Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Hey, little brother.”

Luke pulled his gaze down from the blanket of night sky above the city. Up this high, the the stars were visible at least, but they were still dim in comparison to being out in space among them. A place, Luke was reluctant to admit to himself, he would much rather be right now.

Leia stood at the opposite end of the Capitol Tower’s rotunda. She was still in her congressional robes. He gave a sympathetic smile. A long night for her in chambers again, then.

“We never actually determined which of us was older, you know,” he said, rising to her attempt to lighten his mood.

She smiled back. “I claim it by dint of higher education and a much less reckless mentality,” she teased, but her voice was tired.

“Late night?” he asked.

She sighed and joined him at the railing. “More debate over the validity of these rumors creeping in from the Rim about an Imperial Admiral jigsawing the remnants of the Empire together.”

“Ahsoka believes it,” Luke said.

“I know she does.”

“And I believe her,” he added.

“I know you do.” Leia bowed her head. “I wish that were enough. Once, in the Old Republic, it would have been. But now…”

“They still don’t trust my judgment.” Luke kept his frustration under tight control. His sister was not nearly as adept in the Force as himself, but being twins they were finely attuned to each other even without its additional connection. 

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “It frustrates me, too.”

“Sorry,” he apologized.

“It’s fine,” she said tiredly. “I know that’s not all that’s frustrating you either.”

Luke leaned down on the railing and looked out over the glittering city. “I should be out there helping Ahsoka. I should be out there trying to find the tools to rebuild the Jedi. The New Republic won’t survive without us.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Leia said wryly.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” She pulled a pin from her hair and, with a relieved sigh, let the thick braid coiled atop her head fall down her back. “Even you can’t be in two places at once, though. How goes the training?”

Luke dropped his head between his shoulders, recalling his most recent unsuccessful session with Grogu. “It doesn’t.”

“Oh?” Leia raised a delicately sculpted eyebrow. Her lifetime of diplomatic training was showing through in her carefully neutral tone. “I thought you said he was powerful?”

“He is.” Luke rubbed tiredly at the back of his neck. “The power he put out using the Seeing Stone on Tython, and the fact that I could track him to that Imperial cruiser proves it.”

“But?”

“But even after all these months, I can barely get him to demonstrate his abilities. He’s reluctant to communicate. He hears me, and I know he’s listening, but he doesn’t hardly respond.”

Leia chuckled. “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘stubborn’.”

Luke smiled sadly. “Very much so. Not unlike another of his species I knew.”

The similarities between Grogu and Yoda were remarkable. On seeing him for the first time aboard the Imperial cruiser, Luke was taken aback and awash in the fond memories of his former master. He wondered if Grogu had sensed it during their first meeting. If he did, he’d given no indication so far, nor queried Luke about any images of Yoda he may have seen in Luke’s mind.

Leia put a reassuring hand on his back, sensing his unease with himself. “Don’t doubt yourself, Luke. Yoda didn’t.”

“Didn’t he?” Luke asked. “My training was trial by fire, Leia. Yoda…didn’t really have a choice in making me a Jedi. He was dying. There had to be a successor, someone to take on Vader. I was it.”

“I don’t think he had to do anything,” Leia said. “Don’t sell yourself short and don’t start doubting your own abilities because Grogu is resistant to being taught. From what you’ve told me, he hasn’t had a very easy life.”

“No, he hasn’t,” Luke conceded. “I haven’t been able to learn very much of his past, but I do know he was there the night the Temple burned, the night Order 66 was executed.”

And nearly every living Jedi across the galaxy with it. Luke was loathe to tell Leia about their father’s part in that bloody execution. It was a punch to the gut that Luke had not expected, to find his own father in the child’s memory, limbed in fire and destruction. Luke knew what sins Anakin had committed against the Jedi and what Darth Vader had done after he adopted the moniker, but it was just a diaphanous history constructed of words and given shape by Luke’s own imagination. Until Grogu showed him the very real memory.

“He was smuggled out by another Jedi and told never to reveal his powers or he would be hunted and killed like all the rest,” Luke said, avoiding their father’s identity as the specter of the “hooded-man” in Grogu’s memory from whom he’d been so carefully hidden. “That Jedi was killed not long after she escaped with him, and there was no one to care for him or protect him after that. I have no idea how he survived so long. In his mind, most of the intervening time is darkness, like he was asleep, or…disconnected somehow from the Force.”

 “Then it doesn’t sound like he has a great deal of motivation to trust anyone,” Leia reasoned, “And without trust, there’s only so much that can be done.”

“Very diplomatic,” Luke said slyly. He leaned in toward her and she moved her hand up to sift slowly through the hair at the nape of his neck.

“My father always said trust was key,” she replied a little wistfully. 

Luke reached back and caught her hand in his and brought it to his cheek, trapping it there. He often forgot, through all his trials and tribulations, what she had suffered in the name of gaining the galaxy freedom from the Empire’s tyrannical rule. He may have been bloodied and beaten, even lost a hand, learned he was the son of the most feared of all Sith lords and been forced to battle his father almost to the death; but Leia had watched her world destroyed before her very eyes along with everyone she knew and loved. He knew she harbored an incredible guilt for that as well, though she never spoke of it, no matter how he tried to convince her that no answer she could have given would have made Moff Tarkin spare Alderaan. 

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I don’t mean to whine.”

She placed a kiss at his temple. “You’re allowed. From time to time.” Luke turned his head to kiss her palm. She smiled and brushed a thumb over his cheek then freed her hand from his. “Have you considered that Grogu senses your indecision and your doubts and it’s affected the way he reacts to you?”

“The thought’s occurred, yes.” Luke straightened, turned his back on the view of the city, and leaned on the balustrade. “I think the bigger issue is he misses his Father.”

Leia’s eyebrow rose again. “The Mandalorian?”

Luke nodded. “His thoughts are consumed by him. Grogu loved him very much. Loves him.”

“Odd,” she said, frowning a little. “The Mandalorians are not given to love, so I understand. They aren’t given to much except war.”

“This one is different,” Luke said. “I think he came to love Grogu as well, at least enough to protect him and see him delivered to my safe keeping.”

The memory of the Mandalorian’s face when he turned Grogu over was etched in Luke’s mind, and even without Grogu’s feelings to back it up, it was still intense. The man cared for Grogu very much and had risked everything for his safety, had even been prepared to sacrifice his life. A common thread with fathers and their sons it seemed.

Leia was cognizant of the subtle flinch across Luke’s shoulders. She slid up beside him and looped an arm around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder. It was a solace. She was not there for Luke’s battle with Vader, she had not seen the monster become a man once more in his final moments and take up the last thread of light in his soul to defend his son. She had none of the regret or feelings of loss in her that Luke did, but she was sympathetic nonetheless. 

He returned her gesture, turning enough that he could take her in his arms and rest his head atop hers. “I need to tell him to let go of his love for the Mandalorian because it’s clouding his ability to connect with the Force…but I don’t know how to do that when I can’t,” he said softly.

“I don’t know how anyone could,” she replied. “We are the sum of our experiences and our feelings. Letting go of any one of them makes us less than we were meant to be. I don’t see how the Jedi teachings could preach otherwise.”

“Letting go doesn’t mean forgetting,” Luke said. “It just means not letting it motivate us.”

“But what else motivates us besides our feelings?” Leia countered, tilting her face to look up at him. 

“Peace. Justice. Life,” Luke replied.

Leia scowled a little and pressed her cheek back into Luke’s chest. “Those are very cold precepts without the passion that drives us to them.”

She was right. The Jedi teachings were sterilized with logic and left little room for emotion. Without passion and the drive it provided them, the Rebellion would never have succeeded in conquering the Empire. The Jedi may ultimately have fallen because they forgot how to use that passion effectively.

He kissed the top of her head. “You have a truly brilliant mind,” he said.

She smiled up at him. “I know.”

Chapter Text

“You threw it down the gullet of a Sarlac,” Din said again.

Fennec grinned. “Yup. Bo-Katan is welcome to go after it if she wants.”

He shook his head, chuckling. “I’m not sure battling a Sarlac will satisfy the Dark Saber legend. You may have just ruined it for her.”

Fennec shrugged and finished off her ale, motioned to the Twi’lek waitress for a refill. “Well, it’s out of your hands now at any rate, and I figured you’d be grateful for that.”

“I am,” Din nodded. “Thank you. It was…creative, to say the least.”

“So, what else have you been doing with yourself besides tracking me and Fett down?” she asked.

“A bounty here and there,” Din said noncommittally. “Nothing much.”

Fennec gave him a pointed once over and lifted a sardonic brow. “You look beaten to hell. That armor was a lot shinier the last time I saw you. Not to mention it looked like you and Cara were…” She drifted off at Din’s sudden stillness, then blanched. “I didn’t—?”

“Kill her with the stunt you pulled on Gideon’s ship?” Din finished for her. “No. She’s fine. She’s back on Nevarro. She takes the whole New Republic Marshall thing pretty seriously.

Fennec looked relieved. “Oh, good. Sorry about that, by the way. I was planning on the fly.”

“It accomplished the goal,” Din said. “And I owe you one for it.”

“Do you?” Fennec asked.

Din could hear the hinting tone in her voice. He sighed. “What do you need.”

“Paying job,” she said, her grin returned. “We’ve been having some trouble with a local group. They were loyalists to Jabba before that Jedi showed up and then they pitched tent with Fortuna after he took over.”

“I didn’t know ‘loyal’ could be applied to anyone around here,” Din said. “How come you’re having trouble swaying them to your side, if they hopped from Jabba to Fortuna so easily?”

Fennec took a swig of her ale. “Beats me. Something with their code. Since Fortuna was Major Domo, they allowed that he was heir apparent when Jabba bit it, I suppose, but we don’t fall under that category.”

“I see. And they would be?”

“C’Araesens,” Fennec said.

Din’s eyes widened behind his visor. C’Araesens were a rarity in the galaxy. Their home world had been destroyed centuries past and their race all but died out. The few remaining were legendary, near immortal creatures with abilities that defied reality and most times imagination as well. Some speculated they were precursors to the Jedi. They were not necessarily known for violence, but they were nearly invincible in battle. What even one of them, much less a group, would be doing in a backwater place like Tatooine was beyond Din.

“A group of them?” he asked.

Fennec looked down at her mug. “Well…two.”

Din nodded. One would be enough trouble from the stories he’d heard. “Why would they have thrown in with scum like Jabba in the first place?”

“No idea,” Fennec said. “But they’re a true pain in the ass. I’ve had them in my sights more than half a dozen times, shot them dead, and then they just get back up and keep coming. Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot.”

“And you think I can do any better than one of the Empire’s elite assassins?” he said.

“Mandalorians are pretty legendary themselves,” Fennec said. She waved a hand at the Beskar spear he wore strapped to his back. “And who knows, maybe that magic spear of yours will do the trick.”

“It’s not magic,” Din said.

“Might as well be. I don’t know of anything else that can stand up to a Lightsaber,” Fennec countered. 

“That doesn’t make it magic.”

“Whatever.” Fennec shrugged. “You in?”

Din looked around the dim cantina. This place was legendary in its own right. It was the birthplace of one of the Empire’s greatest scourges and one of the New Republic’s greatest heroes. Skywalkers both. Even on the Rim, people told the story of father and son pitted against each other in the final moments of the Empire’s rule. The story hadn’t done it any favors, though. The place was still a hive of criminals. Some things just didn’t change it seemed.

And some things did.

Finding Fennec and the Dark Saber was supposed to be Din’s last run. He planned to go back to Nevarro and see if he and Cara could make some sort of life together. But he’d taken a pretty circuitous route getting to Tatooine, even though he’d known where to find Fennec and Fett for months. Between Karga’s underworld informants and Cara’s Republic access, they’d made short work of tracking them down. All Din had to do was bring back the Saber. He’d dragged his feet, though, and he wasn’t sure why. 

I’ll see you again. I promise.

Grogu’s absence still stung. Din expected the empty loneliness he felt to abate over time. After all, he’d only known the kid a few months. But time’s healing properties were failing miserably at mending the hole in Din’s heart that Grogu had made for himself and, if anything, the pain was growing worse. On Nevarro with Cara, Din had no chance of upholding his promise to see Grogu again. He had no idea where Grogu was now, or even the name of the Jedi who had taken him into his care, but out here in space chasing down bounties, at least he was on the move, and there was the possibility he might run into him or hear something about him. He had a very hard time letting that possibility go.

“Hey,” Fennec reached across the table and knocked on Din’s helmet. “You still with me?”

Din caught her wrist reflexively and twisted hard. Fennec swore harshly, and he let her go immediately, lifting his palms in apology. “Sorry.”

Fennec rubbed at her wrist. “Tense much?” She eyed him suspiciously now. “Seriously, Mando, are you okay? ‘Cause you don’t look it.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “And I’ll take the job.”

Chapter Text

Grogu was sitting on his cot under R2-D2s watchful gaze when Luke returned to his quarters. He was a little surprised at the droid’s affinity for the child given his past experiences with the elder version. Yoda had not been a favorite on R2’s list of people for various reasons that ranged from being swallowed by a giant swamp slug on Degobah, which really wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own for not listening to Luke and staying away from the bog, to the Jedi Master’s harsh treatment of Luke during his training. R2 was a very unique droid, having developed a personality so like a living being that Luke barely thought of him as a mechanical thing any longer; and if feelings could be applied to a droid in any respect, then R2 cared deeply for Luke and would never let him come to harm if anything could be done by the little droid to avoid it. 

R2 was definitely developing a connection with Grogu, though, and maybe it was because the child seemed vulnerable and in need of protection. This would quantify him, for the droid, in the same category as Luke since R2 was resolute in his programming that Luke wouldn’t survive half the situations he got himself into without R2’s help. He was almost more arrogant than C-3PO. The squat droid had assigned himself as nurse to the child, and it was just as well because Luke couldn’t take him everywhere he went and the child needed constant supervision. 

Luke had sensed an intense curiosity in Grogu on their first meeting, and he knew curiosity often equated to mischief in the young, so it struck him as odd that the child had been docile ever since his arrival on Coruscant. He sat very quietly now with a round silver ball bearing in his lap. He was starring at it and his ears were drooping very low. The child’s ears were an enormous expressive device for him, and Luke found that when he could not make sense of Grogu’s thoughts, he could at least detect his mood from the position of his ears. Now, he was sad. 

Luke squatted by the cot and reached to pick up the bearing, slowly, so Grogu knew he didn’t mean to take it away from him. Grogu blinked up at him, his ears dipping further. 

“Where did you get this?” Luke asked gently. R2 beeped something from his post in the corner. “Ah, I see. R2 found you a toy?”

He offered the orb back in an open palm. Grogu looked at it solemnly, and then held up one little claw. After a moment, the ball rolled out of Luke’s palm and floated over to Grogu’s waiting hand. Luke felt a surge of loneliness rise up in the child, and Grogu clutched the little orb to his chest. 

Father…

Luke lowered himself to sit cross legged on the floor, bringing him to Grogu’s eye level. He reached out a hand and carefully patted Grogu’s shoulder. “You played with your Father? With something like this?” he asked.

Grogu’s ears perked a little and he gave a soft coo. 

Father played with Grogu.

That’s very good, what you just did. Luke indulged Grogu in his telepathy. Would you do it again for me?

Grogu misses Father.  

Grogu ignored Luke’s request, and his ears lowered even further.

I know you do, but he wanted what was best for you, Luke returned gently.

But what is best for Father?

Luke was taken aback by this. He thought Grogu only missed the Mandalorian, but it seemed he was worried for him as well. Luke had misinterpreted the meaning behind the child’s continual fretting in the last few months.

You’re worried about your father?

Grogu turned his gaze to the orb in his hands. 

Father is alone without Grogu.

But here you’re safe, and surely that makes your father happy?

Father is alone…

Luke sighed. This wasn’t going well. He had to make some sort of progress with Grogu or else attempting to train any other Force-sensitive beings would be for naught. If he couldn’t manage a child  already extensively trained, there was no hope he could manage one completely untrained. Perhaps trust really was the issue, as Leia had pointed out. Luke needed to give them common ground to stand on if he was going to gain Grogu’s trust and also teach him how to channel his feelings.

Luke folded his hands in his lap. “Grogu.”

Grogu looked up at him. Luke took a deep breath. This could be an enormous mistake.

“Grogu, do you want to be a Jedi?”

Grogu seemed to consider this very seriously, his little face pinching with the effort, then,

It will make Grogu strong.

“Yes,” Luke allowed cautiously. “It will make you strong.”

Grogu can help. They said to help was very important.

Luke assumed by “they” Grogu meant his former masters. “Yes, that’s right. It is very important to help.”

Grogu can help Father.

“You could help many people,” Luke corrected gently. Grogu didn’t seem to like this answer as much, but Luke pressed on. “That is the purpose of the Jedi.”

Black-hand man helps…many people? Grogu asked this cautiously, referring to Luke by the signifier he had given him shortly after their meeting. Luke’s prosthetic hand was long since repaired after the damage it took during the battle aboard Jabba’s skiff, but he kept the glove as a kind of tribute and reminder of the path he was on and the one he never wanted to fall upon.

Luke nodded. Yes. This is the way of the Jedi.

Something in that statement struck a chord with Grogu.

Black-hand man helped his Father. 

The grief caught Luke unawares, and he clamped down on it. Well, he thought, that was that, then. Grogu had seen at least that much through their fledgling connection. It was proof he was stronger than he was letting on and stronger perhaps than Luke realized.

“I did.” Luke swallowed thickly. “Grogu, do you know who my father was?”

Grogu gave a very slow and solemn nod. 

The hooded-man.

Luke’s shoulders sagged. He pulled his hands down his face, taking a deep breath to recenter himself. “Is that why you don’t trust me, Grogu?”

Grogu trusts the black-hand man.

Luke smiled sadly. “You can call me by my name,” he said. “Luke. Remember?”

Grogu resisted this. He had an odd difficulty with names. He preferred descriptors for some reason. 

Master?

“If you like, but just my name is fine, too.” Grogu was silent. Luke continued. “The hooded-man had a name, too. His name was Anakin. Not many people remember it anymore. I would like you to.”

Grogu still gave no response. 

“I miss my father, too,” Luke said quietly. 

Grogu nodded. 

Grogu knows.

Luke felt a wave of sympathetic grief come from the child. It was almost overwhelming, a jumble of emotions and images and thoughts all mixed together. Most of it was rooted out from Grogu’s memories, but some were Luke’s own reflected back at him and amplified. Luke shuddered and gasped as the wave crashed over him.

“Yes, like that…” Luke answered Grogu’s unasked question. “I miss him like that.”

Grogu nodded again and the wave receded. Luke took several more deep breaths before he continued. “But we cannot dwell on those feelings, Grogu. We should not forget, but we can’t let them rule us either.”

Grogu picked up his toy and held it close, mouthed at it a couple of times, and then simply pondered it like there was nothing else in the room. Luke knew he had lost Grogu’s attention for the time being, so he rose and went to sit in a chair across the room. R2 gave a mournful two-tone whistle from his corner, sensing his master’s mood had taken a turn for the worse. Luke gave him a weak smile.

“We’ll get there, R2. We’ll get there.”

Chapter Text

Fett and Fennec had shown Din on a roughly drawn map where they thought the C'Araesens were hiding themselves. It was a deep crevasse on the outskirts of the Dune Sea. A surprising choice since it would make them vulnerable to attacks or ambushes from above, but maybe that didn’t concern them with the kind of abilities they had. It did concern the trio of hunters, however, since neither Fett or Fennec could really describe what those abilities were. Din had heard stories here and there, but they were just that…stories. Given the amount of time that had passed since the C'Araesens were any kind of actual presence in the galaxy, any known facts had likely morphed into myth. 

“So, really all we know for sure is that they’re impervious to blaster fire?” Din asked as they traversed the last kilometers to the crevasse on foot. The plan was to reach it in the dark. Not Din’s first choice, but Fennec said they never attacked at night, so it was likely they would find them in their lair at that time and be able to trap them. Trap them how was still up for debate. 

“And just about everything else,” Fett said.

“Such as?” Din prompted. 

“Explosions,” Fennec said. “You think I haven’t already tired bombing them out? Good old fashioned laser arrows, too. I had to crack my bow out of mothballs.”

“Blades?”

“Haven’t gotten close enough to find out,” Fett said. “The way they move is…strange. They don’t stand still.”

Din grimaced. “What does that mean?”

Fett shrugged. “It’s hard to explain.”

“It seems nearly everything about them is,” Din muttered. Fennec shot him a look, but he ignored her. “You realize you’re banking a lot on my getting in close enough to actually hit them with the spear, and even more on the idea that they’re in any way susceptible to Beskar?”

“Worth a shot.” Fennec grinned.

Din ground his teeth. “Let’s hope I don’t die in the process, shall we? You know, you might have kept hold of the Dark Saber long enough to try it on them. Not much is impervious to Lightsabers.”

Fennec nodded. “That thought crossed my mind, but a little too late. That’s why I thought your spear might do the job.”

Din didn’t like her reasoning. It was an awful stretch and didn’t have a shred of fact to back it up. But they were short on facts in all departments where the C'Araesens were concerned, so theories would have to work.

They reached the crevasse by nightfall and crept up and over the edge. Fett and Din used their night vision built into their visors to survey the floor of the very narrow cut in the earth, and Fennec used the scope on her sniper rifle. He’d tried to point out that she was basically bringing a gun to a knife fight since they knew the rifle had no affect on them, but it was her preferred weapon, and she didn’t go anywhere without it. 

“This place doesn’t look lived in at all,” Din whispered. “How do you know they’re here?”

“I managed to track one once,” Fennec whispered back. 

“There.” Fett pointed to the far end of the crevasse, deep in its shadows.

Din looked and then turned of his night vision and looked again. “Well, that may be why they don’t come out at night,” he muttered. “You could hardly miss them.”

Fett and Fennec were staring wide-eyed at the two rangy, very tall figures which glowed like stars at the opposite end of the crevasse. They were almost beautiful from this distance, but their features were indistinct and the longer Din looked the harder it was to focus on them. It was…like they weren’t standing still. He could see why Fett had a hard time describing it now. What he could make out of their outlines shimmered and shifted constantly, as if they were surrounded by some sort of energy field, and maybe they were. It was possible they had adapted some kind of technology to give them their own personal body shield which would explain why Fennec’s rifle was useless, or maybe they generated the energy themselves. There were stranger things in the galaxy, after all. 

Din launched his grappling hook into the far edge of the crevasse and rolled over the edge. It was a short distance and he muffled the drop by hitting boots first on the rock.

“What are you doing!” Fennec hissed from above.

“What you’re paying me for,” Din said.

“I didn’t mean for you to do it alone, you idiot!”

“See any spare Beskar spears laying around?” he shot back and dropped down the wall before she could answer.

Fennec swore under her breath. “He says, ‘let’s hope I don’t die,’ and yet there he goes. He has a death wish,” she mumbled.

Fett nodded. “I was beginning to wonder.”

Fennec pulled a line and hook out of her utility pack and sat back on her knees to get enough space to get a good swing on the line.

“You’re following him?” Fett asked.

“Of course,” she said. “He’ll get himself killed otherwise.”

Fett watched her swing out on her line and drop slowly after Din into the darkness below. He sighed and shot his grappling line out behind hers and jumped over the edge.

Din was glad the crevasse was so deep. While it hid the C’Araesens from prying eyes it also muted the shine on his armor. Though that wasn’t nearly the problem it might have been a few months ago when it was still almost new. Fennec wasn’t wrong in her assessment at the cantina. He did look like hell. The armor’s integrity was fully intact—not much could damage pure Beskar—but it had definitely taken a beating recently. He’d declined to tell her about the still tender ribs on his right side that he’d managed to break a second time after her point blank shot on Gideon’s cruiser, or the barely healed fracture to his left femur. He was still getting migraines, too, from the concussion he’d suffered two weeks ago. He wasn’t sure if he was getting old, or if he just didn’t care anymore. It wasn’t a question he examined too closely for fear of the real answer. 

He kept to the walls of the crevasse and made his way steadily forward, following the bright glow from the other end. He heard Fennec and Fett descending above him, but they didn’t sound like they were making good progress. On the floor of the crevasse, it was pitch black but for the glow of the C'Araesens which didn’t extend this far, so his night vision didn’t show much and neither would Fett’s. The thermal imaging was barely better since the temperature down here was a good twenty degrees cooler than the surface and everything was uniform rock. Din had one advantage Fett was probably lacking and that was subsonic mapping built into his HUD. It was newer than anything Fett’s father would have had access to when his armor was built. He’d have to remember to tell Fett about it so he could make the modifications later if he wanted.  So, while the other two had to procede with a lot more caution so as not to break any bones on unexpected rocks or drops, Din had a relatively clear map of the path leading to the opposite end of the crevasse.

He moved cautiously and as quietly as possible. He had no idea what the C'Araesens sight or hearing capabilities actually were, but there was no sense in announcing his presence. As he drew closer to them, he tucked himself more deeply into the shadows to avoid any light they generated bouncing off his armor and drawing their attention. For all his caution, though, they appeared completely oblivious to his presence. He got within five meters and they hadn’t moved at all, except for the strange and constant shifting of their outlines.That’s when he discovered the reason they might have thrown in their lot with Jabba in the first place.

They sat motionless, one on either side of a demarcated circle on the crevasse floor, and in the center between them was what looked very much like a Triscain Crystal. 

Highly prized, incredibly radioactive, and nearly impossible to find, Triscain Crystals were a tremendous power source harvested from the heart of a white dwarf star. The equipment to harvest the crystals was so expensive that there were only two, maybe three harvesters in the whole galaxy, and they were a one time use. To harvest more than one load, you had to start from scratch. Very cost prohibitive. The crystals themselves were highly unstable even after processing, so despite their incredible power, they almost weren’t worth the trouble to use. The Empire had toyed with them as a power source for a new design of  Star Destroyer decades ago, but the results had been repeatedly disastrous and abandoned shortly afterward. The crystals were more a status symbol now than anything else. To have proof of ownership of one at any point in time was a ticket to the upper echelons of the galaxy for several generations.

The C'Araesens didn’t appear to have much use for them as status symbols, though. Religious objects perhaps, Din thought briefly, given the way they arranged themselves around it, but that didn’t seem quite right either. Power source. Only not the kind that powered ships or tools. They were absorbing the power directly. It powered them. So, they needed the radiation to survive maybe, and who but the crime lord of all crime lords might have been able to get his slimy hands on one for the bargain price of eternal indentured servitude. That just left the question of how valuable their servitude really was.

The strike, when it came, would have been impossible for Din to anticipate. Between one eye blink and the next, there were two C'Araesens seated around the crystal and then only one, and Din’s whole left side suddenly lit on fire like he’d been doused in rocket fuel and set ablaze. He wondered for a moment if that was exactly what had happened, one of the C'Araesens having punctured his Phoenix pack and lit it on fire; but there were no flames and no smoke and after a moment Din realized the burning was from cold not heat. He forced himself over on his uninjured side and found the C'Araesen looming above him.

It was unimaginably beautiful. A head taller than Din, it was all stretched limbs and sinew over bone. It had long silvery hair that crackled and danced around its shoulders and down its back like it was alive. Its face was austere, sharp planes and angles and opaque obsidian eyes. It was clad in nearly nothing, only leather strips and metal discs and…blue fire. The flames danced all along its skin, subtly and constantly changing its shape. 

The C’Araesen leaned down, hands outstretched. Din’s spear was caught beneath him and his rifle and blaster would likely prove as useless against it as Fennec’s. He twitched his wrist and flame plumed from the thrower in his vambrace, catching the C’Araesen full in the chest and face, but it was completely unfazed and just kept coming. Din planted his heals and shoved himself back on the rough rock beneath him. His backplate grated and sparked. He grabbed for the vibro-blade in his boot and slashed at at the fiery figure bearing down on him. The blade deflected off the thing’s arm before it ever made contact with flesh. Blue fire swarmed the spot where Din struck and tangled around the vibro-blade. It sparked and sputtered, and Din felt his fingertips burning as the fire oozed down the dead blade. He jerked his hand back, gasping in pain. His side was still on fire, freezing pain lancing down to his bones. He shoved back again, biting down on a howl of agony. The C’Araesen advanced, swung one clawed hand down and—

Shrieked.

Din threw up his arms, crossed to ward off the blow and the thing’s claws raked across his Beskar vambraces. It shrieked in pain and jumped backward. Din huffed a surprised breath and scrambled back further, jaw clamped hard against the pain. He grabbed the spear and wrenched it free from underneath him, raising it up just as the C’Araesen advanced again, claws outstretched. It shrieked in agony, or fury, or maybe both. Din swung the spear to catch it along side the head. The blow itself didn’t appear to do much damage, but the taste of metal on its flesh did. It staggered and howled.

“Mando!” Fennec yelled from further back.

The second C’Araesen, docile by the Triscain Crystal until now, shot into action almost faster than Din could track. 

“Get out!” he shouted to Fennec. “Get up the walls! Go!”

He heard Fett’s Phoenix pack ignite and Fennec’s angry screech as, Din assumed, he grabbed her and dragged her away with him.  The weight was too much, though, and he couldn’t make the top edge of the crevasse with Fennec in tow. Din saw the streak of his flame trail in the darkness overhead and just behind it a streak of bright blue-white light leaping from point to point along the walls.  If the C’Araesen reached Fett and Fennec, they were as good as dead. They had no Beskar and no other weapon Din knew of that could kill these things, and there was no way Din could throw his spear that far with any kind of accuracy, not to mention he would lose the only weapon he had to battle the C’Araesen still down here with him.

But there were the Whistling Birds. The Birds were formed of the same pure Beskar steel as the spear and his armor. Their explosive heads were made of average charges, but their cases were Beskar, so even if the charge was harmless to the C’Araesen, the Beskar should slow it down. Although, if the Beskar was biting though the fiery shield that protected them, then the charges may indeed prove as lethal to them as they would to anyone else.

The C’Araesen on the ground was recovering itself and lurched toward him again. Din stabbed with the spear, missed, swung it back and caught the thing’s shoulder, but it was only a glancing blow. Above him, Fett’s flame zagged abruptly, tumbled through the air for a terrifying second and then shot off again, the blue streak of light seemingly inches behind. Din took his eyes off his own opponent long enough to let the HUD register the C’Araesen streaking along the crevasse walls, aimed the Whistling Birds in generally the right direction and let them finish the job. 

True to their name, they whistled through the air singing death as they tracked their target faultlessly. All six made contact and the C’Araesen let out an ear shattering scream of agony and fell from the rock wall, tumbling through the air like a short-tailed comet, blue fire trailing and dying as it fell. The C’Araesen that was left roared in fury and struck out at Din. With his attention split, he wasn’t fast enough to block the blow and freezing claws of blue fire raked across his abdomen. The pain was so intense he couldn’t even scream. The C’Araesen did for him, though, lunging in again.

Din couldn’t find the strength to move. The pain was overwhelming. The wound was on fire but freezing. His blood was ice, burning cold through every vessel. Every part of him felt cut open from the inside. The world was slowing down again, like it had that day in the mud wallow with the Mudhorn all those months ago, time hanging, waiting. But there was no Grogu to stop the C’Araesen, to hold it back from its killing blow, this time; and nothing for Din to grab onto to try to keep himself alive. 

The world blurred.

Slowed.

Stopped…

FATHER!

Din’s heart spasmed in his chest and he sucked in a breath. For one blessed second the pain receded behind a tidal wave of lifesaving warmth that surged through Din’s whole body. Above him, the C’Araesen paused for a heartbeat, tilted up its chin, distracted, as if scenting something on the breeze. It was all the time Din needed. He grasped the spear with every last molecule of strength in his muscles and thrust it up under the C’Araesen’s ribs. The creature howled and thrashed and shrieked in agony. The blue fire rolled back and away from the wound the Beskar made, peeling back along all the C’Araesen’s limbs until it dwindled and died, and the only thing left was a ghostly husk hanging in the darkness. 

Din let go of the spear, gave into the pain, and passed out. 

Chapter Text

FATHER!

Luke rolled from his bed, one hand clutching at his skull and the other fisted against his chest. He staggered across the room, R2 beeping frantically at his heels, and plunged through the suite to Grogu’s room. 

The child lay on his cot, deathly still. Luke dropped to his knees and tried to find his way past the incredible pain still surging in his head and chest to access what had happened. He’d never felt anything like it. The closest he could compare was when Palpatine attempted to electrocute him on the Death Star, but even that had only been physical pain, brutal and intense, but rooted in the body. This…this was love torn in two. Luke would not be surprised if the nearest med unit pronounced his heart ripped down the center and flayed open. It certainly felt like that. 

“Grogu!” Luke grasped the tiny shoulders and shook the child as hard as he dared. There was no response. Luke spread a hand over the little chest. His heart beat rapidly beneath it, racing despite the sluggish rise and fall as he breathed. He was alive. That was something. Luke had feared the worst when the Force-scream ripped him awake. 

Grogu!

 There was still nothing, except a constant background mantra of, FatherFatherFather.

Luke struggled to find a way through the darkness into which the child had fallen, to find a way down to his thoughts, but even his subconscious was submerged beneath its surface. Luke wondered briefly if this was how he hid himself and his powers for all those years, by falling into a kind of negative Force sleep. Luke did not think he’d done it voluntarily this time, though. The power bound up in that scream was off the charts. Luke expected its echoes might find any Force-sensitive individual in this quadrant of space, and power like that came at an immense price.

“Luke?”

Leia stumbled into the room with Han at her heels. He was supporting a good portion of her weight even as she tried to fend him off to get to her brother. She sagged to the floor beside Luke and stared at the child barely breathing beneath his hand.

“What was that?” she gasped. There were tears on her face, from the echoes of Grogu’s pain or her own, Luke couldn’t be sure, and one hand was pressed over her heart like she felt the exact same rending pain Luke did. “I heard…heartbreak. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

“That’s as good a word as any,” Luke said. “I think something’s happened to the Mandalorian.”

Leia’s face blanched. “Oh, no.”

Luke shook his head. “I don’t know if he’s dead. I can’t tell. Grogu’s mind is…dark.”

“Dark?” Leia sounded wary.

“Dark as in blank. It’s a void. There’s nothing there. Only…father.”

Leia moaned in sympathy. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know.” Luke tried again to navigate the darkness of Grogu’s mind, but there was no path to follow, nothing for him to find. “He may come out of it on his own, but…”

“Do we dare wait?” she asked.

“We should find this Mandalorian then, or whatever he is,” Han said. He was crouched behind Leia, a comforting hand at her lower back. 

“I don’t know where to look,” Luke said. “I followed Grogu’s call from Tython. That’s the only way I found him. I don’t even know his name. Not his real one anyway. There aren’t that many Mandalorians left, but they’re very distrustful of the New Republic and they don’t exactly advertise their whereabouts. Finding one would be difficult. Find him would be almost impossible.”

“Surely, if we sent out scouts…?” Leia tried.

“It’s a huge galaxy, princess,” Han chided gently. “Even with all your resources, without any information, it would take us months, if we found him at all.”

Leia tentatively stroked one of Grogu’s limp ears. “There has to be something we can do.”

Luke drew in a deep breath. “There may be one thing.”

———————————

“Carbonite!” Fennec shouted. “You want to put him in Carbonite!”

Fett was working the Carbonite freezer controls with one hand and trying to tap commands into the antiquated med unit attached to the Slave I’s computer with the other. Din was on the deck at their feet, barely breathing.

“Do you have any better ideas!” he shouted back at her.

It was a miracle they’d been able to get him out of the crevasse at all. Fett had gone after the Slave I in his Phoenix pack and brought it to the edge, but it was much too narrow to fly down. So between his pack and his and Fennec’s grapnels, they’d managed to hoist him up and out. He was dead weight, and for a while they’d feared that was the literal truth, but once they got him to the ship they found he was still breathing. 

“Death wish he might have,” Fett said, trying to read the med unit readouts. “But something’s keeping him alive.”

Fennec threw up her hands. “But Carbonite!” she said again. 

“It’ll keep him in stasis until we can get him help,” Fett said. “If I’m reading this right, he’s suffering massive radiation poisoning, and I couldn’t even begin to tell you about those burns.”

The burns were the strangest thing. The flesh was charred a deep blue black, but it was so cold it steamed in the relative warmth of the Slave I’s cargo bay. Fett had never seen anything like it. 

“Fine. Fine!” Fennec gave up and shoved Fett away from the med unit, taking over so he could focus on setting the freezer controls. “But where are we going to take him?”

“At this point, I’d say the only thing that will save him is a Bacta bath,” he said. 

Fennec rolled her eyes. “And those are in every Rim facility,” she said sarcastically.

“No, they’re not,” Fett said. “Mostly they’re on the Core planet facilities.”

Fennec sat back on her haunches and stared up at him. “You do remember that we’re wanted, right? Prices on our heads so high they don’t care if they take us alive or dead?”

“Again. Any better ideas?” Fett demanded. He set the last control. “Strip him. It won’t work if he’s still in his armor. Clothes are fine, but the armor will keep the Carbonite from setting.”

“Well, that’s going to piss him off,” Fennec muttered, but she set to work on the straps and clips holding the Beskar armor in place.

“I don’t think he’s in a position to care right now,” Fett said.

Fennec let one of the vambraces drop to the deck.

“Careful with that!” Fett snapped.

Fennec flinched a little, but recalled how steeped in tradition the Mandalorian armor was and continued with a little more care.

When Din was stripped except for his helmet, Fett grabbed her arm. “I’ll take his helmet off. You…turn around.”

“I’ve seen his face,” Fennec sighed.

“You have?”

She shrugged. “He didn’t mean for me to, but yes, I’ve seen it.”

Fett seemed uneasy at that admission, so Fennec did as he asked and turned her back anyway while he reverently removed the helmet and carefully set it aside. He hoisted Din up and laid him out on the sloped freezer platform, strapping him in to hold him upright during the process. When she heard the door snap shut and hoses start to feed the Carbonite fluid, she turned back around.

“What about the Jedi?” Fett asked.

“What about him?”

“He knows Mando, right?”

Fennec rolled her eyes. “He was there for about five minutes. I don’t think that qualifies as ‘knowing’ on any level, do you? Besides, he was only there for the kid.”

“But he might be able to help,” Fett said. 

“Okay, maybe,” Fennec admitted, though it was a very long shot. “But I have no idea who he is or where to find him.”

Fett checked the freezer readouts, monitoring the process. “There aren’t that many Jedi left. What did he look like?”

“I don’t know. Average? He was just a guy,” Fennec said. 

“Details.”

Fennec gnashed her teeth, but searched her memory of the brief encounter. “He was…kind of short. Dressed all in black. Had the lightsaber. Oh, he had a glove on one hand—.”

“A glove?” Fett stopped her mid sentence. 

“Yeah?”

Fett nodded slowly. “I know who that is.”

Fett’s tone made Fennec shiver and she decided not to follow him up into the cockpit when he stormed off.

___________________________

“Luke…I don’t know about this.” Leia’s tone was fearful, and Luke sensed its focus was for him.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. He gripped her hand tightly and instilled as much confidence into his touch as he could muster. 

The one way he’d thought of to find the Mandalorian was going to require him to go back into the last moment Grogu was conscious, when he had screamed out his terror and rage and love for his father. That meant immersing himself in the moment of emotional pain and trying to navigate it and dissect it for any details which might be helpful. Not any easy task.

“What can I do to help, kid?” Han asked.

Luke smiled at him gratefully. He knew Han wasn’t comfortable with the Force or what Luke was able to do with it, or even the connection he and Leia shared through it, but he was never one to shirk in the face of fear. “Help her,” Luke said softly, tilting his head in Leia’s direction, “to help me.”

Han nodded and edged closer to Leia.

Luke sat with his back to Grogu’s cot and reached up to take his tiny hand. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but it would help anchor him to his purpose. His other hand he slipped into Leia’s and gave a tight squeeze. She squeezed back, wrapped her other hand around his as well and nodded. He closed his eyes.

The pain gripped him almost immediately. His body went rigid with it. He floundered for an eternal second and then reached out and opened himself.

Pain. Fiery pain. Freezing pain. Pain upon pain…. 

Night. Darkness. Rock and sand. The smell of heat. 

Trail of flame. Streak of blue light. Howled fury. 

More pain. So much pain… 

Desperation. Fear. Resignation.

Stars…

Luke tumbled forward out of the moment and into Leia’s arms. She was panting. He was soaked in sweat. Han was trembling as he wrapped an arm around both of them.

“T-Tatooine…” Luke gasped. “He’s on Tatooine. I—I recognized the stars.”

Those stars, set in their bright constellations against Tatooine’s moonless sky were emblazoned on his memory since childhood. He would never forget them.

“Is he alive?” Leia asked. Her voice was weak. 

Luke could feel how much it took out of her to help anchor him. He pulled her close and hugged her. “I’m not sure. I think so. But he’s been badly wounded. Very badly. He needs help.”

“Was anyone with him?” Han asked. “Anyone we might be able to get a message to?”

Luke closed his eyes again. The memories were his now, so he didn’t need to go all the way back into the moment. He sped through the images, snapping focus on the trail of flame he had seen, drawing it in close. It was from a jet pack. Similar to the Mandalorian’s, but it wasn’t him wearing it. No, the armor was older, worn, and…familiar.

“He’s alive,” Luke said in astonishment.

“Who’s alive?” Han asked. “The Mandalorian?”

Luke looked up at him, eyes sympathetic. Han wasn’t going to like this answer. “Boba Fett.”

___________________________

Fennec drummed her fingers against her thigh. Fett had them sitting at the edge of Core space and he was setting the Slave I’s transponder to broadcast a general distress call for Luke Skywalker. They were about to attract a whole lot of unwanted attention. 

“There’s got to be another way,” Fennec said.

“Probably,” Fett agreed. “But not many of them end in him being alive.”

Fennec slid him a look. “Is that important to us?”

She didn’t really mean it. Well, almost not really. He was going to get paid, after all. He did take the job, and every job came with risks. Just because Fett felt some kind of misplaced loyalty to the Mandalorian based on a code they shared, didn’t mean she had to risk incarceration for the rest of her life in order to get him medical help. 

Fett was staring at her from the pilot’s seat. She gave a one-shoulder shrug and hunched down in her own seat. “I just don’t see how it helps him if they decide to blow us out of the sky first.”

“It’s the New Republic,” Fett said. “They won’t.”

“You hope,” Fennec muttered and kept her gaze riveted out the front viewport.

_______________________________

“Commander Skywalker!” A communications tech came running down the corridor toward Luke. “Commander Skywalker!”

Luke drew up with him, but didn’t slow his pace. Grogu’s stasis pod floated alongside him as he continued on toward the launch bay where the Millennium Falcon was being prepped for takeoff. The tech spun on his heel and quick stepped back the way he’d come, trailing after Luke and the pod.

“Commander, we’ve picked up a distress call coming in from the edge of Core space,” the tech said hurriedly. “It has your comm marker on it.”

Luke drew up short. “What?”

The tech offered the flimsy out to Luke’s waiting hand. Luke skimmed it. “They’re trying to find us,” he murmured.

“Sorry, sir?”

Luke thrust the flimsy back at the tech. “Get two X-wings out there to make contact and have Medical send down a full Bacta bath to be loaded onto the Millennium Falcon. Right now, please.”

The tech stared at him in astonishment for half a second and then rushed off. 

When Luke got down to the launch bay, Han was standing at the top of the loading ramp, looking disgruntled as a bulky medical sled was maneuvered on board. He looked at Luke and swept an arm out to take in the unexpected cargo. 

“What’s this all about?”

Luke mounted the ramp. “They’re coming to us,” he said.

“Who is?”

“Boba Fett. His ship is sitting out on the border. Communications just picked up a general distress call with my marker on it from his ship’s transponder,” Luke answered.

Han’s lips pressed into a thin white line. His last dealing with the bounty hunter had not been pleasant. Fett had helped Vader set the trap for Luke on Cloud City and then delivered Han into Jabba’s hands afterward. They had all believed he was dead in the belly of a Sarlac on Tatooine for the last five years. Apparently, they were wrong. 

“Can I kill him for real when we get done?” Han muttered.

Luke just looked at him. Han rolled his eyes and turned to head up to the cockpit. Luke guided Grogu’s pod up into the cockpit behind Han and settled it in the seat behind Chewie who roared a greeting to Luke when he stepped through the hatch.

“Hey, Chewie,” Luke said, digging his hand into a big hairy shoulder and scratching hard. Chewie rumbled his appreciation and continued to lay in their course in the navcomp. 

“So, what’s with all the medical supplies?” Han asked again. He slid into his seat and started through his pre-flight checks. Chewie watched him benignly from his own seat because he’d already done all those things, but Han was a stickler when it came to his ship. If something was going to go wrong with her, he wasn’t going to have it be because someone else had forgotten to check something. 

“The Mandalorian,” Luke said. “The message said he was suffering from radiation poisoning and other wounds of an undetermined nature. They seemed pretty sure he wouldn’t make it without the full treatment.”

“Uh-huh, and how are they keeping him alive right now?”

“I have no idea,” Luke admitted.

Han half turned in his seat to look at Grogu’s pod. He raised an eyebrow at Luke. “You think that’s smart? Taking him out there?”

Luke shrugged. “I think it would be less smart to leave him here. Especially if we can’t save the Mandalorian.”

Han considered this and then nodded. He punch the ship-wide comm. “Everybody not leaving had better get off. Liftoff in five.” 

Luke could sense Han’s frustration bleeding off of him in waves. He wasn’t that comfortable with the situation himself, but Grogu was still unconscious and according to the medical staff, he was getting worse, not better. Luke still couldn’t make any kind of connection with him. He was nothing more than blank space in the fabric of the Force right now, completely inert. Even Yoda had not been able to to that. He hid himself by staying close to a concentrated nexus of the Dark Side to negate his own presence in the Force. It worried Luke that Grogu had disconnected himself, or been disconnected forcibly, with his outburst. He hoped that bringing him back in proximity to the Mandalorian would rouse him.

“He knows we’re coming, right?” Han asked. “Knows he’s not supposed to shoot at us?”

“Would it be a problem if he did?” Luke asked.

Han chuckled darkly. “Not one bit.”

“Just make sure we have the Mandalorian on board first, okay?” Luke sighed.

“Right.”

_______________________________

“X-wings at ten and two,” Fett said.

Fennec twitched in her seat. “And the Bantha fodder hits the circulation unit,” she muttered.

“Slave I, please confirm your ship’s transponder code,” one of the X-wing pilots requested over an open channel. “We’ve received your distress call and are ready to assist.”

Fett looked over at Fennec. “I told you.”

Fennec shot him a scathing look. Fett shook his head and sent out the confirmation ping. 

“Is Skywalker with you?” Fett asked.

“We’ve been asked to hold position here with you,” the X-wing pilot said. “Commander Skywalker will be arriving soon.”

Fennec fidgeted. “I don’t think another X-wing is going to help. We can’t do a ship to ship transfer with one of those things. There’s no place to put him.”

“That’s because he’s not coming in an X-wing,” Fett said, watching his sensor array as another ship dropped out of hyperspace behind them. “He’s coming in that.”

Fennec leaned forward and spotted the Millennium Falcon as she swooped overhead and banked to settle with the  X-wings flanking her. She whistled. “Corellian. Modified it looks like.”

“Oh, yes,” Fett agreed. “Very modified.”

“You know that ship?”

“You might say that.”

“Nice to see you again, Fett,” a cool voice came over the comm.

“I doubt that,” Fett replied.

“Well, I can let bygones be bygones,” the voice said. “If you can.”

“It was just business, Solo,” Fett replied tightly. “You would have done the same.”

There was a protracted silence on the channel and then a different voice came over. “Do you have the Mandalorian on board?”

“Yes,” Fett confirmed.

“Please prepare for immediate docking. We’ve brought the requested medical supplies.”

Fett started to reply, but Fennec slammed her hand over the comm. “We’d like certain assurances before we turn him over,” she said over the channel. “Like your guarantee that we go free after the transfer.”

Fennec expected some sort of political pandering in response, bickering and bargaining chips and all that, but there was only silence. Then the X-wings peeled away and jumped, leaving the freighter by itself, relatively undefended.

“Does that meet with your satisfaction,” the voice said evenly.

“Um, yeah,” Fennec answered dumbly. Maybe these New Republic people really were decent sorts.

Fett set the autopilot and headed back to the cargo bay. The docking collar was already cycling when he got there, and a moment later a black clad figure dropped through the airlock.

“Skywalker.” Fett nodded to Luke.

“Boba Fett.” Luke looked up briefly at the airlock and then back to Fett. “You’ll, uh, forgive Han if he sits this one out, I assume.”

“I figured.” Fett opened the Carbonite containment unit to reveal the Mandalorian, still frozen there. “He was in pretty bad shape,” he said to Luke’s astonished look. “I didn’t know how long he’d last if we didn’t get him into stasis or a Bacta bath. It was the best we could do.”

“Creative,” Luke admitted. “And effective. We won’t get him through the airlock in that, though.” Luke stepped up on the ladder and raised his voice. “Chewie, you ready up there? We’ll need you to pull him up.”

A roar of confirmation came from above. Fett took an unconscious step backward. Luke smiled a little. “Don’t worry. He won’t kill you either, unless Han tells him to.”

“That’s comforting,” Fett grumbled. He tapped in the release code on the blinking panel attached to the Mandalorian’s Carbonite block and it immediately began to heat and vaporize. He glanced up at Luke while they waited. “Tell Solo I served my time. Slow digestion by Sarlac isn’t a fate I’d wish on my worst enemy.”

Luke nodded his agreement. “I’ll do that.”

The Carbonite sublimated slowly in the silence between them. When the Mandalorian was fully visible at last, Luke agreed with Fett’s assessment that he was indeed in really bad shape. His skin was pale to the point of grey and there were long, deep gashes burned across his abdomen and side. He hoped they could save him. If not, he feared very much for Grogu. 

Luke and Fett hoisted his weight between them as gently as they could and passed him up into the airlock to the Wookie. Chewie lifted him tenderly and with ease. Luke stepped up to follow.

“Wait.” Fett gathered the Mandalorian’s carefully packed armor and handed it Luke. “His armor. Take care of it. It’s very valuable to him.” Luke nodded. “And when he wakes, make sure no one is in the room with him. No one sees his face. Except as he chooses.”

Luke nodded again and pushed the armor up through the airlock then paused and looked back at Fett. “What do you owe him that you would risk coming so close to the Core for him?”

“We are bound by honor and brotherhood,” Fett said simply as if that would answer all questions.

Luke cocked his head and examined Fett’s armor more closely. It was very similar to the Mandalorian’s if an older style and much more scuffed and pitted from wear and tear. Luke had never considered Fett a Mandalorian. He only saw the bounty hunter and an enemy. Now, as he allowed his senses to reach out, he found a very tired and weary warrior whose want for greed and need for vengeance tempered and outweighed by a want for someplace to rest and call home.

“The New Republic is always in need of strong warriors to defend it,” Luke said quietly.

Fett nodded, graciously acknowledging the peace offering. “Perhaps one day, but not this day.”

Luke gave him a tiny bow and went up through the airlock.

“So, they’re just letting us leave?” Fennec said when Fett came back into the cockpit. She was still eyeing the Millennium Falcon warily out the forward viewport. Some of its many modifications were in the weapons department, and she was keeping the forward guns under close observation.

“We did what we said we would do. They have what they came for,” Fett said. He looked over at her. “Perhaps one day you will learn a little of the value of trust, Fennec.”

He set the navcomp for the return trip to Tatooine and engaged the hyperdrive.

Chapter Text

Two med techs had accompanied the Bacta unit, and Luke was glad of it. When they received their patient, the speed with which they moved to strip him and get him into the bath gave Luke some inkling of how very close to death the Mandalorian really was. 

Han hovered at the door. Chewie watched the flurry of activity from just behind him, ducked low to see into the med bay. Grogu’s pod hovered near the tank the Mandalorian was being carefully submerged into, as close as Luke could get it without being underfoot of the med techs as they worked. So far the child showed no signs of waking.

“You think this is going to work?” Han asked. He came further into the bay and looked the tank up and down. The Mandalorian was a big man, strong by the looks of it. His body showed signs of being beaten badly over the years, but he struck Han as a kindred spirit who wouldn’t back down from any fight.

“I don’t know,” Luke admitted. “I’ve never seen wounds like this before. It’s almost like they were made with a Lightsaber, but much more damaging.”

“More damaging than death?” Han asked skeptically. He eyed the Lightsaber clipped to Luke’s belt.

“Well, at least when I strike, I kill,” Luke said. “This…this was something else. This was suffering. A slow death.”

Han moved over to the pod and peered inside at Grogu. “Little tyke doesn’t seem to be waking up.”

“No. It might take a while. Maybe when the Mandalorian regains consciousness,” Luke said hopefully.

“If he regains consciousness,” Han muttered.

Din floated.

His last memory was of giving in to the fiery freezing pain eating at every cell in his body and watching the stars fade out above him. He was floating in darkness now, and he wondered if this was death. Mandalorian songs told of an afterlife of celebration and reunion with the Great Warriors of old, but Din had always doubted whether such an afterlife would admit him since he was a Foundling and not a true Mandalorian, and he had never had the opportunity to prove himself in real battle. 

He opened his eyes and the darkness lifted to a hazy watery blue. Indistinct figures moved in the distance. He tried to focus on them but couldn’t. He was weak. The pain was gone, but his limbs felt leaden and wouldn’t obey any of his commands. He was tired. So tired. He closed his eyes again and floated away in the darkness once more.

When Din woke again, there was muted light all around. He was lying down, covered by blankets and something was nestled close into his side. It was very familiar and very comforting. He tightened his arm around it.

“Fett said when you woke, there should be no one in the room with you.”

Din blinked and tried to focus on the voice to his right. It was vaguely familiar. 

“I thought since I had already seen your face, you might not mind. Would you like me to leave?” it asked.

Din shook his head tentatively, searching his still muddled brain for the owner of that voice. “Jedi?” he croaked.

“Luke. My name is Luke Skywalker,” the voice named itself.

“Grogu?” Din rasped.

“He’s there with you,” Luke said softly. “We thought it would help you both.”

Din’s arm tightened reflexively on the bundle nestled to his side. There was no sound and no movement in response to his touch. His brain sharpened. “Both?”

“When you were injured, he…reacted badly,” Luke said. “He hasn’t woken since.”

Din rolled to his side slowly and with effort and pulled the bundle up closer to his shoulder. He pushed away the edges of a familiar blue blanket and peered in at Grogu’s placid, sleeping face. He raised a hand and stroked one of Grogu’s ears and then the downy fuzz on his head. The child remained still.

“How long?” Din asked weakly.

“A few days,” Luke said. “Fett brought you in to us from the Rim frozen in Carbonite to keep you in stasis. It probably saved your life.”

Din nodded. He’d suspected if the wounds the C’Araesens inflicted didn’t kill him, the radiation from the Triscain crystal that they fed on would. “Where are we?”

“On Coruscant,” Luke replied.

Din’s eyes widened at that. “They brought me in to the Core?”

He knew Fett felt a kind of bond of honor to him as a fellow Mandalorian, but Fennec certainly didn’t share that, and to risk capture by New Republic forces just to save his life seemed an improbable stretch for their relationship. 

Luke moved out of the shadows and came to sit by the bed, satisfied that the Mandalorian was content with his presence. “Most of the way. We met them at the border and brought you the rest of the way in the Falcon. I think Fett would have come all the way in if he had to, but his partner wasn’t so enthused.”

“No, she wouldn’t be,” Din agreed. “Fennec Shand was one of the Imperial’s best assassins.”

“Ah,” Luke nodded. “Yes, I’ve heard of her. Very dangerous with a sniper rifle.”

“You have no idea.”

Din kept stroking Grogu’s ear, but the child slept resolutely on. It worried Din. He’d seen Grogu weakened by his efforts in using the Force. He’d slept for a full day after the Mudhorn attack and and nearly as long again after he’d protected them all from the inferno in the cantina on Nevarro but never more than that. He wondered what the child had done to injure himself so deeply.

“He cares very much for you, you know,” Luke said. “He’s been very homesick for you these last months.”

The prickly heat of tears stung the backs of Din’s eyes. “I’ve missed him, too.”

“I can see that.”

Luke’s tone was very sincere. Din looked up at him, finally focusing on the face a few feet away from his bedside. It was a young face, very young. Din remembered him being much older on Gideon’s cruiser, but that may have been because of the incredible power he wielded in the moment together with Din’s own preconceived notions that the Jedi were an old and very wise race. This man looked a little uncomfortable yet in his skin, or at least in the skin of an all powerful Jedi. He looked more like a young, brash fighter pilot who would be much more at home in the cockpit of his X-wing in the midst of a fiery battle. 

“Something amusing?” Luke asked wth a lifted brow.

Din realized he was smiling. “You just don’t strike me as a Jedi at the moment. Not that I know many. Only you and Ahsoka Tano.”

“You’ve met Ahsoka?” Luke was surprised. Ahsoka kept very much to herself. He’d made more than one request for her to join him in the New Republic, but she was still distrustful of any organized government after what happened with Order 66.

“She was the first Jedi I found. She said she couldn’t train Grogu,” Din replied. “She was the one who sent us to Tython.”

This surprised Luke and made him wonder what Ahsoka was doing out in the galaxy that she would refuse to take a youngling in need of training into her care, if for no other reason than to deliver him to safety. She could easily have brought him to Luke. 

“She was the one who found Grogu’s name and she said…” Din’s face went very soft. “She said he thought of me like a father.”

“He does,” Luke said. “It’s what he calls you whenever he speaks of you.”

“He talks?” Din looked up, surprised.

Luke smiled and shrugged. “Well, not exactly. He only communicates telepathically. I’m not sure if he can’t speak or he simply won’t. He’s a little bit stubborn.”

Din chuckled, wincing a little at the ache it caused all over his still healing body. “He’s a lot stubborn.”

Luke laughed softly in agreement, then sobered. “I’m not sure exactly how he did what he did. I know he’s very powerful, but the outburst of Force he focused on you when you were wounded… I’ve never seen anything even close.”

“What do you mean?”

Luke reached out to touch the tip of Grogu’s ear and rub it gently. “He reached across space to you, connected with you somehow, over that distance. It should be impossible. Even for us.” He looked up at Din from under his lashes. “I wonder if you didn’t reach back and meet him part way.”

It was only a theory Luke was postulating. Grogu had thrown his entire self into that Force scream and sent it out into the galaxy, but it would have had no direction, no place to connect. Unless Din reached out first. 

Din was staring at him wide-eyed and wary, and Luke had a feeling he’d stumbled on the truth of it. 

“I was…thinking of him,” Din whispered. “I was thinking how I missed him, how he wasn’t there like he had been before to…urge me on.” He didn’t know how else to describe it. The last months alone gave him a lot of time to think about those moments when he was about to give up and give in, and to recognize the gentle enduring push to keep going that flooded him whenever the situation had reached a point of no return. He searched his memory now for the final moment before the C’Araesen had struck him and heard something in it he hadn’t before.

Father.

“He called out to me.” Din looked down in awe at Grogu. “He called, and I heard him.”

Luke nodded. “I think you should try it now. In reverse.”

“How?” Din asked, bewildered.

“Just call to him—in your mind. I think he’ll hear you,” Luke urged him.

Din reached into the blanket for one of Grogu’s tiny hands and held it between his thumb and forefinger. He held his breath.

Grogu.

Nothing.

Grogu? I’m here.

Still nothing. Din glanced up at Luke, but he only nodded for Din to try again. Din squeezed his eyes shut and focused on the tiny warm hand between his fingers and the fragile little body nestled close to his.

Grogu. Father is here.

Grogu stirred in his blanket. Luke gasped as the child’s Force presence flooded back, astounded by the power of it, or more appropriately by the power of his connection to the man he called Father.

Father!

Grogu blinked his big eyes and cooed softly. His little hand flexed around Din’s finger, and he turned his face up to meet Din’s damp gaze.

“You scared us to death, you little womp rat,” Din admonished lovingly, his voice graveled with emotion. “Don’t do that again.”

Grogu ducked his head and pushed it up under Din’s chin, nuzzling in as close as he could.

Father is alive. Father is saved.

“He’s very happy,” Luke said, swallowing around the lump in his throat. The love emanating from the two nested together on the bed was nearly overwhelming. 

“I know,” Din murmured, pressing his cheek to the top of Grogu’s head. “I know.”

Chapter Text

Din roused to the sound of rustling and a muffled hummed grunting coming from the corner of the room. He rubbed at his eyes and pushed up on his elbows. He took a moment to let a ripple of dizziness pass before he searched the shadowed corners for the source of the sound. That was when he noticed Grogu was not in the bed with him. After he had woken in Din’s arms almost a week ago, he had refused to go back to Luke’s quarters and instead made himself a nest out of a blanket and pillow beside Din’s head. There he stayed for most of their waking hours since Din was still tiring easily and had not yet ventured out of the quarters he’d been given. They passed the time with long naps and Din telling the child tales of old exploits. Din tried in turn to glean what Grogu had been doing in the intervening months they were separated by attempting to interpret his coos and burbles, but either Grogu had not been doing much at all, or Din simply had no way of understanding him. 

“Grogu?”

The odd grunting sound escalated to a high pitched coo of happiness, and Din squinted toward the corner where his armor was neatly stacked. Grogu came toddling out into the light, holding the little silver knob, that was the final relic of the Razor Crest, aloft between his hands. He was smiling broadly, and it was infectious. Din grinned back.

“Been digging around in my utility pack, have you?” Din admonished gently.

Grogu cooed in delight and clambered up onto the bed, immediately bringing the ball to his mouth. 

“Have you learned to do anything else with that besides suck on it?” he asked. He rolled onto his back and folded an arm behind his head so he could watch the child play with his found toy. “I kind of expected you to be floating furniture all over the room or something by now.”

Grogu stopped his suckling and the happy smile slid off his little face.

Din frowned. “Don’t be sad. I didn’t mean it like that. I just thought you’d have learned…I don’t know. What have you been learning from your new teacher?”

“Not much,” a voice said from the doorway.

Din’s head whipped around and he closed his eyes briefly against a rolling wave of nausea. The Bacta bath had healed his body and washed him clean of the radiation poisoning all the way down to the cellular level, but the medics warned him he would be weak for a while yet until his body could build its reserves back up. Weakness was not something he was accustomed to, and he didn’t like it. 

“May I come in?” Luke asked.

Din levered himself up slowly and reached for his shirt on a nearby table. “Sure.”

Luke came into the room and paused a few meters from the bed until Din motioned for him to sit down in a chair.

“What did you mean ‘not much’?” Din asked, pushing himself back into the pillows to lean against the headboard. Grogu crawled over into his lap and started sucking on the orb again. “I thought you were going to teach him to be a Jedi like you?”

Luke sprawled in the chair. It wasn’t a casual or careless gesture. It was exhausted, and Din noted the dark circles under the young man’s eyes. He looked like he’d been awake for days.

“It isn’t for lack of trying,” Luke replied. He pinched at the bridge of his nose and fought to stifle a yawn. “As you pointed out, our little friend has a stubborn streak.”

Din looked down at Grogu who seemed to be studiously avoiding Luke’s gaze. “He’s definitely that, but you said all he wanted was my permission to go with you.” He looked back up at Luke. “I gave it. Doesn’t he want to be here?” Luke said nothing, but looked at Grogu intently. Din looked back down at the child. “Don’t you want to be here with others like you?”

Grogu carefully ignored Din’s gaze as well.

“I don’t understand,” Din said.

Luke shook his head tiredly. “I think I’m beginning to. I think your quest to return him to the Jedi became his, but it wasn’t necessarily what he wanted.”

“But he called out to you on Tython,” Din countered.

“He did. But again, I think it was because he felt he was a burden to you and he was trying to help you achieve your quest,” Luke said. “I’m just speculating here, but given his reluctance with me, that may be the case.”

“You said he had to be trained. He’d be a danger until he was,” Din said.

“And that’s still true, but I can’t force him.”

“Grogu.” Din gently pried the shiny orb from between Grogu’s claws in order to get his attention. The child reached for it and whined. “Grogu, why don’t you want to learn to be a Jedi?”

Grogu said nothing as usual, but his ears drooped and he gave up reaching for the toy and just sat with his hands pressed to the blankets beneath him, looking at neither man directly.

After a long minute, Luke said, “Because he has everything he believes he wants right here.”

Din blinked at him.

“You,” Luke replied gravely. “His mind is so focused on you that had you not inadvertently found your way to us, I was about to consider looking for you. He wants to be with you. He needs you. Everything you’ve seen him do was out of affection for you. You are his motivation.”

Din’s eyes stung. He cupped a gentle hand at the back of Grogu’s head and swiped at his damp eyes with the other. He could hear the gravity in the other man’s tone. His words sounded like a warning.

“And that’s bad.”

Luke nodded wearily. “I know first hand what that kind of obsessive love can do to a Jedi.” He rubbed at the center of his gloved palm. “It destroys them, and everyone around them.”

Din could hear the heavy weight of loss in that admission. “Then Jedi don’t love,” he said.

“We do. But our love is much broader, and we don’t hinge it on the existence of only one being. That’s too dangerous.”

Grogu moaned softly and fretted at Din’s shirtfront. Din gathered him up in his arms, laid a soothing hand across his back.“What do we do then, to change his mind?”

Din was reluctant to ask the question. His own heart was finally at peace again in the child’s presence and he was afraid the solution to Grogu’s recalcitrance was going to be another separation, only this time more permanent with no promises of seeing each other again.

Luke looked at the two of them together for a long moment before answering. “We don’t. He has to make the choice himself. Until he decides his own way—and I think you know how difficult a decision that can be—he will be working against himself.”

Din did know. He chose his Way, swore himself to the Mandalorian Creed as a child, but he had done it for himself. He had no one else then, so perhaps that made the decision a little easier, but his only motivation was survival, growing strong, and never being afraid again. He looked down at the child nuzzling against his chest and wondered if he’d done him a disservice in coming to care for him so deeply. If he’d maintained his distance, Grogu’s path would be much clearer and much easier for him to choose. 

“As easy as we make it seem,” Luke said. “Love isn’t a choice.”

Din’s eyes snapped to Luke’s face. Luke shook his head at the fearful question there. 

“No, I’m not reading your mind, but I know you’re wondering if you should have done things differently, tried not to care for him.” He gave a shake of his head as if discarding the idea. “I don’t think it would have mattered. You couldn’t change the way he chose to feel about you.”

Grogu hummed at this as if in agreement. Din gave him a gentle hug.

“I don’t think I could have forced myself to care less if I had tried,” he said. 

He closed his eyes and let his head drop back against the headboard. He was tired again. It frustrated him. He’d barely moved from the bed in nearly four days, and even a conversation was draining him. He felt Grogu wiggling further up his chest then a tiny hand touched his cheek. His eyes snapped open, and he snatched the hand and pressed it down. Grogu whined an objection.

“No,” Din said firmly. “I’ll heal. I’m fine. Please, don’t.”

Luke leaned forward, brows pulling together. “What was he doing?”

Din rolled his head to the side to look at Luke, surprised the Jedi didn’t recognize Grogu’s intent. “He was going to try and heal me.”

Luke’s eyes widened. “He can do that?”

Din frowned. “Yes. It takes a lot out of him, though, too much. Why? Can’t all Jedi?”

“I’ve read a little in the histories I’ve managed to obtain about healing powers, but I’ve never seen them first hand. It wasn’t in my lexicon when I was trained,” he said a little wistfully. “I was taught how to fight.”

Din nodded. “From what I recall, you’re very adept.”

Luke declined to answer. Instead, he focused on Grogu. “Perhaps your presence will allow him to open up more, and I can better see how much he knows. For now, you should rest. You are both still healing.”

He rose to leave and it was then Din could fully see the way the young man held himself—tightly, like he was trying very hard not to give in to the exhaustion blanketing him.

“Looks like you could use some rest yourself,” Din suggested.

“My sister would agree with you,” Luke said. “But the New Republic is still in its infancy and with no other Jedi to protect it…”

“None?” Din asked, incredulous.

“None that have come forward at any rate,” Luke replied. “It’s why I’ve been searching for others like Grogu to train.”

“What about Ahsoka?”

Some fleeting irritation crossed Luke’s face too quickly for Din to read it.

“Ahsoka has her own mission. She’s much older than you might think and very independent. She barely survived Order 66, and until the New Republic can prove itself, I don’t think I can convince her to come back and defend it,” Luke said.

“Order 66?”

“The order Emperor Palpatine gave to slaughter the Jedi,” Luke said. He looked at Grogu. “He was there. He saw the younglings all killed that night. It was nothing short of a miracle that he was saved. I still think he distrusts me a little because of it.”

Din frowned down at Grogu. “Why would he distrust you because of something that happened so long ago?”

Luke’s face was stoney when he answered, but his eyes were full of grief. 

“Because the man who tried to kill him was my father.”

Chapter Text

Luke didn't return to Din's quarters after he dropped the bomb about his father.

Din wasn't sure how he felt about the revelation. He could definitely understand Grogu’s reticence in learning from the man now, though Din didn't exactly subscribe to blaming the son for the sins of the father. Grogu apparently did not feel the same. Now that Din was paying attention, he could see that Grogu was much more relaxed when the Jedi was not around. Din supposed he couldn't blame him. He’d had an avid hatred and distrust of droids all his life because his parents were killed and his village destroyed by them. It didn't follow that all droids were bad, IG-11 had certainly proved that much in the end, but Din couldn't help those feelings his life experience had brought him or how they interconnected with his memories. Grogu was no different.

After Luke's absence dragged into a second day, Din decided to go in search of the young Jedi. He was still weak, but he'd managed to build up to several slow circuits around the suite. He could at least venture out a little way and see if he could find someone to tell him where the man was. He considered his armor and freshly cleaned clothes in the corner. It seemed somehow inappropriate to try and hide behind the visor now that so many people had seen him without it. Even if he was unconscious at the time. Not to mention the fact that marching through the heart of the New Republic's seat of power in full armor was likely to raise some eyebrows if not several alarms. He left the armor sit and opted for the soft blue shirt, tunic and pants he'd been provided by a serving droid several days ago.

Grogu watched him dress with a worried expression, making concerned cooing noises when Din had to sit down and rest for a minute before pulling on his boots.

"I know what you're thinking," Din said when the child toddled over to stand by the bed and stroke at his calf. "But I don't want you to try it. I'm getting better everyday. It's just a slow process."

Grogu sighed mournfully but didn't attempt his healing trick. Din reached down to pat his head and then finished tugging on his boots.

"Come on, let's go for a walk. If I keep to your pace,” he teased, "I should be fine."

The corridors were mostly silent at midday with only droids going to and fro on their assigned duties and the occasional courier moving at a swift pace on their mission of the moment. Din was given to understand that the upper floors of the Capitol Tower were mostly private quarters like his own, so the lack of activity this time of day didn't surprise him. He was grateful for it in fact, because he hadn't really anticipated the overwhelming sense of vulnerability he felt without his armor.

The armor was a statement of his Creed and purpose, but it was also protection. He didn't realize until this moment that it acted as protection for his psyche as much as his body. No one paid any attention to him as he made his slow way down the corridor, droids beeped an acknowledgement at his passing and the others gave only a brief nod if anything, but he still felt naked and exposed. He put a hand out, leaning on the wall to steady himself against a sudden wave of vertigo. Grogu burbled alarmingly and tried to crawl up his leg.

Din blew out a slow breath and made his way unsteadily to a niche a few feet away where there was a bench he could sit down on and rest. Grogu reached for him anxiously until he picked the child up and set him on the bench beside him.

"I'm alright,” he assured the child. "It's just a litle overwhelming." 

He looked up and down the long stretch of corridor only now realizing his mistake in trying to find the Jedi without any idea where to start looking. He glanced down at Grogu. "I don't suppose you know where your teacher is, do you?” Grogu only cooed in response, obviously more concerned about Din than Luke's location. "I thought not."

A heavy booted tread coming from the opposite end of the corridor caught Din's attention. There was a particular rhythm to a man's walk when he carried a weapon at his hip, and Din's entire body clenched in reflex. The man coming toward him walked with a swagger and confidence Din had come to identify with retired military and fighting men who had seen and successfully escaped countless encounters with death marching only a step behind. This man was anything but military, though. His hair was tousled, his clothes were civilian and well worn. His face was relaxed but his eyes watchful. And he did indeed have a blaster holstered at his hip.

He stopped a meter or so from Din, his hands in full view and loose at his sides as if he were purposefully giving Din time to access him. Din acknowledged this with a slow nod, and the man came closer, his face breaking into a lopsided smile.

"You're the Mandalorian," he said, hooking his thumbs into his belt. "Thought you guys only went around in full armor."

Despite the smile there was tension written into the man's stance. Din kept his own hands clearly visible and relaxed to try and put the man at ease. He thought there might be apprehension in his gaze born of past experience with others of Din’s ilk, and from the look that experience wasn't good.

"I thought it might be rude to walk around looking like I expected a fight."

Din leveled his gaze on the blaster at the man's side.

The man picked up on his meaning and shrugged. "I get a pass. Being married to the leader of the New Republic has its perks."

Din's eyebrow shot up.

"Han Solo," the man said, finally holding out a hand.

Din took the offered hand, trying to keep his trepidation at the unfiltered contact out of his grip. It had been a long time since he'd had skin to skin contact with anyone save Grogu.

"Then I owe you my thanks,” Din said, dredging Han’s name from his fuzzy memory of the first day or two he'd been conscious. "For the rescue."

"Think nothing of it. Seems to have done the trick. Our little friend looks much happier. "

Grogu confirmed this by cooing happily and wrapping a claw around Din's little finger.

Han eyed him curiously. "But you look wiped. What are you doing out here anyway? Thought they still had you on bed rest."

"I was looking for the Jedi," Din said, grimacing at Han's assessment.

"Luke? His quarters are just down there." Han lifted his chin in the direction from which he'd come. "He's not there, though. He took off yesterday, said he had a lead on some Jedi artifact or other. He looked pretty ruffled when he left."

Din felt a twinge of guilt. He wondered if Luke's absence was motivated more by his final admission about his father than this artifact he claimed to be looking for. Din had tried to keep the shock of the statement off his face, but he was unaccustomed to people being able to read his expression, and he was afraid Luke may have felt he was passing judgement on him in much the same way Grogu was even if it was inadvertent.

Han was looking him up and down. “You look like you're ready to tip over just sitting there. Come on, I'll walk you back to your quarters."

Din stood up slowly, taking a moment to let the dizziness that still assailed him whenever he changed altitude wear off before he tried to take a step. Han hovered close in case he couldn’t recover himself. They set off back toward his quarters at a pace so slow even Grogu had to stop every few steps to let them catch up.

“Maybe we oughta throw you back in the tank,” Han mused. “What did you run up against that set you so far back?”

“A C’Araesan,” Din said.

Han whistled low. “Really. I thought those were just things out of fairy tales.”

“More aptly out of a horror story,” Din corrected. “And I hope you never get the chance to see one in the flesh. I have no idea what it did to me, but I still feel like hell.”

Din made the walk back without embarrassing himself by collapsing like Han seemed convinced he might and dropped gratefully into a chair when they got back to his room. Grogu immediately climbed up into his lap and clung to his shirtfront. Han watched him quizzically. 

“I’d have never pegged a Mandalorian as getting attached to a child, and an all powerful Jedi one at that.”

“Well, I didn’t know about the second part until after I met him,” Din said. “And then it was kind of too late, even though it took me a while to realize it.”

“Yeah, they have a way of sneaking up on you in the emotional department,” Han said.

“What? Kids?”

“And Jedi.” Han said it with fondness, and Din was certain the man cared deeply for Luke.

“Does he often disappear without warning?” Din asked, stroking Grogu’s back absently.

Han shrugged and dropped into a chair opposite. His sprawl, unlike Luke’s of earlier, was every bit a gesture of casual nonchalance. “Sometimes for weeks at a time. We barely see him anymore. It worries the devil out of Leia. She does the best she can here, and she’s brilliant at it, but I know she feels better when he’s close by.”

“His…wife?” Din asked. He somehow hadn’t imagined the Jedi being married, especially after his admission about how love tended to cause destruction for a Jedi.

Han laughed. “No. We need to catch you up on the family tree. Sorry. Leia is my wife—Luke’s sister.”

“Ah.” Din relaxed, unaware that he’d even tensed up at the thought of Luke’s attachment to anyone. “Is she a Jedi then, too?”

“No.” Han fidgeted with a tuft on the back of the chair cushion, like the idea made him uncomfortable. “It runs in the family. She has a connection to the Force the same as Luke, but not as strong, or at least not that she wants to test for its strength.”

Din frowned. “He said that if Grogu wasn’t trained, he’d be a danger to himself and those around him. Doesn’t he worry about his sister?”

“Oh, he worries about her. He worries about everyone and everything. He’s developed a complex if you ask me, thinks he should be able to save the whole galaxy single-handedly—no pun intended.” The joke was lost on Din and Han let it pass. “But no, he doesn’t worry about her like that. She was never trained at all. Her connection is all about intuition, and she’s good at it where it counts. Don’t let her get you into a diplomatic debate. Luke’s concern with this little guy,” Han leaned forward to tickle the tip of Grogu’s ear, “is that he was trained once, just enough to make him dangerous if that training isn’t completed.”

Grogu batted playfully at Han’s finger and they engaged in a game of finger tag for a minute. Din watched the easy way Han interacted with the child and envied him a little. All of his time with Grogu had been about protecting him, guarding him every moment against Moff Gideon and the bounty hunters tracking them. There hadn’t been time to just play.

“Do you have kids?”

“Um, no.” Han sat back. Grogu looked bereft for a moment at his loss of a playmate but quickly set to entertaining himself by making shadow shapes in a ray of light that fell on Din’s leg. “We’re trying. Leia feels its important for the bloodline to continue, and Luke’s not liable to produce any heirs, so…”

“Seems kind of a cold reason to decide to have a child,” Din said.

“I would agree with you normally, but the Skywalker blood is historically some of the strongest when it comes to yielding Jedi. Right now that’s a pretty front and center concern for the New Republic. It’s not like we don’t want them for all the usual reasons, too, it’s just an important factor in the equation.”

Din watched Han fiddle with the pillow some more.

“You don’t sound entirely convinced.”

Han considered his answer for a long minute before he spoke. “Luke is very strong and very good, but a Jedi can go bad as well.”

“His father,” Din said. 

Han nodded slowly. “Yeah, it weighs pretty heavy on the kid’s mind which is probably why he’ll never have any of his own.”

Din replayed Luke’s interactions with Grogu, seeing the hesitancy there with fresh eyes. He’d thought it was because he was deferring to Din, not wanting to upstage him as a stronger force in Grogu’s life, but now he wondered if it was something else. 

“He doubts himself, doesn’t he?”

Han sighed heavily. “That’s probably not something he’d like me to confirm, but yeah, he does. It’s why I worry about him.”

A knock came at the door and a moment later a glossy, golden-skinned protocol droid sidled in, trying to look inconspicuous.

“Captain Solo, Councilor Organ is looking for you.”

Han rolled his eyes and heaved himself out of his chair. “Threepio, she’s my wife. You can call her Leia.”

“That would be inappropriate to her station, Captain Solo.”

“Wouldn’t it just,” Han muttered. “Tell her I’ll be right there and have some grub sent up for our friend here. It’s almost lunch time. He needs to get his strength back.” Han winked at Din. “You should join us for dinner later if you’re up to it.”

“I’d like that,” Din replied and realized belatedly that the statement was actually true. He felt very easy in Han’s company, and it would be nice to have someone to actually hold a conversation with.

“I’ll check in on you later,” Han said.

He turned to follow the 3PO unit out, but Din called after him.

“How long do you think Luke will be gone?”

Han looked back over his shoulder somberly. “It’s anybody’s guess, kid, but probably for a while.”

The door swung shut quietly after Han and the droid left, and Din couldn’t account for the odd sense of disappointment he felt at the man’s parting words.

Chapter Text

Luke peeled out of his pressure suit and Degobah’s damp, clammy air immediately worked its way through his clothes and clung to his skin familiarly. It was chillier than he recalled from his past visits. He wondered it that was just an indefinable change of season for the planet or the absence of the Jedi Master who had once made it his home. He balled up the suit and stashed it in the X-wing's cockpit. Behind him, R2 whistled his dissatisfaction at returning to one of his least favorite places. The sound was laced with anxiety as well. Luke smiled sadly wondering if the droid was more worried about being swallowed whole again or about whatever turn of his master's mood had brought them back here.

"It's okay, R2. We won't be here long, I promise. I just need to..."

Luke couldn't finish the thought. He wasn't sure what had brought him back to the desolate swamp planet. He'd Left Coruscant on a whim in the middle of the night, with a message for Leia that he was going in search of a Jedi artifact. That was only an excuse and the whim wasn't that so much as an attempt to escape. What exactly he was trying to escape, though, he wasn't sure.

And that was the real problem. Luke was unsure.

He was unsure of everything right now. Uncertainty in a Jedi's purpose left him vulnerable to attack from the Dark side. It was a vulnerability Luke could ill afford at a time when the New Republic needed his stable strength and his confidence the most. His sister's words on the rotunda had struck a chord the other night and a discordant one at that. He was doubting himself. He doubted his ability to train Grogu properly, he doubted his ability to rally the few remaining Jedi who had survived the Emperor's order, and he doubted his own feelings.

'Reach out with your feelings. Trust them,' Obi-wan had said.

But Luke's feelings were in turmoil.

He'd lost his focus in the five years since the Empire's defeat. He thought searching out the surviving Jedi and helping Leia restore order to the galaxy with the New Republic was enough. But she was right, the passion wasn't there. Or it wasn't in the right place.

The Mandalorian's stricken face floated up in his mind's eye.

Shock at Luke's admission about his father had surged up through the man's aura along with fear for Grogu and a renewal of his need to protect the child. The sight of it on his face had hurt almost physically. Luke had taken the child in trust, told the Mandalorian he would protect him with his life, and that trust fractured in the moment Luke divulged his parentage and its connection to Grogu. That was the breaking point he realized now, when the Mandalorian put Luke on the other side of the equation from himself as a possible threat to the child’s safety. Leia was right in that as well. There had to be trust, and neither Grogu nor the Mandalorian trusted him.

It was possible no one did.

The Council very carefully considered his wisdom while just as carefully ignoring it. The Jedi, if there were any left, certainly weren’t flocking to the New Republic even after years of his searching and putting out word that their presence was welcome and needed. The only reason could be that they were afraid his father’s blood was too strong in his veins.

Luke vaulted from the cockpit and offered a last reassurance to R2 that he would return shortly, then set off over the marshy ground along a still familiar path toward Yoda’s hut. 

Whatever solace he might have been seeking, though, wasn’t there to be found.

The swamp had worked hard in the intervening years to take back the small clearing and the hut Yoda had called home while he bided his time and waited for the prophecy of the defender of the galaxy to come of age. Luke almost scoffed at the idea now. He’d grown up thinking his father was a great pilot but nothing more. His aunt and uncle had carefully protected him from the truth never knowing that all they were doing was keeping him in a holding pattern until powers, greater than either they or himself, thought he was ready. That should have instilled him with all the confidence he needed. If even Yoda would not go up against Vader with all the strength he had in the Force, then Luke couldn’t believe anything but that he was the one, the right choice, the only one who could defeat his father.

It was cold comfort. 

His life was not his own. It never had been. He’d been watched and then lured and then carefully groomed and trained to go up against a power neither of his teachers would face alone. He was a tool, nothing more; and that tool, without someone to wield it, no longer had a purpose. He felt no better than a droid without a directive. Maybe this was where Yoda’s doubts had really lain. Without someone to guide him, something to fight for, Luke was flailing, casting blindly into the far reaches of the galaxy for a reason to continue the fight. Yoda had sensed this and feared it.

He wasn’t strong enough. 

He wasn’t the one. Not anymore.

Luke dropped onto a rock, the exhaustion of the last several days driving him down, constricting his lungs so that he could barely breathe. He put his face in his hands, the eternal cool of his prosthetic hand an ever-present reminder of what he had lost, how close he had come to failing. He had given so much of himself, and there was nothing now. 

“I told you to trust your feelings,” a voice echoed in the trees. “This wasn’t what I meant.”

Luke lifted his defeated gaze to the ghostly shape limbed in ethereal blue that had materialized several meters away. 

“Ben?”

The spirit shape of his old tutor walked slowly toward him, passing through the swamp eaten remains of Yoda’s hut to come and sit near him. It sighed wearily as it took in Luke’s beleaguered state.

“Are you really here?” Luke asked tiredly. “Or are you just a figment of my mind conjured up at the last to try and save me?”

“Either way,” Obi-wan replied, “wouldn’t it serve the same purpose?”

Luke smiled wryly. “I suppose it would. Does that mean I haven’t completely failed, if some part of myself is still trying to save me from the dark?”

“You aren’t lost yet, Luke. But you must find your way, and soon,” Obi-wan said.

“How? How do I do that?” Luke begged. “I thought I knew my way. I thought I was supposed to rebuild the Jedi Order, but how can I do that when the only thing anyone sees is the shadow of my father?”

“Because you do not trust yourself,” Obi-wan said gently. Luke started to protest, but a ghostly hand lifted to forestall his objections. “You should know by now the difference between your true feelings and the feelings of those around you. You are letting yourself be influenced too much by what others feel about you. You are stronger than that.”

“Am I?” Luke asked caustically.

“Luke,” Obi-wan sighed. “You may think your life is not your own, but all the choices that led you to this moment were yours. Your life could have gone any number of ways, but you chose your path—the hardest path—and you followed your feelings to this end. You stumbled along the way, as we all do. You are stumbling now, but you have the power to right yourself. If you believe.”

I don’t believe it…  

Luke’s own breathless words came back to him from the archive of this his once-upon-a-time training ground.

That…is why you fail.

Obi-wan nodded gravely, as if he could see Luke’s thoughts in the air between them. “Your father was not wrong to love as deeply as he did. Where he failed was in a lack of trust of himself and his own abilities, especially his ability to carry on if the thing he loved most was lost to him. What he didn’t understand is that those things are never lost to us. They become a part of us, and we have them with us. Always.”

“His love destroyed him.”

“It also saved him.”

Luke stared. He had told Vader he felt the good in him, but he hadn’t defined that good. He couldn’t. It was for Vader to define himself, and in the final moments he did. He had dredged up the love he lost so long ago and redefined it as a love for his son and saved them both. 

“I…didn’t realize,” Luke breathed.

“You have so much love in you, Luke. Don’t be afraid of it. Hold onto it. Use it. Let it guide you back to your path. You will find your way.”

Obi-wan’s voice was growing faint, the suffused blue light of his spiritual presence fading into Degobah’s deepening night. Luke watched with an aching heart as the shadow of his old mentor dissolved away completely. 

“Thank you,” he said into the silence.

Exhaustion folded around him again. He could barely drag himself back to standing for the long slog back to the X-wing. When he arrived, R2 let out a concerned wail and beeped anxiously from his socket atop the ship.

“I’m all right, R2. I’m just tired.” He dragged himself up into the cockpit and forced himself back into his pressure suit. “I think you’re going to have to do most of the flying, though.”

R2 whistled his agreement and set the X-wing to start powering up. He beeped an interrogative as the canopy lowered and sealed.

“No, I’m not sure I found what I was looking for,” Luke answered, resting his head back against the seat. “But it helped. I think. Now, it’s time to go home.”

There was no mistaking the relief in the little droid’s whistled response.

Chapter Text

Din stood outside the classroom, watching through the wide one-way glass, as the class finished its lessons for the day. It was Leia’s idea to enroll Grogu in school with the children of the other New Republic Council members. She was a very pragmatic woman.

“I thought it would be a good idea from the start,” she’d said with a smile when Grogu immediately became the center of attention in an excited group of youngsters on his first day. “He’s a child like any other and needs to learn the basics just like they all do whether or not he’s probably one of the most powerful Force-senstives in the galaxy at the moment.”

“I’m surprised Luke didn’t think of it,” Din said.

“He tends to think on a much bigger scale and sometimes that doesn’t include the simple things,” she said. Her smile had taken on a sad lilt. Din could tell she was very fond of her brother and worried about him the same as her husband did. It was obvious, too, she missed him during his absences.

Din was a little at loose ends himself without the Jedi present. Luke had been the only one to visit him during the first days of his convalescence, and though his visits were short, Din had grown used to him and looked forward to his company. After their last conversation, Din worried that even when he returned, Luke would no longer come to see him. 

The class broke and youngsters came pouring out the door to the waiting arms of various guardians, droids, and parents who herded them off to their afternoon activities. Grogu came out perched on the shoulder of a tall, waif-thin Arboreal girl whose wild moss green hair, dark skin, and liquid blue eyes had fascinated Grogu from the moment he met her. She grinned up at Din as she turned the child over to him.

“Found a girlfriend already?” Din teased as he tucked Grogu into the crook of his arm. “Thank you for bringing him,” he told the girl.

Her grin widened, showing bright white teeth. “He did very well today. The teacher gave him a star.”

Her voice was like the wind through spring leaves.

“Well, I can’t wait to hear what earned you such a prize,” Din said, scratching behind one of Grogu’s ears and reveling in the purr it elicited. 

Another Arboreal female, head and shoulders taller than Din, came to collect the girl. Grogu waved with his ears perked high as she was led away.

“I’m glad to see you’re making friends,” Din told him.

Despite his inability or unwillingness to communicate verbally, Grogu still managed to make himself at home with the other children, playing and learning with them in much the same way he had on Sorgan, and finding his endearing way into their hearts as well. Din had already fielded several playdates, very politely turning them down because he wasn’t ready for Grogu to be out of his sight quite yet, the controlled and protected classroom environment not withstanding, and even at that he still found ways to check on Grogu several times a day.

Din, meanwhile, was getting stronger everyday, easily making the walk down the five levels to the school in the mornings and back again in the afternoon. At Han’s urging, Din occupied his time during Grogu’s school hours by helping with repairs on the small fleet of space and land vehicles in the Capitol Tower docks. He was grateful for the opportunity to somehow repay his hosts for their kindness. It kept him from being restless and wearing a hole in the carpet in his quarters as well. 

Once Din collected Grogu from his classes, they would spend the remainder of the afternoons sharing their days activities. Din would tell Grogu about all the different species he ran into on the docks and the various ships there, and the child would recount his lessons in coos and burbles and demonstrate how he was learning to solve simple math equations and read Basic. Then they would play.

Grogu had acquired a mound of various toys from the children in his class who happily donated them when they learned he had none of his own. The Crest’s shiny throttle knob was by far and away still his favorite, but Grogu had found a particular liking for a set of building blocks one of the teachers had given him. In the last few days, at Din’s slow and steady prompting, he had started moving the blocks around into different shapes on the floor and stacking them without touching them. He had also invented a game of keep-away with the silver orb in which he levitated it just within Din’s reach and then snatched it back before Din could grab it. Din was so amazed by this showing that he didn’t mind at all never being able to claim the prize of the ball. Grogu, however, still adamantly refused to let anyone but Din see what he was able to do.

Most evenings they would join Han and Leia for dinner, although Leia was absent more often than not or arrived late when some meeting kept her longer than intended. On these occasions, Han and Din would spend the hours regaling each other with tales of their mutually checkered pasts. Han was quick to assure Din that he was not always the upstanding citizen that he appeared to be now. He told Din about his first encounter with Luke on Tatooine, how the brash youth had confronted a seasoned smuggler and bragged about his piloting skills, how that same brash youth had made the one-in-a-million kill shot that brought down the first Death Star and then went on to become one of the Rebellion’s top commanders. As his tale unfolded to include Luke’s near brush with death by hyperthermia on Hoth and the daring, if ultimately failed, rescue attempt at Cloud City that culminated in Han’s capture and the crushing realization of Luke’s parentage, Din could see more and more clearly that Han wasn’t just fond of the young Jedi, he loved him like a brother and worried about him as he would a son. 

“He grew up fast after that,” Han said, leaning back and sipping at a snifter of aged Corellian whiskey. “The brash, bullheaded kid just faded away overnight. It took something out of him, I think, when he discovered who he was really up against. It scared him, too. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was afraid if his father could turn to the Dark Side, then he could, too. I think he’s still waiting for that shoe to drop.”

“But he defeated Vader and saved the galaxy,” Din said. “Even I know that story. The names might be missing, but the story still gets told, even out on the Rim.”

“He did,” Han agreed. “It scarred him, though, and he still carries it to this day. I don’t know exactly what happened up there, he wouldn’t tell us, but he was never quite the same. I think he thought he could save his father, and he feels like he failed in that.”

“Sometimes there’s nothing left to save,” Din said quietly.

Han tipped his head in acknowledgment. “I agree, but Luke looks for the best in everyone and everything. Except himself. When it comes to himself, he’s always looking for the bad, trying to stay on guard and keep ahead of it.”

“It must be hard on him, holding himself to such a high standard.”

“It is.” Han finished off the last of his whiskey and set the snifter down. “More than you or I will ever know.”

Conversations like these often lasted into the deeper hours of the night, like this night, and Din ended the evening carrying a sleeping Grogu back to their quarters through the barren, silent corridors of the palatial Tower. 

When he reached his door, he paused. There was an indefinable wrongness in the air, barely there, like the hint of ozone on the wind before s storm. Grogu stirred and mumbled in the cradle of his arm. Din put his palm against the lock release. He was being paranoid. No one was going to infiltrate the Capitol Tower on Coruscant. It was one of the most well protected places in the galaxy. Moff Gideon was dead, and the bounty on Grogu’s head had died with him. Greef had cleared Din’s name with the guild, and he hadn’t encountered any problems in the months since. It was probably the whiskey. He didn’t drink much that was stronger than Spotchka, so it had likely gone to his head and was making him jump at shadows. 

His rooms were dark and quiet, but it was the quiet of a held breath, and the hairs on the back of Din’s neck stood up. He felt a claw in the front of his tunic and looked down to see Grogu wide awake, his ears high and back like they were when he was anxious. 

“There’s someone here,” Din breathed.

His weapons were in the far corner of the bedroom with his armor. Even if he could find his way to them in the dark, he was hampered with Grogu in one arm, and he wasn’t about to set the child down. The smartest thing to do would be to back out of the room and call security.

“Put the child down.”

The voice was deep and gravely with a breathy hiss at the end of every word that made it sound as though they were spoken through a mouth full of too many teeth. The enunciation was precise, but the cadence was off as if Basic was not the speaker’s first language. 

“Not while I’m living,” Din said.

“Dead is fine,” the voice grated. “He does not care for you.”

“He who?”

No answer. There was a shift in the air, but no sound of movement. Din spun to the side, getting his back against the wall and Grogu into the corner as far behind him as he could still securely keep hold of the child. There was a tinny sounding snick and a deadened thump as a small projectile hit the door where he was just standing. 

“If I kill you, my price will be higher,” the voice said. “I do not mind.”

Din tried to pinpoint the voice in the room, but he realized too late that part of the “wrongness” he’d felt was the pressure of a dampening field on his inner ear. It would suppress the sounds in the room, killing off any echoes, and it made using sound for directionality almost impossible. It also made it highly unlikely that anyone would hear a disturbance if they passed by. 

Grogu was shifting his weight and clawing up toward Din’s shoulder. He tried to get a hold on him and pull him back down into the shelter of the corner, but Grogu was persistent, and Din felt the press of the child’s tiny hand against his jaw a moment later. At Grogu’s touch, the room suddenly changed up through the gears of black on darker black and evolved into shades of grey, the shapes in the room becoming much more defined if not wholly distinct in their detail. 

There was a shift in the air again, and this time Din saw a squat, gnarled shape near the veranda door raise a short tube to somewhere in the vicinity of its face. There was another tinny snick and a low whistle as another projectile flew toward him. Seeing something so small, even with his miraculously increased visibility, was impossible, so he dropped low and heard the muted thump as it struck the wall above him. This time there was a quiet sizzle and the smell of something charring. 

Darts, maybe, Din thought. Charged? Or maybe chemically enhanced. Not good either way, and he had to be dealing with something that could see in the dark. Either naturally or with artificial aid, it didn’t make much difference. It still had the advantage. He needed a weapon. His blaster would be optimal, the dampening field couldn’t muffle anything as loud as a blaster burst, but his spear or vibro-blade would do just as well. Grogu had situated himself up near Din’s shoulder, fisting the back of his collar in one claw, while keeping the other pressed lightly to his face. Din had absolutely no idea what power the child was exerting or how that was helping him see, but he wasn’t going to argue with it.

He crabbed along the wall, staying low and using the furniture for cover as much as possible, trying to keep his breathing even. He wasn’t anywhere near fighting condition. If this came to hand-to-hand combat, Din wasn’t sure he could come out the winner. He was breaking into a clammy sweat already. The bedroom door was only a meter away. He would be cornered in there, and he didn’t like that thought; but there was only the one way into the room, and if he could get Grogu tucked away somewhere defensible, he’d have better odds holding off the intruder. He snatched Grogu off his shoulder, ignoring his squeak of protest and the sudden blanket of darkness that fell across his vision at the loss of contact, then dove for the door, tucking and rolling as he went through. Two more darts whistled after him in quick succession.

He shoved Grogu under the bed.

“Stay,” he commanded in a fierce whisper.

He scrambled for the corner, reaching for his helmet with one hand and his blaster with the other. The pulse rifle was too unwieldy in a small space much as he would love to have its reach. 

Four sets of claws landed on his back attached to something light, wiry, and very strong. Din reared up, helmet rolling away, and fired blindly over his shoulder, hit nothing, and toppled backward as the claws dug in deep, slicing flesh down to bone. He rolled and thrashed, trying to crush the creature with his body weight. The thing clung like a limpet, grunting with the effort of hanging on but seemingly undamaged. He reached behind and over his head, aiming to drive his thumbs into eye sockets if it had them, and met dry leathery skin, a protruding jaw that was indeed lined with long needle teeth, and a heavy boney crest devoid of any vulnerable soft tissue that he could feel. He reached further, straining back, lungs suffering from the stretch of his ribcage combined with the entrenched claws, until  he could wrap his hands under the jaw and wrench the thing forward. It came over his shoulder snarling, tearing gashes in his back as the claws ripped loose. Din heaved it against the wall where it hit with a thud but then sprang nimbly away, landing on the top of the bed and then slithering over the side.

Din rolled and twisted, lunging for the bed. His shoulder connected and he shoved it across the floor, pinning the intruder between it and the wall. Grogu came wriggling out the other side, scurrying for the door.

Too late, Din saw the tube lifted. Then the low whistle. Only this time there was no thump as the projectile missed its target.

Grogu jerked to a stop, spun by the impact of the dart, tottered for a heartbeat and then fell forward onto the carpet.

“No!” Din roared, diving for the little body as it toppled, twisting in the same moment to grab his discarded blaster and bring it to bear.

The room erupted in light and blaster fire as booted feet came careening through the door, leaping Din’s prone form. The thing pinned against the wall screamed shrilly as it was torn through with blaster bolts and collapsed forward, smoking, on the bed.

“Kid! Kid are you—?”

Han choked on his words.

Din huddled on the floor, curled around Grogu who lay lifeless in the curve of his arm. 

“No…nonononono,” Din whispered in panic, patting at the child, finding the dart and ripping it out. He cuddled Grogu to his chest, bent his head, trying to listen for a heartbeat, for a breath.

Guards stampeded the room, breaking like a wave around Din’s crouched form and surrounding him, setting up a perimeter, searching for other intruders.

“Get a med unit up here. Now!” Han shouted. He dropped to one knee, blaster still in his hand. “Kid, hang on. Help is coming.”

Din barely heard him. The world was starting to swim. His hands were covered in blood. It was all over Grogu’s robe and the floor. It was his blood. His back was a mass of fire, his tunic wet and sticky across the torn flesh beneath. He slumped forward.

Han shoved his blaster in its holster and grabbed Din’s shoulders. “Uh-uh. Come on, kid. Don’t you die on me. Just…hold on.”

Din shook his head. His vision was going dim at the edges, and all he could see was Grogu’s slack little face. He spread his hand over the tiny chest, willed it to rise and fall, wrangled his own erratically beating heart and tried to force its rhythm past his fingertips and into the little heart beneath his palm. 

Nothing. 

The arm holding him gave out and he collapsed face first onto the carpet.

“Hey!” Han dragged him over, hooked an arm under his head and hoisted him up. “I said, hold on,” he repeated fiercely.

Din dragged his gaze up to Han’s urgent, pleading one. 

“To…what?” he rasped, and passed out. 

Chapter Text

Luke flailed awake, driven out of his meditative trance by a skull cracking pain that felt like his head had met the business end of a vibro-axe. He banged his elbow on the canopy and his head against the seat back before he became fully cognizant of his surroundings and got a grip on himself. He was soaked in sweat and gasping,

Something, somewhere had gone terribly wrong.

He pressed the heels of his hands against his temples, trying to counter the intense pressure there. He cast out with his senses in an attempt to track its source. It was nearly as bad as the night Grogu had screamed out for the Mandalorian, only this was sharper, jagged, and completely unfocused. 

R2 was whistling shrilly behind him, sending messages in bright bold text across his cockpit readout screen.

INCOMING MESSAGE. URGENT!

“R2, where are we?”

Luke scrubbed at his gritty eyes and scanned the nav-screen. The destination proximity indicator was blinking. They were almost home. His communications console was lit up like the capital city on Freedom Day, a two day old message blinking instantly on the screen. He thumbed the receiver switch.

“Luke.” 

His sister’s voice was muffled like she’d been crying and there was a flurry of noise in the background of her message. 

“Whenever you get this, please come home. As fast as you can. Grogu has been seriously injured and the Mandalorian—.”

Luke slapped the switch. He didn’t need to hear the words, didn’t want to. The desperation in Leia’s voice was all too clear and made his gut twist into a tight, sharp knot of fear.

“No,” he breathed. “Oh, no.”

The X-wing dropped out of hyperspace above Coruscant a moment later, the marbled blue planet looming large outside the canopy.

“R2, give me the controls!” Luke snapped.

The droid beeped a punctuated affirmative and the auto-pilot disengaged. Luke grabbed the stick and wrenched it. The X-wing screamed as it hit the atmosphere and angled into a steep decent, arcing over the northern continent and heading for Coruscant City and the Capitol Tower. Luke prayed he wasn’t too late. 

Leia sat on the bench in the med bay intensive care ward with her knees pulled up under her chin. Admirals, generals, and visiting dignitaries alike had quailed beneath her regal bearing, but now she looked like nothing more than the worried, frightened young woman she was. On one side of the room, the Mandalorian lay on a life support bed, its lights blinking in time with the body functions it was monitoring and supplementing. Less than a foot away, a bassinet floated holding a sleeping Grogu. The child had finally stabilized after the poison from the dart had been filtered from his blood and an antidote administered. The Mandalorian, though, was not fairing so well. 

A full Bacta bath had healed his body once again, mending the deep wounds the assassin had inflicted; but after two days, he was giving no indication of regaining consciousness. The medical staff was baffled. They could find no brain trauma, no poison, no secondary infection or any other physical reason he shouldn’t wake up. Leia knew, though, that the reason had nothing to do with his body. He’d simply given up the will to live. His final pained words to Han made it clear he believed Grogu was dead. Frankly, they all had at first, but the medics found a single tiny thread of life left, and they grabbed onto it with vigor, reviving the child mere minutes after the Mandalorian had passed out. But until he woke up, there was no way he would know Grogu had survived, and if he didn’t know that, Leia feared he would simply choose not to wake up at all. It was why, with the ability to do little else to help him, she’d insisted that Grogu’s bassinet be brought into the room, in hopes that, like before, the one’s proximity to the other would spark something. 

It hadn’t worked yet.

“Did Luke get your message?” Han asked. He was leaning, arms akimbo, against the wide window that admitted a muted afternoon light into the room. 

She shook her head. “I’m not sure. I hope so.”

Han grimaced, hesitant to speak his next words. “Even if he did, is there anything he can do?”

“I don’t know,” Leia admitted in a small voice. 

She watched the steady, artificial rise and fall of the Mandalorian’s chest, wishing she had her brother’s power now to sense his thoughts and somehow turn them so that he would wake up and realize his chosen purpose for living was still alive and well beside him. Without that and until, or if, Luke returned, they could only rely on Grogu regaining consciousness first and perhaps being able to make contact with him. 

“Princess?” Threepio stood at the door, looking tentative, trying to modulate his vocal processor as soft as it would go. In times of stress, he always reverted to her former title. “I’ve received word from R2-D2. He says they have come out of hyperspace in orbit and will be here shortly. He reports that Master Luke has gotten your message and he is…flying rather dangerously in an attempt to get here as quickly as possible.”

Han chuffed at that. “Kid’s probably maxing out the maneuvering jets on that X-wing and then some.”

Leia shuddered in relief, letting out a long held breath. “That’s good to hear, Threepio. Thank you.”

The X-wing was barely in the hangar before Luke was popping the canopy and disentangling himself from his harness. R2 shrieked a warning as he vaulted to the ground while the ship was still rotating into her docking slip. He paid the droid no mind, yanking off his flight helmet and throwing it to the nearest ground crew. He took off down the hangar bay at a dead run. 

The corridors of the Tower were bustling this time of day with their usual traffic, but the crowded thoroughfares cleared like a wave before the passing of some leviathan as Luke went barreling through them, heedless of the startled gasps and speculations in his wake. He was in no mood to wait for the lifts, so he took the stairs, two and three at a time, his heart near to bursting with the physical stress as his mind took over where his cramped and somewhat flight weakened muscles left off, propelling him ever upward toward the medical ward. 

“Master Luke!” Threepio trilled as Luke came stumbling through the main doors, breathless. For once the droid didn’t waste precious time on pleasantries and instead pointed his master in the direction of the unit he was looking for. 

He skidded to a halt, nearly crashing into Leia. She caught him in her arms tightly, stopping his forward rush. She’d sensed the force of his anxiety preceding him into the medical ward.

“They’re okay,” she said. “They’re alive.”

The sheer force of will that had fueled his mad flight drained out of him. He wilted, nearly going to the floor. Leia propped him up on her shoulder and Han grabbed his other arm, hauling him up.

“You’re gonna give yourself an embolism or something,” Han said gruffly. “Breathe, kid. Just breathe.”

“What…happened?” Luke gasped, trying unsuccessfully to shake them both away so he could get to the Mandalorian’s bedside. “I felt… I don’t know what it was. Raw power. So unfocused…”

Leia frowned worryingly. She had felt nothing. Not this time. But her brother was far stronger and more sensitive than she, maybe Grogu had cried out through the Force at the last, like he did before. She put a hand to the side of his face, willing him to be still, to be calm. It helped a little. His eyes finally focused on her and his erratic breathing slowed somewhat. She couldn’t recall ever seeing him so rattled.

“There was an intruder,” Han said.

Luke’s head snapped around. “Here? In the Tower?”

He nodded. “They haven’t been able to identify the remains yet, species or otherwise. We have no idea how he got in or who he’s working for. We’re pretty sure he came for the little guy, though.”

“I shouldn’t have left,” Luke berated himself. “I should have been here.”

“You can only do so much, brother,” Leia soothed, stroking the side of his face. “None of us were prepared. None of us thought it could happen, not here.”

“But who? Why? Moff Gideon is dead,” Luke said.

“Maybe he was only the middle man,” Han said. Leia cut him a sharp look, but he only shrugged. “I’m just saying. The Council might consider putting a little more stock in the rumors of that Grand Admiral.”

“Not now, Han,” she sighed irritably. 

“How are they now?” Luke asked, for the moment ignoring Han’s suspicions. He gently disengaged himself from the two of them and went to the Mandalorian. “Why isn’t he awake?” He turned his attention to the bassinet.  “What happened to them?”

“The intruder ambushed them in his quarters.” Han lifted his chin in the Mandalorian’s direction. “He was torn up pretty bad fighting them off.”

“Grogu?”

“Grogu was hit by some kind of dart,” Leia supplied. “Poison. Before the Mandalorian could get to him.” She reached out a hand to brush lightly up and down the blanket covering the man on the bed. “He thought Grogu was dead. We all did.”

Han grimaced. “I hope never to see anyone look as devastated as he did for as long as I live,” he said softly. “Poor kid.”

Luke’s stomach dropped. If the Mandalorian thought Grogu was dead, and worse than that, because of his failure to move fast enough to protect him, devastated was not a powerful enough word to describe what he would have felt. His eyes widened slightly.

“It was him.”

“What?” Leia scowled. 

Luke nodded at the man on the bed. “It was him I felt. His…grief.”

“But how? He isn’t Force-sensitive…is he?”

Luke had considered it at the very first. For Grogu to reach so far and make the connection over so great a distance the first time the Mandalorian had been injured meant he had to have a latent sensitivity at least; but most people did, they just didn’t realize it. It never developed beyond good intuition or being misconstrued as very good luck in most cases. They never learned to be consciously aware of it, to use it. The power just wasn’t there.

“You didn’t feel anything?” Luke asked his sister.

“No.” She shook her head.

Luke frowned. He stepped closer to the bed and laid his good hand over the Mandalorian’s where it rested on the blanket.

There was grief first, covering over a layer of anger and self-recrimination. Below that there was desolation, a lack of will so profound Luke could almost feel its pull himself. He squeezed the hand under his tightly.

He lives.

Failure. Luke’s breath caught in his throat at the choking force of it.

No! You did not fail, Mandalorian.

The man’s entire essence shirked at being called by his warrior title. He no longer felt he deserved it. 

Luke cast about. He needed a name, a way to connect to the man. It shocked him a little that he hadn’t yet learned it, none of them had, but he had not offered it either. Luke was loathe to invade his privacy or violate the edicts of his Creed, but he needed something, some meaningful thread to drag the Mandalorian back. He narrowed his focus, pushed past the surface feelings of grief and desolation, dove deeper.

There was a boy, dark haired and olive skinned, grinning up at a man who could have easily been the Mandalorian himself in similarity of feature. Father. This man was father. He held the boy’s hand tightly and they walked together through the sunlit streets of a village. A young woman smiled and waved, came running to greet them, stooping down to kiss the boy’s forehead tenderly, her soft dark hair so like his own wafting the pleasing scent of ananntha root and seriswood around him. Mother. This woman was mother.

There was a fire on the hearth. Mother laughed brightly as she kneaded dough on a low table, watching the boy work his own dough with devout concentration, copying her movements. 

Another fire, but much hotter, burned in a kiln. Father covered his hands on the cool, slick clay, and guided them steadily to form the bowl of a pitcher. He whispered encouragement and praise as the clay took shape beneath the child’s hands. 

Din Djarin.

Luke plucked the name out of the long buried memories, wondering that it was hidden so very deep. He reached for the bassinet with his other hand, took up Grogu’s little claw and made the bridge between the two. 

Din felt himself drawn upward and out of the dark toward something familiar, something needed, something he thought had been lost. The pull was steady and unrelenting, dragging him to the surface through the morass of his own guilt and devastation. 

“…Grogu?” Din croaked as his eyes cracked open and fought for focus on the hazy shape above him.

“Is alive,” Luke whispered.

“I saw him fall,” Din rasped. “I thought…”

“I know,” Luke said softly. “I heard you.”

Din closed his eyes, too tired to hold them open. He imagined he felt the warmth of a fire nearby and thought he caught the almost forgotten scent of his mother’s perfume mixed with sweet baking corvus buns and the earthen cool smell of clay on the wheel. Luke slid his hand away and the remembered smells dissolved. A moment later a small, warm bundle was nested into his side, and he instinctively tightened his arm around it, found Grogu’s little chest with the palm of his hand, felt the steady rise and fall and cried. He didn’t care who saw. The moment Grogu had been struck, something inside Din shattered. It was like having a piece of his soul torn away. He vaguely remembered Han and the security guards raiding their quarters, blaster fire, shouting, but the only thing he cared about was the tiny body laying face down on the floor.

“The…assassin,” Din whispered hoarsely. “Did they…?”

“Yeah, kid,” Han said from over Luke’s shoulder. “We got him. Don’t you worry. Security has been doubled around the palace and a contingent has been assigned to you and Grogu for the foreseeable future.”

“Who…hired…?” Din could barely get the words out. He was beyond exhausted. He’d never felt so drained before, not even after he’d come around from the battle with the C’Araesen. 

“Unfortunately, I opted for the shoot first ask later technique,” Han said a little sheepishly. “We’re still working on why he was here.”

“You should rest.” Luke took hold of Din’s wrist, held it for a long moment, frowning. All the monitors said his vitals were good, but his aura was weak, just a bare flicker around him. It didn’t make sense. If Din was sensitive to the Force, enough to make use of it, then he shouldn’t be in such a weakened state. He laid a hand atop Grogu’s head. The child’s aura was vibrant, nearly blinding, even more so than usual.

“Luke?” Leia came up beside her brother, sensing his worry and seeing it in the pull of his brow. He shook his head at her. She stayed silent and reached for her husband’s hand.

“I’ll see about having him moved back to his quarters now that he’s conscious. He’ll be more comfortable there.” She gave Han’s hand a tug and drew him out of the room with her.

Din swallowed thickly and tried to pry his eyes back open. Luke was still standing by the bed.

“You said you heard me,” he managed to get out.

Luke moved to put a hip up on the bed. He was still tired himself,. The rest he’d taken on the way back from Degobah had helped but had not cured what he was coming to realize was a bone-deep fatigue. “Yes. Not like with Grogu, but I heard…something. I don’t know what you did, or how. Don’t worry about that now, though. You need to get your strength back.”

Din nodded, letting his eyes slide closed. “Will you leave…again?”

“No.” Luke covered Din’s hand where it rested on Grogu’s little chest. “No, I’ll be here when you wake up.”

He watched with fascination and a little concern as Din gave up his desperate struggle to stay conscious then and sagged back into sleep. He shouldn’t be in this bad a shape. True, he’d still been on the mend from the last attack a few weeks ago, but the flickering state of his aura almost suggested something was feeding off of him, drawing on his connection to the Force. Luke had never heard of such a thing. Force-sensitivity could be masked, and Grogu had exhibited that amazing ability to actually negate his own aura, but Luke had never heard of anyone drawing off someone else’s connection. 

There were so many things he didn’t know, though. Obi-wan was right, he was letting his own lack of knowledge and everyone else’s feelings about him undermine his purpose. 

You have so much love in you…

Those words more than any Ben had spoken frightened Luke. He loved. Of course, he loved. He loved Han like a brother and Chewbacca by extension. He loved Leia—deeply—in the way that most twins likely cared for each other only amplified by their Force connection. That love had nearly been his undoing in the final moments with the Emperor, and he had shied back from it and any other attachments for fear any leverage put on a relationship would turn him onto the same path as his father. But if Ben was to be believed, then love is what would stabilize Luke in the end, only he wasn’t sure he was wiling to take that risk. If he did take the risk, with whom would it be?

He kept his hand over Din’s, sinking into a watchful rest state, letting his mind unfold and take in everything around him. Grogu still glowed brightly, resting peaceful and perfectly healthy as far as Luke could tell. Din was a wavering shape in the passive field of Luke’s senses. He was dreaming now, of the memories Luke had unlocked to find his name. Names had such power. It was probably why Grogu had kept his hidden for so long before Ahsoka had gently plied it from him. Mandalorian was a name Din had chosen for himself, a shield and weapon against a past that was still dark to Luke. Din Djarin was his given name, a name that belonged to a child who had once been happy and very much loved. Luke wondered what had happened to make him put that name away and hold it like a forbidden treasure.

He was a little like Vader in that respect. Not a comparison Luke enjoyed the thought of, but it couldn’t be denied. Vader had separated himself from Anakin, locking that self away from the light, away from the people who might have been able to connect with him and save him. Luke had only blundered onto the key to that lock through sheer perseverance and blind belief. He’d been so confident then, arrogant really, in his certainty that he could save the Sith Lord from himself. Luke didn’t feel he possessed any of that same strength now.

Din stirred, fretting in his sleep. His eyelids twitched and the hand beneath Luke’s balled into a fist. Luke could feel him sinking, loosing connection, weakening and sliding into someplace dark. He pried Din’s fingers loose and threaded them in his own, squeezing tightly.

“Din,” he whispered the name reverently as it deserved. “I will not let you slip away. I will protect you. I will protect the child. With my last breath, I will see you both safe. I swear it.”

Din stilled and relaxed, and Luke felt a peculiar peace drift over him that he had not felt in a very long time. 

Chapter Text

The ship was a dark splinter against the fabric of stars. The naked human eye would miss it only by looking, but that was the point.

“The assassin has…failed, my lord.”

The Commander was not given to hesitation, but the Empire he had served for the last twenty years had seen men of greater rank than himself suffer instant death for the delivery of much less disappointing messages.

A blue skinned finger tapped lightly on the arm of a lounge chair positioned to look out the expansive view port of the private quarters in which the Commander now stood. The rooms were opulently appointed with several works of original art, most of them priceless, from all reaches of the galaxy, from storied tapestries to paintings to statuary. There was even a Sylvan Messaria Crystal on a pedestal in one corner, centuries old if it was indeed an original, that was said to translate the mood of its owner through its muted coloring and ever changing shape. The Commander fervently wished he had studied up on its history so he might be able to predict the repercussions he now faced from the man in the chair gazing out at the stars.

“I should hope so, Commander,” a voice as cool as the blue-toned skin of the man from whence it came said. “His mission objective was not to kill his target.”

“He did not, my lord.”

“‘Admiral’ will do, Commander. I am no lord of darkness as you still seem to fear.”

“Yes…Admiral.” The Commander straightened, eyes flicking to the crystal. It stood stately and straight on its pedestal, glowing a gentle lavender. If the outcome of this meeting was good, he would be sure to make a note of it for future reference. “He was killed, sir. The target was not obtained.”

“I see.”

The Commander held his breath.

The chair turned very slowly, the body in it relaxed, almost sprawled, legs crossed casually at the knee. The room’s lights were at their lowest setting to allow for a clear view of the stars without, so the face was mostly hidden in shadow, but the red eyes glinted from their depths. The Commander physically resisted a step backward.

“Commander, I know our relationship is still very new, but please, be at your ease,” the Admiral said. “I am not a wasteful man. Nor do I punish where punishment is not due. Unlike my predecessors, I can recognize a man’s strengths and weaknesses alike. His strengths deserve praise, his weaknesses deserve nurturing in order that they become strengths later on.”

The Commander breathed out. “A very pragmatic view, sir.”

The Admiral was right. Their relationship was still very new, and the Commander had to admit, though grudgingly, that this new  Admiral was a man to respect more than fear. It was probably the eyes, the Commander thought to himself. Those eyes were so intense, and so unfortunately colored. Or perhaps fortunately, depending on whose side you were on.

The chair swiveled back toward the viewport. “I am a man of patience above all else, Commander. We can wait.”

“They will be on their guard now, Admiral,” the Commander said.

“Then we will wait as long as it takes for them not to be on their guard. We know where they are,” the Admiral said leisurely. “Success cannot be rushed, Commander. A valuable thing to remember.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chapter Text

The tracking fob was still blinking feebly when it was found in the remains of Din’s wrecked bedroom. Han slipped his knife out of his boot and stabbed it through the back of the casing, effectively disarming it. He handed it up to the forensics lead.

“Standard tracking fob,” Gil Sorba said, turning it back and forth in his hand. “It won’t be worth much in figuring out who sent the thing here.”

“But we can find out who it was tracking,” Han said. He dropped his knife back in his boot and pushed off the floor. He probably wasn’t much help here. In fact, he was probably underfoot of the men and women whose job it was to root through the carnage and decipher what information there was to be found, but he didn’t like the idea of intruders in his territory. He took that kind of thing personally.

Gil raised an eyebrow at him. “I assumed they were after the kid.”

“Yeah, but which one,” Han muttered. Gil’s other eyebrow raised in confusion, but Han batted it away. “Don’t assume anything, Sorba. Decode it and figure out who it was set to find.”

“Yes, sir.”

Han left the team to their jobs. Leia had already made arrangements for the Mandalorian’s quarters to be moved, and Han had personally gathered up his armor and weapons and had them moved before the team came in. He had a feeling that kid wouldn’t take strangers messing with his stuff lightly. He stood back in the doorway, out of the way while Sorba and the others sifted through the rest, staring at the dark stains on the carpet. The look on the kid’s face when he thought Grogu was dead still stuck in his gut, making him almost sick when he thought about it. Han had seen men die before, but he’d never seen them give up, not the way the Mandalorian had. 

“Han?”

Luke was in the outer doorway, flanked by two security personnel and looking decidedly unhappy about it. Every member of the Council had been assigned a guard if they didn’t already have one, and security teams were now on roving patrols in the private quarters. Despite Luke’s capabilities and protests that he of all people didn’t need a guard, Leia had assigned him one anyway. 

Han uncrossed his arms and pushed off the jamb.  “Jedi you might be, kid, but you still need to sleep.” 

Luke shrugged at this and gave his brother-in-law a sheepish smile, reminding him a lot of the young boy he’d met on Tatooine more than a decade past, but declined an answer. 

“How are our patients?” Han asked.

“Medical is releasing Din to his quarters this afternoon,” Luke said.

“Din?” Han quirked an eyebrow.

“That’s his name,” Luke replied. “I wouldn’t, uh, use it, though. Until he tells you himself.”

“Okay,” Han granted. He had no problem respecting the Mandalorian’s privacy. Sometimes it was the only commodity a man had left to call his own, and Han knew about things like that. “And Grogu?”

“He’s doing miraculously well.” Luke’s brow furrowed a little. “Much better than anyone thought he would be after nearly dying.”

“Something about that bothers you?” Han asked.

“Yes and no?” Luke watched one of the forensic team carry a labeled crate out of Din’s bedroom. “Something about him is… He’s more ‘alive’ than he should be?” Luke shook his head. “That’s a terrible way to explain it. I can’t really. There’s nothing wrong, just…”

“Something not quite right, either?” Han suggested.

Luke sighed and nodded. “Yeah. Maybe I am just tired. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Han gripped Luke’s shoulder firmly. “I’ve never known anything you were worried about to be ‘nothing’.”

Luke returned Han’s grip. He hoped in this case the man was wrong. 

“Did they find anything useful yet?” Luke asked, continuing to watch as more crates of material were removed.

“Not much. It’s mostly just debris, except…” Han paused, reluctant to tell Luke anything that wasn’t definite yet. “A tracking fob.”

“Issued by whom?”

“No way to tell, Sorba says,” Han replied. “But they’re going to decode it.”

“I imagine they’ll find it coded to Grogu since that’s who they’ve been after all this time.”

Han lifted a shoulder. “Possibly. But I told them not to assume anything.”

Luke smiled wryly. “You said that?”

Han grinned. “There’s a first time for everything.”

“That there is,” Luke laughed.

Din didn’t care much for being brought up from the medical ward in a hover chair, but it was better than the bed they had threatened, so he ground his teeth against the indignity and suffered it in silence. Grogu appeared to enjoy the ride at least. He sat perched on Din’s lap with his ears perked as high as they would go, burbling energetically all the way up to their new quarters.

“I wish I had your energy right now,” Din said after the orderlies had settled him in his bed per their instructions and left him alone. “For nearly having died, you sure are perky.”

Grogu’s ears lowered slightly. He cooed inquiringly at Din, who cursed himself for letting his frustration show.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,” he apologized, as Grogu reached out and stroked the back of his hand. “I guess the guilt is still getting to me.”

Grogu gave a frantic burble of protest and grabbed hold of Din’s hand with both of his own.

“I know,” Din murmured. “I know. You’re here. You’re alive. But…you almost weren’t, and it was my fault.”

Grogu nearly bounced up and down, his little face pinched in distress and his ears gyrating up and down in his efforts to make himself understood. Din shook his head in frustration.

“I wish I could understand what you were saying!”

“I think maybe you can.”

“Don’t you ever knock?” Din sighed. He raised his gaze to see Luke standing inside the door.

“Sorry, force of habit,” Luke replied. “I don’t usually knock on the door to my own quarters.”

“What?” 

Luke came into the room and sat down in a chair beside the bed. “We had you both moved in here temporarily. Your own quarters are a mess.”

Din’s eyes narrowed. The idea that the Jedi was keeping him close to protect him didn’t sit well. “I can take care of myself.”

“I’m sure you can under ordinary circumstances. You certainly did with that intruder.” Din looked away quickly, and Luke knew immediately that Din had misinterpreted the meaning of his words. “I meant that honestly. You weren’t fully healed and to still put up a fight like you did, to save Grogu, that took amazing strength.”

“It wasn’t enough,” Din muttered.

Luke leaned forward, tempted to reach out but knowing any sympathy would be refused. “He’s here. That’s what’s important. You didn’t fail him, Din.”

Din looked up sharply, eyes flashing angry.

“I’m sorry,” Luke said. He’d been afraid Din would react this way at finding Luke knew his name, but he didn’t want to leave it for him to discover on his own when his head cleared and he could better remember what had happened in the intensive care ward either. Mandalorians were loners by nature and a very private people. Luke didn’t dare let his actions go without explanation. “I didn’t mean to intrude or go against your Creed. I just needed a way to bring you back. Names are powerful tools in the right hands. I couldn’t think of anything else in the moment.”

Din rifled his memory. They were mostly just hazy, dark shapes and sensations. He could barely recall anything. Except Luke’s voice. “Then I didn’t imagine it. You were in the medical ward.”

“Yes.”

“You…pulled me back.”

“I did,” Luke admitted. “I was afraid you wouldn’t find your back on your own unless you knew Grogu was still alive. I didn’t know how else to reach you, but I’m sorry I had to do it that way. I try never to impose on people’s minds without their permission.”He paused, waiting to see if Din would accept his apology. “I won’t use it if you don’t want me to.” 

“It’s not against the Creed,” Din said after a moment. “But I’m not that boy any longer.”

“No,” Luke agreed. “You’re not. I’m not sure what happened to him, but the name is still yours.”

Din said nothing and kept his eyes averted from Luke’s searching gaze. Grogu was fretting at his hand again, tugging on it and making anxious noises. Din rubbed at his ear to try and calm him.

“He’s worried about you,” Luke said. “He thinks you’re lost.”

It was as good a word as any. Din had not felt so cut loose and out of sorts since his first weeks with the Mandalorians when he was nothing more than a confused child overcome by grief and loss with no certain path into the future. He had thought never to feel that way again. He had trained long and hard so that he wouldn’t have to. Now all that training seemed for naught. He didn’t know what weapon he was supposed to use against guilt. 

“You said you thought I could understand him,” he said, trying to steer the conversation away from his own turbulent thoughts. “How would I be able to do that?”

Luke considered the turn in conversation for a moment and then decided to let it pass. “How much do you know about the Jedi?” 

“Hardly anything,” Din said. “The Armorer spoke of the old Songs of Mandalore that told of sorcerers who could wield light and dark, control objects with their minds, and even other men’s thoughts.”

“Mmm, it’s true the Jedi’s dealings with Mandalore were not among their most bright and shining moments,” Luke conceded. The Jedi and the Mandalorians had found themselves at odds long ago on the basic premise that the Jedi order supported peace and the Mandalorians were a very war-like people. The trouble was the Jedi had not bothered to learn the nature of Mandalore’s penchant for war, or the fact that conquest was not their goal. “I’d like to say your songs are wrong, but among the strongest of the Jedi, all those things were possible and then some. Do your songs tell of any Mandalorian Jedi?”

“I don’t know.” Din shook his head. “I wasn’t raised on Mandalore. I was raised in the outer system in the fighting corp.” 

Luke sensed hesitation in Din’s next words.

“I thought the Mandalorians who took me in were the same as Mandalorians everywhere. I learned not long ago that the Tribe to which I belonged was actually a splinter faction called the Children of the Watch. If the old songs of the Jedi were known to the Watch, they did not teach them to me. But there was a weapon I encountered, one the Mandalorian Bo-Katan Kryze valued highly. A Darksaber. I was given to understand it was similar to the traditional Jedi Lightsaber, or so she said.”

“I think I’ve read something of it in the Archives,” Luke said. “Its creator lived a very long time ago. Given your lack of familiarity with Jedi, though, I’d say perhaps there have been no other recruits from Mandalore since. That doesn’t surprise me with the rough history between us.”

“Is it important?”

Luke shrugged. “Only in that it would mean you knew something about the Force and wouldn’t be as resistant to what I’m about to suggest.” Din tensed visibly and Grogu let out a short squeak of objection when Din’s grip on him unconsciously tightened. Luke continued slowly, “I think that you may be Force-sensitive yourself.”

“How is that possible?”

“It’s not as uncommon as you think. The Force is in all things. Jedi just have the ability to sense it more deeply and utilize its power.”

“And you think I have this power?” Din asked warily. 

“To a degree, yes. I think it’s part of what’s connecting you and Grogu, and I think its what allowed me to hear you when you were attacked.” Din looked about to object, his features caught between anger and panic. Luke lifted his hands, palms out. “I also think it is what will give you the ability to hear him, if you choose to. You already do. You just need help in knowing how to listen.”

Din looked down at the child. Grogu was listening intently now and looking between the two men with anticipation. The thought of being able to actually converse with Grogu, to learn where he’d come from and what he’d seen was a tempting proposition, something he’d been yearning for more and more as the weeks on Coruscant passed. If he could speak to him and understand him, too, maybe he could help Luke in his training, be able to better reassure Grogu that this was a path that would make him strong and give him a place to belong. He knew nothing of the Force, and he cared little for any of the things Luke said the Jedi were able to do. Din was a fighting man and that meant fists and feet and weapons wielded with skill learned over the course of a lifetime, not throwing objects around or bending men’s minds so they had no defense against him. Such magics would be repugnant to the physicality of the Mandalorians. It was a no wonder the Jedi were labeled sorcerers.

Din sucked in a breath. “What do I need to do?”

Luke shifted to the side of the bed. “You have a connection with Grogu, one I think you’ve felt from the very first, but you didn’t realize what it was.” Din nodded slowly, and Luke could tell the man had already figured out that much at least. “Focus on it. Let it fill you and…listen.”

Din worried at the inside of his bottom lip and kept his gaze on Grogu. The child looked eager, his ears high, the tips twitching back and forth. Din’s stomach turned over on itself in his nervousness. Luke put a hand on his arm.

“It’s not magic,” he said. “It is nothing that you do not already possess. This has been a part of you all of your life. Think of it as any other tool you would learn to use.” He squeezed Din’s arm reassuringly. “Tell me what you feel.”

“Warmth,” Din said softly, letting his eyes sink closed. “It was like a buzz at first. Constant. Then…a presence. Like part of him is sitting in the back of mind.”

“Good. Focus on that.”

Din did as Luke asked. He reached for the constant warm pressure at the back of his head that he had come to identify with Grogu’s presence. It felt faded now, like it did in those times when the child had overextended himself and been unconscious, but maybe that was only because Din was so tired himself. He tried to keep it in focus, drawing on those memories when it was most intense, when Grogu was trying his hardest to communicate with him: the first time he’d tried to heal Din, the Mudhorn, the moment he’d cried out to be saved from the Client on Nevarro.

Luke felt the slip in Din’s concentration when it happened, the sideways tumble he took into his memories as they rose up around him. These were not the happy memories of the boy Luke had first seen. These were dark, filled with grief and loss.

The village was being laid to ruin, battledroids in ominous black armor stalking every street. The air was hot, full of dust and smoke. Dropships hovered above, razing the buildings with cannon fire.

There was blaster fire, the concussive burst of bombs. Too close. 

The pounding of metal feet on hard packed earth, pulling a wave of destruction and death behind them.

The screech of rent steel, clatter of exploded stonework, screams from the dead and dying.

Panic. 

Terror. 

Desperation.

Hands lowering him down.

The clang of a hatch louder than any of the bombs.

Darkness.

“No.” 

Din jerked in Luke’s grip, the single uttered syllable overflowing with pain. 

Luke flailed for a heartbeat at the disconnection, then felt himself thrown clear. At first he only thought he was being ejected from the memories by Din’s anger. Then his back connected with a table across the room, jarring his eyes open. 

Grogu was clutching Din’s shirtfront, eyes narrowed to angry slits, one hand still outstretched in the sweep he’d made to break the connection between the two men. Din was folded over on himself, gasping.

Luke was pinned, frozen in Grogu’s fierce grip and his own shock.

“Grogu…no…” Din rasped. “Stop. Please…stop.”

The child swayed suddenly, dropped back onto his rump. Luke felt the pressure holding him evaporate. He rolled to his feet and lurched toward the bed. Din was panting, clutching at his chest, sweat rolling down his face. His skin had gone nearly grey. Luke grabbed his wrist. The man’s aura was nothing more than a thin, sickly glimmer around him. He looked at Grogu who was blinking dazedly but otherwise seemed fine. He took the child’s hand firmly, closed his eyes and reached.

What he found filled him with trepedation. 

A thread of Force, thin but bright, connected man and child. It was a connection much like what Luke envisaged between himself and Leia. Except this one was unbalanced. In the extreme. The energy was flowing from Din into Grogu, and Din was weakening. Fast.

Luke reached for the thread, gripped it, twisted like to break it. Grogu let out a pained wail, startling him into opening his eyes. The child slumped on the bed beside him, moaning, ears drooping in pain. Luke eased his grip on the connection and Grogu appeared to revive a little. Luke’s stomach clenched hard as realization began to dawn. He let go of the connection completely.

Grogu heaved a breath and then another and shook his little head as if coming out of a stupor. His eyes went wide with fear and he was trembling. Luke squeezed his hand hard to get his attention. The big eyes turned on him, confused.

“How do you heal him?” Luke asked.

Grogu reached for Din with his other hand, but Luke tugged it back.

“No,” he said sharply. “Tell me.”

Grogu’s ears twitched in frustration and Luke felt a glimmer of anger.

“You can’t, Grogu. Not this time,” he soothed. “Show me.”

With effort, Grogu gathered his concentration. He laid a claw on the back of Luke’s hand where it still gripped Din’s wrist.

Channel. Flow. Heal.

The words weren’t much, and they weren’t important. Grogu called up his memory of learning the technique and unfolded it in Luke’s mind for him to see. It was not unlike many other Jedi techniques of creating a channel and drawing off the Force for power, but instead of using that power to encompass an object or bend the path of a thought, it had to be carefully slotted into place, like a key in a lock, in the injured person’s aura. Their own body would do the work after that, funneling the energy to where it was most needed. It didn’t appear that complicated, but as with most things Luke knew it would take the correct amount of focus and strength to hold the connection.

Grogu took back his hand and watched anxiously as Luke gripped both of Din’s wrists. He emptied himself out, letting go of the moment and all its confusion and fear, and let the Force fill the vacuum he’d created. He tested Din’s aura, not sure exactly what he was looking for, hoping it would aid him by revealing itself. He dipped into its weak, sluggish flow, keeping himself open and ready.

The sensation was like a bolt sliding home and a power coupling coming on line. The energy Luke had gathered surged forward through the made connection, flowing into Din’s aura and sweeping across him, equalizing at it went. The rush was incredible and left him a little dizzy. The torrent of all the raw energy flooding through him was hard to hold. He could see now that the hardest part was directing the flow, like trying to steer a wave on the sea, but he doubled down his focus and kept the channel open until he felt the beginnings of a backwash. He drew back and pulled himself out of the flow.

Din’s color was returning, the lines of pain easing from around his eyes. He drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

“Better?” Luke asked.

Din nodded and allowed Luke to lower him back onto the pillows. “I don’t think it worked.”

“No. Your focus…slipped.”

There was a moment of heavy silence.

“You saw,” Din said. It wasn’t a question. He could see in Luke’s eyes that he had not imagined the maelstrom of memory he’d fallen into, and he hadn’t fallen alone.

“I saw a boy who survived,” Luke said gently. “A boy who refused to give up and turned his grief and loss into strength and became a warrior and a very good man. That boy deserves recognition in who you are today, Din Djarin.”

Din met Luke’s sincere gaze, saw something there he wanted very much to take hold of, if he could find the courage. “Then I suppose you ought to call me by my name.”

A frantic tugging on his shirt drew Din’s attention down the Grogu, whose ears were pinned back in fear. His eyes were wide and wet and his lower lip was trembling. Din frowned.

“What happened?” he asked as Grogu pushed his way into the crook of his arm and rested his head against Din’s chest, keening softly.

“When Grogu was injured, what did you do?” Luke asked. The weight of his earlier discovery was hanging over him. The ramifications if he was right could be devastating, and he didn’t know how to tell Din.

Din looked confused. “I held him. I remember cradling him, checking for a heartbeat.” 

Looking back at the still fresh memory pained Din, and it pained Luke equally to watch him, to see the agony of Grogu’s loss relived in his features.

“Did you do anything else?”

Muscle memory moved Din’s hand to Grogu’s chest, flexed his fingers there in the remembered search for a heartbeat, a breath, any thread of life. He recalled searching out his own heartbeat, the ebb and flow of his own blood, pushing it through his fingertips in his own desperation to unmake the moment and reverse what had happened. 

“I wanted him to live.”

Luke covered Din’s hand, drew it away from Grogu’s chest. Din looked at him, questioning.

“Grogu did die,” Luke said finally.

“And they brought him back,” Din replied. A tight knot was settling in his chest. Luke’s fingers were wrapped too tightly around his own. He didn’t need any Jedi power to know the man was afraid of something.

“No. You brought him back.”

“I did?”

Luke bowed his head, stared at their joined hands. “And in doing so, you connected yourself to him.”

“You said we were already connected,” Din protested, but he had a feeling there was much more to it now.

“Not like this.” Luke suppressed a shudder at his next words. “You gave him a direct connection to your life-force.”

Din tightened his arm around Grogu, fear welling up in him. “What does that mean?”

“It means he’s only alive because of you, and he’ll only stay that way so long as you do. He’s living on borrowed life, and it’s weakening you a little at a time. Unless I can figure out how to safely sever the connection so that you both survive or find a way to keep you strong enough…”

Luke couldn’t bring himself to finish. 

You have so much love in you, Luke. Hold onto it. Let it guide you back to your path.

Too late, Luke realized the focus of those words, what Ben had been trying to tell him, or what he’d been trying to tell himself. Now, it was spiraling away out of his reach before he’d even had a chance to close his fingers on it.

 “We’ll die,” Din said. “Both of us.”

Luke’s only answer was his silence. 

Chapter Text

Leia wasn’t altogether surprised to find her brother in the planetarium at near galactic standard midnight. She had just come from yet another closed door session of the Central Council. Their meetings were growing more frequent and more heated, and Leia struggled not to feel like their newborn republic was already disintegrating into an oligarchy where only a select few would decide the ultimate fate of the galaxy. It was not the ideal she had fought for, not the ideal she had sacrificed her home and her family for, and everything about it was making her skin crawl.

The planetarium was on the same level as the school. Normally, she would not venture down this time of night, but something had drawn her, and she knew even before she left the lift that it was Luke’s own unsettled presence luring her away from her bed and a few stolen hours of precious sleep in her husband’s arms. Luke was seated in the floor, cross-legged, at the base of the projector column. His head was tilted back, staring up at a pattern of stars Leia did not immediately recognize.

“Meketa forbid you should ever be grounded and not allowed to fly,” she said, invoking the name of the ancient Mother goddess of Alderaan from a time before her people had become spacefaring. “You’ve always had your head in the stars.”

Luke slid his gaze to the side to find her. He gave her a small, tired smile and then went back to looking up into the glittering darkness. Leia came into the auditorium, staying her security escort with a lifted hand. They hung back grudgingly and watched with unwavering attention as she went to fold herself down on the floor beside her brother, her cream and blue robes pooling about her as she sat and followed his gaze upward with her own.

“Where are we?” she asked quietly.

“Tatooine,” Luke replied a little wistfully.

“Really?” She had never spent any time on the planet except when they had set out to rescue Han from Jabba what seemed like a lifetime ago, and the stars had hardly been her first concern at the time. “You spent all your life dreaming of escape from there.”

“It was home,” Luke said after a long contemplative silence. “The only one I’ve ever known. It wasn’t perfect, but it’s familiar.”

Leia shifted closer to him and leaned to rest her head on his shoulder. “Are you feeling that lost?”

She could feel that he was. He gravitated to the sky when he was adrift, or more aptly what was beyond it. If names were any kind of portent of a person’s true nature, then his was the truest of all. Skywalker. One who walks the skies. His feet were never meant to be planet bound. She felt him lean into her and rest his head over on hers. She reached out to take his hand, the ungloved one.

“He’s dying, Leia.”

She gave a little jolt. “Who?”

“Din.”

“The Mandalorian? But Medical cleared him.”

“His body is healed, but he…gave himself to save Grogu, and it’s killing him. A little at a time,” Luke said. 

Her brother’s words were bound up with so much pain that involuntary tears sprang to Leia’s eyes, and she had to blink several times to hold them back. “I don’t understand.”

“He’s giving Grogu his life-force. Din is literally keeping him alive by allowing him to syphon off his own life energy.”

“That’s impossible,” Leia whispered harshly.

“I would have said so yesterday,” Luke agreed. “The Jedi are not gods. We cannot stay the hand of death; but somehow Din has managed it.”

Leia tried to tilt her head to look up at him, but he would’t allow it. He felt too raw to let his sister see into his eyes right now. He feared he would come undone beneath her compassion.

“Can’t you break it?”

“Not without losing one or both of them.”

They sat in silence in the starlit darkness.

“It’s more than that that’s worrying you,” Leia said finally.

Luke’s fingers clenched around hers. She could read him so well, even though she claimed no talent and refused any formal training of her own. He let out a long, shuddering breath.

“It’s what Anakin had hoped to achieve in order to save our mother. It is exactly what the Emperor used to sway him to the Dark Side.”

Leia pinched her lips against a gasp of shock. “Then you’re afraid…?”

“He’s completely untrained,” Luke insisted, more for his own benefit than hers. “There’s no way he should be able to do this, and I refuse to believe he’s tapping into some Sith power. Not when his only motivation was love!”

Leia moved her other hand to rest over his pounding heart, brought their linked hands up so she could press his knuckles to her cheek. “Love is capable of terrible things, Luke. Vader proved that if what you say about him is true.”

Luke shuddered violently, and Leia moved to wrap her arm across his chest and hold him to her as tightly as she could. Luke turned his head to press his lips against her forehead in a quiet kiss. His voice was barely audible when he spoke,

“It is. And I’m afraid, Leia. So afraid.”

His words closed like the grip of carbonite around her heart.  Anyone else might have mistaken his meaning, thinking it was the emergence of the Dark Side in Din that he feared, but Leia knew better. She had hoped for so long that her brother would find someone to tether himself to, someone to bring him a little peace and take some of the weight from his shoulders before his self-described mission to rejuvenate the Jedi Order single-handedly ended up crushing him beneath the immense responsibility it entailed; but she had not wanted it to happen this way. 

“There is a way,” she said firmly, tapping into every one of her years of diplomatic training to keep her voice steady. “We’ll find it.”

________________

Din slept restlessly. He was always a light sleeper. When one stayed in some of the places he had, one learned to sleep with one eye open. He had been learning to feel safe in the Capitol Tower, something he couldn’t recall feeling in his living memory, but that had evidently been a mistake. One he wouldn’t make again. His restlessness tonight was born more out of bad dreams than a need to stay alert, though. Whatever had happened between him and Luke in the medical ward, no matter his conscious memory of it was still indistinct, and what had happened later in Luke’s quarters, had jarred opened a door inside Din that he was never sure he had consciously closed and now things were pouring out of the crack. 

He had not thought of his parents in years. Those moments when the Armorer’s hammer had driven the memories out into the open were only flash images of the heated battle that had given birth to the man he was to become, and he had studiously avoided the agony of knowledge on his parents’ faces in those images, knowledge of their certain death and a dreadful hope that their son would somehow be saved. He didn’t need to look. He felt it, in a place he kept deeply buried, where his name had resided until Luke had excavated it from the tomb of his former life. 

Now, the ghosts that inhabited that tomb were whispering to him in the voices of his parents, long forgotten snatches of conversations he was not supposed to hear.

He is a boy, Aarey. Nothing will come of it. Even if what you think is true and he has this…gift. Surely, no one will want to hurt a boy. 

Do not blind yourself to what is happening, Mia. The Republic is dead. The Empire’s grip is tightening so that even out here its power will be felt. There are rumors I hear from the passing traders, rumors of a dark lord who is seeking out anyone with this power they call the Force. He is killing them.

Don’t be ridiculous, Aaery. No one would kill a child. Besides, the Force is a myth. 

Myth or not, it doesn’t matter, if they believe it is real, and if they even suspected he had it—

You speak like it’s a disease! We are people—ordinary people—living our lives out of the way of these politics. It will not touch us. No one would bother. You’ll see. 

But it had touched them. It had killed them. Din remembered the night he lay awake in his cot listening to his parents talk. There were other conversations in the following weeks as the rumors riding in with the traveling traders grew and took shape, conversations that hinted at leaving their home and going somewhere remote in the Outer Rim; but the fledgling Empire recognized no bounds in its thirst for power, and its troops had laid waste to his village and his planet before his family could plan their escape. 

Sleep was not going to visit Din again tonight. He gave up pretending and sat up slowly, careful not to jar Grogu who was curled on his customary pillow beside Din’s head, sleeping peacefully under his blanket. He got to feet slowly, still unsteady. His body was still tired and sore. The freshly healed muscle and flesh where the assassin’s claws had flayed him still tight and unforgiving when he tried to stretch. He stifled a groan and tried a few tentative steps to the high, wide glass doors leading out onto the balcony. He could see the shadows of guards beyond the translucent drapes, standing vigilant. These two he did not know, and he didn’t feel like any company, even though they would probably be as silent and stoic as the day guards were, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, acting their part as no more than necessary furniture to the surroundings. He felt the need for fresh air, though. These quarters were stifling, no matter their luxurious size and perfectly modulated environmental controls. He was accustomed to life on a ship half the size of these rooms, sometimes never leaving it for weeks at a time, but it had never felt so confining as these quarters did tonight. Perhaps it was the vastness of space outside every viewport of the ship that made the difference and knowing that there was no possible danger to him lurking around every corner.

He made his way to the door and slid it aside silently. The guard acknowledged him with only a nod but made no move to curtail his going outside. He went to the wide railing and leaned there, looking out over the city. Below was a courtyard with trees and walking paths and a narrow stream that meandered, glistening silver in the moonlight, from water feature to water feature throughout the green space. Beyond the high stone wall surrounding the courtyard was the outer compound where the workers lived who took care of the day to day business of the Tower, feeding, fixing, mending, and generally tending to all the mundane needs of its many occupants. Outside the compound, the city itself sprawled in patterns of steel and light. Din had never been to a Core world before and could not conceive of so much life living so closely packed together. He wondered how they could stand it, but they seemed happy enough. He had not seen an squalor in his brief visits outside the Tower with Han. The air down there was as fresh and clear as it was up here high above it all. 

He drew in a deep breath, let the night breeze flow across his clammy skin and cool him. 

He wondered how long this dream could last. 

Only the dream was becoming a nightmare.

Unless I can find a way to sever the connection or make you stronger…

We’ll both die.

Luke’s words still made his skin shrivel in trepidation. He had no idea what he had done or how. Maybe it was the power his father had whispered of those nights he had thought Din asleep in his bed. He wished now that his father had shared his suspicions, had spoken of it somehow, had told him why he thought Din could do anything out of the ordinary. Nothing in his memory stood out to give him any clue that he harbored any sort of power similar to what Luke or Grogu was able to do. Ahsoka had said nothing when she had met him, and surely she would have sensed something, but then she had not been looking. Neither had Luke, and it seemed as much a surprise to him as it was to Din. 

He was no one. He was a fighter, just an ordinary man trained to fight where fighting was needed, nothing more. Why would this Force choose him? He spread his arms on the railing, lowering himself until he could rest his forehead on the cool stone.

“Sir?” the guard behind him asked carefully, taking a hesitant step forward.

“I’m fine,” Din said, not moving to lift himself. “I’m fine.”

But he wasn’t fine. The door Luke had opened was swinging wider, and if his soul was beyond it, then it was flickering and dim. He felt weak, and it wasn’t just a weakness of his body. That he would be able to fight, as he had done so many times in the past, with rigorous training until the weakness was rooted out. This was different. It was as Luke had said, like he had given part of himself away. He was being used up, and he didn’t know how long he could last. 

He went down to his knees, still clinging to the railing. Behind him, he heard the guards lurch forward, but there was the sound of a door sliding quietly open and their advance was stayed by a murmured command. Hands rested on his shoulders, drew him back to rest against a solid chest.

“Din.”

“How do I fight this?” Din asked. “I don’t know how.”

Luke rested a hand against his forehead. It felt nearly as cool as the stone. “Don’t fight. The time for fighting is done. I will teach you how to be strong in the Force. We’ll find the answer. Together.”

“I feel…like I’m fading away,” Din sighed.

Luke’s hand encircled his wrist and held tightly. “I won’t let that happen.”

Din had the odd sensation of floating, like consciousness was lifting away from him. “Grogu. Grogu is the only thing that matters. Save him. I’m not important.”

“You are important,” Luke said.

Din thought he heard anguish in the words, but he couldn’t be sure. He was floating further and further away, the breeze was carrying him aloft into the night above and the stars beyond that.

“You are important to me.”

Chapter Text

Din was still groggy from his sketchy night of sleep—and still trying to piece together exactly what had happened on the balcony because he remembered getting up and going out, but he didn’t remember getting back to bed—when the door chime sounded. It didn’t register right away what the sound meant because he wasn’t accustomed to having visitors and the visitors he did have rarely announced themselves which caused him a little belated annoyance now that he thought about it. These weren’t his quarters, though, so the visitor was likely for Luke.

He pressed the lock release and saw the Arboreal girl from Grogu’s class standing timidly at the door with her chaperone hovering not far behind looking slightly disgruntled. Her eyes widened on seeing him, and he belated realized he was still in his sleep pants with his shirt open. He tugged the shirt closed and ran a hand through his hair.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “Long night. Can I help you?”

“I came to see if Grogu would be able to attend classes today,” she said in her whispery soft voice. “I had heard he was doing better after his ordeal.”

“Oh.” Din stood a little dumbfounded. “I hadn’t even thought. He’s, uh…”

Now that his attention was brought to it, he wasn’t even sure where Grogu had gotten to. He wasn’t on his pillow when Din woke up, and he hadn’t had a chance to search him out yet. His focus sharpened, a stab of guilt over Grogu not being his first concern on waking making him grimace, and he heard low voices coming from Luke’s room.

“Please, come in.” He gestured the girl and her chaperone inside. “I’ll check on him and see if he’s up to it.”

The chaperone looked intensely displeased with this suggestion but the girl came in anyway. Din tied his shirt closed and went in search of the voices.

Luke was seated on the floor at the foot of his bed, cross-legged, with Grogu. They were facing each other and there was a book open on the floor between them. Grogu was studying the pages intently while Luke spoke to him softly. Grogu’s ears perked and his attention immediately shifted to Din when he appeared in the doorway. He made a happy noise and darted over to hug Din’s calf. Din squatted down to rub at his ears.

“Your school friend is here,” he said. “She came to see if you wanted to go to class today.”

Grogu’s ears shot high and he peered around Din’s leg, made an ecstatic coo and scuttled over to the girl. She bent with the grace of a willow tree trailing its fronds in the water and offered her long, thin arm for him to take as she lifted him up. He babbled at her excitedly and she smiled at him.

“I think he’s smitten,” Luke said, unfolding himself from the floor.

“I think it goes both ways,” Din replied, levering himself up. He grabbed at the doorjamb to steady himself and felt a hand at his back aiding him in regaining his balance. He stepped purposefully away from the contact without meeting Luke’s eyes.

“Madam Reisen,” Luke addressed the chaperone with a slight bow. “Thank you for bringing your charge. I think Grogu would be happy to accompany her to class today.”

Madam Reisen returned his bow. “It is I who was brought, Master Jedi. Fjoriel is a…very headstrong girl.”

Luke smiled at this. “The young very often are.”

“I only wanted to see that he was all right, Rowan,” Fjoriel said. “It is the proper thing to do, to check on the health of one’s friends, is it not?”

Madam Reisen glowered, but it was half-hearted. “Only when it suits you, do you bring up propriety, Seedling.”

Grogu was humming now, an awe-filled sound, as he tentatively reached to touch a tiny, delicate flower tied into Fjoriel’s mossy tresses. Looking closer, Din realized the flower was not decoration, but actually seemed to be growing in her hair. Fjoriel caught his scrutiny and smiled at him.

“On my planet, it is spring on our continent,” she explained. “The Rowan is beginning to bloom, and we share in her joy of the coming season, no matter how distant we are from our home.”

Grogu made another sound low in his throat, this one of appreciation.

“Thank you,” Fjoriel said quietly. Din thought if her skin was not so dark, he would have seen a blush cross her cheeks. 

“You understand him?” he asked suddenly.

“Oh, yes,” she replied, but hesitated, backpedaling at something she saw in Din’s eyes. “Not in so many words, but I sense his meaning.”

Din frowned. It had not occurred to him that anyone besides Luke might be able to understand Grogu beyond what his expressive face and ears and multi-toned coos could impart, and it sparked a sense of jealousy in him.

“The Arboreal people are creatures of nature,” Luke said. “They are very strong in the Force. They do not, however, believe it should be tapped for the purposes of any single individual’s needs.”

“Life is for all,” Madam Reisen said firmly. “To redirect it to one’s own purpose detracts from the flow and therefore creates a deficit that may harm another.”

Luke bowed again, this time a little lower. “We agree to disagree, Madam.”

He said this very formally as if it were a recitation from some rule book. Madam Reisen inclined her head in graceful acceptance. 

“Fjoriel, you will be late. We must go.”

“We will escort him back after classes, if that is all right?” Fjoriel addressed this to Din.

“Sure,” he said. “I mean, that would be very kind of you. Thank you.”

Fjoriel wrapped her arm securely around Grogu and carried him out with Madam Reisen trailing behind. 

“You should not be jealous of her,” Luke said when the door closed.

“And why not?” Din snapped, spinning on Luke, the spark of jealously welling up into rage. The room spun with him, though, and he started to list. Luke reached out and grabbed him before he fell, guiding him to sit at the foot of the bed. Din sagged and put his head in his hands, feeling the rage ebb away as quickly as it had flared. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” 

Luke’s hand encircled Din’s wrist and a tingling warmth traveled up his arm. He hadn’t realized until that moment how cold he felt. He shivered involuntarily. 

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to rebalance you,” Luke replied. His voice was strained, and Din wondered if it was from the effort of whatever this balancing entailed or something else. “It’s something I need to teach you to do for yourself and soon.”

Luke’s words brought back the crawling feeling of trepidation that had driven Din out to the balcony last night. Mandalorians did not fear death, they only feared a bad death. If whatever connection he had inadvertently given Grogu was going to kill him in the end then he wanted to go down fighting. That thought nudged away the fog that was blanketing the rest of last night after he had gone to his knees under the prevailing drain that was weakening him from the inside out.

You are important to me.

Din turned his wrist out of Luke’s grasp and pushed to his feet. He felt steadier now. His head was more clear at least. He went back out into the main room and found a tray with a carafe of hot spiced hochi still steaming. One of the service droids must have brought it not long ago. He poured a cup and sipped. It was strong, brewed directly from the roots of the plant for which it was named instead of from freeze dried grounds like he often had it on board his ship. Luke followed him out of the bedroom but kept his distance.

“How do I learn?” Din asked, not turning to look at Luke, but instead keeping his eyes trained on the balcony and the steel spires of the city beyond.

Luke cut a curve through the room, giving Din the space he needed, poured himself a cup of the hochi and kept his gaze on its dark, steaming surface like he was trying to read the future there. “I teach you how to recognize the Force, to see the thread of it binding all life. I show you how to connect to it and more importantly how to let it connect to you. Then I show you how to use it.”

“You make it sound easy,” Din said wryly.

“It is the easiest thing in the universe,” Luke replied. “Once you know how.”

“Is it like Madam Reisen said? Does it harm others when you use it to your purpose?”

Luke hesitated. “I don’t know. If it does, the ramifications would be the same as someone dying before their time. There is no way to measure what or who is affected by their death across the galaxy, nor is there any way to say if their death was destined at that time or any other. It’s strictly philosophical, and that can get very muddy if you think about it too hard. The Jedi do not ‘use up’ the Force, we only form it to our will. It goes on as the constant it has always been, just in a different shape temporarily.”

“But Grogu is using me up,” Din said, reluctant to voice the fact because it seemed cruel. It felt like laying blame on the child for finding a way to stay alive.

Luke gestured to the book still laying open on the floor in the bedroom. “Grogu and I were studying this morning, trying to understand what has happened between the two of you. I’ve never found reference of anything like it so I can only theorize, but I believe you made yourself a conduit for the Force as it is connected to him.” Din scowled in confusion and Luke shook his head, trying to think of a better way to explain. “When he…died, Grogu’s connection to the Force was lost. A Master, when he dies, becomes one with the Force because he had immersed himself in it all his life, but Grogu doesn’t have that training or experience. So, as with all things living, when they cease the Force lets them go. When you brought him back, it was by channeling your own personal connection into him. His connection to the Force now is only as strong as your own, and because he is drawing it from you and you don’t know how to maintain your own balance within it, he is consuming what you have inside you. 

“A conduit is meant to act as a throughput, and if you had the training and awareness, you would be a channel for his connection, taking in energy from the Force as he takes it from you. That is what I have to teach you first. But so long as this condition exists between you, he’ll never be able to reach his full potential unless you become as strong as he was.”

“Is that even possible?” Din asked.

“Possible? Perhaps. Ideal? No,” Luke replied, setting down his cup untouched. “Ideally, I would find a way to reconnect him to the Force so he could sustain himself and not through you.”

Din paced over to the balcony doors. “You realize this all sounds like a child’s fairy story, and it still doesn’t answer my question. How do I learn?”

“Force awareness is best found through an event or an object of meaning, something that caused the Force to surge to the surface in the individual at some point and bring their focus to it.”

“Is that how you learned?”

“My training was unique,” Luke said, and Din did not miss the undertone of bitterness in the words. “I was a tool being shaped to a very specific purpose, so I am nothing to judge by. But in a way, I suppose I did. I was a good pilot. Very good. When I flew, I felt…bigger than myself, more aware of everything around me. My sister says my head is in the stars, always. She’s probably right because that’s where I first discovered my connection even though I didn’t realize it at the time. We need to find yours.”

Din looked down at the cup in his hand. It was earthenware, finely cast by a master’s hand, not replicated or machine made. He brought it up to his nose and sniffed deeply. The warm spice of the hochi was powerful, but beneath it there was cool earth, solid and grounding. 

“What do you remember?” Luke murmured. He had come to Din’s side and was watching him intently as if he could see the memory starting to take shape in Din’s mind.

The spin of the wheel was mesmerizing, and Din never tired of watching the graceful forms his father drew from the solid wet lumps of earth that sat wrapped in cloth waiting for his touch.

“Come. Try,” his father urged. “Let’s see what you can do.”

Din pushed up his sleeves and climbed up onto his father’s lap. His father slapped a lump of clay onto the wheel and started it spinning with his foot on the tredel. Din felt the rhythm of his father’s movements all through him and the beat of his heart as he pressed his chest against Din’s back and reached around to cup his small hands in his much larger ones and set them to the surface of the clay. The lump was cold and hard at first, resistant, but as their hands kept pressing and the wheel spun, it became warmer, softer, more pliant.

“Hold the image of what you want the earth to be in your mind,” his father whispered as if telling a great secret. “But be open to what it has to tell you as well. The earth is older than all of us. It has known many shapes through the ages. It has infinite stories to show us of life and death and rebirth. Let it express itself through you.”

“My father,” Din said haltingly. “He worked with clay. When I was young, he would take me into his workshop and teach me. I remember being at peace, watching the wheel spin like it would go on forever, drawing the clay, listening to the shape it wanted to make, feeling the timelessness in the substance beneath my hands—.”

“Din.”

Luke’s whisper was one of awe, and Din looked down at his hands. He had been rolling the cup back and forth between his palms unconsciously as the memory unfolded and his father’s words flowed back to him. Now the cup was floating between them, a thin space of air between his skin and the earthen sides, and the cup’s shape had changed subtly, rounding out slightly and flaring into something a little more graceful. 

Din’s eyes widened in shock and the moment was broken. The cup plummeted from between his hands, but Luke caught it before it shattered on the floor. It spun slowly between them for a moment before Luke took it in the palm of his hand.

“The earth is your anchor,” he said with reverence. “As the stars are mine.”

“I don’t…”

Din was about to say he didn’t believe it, but the proof was in front of his eyes. So, too, were the memories of what Grogu had done, how he had captured the Mudhorn and healed Greef, how he had reached out across the stars to call Luke and found Din in the moment he was about to give up on Tatooine under the claws of the C’Araesen. It begged credulity, as did Luke’s defeat of an entire platoon of Dark Troopers on Gideon’s ship. But Din had seen it all with his own eyes, and it was impossible to deny the reality of that power.

“I believe,” Din whispered.

“And that is how you will succeed,” Luke said. 

Chapter Text

Luke decided the best way to get Din in touch with the Force on his own terms as quickly as possible was to get him as close as possible to the original moment he had first felt the connection. To that end, he enlisted the help of the master potter in the Tower’s outer compound.

“Master Oslo,” Luke gave a small bow when the short stout man answered his knock at the studio door. “I am in need of your services.”

“Anything we can do to serve, Master Luke,” Oslo answered with a deeper bow.

Din hung back from the door, turned slightly into the street, watching the myriad of people and aliens going about their daily work. There was nothing to fear here, or there had not been until a few days ago, but old habits died hard, and Din never kept his back turned to an open space if it could be avoided.

Luke touched his arm to draw his attention. “I have a student who has shown an affinity for the Force through a connection to the earth, and I would like to make use of your workshop for a short time if I may.”

Oslo gave Din a thorough once over, his brows drawing together slightly as he took in the man who looked much more fighter stock than student and appeared several years older than his teacher. He inclined his head after a moments hesitation and opened the door wide to admit them. 

The studio was a working one. Items for sale were on display on one side of the large space and at least half a dozen apprentices were at work at their wheels or sitting at worktables on the other side. Luke surveyed the surroundings.

“Is there anywhere we might work together alone? I would not want to disturb your apprentices in their work.”

Din felt it was Luke’s polite way of saying he wasn’t entirely sure how this session was going to go, and he didn’t want to make a spectacle that others might see. Oslo’s initial hesitation nearly got the better of him and he fiddled with the edge of his apron unconsciously, but then he motioned them to follow him to the back of the studio where he opened the door onto what Din presumed was his private work area. The room was much smaller, tidy, with racks of pottery along one wall either drying before they were fired in the kiln or cooling before they would be further decorated and glazed and then fired again. A wheel stood as center piece in the room with a stool nearby. Two wide windows cut in adjacent walls let in an ample amount of light without admitting any glare that would interrupt the master while he worked and caused the entire space to glow warmly. 

The moment Din ducked through the low door it felt like coming home.

He went to the wheel and laid a hand in the center of it, closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. It smelled exactly as his father’s workshop had, pleasantly cool and slightly damp with the scent of the earth permeating everything in it. 

Luke nodded appreciatively. “This will do nicely. We will not disrupt your work any longer than necessary, Master Oslo.”

Oslo still looked a little nervous. “Does your student have any, uh, experience with the clay?”

“Only from his childhood.” 

Luke laid a companionable hand on Oslo’s shoulder and the tension in the man eased immediately, his face relaxing into a smile.

“Then I’ll leave you to it,” he said happily and drew the door closed after himself.

Din looked at Luke with a raised eyebrow. “What did you do? He didn’t seem especially eager to let a novice work with his tools.”

Luke shrugged lightly. “I only eased his concerns.”

“With the Force?”

“Yes.”

Din scowled. “Do you do that often to get your way?”

“I try not to,” Luke said, sensing the undercurrent of apprehension in Din’s voice. “And no, I haven’t used it with you.”

Din nodded, but the scowl stayed. He wasn’t comfortable with the idea of meddling with another person’s thoughts or emotions for one’s own benefit. It felt like cheating. 

“So, I’m going to make pots and cups using the Force?” he asked. The notion of it still felt a little silly to him. He couldn’t see how that was going to help him where Grogu was concerned.

“The point is not to make the pots or the cups,” Luke said. “We’re trying to bring you as close to the moment you first recognized the Force as possible. If you can grasp that connection here and hold onto it, it will be the first step on the path to your becoming stronger.”

Din nodded, still uneasy with the idea. He went to the cupboard in the corner and pulled open the door. As he expected, there were lumps of clay of varying sizes precut and wrapped in damp cloths. He selected one and brought it to the wheel, untying the loose knot of the cloth covering and let it sit in his hands, feeling the coolness of it seep into his palms. After a minute he discarded the cloth and started rolling the chunk between his hands.

Like this, his father said. Begin to warm it, roll it into a cone.

Din rolled the clay to a blunt point and pressed it firmly to the center of the wheel. He found the treadle with his foot and set it spinning slowly, then he pushed up his sleeves and dipped both hands into a pale of water sitting by his feet.

Now, brace your body, his father instructed. Like this. The earth is strength and it requires equal strength to mold it.

Luke watched in silence as Din tucked his elbows firmly into his sides and leaned forward into the wheel, cupping his hands around the misshapen mass turning at its center.

Be firm, but gentle. Too much pressure and the clay will not yield to you. You must not break its spirit.

The clay smoothed beneath Din's palms, rounding and centering itself as he folded his fingers around it just so.

Listen. Listen! Hear what it wants to be.

The grey mass between Din's hands began to spread outward and upward as he applied pressure here and moved a finger there. Luke followed every minute movement of Din’s fingers, watched him pour the strength and skill he had employed in learning to fight as a Mandalorian into the task before him. But this was no battle. It was a conversation, and Din’s hands knew every precise syllable of the language in which they spoke to the clay. 

He hollowed out the center and drew the mass upwards, coaxing and guiding. 

Luke nearly held his breath as the clay began to glow ever so faintly. If Din was aware of it, he gave no indication. The glow slowly intensified and concentrated, filling up the hollow in the center as Din's fingers continued to gently and patiently draw the clay up and out, thinner and thinner until Luke was sure the structure of it would have to collapse under only the slightest pressure, but Din kept shaping until the wide walls of the shallow bowl curved back up and in on themselves and a wide inner lip was formed that Din once again drew up and folded back on itself. The whole while, the golden glow of the interior grew stronger. 

Luke tested the currents of the room, felt the slow swirling eddy of the Force as it spiraled in toward the wheel and Din and his hands on the clay, flowing through him and into the vessel he was creating.

Luke had never seen the Force contained, never seen it in its raw form.

The Force is invisible. It is an energy that binds all living things.

Not so invisible now, old friend, Luke chided silently.

Din's hands had gone still. He stayed bent over the wheel, but his hands hung in the air on either side of the glowing bowl. His eyes were closed. The liquid Force inside the vessel seeped out into the surrounding clay. It shimmered and moved across the surface like sunlight glittering on water. The clay transmuted, becoming translucent, glowed brilliantly for a moment and then evaporated into a fine mist. A tiny nebula of starlike particles pulsed between Din’s palms then flowed in and out and around his fingers before finally dissipating and all that was left was the light slanting in through the window.

Din opened his eyes slowly, turning his palms upward to exam them. Luke sank down beside him. He reached to cup one of Din’s hands in his own. It was warm, almost hot. He looked up at the man in awe.

“What did you do?”

“It wanted to be free,” Din whispered. “I set it free.”

Transmutation on the atomic level was a skill of the ancients, so rare as to be written down only as rumor in the oldest of the Jedi texts. It was what happened when the strongest Jedi Masters passed out of this life and rejoined the flow of the Force, but that final passage was attributed to the Force taking back what was its own not as an intentional act by the Master. For Din to have unpicked the clay at its most basic level and disbursed it back into the living flow…

“Who are you, Din Djarin?  What are you?”

Din shuddered violently. Luke grabbed his forearms, holding tight.

“Din?”

“Grogu…”

There was a frantic knocking at the door. 

“Master Luke?”

“Yes, what is it?” Luke called, not taking his eyes from Din. He had found his connection and it was holding, but the Force was being drawn through him like a black hole voraciously swallowing light at its edge. Something had gone terribly wrong.

The door swung open to Oslo and the two security guards who had accompanied Luke and Din down into the compound. They were looking stern and worried and Luke could hear frantic voices and background noise coming across the open commlink one of them held.

“What’s happened?”

“They need you at the school levels, sir. Immediately,” the guard said.

“Din?” Luke looked uncertainly up at him.

“I’m coming.” Din shoved to his feet, leaning on Luke for only a moment until he could get his balance. It wasn’t weakness that assailed him this time, but the surging of power through his body. Something inside him had opened up like a spillway to relieve the pressure on a burgeoning river about to break its banks, but instead of just overflowing, the river was being sucked through the gate, and Din was caught in the torrent, trying to stand against the flood. 

Luke took his hand. It acted like an instant anchor against the tidal flow. Din gave him a nod.

Luke waved the guards out of the way. “Let’s go.”

The school level was in chaos when they arrived. Parents and guardians were shouting and crying and children from other classrooms were at once cowering and staring, captivated, through the one-way glass at a scene plucked from their worst nightmares.

“That’s Grogu’s class,” Din gasped. He shoved through the crowd and flung himself at the glass. “What has he done!”

There were flames beyond the glass, dancing high, twisting as if caught in a terrific cyclone. In the center of it, Din could just barely make out Grogu, one little hand lifted high, ears flat back, eyes narrowed. Above him, three figures dangled, writhing and screaming as the flames twined around them like ropes; but they didn’t burn, not physically anyway, that he could tell. There was no smoke, no charred flesh, only screams of pain.

Luke grabbed one of the teachers and spun him away from the horrific scene. His face was a rictus of terror. 

“What happened?” Luke demanded.

“I-I don’t know! We only heard shouting and then screams and then—this!”

Luke went for the door.

“It won’t open!” the teacher warned frantically. “The guards tried, security override and everything. He’s…keeping everyone out.”

Luke gripped the door with his mind, tearing at the locking mechanism, ripping wire and rending mental. It stubbornly stayed closed, shuddering under the pull of Luke’s mind and the opposing force Grogu was exerting to keep it closed.

Grogu, stop this!

Luke commanded with the full force of his will.

They hurt the Heart Flower.

 Heart Flower? Luke was dumbfounded. What was Grogu talking about?

“Din. Din, you have to stop him,” Luke said, grabbing his wrist and dragging him to the door.

“How?” Din asked desperately. “I don’t have that kind of power.”

“But he does, and you are what’s providing it right now! Cut him off. Cut his connection.”

It was a tall order and Luke knew it. He wasn’t sure, if he were in Din’s position, if he would even know how to attempt it himself. Din shook his head, panic flooding his eyes. He wavered. Luke tightened his grip.

“The flood,” he said firmly. “Stop the flood. Close the gate.”

Din steadied himself against Luke’s grip, nodded weakly. He tried to envision the raging flow around him, turned himself into its current and braced against it, but it was too strong and there was too much of it. His reach couldn’t encompass it and he couldn’t find the source. He was engulfed and drowning.

The earth has been many shapes through the ages. Listen…

Din staggered to door, pressed his hands to it.

Hold the shape in your mind of what you want it to be, but do not ignore what it has to tell you.

Steel alloy. The door was made of many elements, each of them birthed in the depths of the earth itself, mined out, formed and bonded together, all pieces that created a whole. 

Luke watched as the door began to vibrate and then glow like the vessel on the pottery wheel had done. It became translucent in the same way, vibrated harder, almost humming with the power coursing through it, and then suddenly it burst apart in a shower of particulates. Din fell forward through the gap and into the flames, lunging for Grogu at the center of the storm. 

“Keep them back!” Luke shouted to the guards as the panicked crowd rushed forward as one toward the now open door in an attempt to reach the children inside. 

The firestorm wavered as Grogu became aware of Din’s presence in the room with him. His concentration fractured slightly, and the three young boys tethered in flame tumbled out of the air. Din felt the brief ebb in the current and took advantage. If the flow of power was like a river, then there was a riverbed beneath it. He rooted himself down in the rushing tide, finding the solidity beneath the soles of his feet. He drew it up, like he had drawn the clay off the bed of the wheel, up and up and out. The earth built up from the sides, squeezing the torrent down to a stream, a trickle, and then to nothing.

Around him, the flames guttered out as their fuel source was cut. Grogu swayed and collapsed. Din crashed to his knees, gasping with his efforts. 

The room was silent except for the soft persistent crying of frightened children. Luke ushered them out, speaking softly, exerting calm into their minds, cocooning them a manufactured sense of safety until they were in the arms of their waiting parents and the manufactured state became real. The three boys, however, lay unmoving in the floor. He squatted down beside their unconscious bodies, touched each sweaty forehead with a gentle hand and found that they were blessedly still alive. More soft crying caught his attention, and he looked up to see the teacher huddled in the front corner of the room. Fjoriel lay unconscious across her lap. The teacher appeared uninjured, but the girl looked badly burned along one side of her face, her mossy hair charred away from that side of her skull. 

Medics had gathered anxiously at the door, held back by the security guards under Luke’s order. He waved a hand to motion them inside. They scurried quickly to their charges and he pointed one of them over to the teacher and Fjoriel. They worked fast and efficiently, stabilizing their patients and moving them out of the room. Luke could hear the panic outside shifting into anger. He glanced at the door. Reinforcements had arrived, and the guards had created a larger perimeter, keeping the crowd contained and away. Luke rose and went to Din.

He was hunched over Grogu, his shoulders straining like he was holding back a huge tide with their strength alone, and Luke suspected he was. But with Grogu unconscious, that tide was recedeing, and as it did, so too did the tension in Din’s body. He sagged down, catching himself on an elbow. He circled an arm around Grogu and pulled him into the lee of his body, curling around him protectively.

“Why? Why did he do this?” Din’s plea was hoarse and broken. 

Luke could hear the strain, the fear and trepidation in his voice. He knelt beside him and put a hand at the back of his neck.

“Don’t,” Din whispered sharply. “Don’t use your powers on me, Jedi.”

Luke let his hand slide down the curve of Din’s shoulder and back and then pulled away. “I wasn’t going to.”

And Luke found that he meant it. His instinct was to soothe, but he didn’t want the veil of the Force between them. He wanted Din’s real feelings, even the ones that stung him as Din’s distrust of his actions did now.

The anger in the remaining crowd was starting to take a violent turn. Luke could hear shouting and demands for explanation, even a few threats. The guards were holding steady, though, silent and firm against the rising ire.

“I need to get him out of here,” Din said, pushing upward, drawing Grogu in close in the cradle of his arm.

“Let the guards get the crowd under control first,” Luke cautioned.

Din raised the rest of the way up and when Luke caught his gaze, understanding, dreadful as it was, dawned.

“I need to get him out of here,” Din said again, his words hardened with determination.

“You mean leave,” Luke said. He sat back, stunned into silence.

Din gathered himself and Grogu and pushed off the floor.

Luke watched the change take hold. It was terrifying and awesome to behold at the same time. Seeing Din lift himself to standing, it was like watching him don his armor a piece at a time; and when he had straightened, his broad shoulders squared and his back straight, Din Djarin was not the one standing in that room anymore.

It was the Mandalorian.

Chapter Text

“You're putting yourself at risk. You’re putting Grogu at risk if you leave now!"

Luke caught himself on the doorframe and swung into the room. Din was a hard man to keep up with when he was determined and on the move. If the crowd downstairs had a thought toward trying to stop him, that thought bent in a whole new direction when they saw his face. Luke was prepared to help, to calm them and turn their fear fueled anger aside with his influence through the Force or do it the good old fashioned way with his lightsaber if that failed; but Din managed it alone with his diamond sharp gaze. They peeled away from his cutting glare as it dared each and every one of them to challenge him and warned them in the same way that they would come out the worse for the attempt. Luke wondered briefly as the crowd parted for him if the man had any idea the advantage he might have gained in his past exploits by simply leaving his helmet off and letting his enemies see his eyes.

Din settled Grogu on his pillow when they reached Luke’s quarters. He was still unconscious but restless. Din could feel him struggling for wakefulness, trying to pull on the thread of Force that connected them.

Luke must have felt it, too. He followed them into the bedroom, sat down beside Grogu and put a hand on him. He settled a little, drifting deeper into sleep, and Din felt the tension on the thread ease.

“You need to teach me that," he muttered as he strode across the room to where his armor was stacked neatly in a corner. "It might come in handy."

"I need to teach you a lot of things," Luke snapped. His composure was fraying. Worry was getting the better of him. It was starting to gnaw at the underside of his ribs so that he almost felt sick. “But I can't do that if you run."

"I'm not running," Din said darkly.

"No?" Luke countered. He pulled his hand back from where it rested on Grogu’s chest. He didn't have enough calm to keep himself under control, let alone enough to share with the child. "Then what do you call this?"

Din spun on him. "I call this taking a stand. I call this me being tired of weakness and tired of fear and doing something about it!"

"And what are you going to do? Fight?" Luke demanded. The worry writhed in his gut, hatching into full blown anger, and he didn't try to control it. He was tired of contorting it. Everyone expected him to be in control, to not feel anything, and he was tired of that, too. “What are you going to fight? Yourself? Grogu?”

Din ignored him and yanked his shirt over his head, biting down hard on a gasp as his scars pulled painfully with the motion.

Luke didn't miss it, though. "You're not even fully healed yet, and you certainly aren't in control of your power. Leaving now could be a death sentence to you both!"

"And staying here is any better? You saw what he did!"

Din dragged the black tunic he wore under his armor out of his pack and jerked it over his head. He hefted the cuirass up and over his shoulder, settling it into place and snapping the closures on his opposite shoulder and down his sides. He pushed the vambraces over his hands, twisting a quarter turn until they locked into place, then he reached for the thigh guards.

“And what if he does it again?" Luke shot off the bed. He grabbed the bottom edge of Din’s back plate and hauled him around. “Will you have the strength to stop him again?"

Din didn't answer. He shoved Luke back and set one of the guards in place, yanking the straps tight and buckling them down. Luke snatched the other one away before Din could reach for it.

“You are letting your fear rule you,” Luke said, “You can't let it. This isn't the way."

“It’s my way."

Din swiped the guard out of Luke's grip, slapped it to his thigh and strapped it in place.

"He was provoked," Luke said, desperately trying a different tact. Anything to get Din to slow down and listen. “He had to have been. If we just—.”

“What if he does it to you!"

Luke stumbled back a step at the leading edge of Din's rage. “What?"

Din sagged, his head dropped forward between his shoulders, but not before Luke saw the shine in his eyes.

“What if he does do it again?'' Din asked. He sounded as though he were being tortured, like every word was razor sharp and slicing from the inside as it came out. “What if he does it to you, and I'm not strong enough to stop him."

Luke just stared and shook his head slowly, unable to answer the question. Din was the only one who could, and he did. 

He stepped in close, twisted his fingers in Luke's shirtfront and pulled their bodies flush. Luke's heart drummed a violent staccato on the inside of his ribs, and his ears were full of the white noise of his blood rushing like the sea to the shore at high tide. He tipped his head back enough that he could look in Din’s eyes and see the true motivation behind his fear. Din held his gaze for a full minute, their breath mingling in the fractional space between them, then he closed his eyes and let his forehead drop to rest against Luke's.

“I couldn't live with that pain," he breathed. "I just couldn't."

Luke folded his hands around Din’s fist, pressing down, coaxing the fingers to loosen and splay wide over his heart.

“And you think I can live with this pain?" he answered hoarsely. “Knowing that if you go out there now, one way or another, you're never coming back?"

The determination that had been driving Din’s mad flurry of action since he scooped Grogu into his arms in the classroom suddenly drained from his limbs, leaving him shaky and breathless. His free hand moved up, almost of its own volition, to wrap at the back of Luke’s neck and squeeze hard. He rocked his forehead against Luke’s in tiny, tiny movements, and then lifted his chin enough to set his lips there. Luke breathed out long and harsh, shuddering under the heat of the skin to skin contact. Din dragged his lips to Luke’s temple and settled another kiss there, then he pulled him in tight and held him.

The Beskar beneath Luke’s flaming cheek chilled him, but he wouldn’t have moved if the galaxy were burning and he was the only one who could stop it. The empty space inside him that had yawned wide with need for so long was finally filling up. He knew at last what his father had feared so much, what had driven him into the darkness in search of a way to hold onto this. It scared him to death, but he knew at the same time, he could not turn his back on it now.

“What do I do?” Din whispered into Luke’s hair. “What do I now? How do I keep him safe? They’ll be out for blood when they’ve had a chance to think, and…when he wakes, when he discovers what he’s done… I don’t know how he’ll react.”

Luke turned his palms slowly against Din’s armored chest and reluctantly pushed back. “Fear will be his undoing. You cannot be afraid of him. You are his anchor, his tether and his reason. You have to be strong for him.” 

Din could only nod. 

“I’ll talk with Leia. She’ll handle the parents. We’ll protect him. You and I. I swore to you I would protect him with my life, and I will,” Luke promised solemnly. “And if it means we have to take him away from here to do that, then I’ll go with you.”

“I can’t ask that of you.”

Luke pressed his hand over Din’s heart. “You don’t have to.”

_______________________

Grogu dreamed of fire. He dreamed of power—a wide, gushing river of it at his command.

And he was frightened.

The Hooded Man came near, bent down. Grogu looked deep in the shadows of the cowl.

And saw himself staring back.

_____________________

Din sat on the side of the bed, still in his armor, stroking Grogu’s back slowly as he slept. Several times over the last few hours, it had seemed like he would wake, but each time he would moan pitifully as if caught in a nightmare and then drift deeper down into slumber. Whenever he was close to wakefulness, Din could feel the tug again. It was becoming more familiar to him. He could sense the Force rising to meet Grogu’s pull on it through him, and he would grip it firmly; but then the tension would go slack, like Grogu was intensionally letting it go when he felt Din’s resistance. He wasn’t sure if the child was testing his strength or merely reacting to his attempts to counterbalance him, and it worried him that Grogu was giving in so easily. Like he didn’t want to wake up.

Luke had called Leia and they were talking softly between themselves in the corner while Han prowled the perimeter of the room, watchful and waiting.

“The parents are scared more than anything,” Leia said. “I’ve spoken with them, done what damage control I can. Most of them just want to be assured that he won’t be allowed to return to the school. The boys’ parents are being more difficult. Rightfully so, I suppose. They’re all three awake now, physically unharmed, but it will be a while until we can determine the psychological damage the ordeal caused.”

“He was provoked, Leia,” Luke insisted. “I can’t believe he ever would have done anything like that if he wasn’t. Were you able to talk to the teacher? To Fjoriel? How is she?”

“Fjoriel is still recovering. I wasn’t able to get much from the teacher. She was very shaken, but from what little she was able to say, I gathered the boys were mistreating the girl and that’s when Grogu…reacted.”

They hurt the Heart Flower.

“It makes sense,” Luke said. “She was the only one to actually sustain any physical injury.”

Leia frowned. “I assumed she was burned by the fire?”

“She was, but not by the fire Grogu made,” Luke replied. “No one else was burned, not even the boys. It had to have happened before. Before Din got control of him, I heard him say, ‘They hurt the Heart Flower.’ I think he was talking about Fjoriel.”

“‘Heart Flower’? That’s what he calls her?” Leia asked curiously.

“Apparently so,” Luke said.

Leia pressed her fingers to her temples. “The lengths love drives us to.” She sighed heavily. “I’ll speak with her family and see if we can get her statement when she wakes up. It would go a long way to help Grogu’s case.”

“Case?” Luke scowled. “Leia, he’s a child. He acted out of self-defense, or at least in defense of someone who was being threatened. They can’t make this a formal inquest. It would be like holding a three-year-old legally accountable for a temper tantrum!”

“Except Grogu’s temper tantrums are dangerous,” Leia countered. “He may be a child, but he’s a child with the Force at his command and he doesn’t know his own limits.” She looked in at Din, took in his state of readiness, his armor, the tension in his body like he was ready to spring at the first sign of a threat. “I hate to admit it, but the Mandalorian may have the right idea. It may be better to take him away from here.”

“Except there’s a problem with that,” Han said, circling around to them and standing with his hands on his hips. 

“What?” Luke asked, alarmed.

“They analyzed the tracking fob,” Han answered. “It was chain coded to him.” He lifted his chin in Din’s direction. “If he takes Grogu now and leaves, they’ll be on him like womp rats on a bantha carcass.”

“I protected him before,” Din said a little defensively. “I can do it again.”

Han shook his head. “Moff Gideon was just a puppet, kid, and by all accounts an arrogant one. Whoever is really pulling the strings had the wherewithal to get an assassin inside the Capitol Tower. That’s someone with a big reach, and you’d be a sitting duck out there on your own.”

“He wouldn’t be on his own,” Luke said quietly. He met Din’s gaze across the space and held it. 

Leia looked from one to the other of them. “Luke, you can’t go.”

“I can, sister, and I will. I promised I would protect him. Whatever it takes, I’ll do that.”

“Luke, we need you here.”

Luke slanted her a look and a soft smile. “Leia, you’ve said yourself that I can’t singlehandedly hold the New Republic together.  Grogu and Din are our best chance at starting a new Order of Jedi. I’m beginning to have an idea of what they might be together. I just need time to prove it.”

Leia said nothing, but Luke could sense a new kind of fear flickering in her, and it wasn’t all for him. She leaned forward, reaching for his hand, and he took hers in both of his own.

Are they your best chance?

It wasn’t often Leia opened herself up to him through the Force. She had the capability the same as he did, but she chose to operate on different levels. She kept her own feelings private out of both nature and necessity. Now, though, she threaded her fingers tight in his and willed him to look inside her. He did, and what he felt nearly broke his heart.

Life. 

Twin flames in the Force.

His breath rushed out of him and his fingers convulsed around hers.

Does he know?

Not yet.

Luke hung his head. To leave her now felt tantamount to betrayal, but to leave Din and Grogu to fend for themselves felt like a betrayal as well, a betrayal of his word and of his heart.

Leia…

I’m not telling you to make you feel guilty, brother. Her scolding was gentle. I’m telling you to give you hope and asking you not to stay away too long.

I won’t. I promise. But I…need this. I need to do this.

I know.

 She squeezed his hand once more and then released it.

“Come home to us when you’ve found what you’re looking for,” she said. 

Han moved around the back of Leia’s chair and put his hands on her shoulders, drawing her back. She reached up and clasped his fingers tightly, tilting her head to smile up at him. It was tired and frayed at the edges, and he wished, despite his fear of it, that he had some ability to sense what she was feeling through the Force the same as Luke did. 

“Where will you go?” he asked.

Luke shook his head. “I’m not sure. It will have to be someplace they won’t expect, can’t find easily. I’ll consult the texts, see if I can find a protected place.” He looked up at Han. “If I do, I won’t be able to tell even you.”

Han nodded, accepting Luke’s words grudgingly. “And how will you get there? Your X-wing isn’t built for two.”

“I can get a ship,” Din said, rising from the bed and coming partway into the room, reluctant to put too much distance between himself and Grogu yet. “I’ll call Cara.”

“Your Marshall friend? Will she come in-system?”

“If I ask her to,” Din said.

“We won’t ask her,” Luke said. “It’s too dangerous. The New Republic may had pardoned her, but there are too many dissenting factions out there that won’t pay any heed to that. I’ll get us to Nevarro. We’ll figure it out from there.”

“I’ll take you,” Han said. “She may be old, but the Falcon is still the fastest ship out there.”

Luke smiled indulgently. The Falcon was far past her prime. It was mostly the savvy of her captain that kept her flying like she did, but Luke would never point that out. “No, Han. You need to be here.”

The way Luke said the words, Han felt like there was something more important he should be hearing. Leia’s fingers tightened momentarily around his, and he saw the warning look she gave her brother. He wondered exactly what conversation had passed between them in the private moments they had just shared. 

“I won’t be gone long enough for it to matter,” he said. “It’s you two they’re after anyway. You can use all the help you can get, at least as far as you’ll let me take you.”

“Han—.”

“He’s right,” Leia interrupted, standing. She circled the chair and fit herself into Han’s side. He encircled her with his arms and hugged her tightly. She could sense his fear and his simmering anger over not being able to take any action against this invisible enemy that was threatening them. “It will give me peace of mind to know you’re not alone.”

Luke said nothing more. He wouldn’t argue with her. Not here, not now. It wasn’t the right time for such things. He had to trust her, the same as she trusted him. He met Din’s gaze. 

“Call Cara. Tell her we’re coming.”

Chapter Text

Cara Dune gave the Orlaphage a stiff shake by the scruff of his neck and thrust him into the holding cell.

“Marshall Dune, I swear—.”

“Save it,” Cara snapped. She backed up a  step and let the cell door slide shut. She held out her hand and a towel was slapped into it. She gave Karga a sidelong look, daring him to say what was behind his grin, and then began wiping the clear, sticky slime from between her fingers.

“You know they only excrete when they’re—.”

“Don’t,” Cara warned with a grimace of disgust. “Just. Don’t.”

Karga laughed out loud and pushed off the wall to follow her quickstep march out of the detention cells.

“Days like these make me miss living on the edges of things,” Cara said, mock wistful. “At least I didn’t need to worry about being slimed by a tentacle-headed con-artist high on pheromones.”

She threw the towel in the ‘cycler and reached for the tap in the tiny wet niche in the back corner of her office. She scrubbed her hands, making a face at the congealed slime under her nails. 

“You love it and you know it,” Karga said, dropping into a chair and propping his feet on the corner of the desk. “Just hope you have some earplugs handy. I think they start ‘singing’ when they reach the peek of their cycle.”

Cara rolled her eyes and shook her hands free of water, drying them on a clean towel. “Don’t worry. I have Harvill on duty rotation tonight.”

“Kriff! What’d he ever do to you?” Karga laughed.

“Let’s just say I don’t like the way he looks,” Cara smirked. She tossed the towel and sagged into the chair behind her desk.

“You mean you don’t like the way he looks at you,” Karga said, his tone still joking but only just. He gave her a long look. “You know it might be time to consider that he isn’t coming back.”

She shot him a sharp look and then stabbed at her console to pull up the messages that had come in while she was out apprehending the Orlaphage. Karga moved his feet off the desk and leaned forward, face going somber. Cara studiously ignored his intense gaze.

“Cara, he was never a man to settle down with. You know that. He’s a Mandalorian. They just don’t…do that,” Karga said.

“Well, they have to get little Mandalorians from somewhere, so I suppose some of them must ‘do that,’” she said through an icy smile. She heaved a sigh, blowing it out fiercely through pursed lips. “But you’re right! He never made me any promises, and I’m certainly not expecting anything from him.”

“Aren’t you?” Karga hazarded. 

Cara hissed through her teeth. “No. I’m not.” She leaned back and refocused on the messages scrolling down her screen. “I’d just like to know he’s okay.”

Karga folded his hands on the desktop and made a show of examining his thumbnails. “You know there’s another option we should probably consider…”

“Don’t you dare say it,” Cara whispered dangerously, glaring at him under her dark lashes for long enough that he felt compelled to lean away from the withering anger in her eyes.

“All right,” he said simply, putting his hands up, palms out in a placatory gesture.

Cara went back to scowling at her screen. A moment later, her face cleared, and she almost smiled.

“Besides,” she said, swiveling the screen so he could see, “you’re wrong.”

The screen held a still image of Din’s face sans his helmet. Karga’s eyes widened slightly. He’d never seen the Mandalorian without his visor, so he had to rely on Cara that this was the man, and she would know since she was one of the privileged few who had seen his face. She pressed the play button.

“Hey, Cara.” His voice sounded much less deadpan without the helmet, Karga noted, almost soft. “Sorry I haven’t been in touch. Things have been… Well, I’m not sure if Fennec or Fett were able to reach you, no reason for them to try, I suppose, but I did manage to find them. The Darksabre is a deadend. Fennec took care of it. I did a little job for them while I was there on Tatooine.” Karga also noted the tiny hesitation here. “It went kind of…sideways on me, but I’m fine now. I actually hooked up with Grogu believe it or not. And the Jedi.”

Karga’s eyes flicked up to meet Cara’s. He wondered if she was hearing the same thing he thought he was under Din’s words.

“Anyway, it looks as if the Empire is still hunting Grogu and they managed to get an assassin planet side on Coruscant and into the Capitol Tower—.”

“Coruscant,” Cara breathed, her eyes going wide.

“—and if they can do that, then no place is really safe. Luke and I are bringing Grogu to Nevarro, and then we’re going to need to disappear. I was hoping you could help me out with a ship. The Corsaire should still be on Tatooine, unless Peli sold it off for parts to pay my docking fee.” He chuckled dryly. “Baring that, I’ll need something else. Small, fast, provisioned for a long trip.” He paused and looked directly into the screen. Karga picked at his nails with attentiveness having a feeling that this next part was strictly for Cara. “I know I don’t deserve your help, Cara, not after I left you hanging like this, but I’m asking. Please. For Grogu, if not for me. They nearly got him this time.”

Cara let out a harsh breath, deciphering the hitch in Din’s voice to mean they’d nearly killed the child this time.

“We’ll be headed your way, soon. I’ll comm you when I’m in-system, and…thank you.”

The message stopped.

“The chances of getting Fett to answer and getting the Corsaire back here in time are pretty slim,” Cara said, swiveling the screen back and calling up an inventory of the ships currently in impound. 

“Cara.”

“I’ve got a few here on the impound list that might do the job—.”

“Cara…”

“—depending on how far under the radar they need to stay. They probably won’t be able to put into any populated ports, so we’ll need to provision it for at least…what? A month? I think that’s a good start—.”

“Cara!”

Karga smacked the flat of his hand on the desk and Cara flinched minutely but refused to meet his eyes. He reached forward with the same hand and ghosted the back of hers with his fingertips. She made a fist and drew back.

“Cara, he’s a Mandalorian first and foremost. You knew that. He wasn’t going to change overnight, if ever,” he said quietly.

“He could have at least let us—me—know he was alive!” she shouted.

Karga agreed with a half shrug and a nod but said nothing.

Cara sagged forward, propping herself on her elbows and pressing her fingers into her eye sockets. “I’m being so stupid,” she sighed. She glared at him suddenly. “I am being stupid, aren’t I?”

Karga weighed his next words against Cara’s fiery temper and decided to risk it. “There’s nothing stupid about hope.”

Cara gave him a scathing look backed up with a sardonic smile, but her dark eyes were wet and shining. Karga had never married for good reason. Women were difficult on their best days and deathtraps walking the rest of the time. Cara was one of the more unique he’d met in his lifetime, taking most things in her stride and giving as good as she got. It was easy to forget there was a woman under the warrior; but there was a time to remind her of that and a time to just let it go.

He rose to his feet. “I’ll start to work organizing the provisions. I don’t imagine they’ll be staying long once they get here.”

Cara let go something between a desperate laugh and a moan and waved him off.

Karga left her staring blindly through unshed tears at her screen.

______________________

Din drummed his fingers against the comm console and stared into the dark screen. 

“Will she answer?” Luke asked from the doorway. He’d let Din have his privacy for the call to Marshall Dune after sensing the build up of tension in the man when it came time to actually make their request.

Din shook his head distractedly. “Not likely.”

“Will she honor your request?”

“Yes,” Din said. “She will.”

He dropped his head forward and rubbed at his eyes. Dawn was approaching, and he could feel exhaustion starting to eat at the edges of him. He’d been awake for nearly a galactic standard day which was nothing compared to some of the sleepless stints he’d taken in his years tracking bounties, but the previous day’s events had been draining in a way he had no comparison for, and it was starting to take its toll. Han would have the Falcon ready in a couple of hours and when they were all safely away, he’d take the time to rest. For now, though, he had to stay awake and on guard for Grogu’s sake. He didn’t want the child waking up alone in the dark.

The comm pinged. It was an internal line. Din toggled the receive switch.

“Din.” It was Leia. She looked as tired as he felt, and he doubted she had slept any more than he or Luke had in the last day. “Is Luke there with you?”

“I’m here, Leia.” Luke came into the room and leaned over Din’s shoulder so she could see him.

“Fjoriel is awake,” she said. “She’s asking for Grogu. Adamantly, according to Madam Reisen.”

“That’s good,” Luke said. “I’m glad she’s all right.”

“But Grogu isn’t awake yet,” Din said. He cast a glance at the still fitfully sleeping child on the bed. “And I’m not sure it’s a good idea to let him near her.”

Luke put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “He didn’t hurt her, Din. I know he didn’t. He was trying to protect her. Against what, I’m hoping she can tell us; but I know he didn’t harm her.”

“Still…” Din sounded doubtful.

Leia sighed and nodded her agreement with Din. “I’m not overly enthused about letting him near her either, if for no other reason than we can’t be sure what he’ll perceive as a threat and therefore don’t know how he’ll react.”

Luke scowled at her. “He’s a rational being, Leia, not a feral animal that acts on instinct alone.”

“He’s a child,” Leia corrected. She laughed softly. “‘Rational’ and ‘child’ don’t belong on the same page with each other.”

“I think it would be more dangerous to take him away without letting him see her,” Luke insisted. He put a hand on Din’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “Think about if you’d defended him the same way and then woke up to find you’d been taken away with no real proof that he was still alive and well. What would you do?”

Din grimaced. “Probably burn something down,” he admitted.

On the screen, Leia conceded her brother’s point with a nod. “All right. When he wakes up, let me know.”

“We will,” Luke said.

Father.

Din roused to the whisper in his mind and the steady tug he felt deep in his chest. 

He’d dozed at the head of the bed beside Grogu after Leia had called to tell them Fjoriel had regained consciousness. He dimly recalled Luke answering the door to Han sometime just after the sun came up and a whispered conversation that sounded as if the Falcon was ready on her pad for the flight to Nevarro, but he’d sunk back into sleep after that.

He pulled himself to full wakefulness now, turning his neck against the stiff position he’d had it in for last couple of hours.

Father?

Din blinked and sat up. “Grogu?”

The child was sitting up on his pillow, ears at half-mast, eyes big and round and looking very timid. Din reached for him automatically, but Grogu shrunk back from his touch. Din hissed as if he’d been burned and dropped his hand to the blanket between them.

“Grogu…”

Grogu has harmed.

Din blinked again. He’d thought he’d been imagining the whisper he heard as some remnant of a dream as he came out of sleep, but he was not imagining anything now as he stared at the child who was still looking up at him fearfully. The whisper wasn’t sound, not in the sense of actual, spoken words. There was no tone of voice, but there was a feeling and it was all sadness and trepidation.

Grogu has harmed.

The words came again, a full thought that bypassed Din’s hearing and his language center and came fully formed into his heart. It was like understanding without speech, and it left him breathless.

“Din?”

Luke was in the chair opposite, his eyes bleary from sleep, a book spread open across his knees that must have been forgotten when he dozed off. Din ignored him.

“Grogu, what do you remember?” Din asked, careful to keep his tone even and devoid of anything resembling fear or anger.

Fire.

“Yes,” Din breathed.

They hurt the Heart Flower!

 Din felt the thread jerk and thicken, spin out fast as Grogu’s temper flared. He reached out and grabbed the child’s hands, holding fast and firm. The tug slackened.

Father is afraid.

“Dank Farrik,” Din swore softly. He shook his head. “Only for you, Grogu.”

Luke had sat up in the chair and folded the book closed and was leaning forward now, but he stayed silent, watching father and son converse.

Grogu cocked his head slightly and looked up at Din as if only now realizing the call and response that had been passing between them. Din felt the thread spool out again, but the pull was less forceful and more experimental, cautious. 

Father learns.

“Yes.” Din nodded. “Yes, I am learning.”

Father hears!

Din gasped at the shockwave of pure, glowing love that exploded through the thread. Grogu launched himself into Din’s lap and Din wished the cold Beskar breastplate was not between them as the child clung and burbled a series of exuberant sounds that translated into something far beyond what mere language could describe. He ducked down to kiss the top of Grogu’s downy fuzz covered head.

“I hear you,” he whispered. 

“Grogu is happy.”

Din’s eyes shot wide and darted up to meet Luke’s. “Did he just…?”

Grogu turned up his face. “Grogu is happy Father can hear.”

The sound was graveled, a little stilted, with a staccato rhythm to the words, but it was definitely speech.

“Stubborn,” Luke confirmed with a soft chuckle and a wide smile.

Grogu shied back from Luke’s voice, edging around into the crook of Din’s arm like he wanted to hide. Din frowned down at him. 

“Grogu?”

“Master is angry.” 

Grogu said it like a statement but Luke heard the fearful question there. He pushed out of the chair and knelt by the bed. “Grogu, Master is not angry,” he said firmly. “I am worried—very worried—for you.”

“Heart Flower…”

Din could feel the thread flare again, and he breathed out harshly with the almost physical yanking sensation beneath his ribs. Luke glanced at him, eyes questioning, but Din shook his head to indicate he had in under control.

“Fjoriel is the Heart Flower,” Luke said, and Grogu nodded. “She is well, Grogu. She is healing.”

The flare dimmed, and Din breathed easier. Grogu looked up into his face, ears rising and falling with anxiety. “Father hurts?”

“No,” Din said emphatically. “No, it doesn’t hurt. It’s just something I have to get used to.”

Grogu settled and looked from one to the other of them as if waiting for something. Luke sat back on his haunches and looked up and Din. “I’ll let Leia know he’s awake.”

Grogu watched attentively as Luke rose and went to the comm console in the corner, then turned his attention back to Din. He flattened a tiny hand against the Beskar armor. “Father has changed. Why?”

Din wasn’t sure how to frame this so that Grogu would not immediately believe his actions were to blame even though that was exactly the case. He didn’t want to lie to him, but he also didn’t want him to spiral down into guilt either. “We aren’t safe here anymore, Grogu. The people who were after you before, they are still trying to reach you.”

“Master can protect us,” Grogu said.

Din nodded. “He’s coming with us, but we can’t stay here. If we do, we could be endangering others.”

“The Heart Flower?”

Din wasn’t sure if Grogu was asking if she would be endangered as well, or if he just wanted to see her before he had to leave. “She’s asked for you. We’ll see her before we go, but yes, she would be in danger, too.”

Grogu’s face pinched in sadness, and his ears lowered, and Din had to wonder just how deep this newfound friendship with the girl ran. The child had been sad to leave the children behind on Sorgan, but he hadn’t attached himself to any one of them as it seemed he had done with Fjoriel.

“Leia is contacting Madam Reisen,” Luke said. “We should be able to see Fjoriel shortly.” He paused. “And then we should probably be leaving.”

Din caught the hint of strain in Luke’s voice and knew that something about the situation must have taken a turn for the worse. Luke sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Grogu, can you tell us what happened?”

Grogu shrunk into himself again, tucking back into Din’s side. Din gave him a gentle squeeze to reassure him that he was safe.

“They hurt the Heart Flower,” he repeated his statement of earlier, but it was apparent he wouldn’t or didn’t know how to articulate any more than that. Luke stroked one of his ears and nodded his understanding.

“It’s all right, Grogu.”

“Grogu was wrong,” he said. He let out a forlorn little moan.

“You were defending her,” Luke said. Grogu nodded. “That was not wrong of you. The Jedi protect and help those who cannot help themselves, but it is not for us to dispense judgment and punishment. Do you understand?”

Grogu nodded again, but Din could feel the thread stirring to life, energy rippling through him like restless waves on the sand before a coming storm. Luke saw it in Din’s face and reached out to take one of Grogu’s claws firmly in his fingers.

“Your intentions were good, Grogu. Focus on that. I will help you learn to control the rest.”

Din breathed out in quiet relief as Grogu’s pull settled.

“Good, Grogu,” Luke said. “That’s good. Now, let’s go and see your Heart Flower.”

The Arboreal people lived on a planet covered entirely in forests and rivers and they had done their best to mimic their native environment inside their quarters. The rooms were aglow in a diffused replication of sunlight that filtered down through a dome of branches and vines that had been grown and trained up along all the walls. There were plants everywhere in the space, leaving little room for anything except the most necessary furniture, which didn’t seem to be much and what there was was entirely made of wood of one variety of another, most of it roughly cut and left as close to its original form as possible. The air was slightly humid but was kept from being close or cloying by a constant, cooling breeze circulated through the rooms, smelling of moss and flowers. Water trickled through several fountains throughout the space and culminated in a wide pool that encompassed the back wall. 

Din didn’t think he’d ever seen so much green in one place. It was beautiful and peaceful. Through the quiet of the burbling water he thought he heard birdsong, and he would not have been surprised to see the flutter of bright wings above. Several butterflies were in attendance, flitting from flower to flower in different parts of the room. He breathed in deeply and felt every part of himself revive to the fresh air, strained and knotted muscles loosening and relaxing.

“You see the benefits of letting Life flow as it is meant to,” Madam Reisen said quietly from the archway of several intertwined saplings that led to another part of the suite. Her tone was not admonishing, but Din felt a twinge of guilt anyway. Her eyes fell on Grogu, and Din unconsciously tightened his grip on the child. She came forward, gliding fluidly through the greenery at her feet and reached out a long, graceful hand to cup Grogu’s head. He sighed musically under her touch.

Din had been afraid of Madam Reisen’s retribution against Grogu for what had happened in the classroom, but her countenance was soft and kind as she stroked his head.

“We are in your debt, little one,” she said softly. “I thank the Rowan for your strength.”

Luke bowed deeply. “Madam, thank you for allowing us to see Fjoriel.”

Madam Reisen laughed. It was a musical sound with the song of birds beneath it and wind through broad leaves. “I am not sure I had a choice, Master Jedi.” She bowed as well. “Fjoriel is waiting.”

Din carried Grogu to the archway she indicated and set him on the carpet of green to toddle into the smaller space where he could just see Fjoriel, sitting in what appeared to be a thicket of soft moss and grasses surrounded by a framework of more branches with a bower of flowers and vines draping overhead. Grogu scrambled up the branches and into her open arms, nesting down beside her immediately. Din could see that part of her face still looked darker and scarred, but the green of her mosslike tresses had already started to grow back where the burns had been.

“Madam Reisen, has Fjoriel told you what happened?” Luke asked.

Madam Reisen sighed and lowered herself to a shelf of rock lining the pool against the wall. She motioned for Luke to join her. “The formality is draining,” she said. “Please, call me Mirrien.”

Luke sat and inclined his head. “Then you must call me Luke.”

She laughed again. “Luke. Yes. Luke and Leia. Twins stars of Republic.” Luke startled and she smiled. “You have not heard it?”

“Not as such.” He tried to contain his blush. “Mad—Mirrien, we are not legends. You know this. We walk and talk and breathe the same as you.”

“Ah, yes, but the power you wield…”

“You do not approve.”

“My approval is not necessary. I know your motives, and they are good.” She dabbled her fingers in the water, and Luke could see a much younger woman suddenly, one who was devoted heart and soul to her young charge and very worried about the same.

“Fjoriel?” he prompted softly.

She sighed again, this time in resignation. “It was a terrible prank, and as much as I would like to see the boys punished severely for their actions, I cannot feel anything but sorrow for their ignorance.” Luke looked at her slightly confused. “Fjoriel is coming of age. We will have to return home soon so she might take her place at her mother’s side as Reminoriel, keeper and protector of the Rowan, of our people and our culture.”

“Reminoriel,” Luke rolled the foreign word over on his tongue. “I had no idea she was royalty.”

“Not in the way you would understand it,” Mirrien said. “But yes, her station is of the highest among our people. You saw the flowers in her hair?”

Luke nodded, suddenly taking note that the same blooms were absent in Mirrien’s plaited tresses. 

“Yes.” She nodded at his understanding. “Only her bloodline blooms so with the Rowan’s seasonal changes.” She paused and stroked her fingers through the pool again, creating tiny ripples that fanned out across the surface. “The boys were being cruel in the way that only children can be when they see something that is not like them. They were picking the flowers from her hair.”

“And it was painful to her,” Luke said.

“As plucking your flesh would be to you.” Mirrien gave him a quick hard pinch on the back of his hand to demonstrate. He didn’t resist or react.

“The fire?” he asked.

“We do not have fire on my planet. For obvious reasons.” She gestured around her at all the greenery and wood. Her gaze hardened suddenly. “They wanted to see if the tree would burn.”

Luke bit back his shock and torqued down hard on the spark of anger that made the air currents in the room suddenly shift and eddy, disturbing the surface of the calm pool beside them. Mirrien lifted a fine, thin brow, feeling the change in the air. He drew in a calming breath and let it out very slowly.

“They will be properly reprimanded,” he said firmly. “I will see to it.”

“Do not be too harsh,” she said. “Children can be exceedingly cruel through their lack of experience.” Her gaze slid meaningfully to the archway into Fjoriel’s chamber, and Luke felt his anger drain away.

“You are very generous in your forgiveness, Mirrien,” he said quietly and bowed his head.

She touched his cheek with her rough fingertips, urging him to look at her. “I was very sincere in my thanks. Grogu saved my little Seedling from greater harm, and I will always be grateful for that.” Her gaze turned worried and she let her hand drift back to her lap. “But I fear for his safety now. Children are not the only ones who can be cruel in the face of what they do not understand.”

Luke nodded reluctantly, glancing over his shoulder at Din and the archway. “Your words are wise, Mirrien, and that is why we are taking him away from here. For now.”

“Perhaps it is best,” Mirrien said. “But do not run too far for too long, Master Jedi.”

Mirrien’s use of his title drew him back around to look her in the eye.  He knew the Arboreal people were long lived, like the forests they called home, and he wondered suddenly just how old Mirrien was. Her eyes were dark and wise beyond measure and held a knowing in them that sent a shiver rippling down his spine. He knew, however, that if he were to ask her what she saw in the web of Force to which she was so closely attuned, she would not tell him. She reached out and took his hand, his prosthetic one, still clad in the black leather glove.

“Your responsibilities are many, Luke.” She turned his hand over in her own and looked down at his palm as if she might read it. “But they are not yours to bear alone. Let go of your fear. A heart divided cannot love wholly. You feel you cannot chose, but the choice you make will guide your path, and if you make it with a whole heart, all else will fall into place.” She peeled the glove away and folded it into her large, long fingered hand, drawing it into her lap. “Put your past to rest.”

Luke felt the shiver down his spine again, but it was not trepidation this time. It was a release, as if Mirrien had lifted a weight from his shoulders to allow him to sit a little taller in its absence.

“Master Jedi?”

The soft, reed-like voice drew Luke’s attention. Beside him, Mirrien rose up.

“Seedling,” she admonished gently. “You are to be resting.”

Fjoriel was in the archway with Grogu in her arm. Din hovered close with a hand at her shoulder should she waver. She smiled at him gratefully and made her way slowly into the room with them. She took Mirrien’s vacated spot beside the pool and settled Grogu in her lap. Grogu held fast to her hand, and Luke glanced up at Din, nervous to find that former flare of jealousy in his eyes, but it wasn’t there. Instead, despite being in near full armor and looking physically prepared for battle, he appeared as relaxed and at peace as Luke had seen him the entire time he’d been on Coruscant. 

“I am well rested,” Fjoriel said, looking up with great affection at Mirrien. Mirrien stepped in close and wrapped a long arm around Fjoriel’s thin shoulders. Fjoriel turned her gaze on Luke. “Grogu says you are leaving.”

“Yes,” Luke answered. “It is the safest way for now.”

Fjoriel’s face was sad as she nodded her acceptance. “Know then that, should you have need of it, you will always find peace and protection with my people. We are in your debt.”

Luke bowed slightly. “There is no debt to be paid, Fjoriel, but I thank you for your offer.” He looked up at Mirrien. “We should be going.”

“Wait.”

This came from Din who was intently watching Grogu as he gently stroked Fjoriel’s hand. The child looked up at him, eyes wide and inquiring, lifted a tiny claw to beckon him forward. He went.

Luke watched as Din knelt down on one knee and took Grogu’s little hand between his fingers and then nodded as if in answer to a silent question. Grogu closed his eyes and reached up toward Fjoriel’s scarred visage with his free hand. She bent down so that he could touch her cheek. 

Din felt the pull under his ribs and this time he didn’t resist it. He let his body be heavy like the base of a giant ancient oak and rooted himself down into the grass and moss and earth beneath him until he could feel the quiet power alive in every twig and leaf thrumming through him. Then let go his hold on the thread. 

The Force flowed.

The living network of branches and vines intertwined above their heads glimmered faintly gold in the soft light of the room, as if the sunlight had coalesced to caress everything it touched. The glow shifted, swirling across bark and leaf and blossom, flowing in the direction of Din where he knelt in the grass.

Fjoriel sighed under Grogu’s hand against her cheek. 

A moment later, Grogu sat back, letting loose of Din’s hand. The golden glow dimmed and faded away. 

Where there had been charred flesh on Fjoriel’s face there was now newly healed unmarred skin. Mirrien sank to her knees and carefully sifted her fingers through the fresh, vibrant mossy tresses that flowed over Fjoriel’s shoulder and fingered the new white blossoms that grew there. She turned her gaze on Grogu.

“Your power is great, little one,” she whispered. “Use it wisely. Always.”

Luke touched Din’s shoulder. The man gave a nod and rose to his feet slowly. 

“Now, we should go,” he said.

Fjoriel lifted Grogu in her arms and stood. Luke saw that she seemed a little taller now and stronger, the weakness of her injuries washed away under Grogu’s healing touch. She kissed the top of the child’s head with a murmured ‘thank you’ and handed him over to Din.

“Protect him,” she said.

Din bowed to her. “With my life.”

Luke stood and offered a hand to Mirrien where she still knelt in awe of Grogu’s healing of her charge. She took it and rose up to her full height. He bowed to them both.

“Until we meet again.”

Mirrien inclined her head. “May it be soon and with great joy.”

Grogu whined a little and leaned out of Din’s arms toward Fjoriel as they turned to leave. She stepped into his reach, and he touched one of the delicate white flowers just above her ear. 

It blossomed, slowly unfolding wide iridescent petals of rose and gold and shimmered at its heart with a pale white light.

“Heart Flower,” he whispered.