Chapter Text
Din had no way of knowing how long he had been in this cell.
There was no light, nothing at all to base the passage of time on— no window to see the sky from, no guards outside the door changing shifts, not even a drip of water to listen to and count. There was only black, all around him, and the hard, dusty ground on which he lay.
They had taken his armor, when they got the drop on him. He was ashamed at how easy it had been. He was alone, working a job for Karga, and had tracked his bounty to a backwater planet barely visible on his ships’ star map, a tiny dot surrounded by much larger and brighter planets that obfuscated its existence. But he had found it, and found his bounty— dead, mangled beyond recognition, and used as a trap for Din himself. He didn’t know what exactly they had done to overwhelm him, only that they had, and he had woken up in this cell, stripped down to his flight suit and with a horrific headache and a bruised skull.
The darkness was crushing and disorienting, and he suspected that was part of their plan— it made it hard to tell if his eyes were even open or not, and he found himself flailing, sometimes, certain he was falling, only to smack into a wall or the ground again. Along with the disorientation was the feeling of being horrifically exposed-- even in the darkness, where no one could see his face, it felt completely and utterly wrong to be without his beskar. He had only ever taken it off to shower or sleep; quick periods of self-care usually done in safe, secure privacy. Now he huddled into a corner opposite from where he had felt the door to be, when he walked a perimeter of the room, and stared into the blackness, every nerve on edge, waiting for the door to open and for his captors to come for him.
The first time they came, he must have drifted off to sleep, because he found himself jerking awake to rough hands grabbing him by the upper arms. Light streamed in through the open doorway and highlighted his captors’ silhouettes for only a moment, before one of them wrapped a blindfold around his eyes and plunged him into darkness again.
They didn’t have anything to say to him-- they just dragged him down what felt like a long hallway to another room, undid his blindfold and threw him down onto the hard stone floor. He looked up, squinting at the bright light, and found himself in an arena, much like the boxing ring where he had once been a spectator, back when he’d been searching for a Jedi for Grogu. Now, though, he found himself cast as a combatant, not an observer, opposite a truly massive Pantoran who grinned down at him with utter malice.
“Gentlebeings, welcome! We have a treat in store for you tonight!”
The announcer’s voice echoed through the arena, accompanied by cheers from the crowd surrounding the ring.
“Up against our reigning champion comes a new contender-- an actual, genuine Mandalorian!”
The crowd hissed and booed, and Din whipped around, trying to find where the voice was coming from.
“No, it’s true, folks! He has so generously donated his armor for our benefactors’ coffers. But fear not! He will gain one weapon back-- and we shall see how a true Mandalorian fights!”
Behind him came a clattering as something was flung into the ring-- his beskar spear. Din scrambled to snatch it up and whirled around as a bell sounded, and the match began.
They took the spear away as soon as Din’s opponent was down, choking, his throat ripped and torn. They threw Din back in his cell after blindfolding him again and dragging him-- his leg wouldn’t take his weight-- behind them. He curled up in his corner and tried to breathe through the pain of at least one fractured rib.
They brought him food sometimes, in between fights, likely when they started to notice him flagging. It was usually little more than a ration bar and half a canteen of musty water, but it was better than nothing, and Din found himself looking forward to mealtimes more than anything else. The fights were moments of stimulation, sure, that kept him from going mad in isolation, but it wasn’t like they were fun. Each time, they would toss him a weapon from his arsenal-- his blaster, with only three charges left in the power cell, or his whipcord, ripped from his vambrace. They changed it every fight, so that he never knew what he would be given, but he tried his best to take it in stride. The best fights were the ones where they gave him his spear, and he discovered that they started to toss it to him more often-- they probably got more enjoyment out of it, anyway. He didn’t enjoy taking down his competitors, of course he didn’t, but if it was going to keep him alive long enough to find a way to get out of here and back to Luke and Grogu-- well. He was going to do his damndest to win every time. The announcer crowed about the ruthlessness of Mandalorians each time Din won, and he tried not to hang his head in shame. There was no way he was still Mandalorian, after this. He’d been without his armor for so long.
Din was in his cell again, tying a strip from the leg of his flight suit around a nasty gash in his forearm, when he heard voices shouting outside his cell door. He couldn’t help groaning -- it hadn’t been nearly long enough since his last fight, they couldn’t be here to collect him yet! He was a solid ache of pain, his ribs shrieked if he took a breath any deeper than a shallow gasp, and his ankle was almost certainly sprained, if not broken; he wouldn’t last long if they forced him to fight again, so soon.
He had managed to pull himself up and was standing slumped against the wall, trying to breathe through the pain in his ribs and his ankle, when the door was flung open and bright light hit him full in the face. He flung up an arm to shield his eyes, waiting for them to grab him and drag him out again-- but there were no cruel fingers digging into his arms, no rough blindfold tied over his head. There was only silence, save for a strange hum that sounded somehow familiar, piercing deep into his chest to set his heart aching, too.
A whooshing sound, and the hum disappeared. There was the lightest brush of sound, a scrape of a boot against the dirty floor, and a voice-- the most beautiful voice, one he thought he would die without ever hearing again.
“Din?”
Soft, barely there fingers grasped his upper arm-- brushing across a bruise from three fights ago that was just now beginning to fade-- and he couldn’t take it anymore. He lowered the arm that was shielding his eyes and squinted into the light.
Luke was lit up from behind, gold hair shining like a halo. His eyes-- gods, how much Din had missed his eyes-- widened, and he gasped as he took in what was probably a sorry sight indeed. Din’s nose had been broken at some point, and he was sure it was healing crooked. He didn’t doubt that his face was more bruise than skin, at this point.
“Din,” Luke breathed, “Oh, gods, what did they do to you?”
Din stared at him. This had to be a dream -- a beautiful one, but a dream all the same. It was too lovely to think about. He opened his mouth, trying to remember how to speak. It had been so long since he’d had any reason to speak aloud. He managed a croak; they hadn’t brought him water since before his last fight. Still, he fought to get any sound out, anything at all, that Luke might respond to, and tell him this was real. “L’ke,” he mumbled, and Luke’s face crumpled. He reached out to pull Din into his arms and snatched his hands away, as if burned, when Din let out an involuntary gasp as his broken rib screamed in protest. Din snarled despite himself and reached out himself, finally feeling Luke, alive and present and real , under his hands. He couldn’t help slumping forward; strength of will only got him so far, and his ankle was probably truly broken, given how it collapsed under him. Luke caught him before he fell entirely, and the last thing Din heard as his vision tunneled and he went under was Luke calling for help out the cell door.