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‘Why me?’ Bo-Katan demands.
‘You’re his favourite aunt,’ Din says.
‘I have no idea why.’ Eyebrows raised, she looks down the length of her greasy nose at Grogu. ‘Can you read?’
Grogu can’t answer her in Basic, which indicates that his diplomatic potential is sorely undeveloped.
Five minutes later, Din has disappeared down a hole in the corner of the throne room, leaving Bo-Katan alone in her barren triumph. Grogu sticks to her like a soggy rat. She hooks a dirty fingernail into the hood of his smock, holding him back as he runs in place.
‘You will not follow your father down there.’
After some nonverbal negotiation, she permits Grogu to peek into the hole. His ears lift, then lower. Bo-Katan wonders whether his species employs night vision. It might come in useful—she’s always enjoyed finding her way in darkness.
Beneath the wreck of Sundari Palace, monsters fester and writhe. Bo-Katan is content to walk in the world above, letting Din Djarin chase death if he insists upon it. His faith sustains him: its laws, its rites of purification. Bo-Katan’s religion turns on a different axis. For her, there is no absolution.
She hates the palace walls and their unmarked whiteness. Unholy city, ripe with ghosts, Sundari will not hold her. It cannot.
Grogu wobbles, warbles, and places his little claw on her boot. It occurs to Bo-Katan that children eat.
‘What would you like?’ she asks him.
Grogu is predictably unhelpful, so she mixes a little water into her ration pack and spoon-feeds the child some protein. They get through about three hundred calories before Bo-Katan remembers she’s seen Grogu feed himself, and she’s being conned into babying him.
‘Very smart,’ Bo-Katan tells him, hoping he understands the sarcasm dripping from her tone. He doesn’t. ‘But you will have to learn independence if you are to be a Mandalorian.’
She puts the spoon in his hand. In response, Grogu throws his ration pack on the floor. They both gaze at the unappetising mess, a sad, brown blob sitting on Satine’s once-immaculate floor.
‘Well, I’m not cleaning that up. Pick up after yourself,’ Bo-Katan says, and walks away to sit on her throne. Grogu sits down, too, on the sullied floor. Some thirty paces apart, they stare at each other in silence. Satine’s portrait is gone from the throne room; in its place stands a pane of transparisteel, white light bouncing from earth to sunbaked stone. Who removed her sister’s glory? Was it destroyed?
Was it her?
The silence stretches. Grogu toddles to the foot of the throne, hops up with Skywalker-trained agility, and settles on the folded blankets. Bo-Katan sighs. He touches her helmet, which sits beside her.
‘No,’ she says helplessly.
Grogu flips the helmet over anyway and hides under it.
‘Your dad is a fool and so are you,’ Bo-Katan warns, lifting the helmet off him. Grogu looks her dead in the eye and then flops down dramatically, one ear squishing itself against durasteel. His little hand rests upon her knee. His eyes close.
After some hours, Bo-Katan sleeps too.
Din returns reeking of the mines, their stench sloughing off him like Mandalore’s last snakeskin. He wakes Grogu gently but doesn’t disturb the blanket draped over Bo-Katan. She sits up nevertheless.
‘Were you good?’ Din asks, raising Grogu to his eye level. Sickeningly, they bump foreheads. Grogu nuzzles into his father’s shoulder with the confidence of a child who knows their home still stands.
Din runs a hand over Grogu’s head and seems to question him without words. Finally, he turns to Bo-Katan.
‘Feel better?’
‘No,’ she says, lying.