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Din leans back in the leather pilot seat, elbows sliding into the armrest’s worn grooves as they enter the darkness of space
Even if he knew the destination, he couldn’t chart a course – partially due to being mentally and physically exhausted after narrowly escaping the Guild’s collective retribution - but mainly because he can’t shake the sense that he should be barreling towards ocean dunes of Karnac clutching an assortment of bounty pucks. Instead, he stares at the acceleration handle’s raw steel gleam, it’s missing round ball presumably still clutched by the kid, snoring steadily behind him.
Accepting that neither he, the kid, nor the Crest are going anywhere, anytime soon, Din shifts to accommodate the dull ache around his left hip, but this only amplifies his bruised ribs. He twists a sideways little bit, then gradually leans his right shoulder more into the chair until pain becomes tension, which slowly unravels, into the wide corridors of sleep.
He’s ripped out of it by an unearthly metallic whine. The noise consumes everything around him, sound submerging all senses. He bolts upright, hands flying to either side of the helmet, fingers searching blindly for the slightly recessed groove that turns off the sound emitter. It takes a few seconds, but even when the sound cuts off, his hands are still shaking. The whining noise still echoes in his skull, giving way only slowly to the sound of his own pounding heartbeat.
Din doesn’t recall the helmet taking any significant hits, but that means little given the sheer intensity of their escape. Any one of many stray blaster bolts could have damaged the sound emitter’s mechanism, which now has to be diagnosed and fixed. He should have checked his gear before allowing himself to relax, but the need to get the kid settled, the fact that there was a kid at all to get settled, threw him off his routine. Never mind, he has time to make the repair now. There's nowhere they need to be.
Din turns to the passenger seat to check that the kid’s still sleeping and decides that it’s safe to venture below for the repair.
Starting down the ladder from the cockpit, Din makes a mental note to grab a softer, warmer blanket for the kid on the way back up.
It's fairly easy to repair the circuitry in the chest plate, even the vambraces are a simple fix. He can do those in the field, the soldering iron just as useful for cauterizing wounds as it is in reconnecting electronic circuits. The helmet, however, is another matter. It's not only the sound and motion sensors that he has to worry about but the complicated electrical system powering the HUD.
Although helmet malfunctions are rare, so rare that he keeps the diagnostic kit stored in the back of the Crest rather than in one of the more forward compartments, Din doesn’t question what needs to be done. Use of the kit, and the specialized tools required for most patch-ups, was essential training in the fighting corps.
If weapons are a part of Din’s religion as a Mandalorian, wearing the helmet is the unwavering practice of it, confirming his identity not only to others but to himself. Although he's schooled himself to view the helmet as another part of his armor, he knows that it’s not. The beskar chest plate protects his body. The helmet shields his soul.
He’s sworn the Creed, speaks the language, wears the armor, and protects the tribe. Like the others in the Covert, no one alive has ever seen his face. And nobody ever will, Din thinks with a sigh of relief after giving one quick scan of the Crest’s shadows before lifting off the helmet and nestling it in the sleeping compartment.
Even given the Crest’s low lighting, Din squints. The shadows cast an inky blackness, the round bulkhead lights on opposing walls reflect warm circles of orangish-yellow. Despite being submerged in the overwhelming realness of it all, he feels disconnected, lacking the constant stream of data from the HUD. Data provide meaning, alert him to the presence of enemies, supply him with the knowledge necessary for survival. The deep golden hues glinting off the metallic sides of the Crest only make his shoulders tighten and his nose itch.
Moving past the armory and turning left towards the back of the ship, Din breathes deeply in an effort to dispel the tension, but it does little good. Despite the Crest’s filtering system, the air smells different, slightly acidic, no doubt from the carbonite cloud released to force Greef Karga from the ship. It makes him feel even more exposed.
It’s darker back here, so it takes some time, without the helmet’s lighting system, for Din to locate the diagnostic kit by the carbonite freezer. Concentrating in his attempt to unfasten the complex webbing that secures the kit and trying to disconnect from the world around him, Din misses the soft shhhh of the opening cockpit door.
As he unbuckles the kit, one of the freezer hoses twists away, hissing and gasping carbonite fog. Having earlier cut the line, he pauses to secure it against the hose again. Carbonite isn’t cheap and he doesn’t know when he’ll see another payday, so it’s best to conserve what he has. As the hissing finally fades to nothing, he hears the oddest noise, a faint, but somewhat organic sharp clicking.
For a split second, Din imagines that another being, another hunter, crept aboard with Karga, but dismisses the thought. His mind runs through a myriad of electrical and mechanical possibilities, but having just been rebuilt by himself and Kuill, the Crest functions flawlessly. The noise doesn’t seem to be coming from the Crest’s internal workings, but something moving around on it.
Thunk…..Scritch…. Scrabble… Scrabble.
Din inhales sharply - only tiny claws on the Crest’s ridged durasteel floor, could make this sound, claws like the ones most recently employed to unscrew, then clutch the acceleration lever’s little silver ball.
The child’s faint but unmistakable “coo” traps Din just as securely as he snared the Mythrol, less than a week ago.
Grogu wakes up alone, one claw still firmly clutching the shiny, slightly spitty, silver ball. He’s wedged into the corner formed by the chair’s back and seat cushion, under the ratty brown blanket.
Extracting himself, Grogu leans forward, expecting to see the man’s dull shine, and huffs in surprise when the chair turns out to be empty.
He’s still a little tired and more than a little hungry, and what he wants most of all, with his throat still sore from shrieking and a dull throb settling into his side, is the man’s voice, soft and low, telling him not to be afraid.
Grogu grabs the edge of the seat and swings himself to the floor. The door opens easily, but the ladder’s a little trickier, especially as he still has the ball. He should have left it back in the chair but just needed something to hold.
He makes his way down the ladder clutching the top rung with one hand and dropping until his clawed feet grab the next rung. Grunting, falling, holding the ball tightly, he reaches the foot of the ladder.
Compared to where he was, this place is much bigger. Towering metal cabinets catch his eye first, then, turning, he sees yellowish light reflecting from tubing and wires, but there’s no sign of the man. He peers into corners, stumbles toward the cabinets, and then, so high up that he almost misses it, there’s a familiar dull silvery gleam.
Grogu coos softly with recognition and relief.
It’s the kid, Din tells himself. It’s just the kid. Relax. Take in a breath, let it out. Don’t pay attention to the windy way breathing sounds, the acidic smell of the Crest, the deep yellow warmth of the light ahead. Close your eyes. Shut it out. Breathe.
It doesn’t do any good.
It was foolish to remove the helmet, to leave it, and to allow himself the belief that a child, once asleep, would stay that way for any length of time.
He really didn't have a choice.
Din runs through previous experience, looks for solutions provided by blasters, flamethrowers, a hastily executed right hook. There’s nothing that’s prepared him for this, no specific technique that he can use or weapon to deploy.
There was a moment during the recent battle when Din, having exhausted all weaponry, held the child close, better to protect him if with nothing else but beskar, blood, and bone. He wordlessly offered an apology, for not coming sooner, for surrendering him to the client in the first place. When the kid’s lids cracked open, Din met those deep brown eyes with his own and, even from behind the T-visor, connected.
He's reached the kid before. He can do it again.
Wincing a bit at the unfamiliar sound of his unmodulated voice, but trying to convey some of what he felt in that moment when the world shrunk to just the two of them, Din says, “Hey kid, are you there? Did you come to find me, buddy?”
Mwah
Din lets out the breath that he didn't know he was holding.
“Can you go back up? Up? Up the ladder?
Silence. No response. Din sighs.
Grogu glances at the silver gleam coming from a shelf above, ears drooping in confusion. The man’s voice doesn’t come from close and above, but from further away, down toward the bigger door in the back of the ship.
The problem is the voice – not that it sounds different, though it does – but that it’s not giving, like the hands that circled him in the cart. It’s asking. The man wants something, wants Grogu to go back to the small space, back up the ladder, but he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to be alone.
He could find the man. He can tell where he is, but it’s dark back there. He wants to stay here, in the yellow light with the gleaming silver that reminds him of the man and have the man come to him.
He brings the ball to his mouth. It snicks against his teeth as he thinks. He doesn’t want to talk more, because his throat still itches inside no matter how hard he swallows, and he doesn’t want to go into the dark, not now. He glances up, wishing that the man was there. His claws slip on the ball.
He stumbles away from the ladder.
He knows how he can get the man to find him.
Does the kid even understand Basic? And even if he does, how can Din possibly know?
Din drags his free hand through his dampened hair and leans his forehead hard against his palm, the gesture grounding him. He needs to establish a pattern of communication, even if just on a yes / no basis that will allow him to determine, with certainty, whether the kid understands him or not.
With one hand massaging his forehead, the diagnostic kit forgotten in favor of this much more pressing problem, Din ponders combinations of rapping and tapping, one for yes, two for no type of method, but it's hard to think. He's hampered by the headache gaining force under the pressure of exhaustion, anxiety, and the absurd realization that after all of the bounties, all of the battles, the most serious threat to his creed is a small, green foundling.
He kneels in place, behind the carbonite freezer to implement the admittedly creaky communication method he's devised. Before he can start the explanation, he hears metal against metal, a hollow sound of a small object rolling diagonally across the Crest’s deck. Tracing the noise, Din sees it gently hit the wall and rebound towards him, finally stopping about a foot away.
He bends forward, places one hand on the deck, and grabs the object. Grasping it between forefinger and thumb, he brings it closer and frowns when he recognizes the ball from the accelerator lever.
He doesn’t know what it means.
It must have come from the kid, who brought it down from the cockpit, but why did he drop it? Is he okay?
Din hasn’t heard anything from the kid since he first came down from the ladder. Tucking the ball into his belt pocket, he runs both hands through his hair, fingers stilling to press down hard on his temples. He’s not alone on the Crest. Even though it’s only the kid, the foundling he rescued, he’s not alone. He’s separated himself from the only thing that keeps him safe, that always has, since he accepted his first training helmet, and he can’t reach it, not without abandoning the only identity he knows.
He has to get to the kid, but he doesn’t know how.
Din backs towards the hatch in the Crest’s cargo hold. Reaching the end of the storage boxes on his right, his hand brushes the side of the ship and his mind stills enough to remember the second control panel that not only opens the hatch and releases the bounties but also regulates the Crest’s interior systems.
He punches the code, and when the panel opens, flicks the series of switches that plunge the Crest into darkness.
Grogu waits for the man to come to him, to get his message, follow the rolling ball and come to him. He waits, rocking back and forth gently, and focuses on the gleaming silver helmet on the high shelf.
It’s the last thing he sees before the lights go out.
He’s alone.
Again.
Grogu’s high shriek echoes through the ship.
“I’m coming. Hold on.”
It takes five running strides for him to reach the hold, where he crouches in the darkness, holding out his arms to where he thinks the kid might be.
Claws scrape slowly, then scuttle as the kid bumps against his left vambrace, and Din scoops him up into the crook of his left elbow and rises in a fluid motion. He murmurs almost to himself.
“I’m here. Right here. I’m sorry.”
Gulp. Sniffle. Sniffle. Gulp.
“You were scared, hun. Yes…. That was scary.”
Letting out a long breath, Din moves slowly, but more confidently forward, one step and then two steps, but the kid, so recently terrified, is now fidgeting. A small elbow thumps the beskar chest plate as the kid hikes himself up further up Din’s left arm, claws scrabbling against his vambrace, back against his bicep.
Din tries to tighten his hold, but it does little good.
Now worried that he’s going to drop the kid, Din leans to his right as slowly as possible, trying to keep the kid from precariously climbing too far. He almost drops the diagnostic kit, as he uses two hands to shift the kid onto his right shoulder. His left hand gently presses against the kid’s back, circled by his right vambrace.
“That’s better, right? Yeah, that’s better.”
The kid sighs against his arm.
Din is almost to the sleeping compartment when an object brushes his right jawline, warm, feathery. For a crazed moment, he thinks that something has broken loose inside the helmet, then realizes that he forgot all about putting it back on when trying to reach the child, terrified in the darkness. The thing, now twitching to lay flat against his chin and jaw, touching him as gently as a whisper, is an ear.
Like soft skin, his mother’s palm, gently cupping his cheek.
Like the rougher, firmer, but no less gentle fingers of the Covert’s Armorer.
The Armorer’s hands raise his chin, meeting his eyes with her own as he swears the Creed.
He is a Mandalorian. Nobody alive has ever seen his face.
His mother’s eyes say goodbye, her hand drops, but her fingers brush his own.
The Armorer nods approvingly.
He is a Mandalorian.
Nobody alive has….
It is dark.
He blinks but only blackness presses back. The ear tickles his jaw. Din leans forward, causing his right cuisse to bump lightly against the edge of the sleeping compartment. Rather than reaching for his helmet, he holds the child tighter, his warmth radiating through his glove’s worn bantha leather.
Snuggled between vambrace and cowl, Grogu sighs. The tip of his right claw, burrowing under the dense fabric, brushes lightly against the man’s throat. As his eyes slide shut, Grogu finds peace in the embrace and, with it, the ability to sink into the warmth of the Force. He finds the man's signature, bright and unwavering, silver, like the man himself and wraps his light around it.
Grogu both is held and holds in return.
Din holds the kid tighter in the Crest’s darkness. He like he did in the cart, back when the world was just himself and his foundling, but there aren't any apologies this time, no regrets. There's only peace. Din knows that he can tuck the kid back into the crook of his left elbow, reach out his right hand, grab the helmet, and pull it over his head.
He doesn’t know why, for a long time, he doesn’t put it on.