into Grogu’s waiting hand. Grogu plopped himself down on the floor and happily started gnawing on it. It was still a good ball. And now it looked like Beroya all over, instead of mostly just on his head and the one shoulder!

Grogu played with the ball until he felt Beroya’s leg pressed against his back and there was a jolt. The cockpit was flooded hyperspace blue, and Grogu dropped the ball. Beroya’s leg moved away. Grogu cried out and stumbled upright, chasing after the ball as it rolled away into a corner.

“What’s up, kid? Did you drop the knob?” Beroya asked. Grogu looked up pleadingly and saw that the pilot seat was twisted to face Grogu, and Beroya’s visor was tilted down at him. The visor moved slightly. “Yeah, it sure did roll behind the seat. Okay.” Beroya groaned a little as he stood up and crouched down again next to Grogu. “I’ll get it for you, and then we’re going to go downstairs. It’s been a long day.”

True to his word, Beroya fished the shiny ball out from behind the chair where Grogu couldn’t reach, handed it to Grogu, picked him up, and climbed down the ladder. He set Grogu on what looked like a weird deep padded shelf, but turned out instead to be a weird bed built into the wall. Then he rummaged around the crates, pulled out a bunch of weapon-care supplies, and sat down, using one crate as a table and another as a chair.

Beroya started cleaning his blaster and his rifle. Grogu watched, playing idly with the ball. He’d never actually touched a blaster himself, but he was familiar with this process. Basically everyone he’d ever met had had blasters and had needed to keep them in working order. Well, everyone he’d ever met since the good times. During the good times, not a lot of people had had blasters, at least not that they’d carried around while Grogu was there. Grogu wondered why Beroya was doing this first, instead of sleeping. Exhaustion rolled off of him like fog. It was even making Grogu sleepy.

It was making Grogu so sleepy, in fact, that he found himself dozing off, even though he’d basically just woken up. The shiny ball dropped into his lap, his ears and head drooped, and his blinks got longer and longer. In between blinks, he saw Beroya finish with his blaster and rifle, but then he blinked and neither were anywhere to be seen, and Beroya was polishing a piece of his armor. Grogu blinked again and Beroya wasn’t wearing any armor except the helmet, and he was polishing a different piece. And then suddenly Beroya was crouching in front of him and gently taking the ball away. Grogu whined at him.

“I know, adiik,” he murmured. “I’m tired too. Let me just get in there with you and we can both go to sleep.” He lifted Grogu for just long enough to sit on the bed himself and set Grogu in his lap, and then he scooted backward so that his legs were also on the bed and pressed a button on a panel near the opening into the rest of the ship. A panel slid closed over the opening, and then the only light in the little space came from the panel of buttons. It was just barely bright enough to see by.

Beroya laid down, apparently content with sleeping with his helmet on, and Grogu crawled up until he could snuggle into Beroya’s chest. Without the armor in the way, Beroya was warm. Grogu shut his eyes tight. Beroya hesitated for a second before settling one hand carefully over Grogu’s back, and Grogu fell asleep instantly.

Chapter Text

By the time Grogu woke up, he was pretty sure Beroya had been awake for a while. Long enough to have eaten some food and put all his armor back on, at least. Grogu opened his eyes to discover that he’d been left tucked under a blanket in the very middle of the weird bed, and when he sat up he saw Beroya sitting at the crate-table with two meal packs, one open and empty and one still sealed. Beroya was clad in his full shiny armor again, and his helmet swiveled towards Grogu the second Grogu moved.

“Hey, kid,” Beroya said. “Breakfast. It’s not ration bars this time.”

Grogu grumbled a little and yawned. He was hungry, though, so he made his way over to another crate-seat next to the crate-table in front of the sealed meal pack, while Beroya tore it open to activate it. It was just done heating up when Grogu got up on the crate-seat. Beroya sat with him while he inhaled the food. He didn’t even notice what it was, honestly – it didn’t taste horrible and it was edible, and he was really hungry. Like, really really hungry. He wondered how long he’d been asleep.

Once the meal pack was gone, Beroya collected both empty wrappers and stood. He put them both in a box along one wall, then returned to the crate-table and hoisted Grogu up. “Time to figure out where we are,” he said, and climbed the ladder into the cockpit. It looked like they had come out of hyperspace while Grogu was sleeping, and now they were just drifting near the edge of some random star system. Beroya set Grogu down in the same seat as before, the one to the right of the door, and dropped heavily into the pilot’s seat, swiveling it around to face the console. He started pressing buttons.

Grogu noticed that the shiny ball was back on its lever. He pouted a little. Why did Beroya want all the fun things to stay on the console? Grogu stretched out cautiously with the Force to gauge Beroya’s current emotional state. There… didn’t seem to be much going on in Beroya’s head right now. He was focused on the console, and he had that out-of-focus pain again. Grogu considered, and decided that it was worth trying to get at the fun things. He wanted to try for the buttons today. They were just all glowy and they did things and Grogu wanted to play with them!

He hadn’t gotten a headache at all using the Force, either, not this morning and not last night, so he must be all the way better from lifting the mudhorn. Grogu eyed the distance between his seat and the part of the console. He crouched – shifted his weight a little – grabbed hold of the Force – and jumped just right to land solidly on the console! He giggled. That was always so fun!

Beroya’s helmet turned towards him and then he did a double take, feeling surprise. Grogu giggled again. “How did you get up there, kid?” Beroya asked. His head swiveled to look at Grogu’s seat, as if that would give him a clue. Then he turned back to Grogu. “You’re sneaky, huh? Well, you can stay there and watch, if you want.” He turned back to whatever he was doing with the controls.

Grogu watched for a little while, but he quickly got bored. He didn’t know what any of the buttons did, so he had no idea what Beroya was actually doing. Grogu’s gaze wandered over the console, including the little strip of buttons up by the ceiling that he would never be able to reach even in a hundred years, and landed on a button right next to him. It was glowing green – the same color as him! He pressed the side of it that was sticking up. It clicked and went down, and the other side came up, and the green light went off. Huh. Grogu looked at Beroya, but he didn’t seem to have noticed anything. He just pressed some more buttons. Grogu turned back to the formerly-green button and pressed the other side of it.

The button clicked again, and the green light went back on, and Beroya said, “Stop touching things.” His tone was vaguely annoyed, and Grogu whipped around to look up at his expressionless helmet. He cautiously felt for anger, and didn’t find any. The buttons were really fun… Still looking up at Beroya, Grogu reached out blindly behind himself and pressed another button.

He must have hit a different one this time, because the ship started shaking. Beroya reached over fast to press it again and make the shaking stop, but he still didn’t feel angry, even as he picked Grogu up and cradled him against his chest armor. Grogu cooed at the new array of buttons in front of him, but Beroya’s hand held him firmly back from pressing any. There was also a screen over here, currently displaying a map of the galaxy. The view switched to information about a planet as Grogu watched.

“Let’s see, Sorgan,” Beroya said. “Looks like there’s no starport, no industrial centers, no population density… a real backwater skughole. Which means it’s perfect for us.” Grogu looked up at Beroya as his hold on Grogu tightened slightly. Beroya’s visor swiveled between the screen and Grogu. “Ready to lay low and stretch your legs for a couple of months, you little womp rat? Nobody’s gonna find us here.”

Grogu babbled at Beroya. He liked the idea of nobody finding them, if anybody was chasing them, but he also would like to know what a womp rat was. Was it good or bad that Beroya was calling him that? But Beroya didn’t elaborate, just turned back to the controls. Grogu poked curiously at Beroya’s feelings. He didn’t sense anything negative, so… that was probably good? Grogu couldn’t exactly ask, since Beroya couldn’t feel the force, so he would have to be satisfied with that.

It turned out they were already in the same system as Sorgan, and it only took a few minutes before they were swooping down into the atmosphere. Grogu laughed and waved his arms as the ship sped over some forests and lakes and a couple villages. It was hard to tell when you were going fast in space, but it was easy to tell on a planet and going fast was fun! He felt a blip of amusement from Beroya as well, which was excellent. Grogu thought that Beroya should have fun more often. He was way too serious.

Beroya landed the ship a few clearings away from a bigger cluster of buildings than the others they’d flown over and flipped lots of switches to power the ship down. He shifted Grogu from arm to arm a couple times while he was doing so, which also coincidentally kept Grogu from pressing any buttons. Right as Beroya finished, though, Grogu came in range of one of the joysticks, and he reached out eagerly to mess with it. It looked fun to fly the ship using the joysticks! Grogu wanted to try!

“Now listen, I’m gonna go out there and I’m gonna look around,” Beroya said, deftly prying Grogu’s hands away from the joystick. He stood up. “It shouldn’t take too long.” He set Grogu down on the pilot’s seat, which was swiveled away from the console, and stood in the middle of the cockpit with his visor tilted down at Grogu. “Now, don’t touch – anything. I’ll find us some lodging, and I’ll come back for you.” He raised one orange-gloved finger and used to punctuate his next point, speaking slightly louder and slower. “You stay right here. You stay. Don’t move. You understand?” Beroya paused. Grogu just looked up at him. He sounded stern, but he didn’t feel angry or annoyed or anything. Just serious.

Beroya appeared to take Grogu’s lack of reaction as an affirmative. Or, possibly, as a sign that Grogu just didn’t understand him. “Great,” he said, and left the cockpit. Grogu only waited a couple seconds before following. Yeah, okay, Beroya had told him to stay, but Beroya also didn’t want him touching any of the buttons, and that was boring. Besides, Beroya was the best! He surely wouldn’t make Grogu stay here if he followed him outside. And Grogu wanted to see what was in the buildings!

Grogu used the Force to hop his way down the rungs of the ladder into the main space. He wondered briefly if Beroya knew that Grogu could use the ladder safely, or if he’d just hoped that Grogu wouldn’t wander out of the cockpit and fall down. Eh, it didn’t really matter – Grogu had the Force! From the bottom of the ladder, he rushed to stand beside Beroya just as the small hatch on the side of the shiny ship opened up into a ramp.

The ramp hit the ground, revealing a line of trees. Grogu looked out at it, then up at Beroya, who was looking back down at him and feeling incredulous and resigned. Grogu made a noise at him that meant, why are we just standing here? Beroya sighed and looked up and out at the trees, moving his helmet in a kind of whole-head eye-roll. “What the hell,” he sighed. “Come on.” He strode down the ramp, leaving Grogu to toddle along behind. Grogu grinned. He knew Beroya would let him come along!

Beroya slowed down for the walk through the woods, once he saw how fast Grogu walked. His slow pace made his cape swing leisurely behind him. Grogu was going as fast as he could, but his legs were short, okay? His head didn’t even come up to Beroya’s knee. And if he went too fast he tripped over his own feet, or over the old plant matter and sticks on the ground. He was happy that the buildings were relatively close, and they reached them after just a few minutes of walking. Grogu gawked at them. They were all made of wood! Grogu didn’t think he’d ever seen buildings made of just wood before. Most buildings were made out of stone or metal, with transparisteel windows. And they were all round, too, not square or rectangular like Grogu was used to. It was new! And exciting! Grogu wished Beroya would understand if he asked questions.

Beroya looked all around as they walked between the buildings, and pretty soon he led Grogu into one with cloth hung across an open doorway and lots of people inside. There were nearly as many people as had been in that market the other day! Grogu completely lost track of Beroya as he wandered across the smooth wood floor, looking up at the rafters and the people and what was that animal sitting under that chair? It had thin legs with talons but its face and body were big and round and furry and its ears were BIG triangles and -

The moment Grogu got near the weird animal it snarled at him and he realized suddenly that it was taller than him, even lying down, and it had so many teeth! Grogu was startled into a yell, and then he was panting and afraid and he looked around desperately for Beroya and as soon as he found him he ran over and clung to Beroya’s cape as hard as he could. Beroya was distracted and didn’t really seem to notice, but a moment later he stopped walking and lifted Grogu onto a tall chair that looked like it was made of solid wood.

Grogu felt a bit better on top of the chair. The angry animal was all the way on the other side of the building, and it definitely couldn’t get him when he was on a chair. Chairs were good! And this chair was at a table, with another chair that Beroya sat on, and the table was near one wall and out of the way of all the people bustling around near the center of the building. That was nice. After his fright, Grogu didn’t really want to deal with people.

A lady came over to the table, wiping her hands on her apron. “Welcome, travelers!” she said, grinning wide. “Can I interest you in anything?”

“Bone broth. For the little one,” Beroya said. Grogu looked at him in time to see him gesture towards Grogu with his helmet. Then the conversation got boring, and Grogu stopped listening. Looking around at the weird wooden building was more interesting – it seemed sturdy enough, but there were also a lot of holes in the walls letting sunlight in. There was also a woman sitting right across from them that most of Beroya’s attention was focused on, even while he was talking to Apron Lady. She was wearing armor too, though it wasn’t at all like Beroya’s, and her whole upper arms were bare.

When Apron Lady moved so that Beroya couldn’t see Arms Lady, she got up and walked out of the building, leaving all her food behind on the table. Grogu stared. Why would she leave her food behind? Food was important, the way sleep was important and Beroya was important. Beroya must think so too, because when Apron Lady walked away and he saw that Arms Lady was gone, he got up in a hurry and followed her out. He also tossed something to Apron Lady as he walked past her. Grogu made a confused noise. He wanted to follow Beroya and Arms Lady, but Apron Lady was paying a lot of attention to him now, and it felt like she wouldn’t like it if he left.

She did bring over a bowl of soup after not too long, though. Grogu took a cautious sip, then a happy one. It was good! He was still hungry, even after the meal pack from earlier. But he could still feel Beroya with the Force, and Beroya felt tense like he was expecting a fight, and that was no good at all. Grogu cast a wary eye at Apron Lady. She was talking to some people at another table now. Grogu could definitely sneak past her. He used the Force to hop down from the chair without spilling his soup, and gave the angry animal a wide berth on his way out. He heard the Apron Lady give a confused shout after he was out of her sight and grinned. He was good at sneaking!

Grogu wandered around the back of the building, to where he could feel Beroya. It felt like Beroya was fighting someone now, actually, but it only took a few more seconds for Grogu to walk far enough that he could see the fight, and Beroya seemed like he might actually be having a good time. He was fighting Arms Lady. It was a relatively even match, which impressed Grogu deeply. Beroya was the best, which meant Arms Lady must be good. It was a quick fight, too, and dirty, with lots of rolling around on the ground. And then Arms Lady and Beroya simultaneously drew blasters and pointed them at each other, and it became a stalemate.

Grogu took a nice long sip from his bowl, since he was standing still. Arms Lady and Beroya both turned to look at him. Beroya felt like he was laughing on the inside. “Want some soup?” he said.

Arms Lady looked at him for a long moment, panting. “Yeah, alright.” She released Beroya’s arm from where she’d been pinning it to the ground, holstered her blaster, and stood up. Beroya did the same, then offered a hand.

“They call me Mando,” he said. Oh, that explained why the angry person from last night had said that! Grogu wondered why Beroya didn’t tell Arms Lady his name. She snorted.

“Cara Dune. Cara,” she replied, and she clasped his forearm. Grogu did not understand how she and Beroya had suddenly just become friends, but they definitely had. He reached out towards Cara curiously, and cooed with delight. She felt like a campfire! Not shiny like Beroya, all polished on the inside, but giving off just a little light and heat and with the potential to flare up, given enough fuel. Grogu had only felt a few people like that, and he had liked all of them. Well… almost all of them.

Beroya shook him out of his thoughts by picking him up, carefully so as not to spill the soup. “How did you get out here?” he asked. “It would have been easier to eat that inside.” He started walking back with Cara.

Grogu babbled at him insistently. Did Beroya just expect Grogu to hang around anywhere where Beroya wasn't? How easily he could eat the soup didn’t matter. And it wasn’t like he was just going to leave the soup behind! Grogu lectured Beroya on the subject very seriously the whole way back to the table inside, where Cara pulled up another chair and ordered another bowl of soup. Her bowl was a lot bigger than Grogu’s. He was jealous.

Once Cara’s soup arrived, she talked for a while about how she had been a shock trooper in the Rebellion for the last few years of the war and the first few years after the Empire was dissolved. Grogu listened with interest, but not much comprehension. He knew that the Empire was the reason why the good times had ended, and he knew that the Empire was mostly gone now, but anything more detailed than that had always seemed way too complicated to remember.

Cara also kept glancing at Grogu. He could feel that she was curious about him, but for some reason, she didn’t ask Beroya anything. And then she was standing, downing the last of her soup, and saying, “One of us is gonna have to move on, and I was here first.” She gave Beroya a tight smile, set her empty bowl on the table, and left.

“Well, looks like this planet is taken,” Beroya said. Grogu looked at him. He didn’t understand why Cara being here meant that they couldn’t. She seemed nice, and a planet was a big place! But Beroya just leaned on the table with one arm and watched all the people, without explaining more. Grogu hmphed a little and finished his soup too.

“You done?” Beroya asked. Grogu was, obviously, so he started climbing on the table to see if Cara had left any soup in her bowl after all. Beroya huffed a small laugh and scooped him up. “That’s a yes, huh, buddy? Come on, let’s get some supplies.”

Getting supplies sounded exciting if you didn’t know any better, but Grogu knew from experience it was actually really boring. It was all boring talking and lots of walking, and any time Grogu tried to sneak off to find something interesting to do like he usually would Beroya somehow saw him and stopped him. Grogu knew Beroya couldn’t feel the Force, but he must have some kind of power, because Grogu didn’t manage to get away even once. Eventually, Beroya just carried him, tucked into the crook of one arm. Trapped, Grogu realized how tired he was from all the walking and from being full of soup. Snuggled up between Beroya’s arm and chest armor, it didn’t take long for Grogu to drop off to sleep.

Chapter Text

Grogu woke up from his nap to find himself back in the middle of the weird bed on the shiny ship, under the blanket he’d been wrapped up in last night. He sat up. He could see Beroya arranging some crates on the other side of the hold, moving them into the ship from a small pile visible on the ground outside. Grogu yawned and stretched – that was a good nap! – and climbed carefully off the bed.

“Hey, kiddo,” said Beroya, when Grogu made it to the open back hatch. “How was your nap?”

Grogu cooed up at him. It was fun to see Beroya look completely different when he stepped inside the ship and reflected the surfaces there, versus when he was outside reflecting the trees.

“That’s good. Hey, once I’ve got these inside I need to do some repairs. It might be boring.” Beroya tipped his helmet towards the clearing they were in. “You wanna play for a bit while I do that?”

Grogu blinked. People didn’t offer to let him play very often – usually he had to sneak around to do it. He turned to look at the grass, then looked back up at Beroya.

“Go on. Just stay in sight – I’ll keep the hatch open.” Beroya set the crate he was holding down on top of another, bigger crate. Grogu trilled hesitantly and took a few steps down the ramp. When Beroya just kept shifting crates, Grogu moved more confidently, and soon he was crouching by a small tree nearby, examining the dirt around its roots.

It turned out that there were a lot of bugs on this planet! Grogu had a great time digging them up and catching them, and he got dirt all over himself. He also saw some weird rodents off in the distance climbing trees, but he was more interested in the bugs. He tried eating a few, just to see if they were any good, but none of them were. Grogu pouted. Maybe they would be better cooked? Some things were, like vegetables. Grogu picked a beetle-like thing and carried it over to Beroya to see if he would cook it so Grogu could find out.

Beroya was crouching near the wall inside the shiny ship. One of the panels had been removed, and he was doing something inside it. He looked up when Grogu approached.

“Did you find a bug?” he asked. Grogu held it up. “Oh yeah. That’s a big one. Very nice.” Grogu held it up more insistently, and Beroya’s helmet tilted. “Is it… for me?” He reached out gingerly and pinched the bug carefully between two fingers. “Uh… thanks, buddy.”

Grogu huffed and waved his arms. He wanted Beroya to cook the bug, not hold it! But Beroya just sat there. After a second, he said, “You got pretty dirty. Guess we’re doing a bath later. I saw a pond nearby we can use.”

This obviously wasn’t working. Grogu made a frustrated sound and went back outside. Maybe he could build a fire and cook a bug himself? He started picking up sticks and piling them up in the middle of the clearing. Soon, though, he forgot all about the bugs – sticks were fun! He waved one around like a lightsaber. Vmm, vmm! And this shorter stick was like Beroya’s blaster! Pew pew pew! If Grogu was as cool as Beroya, he would shoot everyone who tried to do bad things, and nobody good would ever get hurt again.

Eventually, the sun started going down. Beroya came over and crouched next to him. “Hey, let’s go get you clean,” he said. “Stick time’s over.” He scooped Grogu up, but Grogu kept ahold of his blaster stick. He pretended to shoot trees as they passed, but dropped the stick when he saw the pond. It was nearly as big as a lake! Beroya dropped a blanket and towel on the shore when they reached it, then put Grogu down. He grabbed him again immediately, though, when Grogu tried to run straight into the water. Grogu pouted up at him.

“In a second,” Beroya said. He felt like he was laughing inside again. “Let’s get your clothes off first.” Grogu fidgeted all through the process, and shot into the water as soon as Beroya let him go. Water was fun! Grogu had always been a good swimmer, and you got frogs and fish in water sometimes. He swam around happily for a while as Beroya pulled off his gloves and washed out Grogu’s clothes, ducking his head under the water periodically to look around. Eventually, Grogu splashed behind a clump of reeds and spotted – a frog! He ducked under the water so he could be stealthier and swam up behind it, and… pounced! He gripped it with both hands and swam back over to the shallower water near Beroya.

Beroya looked up from Grogu’s clothes, which were all clean. When he saw Grogu, he felt disgust. “Not again – put that down, kid.”

Grogu did not put the frog down. He tilted his head back and dropped it into his mouth and swallowed it. Then he made a triumphant noise, because that was a good frog! He was sure Beroya would understand if only he tried it. But before he could swim off again to look for another one, Beroya snagged his arm and pulled him gently to the shore. “You had fun, huh, kid?” he said. “You don’t even need help getting clean. You like swimming?”

Grogu burbled happily. He loved swimming!

“The sun’s going down. Let’s get you dry and back to the Razor Crest. Guess you don’t need dinner tonight, either.” Beroya lifted Grogu out of the water and started drying him off with the towel. Grogu didn’t mind leaving – the sun was going down, and all the swimming had tired him out. What was the Razor Crest, though? Was that the shiny ship? It must be. It was good to know what the ship was called!

By the time Beroya had dried him off and wrapped him in the blanket again, Grogu was moving from tired to sleepy. He nearly dozed off while Beroya carried him back to the Razor Crest, and sat on the weird bed blinking slowly while Beroya hung up his clothes and the towel to dry. He thought that he maybe fell asleep for a while there, too, because the next thing Grogu knew, the rear hatch was closed and the side hatch was open and it was dark outside. Beroya was taking some boxes out, which struck Grogu as counterproductive. He made a sleepy noise.

“What was that?” someone asked. Beroya let out a short sigh, feeling annoyed.

“You woke up the kid,” he told the unknown person, and came to pick Grogu up and set him back down close to the open hatch. Now Grogu could see that there were two new people outside, along with another flat thing like Kuiil had had. This one was a bit different – it had a droid in the front and no blurg pulling it. That made sense, probably. Grogu didn’t think blurgs would like it on this planet. The two new people stared at Grogu.

“You… have a kid?” the one with the hat asked.

“He’s not mine,” Beroya said shortly. The people exchanged a glance, but when Beroya didn’t say anything else, they seemed to decide that was good enough for them and went back to helping Beroya load boxes onto the flat thing.

Grogu felt more awake by the second. Who were these new people? Were he and Beroya going to go somewhere with them? Why did Beroya need all this stuff from the ship? He reached out cautiously with the Force. They just felt like regular people. Kind of intimidated by Beroya, and the Hat Man was intensely curious, but they didn’t seem dangerous at all. And Beroya just felt kind of tired and vaguely annoyed.

It wasn’t long before Beroya seemed satisfied with the amount of stuff on the flat thing. He got a money pouch off the Hatless Man, told him and the Hat Man to “stay, and watch the kid”, and walked off somewhere. They both stared at Grogu. Grogu stared back.

“Don’t his ears hurt? Under the helmet?” the Hatless Man said eventually. The Hat Man gave him a shove.

“Mandalorians are human, bantha brain! And he said it’s not his. He’s probably… babysitting, or something.” They stared at Grogu again. Grogu got bored and struggled out of the blanket to go investigate the flat thing.

“Why is the baby naked,” the Hatless Man said flatly. “That is more wrinkled green baby than I need to see.”

“I don’t know,” said the Hat Man, looking around. “Maybe the Mandalorian was washing his clothes?”

Grogu tuned them out. The flat thing was piled up with Beroya’s stuff, but there were two spots, one in the front and one in the back, that looked like they were meant for sitting. The spot in the back had cloth on the bottom and softer packs lining the sides. Grogu spared a glance for the Hat Man and the Hatless Man, who were arguing quietly. He couldn’t jump up there without the Force, but he didn’t want to use it, not in front of those two.

“Mando, why is the kid naked?” said someone in the trees. Grogu whirled around to see – Cara! Oh, good, Grogu liked Cara. And she was with Beroya!

Beroya came over and picked Grogu up. “I was washing his clothes,” he said to Cara, and “I left you in that blanket for a reason, you know,” to Grogu. Grogu just snuggled in happily to Beroya’s chest armor. Beroya climbed into the ship to retrieve Grogu’s tunic and patiently put it back on. Grogu wiggled the whole time. He wanted to be outside, where all the interesting people were!

When Grogu was dressed again, Beroya let him go. Grogu rushed back outside to find the Hat Man and the Hatless Man sitting on the front of the flat thing, and Cara perched on the back. She hoisted Grogu carefully up into the back with her and then scooched away a bit, watching him warily. Grogu didn’t know why she was nervous. It wasn’t like he was going to hurt her!

All the lights on the outside of the Razor Crest went off and Beroya joined them in the back of the flat thing, the side hatch closing behind him. The flat thing jolted into movement and headed off down a trail into the woods. Beroya and Cara started talking about something, but Grogu wasn’t listening. He could see the stars! The only light around was a lamp on a pole attached to the flat thing, and the night sky was brilliant! At least, as much of it as Grogu could see between the trees lining the trail. He fell asleep again staring up at them through the darkness.

The next morning, Grogu was already awake when the flat thing pulled up to the edge of a small village surrounded by teeny ponds. He stood up against the edge of the flat thing and looked around eagerly. The houses were all made of wood again, and there were people everywhere, doing things in and around the ponds or, in the case of the children, just playing. Everyone was wearing mostly brown and grey, but everyone also had at least one article of clothing that was a pretty blue-green, which meant that the whole village looked like it was full of moving plants.

The flat thing stopped. Grogu felt Cara jerk awake. Beroya had already been awake for a while, although he hadn’t moved from his comfortable position reclining against the packs with his arms spread out. And then Grogu stopped being able to pay attention to what the adults were doing, because all of the kids in the village came running over and crowded around Grogu. They were all yelling things like “Come on!” and “They’re here!” and “What’s that?”, which was very intimidating. Grogu was glad that they quieted down when they reached him.

“Hi!” one of them said. It was the girl standing directly in front of Grogu.

Hi! Grogu said back, addressing the whole group. None of them reacted, which was too bad. Grogu made a noise instead, and the whole group giggled.

“What’s your name?” someone else asked. Grogu couldn’t pronounce his name yet, but he did his best.

“Gooo,” he told them. They all laughed again, and then Beroya was behind them.

“Hey kids,” he said. “I need to take him with me right now. You can play later.”

The children all went “Awwww!” in a disappointed chorus, but stepped aside to let Beroya lift Grogu to the ground. One of them tugged on Beroya’s sleeve as he picked up a box from the flat thing.

“Excuse me mister,” the kid said, “but what’s his name?”

Beroya stopped. His helmet swiveled until his visor landed on the kid. Grogu felt him go all still inside, not like he was expecting a fight but like he’d just thought of something.

“… I don’t know,” he said.

“But isn’t he your son?” someone asked.

“No,” Beroya said, and abruptly turned and walked off. Grogu hurried to catch up, but Beroya must have forgotten how short Grogu’s legs were. Luckily all the houses were really far apart from each other, so Grogu could still see Beroya come to a stop in front of one of them and look inside. He caught up just as someone inside the house said, “Come in.”

Beroya stepped forward, and Grogu could see that there was a woman doing something with a rope near a support pole. Grogu wandered into the house as Beroya and the woman talked, looking around with interest. The house was a lot smaller than the buildings from yesterday, but it was still round with lots of tiny holes in the walls. There was a bed, and a crib, and various bits of farm equipment that Grogu didn’t understand. And now there was some of Beroya’s stuff too, as he opened the box he’d been carrying and started taking things out.

Grogu felt Beroya go on alert, although he didn’t physically react to whatever he’d noticed. A second later, he whirled around, hand on his blaster. Grogu looked over to see one of the kids from earlier gasp and jerk back out of the doorway. The woman’s head whipped towards the kid and back to Beroya, and then – seeing that Beroya had relaxed – she went to the doorway and gently pulled the kid into the open.

“This is my daughter Winta,” she said. “We don’t get a lot of visitors around here.” Grogu watched with wide eyes as Winta hugged the woman and the woman hugged back. Both of them seemed comforted by the gesture! “She’s not used to strangers.” The woman looked down at Winta and stroked her hair. “This nice man is going to protect us from the bad ones,” she told the girl.

Winta looked shyly over at Beroya. “Thank you,” she said, so quiet Grogu could barely hear her. The Nice Lady looked at Beroya too, smiling. If Beroya responded in some way, Grogu didn’t see or hear it – he was too busy staring at the Nice Lady and Winta.

After a moment, the Nice Lady pulled out of the embrace and took Winta’s hand. “Come on Winta,” she said, “let’s give our guests some room.” They walked away hand in hand. Grogu watched them go, then turned and looked up at Beroya. He seemed almost in a daze for a moment, but then he shook his head slightly and turned back to unpacking.

The rest of the day was… interesting. The villagers fed them lunch and dinner, some of which was the giant blue krill from the ponds. Grogu liked the krill, and determined to catch some out of the ponds as soon as he could. He also played with Winta and some other kids after his nap – they were careful to explain the rules of their games, and they adapted some of the more active ones so that he could still play with his shorter legs and slower run. Everyone in the village was so nice, Grogu had trouble wrapping his head around it. He couldn’t call everyone the Nice Lady or the Nice Man! Although he did learn that Winta’s mother was named Omera, so that was one less person to worry about.

Beroya also seemed a bit off-balance, when Grogu could focus on sensing him with the Force. Grogu thought that maybe Beroya was also not used to being around nice people. Or maybe it was the planet – Grogu had only been with Beroya on lava flats and in a desert before this, and Sorgan was much greener. It was hard to tell.

Either way, Beroya put Grogu in the crib that evening and sat next to him while he cleaned his weapons, just like back on the Razor Crest. He didn’t say much, but Grogu liked just sitting with him too, so it was good. Grogu spent the time thinking about Winta and Omera. He hadn’t seen anyone who acted like they acted with each other, not even other parents with their kids, not even in the good times. Not that he’d seen many parents in the good times. Grogu had reached out once when Winta had run up to Omera and was excitedly telling her about their game, and he had felt the emotion involved there. It was love. It… wasn’t something that Grogu had really encountered often. He thought it might be nice, to have someone who loved him like that. He wondered how that sort of love happened. And eventually, sitting next to Beroya and thinking about love, Grogu fell gently asleep.

Chapter Text

The next day, Beroya asked Omera to watch Grogu while he went out into the woods with Cara. Grogu did not like this. Why couldn’t he go with Beroya too? What if Beroya ran into another mudhorn? Grogu needed to be there so he could protect him! He couldn’t stop crying about it until Omera said something quietly to Beroya and Beroya crouched down in front of him.

“Listen, kid,” Beroya said. He felt uncomfortable. “Me and Cara are just going out a little way, to see what kind of raiders we’re dealing with here. It won’t take more than an hour.” He paused for a second. “I promise I’ll come back.”

Grogu sniffled and blinked some of his tears away. It didn’t feel like Beroya was lying, but he wanted to make sure. When other people Grogu had been with had made deals and promises, they shook hands. Grogu shakily held out one of his hands towards Beroya. Beroya hesitated for a moment before taking Grogu’s hand between his thumb and index finger and shaking once, gently.

“That’s right, buddy,” he said softly. “Cuyi koor.” Then he stood and left.

It took Grogu a few minutes to stop crying, but then he got all distracted playing with Winta and her friends, and then it had been an hour and Beroya and Cara were back, just like Beroya had promised! Grogu wasn’t sure whether anyone had actually kept a promise to him since… well, in a really long time. Beroya and Cara asked to talk to everyone who was free, and gathered them all in front of the building that Beroya and Grogu were staying in – which, it turned out, was actually a barn, not a house. Grogu thought it was important to know things like that. Winta picked Grogu up so they could get there faster and stood in front with Omera so he could see.

Once people stopped joining the small crowd, Beroya said, “Bad news. You can’t live here any more.”

The crowd rippled with shock and dismay. “What? Why?” someone asked.

Cara felt disapproval and muttered something to Beroya before stepping forward. “I know this is not the news you wanted to hear, but there are no other options,” she told everyone.

“You took the job!” said a voice that Grogu identified as the Hatless Man.

“That was before we knew about the AT-ST.”

“What is that?”

“The armored walker with the enormous guns, that you knew about and didn’t tell us!” Cara’s tone was accusing. The people in the crowd were all talking over each other, and Grogu felt Winta growing distressed. Omera rubbed Winta’s shoulder and said, “We have nowhere to go.”

“Sure you do!” Cara was almost cheerful about it. Grogu wondered if she was maybe really bad at reading the room. “This is a big planet. I mean, I’ve seen a lot smaller.”

“My grandparents seeded these ponds,” called the Hat Man.

“It took generations!” the Hatless Man agreed.

“I understand,” Cara said. “I do! But there are only two of us.” She gestured to Beroya.

The crowd grew louder. “No there’s not!” said the Hatless Man. “There’s at least twenty here!”

“I mean fighters. Be realistic!” Cara said, as if this was an argument she could win. Grogu felt the growing stubbornness from the people around him and knew it wasn’t. They continued to argue with her, but Grogu was distracted by the way Beroya was feeling. It wasn’t on the edge of angry, like Cara, or distressed but determined, like the people in the crowd. He was leaning up against the side of the barn, arms crossed, helmet impassive, and he was… considering.

Omera ended the argument by saying, “We’re not leaving.” Her tone was gentle, but it was also final.

“You cannot fight that thing,” Cara said, in a similar tone.

Finally, Beroya stirred. His visor turned slightly, from the crowd to Cara. “Unless we show them how,” he said.

Cara turned to look at him. Grogu knew that neither she nor Beroya could feel the Force, but he thought that something passed between them anyway, something that had nothing to do with words or expressions but was still communication. After a moment, Cara nodded.

“Fine,” she said. She and Beroya told the villagers to go away so they could plan. Grogu struggled free of Winta’s arms – she’d been holding him too tight for the last several minutes – and raced over to Beroya, slamming into his boot. Grogu wrapped his arms around Beroya’s leg to stay upright and looked up, doing his best please pick me up face. Beroya took one look and scooped Grogu right up. Grogu grinned. That was a good face! It always worked.

After that, things got really busy really fast. Grogu didn’t really understand what was going on, but he listened while Beroya and Cara worked out a plan for… something… and then Beroya kept leaving Grogu with the village kids and taking all the adults off to the ponds to make blaster noises and yell a lot. He kept doing that for days! Grogu snuck off a few times to see what was going on, but it just looked like a lot of swinging sharpened sticks around and target practice with cookware, which wasn’t very interesting. Plus, Beroya just paused whatever he was doing and brought Grogu back to the other kids if he spotted him, which was no good at all.

Grogu did get to help put up the barricade, though, which was fun! He couldn’t really lift anything without using the Force, which he didn’t want to do in front of so many people, but Beroya carried him around or let him trail behind him and hold things. And Grogu learned how to tie knots! He wasn’t nearly as good at it as Winta, but his arms were shorter, so that was okay. And since the barricade was right up against the ponds on one side of the village, it wasn’t hard at all to sneak away a couple times to catch krill. Fresh krill were good, just like Grogu had thought they would be! Not as good as frogs, though. Nothing could ever be as good as frogs. And Beroya caught him pretty quickly every time Grogu snuck off! He still didn’t know how Beroya did that.

About a week after they’d come to the village, the barricade was done and Beroya and Cara were full of anticipation for a whole day. The rest of the villagers mostly felt nervous, which made Grogu nervous. He stuck close to Beroya all day, even though it meant being near the target practice. Most of the villagers were pretty decent with a blaster by now, and Beroya gave up on returning Grogu to the other kids after the third or fourth time he snuck back immediately. But by the time Beroya put Grogu to bed in the crib just before sunset, nothing had happened.

It took Grogu a long time to fall asleep, and when he woke up after what felt like no time at all it took him a second to identify what had woken him up. It was the sound of a battle! It was after dark now, and Winta was holding Grogu, huddled up with the other kids and one adult behind a house on the other side of the village from the barricade. Grogu whimpered and pressed his hands over his ears. The yelling and blaster fire was bad. Except – where was Beroya? Grogu reached out frantically with the Force. It felt like the whole village (except for the people near Grogu) was near the barricade, and there were nearly as many unknown people too, fighting the villagers. Grogu hated feeling people dying, but at least it was mostly the unknown people doing it, and – there was Beroya! He was up against the barricade, it felt like, right next to Cara, and they were both really tense.

Grogu shut down his sense of everyone except Beroya and Cara. He didn’t want to be with new people, but there wasn’t anything he could do except watch – not from here, not without using the Force. And then suddenly Cara felt determined and was moving fast towards the ponds, and then she stopped and felt a little bit desperate, and Beroya still felt tense but he also felt focused and then Cara felt relief and Beroya moved fast up past her and there was an explosion! The shock wave rocked the house Grogu was behind and disrupted his focus for a long moment. When he got it back, all the unknown people were gone or leaving, and all the villagers felt exhilarated and relieved, and Cara and Beroya were okay. They were both alive.

Grogu opened his eyes. He hadn’t realized he’d shut them, or that he was crying, but that was happening too, apparently. He was feeling some pretty strong relief himself. He’d been so scared! He couldn’t remember a single time recently that people near him had died and he hadn’t been with different people afterwards, and Beroya was so good. Grogu hadn’t wanted Beroya to die. And he hadn’t! Grogu could still feel him across the village, talking to Cara. It almost didn’t feel real. Grogu needed to make sure it was.

He pushed his way out of Winta’s grasp, using just a little bit of Force to make himself strong enough. She shouted in surprise, but she and the other kids and the one adult back here were all piled together and nobody was fast enough to catch Grogu before he shot out the door and back towards Beroya. He fell a few times on his way, tripping over uneven ground and dead things that didn’t show up to his Force senses, and he thought he understood why adults used curse words sometimes. He felt very strongly right now, and some curse words would express that nicely! But he still reached Beroya as quickly as he possibly could, and found him standing dripping wet next to a pond. Cara was in a similar state.

Cara saw Grogu first. “How’d the kid get over here?” she said, surprise coloring her voice.

Beroya looked around, and as soon as he saw Grogu he was crouching down and feeling concern. “Are you all -” he began to ask, but then Grogu impacted his leg and closed his eyes and hugged as hard as he could. Beroya gently pried Grogu loose and picked him up, cradling him against his shoulder. Grogu hugged Beroya’s neck instead and started crying again. Beroya was alive! It was real! He was going to get to stay with Beroya even though people had died!

“Hey, hey, shh, ad’ika, gar morut’yc,” Beroya murmured. “We won, and everyone’s fine, see?” He turned so his back was to the barricade, as if Grogu was upset about the possibility of any of the villagers dying! Grogu didn’t even bother to open his eyes, just clung tighter to Beroya. “Naak, ad’ika, shh,” and Beroya continued to say things soothingly in that language that Grogu didn’t understand. It was very comforting, and eventually Grogu calmed down enough to stop crying. He didn’t stop hugging Beroya though, and Beroya continued to hold him with one hand while he went around and talked to people and did things. Grogu wasn’t paying a lot of attention, honestly. Once he calmed down a little, he realized how tired he was. And being carried by Beroya was so nice… Grogu fell asleep without even trying.

The next few days were full of adults moving the big dead droid that had somehow gotten into one of the ponds – everyone called it the AT-ST – disassembling the barricade, and moving krill back into the pond that the AT-ST had been in. Apparently that had been what the plan that Beroya and Cara had worked out last week had been about, and the villagers had insisted on moving the krill out of that pond so they wouldn’t get hurt. Grogu got even better at tying knots and even got to sit on Beroya’s shoulders a couple times! Grogu was thrilled. The best part was, he could feel Beroya feeling amused at his excitement! Grogu was glad Beroya was having as good a time as he was.

Once the village was all back in order again, things slowed down. Beroya and Cara kept going out into the woods for a couple hours and coming back, but they also spent a lot of time sitting outside Omera’s house doing nothing while everyone else worked the krill ponds. Grogu spent most of the time playing with the village children, but sometimes they had chores and he got to hang out with Beroya instead. And of course, every evening he went back to the barn with Beroya, who would clean his weapons or his armor until Grogu went to sleep.

Grogu felt like Beroya was thinking hard about something, especially after the first week or two from the night of the battle. He was always looking off at nothing, and once or twice he even neglected to pay attention when Grogu was telling him about his day! Well – as much as Grogu could, anyway, given that he couldn’t communicate with Beroya with the Force and he couldn’t really talk yet. Still. Beroya usually always paid attention, but he was really distracted. Grogu wished he could help out with whatever was on Beroya’s mind.

One good thing about the village that helped distract Grogu from Beroya’s increasing inattention was that all the water attracted a lot of frogs. The first time he caught one and started to eat it, he had an audience in the form of almost every kid in the village. He had only gotten halfway to swallowing before they all went “Ewwwww!” in delighted disgust. That stopped Grogu in his tracks. Was eating frogs… gross? But they were so good! He stared at everyone, seated where they had been listening to a lesson from an adult earlier, as they all covered their faces with their hands or twisted to look away or screwed up their faces like they were imagining the taste of frog and hated it. Slowly, he opened his mouth and let the frog fall out. It sat for a moment, then hopped off into a nearby stone planter. The children stopped feeling disgust and started laughing again. Grogu didn’t understand at all.

He told Beroya about this incident in great length later that evening. Beroya made all the right listening noises, but he didn’t understand, of course. Then he said, “I heard you let a frog go this afternoon. That’s great, buddy. You should leave the poor frogs alone. We feed you enough, you don’t need to supplement your diet.” Grogu informed Beroya that actually, he’d thought about it a lot since this afternoon, and he’d decided that he didn’t care if everyone else thought it was gross. Frogs were good! The best food! He was not going to stop eating them, any time he could catch them.

Finally, one morning, Grogu was overjoyed to wake up and find that all of Beroya’s distraction was gone! He didn’t tell Grogu what he’d been thinking about, but he seemed happier – or, at least, he seemed more certain, which Grogu thought was maybe basically the same thing for Beroya. Grogu went off happily to play for the morning, while Beroya and Cara did the sitting thing outside Omera’s house again.

Later that morning, though, Grogu was sitting near a pond and considering trying to sneak off to find a frog when he heard a distant blaster shot. Large amounts of some kind of small flying animal ascended out of the trees from just outside the village, and Grogu looked up to see Beroya run off towards the spot, blaster drawn. Omera dashed over and picked him up, then ushered all of the kids that were nearby to her house.

“Everything’s fine,” she told them in answer to their many frightened questions. “Mando and Cara will take care of it. We just need to stay here to make sure we don’t get in the way.” Grogu immediately reached out to feel for Beroya, and found him already coming back to the village with Cara. Cara felt grim, and Beroya felt resolved. It was only a few minutes before they came in to give Omera the all-clear. The kids all left, except for Winta, and Beroya stayed as well.

“Change of plans,” he told Omera. “That was a bounty hunter. The kid isn’t safe here. If one of them can find him, the rest of them can.”

Omera felt shock and dismay. “They’re after him? Not you?”

Beroya inclined his head in a yes. Grogu felt Cara stop around the area of the barn and start doing something that involved a lot of small movements. “I have to keep him safe. That means keeping him moving,” Beroya continued. He paused, and said in a softer voice, “I’m sorry. Thank you for what you said.”

Omera covered her mouth with her fingers briefly, then took a breath and straightened, dropping her hand back to her side. She started feeling resolve to match Beroya’s. “You’ll want to leave as soon as you can. I’ll help you pack.”

The villagers could move fast when they wanted to. By mid-afternoon, the flat thing – which Grogu had heard being referred to as a trailer – was all loaded up with all of Beroya’s things, and pretty much everyone was gathered around to say goodbye. Grogu wasn’t exactly sure why they were leaving so abruptly, but he was too busy feeling sad about having to say goodbye to give it much thought. Winta ran up to him where he was standing at the edge of the trailer and hugged him, also feeling sad. “I’m gonna miss you so much,” she sobbed. Grogu agreed entirely.

The hug lasted a long time, and then Winta let go and ran back to Omera. Grogu made a sad sound at her to let her know he’d miss her too. Beroya put one last pack and his rifle on the trailer and sat down himself. Then the trailer started moving, and everyone from the village waved until they were out of sight between the trees.

Chapter Text

Din wasn’t sure when he first thought it, but in the weeks following the sound defeat of the raiders, the thought grew into something he couldn’t ignore: Nobody was chasing them. The kid was happy here. And, as nice as the village was… Din couldn’t stay.

He wrestled with it for a while, in between patrols through the surrounding woodland and watching the kid and hanging out with Cara and talking to Omera. This village was the most peaceful place he’d ever been, and he couldn’t deny it would be restful to live here. There were no bounties to chase, no fights to exhaust and injure him, no stress about stretching the next payout to cover the Razor Crests’s repairs and upkeep as well as supplies for himself and the Covert – there was just the slow, sleepy rhythm of krill farming and moonshine spotchka brewing, and nothing but friendly faces. But.

But that was also part of the problem. The faces were all friendly, and none of them bore helmets. Cara didn’t ask much about Mandalorian culture, although she paid attention when he spoke of it. Omera asked frequently, but as often as not she reacted to an explanation or anecdote with horror rather than interest. Neither of them really understood, and Din suspected that Omera, at least, never would. Cara would move on one day; if Din stayed, he’d be left with a village that was largely uninterested in his culture, except for Caben (whose insatiable curiosity felt like a tourist rooting through Din’s past) and Omera, who – while thoughtful and respectful – regarded Mandalorian culture as a terror to be set aside and moved on from. Din couldn’t fathom why Cara seemed to think there was romance blooming there, as if Din would melt before the first woman to show him the slightest trace of kindness.

Besides all of which, Din still had responsibilities back on Nevarro – or, wherever the Covert had relocated to. He was still the Tribe’s beroya. Sooner or later, he’d have to get back to Nevarro to pick up the trail, locate the new Covert, and resume providing for them. He wouldn’t be sorry to leave Nevarro’s lava flats and Greef Karga behind for good, and he missed the ade. He wasn’t sure if it was that they were Mandalorian children or if it was that they were mostly mar’ey’ade, foundlings, but they all seemed much wiser than the village children on Sorgan, and their play held more weight. Besides, Din was friends with some of them, in the distant way that an adult who’s rarely present but always returns with gifts can be friends with children who are not in their care.

And then there was the Child.

The kid loved it here. He spent every day running around with the village children, playing games and getting into trouble. His favorite thing to do, when he couldn’t find a frog to eat, was to sneak off to the krill ponds and eat krill by the pound. Din’d had to retrieve him from a pond, only to discover him at another pond minutes later, more than once. Din sincerely hoped the harvest wouldn’t be affected. And the kid was a bad influence on the other children, too – despite not being able to talk, half the time any kid got in trouble, it seemed to have been the Child’s idea. They were all having an amazing time. Din was happy for them.

If he was being honest with himself – and he did try to be – the only reason Din had stuck around for as long as he had was because of the Child. He couldn’t fathom the idea of extended childcare on the Razor Crest, and he’d been waiting to see if any repercussions from the shootout with the Guild on Nevarro would reach Sorgan. If it would be safe to leave the kid here, where he was so vibrantly joyful. And as the weeks passed… it seemed like it would be. Din and Cara’s patrols only turned up empty woodland; if there were any other local raiders, they’d moved on to easier targets. Din started to get restless. He knew it was time for him to leave soon, and… he knew he was going to leave the Child here.

He didn’t realize he’d made the decision until it was done. It was late one evening nearly three weeks after they defeated the raiders; the Child was asleep in his crib in the barn, and Din was sitting on a log around a bonfire, keeping Cara and Omera and some other adults company while they drank their home-brewed spotchka. There was talk, and laughter, and by the end of the evening Omera was drunk enough to tell Din and Cara of her husband, who had died in the Battle of Jakku – the battle that finally splintered the Empire into the tiny factions it was now.

“He’s th’ one who taught me t’ shoot,” she slurred, leaning on Cara. “He was in th’ Rebellion, came home when – whenever he had th’ chance an’ thought it w’s safe, an’ he wanted me t’ be able t’ protect m’self.” She paused for a long moment, staring at the way her spotchka practically glowed blue in the firelight. “He w’s never th’ same, y’know. After his f’rst battle. Flinched at th’ tiniest sounds… never let his blaster out of his reach… sometimes he’d – he’d – go away, like. He’d be right there talkin’ t’ you, and then… he’d go all distant, not be able t’ hear you, an’ the look on his face…” Omera shook her head. “I got him to get me s’m medical texts, y’know, figgered out how t’ help him a bit. It’s a thing w’ yer brain, y’know? When y’get hurt sometimes, sometimes, y’know, y’get stuck in th’ hurt. An’ it was worse, ev’ry time he went away an’ came back. I di’nt know what t’ do, sometimes. An’ then he w’s gone.” She sighed deeply and took another drink.

Cara said something, but all Din could hear was his own thoughts going, That’s why. Ever since he had nearly drawn his blaster on Winta that first day, Din had noticed that Omera went out of her way not to startle him – announcing herself before appearing in doorways, walking loudly when she was behind him outside, letting him know before moving near him. And that wasn’t all – even when she clearly didn’t approve of something, like Din keeping his helmet on, she didn’t say anything to try to persuade him to stop. And she always seemed to know exactly how to help the Child, when Din couldn’t figure out what had set him off or how to calm him down. “Get him away from the fire,” she would say, or “He needs to know you’ll come back,” or “Let him know you’re not angry.”

The Child was safe here, and Omera would understand how to help him, when the first fifty years of his life upset him. That was when Din realized that he’d already decided to leave the kid here. It was the least he could do, after turning the kid in as a bounty, after leaving him with those demagolkase Imps – finding a place where the Child could be happy and supported really was the very least he could do. And maybe… maybe, when Din had found his people again and was in the area, maybe he could visit. He wasn’t ashamed to admit he’d grown fond of the little womp rat, and it would be… nice, to have such a restful place to retreat to once in a while.

The next day, he was leaning against the side of Omera’s house, Cara in a chair on the other side of the doorway, both of them watching the Child play with the other kids. The village children, having seen many examples of the Child’s voracious appetite for live small animals, had developed a new game: see who the Child could take the most live krill from, while they attempted to keep him away. It involved a lot of shouting and laughing and running and wiggly blue things in the dust, and the Child was having the time of his life.

Omera brought Cara a drink and offered Din food, and commented on how well the kid was doing before going back to work at the ponds. Cara took a sip from her cup – it was fruit juice of some sort, Din thought – and said, “So what happens if you take that thing off? They come after you and kill you?” Her wry gaze made the joke clear, but the question gave Din pause. How could he explain the concept of being dar’manda to her? You lose your soul seemed too dramatic, and anyway, that wasn’t quite what manda was, or not all of it.

“No,” he said after a moment. “You just can’t ever put it back on again.” It was woefully inadequate, but it was the best he could come up with.

Cara seemed surprised. “That’s it?” she asked. “So you can slip off the helmet and settle down with that beautiful young widow, and raise your kid sitting here sipping spotchka?”

Din gave her a look, turned flat by the helmet. He hadn’t expressed his opinion of her matchmaking in so many words, but he’d thought he’d made it clear that he didn’t approve. He decided to change the subject, and the obvious topic was his decision from last night. He turned back towards the kids and picked his words carefully.

“You know, we raised some hell here a few weeks back. It’s too much action for a backwater town like this,” he said. Cara nodded along. “Word travels fast. We might wanna cycle the charts and move on.”

“Would not wanna be the one who tells him,” Cara said, indicating the Child.

Din took a moment to brace himself. “I’m leaving him here.”

Out of the side of his visor, he saw Cara’s gaze move slowly towards him.

“Traveling with me… that’s no life for a kid. I did my job, he’s safe. Better chance at a life.” Din absolutely refused to think about how Cara had referred to the Child as his kid.

She examined him for a moment, but he saw understanding in her eyes. Cara almost seemed to understand him better than he himself did, sometimes. She turned her gaze back towards the laughing mob in front of them. “It’s gonna break his little heart,” she said, and he knew she agreed.

“He’ll get over it,” Din said, thinking of his parents on Aq Vetina and his buir, the beroya before him, who had just… never come back one day, shortly after Din had established himself in the Guild. “We all do.”

Cara was silent. A short while later, she excused herself to go patrol, and Din set off to find Omera. The decision was made and he’d told Cara, so there was no point in putting it off. Omera was crouched near one of the ponds, examining a piece of underwater flora; she twisted to look up at him when he spoke.

“Excuse me,” Din said. “Can I have a word?” He’d rather not have this conversation where the other villagers might overhear, and say something to the kid before Din was ready to tell him himself.

“Of course,” said Omera, curiosity in her eyes.

Din led her along the nearest path between ponds, to the very edge of the village, before he turned around. He… had no idea how to start this conversation. Dank farrick. “It’s very… nice here,” he said, lamely. What was that? He cursed his inability to have a normal conversation that wasn’t about being a Mandalorian or bounty hunting.

Omera smiled proudly. “Yes,” she agreed.

Okay. Keep going. This was about the Child. “I think it’s clear he’s… he’s happy here.”

Omera’s smile faded slightly. “What about you?”

Din was startled. “Me?”

Omera nodded. “Are you happy here?”

Din was speechless. That was not a question he could answer in less than half an hour, and he still needed to ask about the kid.

“We want you to stay,” Omera continued, when he didn’t respond. “The community is grateful. You can pack all this -” she glanced down at his armor and back up - “away in case there’s ever trouble.” She paused. “You and your boy could have a good life. He could be a child for a while. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Din understood that she wasn’t only talking about the kid. He couldn’t deny that it would be nice to relax here, without worrying about his responsibilities. And – he glanced over at the Child, who had at some point migrated to the ponds with a few other children – he knew it would also be nice to see the Child begin to grow up in a place without fear. He returned his gaze to Omera.

“It would,” he admitted. And then Omera, telegraphing every movement before she made it, raised her hands to the base of his helmet, and Din – froze. For a long, terrifying moment, she pressed relentlessly upward, his helmet raised just an inch so it no longer rested on the top of his head –

Din raised his hands and – gently, he reminded himself – grasped her wrists, stopping their movement. She must have completely misinterpreted his words. He had never said anything about actually staying! He’d just been agreeing with her statement! He searched frantically for something to say as he slowly pulled her hands away and her face fell.

“I don’t – belong here,” he landed on, before the silence got too long. Bring it back around to the kid, bring it around - “But he does.”

She searched his visor, as if she could see through it to his eyes. He didn’t like the understanding in her face. She only understood her idea of him. Her idea of him was false. “I understand,” she said, and he only barely kept himself from laughing aloud. This was a solemn moment, keep it together, Djarin! “I will look after him as one of my own.”

There was the distant sound of a blaster, and birds fled the trees behind him. Din spun around, drew his blaster, and threw an arm out to cover Omera, glad his helmet hid his relief. Ka’ra, if he never had another conversation like that one again it would be too soon. He didn’t see anything in the trees, but his helmet had already pinpointed the source of the noise.

“Go get the kids!” he told Omera, and dashed off into the woods. It only took a few seconds for him to see Cara, blaster out, standing over a body. He slowed down and joined her. The body wore a breathing mask and had rudimentary armor, and held a sniper rifle – a bounty hunter, not human, wanted to kill rather than capture. There was a suspicious beeping noise, too, and Din rolled over the body with his boot to reveal a tracking fob, blinking fast.

Din felt cold. He bent over and grabbed the fob, holding it up so Cara could see.

“Who’s he tracking?” she asked. She’d picked something up from his body language, somehow, and her face was serious.

“The kid,” Din said. He looked back towards the village, mind whirling.

“They know he’s here.”

“Yes.” He turned to look at her. She had a point. She would get to it in a moment.

“Then they’ll keep coming.” Her expression was grim. His grip on the fob tightened.

“Yes.” Four weeks. It had only taken four weeks. And Sorgan was perfect for hiding out, especially this village – it was just about as out of the way as you could get in the Outer Rim, and that was saying something. Din tossed the fob onto a stone and crushed it with his boot. He wouldn’t be able to leave the Child here after all. If every bounty hunter in the sector had a fob, the only way to keep him safe would be to keep him moving, which meant Din had to keep the kid with him.

He ignored the tiny spark of happiness in his chest and turned back to Cara. “I’m going to have to take him with me after all.”

She nodded sharply. “Let’s go get you packed.” They turned and walked back to the village together.

Chapter Text

The trailer moved really slowly, and by the time it got dark and Grogu fell asleep, they were still in the middle of the woods. When he woke up, though, he was lying next to Beroya on that weird bed in the Razor Crest. The ship was humming in a way that it hadn’t been when they were on Sorgan and before they went to the village, so they must already be in space. Beroya seemed like he was probably asleep, but it was hard to tell in the darkness and with the helmet on. Just as Grogu decided to leave Beroya there and go find something to play with, though, he stirred and sat up.

His helmet tilted down towards Grogu. “Awake already?” he said. “Guess it must be morning.”

Grogu just blinked up at him. He didn’t know why him being awake meant it was morning. He woke up in the middle of the night sometimes! Usually only when he had nightmares, though, so maybe Beroya had a point.

Beroya reached out for the glowing panel of buttons on the wall, pressing one and making the door panel slide up. Grogu squinted in the light from the hold, but he didn’t let it stop him from jumping off the bed really fast, before Beroya could even move. It had been forever since he’d seen the Razor Crest! He wanted to explore it again!

He heard Beroya chuckle behind him, but stopped paying attention immediately when he found a new crate. It was smaller than most of the other crates, and made of the same wood as the houses from the village. Grogu hadn’t seen it on the trailer on the way back, but he had been distracted, what with missing Winta and Omera and everyone already. He gave it a thorough once-over, then hooked his claws under the lid and started lifting it up to peek inside –

Beroya’s hands slid around his sides and lifted him up, swinging him away from the crate. The lid settled closed again, and Grogu pouted up at Beroya, who was wearing armor on only one shoulder – the armor on the other shoulder dangled from half-fastened straps. “Not quite yet, adiik,” Beroya said, sounding amused. “That’s breakfast, but I need to get my armor on first. Here -” he pulled the shiny ball out from one of the pouches on his belt - “why don’t you play with this while I get ready?”

Grogu gasped and reached out, making grabby hands at the ball until Beroya brought it in range. As soon as he did, Grogu snatched it out of Beroya’s hand and stuck one finger in the hole. He liked the way the little threads on the inside felt. He hadn’t seen the shiny ball since they’d gone to the village! He thought maybe Beroya had left it on the ship. Beroya set him down, moved back over to where his armor was stacked neatly in the corner next to the bed, and started putting it on. It always took him forever to get the armor on or off, but Grogu hardly noticed this time. He really liked the shiny ball!

Eventually, Beroya finished with his armor and crouched by the wooden crate. He looked over at Grogu and jerked his helmet back towards the crate. “You wanna help me open it?” he asked.

Grogu cooed excitedly and stood up, dropping the ball in his haste. It rolled towards Beroya, who caught it and tucked it back in his belt. Grogu hurried over, hooked his claws under the lid again, and flung it open, revealing – oh! He reached into the crate and managed to grab one of the krill from inside before Beroya caught him again. They weren’t still alive, unfortunately, but Grogu had figured out by now that Beroya preferred his krill cooked, so this was good! Beroya would be able to have some too! Grogu gobbled the krill he had grabbed and trilled in delight.

Beroya radiated amusement as he reached into the crate and carefully brought out two plates of food – each plate had some of the krill, and they also had some bread, with berries for dessert. He stood and placed both plates on the crate-table, and Grogu climbed up onto one of the crate-chairs and scarfed his food down. It was good! The berries especially were almost as good as live krill, which made Grogu wonder if he should have been sneaking into the woods more often on Sorgan to try to find berries instead of just sneaking to the ponds for krill.

It wasn’t until he had finished eating that Grogu noticed that Beroya hadn’t even started. He made a curious noise, looking up at Beroya’s helmet. Beroya stood.

“You know how I only eat when nobody can see?” he said, picking Grogu up. “I still need to do that. It’s part of my Creed that no living thing can see my face.” He carried Grogu back over to the bed and set him down. “Which means you need to stay in here for a bit while I eat. Got it?”

Grogu babbled in protest. Staying in here would be boring, though! There was some stuff hanging on hooks inside the cubby containing the bed, but it was too high up for Grogu to reach without the Force, and the only other item in the cubby was Grogu’s blanket. There was nothing to play with!

Beroya pulled out the shiny ball again and handed it to Grogu. “I’ll be quick,” he said, and then the door panel slid shut again. The lights stayed on this time, which was new. Grogu felt for Beroya with the Force. It seemed like he really was just sitting at the crate-table and eating. That wasn’t very interesting, so Grogu set the ball down in one of the little channels between the strips of padding on the bed and rolled it around. If he pushed hard enough, he could roll it partway up the slope at the side of the bed. He had a very good time seeing exactly how hard he had to push to get the ball exactly halfway up the slope, but then he pushed too hard and the ball rolled all the way to the top and fell down in between the bed and the wall!

Grogu stared at where the shiny ball had disappeared. He loved that ball, and now it was gone. He felt tears welling up in his eyes, and he gave a little sniffle.

Sometimes he wondered if Beroya had superpowers after all, because it was just at that moment that the panel opened up. Beroya stood in the opening, saying, “I’m done. That blue krill sure is good, huh, buddy?” Then Beroya seemed to register Grogu’s emotional state and started feeling worry. “What’s wrong?”

Grogu sniffled again and pointed to the spot where the ball had disappeared, ears drooping. Beroya’s visor shifted slightly, and after a moment he said, “Did you drop the ball?” He leaned in and pressed the side of his helmet to the wall over the spot, peering down into the crack between the bed and the wall. “Yep, there it is. Don’t worry, we can get it back.” He picked Grogu up, tucked him into the crook of one elbow, and gave his ear a comforting stroke. Then he stepped back and pressed a button on the panel that controlled the door panel from the outside.

Grogu watched with wide eyes, tears forgotten, as the bed started to lift up! It raised slowly on four extendable legs and stopped halfway up the wall, leaving enough room for Beroya to lean in under it. There was another bed under there! It looked a lot less worn than the one that Beroya and Grogu slept on. Beroya reached in, grabbed the ball off the lower bed, and handed it back to Grogu. Grogu was so entranced by the beds that he barely noticed.

“Razor Crests were built to hold three people for a couple days at a time,” Beroya told Grogu as he made the top bed go down again. “There was always supposed to be one person awake, so they put in two bunks. I never use the second one, though.” Grogu clutched the shiny ball and stared as the top… bunk?… lowered until it was flush with the lip of the cubby. You couldn’t even tell that there was a second bunk under there! That was so cool! Grogu would be jealous, but he got to sleep on the bunk too, so he was mostly just excited.

Once the top bunk had settled back into place, Beroya looked down at Grogu. “You ready for a long day of space travel, kid?”

Grogu cooed happily. He thought space travel was boring, but he was certain it would be much less boring with Beroya!

Beroya climbed the ladder to the cockpit, still carrying Grogu, and stopped just inside the door, feeling considering. All that was visible outside the viewport was hyperspace, but Beroya’s attention was on the seat to the right. After a second, he said, “No, that’s no good,” and set Grogu down on the floor. “Stay here,” he told Grogu, and disappeared back down into the hold.

Grogu wobbled upright and peered at the chair, wondering what had caught Beroya’s attention. There wasn’t anything unusual about the chair that Grogu could see, especially compared to the other chair and the pilot seat. There were no arms and the red padding was a little faded and worn, but the whole ship was kind of run down like that, so it fit in. Grogu reached one arm up as high as it could go and patted the seat. That… didn’t really tell him anything. It was just a chair.

There was a clanking noise, and Grogu turned his head just in time to see Beroya arrive at the top of the ladder carrying a big open-topped box full of… something, Grogu couldn’t quite see. Beroya walked into the cockpit and dropped the box on top of the chair that Grogu had been investigating. He started pulling stuff out of the box – it looked like a lot of chains and fabric straps.

“You’ll fall right off this if I don’t rig something up,” Beroya explained as he started wrapping a chain around the box. “You had that pram before, but I didn’t grab it, so this will have to do.” He worked for another few minutes and then straightened up and propped his fists on his hips, surveying his work. He had attached the box to the chair very thoroughly by looping the chains and straps around the box and the seat, the back, and the leg of the chair. Grogu peered at it curiously. After a moment, Beroya reached down, picked Grogu up, and set him down again inside the box.

“What do you think, kiddo?” Beroya asked.

Grogu considered. The edge of the box was just the right height for him to rest his hands comfortably on it like a railing, and the box was padded by some folded cloth in the bottom. It felt pretty sturdy, too, not like it was going to fall off the chair at any second. It would do. He looked back up and gurgled his approval at Beroya.

Beroya nodded back at him, feeling satisfied, and headed over to the pilot seat. He sat in it and swung it around to face the console, and then… not much happened for a while. Grogu still had the shiny ball to play with, so he wasn’t bored, but it was space travel. Beroya flipped switches occasionally, but the navicomputer mostly handled hyperdrive, and there wasn’t anything to look at other than the kind of streaky blue that was the stars going by. Eventually, Beroya swiveled the pilot seat around to face Grogu.

“We’re gonna be coming out of hyperdrive in a minute,” he said, and pointed at the shiny ball. “I’m gonna be needing that. Sorry, kid. You can have it back later, I promise.”

Grogu pouted. He liked the shiny ball! He wanted to keep it! But Beroya stretched out his hand for it, and Grogu didn’t actually know what the lever that the ball went on did, so maybe Beroya did need it. Grogu surrendered it to Beroya when his hand got close enough. Then Beroya nodded at him, and Grogu perked back up a bit. Beroya thought he had done good!

Beroya screwed the ball back onto its lever and faced the console again. After a moment, he pulled a different lever, and the Razor Crest dropped out of hyperspace. Off in the distance in front was a planet, all round and beige. Grogu cooed curiously, but before Beroya could do anything else the ship shuddered and a bunch of lights on the console turned red. Beroya felt alarm and muttered something sharp, then pushed the joysticks forward hard. The ship jerked forward, and Grogu only barely stayed standing by clutching the edge of the box. Beroya’s alarm turned into concentration and Grogu’s eyes widened as some weapon pulses flew past the viewport.

The comms crackled to life. “Hey, Mando! I knew I recognized that janky old ship of yours! How you doing these days, still got that kid you broke the Code for? You know, you took all the beskar, but the client is still offering a pretty high bounty to get the kid back! What do you say, want to help me make a lot of money?”

Beroya didn’t respond. He seemed like he was focusing on dodging whoever was shooting at them, and he wasn’t entirely successful. Grogu agreed entirely with Beroya’s prioritization here.

The voice over the comms grew cold. “Hand over the child, Mando.” The ship jerked suddenly as something connected and alarms started going off. “I might let you live.”

Grogu clutched the edge of his box to stay upright as the ship rocked back and forth from Beroya’s dodging. His ears flattened to try to block out the alarms beeping urgently at Beroya, and he decided that he didn’t like space fights! They were worse than fights on planets, because Grogu could hide during those. He couldn’t hide here – he was inside the huge target that was the Razor Crest, and he had no way to leave. There was another impact somewhere on the hull and the alarms got more urgent, if that was even possible, and Beroya said “Hold on!” and then the ship was doing a barrel roll!

Grogu thought that might have been quite fun if the circumstances were different.

As it was, all he could do was huddle and watch Beroya struggle with the controls. Something was wrong with them, but Grogu didn’t know what. “Come on,” Beroya muttered, voice strained as he fought the ship.

“I can bring you in warm or I can bring you in cold,” said the voice on the comms.

Beroya suddenly felt angry. He grabbed the joysticks and pulled back hard, and Grogu hit the front of the box as the ship slowed down really fast. Another ship – it must be the person attacking them! – bounced off of the Razor Crest as it flew past, and Grogu could finally see that it was a small ship – a tiny one, actually, way smaller than the Razor Crest, with just the cockpit and the wings and the guns. Beroya lined up his shot.

“That’s my line,” he growled, and fired.

The other ship exploded. Beroya glanced over his shoulder as the Razor Crest drifted leisurely through the debris. “You all right?” he asked.

Grogu made a small noise. He wasn’t hurt, he supposed, but he definitely wasn’t all right, either.

“Yeah,” Beroya muttered, turning back to the console. “Me too, kid.” He fiddled with something, continuing to mutter to himself, but the ship didn’t respond, and then all the lights turned off.

Beroya didn’t quite feel panicked, but he was close to it. He looked all around, double-checking Grogu and pressing a few buttons, but nothing happened until he got up and moved over to press a button near the door. The red lights turned on again. Beroya felt something like relief and sat back down, movements a little more assured as he continued to do something that Grogu figured was probably damage control. It seemed to help – it wasn’t very long at all before more lights flickered on that weren’t red, and then the distant beige planet was in front of them again and they were moving towards it.

Grogu sat down in his box. He couldn’t see much of anything from this angle, but that was okay. He could sense Beroya, once more feeling smooth concentration, and the knowledge that Beroya wasn’t angry or frightened was good enough for Grogu right now. It meant they were out of danger for sure. He hadn’t liked that! Was that what all space fights were like? Why did anyone ever do that? Grogu thought that everyone should just agree to fight on planets, like sensible people who didn’t want to die in space.

Grogu’s eyelids drooped. That space fight had been a lot, and he thought it might be good to take a nap now. He curled up on the cloth at the bottom of his box and dropped immediately off into sleep.

Chapter Text

Grogu opened his eyes and had to blink a few times before he understood that he was awake. It was very dark, and he was all wrapped up in his blanket again (Beroya liked to do that when Grogu fell asleep somewhere and had to be moved somewhere else). But he was awake, although still very sleepy, and he was back lying on the Razor Crest’s bunk with the door panel closed. Grogu struggled free of his blanket and padded over to the panel of buttons, squinting up at it. He was pretty sure that when Beroya wanted to open the door panel he pressed… this one? Grogu reached up nearly as high as he could go and pushed hard, and the button depressed and the lights turned on and the door panel slid up. Success!

Grogu was still too sleepy to do much gloating about getting it right on the first try, though. He looked around. Beroya wasn’t in the hold. He stretched out with the Force. Beroya wasn’t in the cockpit, either. The back hatch was open – maybe Beroya was out there somewhere? Grogu stumbled forward across the hold and walked out the hatch into sunshine and dust. He paused a few steps down the ramp and looked around. No Beroya, but there was a lady with grease-stained coveralls, a lot of hair, and a blaster rifle with a really big barrel. There were also some really skinny droids with flat heads and one big camera like an eye in front. All three of the droids and Hair Lady were staring at Grogu, baffled. At least, Grogu assumed the droids were baffled. It was harder to feel droid feelings.

“What?” Hair Lady said. She lowered her rifle, which Grogu thought meant she might be willing to pick him up. He was still kind of sleepy, and if Beroya had left him here alone with her, she must be good. He continued slowly down to the bottom of the ramp and lifted his arms, the way that could make anyone pick him up. Hair Lady handed off her blaster to one of the droids and approached slowly, half-crouching and holding her hands out in front of her.

“Now, now,” she said, and gingerly picked Grogu up. The arms always worked. “Let Peli take a good look at you.” She held him at arm’s length and looked around like she wasn’t sure where he had come from, which was silly – she’d watched him walk out of the Razor Crest! She looked back down at him and, although her confusion didn’t lessen, she did also start to smile a little bit. “All right, there you go,” she said, turning slowly and starting to stroll back to where she’d been standing with the rifle. “Did that bounty hunter leave you all alone in that big nasty ship?” She bounced Grogu carefully, like she’d heard it was something one did with babies but had never actually done it.

Grogu made a sleepy sound. He was sure Beroya had left him alone for a good reason. Besides, he hadn’t been alone – Hair Lady (Peli?) was here! And also her skinny droids! Speaking of which, one of them was talking in one of those droid languages.

“How do I know what it is?” Peli snapped at the droid. “Gimme a second!” She turned back to Grogu. He watched, fascinated, as the glare she had been shooting at the droid turned in an instant into an adoring smile. “All right! Now, would you like some food? Are you hungry?”

Grogu was beginning to wake up a bit more now, and yes, he was very hungry, actually! He cooed up at Peli.

She seemed to take this for the affirmative that it was. “Okay – fetch us something to eat, quick!” This was addressed to a different droid, and once again her attitude was completely different when talking to the droid than when talking to Grogu. The droid said something, and Peli said in tones of great annoyance, “I don’t know, something with bones in it!” The droid kept talking in that croaking droid language as it scurried away. Peli looked back down at Grogu, all smiles again.

“Now here’s the plan,” she told him. “I am going to look after you until the Mandalorian gets back. And then, I’m gonna charge him extra for watching you!” She grinned, supremely satisfied, and tickled his forehead and booped his nose. “You see how that works? Yeah? Bright Eyes?” She stroked one of his ears. He wondered why everyone liked to do that. It felt nice, but everyone did it. Did everyone just like his big ears? Nobody else had ears this big. He’d seen a lot of people, so he knew this for sure. “We’re a team,” Peli continued happily. “A team that’s going to get me so many credits.”

Peli arrived at a table that had playing cards and machine parts scattered all over it and sat down next to it. She hesitated a bit before putting Grogu down on the table and watching him, feeling anxious. Grogu looked at the stuff on the table curiously. It looked like someone had been playing sabacc, but the stakes were parts instead of credits. He poked at a taller part with wires sticking out one end.

“That’s a motivator,” Peli told him. “I was about to win with that as a bet when you turned up.”

Grogu thought this was not very interesting, actually. None of the parts on the table had any fun moving bits, and sabacc made people really happy or really angry but was otherwise extremely boring. He tried to get down off the table to go explore the rest of the hangar, but Peli caught him around the middle and said, “Hold up there, Bright Eyes! Dumber is going to be back with some food any second now, and you’re gonna wanna be right here when it does.” She set him back on the table. Grogu pouted up at her. He could come back when the food arrived – he wanted to go explore!

“Awwww,” Peli cooed at him. But she wasn’t swayed – no matter how hard he tried to escape, she would not let Grogu off the table! Eventually he huffed, gave up, plopped down on the table, and watched the two other droids instead. They were bustling around some stacks of gear that Grogu didn’t recognize halfway across the hangar, but they somehow managed to do this in a way that left at least one of them facing Grogu at all times. He thought maybe they were as curious about him as he was about them, but with Peli still watching him, he couldn’t do anything about it. He pouted some more.

Happily, it wasn’t very much longer before the droid that Peli had sent for food came back. It was carrying what looked like a huge rib, all the meat still attached, and Grogu immediately started drooling. It looked so good! It was almost taller than Peli! How was the droid even lifting it? Peli looked it up and down and nodded at the droid, feeling approval.

“Dewback ribs was a good choice,” she said. “Bring it over there and we can get the little womp rat all set up with it.” She gestured towards a little clear space to one side, big enough to fit the dewback rib and covered in a tarp. The droid walked over, but didn’t set the rib down until Peli brought Grogu over and set out some clean cloth for the rib to lie on. Sauce immediately started staining the cloth, and Grogu ducked around Peli and the droid to get to the rib and take a bite. Wow! It was good! Grogu wasn’t sure he’d ever had cooked meat this good before! Whatever the sauce was, it added a kick that Grogu really liked. He wondered if he could get Beroya to get them some sauce like this.

Peli chuckled a little, feeling fond. Then she turned back to the droid and said sharply, “You keep an eye on him, now! Make sure he doesn’t wander off! I need to start on that Mandalorian’s fuel leak, since I can’t use any of you. Go on!” She shooed the droid closer to Grogu, then turned and started moving equipment around near the Razor Crest. The droid took a few steps forward and stood awkwardly on the other side of the rib from Grogu.

Grogu looked up at it, sauce dripping from his face and hands, and made a curious noise. Droids couldn’t feel the Force and Grogu didn’t speak any droid languages, but that just meant he could communicate with them only slightly worse than with everyone else, so he figured they’d be able to work it out. The droid, in return, shrieked and folded up all flat! Grogu stared. He hadn’t known they could do that! He giggled and clapped his hands wetly, and took another few bites of dewback rib while the droid seemed to gather its courage and poke its head up a little.

It unfolded in sections, and Grogu – watching with interest – could see how its weird skinny body was designed to interlock in just the right way to fold into a compact square. Once it was fully upright, the droid took a step closer to Grogu and said something in its droid language. Grogu babbled back in his wordless baby language. Well, not that Grogu’s babbling was actually a language, but he held out hope that if he tried hard enough he might start being able to talk soon. The droid’s head tilted, and then one of the other droids appeared on the edge of the tarp-covered food space. It had a small damp cloth in one of its pincer-hands.

The two droids turned to each other and talked for a few seconds. Grogu sat back from the dewback rib with a contented groan. That had been good! He hadn’t managed to finish it, though. It was big, so big that Grogu thought maybe even Beroya wouldn’t have been able to eat the whole thing! Grogu had only cleared the meat off about a third of one side of the bone. He started licking the sauce off his hands, but he stopped when the second droid stepped forward and gingerly held out the cloth. What was it doing that for?

He stared at the cloth, then looked up at the droid and made a confused noise. It startled backwards and folded up just like the other one had! The first droid said something that was clearly exasperated and came over, picking up the cloth that the second droid had dropped and using it to carefully start wiping the sauce off of Grogu’s face and hands. Grogu let it – all that sauce was sticky – but he was really surprised. He hadn’t ever met a droid that did things like clean him up before! Mostly droids didn’t really pay attention to him, and mostly they didn’t really seem to have the right kinds of limbs to interact with him anyway. These skinny folding droids really were weird, but – Grogu decided as the first droid got the last bit of sauce off his face – he liked them.

From across the hangar, Grogu heard Peli say, “Well, put it in the conservator, then! I’m busy!” He turned to see her pushing buttons on a big machine that had been moved over by the Razor Crest’s open ramp and hooked up to some tubes that were now dangling out of some open panels on the hull. She was scowling, which was scary at first until Grogu reached out and felt that she was just frustrated, and it was all directed at the machine in front of her. The third skinny droid scampered away from her and through a door in one wall. Grogu hadn’t even noticed that the wall was actually a whole building!

He turned back to the two droids near him when he heard the sounds of the second one unfolding. It ran off for a second and returned with a knife, while the first droid carefully grasped Grogu’s hand and tugged at it. Grogu was fascinated, and obligingly got up and followed it a few steps away from the dewback rib. The third droid joined the second with some large containers, and together they started slicing the meat off the rib and boxing it up. Grogu was interested for a minute or two, but then he got bored. He liked watching the droids work together – it was like they were one droid with four arms, the way they moved totally in sync – but food storage was not, inherently, very interesting.

Maybe the droid whose hand he was still holding would play with him? He tugged on its hand and looked up into its eye hopefully. It looked back down at him and said something, but Grogu got the impression that maybe it knew he couldn’t understand it, and after a second it let him lead it off into the hangar. He crowed with delight and raced off as fast as he could, the droid keeping up easily, to go explore all the stuff that crowded every corner of the hangar. There was a lot to see! It was mostly machines of varying sizes that Grogu couldn’t tell what they did, but there were also lots of machine parts just lying scattered around, and there were a bunch of sealed crates too. The droid didn’t seem to like it very much when Grogu tried to get into the crates or play with the parts, and it was just pulling him back off a crate he had climbed to try to get at a big, interesting-looking machine when Peli found them.

“Bright Eyes!” she boomed, swooping down to pluck him from the droid’s arms. “How’s it going over here, ya little rascal? Having fun? Not touching anything you shouldn’t?” She gave the droid a sharp look and jerked her head back towards another part of the hangar. It scampered away. Grogu watched it go and gave a sad coo. He liked the skinny droids! He didn’t know why Peli was so harsh with them all the time. Peli looked back down at him and pulled him in to her chest, cradling him carefully.

“Aww, is it naptime, little one?” she asked. “You had a big lunch, huh? You ate a lot of that dewback rib! How about we find you a nice place to sleep?” She walked over to one of those doors in the wall and went through.

Grogu looked around, eyes wide, at this new space. It was a narrow hallway branching off in front and to the right. To the right, he could see what looked like a workstation with a window out into the hangar, but Peli walked forward, into a cramped little living space. She set him down on a threadbare couch and shuffled off to retrieve a blanket, which she tucked around Grogu before leaning back with a smile, feeling satisfaction.

“There!” she said. “Isn’t that nice? Now, you just go ahead and have your nap, and I’m sure your Mandalorian will be back any minute.”

Grogu blinked. Come to think of it, where was Beroya? He had been so distracted earlier by the droids and the dewback rib and Peli that he’d forgotten to look for him. Grogu reached out with the Force, but didn’t feel Beroya anywhere near. In fact, he couldn’t feel him anywhere in his range, even if he stretched out really far. He stretched as far as he could, and felt himself beginning to whimper as he still didn’t feel anything. He knew his range wasn’t very far – he was still a baby, after all – but he thought he should still be able to feel Beroya, right? He always had, in the village. Unless Beroya was just gone this time. Grogu started to cry.

Peli felt panic as soon as the first tear dropped out of Grogu’s eyes. “Oh no, don’t cry, Bright Eyes! Don’t worry, he can’t have gone too far, not if he was looking for work! And he’ll be back for sure! Oh -” She picked him up, letting the blanket slide to the ground, and started pacing across her living space and up and down the hall. She kept bouncing Grogu and shushing him gently, but it wasn’t anything like when Beroya did it, and it only made Grogu cry harder. Peli was too soft and warm. She didn’t even say the right words, in that language that Beroya only used when he was tired or Grogu was upset.

Eventually, Peli was pacing all the way from that workstation to her living space and back. She wasn’t Beroya, but Grogu still found that the movement helped calm him down after a while. He stopped crying and sniffled into Peli’s shoulder.

“That’s it,” she said, feeling tired. She plopped down into a chair by the workstation window and leaned back, supporting Grogu carefully in the crook of one arm. “How about you have that nap now, huh?”

Grogu grumbled his agreement. Crying always made him sleepy, so it wasn’t long before he drifted off. He hoped that Beroya would be there when he woke up.

Chapter Text

Grogu felt the instant Beroya came back into his range, although it took him a bit to pull himself free from his dream of swimming in an endless pond, catching infinite frogs and fish. When he finally rose to wakefulness, he could feel Beroya very close – just out in the hangar. Grogu himself was still cradled in Peli’s arms in that chair in the workspace inside the hangar wall, and Peli was sound asleep. She woke up a moment later, though, when Beroya was suddenly feeling shock and worry and moving fast towards one side of the hangar and shouting: “Hey!”

Peli jerked up out of her slump over Grogu and yelled, “I’m awake! I’m awake!” Grogu didn’t know who she thought she was fooling. The sudden volume startled him though, and he made some unhappy noises in protest while she shushed him. She got up fast and hurried out of the workspace, towards the door into the hangar.

“Where is he?” came Beroya’s voice again, along with the distinct clank-thump of one of the droids folding up really fast. Peli banged through the door and onto the sandy ground of the hangar, and Grogu felt Beroya’s worry sharpen.

“Quiet!” Peli scolded, and made another soothing noise at Grogu. “You woke it up! Do you have any idea how long it took me to get it to sleep?” Her irritation paired with Beroya’s growing hostility as she walked towards him to grate awfully at Grogu’s brain. He made a grumpy sound.

“Give him to me,” Beroya said, just as Peli got within normal conversational distance and turned a bit so Grogu could see him. He was standing by the bottom of the Razor Crest’s ramp, and his legs and cape were dusty to the knees.

“Not so fast!” Peli shifted her weight, irritation fading into prickly concern. “You can’t just leave a child all alone like that!” she said, and paused long enough for both she and Beroya to glance down at him. Beroya’s worry and hostility melted into relief, and he also started feeling a bit of chagrin. “You know, you have an awful lot to learn about raisin’ a young one,” Peli finished, more softly.

Grogu looked up at her. She looked and felt more than a bit embarrassed now, looking down at him to avoid Beroya’s visor, and he wondered why. It wasn’t like Beroya hadn’t left him with other adults all the time back on Sorgan, and it wasn’t like all those grown-ups hadn’t been similarly protective of him. Grogu didn’t like being separated from Beroya but he was used to it by now, and Peli acted a lot like some of the grown-ups from Sorgan.

“Anyway,” Peli said, looking back up at Beroya’s visor, “I started the repair on the fuel leak.” She turned and started fussing with the big machine next to the Razor Crest’s ramp. “I had a couple setbacks I want to talk to you about -” she paused to hit the machine, and Beroya turned and walked up the ramp, grabbing something off the wall. “You know, I didn’t use any droids, as requested, so it took me a lot longer than I expected. But I figured you were good for the money, since you have an extra mouth to feed.” Peli gestured towards Grogu, still nestled in the crook of her arm, as Beroya walked back down the ramp and came to a stop in front of her. He was carrying a pack now. Grogu made a curious noise. He’d seen that pack around but he didn’t know what was in it, and he wanted to find out.

Peli shifted her weight again and gave Beroya a defiant look. She was still feeling a little embarrassed, but Beroya felt nothing but gratitude as he dipped his head a little and said, “Thank you.”

Peli felt sudden surprise. She hurried after Beroya as he turned and walked towards one of the doors in the walls. “Oh, I guess I was right, you got a job, didn’t you?” The door slid open and Grogu squinted against the bright sunlight as Beroya walked out of the hangar. “You know, it’s costing me a lot of money to keep these droids even powered up,” Peli said, following Beroya closely. She stopped when a new voice spoke up.

“Hey Mando, what do you think? Not too shabby, huh?” There was a young man with curly hair and a vest leaning against a speederbike in front of the door, with another bike parked next to him. He exuded bright confidence, which clashed a little with Beroya’s caution and skepticism. Beroya dropped his pack on the back of the second bike and gave it a once-over. When his helmet tipped back up towards Young Guy, the set of his shoulders said acceptable.

For some reason, Young Guy shrugged and muttered, “What’d you expect? This ain’t Corellia.” He looked away and nodded respectfully at Peli. “Ma’am,” he said. His eyes landed on Grogu and he started radiating confusion.

Peli felt nothing but suspicion, and nodded tightly back. Grogu made a dismissive sound and turned away. He didn’t like the feel of Young Guy – he felt pretty similar to some people Grogu had met during the bad times – and he didn’t like how Young Guy was making Peli uncomfortable and Beroya unhappy. He wanted Young Guy to go away. Happily, it only took a few seconds for the speederbikes to turn on, and then Young Guy and Beroya were roaring away. Wait. And Beroya?

Grogu wriggled around in Peli’s arms and watched Beroya fade into the sandy distance. He made a sad sound. He wanted Beroya to be here, not out there with Young Guy! Peli, who was also watching Beroya and Young Guy drive away, bounced Grogu gently.

“Don’t worry, Bright Eyes,” she said absently. “He’s just got a job with that… kid. He’ll be back soon.” She paused, then sounded cheerier when she added, “And when he is, he’ll have the credits to pay me! Speaking of which -” she turned around and went back into the hangar – “I have work to do. Here, you play with the pit droids for a bit.” She set Grogu down next to one of the droids, which he was pretty sure was the same one he’d been playing with yesterday, and started doing something to the Razor Crest’s exposed tubing.

The droid looked down at him and said something, holding out its hand. Grogu didn’t grab it. He didn’t want to go exploring the hangar today, he wanted Beroya! So he just sat and pouted for a while, his ears drooping low enough to drag in the sand. The droid sort of stood there, like it wasn’t really sure what to do, until eventually it picked Grogu up and brought him over to a part of the hangar where the other two droids were working on some half-disassembled machine that Grogu didn’t recognize. It set him down nearby and joined the other droids.

Grogu watched them halfheartedly until he noticed that they were having trouble reaching something in the middle of the machine. He perked up a little and glanced back towards the Razor Crest, where Peli’s entire top half was buried in the cavity behind one of the landing struts. Distant swearing echoed out of the space. Grogu thought Peli would be busy with that for a while – at least long enough to use the Force a little, anyway. He pushed himself up and toddled over to the pit droids.

They all turned to stare at him. He tugged gently on the hand of the one closest to him and pointed at the machine. It said something confused-sounding. Grogu pointed again. The droids all looked at each other and had a brief discussion, and then the one whose hand Grogu was holding disengaged from his grip, crouched down, and drew something in the sand. He leaned over, curious. Oh! It was a diagram of the machine, all neat and tidy like a blueprint! The droid drew an arrow to the middle, and then drew a separate diagram of a part that Grogu could see in the guts of the machine. The droid very carefully drew curved arrows to indicate that the part needed to be unscrewed.

Grogu chirped happily and clapped his hands. He could do that! He glanced over at Peli again to make sure she was still busy, then reached out his hand and focused. Feeling inanimate things was always harder than animate things, especially when it was just one part in a big machine full of parts like this, but Grogu grasped what he was pretty sure was the right part with the Force and turned it gently.

The pit droids all started chattering excitedly as the part unscrewed itself and floated out of the machine and into Grogu’s hand. He grinned and held it up for inspection. The droid who had drawn the diagrams snatched it out of his hands and had it disassembled in seconds, which Grogu thought was very impressive. One of the other droids came over and pointed at another part of the machine and drew another diagram, and Grogu happily retrieved that part for them too. This was fun!

Helping the droids out with whatever they were doing lasted until the end of the day, at which point Peli scooped him up and fed him leftover dewback rib until he couldn’t eat any more. She told him a story until he fell asleep, which was something that nobody had done for Grogu in a long time, and he woke up snuggled up against her in her bed in her living space in the hangar wall. It was nice, but Grogu couldn’t help but miss how Beroya would sit quietly with Grogu and clean his armor before bed, and the way his helmet gleamed in the dim light of the bunk.

Grogu was in a funk all day, missing Beroya. The droids wanted him to help them more, but he was too upset to do anything but sit and doodle aimlessly in the sand. Eventually Peli was done doing whatever she’d been doing to the Razor Crest, so she came over and tried to play with Grogu too – but he didn’t want to play with Peli, he wanted Beroya back, so he ignored her and kept drawing gentle curves. The droids all went to play sabacc with Peli after that and they all seemed to be having a good time, so it was probably fine.

After a while, Grogu’s curved lines turned into Beroya’s helmet, and then his chest armor, and then the rest of his armor. Once he had a complete Beroya he added himself, just two circles with eyes and big ears tucked against Beroya’s side, and felt very proud of the result and then very sad that Beroya still wasn’t here – and then he felt something else, through the Force.

He had been keeping his Force sense stretched out as far as it could go to feel for Beroya coming back, and he felt – not Beroya, but Young Guy all alone, feeling very cold. Not temperature cold – Force cold. Where had Beroya gone? People feeling Force cold were usually bad, so Grogu got up and went to tug on Peli’s pant leg, trembling. He didn’t like the memories that came with cold people! He needed to warn Peli!

But Young Guy was coming towards them very fast, and Peli didn’t have time to do more than pick Grogu up and say “What’s wrong, Bright Eyes?” before Young Guy was barging into the hangar and threatening Peli with a blaster. The droids scattered, and Young Guy grinned triumphantly as he said, “So that’s the target! It doesn’t look like much, does it?” He didn’t appear to care about the droids, but kept his blaster trained on Peli – and, by extension, Grogu.

“What do you want?” Peli said. She sounded angry, but Grogu could feel that she was mostly wary. Not scared, though. That was nice for her – Grogu was very scared, and staying as still and quiet as he possibly could. Young Guy had already noticed him, but it was always good to be silent and still when cold people were nearby.

“I want you to go into that ship and be nice and quiet for a while,” Young Guy said. “Mando’s gonna be back eventually, and we’re gonna be here waiting for him when he does.” He jerked his blaster to the side to indicate the Razor Crest before training it back on Peli.

Peli didn’t move. “Why?” she asked. “And why should I? You gonna shoot me and the baby?”

Young Guy’s smile disappeared. “You’re right,” he said, and stalked forward to jerk Grogu out of Peli’s arms. Grogu couldn’t stop himself from whimpering slightly. “You should get in the ship because I’m going to shoot you if you don’t. The kid I’ll keep for leverage.” He pressed his blaster against Peli’s chest, and her face went pale. Grogu felt her wariness split evenly into anger and fear.

“All right, all right, you don’t have to keep wavin’ that thing around,” she said, raising her hands. Moving slowly, she climbed the ramp into the Razor Crest and moved back to the wall with the ‘fresher and the bunks. Young Guy stayed a step behind her the whole way, looking around the ship as he went. Once Peli stopped, he said, “All right, this might take a while if Mando’s riding that dewback, or whatever. You can sit down, but no funny business, all right?” He waggled his blaster a bit and plopped down on top of the crate that Beroya and Grogu used as a table.

Grogu would have liked to Force-throw this child all the way across the hangar, but he didn’t. He was still too scared to move, let alone use the Force in front of people, and Young Guy did still have his blaster pointing at Peli so it wouldn’t have been safe anyway. Grogu remained as still and quiet as he could while Peli cautiously sat down on another crate and lowered her arms.

Then they all just sat there for a while, long enough for the shadows to move across the floor of the hangar outside. If Young Guy wasn’t still pointing his blaster at Peli, and if Grogu wasn’t still so scared, he would have probably gotten bored. Peli’s fear, on the other hand, was fading as time went on, and after a while she said, “So what’s this all about anyway? Holding me hostage on a customer’s ship – I could report you, ya know.”

Young Guy scoffed. “Yeah, sure, and by the time anyone gets around to looking for me I’ll be long gone.” He leaned back a little, lazy satisfaction flitting across the chilly surface of his mind. “If you must know, Mando’s wanted by the Bounty Hunters’ Guild – something about a shootout on Nevarro. I’m trying to get in. I was going to do it with the bounty I hired him for, but he’s worth much more to the Guild than any bounty. I’m going to deliver him to them and make a reputation for myself. Not bad for a complete unknown.” Young Guy grinned for a second, all teeth, before frowning and adding, “And you can just shut up. No tricks, I said. We’re all going to sit here in silence until Mando gets here, and don’t you dare think of moving.” He waved the blaster again.

Peli subsided, her anger growing. Grogu hoped she was just angry at Young Guy, and not at him or Beroya. It was hard to tell when Grogu was so scared. Also, it was definitely past his naptime. His eyes kept closing against his will, and he was pretty sure he dozed off for a good long while there because one second it was late afternoon and the next it was after dusk and Grogu could feel Beroya outside the hangar, feeling cautious and a little worried.

Young Guy and Peli had moved, standing at the edge of the shadows inside the Razor Crest with Young Guy’s blaster pressed up against Peli’s back. Young Guy still felt overwhelmingly cold, and Peli was a mix of anger and anxiety. Grogu, clutched against Young Guy’s chest, couldn’t see the hangar at all, but he could feel Beroya enter slowly and carefully, and he knew the moment Beroya registered their presence – partly because it came on the heels of Young Guy calling, “Took you long enough, Mando!” and starting to walk forward.

Beroya took another step forward and focused on them. A moment later he felt grim anger, and Grogu knew that he had seen the way Young Guy was holding him. Normally Grogu didn’t like anger, but in this case he thought Beroya’s anger was good actually because it meant Beroya wanted to hurt the person who was threatening to hurt Grogu. Beroya always protected Grogu.

“Looks like I’m calling the shots now. Huh, partner?” Young Guy said, continuing down the Razor Crest’s ramp. “Drop your blaster and raise ‘em.”

A few more steps and Young Guy stopped. A moment later, Grogu heard a small thump.

“Cuff him,” Young Guy said, nudging Peli with his blaster. She made a small noise and walked to stand behind Beroya while Young Guy leveled his blaster down the ramp and said, “You’re a Guild traitor, Mando. And I’m willing to bet that this here’s the target you helped escape.”

Grogu didn’t think that Peli and Beroya were listening to Young Guy. There was a flash of surprise from Peli, and then approval; Beroya still felt angry, but he also felt watchful, like he was waiting for something. Grogu tried to turn his head to see them, but he couldn’t get far enough without wiggling in Young Guy’s grasp, which he would not do, especially not with Young Guy gesturing briefly towards Grogu with his blaster. Beroya’s anger ratcheted up a notch.

“Fennec was right,” Young Guy went on, apparently not noticing his audience’s lack of attention. “Bringing you in won’t just make me a member of the Guild – it’ll make me legendary.” He tightened his grip on his blaster, apparently ready to shoot – and suddenly there was a very bright flash of light from behind Grogu, who squeezed his eyes shut as Peli moved in one direction and Beroya moved in the other and Young Guy yelled and bent over to cover his eyes, shooting furiously at empty sand.

Young Guy suddenly felt less cold and more shocked, but it didn’t matter much because just as he swung wildly around to look for Beroya a blaster bolt screamed out of the darkness and hit his chest. Grogu felt Young Guy’s life flick off like a light and immediately jumped free, using the Force and the confusion of the moment to hide behind a nearby basket while the body fell to the ground.

Beroya and Peli converged on the body. “Stay back,” Beroya warned her, but she was mostly feeling concern at this point and stuck right behind him. Grogu drank in the sight of Beroya’s armor gleaming in the dim light. He had missed him so much! He didn’t come out yet though. Beroya had to make sure it was safe first.

Blaster at the ready, Beroya leaned down and pushed at Young Guy’s shoulder, rolling the body on its back. He and Peli both felt shock and worry and started casting around. “Where is it?” Peli asked, almost frantically. Grogu felt at Beroya’s feelings carefully, but there wasn’t any anger or wariness or concentration left, which probably meant it was safe now. Besides, he was pretty sure Beroya and Peli were both looking for him. He made a sound that meant I’m here and peered out from behind his basket.

“There you are,” Peli sighed, crouching in front of him and feeling relief. Grogu felt Beroya laser-focus on him for a second, but then he bent over Young Guy’s body while Peli’s tone turned doting. “Were you hiding from us? Huh? Look at you!” Grogu stretched one hand out to point at Beroya and made a noise that meant why is he not paying attention to me?, which Peli mistook as a request to be picked up. She obliged and stood, cooing, “That’s all right, I know, that was really loud for your big old ears, wasn’t it? It’s okay, shhh.”

Grogu babbled at her. He appreciated the concern, but he was used to blaster noises at this point, and he really wanted to be handed over to Beroya now. That had been scary, and Beroya had been gone for so long, and Grogu thought some cuddle time was in order. While he talked, Peli moved over to the base of the Razor Crest’s ramp. After a moment, Beroya stood and joined them. Feeling reluctant, Peli handed Grogu over to Beroya. Grogu snuggled happily into the space between Beroya’s arm armor and chest armor.

“Be careful with him,” Peli said. She paused. “So, I take it you didn’t get paid.” She made a face and propped her hands on her hips, doing that thing again where she pretended she hadn’t just shown any emotion by talking about work. Grogu thought she wasn’t very good at it. Everyone had seen her caring about Grogu!

Beroya, feeling mostly satisfied and relieved, held up an open pouch and poured credits into Peli’s hands. “That cover me?” he said.

Peli felt flabbergasted, which made Grogu think it was maybe a lot of money that Beroya had just given her. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish for a second before she managed, “Yeah! Yeah, this is gonna cover you.” Beroya turned and started up the ramp as Peli gathered herself together and started yelling at the droids again about getting rid of the body.

Beroya swung himself and Grogu up the ladder into the cockpit and took off just as quickly as he could. He even let Grogu stay in his lap instead of going in the box on the other chair, which made Grogu very happy! He snuggled up against Beroya’s chest while Beroya focused on getting them off the planet. It was so nice to have Beroya back! And Beroya seemed to feel the same way about Grogu, tilting his visor down every few seconds to look at him.

When Beroya finally pushed a lever and took them to hyperspace, the brighter light made Grogu notice a big black mark on Beroya’s chest armor. It looked like carbon scoring from a really powerful blaster rifle. Grogu made a worried noise and set his hand on it, feeling towards Beroya in the Force to see if he was hurt. Beroya looked down again and his feelings did something complicated as he quickly scooped Grogu up into his arms.

“Naas, ad’ika, ni ne’kadala,” he murmured. “I’m fine, I promise. The beskar held up.” He stood and carried Grogu down the ladder to the bunks, where he stripped his chest armor off and set Grogu’s hand back on his chest where the carbon scoring had been. It was reassuringly whole. “See? Beskar’gam cabuo ni. Pure beskar can do anything.”

Grogu pressed his forehead against Beroya’s chest and gripped his shirt tightly, closing his eyes. He was really glad that Beroya’s armor had stopped the blaster bolt! He didn’t even want to think about what would have happened if Beroya had gotten hurt out in the desert with Young Guy, and Grogu back in the hangar unable to help! That could have been really bad.

Beroya’s feelings did that complicated thing again. Grogu listened as air whooshed through Beroya’s chest. The arm holding Grogu up tightened a little bit, and they stayed there like that – basking in each other’s comforting presence – for a very long time.

Chapter Text

They spent a few days hopping from hyperlane to hyperlane while Beroya took stock of the state of the Razor Crest and what was in the few crates that remained in the hold. This was much less boring than Grogu would have expected, mostly because Beroya talked to him the whole time.

“It looks like Peli did a decent job with the fuel leak and the loose landing strut,” he told Grogu, pointing at a screen full of diagnostics. They were in the pilot seat, Grogu held against Beroya’s chest so he could see. He didn’t understand anything he was looking at on the screen, but that was what Beroya’s talking was for. “There’s plenty of other stuff that could use looking at, which is normal for such an old ship. Did you know the Razor Crest is a bit over 35 standard years old? That’s not much younger than me, and it’s really old for a ship.”

Grogu cooed, fascinated. He had known that everyone else seemed to age really fast, but he hadn’t known that Beroya was so much younger than him!

Beroya nodded at Grogu. “Most of the stuff that needs looking at is minor, and has been having issues for a while. I can fix some of it myself, which I do. I usually need credits for other things. We don’t have any credits at all right now, which means I’m going to need to find a job soon. We don’t have many supplies left downstairs, and ships need fuel.” He heaved a sigh. Grogu sympathized completely. He didn’t usually need to worry about paying for things himself, but pretty much everyone he’d ever met thought about money a lot.

“I had an idea about that,” Beroya confided, lowering his helmet and his voice. “It’s a bad one, but we don’t have many options right now since we’re still in hot water with the Guild.” He straightened up and stopped whispering, which was too bad – Grogu liked the feeling of being let in on a secret! “I sent a message about it yesterday, and I got a reply while you were asleep earlier. We’re going there now.”

Grogu giggled and clapped his hands. A job would be exciting! Maybe scary too, but Beroya would be there, so Grogu was sure nothing too bad could happen. He patted Beroya’s chest armor, gleaming once again, and babbled at him.

“Yes, and we’ll both be fine, because my armor is strong and I’ll protect you,” Beroya agreed. Then he paused, and Grogu felt him turn serious. Grogu raised his ears a bit. “Listen, though, kid. The people I asked for a job are… not very nice. You probably know all about that, huh?”

Grogu shuddered.

“Yeah,” Beroya muttered, running a comforting finger along Grogu’s ear. “Well, I don’t want you near any people like that, and I bet you don’t either. I don’t know what the job is or how long I’ll be gone, so I’m gonna put you in the bunk with some snacks and I need you to stay there, okay?”

Grogu’s ears drooped and he whined. That sounded boring! And sure, he didn’t want to be near any not-nice people, but he didn’t really want Beroya to be near them, either. He tugged on Beroya’s glove, on the hand that was holding him.

“I know you get bored, but I still need you to stay in the bunk until I come get you. I’ll leave you something to play with, how’s that? And I’ll show you how to turn the lights off if you get sleepy. We’re going to a station in empty space that’s run by these people, so even running around the Razor Crest is dangerous. Understand?”

Grogu gave Beroya his best this is the saddest I’ve EVER been eyes and tugged on his glove again. He felt Beroya go kind of mushy, which was an interesting thing that Grogu had discovered he could make Beroya feel at will with this face. He hadn’t figured out yet if it was a Beroya-only emotion, since he’d never felt it from anyone else. Beroya let out a sharp sigh that crackled through his helmet and tightened his hold on Grogu for a second.

“I know, kid. I’ll make it as quick as I can, I promise.” Beroya sat there for another few minutes just holding Grogu before he stood up with a little groan. “Let’s get you ready.”

Apparently, getting ready for hiding from not-very-nice people involved unstrapping Grogu’s box from the second chair in the cockpit and Beroya giving Grogu a ride down the ladder inside said box. It was really fun! But then Beroya tucked Grogu inside the bunk with a toy from Sorgan and his blanket and some snacks, showed him which button was the lights, and went back up to the cockpit, closing the door panel behind him. Grogu pouted at the smooth metal and reached out with the Force. Listening for Beroya would be much more interesting than the toy, and this way Grogu would know if Beroya was in trouble.

Beroya stayed up in the cockpit for a while, until Grogu felt the shuddering jerks that were the Razor Crest landing. He expanded his Force awareness a little and found other people, so they must be in that space station now. After a minute, Beroya came down from the cockpit and went far enough away that he must be outside, in the station. Grogu felt curiously at the people around Beroya. He knew Beroya had said that they weren’t very nice, but what were they like?

Mostly, they just felt like normal people. Grogu didn’t know why Beroya had been so worried. He also didn’t know why Beroya was still so worried – he had been wary but relaxed at first, walking around and meeting up with someone, but then he had felt a burst of dismay and tightly controlled anger and now Grogu could feel him getting more tense and less happy every second. He had been walking around with that one person, but now he was near a few other people – Grogu could feel the slight thread of attention that said they were all talking to each other. The people Beroya was talking to didn’t feel like normal people. They felt mean. They were all really hostile towards Beroya, and they all reminded Grogu of people from the bad times.

Maybe Beroya had a point about them not being very nice.

Grogu was distracted from keeping track of Beroya when he heard a noise from inside the Razor Crest, just outside in the hold. It sounded like footsteps, walking in and climbing the ladder into the cockpit, but Grogu couldn’t feel anyone. A droid? He concentrated harder and caught a whisper of mechanical thought up in the cockpit. What was a droid doing here? Grogu had figured out pretty quickly that Beroya didn’t like them at all, but it was hard to tell if Beroya knew about this one or not with all the negative emotions he was feeling right now. Speaking of which – Beroya felt a surge of alarm that collapsed into incredulous dread and, after a minute, resignation.

Whatever that was about, Grogu did not want to be involved! What could make Beroya feel dread? Grogu moved back, away from the door panel, and felt his ears flatten against his sides. And the mean people Beroya was talking to just felt amused and derisive – why weren’t they scared, too? Didn’t they know that Beroya was the best fighter in the whole galaxy? They were idiots, if they didn’t think something that made Beroya feel like that was anything to worry about.

Grogu huddled unhappily against the back wall as those droid footsteps came down again, this time leaving the cockpit and going down an open ramp. He caught the edge of a mechanical voice – he couldn’t hear what the droid said, but it must have joined the conversation with Beroya and the mean idiots. Beroya felt a corresponding swirl of complicated emotion. Grogu was never able to work out what Beroya felt around droids – it was a lot, and mostly negative, and it felt old, like Beroya had been feeling it for a long time.

The mean idiots and the droid and Beroya kept talking for what seemed like forever, and Beroya kept getting more and more unhappy. Eventually the mean idiots started filing into the Razor Crest, which Grogu did not like. Why were they inside the ship? Grogu didn’t want them inside the ship! And they were all staying in the hold, right outside the door panel that was all that separated Grogu from the rest of the ship. Why were they doing that? Grogu heard footsteps on the ladder, which probably meant the droid had gone back up to the cockpit. Why was the droid flying?

Grogu grasped a little desperately at Beroya’s feelings as he came up the ramp into the hold. He didn’t like this any better than Grogu did. In fact – Grogu sat up and tilted his head a little. Beroya was angry, but he also felt helpless, just a little. It reminded Grogu of the mudhorn, and that reminded Grogu that he could help Beroya, like he had before! Beroya was the best fighter, but he couldn’t feel the Force, and he couldn’t keep an eye on three mean idiots and a droid all at once, not if they were in different places. But Grogu could!

He got back up and walked over to the door panel, determined. He was going to keep track of everybody and make sure they didn’t do anything mean to Beroya! He shuddered at the thought of actually going out there with the mean idiots to stop them, but he would, if he had to. Grogu pressed his hands to the door panel and settled in to concentrate for the flight. He got the definite feeling, as Beroya joined the droid in the cockpit and the ship lifted off, that this wasn’t at all what Beroya had expected from this job.

Chapter Text

The three mean idiots were in the hold, just on the other side of the door panel that hid the bunk from sight. Beroya was in the cockpit, a swirl of discomfort, protectiveness, and anger. Grogu assumed the droid was flying, but Beroya probably had that situation handled, so he focused on the mean idiots. Two of them were stationary, one concentrating on something and the other paying attention to the last one, who was pacing. The pacing one seemed to be distracting the concentrating one; Grogu felt her concentration twitch into annoyance a little more with each pass.

“Will you sit. Down.” came a snarling voice through the door panel. Grogu thought it probably belonged to the concentrating mean idiot; nobody else was annoyed enough to sound like that right now. He jumped at the loud sound that immediately followed, like someone had punched the hull. Had someone punched the hull? Grogu couldn’t tell who had made the noise, or what it was. He hoped nobody had punched the hull. They were in space! They needed that!

There was a beat where Grogu couldn’t hear anything, and then someone laughed. Probably the pacing mean idiot, who quit pacing and wandered over to where Grogu was pretty sure was the ladder to the cockpit. The concentrating mean idiot’s annoyance lessened slightly. In the silence that followed, Grogu wondered how to tell Beroya that somebody had punched the hull.

Then a familiar clank came through the door panel, and Grogu’s eyes widened. That was the weapons locker! Beroya had made it very clear to Grogu that only Beroya was allowed in there. Grogu was going to have to go out there and stop the pacing mean idiot from his eager rummaging through – oh, but there was Beroya coming down the ladder! There was another clank, the pacing mean idiot’s eagerness faded into disappointment and anger, and there was another hull-punching sound. The pacing mean idiot's attention focused on Beroya, who was paying attention right back. It was very tense, and Grogu thought they were maybe about to fight? Beroya slowly rotated the pacing mean idiot around towards the cockpit ladder and took his place in front of the bunk door panel.

One of the mean idiots said something, but Grogu ignored them. He was more focused on the tension between Beroya and the pacing mean idiot, which lessened a little at whatever had been said, but didn’t disappear. The pacing mean idiot was all hostility, and although he was participating in the conversation, he wasn’t letting any of his attention stray from Beroya. Beroya, for his part, was feeling a lot of things; the feeling rising up over the top right then was protectiveness.

Oh! Beroya was feeling protective of Grogu! Oh, that made Grogu so happy! Hardly anyone had ever felt protective of Grogu – not since the good times, anyway, and even then it had mostly been at the very end, when the bad times had started. Grogu perked up from his tense stance and cooed quietly. Beroya was so good!

The mean idiots kept talking, and Beroya kept guarding the door panel. They were making fun of Beroya, Grogu thought, which seemed really stupid. Beroya could squash them all in a second if he wanted to! One of them – Grogu thought he caught the name Xi’an – talked like she knew Beroya, which just made her even stupider, if she knew how amazing he was and still wanted to be mean to him. If Grogu was a grown-up who could fight alongside Beroya, he would never ever say anything bad about him or stop helping him!

Xi’an said something, fighting down glee, and Beroya responded with a surge of disgust. Grogu thought Beroya had the right idea. Whatever she said made the last mean idiot focus on Beroya, though, in a way that Grogu didn’t really understand. He wasn’t feeling more than a spark of amusement – not like Xi’an’s continued glee – but he was making fun of Beroya in the same way, and there was something else under the amusement that Grogu couldn’t read. And then something in the room shifted, and suddenly the hostile mean idiot was back to menacing Beroya, and the third mean idiot wasn’t making fun any more.

The third mean idiot gave some sort of signal, which made the hostile mean idiot step forward with a growled, “I’ll do it.” Grogu wasn’t worried about it as the mean idiot fought Beroya, except they were fighting right outside the bunks and someone’s arm must have hit the button because a second later Grogu was blinking at a hold full of people. There was a bald guy with a lot of guns who felt like the third mean idiot, a purple lady who felt like Xi’an, and a big red guy who felt like the hostile mean idiot. All of them felt surprised. Well, Grogu was too!

“Whoa!” exclaimed Bald Guy. “What is that?” He stood up, making disbelieving noises. Beroya’s head swiveled towards Grogu, and a surge of anxiety spiked through him.

Grogu looked up at Bald Guy and cooed in his most charming way. There was no reason to put him on his guard – not before Grogu took him out for being so mean to Beroya!

“You get lonely up here, buddy?” Bald Guy continued, glancing at Beroya. He took a few steps towards Grogu, looking him up and down – not that there was much up to look – before swinging back around to face Xi’an. “Wait a minute,” he said, beginning to feel gleeful. “Did you two make that? Huh?” He didn’t wait for either Beroya or Xi’an to respond, turning right back to Grogu and saying, “What is it, like a pet or something?”

Beroya was now radiating anger and caution. “Yeah,” he said flatly. “Something like that.”

Grogu was pretty sure that was supposed to mean Beroya liked Grogu but didn’t want Bald Guy to know. He hoped so, anyway.

Bald Guy started waving a hand in front of Grogu’s face, for some reason, and poking at his shoulder, while Xi’an said something to Beroya. Grogu watched Bald Guy, bewildered. What, was he trying to see if Grogu would startle like a wild animal? Whatever he was trying to do, he grew rapidly bored and dropped his hand. “Me, I was never really into pets,” he said conversationally, glancing between Grogu and Beroya. “Yeah, I didn’t really have the temperament. Patience, you know? I mean, I tried, but it never worked out. But I’m thinking,” and here Bald Guy paused and made an exaggerated thinking face, “maybe I’ll try again -” he picked Grogu up – “with this li’l fella.”

Beroya made an abortive movement forward, and Grogu tensed along with him as Bald Guy tipped Grogu onto his back. He entirely agreed with the way Beroya was feeling right now – still some anger, but mostly worry and the desire to do something fighting with the knowledge that doing something right now could be very bad. It was a lot of feeling for both Beroya and Grogu to be having. Grogu squirmed a bit, out of both physical and mental discomfort, but Bald Guy didn’t appear to notice.

Bald Guy turned towards Beroya and grinned, feeling the same way he had when he was making fun of Beroya earlier. Grogu still couldn’t figure out what was there under the amusement. “Whoa!” Bald Guy said, pretending to drop Grogu. Grogu’s stomach swooped unpleasantly, and he tried to get a grip on one of the straps crossing Bald Guy’s torso. Luckily, before Bald Guy could do anything more after that than chuckle tauntingly at Beroya, the internal comms clicked on.

“Dropping out of hyperspace… now,” said a droid voice, just before the Razor Crest jerked and everyone standing around had to brace themselves against the nearest wall. Bald Guy’s arm tightened almost painfully around Grogu as he wedged himself into the doorway into the bunks. Happily, a moment later another shudder shook Grogu out of Bald Guy’s arms, and the droid continued, “Commencing final approach… now. Cloaking signal… now.” The ship immediately started twisting through a whole bunch of maneuvers that Grogu hadn’t thought any ship could pull off, throwing people and crates everywhere.

Grogu squealed as he flew through the air – the Razor Crest went down suddenly while he was aloft, which kept him up a few seconds longer – and hit the floor hard enough to bruise. He started to slide as the ship tilted again, but then Beroya was there above him, holding him in place and sheltering him from the stuff flying around. Grogu cried a little with pain and relief, and Beroya crouched a bit closer.

“Engaging coupling… now,” the droid said, and the ship jerked a final time and stopped. Beroya scooped Grogu up as the droid concluded, “Coupling confirmed. We are down.” Beroya hugged Grogu on his way over to the bunks, where he set him down and looked him over quickly. The mean idiots all kept talking behind him, and there were some big thuds like someone had thrown something heavy across the hold.

Beroya had discovered Grogu’s blossoming bruises. “I’m sorry you got hurt,” he said, quick and quiet. “I have to go, but we’ll put bacta on that when I get back and these guys are off my ship.” And then he stepped back, and the door panel slid shut. Grogu felt him join the other mean idiots on the other end of the hold, and then one by one they literally dropped out of easy sensing range.

They left? Where did they even have to go? Weren’t they still all in empty space? Grogu pushed out the edges of his Force senses and briefly felt Beroya and the mean idiots again, below the Razor Crest and off to one side, before they walked out of range again. He also felt two lines of people, spaced apart, all feeling curiosity, boredom, or various cold feelings. So there was another ship, and Beroya wasn’t just floating in space! That was a relief, although Grogu was sure Beroya would find some way to survive in space if he had to. What a weird ship, though, to have everyone on board all separated and in lines like that!

So Beroya’s job had something to do with this weird ship, and he needed all the mean idiots to help with it. Grogu didn’t remember hearing the droid come down from the cockpit, so they must need it to stay here for some reason? Despite having spent a lot of time around mean people, Grogu wasn’t very familiar with what their jobs tended to look like, or why particular people went particular places during those jobs. Maybe he could ask the droid?

No, probably not, right? The mean idiots were mean, and the droid had come with them, so it seemed likely that the droid was also mean. Grogu didn’t want to attract attention from any mean person, and he had always felt slightly betrayed by mean droids, in particular. But Grogu was curious – maybe he could sneak up there and just… watch? That wasn’t too dangerous, right?

Yeah. Grogu could do that. Grogu was great at sneaking! He snuck around all the time! Not much with Beroya yet, but he’d taught some of the other kids on Sorgan some of his less Force-intensive methods of sneaking around, so Grogu knew he was good at it. The Sorgan kids had been so bad at it! It was like they’d never had to sneak around at all before!

Full of determined pride, Grogu looked up and around at the panel of buttons next to the door. Which one had been the right one? It was… this one, wasn’t it? Grogu reached up and pushed it, and the door panel slid open. He grinned happily, but since it wasn’t his first time opening the bunks by himself, he didn’t linger too long in the victory. Instead, he slid down to the floor and looked around.

… Wow. It had gotten really messy in here during those maneuvers earlier! There was stuff everywhere, where usually the crates were in neat stacks and behind the loose nets riveted to the walls. A couple crates had even spilled open, which would have been much worse if nearly all the crates hadn’t been basically empty already. Which was why Beroya had taken this job in the first place, and was bad in general, but Grogu thought was actually all right in this specific situation.

It was going to take ages to clean all this up, even if Grogu helped with the Force! Although, maybe he wouldn’t – he wasn’t so good at fine control yet, and he might end up crushing stuff. He remembered people telling him that it would come with age, back during the good times, but he’d aged and it hadn’t come yet, so Grogu didn’t know why they’d said that. He grumped at the stuff littered all over the floor and toddled over to the ladder, peering up.

He thought he could hear the droid speaking. Was it using the comms? What for? Grogu wanted to find out, so he used the Force to get himself up the ladder, rung by rung. He wouldn’t have gone so slow or been so careful, except Beroya wasn’t here to catch him if he fell and didn’t manage to catch himself, and he was already hurting a bit from hitting the floor earlier. And he still made it to the top of the ladder eventually, it just took forever.

Unfortunately, when Grogu made it to the top of the ladder and could stop focusing enough to listen, there wasn’t much going on. The droid was sitting in the pilot’s seat – which Grogu didn’t like, that was Beroya’s chair! – fiddling idly with some controls using its connector, which was plugged into the console. Every so often something beeped, and the droid’s entire body would swivel around to check it, which let Grogu get a look at it. Was that a protocol droid? What was a protocol droid doing, going around being mean to people?

Well, there was nothing for it but to sit just outside the cockpit door and listen. Something had to happen eventually, right? If nothing else, the job would be over soon – Beroya and the other mean people would have to come back then, and Beroya would come up to the cockpit and find Grogu before any of the mean people could. Grogu thought he was content to just wait and listen, knowing that, so he settled in with his back to the wall and perked his ears up, listening.

Chapter Text

Grogu sighed quietly and slumped down against where the wall met the floor. Not that he had to slump very much to get there, but he was bored! The droid was just sitting there, pressing buttons occasionally. What was it even doing? What was its part in Beroya’s job? Was it literally just minding the ship, or something? When Grogu had thought that something had to happen eventually, he hadn’t known that eventually would take so long to happen!

Fortunately for Grogu’s increasing impatience, it only took another few long, dragging minutes for eventually to arrive with a beeping sound from the console. There were some abrupt sounds like the droid had turned around suddenly, and then the droid said, “Zero to Mayfeld. Zero to Mayfeld.”

Grogu perked up. It was using comms! Finally. Who was Mayfeld, Bald Guy or Angry Guy? Oh, and Zero must be the droid!

It took Mayfeld a moment to answer, but Grogu immediately identified the breathless “Yeah?” as Bald Guy’s voice.

“You have a potential problem,” Zero said, with no intonation whatsoever. “He has escaped.”

He? Who was he? Grogu got up and peered around the edge of the doorway into the cockpit. Zero was jerkily looking around the console and pressing buttons – Grogu was never sure if the way protocol droids moved was a feature, or if all of their joints were just screwed on too tight. Zero’s head moved in a way that Grogu thought was probably confused as it said, “Zero to Mayfeld, do you copy?”

Oh, right, Mayfeld hadn’t said anything back to Zero about “him” escaping. Zero pressed some more buttons and continued, “It seems comms are no longer functioning. Therefore, you cannot hear me. You are on your own.”

It was at this point that Grogu realized two things: first, he could very faintly feel Beroya through the Force, somewhere in the ship below and well outside Grogu’s current sensing range. Second, Beroya was angry, and he was angry at the mean idiots.

Well. Grogu had no idea how he could be feeling Beroya right now, but if Beroya was angry enough at the mean idiots to do something about it then of course Grogu would help out! And Beroya definitely was that angry. His anger had a specific feeling of focus behind it that Grogu thought probably meant Beroya was plotting. Grogu could plot too! He could help do something about Zero! Step one: catching its attention.

Grogu stepped forward so that he was fully framed in the cockpit doorway and said, “Eh?”

Zero jumped and twisted around. It stared at Grogu for a second and then commented, “Curious.” Some droids’ voices sounded fairly organic, but Zero really did have just absolutely no inflection, so Grogu couldn’t tell what it was thinking.

As Zero continued to just look at Grogu, head twitching up and down slightly, Grogu realized that he didn’t have a step two. He probably should have thought of that before engaging the enemy – he was sure that Beroya would have told him so, if he were here. Well, at least the decision was easy – Zero twisted to the side, reaching towards – yep, that was a blaster! Grogu didn’t want anything to do with that, thank you very much, so he whirled around and jumped down the ladder hole, catching himself with the Force just before he hit the ground.

The comms were down, so Grogu thought he could probably assume that Zero would be coming after him soon instead of continuing to do its job. He looked around at the mess in the hold and scuttled over to hide behind some crates that were still near the wall, squeezing into a space that was far too small for anyone else. It wasn’t ideal, but it would do for now. Grogu needed a plan. He could hide from Zero all day, but what he wanted to do was… well, he didn’t know. Incapacitate it? Deactivate it? Yeah, actually, deactivating it was a good idea! Then Beroya could decide what to do with it when he got back!

Zero clanged down the ladder into the hold, and Grogu peeked around the edge of the crates. Well, it sure had brought that blaster with it, hadn’t it! Grogu didn't like that at all – he’d have to be sneaky to avoid getting shot. Well, sneaky wasn’t hard! Grogu was good at sneaky! Speaking of which – he ducked back out of sight as Zero moved slowly forward.

…Really slowly forward.

...Okay then, that just meant Grogu had more time to think! What was his next move? He knew protocol droids had a deactivation switch in their abdomens, so he needed time and space to find that switch. Zero would probably find him behind the crates really fast, so he needed to hide somewhere else while he felt around with the Force, somewhere like… oh, the bunks! Perfect!

Grogu peered back out at Zero, who had finally moved past him. It still had a little ways to go before it got to the other end of the hold, which meant Grogu had plenty of time to get into the bunks without Zero seeing him. Especially if it kept moving so slowly! Grogu reached out carefully with the Force, and then ran across to the bunks and Force-pushed the button to open the door and dived through and Force-pushed the button again to close the door. It slid shut with a little hiss – it hadn’t even had time to open all the way. Grogu was very fast!

He took a moment to be proud of the maneuver, then turned to face the door again. It was always easier to use the Force when he was facing what he was doing, even when he couldn’t see it. But before he could reach for the Force to start looking for the deactivation switch, the door panel slid open again – all the way open, this time, and Zero was standing right outside.

Well! Okay! So Zero could move a lot faster than Grogu had thought then! This was fine.

Grogu stared in surprise at Zero for a second before he remembered his plan. The deactivation switch! Right! He closed his eyes and reached out, with his hand and the Force. This would be complicated, but after the time Grogu had spent helping the skinny droids out with their mechanical projects, he was sure he could do it. Probably. He extended a tendril of Force sense to brush against Zero’s torso –

There was a small explosion. Grogu jumped, opening his eyes in time to see Zero slump, sparking violently. Had… had Grogu done that? He turned his hand over and looked at it wonderingly. He hadn’t even thought he’d been doing anything yet!

Then Zero toppled over entirely – and there was Beroya, standing behind it, blaster still extended. His visor tilted, following Zero to the ground, before he holstered his blaster and stepped forward. Grogu dropped his hand and looked Beroya up and down, looking for the source of the thin thread of pain that was leaking out of him. There wasn’t anything obvious, like a big hole in Beroya’s clothes or a big dent in his armor, but that just meant that whatever-it-was was small enough that Beroya was going to ignore it until later. Grogu did not like that. At least the anger was gone.

“You okay, kid?” Beroya asked, giving Grogu a once-over of his own. “The droid didn’t hurt you, did it?”

Grogu cooed, trying to reassure Beroya. Zero hadn’t even had the chance to hurt Grogu – he was too fast!

Beroya seemed satisfied, both at Grogu’s attitude and at the lack of fresh wounds. “Okay. That’s good. Listen, kiddo, the people that came with us are staying here, but I picked up a new guy. We’re taking him back to finish the job. I need you to stay in the bunk and stay quiet until he’s offloaded, okay? I don’t think he’ll make trouble, but I don’t want him knowing about you. I’ll come get you as soon as he’s gone, I promise.”

Grogu thought about what had happened with the mean idiots once they had found out about him and nodded firmly. He didn’t really want this new person to know about him, either.

Beroya nodded back at Grogu, looked him over one last time, and stepped back. The door panel hissed shut, and Grogu felt Beroya move back across the hold before a muffled “You can come up now!” filtered through the door. Grogu reached out curiously to feel the new person as they climbed into the hold. He felt… kind of familiar? Grogu thought he might be related to Xi’an – people who spent a lot of time together while they were growing up tended to have similar flavors to their Force presences. Then again, all the mean idiots felt kind of similar, just because of the kind of people they were.

“Don’t touch anything,” Beroya warned the new person. The new person seemed thoroughly cowed, and agreed meekly. He even seemed to be keeping his word, hovering around one spot in the hold while Beroya did something that caused the Razor Crest’s atmosphere to fluctuate and went up to the cockpit. A minute later, the Crest jerked, and Grogu knew they were on their way back to the station where they’d picked up the mean idiots.

The trip back was boring. Grogu could only spend so long listening to the new person alternate between scared and angry, and Beroya was all calm satisfaction with that little thread of pain, which – while mostly comforting – wasn’t particularly interesting either. Grogu was forced to resort to playing with the toy that Beroya had tucked into the bunk before they’d picked up the mean idiots. He did enjoy the toy, at least. It was a good toy, a soft stuffed oversized krill that Winta had made for him, with Omera’s help. The emotions that had sunk into it during its construction lingered, wonderful and warm.

Eventually, the Razor Crest shuddered into a landing, and Beroya dropped back into the hold. “Out,” was all he said to the new person, once the sound of one of the side ramps dropping stopped. They both stepped outside, and Grogu stretched just a little to keep eye on them. Metaphorically speaking. They both talked to someone who Grogu was pretty sure Beroya had talked to before, and then Beroya’s satisfaction intensified and he came back inside. Grogu waited for the ramp to finish closing before he pressed the button for the door panel and leaped out of the bunks at Beroya.

Beroya was already turned away from the ramp and stepping towards the bunks. He only barely managed to catch Grogu, and with a great deal of surprise. “Wayii! You can really jump, kid!” he exclaimed. “Is that how you got down the ladder, before?”

Grogu beamed up at Beroya. The job was over, a pouch of credits was dangling from one of Beroya’s hands (and making his grip on Grogu slightly awkward), and all the mean people were gone. This was great! Now they could do the bacta thing that Beroya had mentioned earlier, and Beroya could stop hurting, and they could use the credits to buy supplies! Grogu thought that jobs were the worst, actually, and the time between jobs was the best. He hoped they’d gotten enough credits out of this one to not have to do another one for a while.

Beroya felt fond for a moment before raising his visor and sweeping it across the hold. “It’s a mess in here, huh?” he sighed. “Let’s get into hyperspace, and then we can put bacta on your bruises and start cleaning up.”

Grogu nodded happily and snuggled into Beroya’s chest armor as he swung them both up into the cockpit. Grogu’s box was up there already, and Beroya took a few seconds to strap it back onto the second chair before plopping Grogu down inside and settling himself into the pilot’s seat. Grogu watched the takeoff sequence with great interest. He would never be big enough to pilot this ship by himself – at least, not without some serious use of the Force, and probably a lot of creativity as well – but it was so cool how Beroya just knew what all the unlabeled buttons did, and what order to push them in, to make the Razor Crest do exactly what he wanted.

The Razor Crest lifted off, turned around, and headed back into empty space. Beroya had just started punching in a destination to the navicomputer for the hyperspace calculations when three fighters dropped into realspace in front of them, and Beroya had to stop to navigate around them. Grogu made a curious noise, but Beroya didn’t comment. His satisfaction peaked and then settled into relief, but he didn’t really relax until he’d finished with the navicomputer and they jumped into hyperspace.

Beroya sighed and slumped into the pilot’s seat for a second. Grogu felt all the tension drain out of him, and sympathized deeply. That job had been no good at all. Then Beroya reached out and unscrewed the shiny ball from the lever on the console and turned back towards Grogu.

“I told you that was a bad idea,” he said. Grogu reached a hand out eagerly for the ball, because Beroya had told him it was a bad idea, but they were both fine now, mostly, and he could tell that the shiny ball was an apology, this time. Grogu wanted Beroya to know that there was no apology necessary. They had needed the credits, and now they had them!

Beroya handed it over with a huff of a laugh, turned back to the console to flip a few switches, and then turned again to scoop Grogu up. “C’mon, kid,” he said. “Let’s get those bruises looked after.”

Chapter Text

Grogu knew that something had changed when he woke up from his nap and the air of aimlessness that had been hovering around Beroya was gone. They were in hyperspace, which was unexpected – they’d been drifting between systems when Grogu had gone to sleep, and Beroya had said that they would stay there until they needed to refuel. What had happened? Where were they going?

Grogu sat up and made a questioning noise at Beroya, to try to encourage an explanation. Beroya turned to look at him, but didn’t move to pick him up.

“Nice nap?” Beroya asked. It had been nice, so Grogu cooed an affirmative. Beroya hummed and turned back to the console. After a moment he said, “You remember Sorgan, right, kid?”

Of course Grogu remembered Sorgan! That was the longest they’d stayed in any one place, and Winta and Omera had been there, and Grogu still dreamed sometimes about swimming in the ponds and catching krill and frogs. Those were good dreams! Grogu shrieked happily at the memory, and Beroya tilted his head slightly with a flash of ow.

Ow, Grogu had discovered recently, was different than the sort of pain feeling he got off Beroya from injuries; it was more this doesn’t really hurt but I want it to stop. Grogu was learning a lot about what shades of meaning he could get from feelings in the Force! It was from being around someone who liked him, he thought.

“Of course you do,” Beroya muttered, feeling amused. “Well, we’re going back there to pick up Cara.” He paused. “Kid, we… do you know why we don’t stay in one place?”

Grogu’s ears perked up curiously. He had never known why anyone he was with did what they did, before Beroya. Beroya actually explained things like “stopping for supplies” and “needing money”, and Grogu didn’t even have to eavesdrop or ask droids or anything! But Beroya hadn’t explained this. Actually, it hadn’t even occurred to Grogu to be curious about this before!

Beroya turned his head so the corner of his visor was trained on Grogu. “There’s a lot of bounty hunters after you. I think… the man who put your bounty out, he’s not going to stop wanting you. The only way to make sure you’re safe is to -”

Beroya stopped, feeling conflicted. Grogu leaned forward, eyes wide.

“- to… make sure he… can’t pay your bounty. I have a contact who can help, but I want to pick up Cara to make the job safer.”

Grogu cooed. Cara was good at fighting, and she was nice in a sweet, kind of uncertain way, so he understood why Beroya would want to pick her up.

Beroya nodded, feeling awkward, and turned his head back to the console. “We’re nearly there,” he said, and then got quiet.

This did explain why they’d been moving around ever since Sorgan, Grogu reflected. He didn’t know why, but he had figured out a long time ago that Beroya wanted to protect him. Making all the bounty hunters stop chasing them seemed like a good way to make that easier! Although… did that mean that they were going to find somewhere to stop moving, after this? Oooh, maybe they would go back to Sorgan! Grogu liked Sorgan!

The Razor Crest eventually slid back into normal space, and Beroya piloted them back down to the same clearing they’d landed in last time. He didn’t even try to make Grogu stay in the Crest this time, just scooped him up and carried him down the ladder. He put him back down for the walk between the Crest and the building where they’d had soup with Cara, though. That had been good soup! Grogu hoped they had time for soup again.

There was a lot of noise coming out of the building this time – Grogu could hear people yelling and cheering from a long way away! It quieted down as they approached, and by the time Beroya held the cloth in the doorway out of the way for Grogu a big crowd of people was trickling away.

Cara stood in a cleared area of floor just past where the crowd was leaving, her hands full of credit pouches. Grogu watched the people who were walking out with interest as Beroya walked up to Cara and said, “Looking for some work?”

There was a flash of recognition, surprise, and happiness from Cara. Without another word being spoken, she and Beroya walked toward a table and sat down together. Grogu trailed after them, marveling at how they did that without using the Force! He was also a bit distracted by the sensation of walking over a wood floor. It didn’t happen very often, and he hadn’t really gotten to appreciate it last time they’d been here. The floor was warm and smooth, which felt really nice on Grogu’s bare feet.

Cara ordered some spotchka and a bowl of some kind of spiky fruit from Apron Lady. Once Grogu caught up to them, Beroya lifted him onto a chair, and he settled in to listen to the discussion. Beroya hadn’t really said much on the Crest, and Grogu wanted to know more about how Beroya’s jobs worked. He would have to say more to Cara, right?

Apparently not, because they didn’t start talking about the job right away. They did some small talk first, although they both seemed kind of out of practice at it. As soon as Cara’s spotchka arrived, Beroya switched conversational tracks.

“It seems like a straightforward operation,” he said, with no transition that Grogu had noticed. “They’re providing the plan and the firepower. I’m the snare.”

Cara sipped her spotchka. “With the kid?” Her tone said volumes about her opinion on that.

“That’s why I’m coming to you.”

Cara started saying something that sounded considering, but Grogu could feel her refusal. He thought maybe Beroya could too, but he was distracted from the conversation when someone walked up from behind Cara and dropped a credit chip onto the table next to Grogu with a grunt and a displeased scowl. Grogu looked at it, eyes wide. There was a pile of credits on the table a bit closer to Cara, but Grogu didn’t think he’d ever been close enough to a credit chip to touch it. He reached out gently and held his hand over the credit, not quite making contact. Actually… there was quite a lot of emotion sunk into the metal. Maybe he shouldn’t touch it. Grogu put his hand back down on the table.

He tuned back in to the conversation. Cara was telling Beroya why she couldn’t come on the job. Beroya was a tangle of emotions – Grogu didn’t think he’d expected her to say no. He felt Beroya’s spike of intent, though, the moment he spotted an argument that would work.

“He’s not a local warlord,” Beroya said. “He’s Imperial.”

… Yep, that had done it! Grogu stared up at Cara as her lazy sense of victory and satisfaction sharpened into interest and a tiny spark of old rage. She took a deep breath; her shoulders and expression both set. She raised her cup to Beroya. “I’m in,” she said, and tossed back the rest of her drink. She stood, and Beroya lifted Grogu down to the floor and followed.

Cara walked way too fast on the way out of the building, but she slowed down when she realized that Beroya was walking slow enough for Grogu to keep up. She eyed Grogu, but didn’t say anything other than, “Where did you land?” and kept to a Grogu-friendly speed on the way, which Grogu appreciated. His legs were very short compared to everyone else’s. He wondered if he would ever grow up to be as big and strong as Beroya. Human babies grew from Grogu’s size to Beroya’s size, right? So Grogu should be able to, too! He would just have to try really hard!

They all went straight back to the Razor Crest and left Sorgan, to Grogu’s disappointment. He’d wanted to go for a swim while they were there. Maybe they would have time to come back and swim after the job? Beroya seemed really worried about this job, maybe even more than he’d been about the job with the mean idiots! Which was impressive. Grogu tried cooing at him and patting his armor when Beroya picked him up to climb to the cockpit, which had worked to make him relax in the past, but it didn’t work this time. Beroya just stroked Grogu’s ear absentmindedly and set him down in his box on the seat.

After they had lifted off but before they had gone into hyperspace, Cara broke the companionable silence. “Does your contact need to vet me?” she asked, sounding unconcerned by the prospect.

“Doesn’t know you’re coming,” Beroya said, still doing something with the console.

Now Cara was amused. “Really. That could be a problem.”

“It won’t.” Beroya turned in the pilot’s seat to face her, reflecting her amusement off his clean calm. “But if it is, it’s his problem.” He got up and led Cara out of the cockpit. Grogu watched them go, confused. Where were they going? Why weren’t they in hyperspace yet? Why had they left Grogu here? He made a questioning noise, but they were gone.

Well then.

Grogu climbed out of his box and dropped to the floor. He wasn’t just gonna sit around while Beroya and Cara did something! The question was, what were they doing?

He made it over to the ladder down into the hold just in time to hear Cara say, “So then why are we going?” There were a bunch of small metallic noises under her voice. Was she dropping something?

“I don’t have a choice,” Beroya responded, unhappiness echoing under his voice as Grogu carefully anchored himself to the floor with the Force and lowered his head down into the ladder hole. He just wanted to see. What was making that noise? “You saw what happened on Sorgan. They’ll keep sending hunters.”

Grogu’s eyes cleared the bottom of the hole. Beroya was leaning up against the wall across from the weapons locker. Cara stood in front of the locker, which was wide open and missing lots of weapons. Well, not missing – they were all scattered around Cara, on the floor and the bunk and leaning against the walls, and one of them was in her hands. She was looking it over appreciatively. Oh, so Beroya was just lending Cara a blaster! That was boring.

“The kid’ll never be safe until the Imp is dead,” Beroya said, and Grogu withdrew his head.

They seemed like they would be busy for a while, Grogu reflected, unsticking himself from the floor. Beroya had a lot of weapons. Grogu might as well have some fun while he waited, and since Beroya wasn’t here… Grogu’s eyes slid over to the console. He smiled toothily.

Thirty seconds later, Grogu was having a blast standing on the console and playing with one of the joysticks. He’d been right, this thing was so fun to use! The ship was shaking and some alarms were going off, but that was fine, probably. Who cared? Grogu was flying the ship! He twisted the joystick and nearly fell off the console as the ship dipped to the side. Whee!

Unfortunately Beroya and Cara were both radiating alarm to match the ship’s, and right then Beroya stumbled into the cockpit and scooped Grogu into Cara’s arms. Grogu pouted as she set him back in his box and Beroya did something that made the ship stabilize and the alarms turn off. What was that for? He’d been having fun!

“We need someone to watch that thing,” Cara panted, relief and fading panic pouring off of her.

Beroya nodded his agreement, feeling exactly the same. “Yeah.”

“You got anyone you can trust?”

Grogu lost interest in the conversation as he turned to look at the console closest to him. He giggled with leftover excitement and reached towards the buttons. He could just touch some of them from here, but not well enough to press any of them. That was okay, though – he’d had a lot of fun playing with the joystick, and he was pretty sure that Beroya would get actually upset if he messed with anything else on the ship this soon. Grogu contented himself with playing with the light from the buttons instead, by moving his hand so that it hid some of them from view. This was good too!

He did get bored of the buttons eventually. Cara had gone back down to the hold and was still busy looking over Beroya’s weapons, but Beroya himself had stayed up in the cockpit with Grogu. He picked him up readily when Grogu made uppy hands, feeling fond. Grogu cooed happily once he was settled and slapped both hands on Beroya’s chest armor in a rhythm. It was in two sections, and in the middle was a six-sided shape that Grogu could never quite reach, but that seemed like it would be really good for touching. He reached for it, but fell short as always.

Beroya huffed a laugh. “Yeah, you happy, kid? You nearly crashed us in empty space. That’s pretty impressive for a little green guy.”

Grogu was happy, actually! He’d had lots of fun with the joystick earlier, and now he was here with Beroya. That was all he really needed! Except for food, he supposed. And toys. And he could do without the toys, really, but speaking of – he reached out towards the shiny ball on its lever and patted Beroya’s armor with his other hand.

“Yeah, all right, here you go,” Beroya said, feeling amused. He unscrewed the shiny ball and dropped it into Grogu’s waiting hands. Grogu shrieked with excitement and banged the shiny ball on Beroya’s chest armor. It made such a wonderful sound!

Beroya’s helmet dipped – he was feeling ow again – and Cara shouted up from the hold, “What is that racket?”

“It’s just the kid!” Beroya called back. “He’s playing with my armor!”

“Can he stop?”

Beroya’s helmet tilted down towards Grogu. “What do you think, buddy? You done?”

Grogu was not done. He could stop with Beroya’s chest armor, though, if it really bothered him and Cara that much. Grogu turned a bit and started banging the shiny ball on Beroya’s shoulder armor instead. He grinned at the sound – it was a little different from the chest armor, but it was still amazing.

Beroya sighed. “Seems like no!” he yelled to Cara. She made a sound of inarticulate frustration and started making a few banging noises herself. Beroya’s helmet moved in a way that communicated a wince very clearly. Grogu was fascinated.

The Razor Crest was filled with merry noise all the way to their next destination, which nobody told Grogu the name of. He recognized it, though, as soon as the ramp dropped. This was the planet where he’d met Beroya! Why were they back here? Was Beroya just taking a reverse tour of all the places he’d been with Grogu? They’d skipped a lot of supply stops, if that was their goal.

Oh, and they were at the place where Kuiil lived, too! Grogu wondered if the Jawas were going to come back, or if they stayed around where Beroya had landed the Razor Crest last time. Or maybe they were scared of Kuiil? They hadn’t acted very scared, when Kuiil had been helping Beroya get his stuff back.

Beroya stepped down the ramp, followed by Cara and Grogu in his box. It turned out Grogu’s box could move, just like his pram had. It wasn’t as comfortable as his pram had been, but he’d sat in worse places. Kuiil invited them all inside his house and told them to sit down. Beroya steered Grogu’s box so that it formed a semicircle with the other seats.

Kuiil took a close look at Grogu, and then the adults all started talking. Grogu didn’t really understand what they were saying. Guessing where Grogu was from, maybe? Grogu could have told them that, if any of them could feel the Force. Then a droid ducked in through the door carrying a tray of drinks, and Beroya felt alarm and stood and drew his blaster and Cara felt surprise and confusion and followed suit and Kuiil moved between them and the droid and Grogu… blinked. Hey, he knew that droid! It was the one Beroya had shot when they first met!

“Would anyone care for some tea?” the droid said.

“Please, lower your blasters,” Kuiil said, holding up a hand. “He will not harm you.”

“That thing is programmed to kill the baby,” Beroya said tightly. That wasn’t good. Grogu didn’t want that to happen. Beroya seemed like he had it covered, though. His blaster was out and everything!

“Not any more.” Kuiil gestured again. Beroya and Cara slowly holstered their blasters and sat, although Beroya remained tense. The droid put down its tray, and Kuiil started talking about how he’d salvaged and rebuilt it. Grogu thought it was probably okay. The droid hadn’t even tried to kill him yet!

Beroya wasn’t convinced. “Is it still a hunter?” he asked.

“No,” Kuiil said. “But it will protect.”

Beroya continued to stare the droid down for a few seconds. The droid, for its part, seemed completely unphased. It just finished pouring something into the cups it had brought, then held one out.

“Tea?” it offered.

Beroya didn’t move. He was feeling a lot of things, but mostly he was feeling distrust. After a second, Cara reached past him and warily took the cup. She sipped, then made a surprised face and shrugged at Beroya. He sat back slowly.

After a few intensely uncomfortable seconds, Cara said, “So! How did you meet?”

Chapter Text

It turned out that they had come to visit Kuiil because Beroya and Cara wanted him to come on the job with them. Apparently, Kuiil had agreed to come, but only if he could take his blurgs along, too. This was why Grogu was currently leaning over the edge of his box and watching with wide eyes as Beroya grumpily helped Kuiil herd all three blurgs into the space he’d sectioned off at the other end of the hold, which seemed way too small right up until all the blurgs were curled up comfortably.

Cara was sitting on a crate next to Grogu, also watching. She was doing a very poor job of hiding her amusement, and she was completely ignoring the increasingly desperate glances Beroya was throwing her way. Maybe she just couldn’t tell that they were desperate, but Grogu doubted it. He was pretty sure Beroya thought the same, because he was radiating irritation by the time he slammed his hand on the button to close the ramp and stomped by them to head up to the cockpit.

Grogu stretched out his Force sense to keep an eye on Beroya, but kept his literal eyes on the blurgs. He’d known they were big, but seeing them in the familiar confines of the Razor Crest’s hold was different than seeing them outside. Blurgs were really big! They were really peaceful, too – they were just sitting there, not trying to get past the netting that Beroya had strung up across the hold to block them in or knocking against the walls or anything. Grogu was impressed. In his experience, most big animals just tried to eat you.

The engines powered up with a distant rumble, and Grogu could tell that they were straining a lot more than they usually did to lift off. Beroya’s irritation deepened. Kuiil placidly moved some crates to block the edges of the net, feeling clean calm as the Razor Crest shuddered out of atmo. Cara, on the other hand, was distinctly uncomfortable, and stood up to move some different crates around with considerably more energy. As soon as they’d entered hyperspace and Beroya dropped back down the ladder, Cara said, “Hey Mando! Bet you fifty credits I can beat you at arm wrestling!”

Beroya’s helmet tilted slightly. “You’re on,” he said, and sat down on one of the crates Cara had been moving.

Some of the buzzing underneath Cara’s skin settled as she sat across from Beroya and held up one arm, elbow on the crate between them and hand in the air. Beroya clasped the offered hand, and then her muscles were bulging and his irritation was flaring and their hands didn’t move, straining against one another exactly in the middle.

Grogu watched, losing track of Kuiil and the blurgs. He’d seen people do this before, but it had always been the lead-up to a fight of some sort. He hoped Cara and Beroya weren’t about to fight, but – but it felt like they were, and Grogu had seen that Cara was evenly matched with Beroya back when they fought behind that building on Sorgan, and – would Beroya be able to beat her? What if the arm wrestling was for a sneak attack?

Attacking Beroya when he wasn’t ready to defend himself wasn’t allowed. Grogu stretched out one hand and reached out with the Force and grabbed at Cara at the place the Force said would do the most damage the fastest and shuddered with the effort, eyes fluttering closed as Cara’s aggressive concentration faded into panic and confusion and then Beroya was shouting and grabbing Grogu out of his box and his concentration shattered.

“We’re friends, we’re friends! Cara is my friend!” Beroya yelled, leaking confusion and fear. Grogu blinked his eyes open and looked between Beroya and Cara, who was gasping and clutching her throat. Were they not going to fight after all? Being friends had nothing to do with it, as Grogu well knew.

“That is not okay!” rasped Cara, jabbing a frightened finger towards Grogu.

“Hmm. Curious,” murmured Kuiil from where he was suddenly standing right behind Grogu. Grogu would have jumped, if he wasn’t so busy focusing on Cara and Beroya. It still felt like a fight could happen any second.

Cara’s fear was morphing into rage. “Curious? It almost killed me!”

Grogu just kept looking between Cara and Beroya as the adults all kept talking and the atmosphere got tenser and tenser. Beroya’s helmet also kept moving between Cara and Kuiil, and Grogu’s own confusion was nearly drowned out by Beroya’s fading fear mixing with Cara’s fear-anger poking at Kuiil’s surprise-anger. The fight that Grogu had expected hadn’t happened, but they were still fighting in a different way, and Grogu didn’t understand why.

There was a moment of stillness, and then, “Tell you what,” Beroya said, breaking what had become a very tense silence. “I could really use your craftwork right now.” He set Grogu back down in his box and gestured between it and Kuiil. “Can you pad this container so the Child can sleep better?”

All the anger ran out of Kuiil. He placed gentle fingers on Grogu’s chest, examining the box. Cara looked on, still full of sullen rage, and now that Grogu was facing the other direction he could also see that the droid IG-11 had stepped up to stare blankly at her. What was that about? Grogu didn’t understand these people!

Kuiil looked up at Beroya. “I shall fabricate a better one. Then perhaps this dropper can see how one can win their freedom with the skill of one’s hands.” He gestured sharply at Cara, who blew out a breath and rolled her eyes.

“Thank you,” Beroya said to Kuiil, and turned to Cara. “Go cool off,” he told her. She frowned at him, but her rage had simmered down a bit, and after a moment she whirled and climbed up into the cockpit.

Grogu whimpered up at Beroya. What had just happened?

Beroya looked down at Grogu, then up at Kuiil, who had begun rooting through crates and pulling out tools and materials. He looked back down at Grogu. His vocoder crackled with what might have been a sigh, and he picked Grogu back up and sat back down on his crate, balancing Grogu on his knee.

“Kid,” he said seriously, “I appreciate that you want to protect me. You’ve been very helpful in the past. But you can’t be hurting people, do you understand? Not people we’re friends with. You know Cara. We weren’t fighting, we were just playing a game. It must have been scary if you thought we were really fighting, and I’ll make sure to let you know next time we play a game like that. But you can’t hurt our friends. Got it?”

Grogu peered unhappily up at Beroya’s expressionless helmet. He’d never seen arm wrestling treated as just a game, but… everything was different, with Beroya. Different like things had been before the bad times, when Grogu could barely remember there being warmth, and light, and other children. He made an unhappy noise, but also patted Beroya’s arm in acceptance. Beroya was good at this – at fighting, and at avoiding fighting. Just look at how he’d calmed Cara and Kuiil down just now! Grogu could follow his lead on this. For now, at least – until he saw evidence that Beroya’s judgement was bad. He hoped he wouldn’t.

Beroya watched Grogu for another few seconds before nodding. “Okay. Good. I have to go talk to Cara and deal with our next hyperspace jump. Do you want to come up, or stay here with Kuiil?”

Given the muted anger still trickling down the ladder from the cockpit, Grogu thought he’d rather stay down here. He turned to point to Kuiil, and stopped to stare when he saw what Kuiil was doing. Where had the welding tool come from? Kuiil had half a frame assembled already!

A wave of amusement washed over Grogu. Beroya stood, placed him back in his box, pressed a button on his forearm armor, and waved a hand. The box moved so Grogu had a perfect view of what Kuiil was doing, but couldn’t reach out and touch it. Grogu giggled in excitement and stretched a hand out anyway. Kuiil glanced up and gave Beroya a nod. Beroya nodded back and vanished up the ladder.

Kuiil worked really fast! He had a whole new pram built in only a couple hours, and it was just like the one Grogu’d had before Glasses Man had put him to sleep except it was better because Kuiil had made it! He’d moved Grogu from his box to a nearby crate partway through and cannibalized the box for the hover mechanism and control board, so the new pram even had some of Beroya’s stuff in it!

Cara came back down into the hold for second meal, which IG-11 had made using some of Kuiil’s supplies. Beroya joined them again shortly after the meal, just in time for Kuiil to start explaining the buttons he’d put on the front of the new pram to Grogu. One of them opened and closed the top, and a few of them controlled the pram’s movement, and one of them disconnected the pram from any remote controller. Kuiil and Beroya explained to Grogu that he was only supposed to use that one in an emergency, when Beroya wasn’t able to help or if someone else had taken control of the pram. Grogu nodded very seriously at them when they said that, but it didn’t stop him from gleefully sitting in front of the pram and pressing the button to open and close the top over and over and over. It was so fun! Grogu giggled over the rising annoyance from Cara and indulgent amusement from Beroya and Kuiil.

Eventually Beroya had to go back up into the cockpit to land them on the planet that the job was on. Kuiil argued with Cara until she agreed to help him saddle the blurgs, and they both ducked past the netting into the other end of the hold. Grogu watched with wide eyes as they pulled out huge pieces of shaped leather with long straps and big buckles and set about getting them on the blurgs. The straps went in front of their legs and behind their teeny tiny arms. Grogu didn’t even know what those tiny arms were for. It wasn’t like the blurgs could use them for anything. They were too small!

The Razor Crest shuddered as it landed, and a few minutes later the blurgs were saddled and Beroya dropped back down the ladder. He, Kuiil, and Cara had a quick conference – to decide what kind of first impression to make, from what Grogu could hear – before Beroya tucked Grogu into his new pram with his blanket.

“Okay, kiddo,” he said. “We’re starting the job now. We’re meeting some people here who are going to help us, but we’re pretty far out of town, so it’s going to be walking today and action tomorrow. It might get scary, but Cara and Kuiil and I will protect you. I’m going to close the pram for now, but you’ll get to look around in a bit.”

Grogu cooed happily and settled in with his blanket. The new pram was much better for sitting in than the box had been, with more padding and fewer corners, and he was excited to be closer to the actual action on this job! Hopefully these new people would be better than the mean idiots had been.

Beroya kept looking at him for a moment, radiating unease and determination, and then he shut the pram and – from the sounds of shifting blurgs, cursing from Beroya, and laughter from Cara – mounted up. Grogu stretched out his Force sense, listening to the ramp lowering. He felt four new people, and – hey! He knew one of them! It was the angry man who’d snuck onto the Razor Crest while Beroya got Grogu back from Glasses Man! Hadn’t Beroya shot him?

Grogu tipped back a bit when the pram started moving, and a moment later Sneaky Man was talking. Grogu couldn’t hear words very clearly through the new pram’s lid, though. What kind of seal had Kuiil put on this thing? It was way more robust than the seal on Grogu’s last pram. Grogu could hardly even smell anything from outside!

Beroya didn’t feel very happy about whatever Sneaky Man was saying. Cara was smugly confident and Kuiil was a little disdainful, but neither of them said anything. In fact, there were a couple pauses where Sneaky Man obviously expected a response and didn’t get one. Wow, Sneaky Man talked a lot. Beroya did respond after a few of those pauses, and then the pram was moving again. When it stopped the top slid down, and Grogu was hit with a blast of heated air and the sight of Sneaky Man looming over him.

Sneaky Man stepped closer. “So,” he said, “this little bogwing is what all the fuss was about.” He felt curious and calculating. He also reached out slowly and picked Grogu up, which made everyone else tense up and grab for weapons, and which struck Grogu as a poor move. Beroya had shot Sneaky Man before, he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. Especially if Sneaky Man tried to hurt Grogu!

He didn’t, though. He just looked Grogu over and called to Beroya, “What a precious little creature! I can see why you didn’t want to harm a hair on its wrinkled little head.” He lowered Grogu carefully back into the pram and set his hands on his hips, and everyone else relaxed again. The people behind Sneaky Man lowered their hands away from their weapons, which Grogu assumed meant Beroya had done the same.

Sneaky Man looked back up at Beroya, projecting harmlessness. Grogu didn’t trust it one bit. “Well. I’m glad this matter will be put to rest once and for all,” Sneaky Man said. Beroya must not trust his harmlessness either, because the pram slid closed and retreated back to where Grogu could feel the line of blurgs. Sneaky Man said something else that Grogu couldn’t hear, and they all set off in the same direction. Towards town, Grogu assumed.

Beroya had said that Grogu would be able to look around in a bit, but that must not have meant during the walk, so Grogu settled in for a long, boring day. He spent some time feeling out the new people. The three that he didn’t recognize felt like bounty hunters – not as mean as the mean idiots, but nowhere near nice, either. There was also an undercurrent of hostility there that Grogu didn’t like, but he thought maybe that sort of thing just happened when bounty hunters that weren’t already friends met up for jobs. Beroya and Cara felt like that too, right now.

The Sneaky Man felt different though. Still the same sort of not-nice as the bounty hunters, but there was an additional element of confidence. He was definitely in charge. The person in front wasn’t, not always, but Sneaky Man was. Grogu wondered what that meant. He hadn’t been on enough jobs to really know, yet.

Once Grogu had examined the bounty hunters to his satisfaction, he quickly grew very bored. He didn’t know anything about this planet except that it was hot and grey, and he couldn’t feel any plant life anywhere. There were a couple small animals out on the edge of Grogu’s range every once in a while, but otherwise there was nothing out there. There wasn’t anything to sense, and there wasn’t anything to do! Beroya hadn’t even given him a toy to play with! Grogu made a frustrated sound and flopped over on his back. He supposed he was just going to have to stare at the roof of the pram until something happened. He settled in for a long wait.

Chapter Text

The first sign that something interesting might be happening was a feeling of brief concentration from one of the bounty hunters, followed immediately by a blaster shot and a life snuffing out. Grogu blinked. It sounded like someone had decided it was dinner time. Maybe they would give Grogu some? Being bored made him hungry.

There were muffled sounds of discussion, and one of the bounty hunters walked off, away from the group. Everyone else started moving around in a little area just off to one side of Grogu, and Beroya, Cara, and Kuiil got off the blurgs and got them to settle down a little ways away. Grogu stared up at the closed top of the pram and huffed. He wanted to be doing things outside, too! Maybe he could open the pram himself to look around? He’d played with the button enough earlier, he knew where it was, it would just take a bit of time and concentration! … Probably. He was pretty sure, anyway.

Grogu pressed one hand against the front of the pram, on the inside of where the buttons were on the outside, and closed his eyes to concentrate. He pulled in his sense of everyone making camp, or whatever they were doing, and focused on the feel of metal – big plates on the outside of the pram, and smaller struts on the inside, and even smaller half-cubes for the buttons, which bled into the teeny echoes of wire and electronics and – but the buttons were distinct, one two three four, now which one was the one that opened the pram again?

Ah yes.

Grogu opened his eyes and smiled as the top split down the middle and slid to either side. He’d done it! He was so good at using the Force, all the Masters would be so proud –

No, Grogu didn’t want to think about that, actually. He looked around a bit desperately for a distraction, squinting through the sunset. Oh, there was one! Grogu hopped over the side of the pram and hurried over to grab IG-11’s leg, staring at the lava river in front of them. He hadn’t ever seen one of these from up close before! Wow, it was really hot. And kind of glowy where the moving river made the hardening shell of rock crack. That was so cool!

IG-11’s whole body tilted to let its camera see what had just hit its leg. It was holding a shovel, for some reason. Where had that come from?

“You should still be in your pram,” IG-11 informed Grogu. “How did you get out?”

Grogu felt Beroya’s attention snap over to them. A second later, he hurried up behind them and scooped Grogu up. “That’s a good question,” he said to IG-11. His visor stayed on Grogu. “Don’t wander around while we’ve got company, okay, kid?”

Grogu blew a spit bubble at Beroya. Beroya sighed and tucked him under his arm, feeling resigned. He walked back over to join Cara and Kuiil by the blurgs, waving his other arm so that the pram would follow. He did put Grogu back in the pram when it got there, but he also left the top open, so Grogu counted it as a win and looked around happily, ignoring the adults’ conversation.

The bounty hunters were making camp, only nobody had any tents or anything, so mostly they were just marking out a flatter area to sleep and building a fire to cook the small animal that one of them had shot earlier. IG-11 was shoveling bits of lava into the firepit to light the fuel, which explained why the shovel but not where it had come from. Or what kind of fuel they were using, or where they had gotten it, come to think of it. Sneaky Man was just sort of standing around telling everyone else what to do.

Grogu looked around more, away from all the people. The whole landscape was grey and rocky, like the lava rivers used to flow everywhere but had since narrowed to their current courses. Maybe this was a young planet? Young planets tended to be much more volcanic than older ones. Grogu felt cautiously at the ground with the Force, but didn’t feel anything except that it was rock. He probably had to be older and know more to learn stuff about planets that way. He pouted. He wanted to know more about this planet now!

Cara, Kuiil, and Beroya finished up their conversation and headed over to join the bounty hunters and Sneaky Man around the fire just after sunset. Everyone sat there in very awkward silence until the smell of roasting meat made Grogu’s stomach growl. Sneaky Man and Cara both laughed, and Grogu looked at Beroya with wide eyes and lowered ears to ask for food. Beroya got up and poked at the meat, which was propped up on a skewer over the fire, with a vibroblade.

“It’s ready,” he grunted. He sliced off a limb for Cara and a couple pieces from the side for Kuiil and Grogu, but didn’t take any for himself. Kuiil fed Grogu his portion a little bit at a time which was… maybe a little embarrassing. Grogu was fifty, he wasn’t a baby!

Sneaky Man watched from Beroya’s other side, considering. “I guess the little bugger’s a carnivore,” he said, gesturing towards Grogu. “Never seen anything like it.” His voice lowered confidingly, even though Beroya was ignoring him. “They were ready to pay a king’s ransom for that thing. Must be for some kind of highfalutin menagerie.”

Beroya’s irritation snapped. “Let’s go over the plan again,” he said.

Sneaky Man didn’t seem bothered. Grogu was kind of focused on eating, which was especially difficult because of Kuiil’s not-help, but he still listened as best as he could to the discussion. Beroya seemed bothered by something about the plan, but Sneaky Man was confident and dismissive.

“Trust me,” Sneaky Man said, standing to get some more meat. “Nothing can go wrong.”

Which, of course, was the moment that a giant winged animal flew out of the night and snatched the meat right out of Sneaky Man’s hands.

Sneaky Man yelled, stumbling backwards, and everyone else stood up and started shouting and shooting into the darkness. Grogu watched with interest, but Beroya closed his pram after his first few shots. Grogu pouted at the smooth metal. He wanted to see! He guessed he would have to settle for sensing, and stretched out with the Force.

He couldn’t really sense the blasterfire, but going by what he could hear and the confused and panicked impressions the bounty hunters were giving off, there was a lot of it and it was making things very chaotic. Cara and Beroya were calm and focused, and Kuiil was the same until a big animal swooped down and latched onto one of the blurgs. Then Kuiil got a bit distraught. Grogu thought he fired at the animal, but it was kind of hard to tell, and either way it succeeded in hauling the blurg off and out of Grogu’s range.

There was a moment of stillness after that. Grogu only sensed the next incoming animal a second before it snatched one of the bounty hunters and flew off – it was fast! Nobody really reacted to that bounty hunter’s death, except to brace for more incoming animals, but Kuiil got even more upset and angry a moment later when another animal tried to take another blurg. He must have managed to hit that one, because Grogu felt it flare with pain and then drop on top of the blurg. Both of their lives flickered out.

Another animal swooped down and hit Beroya, dragging him along the ground. Grogu whimpered at the feeling, but Beroya seemed okay – the animal must have hit his armor, and it only dragged him a little way before giving off a wave of animal fear and lifting off and heading out of Grogu’s sensing range. In fact, all the animals seemed to be afraid and leaving – all the blasterfire must have finally scared them off! Grogu let out a sigh of relief as Beroya and Cara and Kuiil formed a defensive triangle around his pram. Everyone waited a few tense seconds to see if any more animals would attack, and then they all relaxed. Beroya pressed the button to open Grogu’s pram again, and Grogu looked around to make sure everyone was okay.

Beroya, Cara, Kuiil, and the two remaining bounty hunters were okay, but Sneaky Man was not. He groaned painfully, attracting everyone else’s attention to where he was lying propped up against a rock, clutching at his right arm. Grogu hadn’t even noticed when he’d stopped fighting. What was wrong? Cara and Kuiil hurried over, feeling something that was not quite concern.

“He’s hurt badly,” Kuiil reported, hunching over Sneaky Man. Sneaky Man tried to insist he was fine, but trailed off in a way that made it clear he was not. Beroya finally, reluctantly, left Grogu’s pram to approach Sneaky Man.

“Hold still,” Cara ordered, kneeling next to Sneaky Man in just the right spot to block Grogu’s view and pulling something out of her bag. “They got you good.” Grogu couldn’t see what she was doing from here, but he knew the sort of med supplies Beroya’d had on the ship. Based on the pain radiating from Sneaky Man and the grim focus from Cara, he didn’t think it would be enough.

“How bad?” asked Beroya.

“Bad. The poison’s spreading fast.”

The bounty hunters had also migrated over to Sneaky Man, and were just sort of standing there. Grogu hmphed at their concern, which felt directed at themselves rather than Sneaky Man. He didn’t like them, he decided.

Sneaky Man hadn’t stopped making pained noises. “So this – this is how it happens,” he panted between his noises.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Cara said. She was still doing something with Sneaky Man’s arm, but Grogu still couldn’t see what. “I need another medpack! Got any other medpacks?” She looked up and around. “Anyone?”

The bounty hunters shook their heads. Beroya just looked on with concern. Grogu didn’t have any medpacks, but… he climbed out of his pram. He could help, he knew he could! Sneaky Man might be sneaky, but he wasn’t bad, and Grogu didn’t want anyone to die when he could help!

“I’m guessing that’s a no,” Sneaky Man groaned.

Grogu walked forward as Cara pulled out a scanner. He finally had a view of the wound – three parallel gashes, from claws, far too small to be dangerous if not for the poison. He reached Sneaky Man’s side as Cara said, “It’s still spreading. This isn’t working!” She noticed Grogu and cast Kuiil a disbelieving glance. “Get this thing outta here,” she gritted out.

Grogu ignored her, and whatever anyone else did in response. He was here to help, and Cara being grumpy wasn’t going to stop him! He stretched out his hand and pulled on the Force. Healing was a rare talent, and he didn’t really know enough about medicine to do it skillfully, but if the problem was only poison… His eyes closed as his hand landed on Sneaky Man’s arm, and he reached into his feeling of the wound. It was all wrong in the Force, energy twisted and broken off where it should be flowing smooth, and there was also a creeping darkness spreading up and down the arm – that must be the poison!

Now for the hard part. Grogu pushed light into the darkness until it was gone, and then pushed on the wound itself, telling it you’re fine, everything’s okay, you can go back to how you should be. It took a monumental effort, but slowly the Force started flowing again, and the wound pulled back together under his hand. When it was nearly healed it almost felt like everything clicked into place, and Grogu let go of the Force and sat down with a thump, suddenly woozy. He might have overdone it, he thought hazily.

He’d definitely overdone it, actually, because the next thing he knew it was daylight and he was in his pram and everyone was walking except for Kuiil, who Grogu could feel riding the only remaining blurg behind them. The pram was open, and Beroya’s helmet was visible, radiating worry. He kept turning towards the pram, and as soon as he noticed that Grogu had woken up he swooped in and scooped him into his arms.

“How’re you doing, kid?” he murmured, low enough that the bounty hunters and Sneaky Man, walking a short distance in front of them, didn’t hear. Cara glanced over, but didn’t say anything.

Grogu yawned and cooed sleepily, nuzzling into Beroya’s hold. He was fine, but it was nice that Beroya worried about him! He was even starting to get used to being worried about, which was strange.

Relief suffused Beroya’s being. “Okay. Good. That’s good.” He paused. “You hungry?”

Grogu perked up. Dinner last night had been interrupted – of course he was hungry!

Beroya glanced at Cara, who nodded and dropped back to walk by Kuiil. She wasn’t gone long – she jogged back up a minute later and handed a small pouch to Beroya. Beroya nodded his thanks and set Grogu back in the pram. Grogu’s nose twitched at the smell of meat that drifted by when Beroya opened the pouch and checked inside. Beroya nodded again and tucked the pouch into the pram next to Grogu.

“We’re going to be arriving soon,” he said. “I don’t want you visible. Eat up.” He waited until Grogu had stuck a curious hand inside the pouch, then closed the pram.

Grogu was too hungry to be upset about being shut in again. He grabbed a strip of meat out of the pouch and chowed down happily. It was jerky, not the leftovers from last night, and Kuiil’s jerky was good! It occupied Grogu for a good long while, until the pouch was very thoroughly empty. Grogu sat back with a satisfied sigh and started paying attention to his surroundings again.

The marching order had changed while Grogu was eating. Now Sneaky Man, Beroya, and Cara were all walking at the front, with Grogu’s pram just behind them and to one side. The bounty hunters were in the middle, and Kuiil on his blurg were still in the rear. Grogu made a curious sound as he brushed over Sneaky Man in the Force. Sneaky Man was feeling all… resolved. Like he’d been thinking about something really hard, and he’d come to a decision, but he didn’t think it was a good decision. And then everyone stopped walking, and there were a few seconds of silence, and Sneaky Man’s resolve hardened into focus and there was the sound of blaster shots and Grogu gasped, feeling desperately for Beroya and –

And Beroya was safe, it was fine, Sneaky Man had done a sneak attack but not on Beroya. Grogu breathed back out. Things still felt tense out there, and he couldn’t feel the bounty hunters any more, but nobody felt like they were actually going to attack anybody else in the next few seconds, and Grogu needed to see what was going on. He pressed his hand against the front of the pram again and reached, and it was easier this time because the metal remembered his touch in the Force and the button he needed sang, just a little, and then the pram was opening and Grogu blinked in the light and looked around.

Both the bounty hunters were dead on the ground, and Sneaky Man was standing over their bodies, facing Beroya and Cara. They both had their blasters out, pointing at Sneaky Man, but his hands were empty. Grogu’s eye caught on Sneaky Man’s chest, where the blaster hole from the last time Beroya had shot him was still visible.

“The plan was to kill you and take the kid,” Sneaky Man said seriously, and Grogu whined a little in distress. “But after what happened last night, I couldn’t go through with it.” He paused, radiating honesty. Nobody lowered their blasters. He frowned and raised his voice. “Go on, you can gun me down here and now and it wouldn’t violate the Code, but if you do this child will never be safe!” He gestured towards Grogu.

“We’ll take our chances,” Cara snarled, but Grogu looked at Beroya. Beroya was looking back, feeling conflicted. He turned to face forward when Sneaky Man started talking again, and Grogu lost track of exactly what was being said, caught up in Beroya’s protectiveness and Cara’s anger and Kuiil’s consideration and Sneaky Man’s increasing desperation.

Then Beroya lowered his blaster. Sneaky Man’s desperation turned into relief and then confusion as they kept talking, and Cara’s anger became determination. Beroya was calm, now. Grogu wondered if it was because he had a plan.

Grogu didn’t like Beroya’s plan. He didn’t really want to be bait for Imperials, but he also didn’t want Beroya to be bait! Why couldn’t Beroya just beat them all up like he had when he’d gotten Grogu back from Glasses Man? And why couldn’t Grogu at least stay nearby? What if Beroya needed help again, like with the mudhorn? What if he got hurt and Grogu wasn’t there to help? And Grogu had a bad feeling – he thought that Beroya would need help, somehow.

But… Grogu had to admit that Beroya knew how to take care of himself, and he’d been alone for a long time before Grogu had met him. This was Beroya’s job, and Grogu was really only good for helping with one big thing before he had to go to sleep for a while. So he didn’t like the plan, but Grogu didn’t protest as Sneaky Man clasped binders around Beroya’s wrists and Kuiil wrapped Grogu in his blanket and lifted him out of his pram.

Grogu kept his eyes on Beroya until the blurg had carried him out of sight.

The ride back to the Razor Crest was long and bumpy and cold. Kuiil had pulled a fold of Grogu’s blanket over his head and tucked him in close to his chest, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but Grogu hadn’t thought it was possible for him to be shivering when they were so close to literal rivers of lava. Grogu grumbled and snuggled closer to Kuiil. His bad feeling was getting worse, too, which didn’t help.

They were most of the way back, Grogu thought, when Kuiil’s commlink chimed. Kuiil answered awkwardly, juggling Grogu in one hand and the blurg’s reigns in the other.

“Kuiil! Are you back to the ship yet?” came Beroya’s voice. In the seconds it took for Kuiil to maneuver Grogu and the reigns to get at the comm, Beroya’s voice went up a notch. “Are you there? Do you copy?”

“Yes!” Kuiil called over the wind, having finally tucked the comm into his collar where he could use it without his hands.

“Are you back to the ship yet?”

“Not yet!”

“Get back to the ship and bail. Get the kid out of here, we’re pinned down!” Beroya sounded worried, which made Grogu worried. What had happened?

Kuiil didn’t answer, but he did shake the reigns. The blurg sped up. Grogu hadn’t realized how fast they could go! It was really impressive, for such big creatures, and it wasn’t much longer before Grogu could see the Crest in the distance.

His ear twitched. What was that buzzing sound?

Kuiil reached for his belt and the rear ramp on the Crest started lowering. He was panting, and his comm was chirping again. That buzzing sound was getting louder –

There was the sound of a blaster shot, and Grogu was flying through the air, and then he knew no more.

Chapter Text

Din dropped his hand away from his helmet, gripping the commlink so tight the metal creaked. Kuiil wasn’t answering. Why wasn’t he answering? What had this Imp done? Was the Child safe?

Cara cast him a worried glance from behind her pillar, on the other side of the gaping hole where the front cantina window used to be. She didn’t really understand kids, but she understood his obligation to the Child, and nobody liked the thought of a kid in this kind of trouble. She didn’t say anything, though, just adjusted her grip on her machine blaster and nodded towards Din’s hands.

He blinked. Right, yes, they were in a firefight, one that had only paused so that the head Imp could arrive as dramatically as possible. One that could restart at any time, so Din tucked the commlink back into his belt and adjusted his grip on his pistol, holding it at the ready. Cara flashed him a tight smile and leaned out of cover, checking through the window. Din leaned with her to check again, but the sight hadn’t changed – rows and rows of stormtroopers with dirty armor but, unfortunately, functional blasters, and one officer front and center, looking very dramatic with his black armor and cape and matching purge troopers. Din took a moment to be disgusted with the pageantry as he drew back behind his own pillar.

Cara looked at Karga, huddled behind a third pillar with his own pistols. “Is there another way out?”

“No, that’s it,” Karga said, motioning with one pistol towards the door just to the left of the window.

That was it? In this town? This cantina was frequented by bounty hunters and it didn’t have a bolthole?

“What about the sewers?” Din asked. He hadn’t explored them much, but they were very roomy for such a small town. You couldn’t fit a whole Covert just anywhere.

“Sewers?” Karga repeated, clearly confused. How did he not know this?

“The Mandalorians have a Covert down in the sewers,” Din explained. “If we can get down there, they can help us escape.” If they haven’t already left. It had been nearly six weeks since they had helped Din rescue the Child – would they have moved on by now, or decided it was safe to stay a while longer?

“Yeah, sewers are good!” Cara said, wide-eyed.

Din took Karga’s agreement as a given and switched his HUD to thermal, looking for breaks in the cool stone walls. It took a few seconds, long enough for Cara to notice the Imps setting up an E-Web and for her and Karga to both panic, in their own ways. Din wasn’t happy about it either, but did Cara really have to shoot the sewer grate? It didn’t even work, and it attracted the Imp officer’s attention.

“Your astute panic suggests that you understand your situation,” he called. “I would prefer to avoid any further violence, and encourage a moment of consideration.”

By the manda, this guy was so over the top. First the dramatics and the matching armor, now the grandstanding. Effective grandstanding, though – Din saw the shock in Cara’s eyes when the Imp said her full name and title, and then –

“Or perhaps the decommissioned Mandalorian hunter, Din Djarin, has heard the songs of the Siege of Mandalore, when gunships outfitted with similar ordinance laid waste to fields of Mandalorian recruits in the Night of a Thousand Tears,” said that smooth voice, and Din couldn’t stop himself from stepping forward to where he could see through the shattered window. The Imp looked perfectly calm, and slightly threatening, even speaking of events he should know nothing about. He wasn’t even using the right words – who called kids recruits? – but –

Din’s head dipped. How did this man know his name? There were those in the Covert who still knew his first name, but the Imp couldn’t have been talking to them, and his family name hadn’t been spoken since…

He tuned back in just in time for the Imp to call, “If you’re asking if you can trust me… you cannot.”

Din exchanged a glance with Cara. Was that supposed to persuade them to agree to whatever terms had been stated?

“Just as you betrayed our business arrangement, I would gladly break any promise and watch you die at my hand.”

Well okay then, kark this guy too. Who made business arrangments about selling kids? Other than Hutts, of course. Din pushed his own guilt down and maintained focus.

“The assurance I give is this: I will act in my own self interest, which at this time involves your cooperation and benefit.” Din’s heart lifted as the Imp glanced at the setting sun. “I will give you until nightfall, and then I will have the E-Web cannon open fire.”

He turned and swept away between the rows of stormtroopers, blasters still at the ready. His purge troopers followed him.

Karga swiveled towards Din and Cara. “I say we hear him out,” he said, desperation clear on his face.

“The minute we open that door we’re dead,” growled Cara. She strode over to one of the dead stormtroopers on the floor and started stripping his weapons.

“We’re dead if we don’t! At least out there we’ve got a shot,” Karga protested.

Din tuned them both out. They had to get it out of their systems for a minute before they’d be able to think clearly, and he needed to chase that thought from earlier. How did this Imp know his family name? Nobody in the Tribe ever used it, not even the trainers in the Fighting Corps, not after he’d sworn the Creed. Could the Imp have talked to anyone from before the Purge? No – the people who’d known Din’s family name were either still with the Covert, or dead. Where else could he have gotten it? Had it been written down anywhere?

Hadn’t Din’s buir mentioned something about census records once? But that would mean this Imp would have needed access to the records on Manda’yaim before the Purge, and the only Imp who could possibly have done that and also have this many troopers under his command was –

“What about you, Mando?” came Karga’s voice. Din had no idea what they were fighting about now, but the Imp’s identity took precedence.

“I know who he is,” he said instead of answering.

Cara stilled, stopping her frantic grabbing and checking of weapons. Karga turned his whole body towards Din.

He raised his head. “It’s Moff Gideon.”

“No,” said Cara. “Moff Gideon was executed for war crimes.”

Cara didn’t understand. “It’s him,” Din insisted. “He knew my name.”

Karga understood even less, as evidenced by his quick, “So? What does that prove?”

“I have not heard that name spoken since I was a child.”

And then Karga proved that he didn’t even know the basics about the people that had been living under his city for over a year. “On Mandalore?” he asked, confused.

Din and Cara spent several minutes setting him straight.

“When I came of age I was sworn to the Creed,” Din finished his explanation. Now to get back to the actually important part of this discussion. “The only record of my family name is in the registers of Mandalore. Moff Gideon was an ISB officer during the Purge. That’s how I know it’s him.”

Karga looked away. Din couldn’t read the set of his shoulders. Was that sorrow, or simple discomfort?

“That’s how he knows who we all are,” Cara huffed, standing. Din didn’t really see how that followed, but it was irrelevant to the more important point, which was –

“He says he needs us, which means the Child got away safely,” Din continued, ignoring her. “I was worried when the Ugnaught didn’t respond, but if they’d captured the kid, we’d already be dead.”

“Hail them again,” Cara ordered as she hauled her many weapons over to a pillar closer to the door. Karga had found a bottle of spotchka and poured himself a cup, pistol still gripped in his other hand. Din grabbed the commlink and raised it to his visor.

“Come in, Kuiil,” he said. Waited a moment. “Kuiil.” Waited another moment. He shook his head, frustrated. “Nothing.”

She was brandishing her machine blaster and peering out the window. “They might have jammed the link.”

And then Din heard the most beautiful sound in the galaxy: the Child, burbling excitedly. Din’s heart lifted at the sound. He was all right! He was… where was that coming from? The commlink? Why had Kuiil given it to the kid? Or maybe the kid had stolen it – just like him, the little womp rat.

“Kuiil has been terminated,” came IG-11’s toneless voice, and Din’s heart sank right back down.

“What did you do.”

“I am fulfilling my base function.”

“Which is?” Din asked, in his most threatening tone. If the droid had hurt the kid…

“To nurse and protect.” Then there was the mechanical roar of a speeder and the sound of blaster shots, but Din could hear the Child giggling so at least he wasn’t hurt –

Was that an explosion from outside?

“Look!” called Cara. Din rushed forward to a better vantage point, and Karga threw back the rest of his spotchka and followed. The stormtroopers outside were scrambling, preparing for incoming from the left, completely ignoring the cantina. Cara walked out from cover and none of them even noticed, and Din understood why when a speeder shot out from the side street and crashed straight into them. IG-11 flew past, kid strapped to its chest, having clearly just jumped from the speeder, and slid as it landed on its feet. Reckless IG unit – why had it taken the Child into battle?

Din had to get out there.

“Cover me!” he shouted to Cara. She glanced around, evaluating options, and hopped up to kneel on a half-wall that ran parallel to the window and lay down cover fire with her machine blaster. Din ducked under her radius and over to the door, Karga right behind him.

Once they were outside, the fight was… a fight. Din was more than a little desperate to make sure the Child was safe, but there were far too many Imps for a clean extraction, and he knew this wasn’t working when he saw a few shots ping off IG-11’s back, sending it to its knees with its arms around the kid. How could he clear out a bunch of Imps, real fast, with no bombs left on his belt?

His searching eyes found the E-Web.

Perfect.

Din grabbed it off its stand, holding it in a way it definitely wasn’t meant to be held, and swung around, targeting the Imps that were clumping together and the ones that were behind cover. The E-Web could handle cover. The E-Web was handling cover very nicely, in fact, and Din was viciously satisfied with his choices right up until he heard the explosion and Cara’s higher-pitched blasterfire stopped.

He glanced back at the cantina. The door was gone, and those purge troopers were filing in, blasters raised. He didn’t have time to go over and help, though – his glance had also let him check on IG-11, who had managed to get up and start shooting again but still needed the cover fire Din was providing. He focused back in on maneuvering the E-Web. It really wasn’t designed to be used the way Din was using it, and it did not like being turned.

Cara’s blaster started up again. Din smiled.

And then there was blinding pain in his head, knocking him forward, and Din shouted in pain and surprise. Had someone just shot him in the helmet? He twisted around, still hunched over from the impact, to see Gideon standing across the square, blaster raised and pointing right at him. Osik! Din hauled the E-Web around, trying to get it up before Gideon could shoot –

Gideon’s eyes dropped, and Din watched with painful clarity as he adjusted his aim and shot the E-Web’s power source instead. The resulting explosion almost seemed leisurely as it picked him up and tossed him halfway across the square, the E-Web dropping from his suddenly nerveless fingers.

Din must have blacked out for a few seconds there, because the next thing he knew Cara was leaning him up against one of the upended couches inside the cantina. His ears were ringing and he could feel blood dripping down the back of his neck, which… made sense. The room was spinning. He had a head wound, a concussion at the least, maybe worse. He definitely couldn’t walk, probably couldn’t fight. Easy prey. Din felt oddly at peace with it.

He rolled his head to look at Cara, kneeling over him with a frantic look on her face. “I’m not gonna make it,” he groaned. “Go.”

“Shut up! You just got your bell rung. You’ll be fine,” she panted. She tried to smile reassuringly. Din wasn’t fooled.

“Leave me,” he insisted weakly.

Cara’s eyes widened as she noticed all the blood coming from his head. “I’m gonna need to take this thing off,” she said, her hands moving to the base of his helmet.

“No!” Din said, as strongly as he could, and slapped her hands away. Kind of. He was gripping at least one of her wrists at the end of the maneuver, but at least it had stopped her. What could he say to make her understand she needed to go?

“You leave me. You make sure the Child is safe – here,” and he scrabbled at the gap between his cape and his kot’las until his fingers caught on leather. He snapped the cord and held it out, ignoring the twinge of horror at treating it this way. “When you get to the Mandalorian Covert, you show them that. You tell them it’s from Din,” he paused to pant for breath, “Djarin. You tell them the foundling was in my protection – ‘n they’ll help you.”

Cara was staring at him, mythosaur skull pendant in her palm, eyes wide in desperation and denial. “We can make it!” she protested, and tried to tug him up. “Come on, let’s go!”

The movement made his head flare in sudden pain. “I’m not gonna make it and you know it,” he wheezed. He tried to rally himself to say something else – anything that would make her get the Child away safely – but then there was fire coming in through the window and Cara was throwing herself over him and Din might have blacked out again, just a bit, but he was awake when she sat back up and aware enough to know that time had just run out.

“You protect the Child,” he told her again. “I can hold them back long enough for you to escape. Let me have a warrior’s death.” To die protecting a foundling – songs would have been sung, if there were any other Mandalorians here to carry the story.

Cara leaned over, eyes wide, deadly serious. “I won’t leave you,” she hissed.

Her loyalty was touching. How could he make her understand? “This is the Way,” he choked out, the Basic burning his tongue.

There was the acceptance, and with it, the grief. But Cara only had a moment to wallow, because there was more fire coming in through the blackened frame where the door used to be and then a trooper with red-lined armor was silhouetted against the light, framed by the flames that had caught around the cantina. Din braced himself for the incoming accelerant, reached down for his blaster –

The Child was in the path of the flames.

The Child was standing between Cara and Din and the trooper, little hands raised, little head bowed, and the flames were bending away from him. They bent like the Child braced a shield, only there was nothing there, and Din took a moment to wonder hysterically if his head wound was causing him to hallucinate. Lifting a mudhorn was one thing – one, unbelievable thing – and healing a deadly wound was another, but this?

Manda and ka’ra all bless, the kid was pushing the fire back. He was pushing it back so far it consumed the trooper holding the flamethrower, and wasn’t that a clever bit of problem solving?

Din dropped his head back against the upended couch. Clever problem solving using magic powers. He wondered if this was what it was like to be hysterical. He felt… weirdly proud.

The kid keeled over. His magic did tend to tire him out, didn’t it? There was a clang from over by the wall, then another, and then Karga was shouting, “Come on! It’s open, let’s go!” That was the sewer vent, then. How had they gotten through it?

“Go,” he told Cara, and repeated it until she jerked herself upright. Good. They’d already had that whole conversation, and he didn’t think he had the energy left to put up another fight. The front of the cantina was extremely on fire now, so he didn’t even have to try to hold off any Imps to cover the retreat. That was nice.

And then the IG droid was crouching down next to him.

Din stared at it. What was it doing, staying here? Wasn’t it supposed to be a nurse droid now? If it was ignoring its new programming, then that could only mean one thing.

“Do it,” he told it.

Its cameras rotated a bit. Left, right. “Do what?”

“Just get it over with.” He rolled his head so that he wasn’t looking at it. “I’d rather you kill me than some Imp.”

“I told you,” it said, monotone voice perfectly pleasant, like they were discussing the weather. “I am no longer a hunter. I am a nurse droid.”

Yeah, Din had never bought that banthacrap. “IGs… are all hunters,” he panted. His head was getting worse, and the heat and the smoke really weren’t helping.

“Not this one. I was reprogrammed.” And then, without a pause, as if one thought led directly into the other, “I need to remove your helmet if I am to save you.”

Din just managed to get his hand on his blaster as IG-11’s claw clamped down on the rim of his helmet. He lifted it until it was pointing, very shakily, at the droid’s chest. “Try it and I’ll kill you.”

It didn’t move. Din felt, groggily, that more words were needed. “It is… forbidden.” Even more words? “No living thing has seen me without my helmet since I sw… swore the Creed.” Surely that was enough? Din really didn’t want to have to talk any more.

Those cameras did their little twitch, left, then right. “I am not a living thing.”

What?

Din didn’t move as the droid lifted his helmet off and set it gently to the side. The air felt strange on his aching face, and he couldn’t quite put together what had just happened.

“This is a bacta spray,” it said. Din felt something cool against the side of his head. “It will heal you in a matter of hours.”

He lowered his blaster into his lap. He was going to live?

He was going to live. And his helmet was off, but he hadn’t broken the Creed?

Din was much less sure about that one.

“You have suffered damage to your central processing unit,” IG-11 said.

Din blinked. He swallowed, with difficulty. Thinking was like running through sand. “You mean my brain?”

IG-11’s cameras twitched again. Left, right. “That was a joke. It is meant to put you at ease.” Din thought that was the first hint of threat he’d heard from it all day.

He couldn’t stop himself from huffing, the weakest laugh he’d ever produced. He…

What?

Chapter Text

Grogu blinked awake surrounded by canvas and the roar of speeders. He was in a… bag? One of those soft-sided bags that people used to haul around personal items. Grogu did not like what the bag and the speeders might mean – neither of them could possibly have come from the Razor Crest. Where did they come from? He stretched out cautiously with the Force.

He could only feel two people, neither of which he knew. Their minds didn’t really have any identifying features, and they were both focused on piloting, so there wasn’t anything to learn from their emotions, either. That was no help. But they were both focused on piloting, so Grogu could probably take a peek outside the bag without being noticed.

He fought his way free of the blanket, which was still wrapped around him, and pulled himself upright. One of the straps keeping the bag closed wasn’t fastened, and the flap was being kept slightly open by the wind, which made peeking out much easier. Grogu lifted his face into the gap and peered around.

Directly in his line of sight was a stormtrooper, the kind with the square blinders around their visors, on a speederbike. They looked at him long enough for Grogu to feel a quick brush of curiosity, then went back to focusing on piloting. The landscape was grey and rocky, so at least Grogu could be pretty sure they were still on Nevarro. He couldn’t see much of the person carrying him, but he saw the dingy white armor on their leg and the matching speederbike and drew some conclusions.

Grogu ducked back down into the bag. So. Some stormtroopers had taken him from Kuiil. That seemed bad. What was he going to do about it? Well, that was obvious – he would try to escape and make it back to Kuiil or Beroya! The troopers were on bikes, though. Were they even near enough to Kuiil for Grogu to be able to make it back any more?

He reached out with the Force, but he couldn’t feel anyone else in his range, even when he stretched out as far as he could. That seemed like a no, then. But before Grogu could think the problem through any more, he felt the bike turn sharply and slide to a halt.

“Speederbikes have arrived at the checkpoint with the asset,” said the trooper carrying Grogu, sounding bored. “Awaiting confirmation –”

Grogu squealed. He could feel people, right at the edge of his range – ow!

Tears welled up in his eyes and he reached up to cover the spot on his head with his hands. The trooper had hit him! That hurt! Grogu was so used to Beroya, he’d almost forgotten what it was like to be around adults who didn’t actually care. This sucked.

“Knock it off!” the trooper said, and waited a moment. Then, “Waiting for confirmation to continue into town.” They must have a comm or something. They definitely did, actually, because Grogu could hear the tinny sound of a voice filtered through a helmet vocoder and a comm. He couldn’t quite make out what it was saying, but apparently both the troopers could, because they both let off a wave of disbelief and the one carrying Grogu replied, “Standing by.”

The other trooper spoke up. “Did he just say that Gideon killed his own men?”

“Oh who knows,” snorted the one carrying Grogu. Grogu decided to call him Meanie One. “These guys like to lay down the law when they first arrive into town, y’know. You know how it is.” They were turning towards and away from the other trooper – Meanie Two – as they spoke, which made Grogu’s bag swing uncomfortably. He made a small noise about it, because he might throw up if that kept happening, and Meanie One hit him again! Owww…

“I said, shut up! Yeesh…” Meanie One sighed. Grogu resolved not to let them know if he was about to throw up. In fact, if he could manage to throw up on Meanie One, Grogu thought that would be perfect.

Meanie Two’s curiosity poked at Grogu again. “What is that thing, anyway?”

“Uh, I – I dunno, maybe Moff wants to eat it, I don’t ask questions.”

There was a moment of silence, which Grogu used to wonder if he could climb out of the bag without Meanie One noticing. Then, “… Can I see it?”

Grogu could practically hear the expression on Meanie One’s face. “Did you not just hear that Moff Gideon killed a dozen of his own troopers just to make a point?”

“Okay,” muttered Meanie Two defensively.

“I get that point,” Meanie One continued. “Do you get the point?”

“Yes I get the point.”

“Okay.” Meanie One seemed to think their own point had been made, and settled into disgruntled silence. Meanie Two was feeling sullen, but after a moment both of them started feeling more bored than anything. Grogu was not impressed by their attention span. He could spend hours doing nothing, if he had to. He had spent hours doing nothing, just yesterday! These full-grown adults couldn’t even last five seconds?

Then there was the sudden sound of a blaster shot, and Grogu jumped and only barely kept himself from making noise, heart hammering. Both troopers just felt bored, still, and there were a couple more shots. Were they… Grogu reached a bit deeper into the feelings he was catching from them, and got an image of something small with a bunch of wires sticking out of it sitting on the ground. They were just… idly trying to shoot it? Why?

Neither of them hit it, and Meanie Two’s curiosity came back quickly. “Should we offer that thing some water?”

That set off a round of bickering, briefly interrupted by Meanie One checking back in with whoever was on the comm and ending in Meanie One tearing the flap open, leaving Grogu blinking in the sudden light.

“See?” they huffed. “Take a peek. Everything’s fine.”

Meanie Two was gazing at Grogu in open wonder. Grogu would feel a lot kinder about this if Meanie Two hadn’t let Meanie One hit him. “What is that?” they breathed, reaching out and gingerly poking Grogu’s forehead. Oh, Grogu hated this. If that finger went anywhere else…

“I dunno, it’s a pet or something,” Meanie One said dismissively. They stepped away from Grogu’s bag, which they had set down on their bike.

“A pet? I thought you -” Which was when Meanie Two’s finger drifted down by Grogu’s face, and Grogu took the opportunity immediately. He lunged forward and bit down, hard. Meanie Two yelled and jerked away, clutching their finger, then whirled and punched Grogu hard.

This really sucked. That hurt! It had been worth it, though. Grogu bared his teeth at both troopers.

“Serves you right,” said Meanie One, fastening the flap closed over Grogu’s head again.

There was a distant clank. “Stop that,” said a droid voice, and Grogu perked up. Was that IG-11?

Both troopers felt sudden alarm. “Identify yourself!” one of them shouted.

“I am IG-11.” Yesss! Grogu worked himself around and pushed at the flap until it shifted enough for him to peek out with one eye. “I am this child’s nurse droid, and require that you remand him to me immediately.”

IG-11 was standing a few meters away, dusty and empty-handed. It didn’t stay that way, though – it walked forward as the troopers taunted it, and once they were in arm’s reach and had verbally refused to hand Grogu over, IG-11 attacked. Grogu watched with a great deal of satisfaction as it broke Meanie One’s arm and bashed Meanie Two into their bike until the bike was broken and the trooper wasn’t moving. Good. Grogu hadn’t liked them!

IG-11 walked over to Grogu and picked his bag up. Grogu squealed a greeting as it swung one leg over to sit on the bike and placed him in front of it, facing forward and with the flap open so he could see. It started up the bike and then paused, tilting its cameras down at Grogu.

“That was unpleasant,” it said. “I’m sorry you had to see that.” The bike shot forward before Grogu could protest that no, he’d been really happy to see that, actually! They had deserved it. They were mean!

While it piloted, IG-11 hoisted Grogu’s bag up and slipped the strap over its head so that the bag was strapped to its chest. Grogu was really impressed with how it managed to pilot with one hand and maneuver the bag with one hand, but he was very quickly distracted by the way the wind streamed by his face and made his eyes squint and his ears flap. This was so fun! Was this why people liked piloting? Grogu made lots of happy noises about it, squinting around at the landscape whooshing by.

“Kuiil has been terminated,” said IG-11, which was very confusing and upsetting, especially coming out of nowhere. Those troopers had killed Kuiil? Grogu’s happy noises cut off abruptly.

“What did you do,” came Beroya’s voice, which was when Grogu realized that IG-11 had been talking into Kuiil’s commlink. Beroya sounded upset. Grogu understood completely.

“I am fulfilling my base function,” IG-11 responded pleasantly.

“Which is?”

“To nurse and protect.” And then IG-11 leaned forward and the bike sped up, and they were approaching the arch at the edge of town really fast, and Grogu had a really hard time tracking what happened next except that apparently the bike had a built-in blaster and IG-11 had other blasters in its hands suddenly and every trooper they passed was winking out as they zoomed through town, building after building whipping by and – Grogu could feel Beroya ahead! And Cara! And Sneaky Man!

Grogu laughed in confused exhilaration. This was a fight, he thought, or maybe the start of one, but it was nothing like any fight he’d ever seen before.

Suddenly IG-11 tucked one blaster away and put that hand back on the bike’s controls and leaned, turning a corner so fast the bike tipped and Grogu felt like he could almost touch the ground – and then there was an opening in the buildings in front of them, a square or something, and it was full of troopers who were raising their blasters and Grogu barely had time to register the blaster bolts before IG-11 had tucked its arms around him and spun its torso around. Grogu was now facing backwards, ears flapping into his eyes, but he could still hear the bolts pinging off IG-11’s back. Wow! Beroya sure couldn’t do that!

There was a boom and Grogu blinked. IG-11 was standing on the ground now, how had that happened? Where had the bike gone? He twisted around to see a ball of flame against a building on the far side of the square. Oh. No wonder IG-11 had jumped.

Beroya and Cara and Sneaky Man’s Force signatures flared with surprise and determination and worry, although that last one was mostly Beroya, and Grogu felt them start to move. He really couldn’t tell what was happening, though – he knew he was still strapped to IG-11’s chest, and he knew IG-11 was shooting with both blasters, but it was also twisting its torso around to keep itself between Grogu and incoming blaster bolts, and it was making Grogu kind of dizzy. There were troopers everywhere in this square, so IG-11 had to twist its torso a lot.

Then IG-11 was just advancing, suddenly, still shooting with blasters in both hands but no longer twisting Grogu around, and Grogu didn’t know where it was going but it didn’t make it far because then it was jerking and falling to its knees with the impacts of blaster bolts against its back, and Grogu whimpered as its arms came up around his bag and pulled his Force sense back, hard. He’d been so focused on Beroya (and Cara and Sneaky Man) that he hadn’t really noticed the feeling of people dying, but now that he was less dizzy he was noticing it a lot and he didn’t like it.

The rain of blaster fire on IG-11’s back ended, and it staggered upright and onward. There was one explosion, and IG-11 twisted around so Grogu was facing backwards again. Another, and Grogu realized that he hadn’t been able to block out his sense of Beroya, because Beroya went all fuzzy. Grogu knew what that feeling meant. Beroya was hurt, and badly. But – but that couldn’t be right! Beroya had promised! He had promised that his armor could protect him! But then IG-11 was inching sideways along a wall and backing up into a doorway, and Grogu could see Cara already inside the building dragging Beroya along the floor, and Beroya wasn’t okay.

Grogu started squirming inside his bag. He wanted to go help! He could make Beroya be okay! But – he stopped as IG-11 unstrapped the bag and set Grogu on the floor near where Sneaky Man was half-crouched behind what looked like an upturned couch. There were a bunch of adults here that were helping, and what if they needed Grogu to help with keeping the troopers away while they treated Beroya’s injuries? Grogu would only be able to do one big thing, and that meant healing Beroya or fighting the troopers. He felt tears well up as he watched Cara crouch over Beroya. What should he do?

At the very least he could be ready to help, if he needed to. Grogu struggled free of the bag and stumbled over to Beroya’s legs, sprawled across the ground. He put one hand on the toe of Beroya’s boot, sticking up to Grogu’s shoulder-height, and shakily blocked out the pain leaking out from behind that familiar helmet. Beroya said something that Grogu couldn’t focus enough to understand and scrabbled at his neck with one hand. Was he having trouble breathing?

No – he’d been wearing something around his neck, under the armor, and he snapped the cord and handed it to Cara. He kept talking, and Grogu had to lean hard against the boot at the way Beroya’s voice wavered. He was going to be okay, right? Cara was going to fix him? Only – hadn’t Cara used the last medpack on Sneaky Man last night?

And then suddenly the Force was screaming DANGER through his shields and Grogu flinched hard as fire came bursting in through a window. It only lasted a few seconds, but it set a lot of the loose stuff lying on the floor of this building on fire. Grogu reached out and felt – creeping cold, pushing flames in front – and it was coming closer. More fire sailed in through the doorway, and Grogu found that he couldn’t look away. Now this – the shadow in the door, the pilot light standing out against dark metal, the red paint on white armor – this was something that none of the adults would be able to deal with. But Grogu could.

The trooper raised the flamethrower. Grogu stepped forward and lifted his hands. He reached.

Time seemed to slow down as Grogu grabbed two handfuls of the Force and brought it to bear. He felt the trooper’s finger pulling back on the trigger, and the mechanisms inside the flamethrower releasing fuel, and the fuel passing over the pilot light and catching fire, and even with time crawling along Grogu only just managed to get a shield up in time to deflect the flaming fuel before it hit his face. He took a moment to make sure none was getting past him, but he was ready now, and he pushed the fuel backwards – find your source, don’t you want to know what gave you life? – and it swallowed the trooper and the finger lifted and the fuel stopped coming and Grogu blinked and sat down.

The whole room in front of him was on fire.

Oops.

Chapter Text

Grogu opened his eyes and had a moment of confusion at the feeling of canvas surrounding him. Had he dreamed everything since waking up with the stormtroopers on the speeders? No – he must have fallen asleep after the fire. He was back in the bag, but this time the flap was open and he could see Cara carrying him. She wasn’t even carrying the bag by the strap – she was just cradling it in one arm. What was the point of the bag, then? She might as well just carry Grogu!

The lighting was weird. Grogu could barely see Cara’s face. Why was it so dark? Grogu twisted around to see Sneaky Man walking beside Cara and a flashlight in Cara’s other hand. They were in… some kind of stone tunnel? There were cutouts in the ceiling every few meters that let light in, but that added up to not very much light. And… Grogu couldn’t see anyone else. Where were Beroya and IG-11? Grogu reached out cautiously with the Force, but he couldn’t feel them anywhere in his range. There was also something poking him in the side, which was very distracting and made it hard to concentrate. Grogu fished the pokey thing out from the folds of canvas.

Wow. What was this? It was all silver and shiny, like Beroya’s armor, about as big as one of Grogu's hands, and it was shaped like the skull of some animal with two long, curving tusks. Grogu gently touched the tip of one claw to the tip of a tusk. He wasn’t good at reading memories off of objects unless they were very strong, but this was old, and it had spent all that time being loved. Grogu closed his eyes and savored the gentle warmth in the Force, and his hand brushed against leather.

He opened his eyes and saw that the shiny skull was attached to a leather cord at the top. He pulled the cord into the light and saw the knot partway down, and the rough break preventing it from being a circle going through a ring on the shiny skull. Oh! This must have been what Beroya had been wearing around his neck, that he had given to Cara! Grogu hadn’t known Beroya even had this. It seemed really important. Had Cara just dropped it in the bag? What if they lost the bag? Grogu didn’t think Beroya would want to lose this.

Grogu carefully unpicked the existing knot and dropped the shorter length of cord into the bag, then tied the remaining broken end to the smooth one. There! Grogu grinned, triumphant. The cord wasn’t really long enough for Beroya to wear around his neck any more, but it would fit Grogu just fine! He maneuvered the cord over his head and around his ears and tucked the shiny skull into the front of his clothes. Now he wouldn’t lose it, no matter what! Grogu gave the lump on his chest a satisfied pat.

With that taken care of, Grogu was just about to reach out again to look for Beroya when there was a sound from behind them and Cara and Sneaky Man whirled around. Grogu blinked. Someone else had a light! They were walking down a side passage, and Cara and Sneaky Man were radiating tension and reaching for blasters but before they could do anything the other person walked into the tunnel where they could see.

It was Beroya! And IG-11! Grogu was about to make a very happy noise – Cara definitely agreed, and had already started walking forward in a surge of relief – but then he noticed that Beroya was leaning hard on IG-11 and he reached out to see if Beroya was okay, instead. He felt a lot less fuzzy than he had before the fire, which seemed good! Did IG-11 have a medpack? He was still leaking pain, though, which Grogu did not like.

Cara reached Beroya and handed Grogu to IG-11, ducking under Beroya’s shoulder and taking his weight in exchange. “I gotcha,” she said, and started helping him walk, one arm around his waist.

Grogu pouted. He wanted to hug Beroya too!

They all kept walking down the tunnel, and they kept going for a while. There were other tunnels that looked exactly the same, which Beroya turned them down sometimes, but nobody actually seemed to know which way to go. Beroya kept feeling better and better, though, and eventually he stopped leaning on Cara and looked around. “We’re close,” he said, gesturing to something that Grogu couldn’t see, and strode off. Grogu blinked. He could feel someone new in that direction – someone almost as shiny as Beroya! Were they going to meet them?

They passed some stairs winding upwards into bright light and then Beroya stopped, suddenly the center of a storm of horror-grief-pain. Grogu whimpered. Beroya’s light turned off and then he was stepping forward again, slowly, and then Grogu could see what Beroya had seen – a huge pile of armor, gleaming dully in the dim light. Grogu pushed back against the way Beroya’s emotions were making the helmets look like humanoid skulls to Grogu’s eyes as Beroya slowly dropped to his knees in front of the pile, shoulders hunching inwards under his cape.

Slowly, Beroya reached out and picked up a helmet. Cara waited a few seconds, feeling sorrow-sympathy, and then stepped forward. “We should go,” she murmured.

Beroya didn’t look up. “You go. Take the ship. I can’t leave it this way.” And then his feelings shifted towards anger and his helmet swiveled towards Sneaky Man and he demanded, “Did you know about this? Is this the work of your bounty hunters?”

Sneaky Man’s discomfort turned to injured surprise. “No!” he said. “When you left the system and took the prize the fighting ended, and the hunters just melted away! You know how it is!” Sneaky Man had one hand propped on his hip, the other gesturing to emphasize his words. “They’re mercenaries, they’re not zealots!”

Beroya dropped the helmet and stood so fast that it took a moment for Grogu to understand what had happened. His anger grew to blot out all his other emotions as he strode up to Sneaky Man and pushed a finger into his chest and shouted, “Did you do this! Did you!”

“No!” Sneaky Man shouted back –

“It was not his fault,” called a voice filtered through a vocoder. Grogu blinked at the way all of Beroya’s emotions hushed into relief as he turned towards the voice, and then there was a lady with a golden helmet and a fur half-cape coming out of a side passage. Oh! Grogu had seen her before! In his dream, where he had learned Beroya’s name!

“We revealed ourselves,” Golden Lady continued, walking evenly over to the pile of armor. “We knew what could happen if we left the Covert.” She bent down and picked a piece of armor up and looked it over. “The Imperials arrived shortly thereafter. This is what resulted.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, but her feelings were one deep well of grief.

Beroya stepped forward and away from Sneaky Man, filled with desperate hope. “Did any survive?”

“I hope so,” Golden Lady replied, now moving armor piece by piece from the pile to a nearby hovercart. “Some may have escaped off-world.”

Beroya hesitated, visor moving from Golden Lady to the armor pile to the hovercart and back, emotions whirling so fast Grogu could only catch their echoes. “Olaro ti mhi,”¹ he said, and Grogu blinked. That wasn’t Basic. That was the language Beroya spoke sometimes when he was tired!

“Nayc,” Golden Lady said, gently placing a helmet into the cart. “Ni ne’ba’slana ibic taap akay ni marbi megin arasuumyc.”² She gripped the cart’s handle and pushed it into the side passage. Beroya followed. Cara and Sneaky Man exchanged a glance, sharing confusion, before also stepping forward, and Grogu gasped as IG-11 carried him into what turned out to be a big room with a circle of powerful blue jets of flame in the center. There were workbenches lining the walls and tools everywhere. What was this place?

Golden Lady parked the cart next to the circle of flame and used some tongs to move a piece of armor into the center of the circle, where it melted like ice on a desert planet. Grogu lost track of the Force as he stared, eyes wide.

“Ke’tengaana ni solus morut’yc be’adu saan ibic naastla,”³ Golden Lady said, turning towards Beroya. Beroya stepped forward and gestured to Grogu.

“Ibic cuyi solus,”⁴ he said. Sneaky Man and Cara exchanged another glance from where they’d tucked themselves against a wall.

“Tion’ibic cuyi solus bac gar oya’kari, ven’la tegaanali?”⁵ Golden Lady sounded skeptical, and Grogu shrunk under her gaze. He didn’t know what she or Beroya were saying, but he scrambled for the Force again and felt her doubt. Did she not like him?

Beroya nodded. “Elek. Solus bac tegaanali ni balyc.”⁶

That made Golden Lady turn, a thread of surprise winding off her shoulders. “Tion’mudhorn teh.”⁷

“Elek.”⁸

“Haa’tayli nu’gaataylyc,”⁹ she said, now considering as her visor swiveled back to Grogu. He shrank even further. He hadn’t felt like this in a long time – like someone older and wiser than him was taking his measure, and finding him wanting.

Beroya shook his head. “Kadala, al nu’ne nu’gaataylyc. Droten be’bic liser shaadla kebise ti mirshe.”¹⁰ He sounded excited, almost, and Grogu perked up a little.

Golden Lady turned back towards the flames. “Ni kar’tayli be asyc kebise.”¹¹ She set down her tongs and picked up a big weird spoon, and curiosity spilled out of Beroya. “Laare be were ruyot rejorhaa’i be sol’akaane acyk Mand’alor haar Ori’jate, bal solus tsad be nakar’lisan gai Jetii – Jedi – bac ru’akaani pirimmu asyc nakar’lis.”¹² She dipped the spoon into the middle of the circle of flames and turned back to Beroya.

He felt a little nervous and sounded hesitant as he said, “Tion aru’e?”¹³

“Nayc,” said Golden Lady, with the same finality as she had earlier. “Tsad droten be’bic ru’aru’e, al ibic solus ne’cuyi.”¹⁴ She turned and walked over to a workbench, and Beroya took a few steps to follow her.

“Tion’meg bic?”¹⁵

“Mar’ey’ad.” The doors to a cabinet on top of the workbench swung open as Golden Lady approached. “De Haa’miit, gar cabur.”¹⁶

Sneaky Man shifted, leaking don’t understand and impatience, as Beroya reared back. “Tion’baju gar ni copaani ibic kebi?”¹⁷ he demanded, jabbing a finger towards Grogu.

“Ori’laandur,” Golden Lady said dismissively. “Ven’nari ramaana. Gar nu’gana gaanade – ente’solyc bic ti droten be’bic.”¹⁸ She bent over the workbench, doing something that Grogu couldn’t see.

Beroya’s hand dropped under the weight of his surprise and sudden focus. “Tion’vaii?”¹⁹

“Ibic, gar ente’mareyi.”²⁰ Golden Lady put down the spoon and picked up a hammer.

“Gar ke’gyce ni bah echoyli oyu par yaim be’ibic kebi bal dinui at droten be aru’ela nakar’lisane,”²¹ Beroya said, voice flat, dripping with disbelief.

Golden Lady turned to face him. Grogu thought that she was probably giving Beroya a look, which the tilt of her helmet communicated really well. Grogu was impressed. “Serim’nare,”²² she said.

Beroya met her gaze, visor to visor, for a long moment before slowly bowing his head. He was once again a storm of emotion, too much for Grogu to pick apart. Golden Lady turned back to the workbench and brought her hammer down on something there, once, twice, three times.

Cara turned from the workbench she’d been examining and eyed Beroya and Golden Lady, impatience and anxiety finally breaking through. “Hey,” she said, stepping forward. “These tunnels will be lousy with Imps in a matter of minutes. We should at least discuss an escape plan!”

Golden Lady put down the hammer, but her hands kept moving. “If you follow the descending tunnel it will lead you to the underground river. It flows downstream toward the lava flats.”

Cara nodded and turned to give Beroya a look. Grogu thought it wasn’t nearly as good a look as Golden Lady's look. Sneaky Man took the opportunity to step forward.

“I think we should go,” he said, slightly nervous.

Beroya shook his head and swayed a little. “I’m staying,” he said. “I need to help her and I need to heal.”

“You must go,” Golden Lady declared. “A foundling is in your care. By Creed, until it is of age or reunited with its own kind, you are as its father.” She picked something up in big tongs and lowered it into a nearby bucket, where it steamed and hissed, as she spoke.

Cara got a funny look on her face, and Grogu stopped being able to understand her feelings either. It didn’t matter though – he was too busy staring at Beroya, whose own emotions had suddenly split into surprise-happiness and fear-grief. He was staring back at Grogu, still swaying a little.

“This is the Way,” murmured Golden Lady. Grogu got the feeling she had known exactly what reaction her words would cause, and she was very pleased about it. She finished whatever she was doing and turned to face Beroya, a small flash-welder and something small and metal glinting in her hands.

“Gar nari parji aliik,”²³ she said solemnly, and strode forward until she stood by Beroya’s right shoulder. Both of her hands came up and sparks flew from the flash-welder as Cara paced impatiently towards the door, and when Golden Lady stepped away there was a shiny new image of an animal skull on Beroya’s shoulder armor. Grogu squinted. No, wait, he knew that animal – that was a mudhorn skull! Just like the one he had helped Beroya kill! Why had Golden Lady added that to Beroya’s armor?

Golden Lady stepped back from Beroya’s shoulder and looked back up at him. “Gar cuyi Aliit be t’ad.”²⁴

Beroya stared down at his own shoulder for a long moment. “Vor entye,” he croaked. “Ni jori ti ijaat.”²⁵

Grogu’s ear twitched as something exploded somewhere else in the tunnels. Everyone in the room – except for IG-11 – tensed and looked towards the door, and then IG-11 was handing Grogu to Cara and walking out. Cara radiated discomfort as she gingerly tucked Grogu’s bag into her arms, which Grogu thought was kind of funny. She’d carried him all the way through the tunnels with no problems at all, and now she was worried about him being a baby?

(Which he wasn’t, by the way. He was fifty. He was a toddler, at least.)

By the time Cara had stopped distracting Grogu with settling and re-settling his bag in her arms, something else had happened between Beroya and Golden Lady that Grogu had missed! He pouted about it, but there was the sound of blasterfire from the tunnels, closer than the explosion had been, and everyone went quiet and looked at the door again.

IG-11 clanked back into view and lowered its blasters. “You are protected,” it said mildly.

Golden Lady handed something big and shiny with thrusters on the bottom to IG-11, and Beroya grabbed something from a workbench, and then Cara was following Sneaky Man back out into the tunnels to the sound of Golden Lady calling “Now go! Down to the river and across the plains!” and Grogu pouted again because he was missing whatever Golden Lady was saying to Beroya to say goodbye! She seemed really important to Beroya, and she spoke that language with him, and Grogu wanted to know more!

Grogu tucked the memory of “you are as its father” away to think about later. He wasn’t totally clear about what a father was, but the way Golden Lady had said it had given it weight, and Cara and Beroya had reacted really strongly.

Beroya caught up to Cara and IG-11 and Sneaky Man in the tunnel outside Golden Lady’s workroom. They all exchanged looks – Grogu was familiar with this, they were making sure everyone was there and armed and ready – and hurried on towards the next crossroads.

Chapter Text

Cara lasted all of two minutes before she opened her mouth. “So… what was all that back there?” she asked, glancing sideways at Beroya.

He took a moment to answer, emotions rolling like water boiling hard. “Goran asked about the kid and told me to protect him until I can return him to his people.”

“Okay…” Cara said doubtfully, “but what language was that? I’ve heard you use it before, with the kid.”

Beroya peeked around a corner and waved everyone forward. “Mando’a. Mandalorian.”

“Oh. That makes sense.” Cara paused. “What’s with the shoulder thing then?”

Before Beroya could answer, they rounded another corner and heat blasted into Grogu’s face, making him blink. The tunnel only continued for another few meters, and ended with a long, flat boat at the end of a pier, opening up onto a much larger tunnel filled with slow-moving glowing rock. Sneaky Man hurried a few steps forward. “This is the lava river,” he said, pointing ahead, and Grogu squinted at him. They could all see that. What was the point of saying it?

As they drew closer, it became clear that the boat had not moved in a long time. There was rubble piled up inside of it, some of which was partially on top of the astromech at the rear, which was also more than slightly scorched. Beroya peered down at it and let off a flash of frustration.

“The ferry droid is fried,” he said.

Sneaky Man was filled with desperate energy. “Yeah but – if we push the boat out, we can get it to float downstream,” he said, gesturing. “Come on!” He bent down and leaned on the side of the boat.

Beroya was doubtful, and said so, but joined in pushing. Grogu peered down at the boat. Why wasn’t it moving? Beroya was strong, and Sneaky Man was helping, and the boat wasn’t that big. It was a boat. It floated. The spot where the boat touched the stone pier looked funny, though, all crusted over, like someone had poured stone all over it… Oh! The boat had melted onto the pier! Wow, the lava river must be really hot!

Beroya gave up on pushing and found a nearby length of metal to try to use as a prybar, but Cara lost all patience and just shot the crusty stone a bunch with her machine blaster. It did work, and it was fast, but Grogu eyed the small holes in the boat as it started floating away from the pier and thought that they could probably have found another way.

Everyone hopped into the boat, which started drifting gently downstream. Grogu squinted down the tunnel. There was a tiny spot of light way off in the distance – was that the opening to the plains? Cara turned suddenly and broke his line of sight before he could figure it out, but that was okay, because she had turned because of the noise of the ferry droid booting up, and Grogu stared up at it with wide eyes as it unfolded four long limbs and stood up, and up, and up, and picked up a metal pole. Rubble tumbled down its curved dome and off into the lava. Grogu had never seen an astromech with arms and legs before! It even had two little extra arms tucked up under the longer arms, right by its… waist? Where its legs connected to its body, anyway.

Grogu didn’t think anyone else had seen anything like the ferry droid before either. They were all pointing their blasters at it, and stayed wary as IG-11 translated its question about where they were going. Sneaky Man answered, projecting confidence even while his blaster stayed steady.

“Down river,” he said, too loud. “To the lava flat.”

The ferry droid chirped cheerfully and dug its pole into the river, pushing the boat forward. Everyone kept watching it for a moment, but when nothing else happened, there was a general movement of blasters holstering. Grogu blinked and tipped his head. Was the ferry droid… humming? That was… different. Grogu wondered if it had even noticed how long it’d been inactive.

Everyone stood around for a bit, but the lava river was really long, and eventually they shifted around. IG-11 and Sneaky Man didn’t seem to feel the need to move, but Beroya went up to the front of the boat and looked ahead, and Cara shifted away from the ferry droid in the back as well and set down her machine blaster. Grogu spent the time listening to the ferry droid’s humming and feeling out the little minds on the banks and in the tunnels around them. They were some kind of small rodent, he thought, but they didn’t seem to mind the heat at all – some of them even went right up to the edge of the river! – so they probably weren’t standard rats.

Probably.

It took a while, but the spot of light downstream got bigger and bigger, and eventually it got big enough for Sneaky Man to notice it. “That’s it!” he said with a jolt of excitement, pointing forwards. “We’re free!”

Beroya took a step towards the front of the boat. A creeping sense of dread started to spill out of him. “No. No, we’re not.” His voice lowered. “Stormtroopers – flanking the mouth of the tunnel. It looks like an entire platoon… they must know we’re coming.”

Grogu wondered if Beroya thought the troopers might hear them if he was too loud. That was silly – they were still ages away from the troopers, and the river made its own small noises that would help drown him out!

Cara told the ferry droid to stop the boat. It didn’t seem to hear her, and she shot its head off. Grogu stared up at her. Why had she done that? The poor droid hadn’t done anything to deserve it, and the boat was still going, carried by the current. Maybe the thread of panic trickling off of her made it hard for her to think right now? She looked down at Grogu and bounced him soothingly. He blinked. Did she think that would help?

“We’re still moving,” said Sneaky Man, unhelpfully. They could all see that. Grogu remembered an observation that he’d made many times in the past – stress made people a little bit stupid. He huffed.

“Then we fight,” Cara declared.

Beroya shook his head. “There are too many.”

“Well then what do you suggest, ‘cause I can’t surrender!”

“They will not be satisfied with anything less than the child,” commented IG-11. It swiveled towards Beroya. “This is unacceptable. I will eliminate the enemy and you will escape.”

“You don’t have that kind of firepower, pal,” Beroya said, still facing the tunnel mouth. He was focused, and Cara and IG-11 hadn’t distracted him at all. “You wouldn’t even get to daylight.”

“That is not my objective,” IG-11 said calmly. That got through to Beroya – he turned, visor tilting towards IG-11.

“We’re getting close,” Cara interrupted. “Saddle up!” She stepped forward, handing Grogu off to IG-11 as she passed, and picked up her machine blaster from the floor near the front of the boat.

IG-11 accepted Grogu easily, shifting the big shiny thing that it had been holding since Golden Lady gave it to it under its other arm. Grogu peeked at it curiously. He hadn’t gotten to look at it up close yet – it had all sorts of interesting ridges on it, and those thrusters on the bottom. What was it?

“I still have the security protocols from my manufacturer,” IG-11 continued as if nothing had happened. “If my designs are compromised, I must self-destruct.”

Beroya… hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“I am not permitted to be captured. I must be destroyed.”

Grogu blinked at the flash of understanding and surprise from Beroya. “You would do that for us?”

IG-11’s cameras twitched towards Grogu. “For the Child. Yes.” It set the big shiny thing down on the cargo compartment, sticking up to waist-height in the middle of the boat, and held Grogu out towards Beroya. “My base command is to keep the Child safe. This supersedes my manufacturer’s protocols. Please tell me the Child will be safe in your care. If you do so, I can default to my secondary command.”

Carefully, Beroya took Grogu from IG-11 and tucked him against his chest. He inclined his head, radiating grave respect. “I swear by the Ka’ra, the Child will be safe in my care.”

IG-11 didn’t move for one, long moment. Grogu thought that if it had the right joints, it would have bowed its own head in return. Instead, it just turned towards the side of the boat and reached out.

“IG!” called Sneaky Man, startled and upset, when IG-11 gripped the edge of the boat and swung itself down into the river. The lava only came up to just below its knees, and it left twin trails of bright orange behind it as its thin legs broke the crust of hardened stone. It walked increasingly jerkily towards the mouth of the tunnel and halted just outside, lava now reaching above its knees, flaming where the materials of its joints had caught fire. Grogu could just barely see stormtrooper armor and blasters, lining the river on both sides of IG-11.

“Manufacturer’s protocol dictates I cannot be captured,” said that smooth voice, glitching and distorted. “I must be destroyed.” Something beeped a couple times, and then –

Grogu pulled in his Force sense just as IG-11 disappeared into a ball of flame. He watched and waited until the fireball had dissipated before reaching back out. There were no more stormtroopers to be felt outside.

Sneaky Man had moved up right behind Beroya while IG-11 had been in the river and he was now standing there, frozen, full head to toe with shock. Cara remained on guard, machine blaster at the ready, steady focus drowning out her other emotions. After a few seconds, Beroya turned and set Grogu down on the floor, propped up against the side of the boat, then turned back and drew his blaster. The boat drifted on.

Sunlight lit up the ash-covered metal at the front of the boat and slid slowly over Cara and Beroya. Beroya took one look around and lowered his blaster to his side, leaking relief. Grogu couldn’t see anything but sky from the floor, but he didn’t particularly want to see the aftermath of IG-11’s explosion, so that was okay. Cara was still tense, peering around suspiciously, and Sneaky Man’s shock only grew. Grogu wondered if they were going to take the boat all the way back to the Razor Crest, or if they were going to have to walk again. That would take forever, he didn’t want to!

Distantly, Grogu noticed a roaring sound, like a faraway engine. He started to get a bad feeling.

The adults all looked up and around at the noise. “Moff Gideon!” Cara shouted, and Grogu glimpsed something that was probably a TIE fighter moving really fast flying towards them before the blaster bolts coming from the adults obscured it. There were a few impacts from the fighter cannons nearby, and Grogu wondered what Beroya and Cara and Sneaky Man thought blasters were going to be able to do to a spaceship with fighter shields. Also, who was Moff Gideon?

“He missed!” Sneaky Man said. Grogu huffed again. They would have all noticed if he hadn’t!

“He won’t next time,” said Beroya grimly, and started thinking as hard as Grogu had ever seen him think. Grogu could just catch the edge of his thoughts as he came up with and discarded plan after plan.

Cara let the nose of her machine blaster drop. “Our blasters are useless against him,” she growled, that thread of panic returning.

Sneaky Man perked up. “Let’s make the baby do the magic hand thing!” he said. Grogu turned his head and gave Sneaky Man a blank stare. Sneaky Man holstered one blaster and held up three fingers, obviously imitating Grogu’s hand, and wiggled them. “Come on, baby! Do the magic hand thing!”

Grogu didn’t know what Sneaky Man meant. Did he just want to see Grogu’s hand? Grogu waved.

Sneaky Man’s hand dropped with a flash of disappointment. “I’m out of ideas.”

Was that not what Sneaky Man had wanted?

“I’m not,” muttered Beroya, one plan caught in his mind, and holstered his blaster.

“Here he comes!” Cara yelled, lifting her blaster back into position. Beroya picked up the big shiny thing, pulled his cape out of the way, and swung it onto his back, where it stuck. The thrusters fired at the same time as Cara did, and there were more explosions as the fighter fired –

Beroya shot up into the air, and the fighter blasted past under him.

Grogu gasped, eyes wider than they’d ever been, as Beroya seemed to hover for a moment – and then that cable shot out from his arm armor and he was gone.

The big shiny thing was a jetpack!

Grogu wanted a jetpack!

Cara and Sneaky Man turned in unison, eyes fixed on something Grogu couldn’t see. The fighter, probably, or Beroya. What was Beroya doing up there?

“… Okay,” Cara said after a few seconds, radiating disbelief, “seems like he’s got this.” She slung her machine blaster over her shoulder and bent to pick Grogu up, just as something went boom in the distance. Grogu looked around frantically from his new height and spotted the fighter spinning fast, way high up in the air. Cara and Sneaky Man hopped off the boat and a speck detached from the fighter and fell –

The fighter exploded!

No, wait, that wasn’t right – something on one of the wings had exploded, and now the fighter was crashing! The speck fell for another few seconds and then sprouted little flares, and Grogu realized that it was Beroya, hopping off before the fighter went down. Oh, good! Beroya managed to land not too far away from them, and Sneaky Man and Cara walked forward to meet him.

They all started talking, but Grogu was not interested in whatever they were saying. Beroya’s armor wasn’t shiny at all any more, all covered in soot and carbon scoring and reflecting dull browns and grays in weird patterns, and Grogu couldn’t tell what parts of Beroya were hurting because of the fight earlier or what parts were newly injured. All the stuff on his armor made it impossible to tell by looking with his eyes, too! Grogu was just going to have to find out by going over there himself.

He looked up at Cara and gave a small squeal. She finished what she was saying and put him down, which wasn’t quite what he’d been going for, but that was fine, he could adapt! He struggled out of the bag, leaving it crumpled on the ground behind him, and toddled over to Beroya’s leg. Beroya looked down at him just as he put out his hands to hug Beroya’s boot, but looked up again when Sneaky Man started talking. Grogu huffed impatiently. It felt like Beroya’s legs were mostly okay, but he would like to check over the rest of him, please!

Finally, Sneaky Man finished whatever he was saying, and Beroya bent down to pick Grogu up. He tucked Grogu against his chest armor and looked down at him, relief-grief-pain swirling around other emotions that Grogu couldn’t identify. “I’m afraid I have more pressing matters at hand,” he said.

Grogu didn’t think Beroya seemed afraid at all, actually, although maybe he should after taking down a fighter like that. Without another ship, or even any kind of cannon! Beroya really was the best fighter in the whole galaxy, Grogu thought smugly.

Cara stepped forward and gently gripped the fleshy part of Grogu’s ear, rubbing it between her gloved fingers. Grogu squeaked at her about it. “Take care of this little one,” she told Beroya, full of affection.

“Or maybe, it’ll take care of you,” Sneaky Man added, running one finger along the top of the same ear once Cara had stepped back. What was it with adults and Grogu’s ears?

Beroya gave Cara and Sneaky Man a nod and turned away, adjusting his hold on Grogu. He only took a few steps before Grogu heard the low roar of the jetpack’s thrusters, and then they were flying! Grogu turned his face into the wind and laughed. Now this was how to travel!

It took barely any time at all to get back to the Razor Crest – a whole day of walking, and it only took them an hour of flying to cover the same distance! Grogu and Beroya both got really sad when they got there, though, because Kuiil’s body was just… lying on the ground nearby. Beroya got a shovel out of the Crest and buried him, and then he let Grogu help find and carry stones to build a cairn over the grave. Beroya put Kuiil’s hat and goggles on top of the tallest stone, and they both told it goodbye before getting back into the Crest.

Beroya took his jetpack off in the hold and carried Grogu up the ladder into the cockpit. He set Grogu down on the same seat as usual, only his box wasn’t there. Grogu wondered if Beroya was going to go get it later, once they had taken off. Actually – now that they had a moment… Grogu reached into the front of his clothes and pulled out the shiny skull. It still felt really nice in the Force, and he chewed on it idly while Beroya began the start-up sequence. His mouth made a little sucking noise, which made Beroya turn around kind of suddenly.

“What d’you got there?” he asked, and reached out to gently extract the shiny skull from Grogu’s fist. As soon as he could see what it was he stopped, arm still outstretched. He stared for a few seconds, leaking surprise-happiness-grief. “I didn’t think I’d see this again,” he murmured. He spent another few seconds staring, and then his visor tilted from the shiny skull up to Grogu.

“Why don’t you hang onto that,” he said, and held it back out for Grogu to take.

Grogu grabbed the shiny skull and started chewing on it again, watching Beroya. He was trying to focus on starting up the engines and flying off Nevarro, Grogu thought, but he was still feeling a lot of things, and his armor was still dirty, and he was definitely still hurt. It had been a long two days, Grogu decided. He was going to get Beroya to lie down as soon as he could.