Chapter Text
‘Stop running!’ Din yells across the playroom.
‘I’m not running!’ Rey yells back, while running.
Crouched beside a heap of plastifoam bricks, Ezra stretches out his arms just in time to catch Rey. All six adults in the three-to-five room are carefully spaced out, dotted like control towers from the Construction Corner to the sink. Whenever one moves, the others instinctively rotate to cover the new blind spot. Din, who spends every day wishing he had 360° vision, has been rooted in place by a weeping Quarren toddler, and is temporarily out of commission.
‘Mummy go away,’ she wails.
‘Mummy no go away!’ says Din, before his brain catches up to him and he remembers he should be modelling full sentences. ‘Mummy’s coming soon,’ he amends with haste, glancing round to make sure nobody noticed. (Sabine noticed.) Din’s voice takes on the singsong rhythm of baby-soothing: ‘Soon it’ll be tidy-up time, and then it’ll be Together Time… then we’ll go outside… and before you know it, it’ll be Home Time…’
Her tiny suction-cupped hands stick to his helmet. Din winces.
Behind him, there’s the clatter of someone knocking over the stationery cups. With Errhu still on his knee, Din squat-waddles around until he’s facing the art table, and not a moment too soon. Poe looks back at Din with guilty eyes and a pair of scissors poised over his stuffed tauntaun.
‘Sir!’ bellows Ahsoka. As usual, she comes to Din’s aid, swooping in to address the situation while he’s immobilised. ‘No, thank you!’ She retrieves Poe with one hand, the pair of scissors with another, and hauls the young offender towards the House Corner for distractions. An enormous green comlink, missing its receiver, sits atop the kitchen set. The credits register is piled high with toy fruit, and little Winta has stuffed handfuls of fake money into its pop-out drawer. Next to the shop, Winta’s friends are solemnly blow-drying their baby doll in a large saucepan.
But Poe doesn’t want to play house with younglings. He’s a big boy of five, and he craves adventure, and Finn is enjoying his snack at Peli’s table and won’t play with him. Poe runs off to cause chaos elsewhere, while Ahsoka discovers putty in the teapot and screeches.
Din scans the room for reinforcements. Sabine stands at the corkboard with a stylus in hand, chewing her lower lip; it’s her turn to plan activities for next week. The sections for Art and Malleable Play have already been filled in (Sabine excels at those), but she’s stuck on Counting and Pre-Literacy. Meanwhile, Greef is reading a story to three Jawas in his rich, grandfatherly baritone, and Peli’s still busy washing the dishes from snack time. Din’s got no other option. He’ll have to become mobile again.
‘Can I let go of you now?’ he asks Errhu, somewhat hopelessly. She gives an angry little squeak and buries her face in his neck. Sighing, Din begins detaching her fingers from his visor one by one.
At this moment, Rose notices Errhu crying and remembers she also has a mummy to cry for. They take it in shifts. Creaking and groaning, Din removes one child from his lap only to receive another. Sabine turns with exaggerated care to the children’s individual Learning and Development Plans pinned to the corkboard, and writes: Rose has made progress in turn-taking.
‘Very funny,’ Din says. He rises to his feet with a grunt, taking Rose with him; she squishes her cheek against his shoulder. She’s been struggling through an adjustment period since her big sister aged out of nursery. In time, Rose too will go to the big school next door, and the little ones in the two-to-three room will be big ones in Din’s three-to-five room, and the babies will be two- and three-year-olds, and new infants will populate the baby room where Din used to work.
‘I miss the baby room,’ Din mutters into Rose’s sweaty hair. Very gently, so his helmet doesn’t hurt her, he plants a Keldabe kiss on the top of her head.
On his way to the door for his tea break, Greef overhears this and laughs. ‘You miss changing nappies?’
‘They got up to less trouble.’ Din adjusts his hold on Rose so she’s balancing on his hip. Curious, she raises her head to see where they’re going. His pauldron has flattened her soft cheek, which slowly reinflates. ‘Also, there was naptime.’
He carries Rose on his rounds until she wriggles to get down, her mummy forgotten. Released from the snack table, Finn is kindly trying to help Ahsoka clean up, but his efforts with a toy vacuum cleaner only mash putty into more surfaces. Two Rodian boys scramble up and down the formplast ramp-and-slide, keeping their balance except when Din walks past. Then, and only then, they begin to wobble and cry for help. Very mysterious. Din knows from experience that if he lifts them down from the ramp, they’ll run back up and make him keep doing it till his arms ache. Din is a sucker and every child knows it. He therefore avoids going near them.
Instead, he sits down crosslegged in the Story Corner. Poe plops down in Din’s lap at once, and Jessika, arriving too late to claim the seat, begins fussing. ‘No,’ Din tells her firmly. He pats his right knee. ‘Here, there’s a space for you. Sit here.’
She perches on his knee and is consoled. From all the way across the room, Din sees Rey’s eyes light up.
‘Come!’ Poe calls, patting Din’s other knee imperiously. ‘Come!’
Summoned, Rey makes a beeline for them. She’s been at the crafts table; her once-plaited hair is full of edible, child-safe, flour-based putty. She, too, hops on with a happy sigh. Din is in pain.
‘Shall we read a story?’ he asks with great love and resignation.
To the relief of Din’s thighs, Poe hops off and scampers to the bookshelf for options. He pulls out several more books than they need, aided by Rydha and her four Besalisk arms. Eventually they settle on a children’s encyclopaedia with glossy, full-spread images: Reptiles of the Outer Rim. Little hands plap down on the pages, tamed only by Din’s insistence that he alone decides when to flip.
Sabine leans against the lightweight plastene barrier—low enough for adults to step over, high enough to stop wayward toddlers—between playroom and kitchen. She’s snapping pictures with a holo-imager to broadcast to the children’s families on their nursery channel. Din’s wrist comlink gives its routine beep, and he ignores it.
An adult-height handle turns at the very top of the playroom door: Greef is back. This means Sabine can go on break. At the same time, though, Zorri’s gran arrives to get her (Zorri is one of the few who go home after lunch). Sabine expertly unlatches the plastene gate to let Zorri through, herself out, and Greef in while blocking everyone else from flooding the corridor. It takes more skill than flying full speed through an asteroid field.
‘I’ll sign her out,’ calls Peli, who’s standing nearest the counter where they keep a jealously guarded datapad. She strips off her flimsi apron and gloves from snack time, and disposes of them in the bin. Satine waves in thanks without looking back.
‘Right,’ Peli says once she’s done that, wiping her forehead. She picks up the big bell and shakes it vigorously. ‘Tidy-up time!’
‘Tidy-up time!’ echoes Din. Six toddlers of varying sizes are dislodged from his lap.
With Mandalorian self-discipline, they succeed in putting (mostly) everything back in its proper place. Synthplate pots and pans are shoved under the toy sink; dolls flop into their cribs; the nanowave oven door slams shut; bricks and wood blocks are piled on shelves, occasionally spilling over; aquatic beings, humanoids, amphibians, and Big Bugs go into their separate labelled baskets. Lu’en, who has built a sprawling system of train tracks, dismantles his masterpiece with only some fuss.
That’s the thing about small children. They like to help; they love being involved. Give them something to do, and they’ll participate. Din and Ezra follow in their wake, wiping down tables with antibac spray and sweeping up the mess from the sandbox.
Having been praised for their work, the children are shepherded into the Story Corner with the gate latched shut. Rydha, who’s a risky climber, goes on Poe’s lap to keep her safe. The children don’t know phrases like developmental stages or speech delays, but they recognise those who are a little different: the runners, the topplers, the ones who scream so loud when they’re told to sit still that they upset other kids. And because children like to help, they look out for their own. This is the Way.
For Together Time, Ahsoka wheels out a big whiteboard. Ezra sits at the front to support her, and shoos back the children at Ahsoka’s feet so that little ones behind them can see.
A small Wookiee paw rests on Din’s boot. He stretches out his legs in front of him to relieve the ache, and three children immediately sit on each one.
Errhu, reminded that Together Time still does not include mummy, bursts into tears once more.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ asks Finn, who has a big heart.
‘She’s sad,’ Rose explains helpfully. Finn toddles up to Errhu and puts his arms around her.
‘Finn, sit down on your bottom,’ Ahsoka chides, though very gently. ‘Now, who can tell me…’ She holds up a finger to deter interruptions. ‘Uh-uh-uh-uh! Listening ears! What day is it today?’
‘Tuesday!’ shouts Poe. It is Friday.
Ahsoka lets Jannah, who got the answer right, come up and stick the correct strip of printed flimsiplast in the Day column. Jannah needs time to recognise which word she’s meant to pick, but she gets there eventually.
‘And today’s date is the twenty-fifth of—’
‘Cold!’
With immaculate patience Ahsoka guides them through months, years, seasons, and finally the weather. When it’s time to line up for coats, Rydha escapes Poe’s arms and darts to the fire door leading outside. ‘Rydha!’ her peers all yell, and Ezra sprints to scoop her up before she presses down on the big bar handle.
‘Not yet, honey! Not yet!’ says Peli, who has no indoor voice and is thus most frequently deployed for crowd control. ‘When I say your name…’ She leans forward, calloused hands braced on her knees, and three more children start getting to their feet. ‘Sit! Down! On! Your! Bottoms! Din, hold them.’
‘Hold them where?’ says Din, all four limbs pinned down.
‘Bibbledy-bobbledy-Bessika,’ Peli begins, fixing the audience with a meaningful stare, ‘a bantha sat on…?’
‘Jessika!’ everyone shouts. Jessika jumps up and runs to get her coat from its labelled peg.
‘Wibbledy-wobbledy-Waina, a wampa sat on…’
‘Jaina!’
Outside Time is Din’s favourite time of day, second only to Home Time. He zips up a dozen coats and ties two dozen shoelaces, and then their owners run free in a well-fenced enclosure beyond the fire door. Peli leaves for her break, which means it’ll be Din’s turn after she’s back. He stands watching in the northwest corner, sometimes stopping Rey to retie the scarf which keeps dangling loose and threatening to trip her. Although there’s a lot of screaming—Finn and Poe are riding the X-wing playset again—Din can distinguish between happy screams and distressed screams. So he scans the area at his usual leisurely pace, intervening only when Poe hogs the controls and won’t let others have a turn.
Ahsoka takes Rey aside for their daily Jedi Time (Finn had his turn before lunch), while the inhabitants of the two-to-three room next door enter external circulation. Screams intensify. Non-Force-sensitives, the majority of Din’s charges, keep crowding the fence to get a glimpse of Jedi Time in the nursery’s tiny garden. Mace from the two-to-three room steps in to shoo them away periodically, but compensates by playing Jedi with his many admirers. Playing Jedi, a game based on their vague impressions of Ahsoka’s Special One-to-One Jedi Time, consists of dodging an inflatable ball and going pew pew!
Din’s not sure how he’ll cope when the two- and three-year-olds grow up and transition into his playroom. The other room has a glut of Force users—Mace, Trilla, Quinlan, Cal—to match its disproportionately Force-sensitive crowd, but Din’s room only has Ahsoka and Ezra. He’ll need to speak to the Armourer about rotating staff. Just as Din thinks of her, the Armourer emerges outdoors, accompanied by a tall blonde woman Din recognises as their Director.
‘Lady Satine,’ the Armourer tells all staff within earshot, ‘has come to pay us her quarterly visit.’ With quiet dignity she crosses her hands at her waist.
Like Sabine, the Director is Mandalorian but doesn’t cover her face. Unlike Sabine, she wears no armour at all. With an elegant curl of her lip she greets Ezra, Greef, and Cal, then looks askance at the kids raiding their playground’s stock of flimsicard Mandalorian helmets.
‘Ahsoka Tano, Child Development Lead,’ says the Armourer, unruffled by half a dozen menaces running past her with boxes on their heads. Ahsoka hears her name and steps out of the garden to join them; re-released into the wild, Rey engages her fellow combatants with fervour. ‘Sabine Wren, Child Development Officer. Ezra Bridger, Child Protection Lead. And this is Din Djarin, our new—’
‘Cleaner,’ Din says.
‘Largest child,’ Ahsoka says.
‘Baby chair,’ Sabine says.
‘—newest Child Development Officer,’ the Armourer finishes smoothly. ‘He recently completed his apprenticeship, and is now a fully qualified member of our staff.’
‘Sponsored by the Watch, I assume,’ Satine says.
‘Yes,’ Din says. ‘They paid for my training.’ He doesn’t see the need to elaborate.
‘Very good. Don’t let us down.’ She looks Din up and down, lingering on his beskar’gam. ‘Is that not a safety hazard?’
It takes Din a second to realise she’s talking about his armour. ‘They don’t hit. They know they’ll hurt themselves.’
‘We teach them not to hit each other, regardless of what anyone is wearing,’ the Armourer says.
‘Still, I don’t see the need for a completely armoured staff member. You never remove your helmet?’
‘It’s for religious reasons.’
‘We are not a religious organisation.’
‘They know me like this,’ says Din, finding it impossible to express himself any better. ‘They see me like this every day. They’re used to it.’ A tricycle, thrown with strength beyond a child’s natural means, bounces harmlessly off Din’s cuirass. Reaching out from the other end of the playground, Ezra arrests it in mid-air and lowers the tricycle before it falls on anyone. ‘Plus we have kids with magic powers.’
‘Force-sensitive younglings,’ Ahsoka corrects under her breath.
‘It’s not like I’m armed.’ Din doesn’t break eye contact as he reaches behind his own back to stop Rey, who’s attacking his shin guards with a toy screwdriver. ‘Which puts me at a disadvantage.’
Rey smacks his bottom, which is the highest part of Din she can reach.
Grogu spots Din at this instant and races straight towards him, freeing Din from the conversation. Din bends down to greet him, and Grogu’s two-to-three-year-old peers promptly pull Din into a round of ring-around-the-musk-rose. This is much preferred to making small talk with important adults, but costs Din his strategic northwest position. He doesn’t have a visual on the area behind him and wouldn’t be able to engage if he did. Round and round they go. The rope pyramid and little cries of ‘Oya! Oya!’ become a dizzy blur, and Din lets go and trusts in the Force.
Sweaty, laughing, they collapse in a heap. Din looks around. Finn, once so shy and yet so courageous through his terror, is shrieking and running in circles with his friends. Rose—still wearing a flimsicard box with a T-shaped hole cut out—is glued to the fence bordering the primary school’s playground, yowling for her sister. A big boy of nine or ten comes to investigate, and once he’s understood why she is crying, he dashes off to find Paige.
Poe sits on the ground, quite far away from his beloved X-wing (now piloted by Jessika), being uncharacteristically quiet.
Din turns his head towards Poe just as Grogu flops down on his chest. ‘You okay?’
Poe nods.
‘Just taking a moment?’
Poe nods again, perspiration dripping off his flushed nose. He’s okay. When he’s not okay, he knows he can come to any of the adults. They all do.
Grogu lays his sweet head on Din’s shoulder, and Din clasps him tight as he begins to sit up. ‘We gotta get up, pal,’ Din says.
Paige has been located. Rose, now ecstatic beyond belief, is showing off to her sister by tossing hoops about thirty inches, while Paige’s big friends cheer.
Taking advantage of Din’s distraction, his former ringmates jump on him like cubs on a rock-lion. They are very young, and since they’re in Grogu’s playgroup, Din doesn’t know their names; he settles for Ahsoka’s tactic of calling every toddler sir regardless of gender. Din is a good rock-lion and pretends to be gravely wounded, which only encourages them. Sabine sees this happening and joins in the fun, really to protect the littlest ones from banging their heads on beskar.
They play-wrestle for only a few moments, tempering the kids’ rougher impulses; accidents can happen. Then Sabine offhandedly smacks Din’s arm onto the ground and gasps, hands going to her throat. Grogu, with a tiny frown etched deep into his features, is choking Sabine for attacking his favourite.
‘Sir!’ Ahsoka roars. ‘No, thank you!’ She bounds across the playground, two miniature starfighters abruptly ceasing to levitate as she abandons them. Ahsoka breaks the Force-chokehold with no effort. To underscore the severity of Grogu’s misdeed, she delivers her most stinging rebuke: ‘I’m not happy!’
Grogu ducks behind Din, who denies him amnesty. Betrayed, Grogu howls his displeasure as he is handed grimly over to Ahsoka.
‘You okay?’ Din asks Sabine, getting up and brushing himself off. The other toddlers run off to play with Trilla, the incident already forgotten.
‘Yeah.’ She coughs a few times. ‘It’s fine. Occupational hazard.’
Rydha, who is still mostly non-verbal, shows her love and concern by lying down beside Sabine.
Din spares only a single glance for the garden where Ahsoka is speaking gravely to Grogu, as well as to Mace, who’s promising to address emotional regulation at their next Jedi Time. The situation is secure. Being majority-human, Mandalorians have named their nursery playrooms after chronological ages which really don’t apply to other species; they haven’t come up with better terms yet. Nevertheless, Grogu’s been placed in the playgroup most appropriate to him developmentally, where his support workers are helping him develop a healthier attachment style. They’ve all worked very hard to get Grogu to the point where he is now. He’s made a lot of progress since he started at nursery, but he still has a long way to go.
That’s okay. Grogu is not the first, and he won’t be the last.
Din takes his tea break, checks the messages on his comlink (Cal’s holo-images of Grogu at water play, just as he expected), and heads back to the playground. The kids are beginning to stream back indoors and—thank the Maker—it’s Home Time. Din crouches down by the fire door and helps get coats, scarves, and the odd hat off the ones who know their folks won’t come for them until late, while telling the others: ‘Keep that on, your Granda’s coming… Nana’s coming soon… Mummy… Buir…’
‘Grogu!’ Quinlan shouts. ‘Look who’s here!’
On Din’s side of the playground, Ezra and Greef add their own cries to the chorus as more family members appear. Poe goes—and Jannah—and—
‘Hey, little one,’ Luke Skywalker says. He takes Grogu gently from Quinlan’s arms as the kid reaches for him, and straps Grogu into the baby carrier he wears on his back. ‘Were you good?’
‘He was good today,’ Quinlan lies without blinking.
Across the fence, Luke makes deadpan eye contact with Din.
Satine looks on, nonplussed. ‘Shouldn’t you tell his father what he did?’
‘Law of the jungle,’ replies Ezra, folding his arms.
‘What… what does that mean?’ Satine says.
Sabine gives the Director a pitying look. ‘It means Mandos aren’t snitches.’
Din circles the playground, drawn as if by magnetism, and goes to the fence to touch foreheads with Luke. ‘I don’t know how you manage this,’ says Luke as he does every day, grease-stained and beautiful. ‘I wouldn’t be able to do it.’
Din thinks back to the early stages of their relationship, when he’d asked Luke if he had any children’s toys and Luke, baffled, had opened his mechanic’s toolbox and handed Grogu a pair of wire cutters. ‘You’d manage.’
Luke’s eyes crinkle at the corners. ‘Oh, I could. I don’t believe that I should.’ He leans over the fence and places a peck on Din’s helmet. ‘See you at home?’
‘See you at home,’ Din says. Rey and Finn press their noses up against the gate to watch Master Luke leap over fences and trees with Grogu in his backpack till they disappear from sight—while Din, without a worry in the world, goes back to work.