Work Text:
It can't be.
Her eyes had deceived her. It was merely an elaborate hallucination - something adrenaline had manifested from bubbles, shadow, and stone.
Catching her breath, she stares at the dark water, still rippling from their breach. But there is nothing else. Just water.
Had she really seen…? She can't even complete the sentence in her thoughts. It's too crazy. Foolish. Yet her mind races. Feelings she hadn't felt since she was a child surface. The solid understanding of what she knows to be true cracks, the Living Waters themselves seeping in, imbuing within her something akin to an epiphany. The festering weight of failure that had made its unwelcome home in her bones suddenly vacates.
In her mind's eye, she replays the incredible image of what she thinks she'd seen over and over. The more she thinks about it, the less she doubts. It was too real, too detailed.
It lives. The Mythosaur lives.
Din's wet, labored coughs suddenly stop, gripping her from her daze. Her eyes fall to the man, now laying limp next to her.
"Din?" She studies him for any response, any movement.
He's not breathing.
Grogu fusses, his pram drawing closer.
"Din?!" She jostles his soaked form. He doesn't rouse.
She switches HUD settings, scanning his torso. The usual sound of blood pumping is eerily absent, the white-hot silhouette of his heart lies completely still.
"Dank farrik!" she sneers, not caring the kid can hear.
Grogu cries.
"It's ok," she glances at the child's large dark eyes, so soulful even her heart is not impervious to his charm. "I'm gonna help your dad."
She makes quick work of his cuirass - surprisingly it's attached in the same way as hers. She slips off her helmet and presses her ear against his chest just to ensure her HUD wasn't shorted from the water and that he in fact was truly...dead.
Silence greets her ears.
Panic momentarily threatens her resolve but she's dealt with far, far worse.
Stacking her hands over the center of his chest, she starts compressions. The sickening crunch of fracturing ribs echo in the cavern with the first forceful push. She just hopes the creature lurking remains content in his watery hideaway. And she hopes Din starts breathing soon. She doesn't want to have to remove his helmet...
"Come on Din," her voice quivers. Grogu whimpers but doesn't interfere.
She continues pumping against his chest, now unnaturally pliable from her rigorous efforts. She might need to remove his helmet if he doesn't come-to soon. It wasn't a decision she'd make lightly. She knew how much his Creed meant to him, as much as she found fault in it. She admired his devout perseverance. He at least believed in something...
She'd lost everything, failed so many times, until there hadn't been anything to believe in anymore. But here she is, with him, and she wasn't going to give up.
"Din!" she shouts, anger sinking its wiry grip throughout her core. Anger at herself.
She felt responsible. She led him here. But she hadn't recalled the waters being so deep. The tremors from fusion bombs must have knocked out the floor, deepening the waters. She should have been more cautious - this is her fault.
"Din! Come. On." She punctuates each word with a deep compression, sweat now mingling with the water droplets on her brow. Her arms start to ache.
She's just about to stop compressions to remove his helmet to give a…
Suddenly he sputters, and she quickly rolls him onto his side, patting his back.
Thank the Manda.
The water expels from his lungs, seeping from the lip of his helmet. His breathing is a painful wet wheeze, but he's breathing.
Grogu jumps from his pram and buries himself in Din's chest, warbling little sentiments she recognizes as relief and tearful joy.
"H-hey pal," he coughs, a wince in his raspy voice. "It's ok."
The affectionate scene thaws her cold soul. While foolishly devout and accident-prone, Din Djarin is a good man. She knows this to be true.
"W-what happened?" Din's husky voice greets her ears.
She eyes him, a smile on her face. "You drowned during your atonement ritual."
He pats the kid's back, glommed firmly against his chest.
"Thank you," he chokes. "I'm forever indebted to you." He nods, reverently.
She cracks a smile. "Nothing is owed," she huffs mirthfully, "except promise you'll learn how to swim."
He chuckles, breaking into another coughing fit. His lungs sounded awful, still bubbling roughly with fluid. She'd have her medic droid give him a once-over later back at the palace, whether he liked it or not. He wasn't succumbing to pneumonia and blood loss, at least not on her watch.
"Din," she looks him squarely in the visor. His steadfast gaze tells her she has his full attention. Her vision flits down to her feet as she momentarily second-guesses herself. Taking a centering breath, she forces herself to meet his gaze. "Did you see anything down there?"
"Like what?" his tone is genuinely curious.
He clearly had been too incapacitated to have seen or remembered the creature.
"I thought," she stops herself, smiling at the lunacy. But what the hell does she care - this is all crazy. "I saw -"
Her sentence is interrupted - water rushes and cascades in a deafening chorus, the ground beneath trembles. A gargantuan figure crests from the water. The creature rises straight up, just a dozen meters away.
She freezes, mouth agape.
It stares at them with ancient eyes. An eternity passes. She can feel the breath being drawn in and out by its large nostrils, creating a turbulence despite its relative distance.
"A mythosaur," Din nearly whispers. Unsteady and clearly still weak, he slowly rises to his feet, holding Grogu to his chest.
The creature's eyes shift to Din. There's an alarming depth of intelligence in the darkness of its pupils. The scale is so massive, so breathtaking…she can't believe her eyes.
Grogu coos.
It draws closer, its head alone nearly the size of the Gauntlet's fuselage.
Hairs stand straight on the nape of her neck. She stiffens defensively, but it's all in futility. There's absolutely nothing any of them could do if it chose to strike. She doesn't think she could even dodge it. There's simply no room.
Din, to her utter surprise, kneels in front of the beast. It calmly stares, angling an eye to study the warrior, stopping a mere arm's length from Din. The texture of its skin is tough, a veritable armor of its own. She imagines its tusks and teeth could easily crush even pure beskar.
"From this moment on," he begins reciting the final passage of the Creed, "I shall never lose sight of my people." His visor slowly glances at her, stealing her already bated breath. "This is The Way." He bows his head to the beast, fist over his newly restarted heart.
He clearly altered the Rites. She doesn't know what shocks her more, the reality of the creature or his words.
The creature draws nearer, now centimeters from Din. Grogu reaches a small clawed hand, gently touching its hide. The beast's eyes close.
Serenity. Unity.
She cannot explain it - something long-forgotten, long-buried sways inside her. Something akin to hope.
Perhaps the planet wasn't lost afterall.
Perhaps he, a Child of The Watch, was The Way.