Work Text:
Din Djarin had heard stories of Endor—who in the galaxy had not, after the great Battle of Endor five years ago?—but never in all his years of traveling the stars, hunting down one individual or another, had he set foot in these ancient forests before.
Until now, that is—now, he was already beginning to suspect that he was soon going to know them all too well.
Particularly the endless stream of chatter of its diminutive inhabitants.
“Oooooo, sheeba, sheeba!” one of the creatures—an Ewok, he was certain— exclaimed from where it was “shadowing” him from the brush to his left, along with two others that he had spotted earlier. He didn’t bother turning to try to discern what had excited it—he was fairly certain that they didn’t intend to try to hinder him in any way, so he was doing his best to simply ignore them—but he heard rustling around in the bushes that seemed to tell him that the creature’s companions had rushed forward suddenly to catch up with it.
“Oooooo!” another one of the Ewoks said, clearly excited as well.
“Sheeba!” a third cried.
“Sheeba, sheeba!” the first repeated.
“Sheebaaaaa!” the other two cheered.
This had pretty much been Din’s soundtrack for the last fifteen minutes, ever since he’d left the Razor Crest parked in a large clearing behind them.
He felt movement against his hip and glanced down to find the Child peering back at the bushes and the Ewoks from the satchel Din used to ferry him about, his green face scrunched up in obvious confusion.
“Don’t worry about them,” Din murmured down to him, and the Child turned his brown-eyed gaze up to him.
It was still unclear just how many words the kid could understand—if any— but it seemed that the sound of his voice had gained his attention for the time being, at least.
The Child blinked, silent as ever, and continued to gaze up at him.
After a moment or so, something about that unwavering stare made Din oddly uncomfortable, and he was grateful for the excuse to look away when they reached a large ravine, the forest floor suddenly giving way before them in what he quickly realized was a twenty-foot drop.
A quick glance around revealed that there was no obvious way across—not one provided by the landscape, at least.
That’s probably for the best, Din mused as he heard the Ewoks give a particularly loud round of “OOOOOOO”s from behind him; they would have a hard time pursuing him, this way.
While the creatures seemed more curious than anything else, their presence wasn’t exactly welcome—not when they could wind up getting in the way of his mission here.
Without further ado, Din fired up his jetpack and boosted himself and the Child across the chasm, leaving the Ewoks’ “ooooo”s becoming groans of disappointment as they finally turned their attention back to him just in time to watch him leave their reach.
Unfortunately for them, the feeling certainly wasn’t mutual.
Asheena and her brothers—Wikki and Agroo, by name—watched in disappointment as the stranger shot up into the air in a jet-boosted leap across the ravine, leaving them behind.
“It would take hours to get around that ravine!” Agroo groaned from behind her, and she knew that he was right; they’d come this way on patrols before and knew the lay of the land well.
“He will be long gone by the time we get there,” Wikki agreed sullenly. Already, the stranger was disappearing through the trees, out of sight.
“He doesn’t look very tough, anyway,” Asheena commented. “Looks a lot like one of those stormtroopers, and everyone knows that they’re all a bunch of wimps; he can’t be much of a threat, especially on his own.”
Her brothers murmured their agreement. They were too young to have fought during the Battle of Endor themselves, but their parents both had, as had most of their other relatives, so they had heard tales of the less-than-impressive soldiers of the fallen Empire before.
“Should we report this to the chief, at least?” Agroo asked.
“When we return to the village, yes,” Asheena replied, turning briefly back to the fist-sized beetle that had caught their attention earlier. The creature was sitting on the trunk of the tree before them, its metallic body shining in the sunlight filtering in through the thick forest canopy above and, as she watched, it spread its wings and fluttered off into the trees, off to do whatever insects did with their time.
She made no attempt to keep the unspoken but from her tone, and her brothers both tilted their hooded heads inquisitively at her.
“What are you thinking?” Wikki wanted to know.
“We won’t be expected back for another hour, at least,” Asheena said slowly. “That is more than enough time to check out his ship, yes?”
Her brothers didn’t need to hear anything more and, together, they eagerly started off back the way they’d come to get a closer look at the stranger’s ship and what otherworldly wonders it held.
Din’s mission here was simple; he’d been told by an old contact that there was information to be found about the Jedi and where they might be here, held by an old woman named Vi Brel who was said to have once fought alongside a powerful Jedi master named Amara Xaan.
Xaan, he’d been told, had been killed when Order 66 had gone out, but Brel had survived and gone on to come to Endor, where she was supposedly still living out the rest of her days in solitude on a small farm.
She was also, according to his contact, a fellow Mandalorian—or a former one, at least; whether she still upheld the Creed or not was unknown to him.
But, one way or another, this wasn’t about that; this was about the kid, and getting him back to his own people—about carrying out his duty as a Mandalorian and completing his quest. Nothing else mattered.
Din stepped out of a particularly thick swath of forest into a clearing in the trees—a clearing that looked to be almost completely taken up by a small homestead, complete with a large vegetable garden and a coop that he could only assume was for the small bird-like creatures that were milling about the place, pecking at the ground and letting out weird screeching calls.
A small cottage stood behind it all, and Din knew he must’ve found Brel’s home.
As he stood there surveying the place, trying to decide upon the best approach, the Child suddenly began to squirm around in his bag, making whiny little noises of displeasure. When Din glanced down at him to see what in the galaxy was the matter, he found the kid pushing the edge of the bag down insistently, looking down at the ground longingly.
“If I let you down, you’re going to stay right here, understood?” Din said, guessing at what the Child wanted. He had been confined to the bag ever since they’d arrived here. Besides, maybe leaving the kid here while he met with Brel would be a good thing all around, in case things went south.
Assuming he didn’t wander off anywhere, that is.
The Child beamed up at him, giving away nothing.
Somehow, Din didn’t find that very reassuring. But, after a moment or two of thought, he did let the kid down, placing him on the ground before him. The Child gave a little squeal of glee and immediately began glancing around at the garden around them—Probably looking for something to try to eat, Din thought with a frown.
“Do not move,” he instructed, talking slowly in what was probably a futile attempt to get the kid to understand and, hopefully, to obey. “And do not try to eat anything. Got it?”
But the Child wasn’t even looking at him, his gaze fixed on something off to the side that Din couldn’t quite pin down.
Din sighed. He would just have to accept that.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, standing from his crouch. The Child finally did look up at him again, tilting his head ever so slightly to the side. “Stay here.”
The look on the kid’s face didn’t make any promises.
The closer Din got to the cottage, the more he began to feel that something wasn’t right here. The gardens, he now noticed, were looking slightly overgrown, as if no one had been out to weed in a few days. One of the fences that marked the perimeter of the homestead was broken, the board across the top snapped in two pieces, which were hanging off their respective nails.
Maybe it had been broken by a fallen tree—but even this possibility sparked the question of why no one had come out to fix it. And why there was no such tree to be seen.
Something was wrong here.
This thought was all but confirmed as fact when he came within sight of the door, which had apparently been smashed open and was lying in splinters on the wood floor of the cabin.
No fallen tree had done that.
Din stopped a moment to pull his blaster from its holster before peering into the dark interior of the cottage, holding the weapon at the ready.
He soon learned that he needn’t have taken that precaution, though; the place was empty, save for the broken furniture and scattered belongings that littered the floor.
And, of course, the motionless lump lying in the center of it all.
The motionless lump that looked suspiciously like the body of an old woman.
Din cursed aloud and stepped fully into the cottage to get a closer look, hoping that he was mistaken. A quick inspection of the body proved that he was not, though; the corpse was that of an elderly human who had, judging by the deep wound in her chest, been stabbed in the heart with some sort of blade—and not long ago, either; by his estimate, she couldn’t have been dead for more than a couple of days.
Meaning that, if this was indeed Vi Brel—and it seemed unlikely that it would be anyone else—he’d just missed her.
Now what? Din wondered as he stood up and glanced around the room. Brel was dead, and whatever knowledge she’d carried had died with her—this whole trip had been for naught, unless he could find something in the cottage that could give him the answers he needed.
He didn’t hold much hope in that possibility, but made himself look around anyway. As he shifted through a small bookshelf, hoping to find some sort of journal or something, it occurred to him that, at the very least, he could burn his fellow Mandalorian’s body, rather than leaving it here to rot, as it most assuredly would have if he hadn’t come looking for her.
He tried to take some measure of satisfaction in that, but it was a poor source.
A figure watched from atop a tree-covered ridge as the strange armored man— another Mandalorian, the magnification of the binocs revealed—emerged from the cabin of the deceased Vi Brel about a full ten minutes after stepping inside. Although his silver helm hid his face from view, the tenseness of his shoulders gave away his frustration over what he’d found waiting for him.
Was this some friend of Brel’s, some old acquaintance? The onlooker didn’t know, having been led to believe that the old Mandalorian had been almost completely solitary for at least the last decade of her life, coming into contact with almost no one.
But, for some reason, this person had come looking for her—Why? After a moment of consideration, though, the onlooker decided that he couldn’t care less what this Mando’s reasons were.
But he did know that the stranger wouldn’t be leaving this moon alive.
A blast from his flamethrower set the whole cottage ablaze, Brel’s body still inside of it. It wasn’t exactly a customary pyre, but it got the job done quickly and efficiently.
And also without Din having to drag a dead body out where the Child, who was watching in obvious confusion off to the side, could see it, which was an appreciated bonus.
Din stepped back and watched the blaze for a moment, fairly confident that it was too far from anything else flammable to become a problem, then finally turned to face the Child in full.
“We’re going back to the ship,” he announced. “There’s nothing to find he—” He stopped mid-sentence when he actually looked down at the kid.
The Child had a pair of bird feet sticking out from between his lips as he gazed innocently up at him. A muffled chirping noise came from within his mouth, and Din knew that the kid wasn’t its source.
“Hey, spit that out!” Din ordered, starting towards the Child, who only beamed up at him, looking rather proud of himself. As Din crouched down to his level, the Child did pull the still-living bird—the chick of one of the feathered creatures wandering about the garden, Din realized—out of his mouth and offered it to him as if to let him have a taste as well.
After a beat of hesitation, Din took it but, rather than sticking it in his mouth as the Child seemed to expect him to, placed it on the ground beside him. The tiny creature stumbled off into the garden, chirping in what struck him as a crabby manner as it went.
The Child watched it wander away and even looked to be considering going after it, but Din didn’t give him the chance before he plucked him up and stood.
It was time to go.
He was just about to return the kid to the satchel at his hip before starting back the way he’d come when he became aware of a strange rumbling, snapping sound off in the distance—though growing nearer every second, he realized as the volume quickly increased.
After a few beats, it almost started to sound like . . . like the engine of a ship—a ship crashing through the forest.
And rushing right towards them.
The second the thought occurred to him, Din saw a large shape rapidly shooting in their direction, smashing through every tree in its path. Crying out in alarm, Din ducked down just in time to avoid the incoming ship, which rushed past only a few feet above his head, the roar of the engine near-deafening from so close.
It lasted only a second, and Din glanced up at it as it shot onwards through the forest, momentarily too stunned to even be angry at his and the Child’s near-killer—though that didn’t last long, especially when he found that he recognized that ship.
The Razor Crest—his ship!
But it obviously wasn’t him in the pilot’s seat.
Din glanced down at the Child to ensure that he was unharmed— fortunately, his sudden drop to the ground didn’t appear to have hurt the kid in any way—and stood up, his mind still struggling to comprehend this sudden turn of events.
Someone had stolen his ship—here, on this secluded little moon, of all places! One would think that, of all the places he went, this would be about the last place for such a thing to happen.
Whoever that was, they have to be the worst pilot I’ve ever seen, he thought. Why were they flying so low to the ground? Were they trying to turn it to nothing but scattered scrap metal lying strewn about the forest floor?
Quite frankly, this guess seemed to be the most believable—especially when a thunderous boom! sounded in the distance where the ship had disappeared from sight.
Din grimaced and tried very, very hard not to think about the current state of his poor ship.
At least it sounded like it had stopped—even if that stop had sounded an awful lot like a crash.
In his arms, the Child lifted his tiny hand and waved a silent farewell to the ship.
Little did the kid know that they would be meeting it again sooner than he seemed to think; they had to, with it being their only way off this moon.
Din tucked the Child back into the satchel and, without further ado, fired up his jetpack and started after the stolen ship, following the swath of destruction it had left in its wake.
As he shot through the air, he could’ve sworn that he saw movement out of the corner of his eye on a nearby ridge but, when he glanced back in that direction, he saw nothing but trees in the spot.
Probably just an Ewok or something, he told himself as he turned his gaze back to the trail of fallen trees.
And he almost believed it, too.
By some miracle, the Razor Crest appeared to be mostly intact when Din landed a few paces away from its battered hull. Various panels looked to be missing from its outer shell, and about half of one of its wings was missing—that could be a pain to fix, he thought grimly as he looked up at the remaining portion—but there didn’t look to be anything more serious wrong with the thing.
Not from out here, anyway.
Din approached the closed ramp, pulling out his blaster as he went. With his free hand, he took the flap of the Child’s bag and draped it over the kid’s head.
He heard the Child give a muffled little coo of confusion but, other than that, he remained silent; by now, he knew the drill.
Din had almost reached the ramp and was preparing himself for a forced entry when it suddenly began to drop open before him. Startled, he stepped back and looked up.
When he saw who was standing at the top of the ramp, he groaned aloud.
“. . . Meecha?” one of the three Ewoks—the very same who had been tailing him earlier—said sheepishly. On either side of it, its companions were toeing the floor in apparent shame.
“You!?” Din blurted, lowering his gun in shock. They must’ve turned back after he’d escaped them at the ravine and gone to his ship, for some reason. “How did you—?” He cut off with an exasperated sigh, turning away. Asking them questions was pointless, anyway.
By this point, the Child had lifted the bag flap to peer out at what was happening around him, his brown-eyed gaze sweeping from Din to the Ewoks standing at the top of the ramp in obvious confusion.
The Ewoks must’ve noticed him, because they all stopped what they were doing and stared at him for a moment—before they let out a collective squeal.
“What are y—? Hey!” Din cried as the diminutive creatures suddenly charged down the ramp towards him, still making shrill little noises as they went. The one in the lead reached out towards the Child, and Din had to dodge out of the way.
Without a thought, the blaster was pointing at that Ewok again, and all three of the little creatures immediately froze with the obvious threat.
“No,” Din said firmly, though he slowly lowered the gun again almost immediately afterward; even with all the trouble these three had caused, he didn’t think that they had actually intended any harm—for the most part, anyway.
Whether they understood his words or not, the Ewoks could clearly tell from his tone that they’d irritated him, because they kept well back after that—even as they continued to cast longing gazes the Child’s way.
“Is there anyone else in there?” Din demanded, pointing back towards the ship.
Again, they must’ve understood enough to get the gist of it, because all three shook their heads.
“Are you sure?”
The head shakes turned to vigorous nods.
“Then go on.” Din jerked his head towards the forest, motioning for them to leave.
For a moment, they didn’t move but, eventually, they seemed to see that sticking around would get them nothing, and they trailed into the surrounding woodland, heads bowed guiltily.
Din couldn’t help but feel a brief pang of regret himself over his less-than-friendly treatment of the three, but did his best to ignore it as he turned his attention back to the Razor Crest.
He supposed he should start assessing the damage and getting an idea of how quickly he could fix it.
On the bright side, his assumption that most of the damage wasn’t incredibly severe had been correct; a quick diagnostic scan had shown him that.
But he was still missing half a wing, which was more than a bit of a problem.
He was going to have to go out and try to find the missing half, he knew, then try to lug it back here; there wasn’t exactly a place he could go to get a replacement—not that he knew of, at least.
“I’m heading out again,” Din told the Child as he stood up from the pilot’s seat of the Razor Crest. The kid was standing in the entrance of the cockpit, where he’d been silently watching him as he’d run the scans. “You’re waiting here. This shouldn’t take long.” At least, I hope it won’t, he thought but did not say.
He’d been told—firmly—that leaving the kid alone wasn’t something he should make a habit of, but something had him feeling that bringing the Child with him into the darkening forest outside was an even worse course of action; he didn’t know what prowled these woods at night, to say nothing of his lingering suspicion that something had been watching them when they’d left Brel’s garden.
It would be best for everyone if he left the kid in the safety of the ship—so long as no more curious Ewoks found a mysterious way of entry, that is. (He’d searched thoroughly for possible entrances that they could’ve used to sneak in, and had found utterly nothing of the sort.)
He’d check again and make sure that all of the locks were secure before he left, he decided. And then pray that it would be enough.
The Child didn’t look pleased with this arrangement, his oversized ears drooping ever so slightly in disappointment, but he didn’t try to fight it when Din scooped him up and placed him in the passenger’s seat.
“I’ll be right back,” Din promised as he took his rifle from where it was leaning against the doorway.
He chose to ignore the Child’s doubtful frown as he ducked out of the cockpit.
There were surprisingly few broken pieces of the ship littering the path that the Ewoks had accidentally cleaved through the forest, Din quickly found; he’d expected to find more as he searched for the missing portion of the wing—had hoped for it, actually, to give himself more parts to work with and to return to their proper places.
But it seemed that this was not to be—not for the most part, anyway.
It was fully dark by the time he finally found what he sought in a thick tangle of bushes, the wing portion’s silver plating shining in the light of his helmet’s small headlamp.
Now I just need some way to get this back to the ship, he mused as he inspected the thing. He wouldn’t be able to carry it—not easily, at least—as it was, but maybe if he disassembled it somewhat . . .
He was just kneeling down to get to work when he became aware of the feeling of eyes on the back of his neck.
He was being watched again.
Disturbing as this was, Din did his best to keep his knowledge of it to himself, keeping his movements casual and refraining from glancing over his shoulder; if something was stalking him, there seemed to be no better time than now to make its move, while he was alone in the night and, by all appearances, occupied.
But appearances could be deceiving.
A few moments passed, but Din refused to let his guard down even as he began to take the wing apart with the various tools he’d brought with him specifically for this purpose.
He was just beginning to wonder if maybe he’d been mistaken after all when he heard shifting around in one of the trees above him, and he finally did turn his attention from his work to look up—just in time to see a darkly-clad humanoid figure drop down from the branch above his head!
Grunting in surprise—he hadn’t expected his stalker to be waiting in the trees—Din rolled aside and sprung to his feet, turning to face his attacker, who had just landed on the ground where he’d kneeled mere seconds before, driving what he realized was some sort of spear into the dirt—it would have been his back if he hadn’t spotted the would-be assassin in time.
Not even waiting to get a better look at his attacker, Din lifted his arm and fired his whistling bird at the figure. The tiny munitions shot out of the vambrace he wore and struck his attacker unerringly, causing the man—for it appeared to be a man, he realized now—to shout in pain and stagger backwards a few steps.
Din used his opponent’s momentary distraction to draw his blaster, which he immediately fired at the stalker—or, at where he’d been standing only seconds ago; now the spot was empty. Din started to whirl around to see if his opponent had gotten behind him somehow—and quickly learned that his suspicions were well-placed when he felt something suddenly stab into his side from behind with such force that he nearly fell forward. Crying out, he jerked away and completed his turn, firing again the instant he did so. The laser struck the black-clad man in the shoulder, but this hardly slowed him when he jabbed at Din’s leg with his spear. Din dodged it with a hasty sidestep and shot again, though this time the blast went high.
“You shoot like a stormtrooper,” his opponent taunted in a surprisingly light tone of voice, given his dark, menacing appearance. He kicked at Din’s shins with shocking strength that nearly knocked Din over, though he managed to recover his footing at the last second.
Din didn’t give a verbal response of any sort. Instead, he simply fired at the man again—this time hitting him dead in the chest and causing him to fall back into the trunk of a nearby tree with a startled grunt.
Din thought he had him then, but quickly realized that the man must’ve been wearing some sort of armor, because he straightened up again almost immediately.
“Point taken,” the man grunted, and a blaster of his own suddenly appeared in his hand. He pointed it Din’s way, but didn’t fire, leaving them both standing there, aiming but not shooting—yet, anyway.
“Who the hell are you supposed to be?” Din demanded. His finger was still positioned over the trigger, ready to fire the second his opponent made a move he didn’t like.
He hadn’t actually expected much of an answer, but his opponent seemed more than happy to deliver.
“What, so you mean to say you’ve never heard of me? You’ve never heard stories of my treasonous, dastardly deeds?” The man gave a self deprecating laugh and shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t have; not yet, at least.”
“Get to the point.” Din didn’t have time for this.
To his credit, the man seemed to take the hint. “I was once called Vindar Hasax, though I prefer to go by no name now, if you understand my meaning.”
Din didn’t, but he honestly couldn’t care less what he chose to call himself. “What do you want with me? Why have you been following me?”
“You’re Mandalorian; I made an oath to kill every last one of you, and I happened to be in the area, so . . .” The man—Hasax—shrugged, clearly feeling that the rest was obvious.
And it was—possibly more so than Hasax seemed to think.
“You were the one who killed Brel, weren’t you?” Din murmured, more to himself than to the stranger before him. Brel had been stabbed—and her wound had looked suspiciously like the one that now burned in his side. And Hasax had been in the area, standing atop that ridge when Din had first glimpsed him out of the corner of his eye; he must’ve made camp there after completing his dirty work down in the cottage.
“Didn’t think I’d be killing two Mandos in one trip, but that’s not an opportunity I’d like to see pass,” Hasax replied. Although a silver mask covered most of his face, Din was still able to see it when the man’s green eyes roved over him. “That armor would probably fetch a handsome price, too,” he remarked as an apparent afterthought.
Din didn’t know where this man’s motivations lie—an oath to kill all Mandalorians was a rather intense duty to bestow upon yourself and had to require quite the incentive—but he knew that the time for talking was over when Hasax finally fired, forcing him to duck away.
Unfortunately, Hasax was already moving as well, charging in with his spear again. He managed to graze Din in the arm, but Din ignored the sting as he fell back a few paces, trying to get out of range of that weapon, at least. He fired his blaster in an attempt to keep Hasax at bay, and the laser struck his opponent in the side, slowing his pursuit long enough to allow another shot.
Or, so Din had intended—the second shot hit nothing but a nearby tree, for Hasax wasn’t there anymore.
Before Din could fully process this, something suddenly slammed into his legs. Caught by surprise, Din couldn’t stop himself from going down. Hastily, he rolled over onto his back to see his opponent, holding out his blaster to shoot—only for it to be immediately knocked out of his hand by a hard kick in the wrist.
“I think you've done enough with that,” Hasax said matter-of-factly, and Din looked up to find the murderer looming over him, spear in one hand and gun in the other. “Do you have any last words I should know about?”
“No,” Din said flatly, and he fired his flamethrower up at his opponent, causing his clothing to immediately catch aflame.
As expected, Hasax screamed and fell back, slapping frantically at the flames in an attempt to stamp them out. While he was distracted, Din grabbed his blaster off the ground and shot back to his feet. He pointed the weapon at Hasax’s retreating form, but didn’t bother firing, certain that the man was finished.
He watched until Hasax disappeared into the dark forest, still flaming and slapping.
Even if he survived, he wouldn’t be in any shape to come hunting for him again any time soon, Din knew.
Still, he stood there for a few beats, breathing hard and waiting to see if Hasax somehow reappeared. Only when he did not did Din allow himself to relax his guard.
It was over.
Now that the adrenaline was slowly ebbing from his veins, he was becoming aware of the pain of his injuries, particularly the one in his side. A glance down told him that it was bleeding rather heavily and was in dire need of his attention.
Continuing his work in this state would be a fool’s errand; he’d have to get back to the ship to tend to his wounds, then come back for the wing half later—probably after the sun came up.
Grimacing, Din pushed his forearm to the wound in an attempt to slow the bleeding, then began to make his way back towards the ship as quickly as his injured state would allow.
At least he’d gotten rid of Hasax, even if he’d failed to do much else tonight; that was a win.
Even if it might not have felt like much of one right now.
The trip back was far from enjoyable, but he managed without running into trouble.
If he thought rest was waiting for him back at the Razor Crest, however, he quickly found that he was mistaken when he saw firelight burning in the clearing beside the ship.
He was fairly certain that the Child couldn’t have begun such a blaze himself.
Din stepped into the clearing with his blaster drawn, fully expecting that this night was about to get a whole lot longer.
Then he saw just who it was who sat gathered around that campfire.
“Meecha!” It was one of the Ewoks from earlier, sitting beside the Child on a log that it had apparently dragged over. It had paused in the middle of spooning something from a bowl in its lap into the kid’s open mouth to wave at Din as he stood at the edge of the clearing, dumbstruck.
A dozen different questions whirled through Din’s mind—the question of how the Ewok had managed to get into his ship unbidden again to smuggle the kid out among them—but one in particular struck him as supreme above all.
“. . . What’re you feeding him?”
Although the Ewok didn’t respond, not seeming to understand, the Child more or less did so himself when he chose then to release a spew of bile, causing the Ewok to give a shrill little cry of surprise and jerk back.
Sighing, Din crossed the clearing to the fire, where he bent down to pluck the Child up off the log. The kid cooed happily upon seeing him, his stomach apparently having settled now.
As he did so, Din noticed two more shapes moving around near the hull of the Razor Crest and turned to see a pair of Ewoks—the other two from earlier, he realized—pulling things out of a large sack that sat on the ground between them.
It didn’t take Din long to recognize the things as ship parts—the missing pieces of the Razor Crest.
Suddenly, his failure to find any during his search earlier that night made a whole lot more sense.
The annoyance Din had initially felt upon seeing the creatures return immediately faded.
“You went and found all that?” He turned back to the Ewok sitting on the log, who was gazing in the direction of its companions, clearly having followed his gaze.
The Ewok nodded, looking rather pleased with itself.
“Thank you.” It was all he could think to say just then, surprised by this development as he was.
The Ewok stood up atop the log, making it almost able to come eye to eye with him, and extended its furry paw to him. With its other, it gestured to itself. “Asheena,” it said.
It took Din a beat to realize that it was introducing itself but, once he did, he accepted the paw and gave it a single shake.
The Ewok—Asheena—then gestured to the other two working by the ship, introducing them as “Wikki” and “Agroo”. The two looked up from their work only long enough to wave at him, then turned their gazes down to the bag again.
“What are you doing now?” Din asked, frowning at the two.
Again, Asheena was the one who responded—she clearly seemed to think of herself as the leader here. “Agi ashee!”
Din blinked. She seemed to understand most of what he said, but he hadn’t the faintest clue how to speak her language.
“. . . I don’t speak Ewokese.”
Asheena didn’t respond immediately, considering. Finally, she said in a halting form of Galactic Basic, “We fix ship!”
This hadn’t been what Din had been expecting at all. If how they’d flown was any indication, they didn’t know the first thing about ships.
“Oh, you don’t need to do that,” Din replied a little too hastily. “I can do it on my own.”
“But we help!” Asheena pressed, unrelenting.
Din opened his mouth to argue further, but stopped himself, considering the offer further. Whether the Ewoks knew what they were doing or not, would it really be wise to turn them away when they were offering to aid him?
The answer was rather obvious, when it came down to it.
“. . . Fine,” he said at last, and she beamed. “But I’m going to need you—all of you—to follow my instructions, got it?” He couldn’t risk one of them messing something up further due to lack of experience.
Asheena bobbed her head vigorously, eager to help in any way she could. Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to Din until now that she and her companions might’ve felt guilty over their actions and wanted so badly to set things right with a stranger they knew nothing about.
Before he could say anything more, a sudden wave of dizziness washed over him, nearly causing him to lose his balance. Groaning, he steadied himself and glanced down past where the Child was held against his chest to his side, only now reminded of his wound. The stain in the side of his shirt was noticeably larger than it had been when last he’d looked, a clear sign that it was time for him to stop and tend to the wound before he bled out.
The Child was gazing up at him, concern clear in his huge brown eyes, when Din placed him back on the log beside Asheena, who seemed to have finally noticed his injury herself and was staring in obvious alarm.
“I’ll be right back,” Din grunted, pushing one hand against the wound again. Without waiting for a response, he staggered towards the ramp of the ship, which was already hanging open from the Ewoks wandering in and out.
Although he felt concerned gazes on his back the whole way to the ship, all seemed wise enough not to pursue.
Vindar Hasax had always had a knack for surviving things he shouldn’t have survived, and the flames that the Mandalorian had shot his way were no exception—in no small part due to the fact that he had little flesh left to be burned away anyway, with most of his body having been replaced by metal and wires long ago.
That didn’t mean it hadn’t hurt, though—that it didn’t make his anger towards this particular Mandalorian run deeper than most.
Hasax had already wanted to kill him before due to his religion, the creed he’d sworn to uphold, but now . . . now, this was personal.
The skin of his face and torso still smarted and burned as he made his way through the dark forest, following the apparent path that his quarry had taken when he’d left the site of their battle about an hour before—a swath of destruction that had been left by that ship the Mandalorian had chased after when he’d left Brel’s home.
Now, the path was also marked by the occasional splatter of blood, making tracking his prey all the easier.
He just hoped the fool wouldn’t bleed out before he managed to catch up with him.
The Ewoks quickly proved their capabilities the next morning when they began working on repairing the ship. It was made clear from the beginning that they didn’t know much about ships, but Din was grateful to find that they seemed to be fast learners. He didn’t dare try to teach them how to use most of his tools—he didn’t want to risk anyone losing an eye or anything—but they were more than capable of finding the things he needed and bringing them to where he worked, along with bashing any bent or twisted pieces back into their proper shapes so that he could reattach them.
They made much more progress in those first few hours than he’d expected, reattaching most of the missing pieces of the hull before they finally stopped for a break around midmorning—and even that was more for himself and his injured side than the Ewoks or even the Child, who the Ewoks had been taking turns watching and playing with while everyone else worked.
If Din had doubted the value of their help before, he definitely didn’t now.
At this rate, they’d probably be finished in only a few days, he mused as he gazed at the Razor Crest from his seat on the log, the Child perched in his lap. Once the job was finished . . . then he supposed that they would have to continue their search for the Jedi elsewhere, seeing as there were no answers to be found here, thanks to Hasax and his murderous oath.
Where would they go afterward? He supposed he could try to find another contact, someone else who owed him a favor, but he was quickly running out of those, particularly those whom he could trust. He had the feeling that he would be turning to chasing nothing more than rumors in short order while he tried to complete this seemingly endless quest of his.
A quest that, try as he might, he couldn’t even seem to fully put his heart into, for reasons that were far too selfish for him to admit even to himself.
A part of him was almost grateful for Brel’s death, seeing as it further delayed the end of his mission and, more specifically, the inevitable parting of ways between him and the tiny creature that now sat in his lap—a fact that shamed him more than he could say, but one that he was quickly finding he could not deny.
But he’d push through—he’d promised as much, and he wasn’t going to back out of it now, especially when he knew his current course was the right one—the only one, really.
He didn’t have to like it to see that much, at least.
Din was torn from his melancholy thoughts when he felt the Child suddenly go rigid against him, his head abruptly swiveling to the side as if he thought he’d seen something. Din immediately tried to follow his gaze, but he saw nothing.
“What is it?” he asked the kid, not about to let his guard down just yet. He knew that the Child’s unique . . . abilities allowed him to detect things that an ordinary person could not.
The Ewoks, who were all sitting on the ground nearby, doodling with sticks in the dirt and chatting excitedly in their native tongue, all stopped what they were doing and turned to look at Din and the Child, clearly overhearing, but Din didn’t pay them much heed, attention fixed fully on the Child.
The kid pointed to the same spot he’d been looking in and, although Din looked again, he still didn’t see anything.
But he didn’t doubt that something was there.
Din stood up, still watching the spot. He was just about to set the Child down on the log and try to approach when he finally did see something—something small and flying straight towards them from the bushes.
Din’s stomach dropped as he realized what it was.
“Get down!” he cried, dropping down to the ground and curling his body around the Child—just as a loud boom! sounded from only a few feet away, followed by the intense heat of an explosion. Din heard the Ewoks give a collective shriek of alarm—or, at least he hoped that it was alarm, and not the alternative.
Two more grenades struck the ground around them, sending flame and dirt flying. When it seemed that no more would follow, Din dared to lift his head to see how his companions had fared.
The Ewoks were all moving about and didn’t appear to be injured. A glance down at the Child showed him that the kid hadn’t been harmed either, though he was certainly rattled as he gripped at the front of Din’s cloak.
“I’ve got to say, your choice of allies isn’t exactly the most impressive, Mandalorian,” a familiar voice called out from where the bombs had come from. Surprised, Din looked up and found none other than Vindar Hasax standing at the edge of the clearing.
Clearly, the man had seen better days, what was visible of his face marred with healing burns and his clothing little more than rags. Through all the tears, Din could see the shine of metal beneath his garments, and at first he thought it was armor—until he noticed the mechanical joints and wires, indicating something else entirely:
Hasax was no ordinary human; he was a cyborg. Maybe that explained how he’d managed to survive their last encounter, Din mused as he released the Child and stood up, stepping between him and Hasax protectively.
“I guess you forgot how round one ended, didn’t you?” Din called back, making no attempt to keep the danger from his tone as he drew his blaster.
Attacking him was one thing, but threatening the Child and the others he associated himself with was something completely different. Something far more difficult to forgive.
“Believe me, I haven’t.” Hasax gestured to his marred face to illustrate his meaning. Din noticed that the hand was robotic as well. Hasax must’ve seen where his gaze had gone, because he added, “This isn’t the first time your kind has disfigured me so, you see. At least this time I did not consider myself a brother to you.”
Before Din could fully process that statement and its implications, Hasax pulled his spear from his back and charged, appearing before him in the blink of an eye. Din narrowly managed to duck that first stab—a vicious jab at his visor— and fired his blaster point-blank at the crazed man. The beam struck Hasax in the midsection, but it seemed to do little more than knock him back a few steps.
Grateful for the breathing room, Din fired again, determined to keep him back long enough to turn to the Child and the Ewoks, who were all unarmed and practically defenseless.
“Take the kid and get out of here!” Din ordered Asheena and her brothers who, to their credit, already looked to be doing just that, one of the brothers—Wikki, he thought it was—grabbing the Child and backing into the forest beyond with the other two hurrying after him.
Din turned back to Hasax—just in time to see the man pulling forth another grenade and aiming to hurl it his companions’ way. Not about to let that happen, Din shot him in the mechanical wrist, causing a shower of sparks to spring forth—but clearly not before the cyborg had gotten the chance to pull the pin, for the explosion sent them both flying across the clearing to land hard in the brush.
Fortunately, Din’s armor shielded him from the worst of it and, groaning, he pushed himself back up to his feet, twisting around to face his opponent, hoping that maybe he hadn’t been so lucky—until the sudden pew! pew! of blaster fire proved him mistaken. He tried to duck the beams, but both struck him square in the chest. They didn’t get through his armor, but the impact was enough to knock him briefly off balance and send him staggering backwards a few steps. He recovered just in time to block the incoming spear strike with his bracer and, when Hasax continued to press down in an attempt to overpower him, fired his whistling bird at his opponent, forcing him back.
“Do you even know what you’re standing for as long as you wear that armor?” Hasax demanded as he rushed right back in, thrusting again. Din dodged the strike and fired his blaster at him, but the shot went high; his opponent was moving too fast. “Do you understand the full depth of your Creed and what it means?”
Din didn’t bother with a verbal response, continuing to dart back and shooting again. He struck Hasax in the shoulder but, again, this seemed to have little effect.
He needed a new strategy, that much was clear; he couldn’t beat him like this.
Hasax closed on him, ignoring the numerous shots that Din sent his way as he did so. The spear came in several more times as the cyborg went into a frenzy of stabs and jabs. A few hit their mark before Din managed to get away, firing even as he retreated.
The trees were growing thinner around them now as they went back and forth, coming fewer and fewer with every step until they were little more than shrubs underfoot. At one point, Din risked a glance over his shoulder to try to get an idea of what was waiting behind him and was startled to find the edge of a cliff only a mere few paces away.
Din’s attention was forced back to his opponent when Hasax very nearly jabbed him through the eye with his spear. He responded by shooting the cyborg in the leg, though did little more than sear a hole in the ragged remnants of his clothing—and revealing that that limb was made of metal as well.
Just how much of him is even still flesh and bone? Din wondered, quickly growing frustrated by the lack of progress. Because so far, it almost seemed as if it was only his face.
They were almost to the ledge now, and Din could tell now that the drop was a long one, at least fifty feet—a deadly drop.
Due to his jetpack, Din wasn’t overly concerned about going over the edge himself, but his opponent didn’t have such an item at his disposal, sparking an idea in his mind.
Before he could do anything about it, though, Hasax suddenly changed tactics, sweeping the butt end of his spear at Din’s legs, causing him to lose his footing and crash to the ground at his opponent’s feet. Hasax immediately stabbed down at him, going for a killing strike in Din’s stomach, but Din hastily rolled out of the way, leaving the spear dip slamming into the dirt so hard that it was completely buried up to the beginning of the haft. While he was pulling it free, Din kicked at his legs from his position on the ground, catching Hasax by surprise and sending him sprawling to the ground beside him, the spear falling down between them. Hasax tried to grab for it, but Din was faster, grabbing the cyborg and flipping him over where his own body lay to land on his opposite side—right at the edge of the cliff. That done, Din immediately sprung up, shooting at Hasax—who was also beginning to rise—in the chest as he went and knocking his opponent back—back, and over the edge.
Grunting in alarm, Hasax managed to grab the ledge with one hand, saving himself from the drop—though not for long, if his hold was as precarious as it looked.
Din knew he had him as he stood up completely and pointed his blaster down at the man.
“Do you . . . really think I’m afraid of a little fall?” Hasax panted, clearly more drained from their battle than he was willing to let on. “I’ve survived far worse.”
“I’m pretty sure you said that already,” Din deadpanned, unamused. He lowered his gun so that it was aimed at Hasax’s mechanical hand.
One shot, and he would fall—most likely to his demise, for Din was convinced that he was more talk than anything by this point.
Hasax must’ve known this too, because he blurted out the first thing he could seem to think of that would get Din to hesitate.
And, admittedly, it worked.
“I used to be one of you, you know—a Mandalorian, living by your forsaken Creed. Do you want to know why I forsook it? Forsook them?”
Din didn’t respond, telling himself that he didn’t care what sort of story this murderer had to tell—one that was quite possibly a lie, he knew. He should just shoot him now, before he tried something.
But he did not, allowing Hasax to press on.
“I made a mistake once—once, I went against the Creed. And, the instant the others learned about it, they—my brothers and sisters, my comrades and companions—didn’t hesitate to cast me out. They abandoned me, left me to die—or, so they intended, at least. It is because of their betrayal that I am as I am today. And they will betray you too, should you ever make that one fatal mistake; they’ll cast you out, just like they did to me. There will be no hesitation, no moment of second thought—not when you go against that forsaken Creed that they so blindly follow. They will abandon you, too—”
He never got the chance to finish, for Din cut him short with a well-placed shot in the hand that immediately caused him to lose his grip and finally fall from the ledge, down to the hard ground fifty feet below.
He’d heard enough.
Din stood there for a few moments, blaster still drawn as he half expected Hasax to find some way to crawl back up. Only when it became clear that he would not did Din finally lower the gun, though he did not relax his posture, nerves still buzzing with adrenaline.
So, when he heard movement in the bushes behind him, he immediately snapped around, hand tensing around the gun again—though he quickly found that his paranoia was misplaced when he saw two Ewoks—Asheena and Agroo—standing there, both holding bows and arrows at the ready.
They had come to aid him, Din realized with no small amount of gratitude.
“He’s gone,” he told them both, and he finally returned his blaster to its holster. “It’s over.” And this time, he knew it to be true.
The Ewoks both blinked, seeming to take a moment to understand his meaning but, after a few beats, they did lower their weapons, albeit grudgingly.
Maybe they were more thirsty for blood than he’d initially thought.
“Are the kid and Wikki alright?” Din asked. He didn’t see them nearby, meaning that they’d clearly stayed behind, away from the violence.
Asheena nodded and pointed back the way they’d come. “Hiding in woods,” she told him.
“Then let’s go meet up with them.” There wasn’t a point in hanging around here any longer.
Fortunately, Asheena and Agroo seemed to agree.
With Hasax gone, finishing the ship’s repairs was going to be a simple task; Din and the Child would be leaving Endor in only a few days, even with the sudden attack having thrown them a few hours off track.
Evening was well underway now, Din, the Child, and the Ewoks having returned to the crash site of the Razor Crest only a short while before, just as the sun was beginning to set. Through the cockpit window, Din could see the Ewoks settling in for the night around the dying campfire, having once again refused his offer to let them sleep inside the ship, preferring the more familiar outdoor surroundings to the often-cramped interior of the Razor Crest.
Din supposed he understood, though that didn’t make their decision seem any less strange to him.
In his arms, the Child squirmed restlessly, causing his attention to shift downward.
“Trust me, I like bedtime just about as much as you do,” Din told the kid, and it was an honest statement; getting the tiny alien to sleep when he didn’t want to was never an easy job.
But it had to be done, so he simply had to power through.
Slowly, Din lowered himself down into the pilot’s seat, grimacing when his now-numerous injuries twinged in complaint with the movement. The Child gave a small whining noise as Din settled him against his chest, though his struggling did die down after a few more minutes of wrestling, giving in.
Relieved, Din shifted into a slightly more comfortable position and sat back.
As he sat there, Din’s thoughts eventually began to drift to the events of the past few days. In the end, he supposed that this whole little trip had done little—if anything—to further the progress of his mission; he hadn’t gotten the information he’d come for, and he was no closer to finding the Jedi than he’d been before.
But, on the other hand, he had made some new allies—even if those allies had first introduced themselves by stealing and crashing his ship—and had killed a dangerous murderer that would have gone on to kill numerous other Mandalorians if he hadn’t encountered him; he could have saved lives today.
But he didn’t feel like a hero; he didn’t know what he felt like, but it wasn’t that.
Even with Hasax dead, something still nagged at him—a lingering seed of doubt that hadn’t been there before about . . . well, practically everything.
Hasax had claimed to have been a Mandalorian once—one who had gone against the Creed, and then cast out over it—brutally, if his story of why so much of his body had been replaced with metal had been true.
“They will abandon you, too.”
But he was wrong, Din assured himself. His faith in the Creed had never wavered, and never had he seriously considered going against it, nor did he ever see himself doing so in the foreseeable future; he had nothing to fear as far as his fellow Mandalorians were concerned.
Not yet.
Don’t, he ordered himself. Such doubts would do nothing but drive him insane.
He was grateful to be reeled back into the present when he became aware of the sound of soft snores shortly later. Looking down, he found that the Child had fallen asleep, clearly more exhausted than he’d originally let on.
Now he just had to get the kid to his cot without waking him up . . .
Din considered getting up and making the trip, but almost immediately abandoned that train of thought, not wanting to risk waking the Child up and also holding no desire to move, upsetting his injuries again.
They’d sleep in the chair—that was good enough for him and, apparently, good enough for the kid as well.
For the moment, nothing else mattered.