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In the moment, the choice to make the jump isn't rational.
Or—it's rational to make the jump, considering how many raiders there are, how badly outnumbered he is, the amount of damage the starfighter has already taken. His ship's speed, sublight and jump alike, is the only advantage of any significance that he has. But the choice of where to jump—that's impulse.
"Safety" should mean, should always mean, the covert. Should mean his people, the refuge where they've settled, or even Mandalore itself.
But he's on the Outer Rim. It isn't going to be far at all. And when he looks at the console, assessing the available hyperlanes at a glance, one of them is familiar. One of them is safety, and he reaches for it without thinking, selects it and feels the ship's hyperdrive thrum itself awake.
Grogu creels worriedly from the pod seat.
"It's okay," Din tells him, "just—hang on."
The raiders are swarming, closing in. But they aren't going to be fast enough to catch up to the starfighter before it's able to jump.
They're still firing, though—and it isn't just disabling shots, not anymore. If he escapes, they get nothing, not even salvage; blowing him up is, presumably, both a more satisfying prospect and a more profitable one, if only marginally.
He still misses the Crest. But he's grateful all over again for Peli—for the way the starfighter handles, how slim and sleek it is, the way he can skim it right in between a pair of blaster cannon bolts and then pull it into a spin that slices the left wing up and out of the way of the bright blue star of a torpedo. It's crisp, smooth, beautiful.
But it isn't quite enough.
The drive kicks in. The stars start to stretch and smear, the blue-white hole of hyperspace expanding into a screaming tunnel—and at that exact moment, Din feels something hit the ship.
Grogu makes a sharp scolding noise, as if to express his disapproval of the bolt, the laser or missile or whatever it might've been, having the nerve to hit the N-1. Din almost laughs, it's so—so ridiculous, so adorable; but he's already fighting with the controls, the starfighter heaving and yawing. Must've hit an engine, and taken out a stabilizer along with it. The shriek of hyperspace is getting louder, louder, and it's abruptly taking all the strength in his arms just to hold the control yokes steady. But it won't be long, it can't be long—
The hyperlane contracts, expands, shivering and shuddering in a way Din's never seen before; and then the starfighter is hurled from it, realspace exploding into being around them. He feels a split second of fear, a tight cold knot deep in his gut—but no, there's the sandy-dull circle of Tatooine after all.
It isn't where it's supposed to be. The angle of the approach is going to be all wrong. But there's not a lot Din can do about it. They'll probably come down somewhere on the same hemisphere as Mos Eisley.
Probably.
But they're already inside the planet's gravity well, and there's nowhere else in what Din estimates is a steadily shrinking range, the starfighter already straining, an uneven tooth-rattling rumble in the sound of the remaining engine.
Peli is going to be outraged at what he's done to this ship, he thinks.
And then they hit atmo, and he isn't thinking anything at all. It's a blur—turbulence, bright heat tracing itself along the starfighter's curves and angles, which means they've lost dampeners, inertial shielding; the surface of Tatooine, rapidly expanding as they plunge toward it in a lurching, dizzying spiral; Grogu, crying out.
Din clings grimly to the control yokes, and counts it out in his head. He has to wait, has to wait, until just the right moment. Too soon, and it'll be too high. Too late, and it won't do any good.
Three seconds from the ground, he hits the switch, the only one that matters: the pod seat seals instantly, with the child still inside it, and ejects itself. And then he has time to draw one more breath, to brace himself against the control panel—
His mouth tastes terrible.
That's the first thing Din understands, the first thing he becomes aware of. His mouth tastes terrible, and that's because it's full of—full of—
It's never a good idea to cough inside the helmet; worse still to spit. He does it anyway, because he has to, because there's no other way. The blood is thick, hot against his chin, itchy trickles down the outside of his throat, an awful clogging coating over his teeth. And he still—he can't breathe, he realizes dimly, even with his mouth open.
There's a weight against his chest, but it isn't the problem, it can't be. It's too small. Just above the edge of the beskar chestplate, he can perceive a touch, a small round palm and three short fingers.
Grogu, he thinks, the closest he's come to clarity, and it's a jolt—he tenses up all over, manages to blink his eyes open, coughs again. He tries to move his arm, the one that isn't numb and heavy, pinned, but agony explodes through his chest, a horrible grating feeling.
That noise, that soft wordless grunt, must be Grogu. And the grating feeling sharpens—ribs, Din grasps, it must be his ribs—but something is changing, a soft, wet, suffocating pressure suddenly lifting from that side of his chest. Grogu makes another sound, thin and frantic, and Din jerks, convulsive, and then can breathe after all. Ragged, too-shallow, half-choked, but it works, and he does it again, again, and the odd flickering darkness at the edges of his vision starts to recede.
Oh. He'd thought he must've damaged the helmet, the visual display.
"Grogu," he croaks, and gets his hand to cooperate properly at last—drags his head up, and Grogu makes a warbling teary coo of a noise and tumbles into the crook of his arm, clinging to the edge of the chestplate. He's breathing hard, tiny chest heaving, huge eyes fixed on Din's face but still sinking half-shut, once and then again. "Hey, hey. Stop. You can stop, it's okay, I'm okay. Don't worry, I'm okay."
Grogu burbles, quieter, and turns his face into the chestplate, curls his tiny fingers in so tight his little clawed nails catch the underarmor.
Exhausted—but it's no wonder, Din understands, when he finally manages to make himself look up.
He's still in the cockpit of the starfighter. But the frame of it crumpled in around him, at the first impact, and then the ship plunged into the sand, deep into the side of a dune. Grogu must've come down, wherever it was the pod seat landed, and who knows how long it took him to—to wake, if he'd been knocked out the same way Din had. To wake, and find the rest of the ship, and he couldn't have peeled the cockpit open around Din without using the Force. Fixing Din's ribs, after all of that—no wonder he can't keep his eyes open.
Din holds him close, cradles him carefully; checks his pinned arm, but it seems it's only numb from his own weight, however long he's been trapped in here. It doesn't look severed, doesn't even look broken. He takes a chance, shifts, and once the first overpowering wave of pins and needles has subsided, it feels cold, clumsy, stiff and aching, but usable.
It takes him far too long to pry himself up, to lever himself over the side of the cockpit until he can roll out onto the sand. He does at least have enough strength, enough coordination, to keep Grogu tucked close, to make sure he lands on his back and his other side, and Grogu makes an anxious sound and only clings to him even more tightly.
The impact is—uncomfortable. But Din is very sure it would've been agonizing, if Grogu hadn't managed to fix his chest.
He still has to cough again. He catches his breath after, ragged, uneven; his head is pounding, slow waves washing up in a surge of throbbing pressure at his temples and then subsiding, over and over.
But he has to get up. He's going to have to get up. The starfighter hasn't been destroyed—Peli's probably going to be able to fix it, eventually. But it's half-wrecked, billowing dark smoke. He isn't going to be able to get it off the ground, and that means he needs to start walking. He has no idea where they are, whether he managed to bring them down anywhere near Mos Eisley. All he can see, sitting here resting his aching body against the side of the ship, is sand. But on Tatooine, that doesn't mean much.
Din shuts his eyes.
He has to get up. He has to find something, somewhere. A cave, a Tusken camp, an outpost. And he has to do it as quickly as possible, or neither of them will survive this.
Safety. He probably should've known better than to think there was any such thing, for him. But he supposes, if he had to pick—so many of the things that have mattered the most to him, even when he didn't know they would at the time, have happened to him on Tatooine: Mos Pelgo, and—and finding Boba Fett's armor; Fennec Shand, and Peli, and the starfighter; having Grogu returned to him when he'd thought he'd never see the child again. He can't claim it wouldn't be right, in a way, if he should die here too.
And, just as he's thinking it, he hears a sound.
At first, he decides it must be in his mind. But then it starts to get louder, starts to shift as if the source of it is moving, and that isn't the kind of trick his ears have ever played on him, no matter how hard he's hit his head. It occurs to him, in a cold stark instant, that it's some part of the ship, that it's about to explode—and then he sees the smudge against the sky, past the nearest dunes. A cloud of sand, dust. A skiff.
A skiff, and it's moving ludicrously fast, slicing across the tops of the dunes with quick sharp showers of sand, long scattering clouds of shadow with the angle of the double suns. Din stares at it, baffled, following its motion mindlessly; he's dimly aware that he should be leaping to his feet, finding somewhere for Grogu to hide, preparing to kill whoever this is if they should make it necessary, but that awareness fails to translate itself into movement.
The skiff drops lower, swings around and skids through the air, a hasty shortcut to bring it to a stop, and a figure drops from the side of it as the narrow deck tilts—lands on two feet, already moving, rushing across the sand.
"Mando—what in the ten hells's happened to you?"
And Din stares up blankly, abruptly cold all over, heart a knot in his chest, with the taste of his own blood in his mouth.
It's Cobb.
The dunes seem to tilt sideways, for an instant. Din shuts his eyes.
He should be outraged, probably. Cobb didn't—didn't follow the Way of the Mandalore, didn't understand it, had never sworn himself to it. His soul should be gone, lost, wandering in spiritual exile. He shouldn't be here, at the end, waiting for Din. All the teachings Din has ever known say so.
But all he can find within himself is a vague, numb gratitude. Cobb wouldn't have deserved such a fate. It's good, to think his soul is still intact, whole and safe—better still, to think there is some thread, somehow, that has tethered him to Din, and brought him here at a moment like this. It's selfish, it isn't the Way, but—Din wouldn't have wanted to be alone, in death.
"Please," he says, scraped and wavering, hoarse. "Please, don't take me yet."
"What?" Cobb says, still striding closer. Wonderful and terrible, both at once, that he should sound so very much like himself, the tone of his voice so vibrantly expressive. It's almost as if he's really there.
He reaches Din's side, drops to his knees and extends his hands, and then hesitates, as if he isn't sure where to start, what to do.
"Well, you sure are a mess, my friend. Anywhere on you that ain't hurting?"
Din blinks cold sweat out of his eyes. He can't make sense of a word Cobb is saying to him—but then perhaps that's only to be expected, the enlightenment that comes of crossing over still withheld from Din himself, for the moment.
"Please," he says again. "The child, I—I can't leave the child."
Surely even a dead man can understand that much. A dead man who has, somehow, been allowed within the borders of the true afterlife, the Mandalorian afterlife, can't have gotten there without some grasp of the tenets of the Way—and the care of foundlings is one of them. Surely he'll let Din find a safe place to leave Grogu, before drawing him free of the meaningless meat of his body.
"No, no, 'course not," Cobb murmurs to him, soothing, as if to gentle him.
And then, ten thousand times worse—he reaches for Grogu. Takes him, from the crook of Din's slack and helpless arm; and Grogu cries out in anxious gratitude, grabs for Cobb's hands, his sleeve.
No. No, no—
"Okay, little one, 's all right," Cobb adds, to Grogu, and then looks at Din again—grimaces, dark eyes wide, a furrow in his brow, as he reaches with his free hand to touch—
Din manages to tilt his head, and glances down.
Oh. It wasn't just his ribs, it was—something went through him, apparently, somewhere on the way down. There's a nasty ragged hole, just under the lower edge of the chestplate, and a truly excessive amount of blood.
It doesn't hurt. Not more than any other part of him, at least. But that probably shouldn't be a surprise. Fair enough, he thinks. Not Cobb's fault; of course it isn't. And Grogu isn't Cobb's fault, either. Maybe he'd been hurt after all, when the pod seat had landed—maybe he'd spent too much of himself trying to save Din. Cobb isn't to blame for being the one here to take them both.
"Hell of a lot of smoke," Cobb's saying, "coming up out of that thing. Saw it all the way from Freetown. Came as fast as I could—knew I'd have to be quick, if I was going to find anybody who'd survived before something else happened along. But I didn't for a moment think it might be you."
Din blinks again. He thinks—he thinks perhaps he can feel it happening, the slow dissolution of all that holds him to his flesh, the severing of himself.
"I'm sorry," he manages.
Cobb frowns at him, close and gentle, concerned. "Mando—"
"I'm sorry," he says again, and it takes what feels like all that he has left to lift a clumsy arm, to find the wrist of Cobb's free hand and close his gloved fingers around it. His blood is smeared across Cobb's palm—but that's good. That will leave a mark, and one Din will be glad to bear into the afterlife with him.
He braces himself, drags Cobb's hand up as high as he can manage, fumbles to press Cobb's palm to the curve of his helmet, Cobb's thumb stretched out across the brow.
"I shouldn't have come to you," he admits, soft and ragged. "You were killed because of me. I didn't want that. I never wanted that. I was—I wanted—"
"Mando," Cobb repeats, and he sounds sweetly startled, breathless.
But then he's dead. He has no breath to breathe.
And Din is dead, too, or about to be; Cobb wouldn't be here, if he weren't. So it must be all right, at last, to say it.
"I wanted you. I saved the child because it was right, because I couldn't do otherwise. But I'd never wanted anything for myself, before that—before you. I would've done anything to save you, if I'd known."
"Oh, fuck," Cobb says blankly.
"I'm sorry," Din says, one last time, and then the soft endless dark rises up to swallow him.
He comes awake on an indrawn breath, in a place he doesn't know.
It's a room: clean dusky sandcrete walls, bright light streaming in through the windows, a small table, a chair; a handful of other objects, storage closures and knickknacks.
Din is in a bed, which takes up almost half of it. It's a comfortable bed, and he lies there, blinking, absorbing the sensation of it. He's almost certain this isn't what death is supposed to be like. But if it isn't death, then he's utterly at a loss to guess what it is.
He is, at least, wearing his helmet, which is reassuring. His armor's been removed, but it isn't gone; he can see it, stacked up neatly against one of the walls, gleaming. Clean.
Blood, he remembers. There had been—there was blood all over him. Little wonder someone had wanted to take care of it before putting him in this very nice bed.
He turns his head. He doesn't see Grogu; but there's a soft depression in the second pillow, his helmet's infrared scanner helpfully highlighting a pattern of lingering warmth in the dip of it. It's the right size, too. Must've been the child, and he can't have gone far. Din feels a certain quiet tension that had been lodged between his shoulder blades unraveling itself.
He aches, but only a little bit. He dares to lift his arms, to reach up and touch the helmet—it's twisted sideways the barest fraction, not quite settled right on his head. It's less painful to move, to hold his head up for a moment, than he'd thought it might be.
And then something moves, someone—someone stepping into the smooth open arch of the doorway.
Cobb.
Din stares at him, swallowing.
Cobb. Cobb, and he's—he's still got that red kerchief of his; the salt-and-pepper of his hair, the stubble on his jaw, is the same, and the wry friendly lines around his eyes. Almost exactly the way Din remembers him, and yet not quite. New pair of gloves, though still the kind that cut off at the first knuckle, the way Cobb seems to like them, tucked into his belt; and a dark shirt, not the dusty red one Din might have pictured.
If this is in his head, though, it shouldn't be different. There shouldn't be anything he isn't expecting. Should there?
But—but Cobb is—
"Oh," Cobb says, and stops. "You're awake. Kid's okay," he adds quickly. "He's just fine. Jo's looking after him. Got a few of the Freetown kids out today, playing games, taking turns on her speeder, that sort of thing. Needed some rest, but then he was right as rain, and—" Cobb pauses, and makes a sheepish kind of face. "Well, frankly, I suspect he was getting bored of watching you sleep, seeing as you're bein' looked after and all."
Din says nothing, can say nothing. His head feels utterly empty.
"That is, uh." Cobb dips his head, rubs a hand across the nape of his neck for a moment. "Not that there was all that much looking after to do, strictly speaking. You looked a right horror show, but aside from your head, and all that blood you seem to have lost—can't say how you managed to lose it, mind, seeing as I couldn't find a leak anywhere—you're okay. Had to clean you up and get some water in you; I shut my eyes before I took it off," and Din understands dimly that he means the helmet, that that's why it had been awry before: Cobb, with his eyes shut, wiping Din's bloody face carefully clean, trickling water into his mouth—fumbling, feeling around, to get the helmet back on without looking. "Hope that don't break your rules, but if it does, I'm sorry, and if there's anything I can do to make it right, you just tell me what it is."
Din bites down on a swell in his throat that might or might not have come out as a laugh. He knows how to reach the mines of Mandalore, now, the waters of the mythosaur—if he has to make that journey again, then so be it. It seems like such a small price to pay, now, to be here, in a room, with Cobb.
"But," is all he can think to say. "But, Cobb—you're dead."
Cobb looks at him, and tilts his head. His eyes narrow; his gaze is intent, gently searching. "Yeah," he murmurs, "you were saying a little something about that earlier."
"You were shot," Din repeats. "Cad Bane shot you."
"Indeed he did," Cobb agrees, and then he reaches up, hooks two fingers in the collar of his shirt beneath the kerchief and draws it open, wide, over his collarbone, part of his shoulder.
He's been rebuilt, somehow. The skin of his chest—ends; beyond it, there's the silver gleam of metal, pistons and ports and wires.
"Got me pretty good," Cobb's saying, rueful. "Had to install a whole new shoulder, lung, the works. Half my arm, too. Other half's still meat, though," and he bends the arm, lifts his hand—which is indeed skin instead of metal—and then twiddles his fingers at Din. "Awful fond of this new elbow, if I may say so. Old one was starting to stiffen up a little."
He falls silent. He's still looking at Din, those warm dark eyes cautious, a tentative slant to his mouth.
Alive.
And Din sits there in the sunlight, clutches Cobb's clean pale sheets in his hands, and tries to work out how to believe it.
It's just that it seems impossible. It must be impossible. The words had been a blaster shot to the gut: You should've never left him without his armor. Din's fault, and in so many more ways than one; because he had left Cobb without his armor, had taken it from him, and then had guaranteed he'd need it, asking him for help he'd been under no true obligation to give without a thought for what it might mean, what the Pykes might do to him for it.
He's been shouldering the cold heavy weight of it, the knowledge of his errors and of the price Cobb had been forced to pay because of them, ever since. And it feels utterly unreal that it should simply—dissolve. That he should be forgiven, so readily, so completely, by the universe, and without even being required to climb down a mythosaur's throat first.
Cobb clears his throat. "Starting to come under the impression you may not have known about that part."
"No," Din says, and shuts his eyes. "Cad Bane was there, when we fought the Pykes. He told us Freetown wasn't coming, that he—that he'd paid you a visit. He knew that I'd gone to you, that I'd asked you for your help and you'd agreed to give it. And he killed you for it—"
"He did not," Cobb says firmly, and Din isn't looking, still can't, but it doesn't matter; he can hear the rush of Cobb's steps crossing the room, the weight of him settling on the edge of the bed, the warm reassuring pressure of his hand closing on Din's knee. "He gave the attempt some modicum of effort, I'll grant you, but he didn't kill me, Mando. I'm all right. Okay?"
Din shakes his head—not in denial, not in dismissal, simply because it's too much, because he can do no better. He fumbles a hand free of the sheets, grips Cobb's wrist and digs his fingers in with helpless greedy desperation; and it remains, stubbornly real, solid under his hand.
"And, if I may," Cobb adds, "I hope you ain't thinking it wouldn't've been more than worth it to me if he had."
"Cobb—"
"No," Cobb says, not unkindly. "You hush up and let me say my piece, my friend. I'd rather get myself shot for saying yes to you when you needed me than go on without a scratch for saying no. Fine way to go, for the sake of having promised to help a man in want of it, and better than any number of others I could name. Got my pick of deaths, out here," he adds, "and if I had the chance to choose one for myself, well, I fancy that'd be it."
No. Din shakes his head again, and this time, that's what he means by it. No. Now that he has, so suddenly and unexpectedly, been handed a universe where Cobb Vanth is alive, he can imagine few things worse than being forced to return to the one he had inhabited, had believed he inhabited—than having it made real after all. "No," he says aloud, too sharply.
Cobb huffs out a sigh through his nose, and then—and then he must move, his arm, his hand; the one Din isn't clinging to. Because now there's a soft weight, against the curve of the helmet, the long smooth edge that arcs down one of the cheeks of the faceplate.
"You looking at me, in there?"
Din swallows. His eyes are still closed, though of course Cobb has no way of knowing it. He doesn't want to open them. But it would be wrong, dishonorable, to lie.
He blinks, allows himself to look past Cobb; and then at his shoulder, his collar still tugged sideways, loose and open, and the glinting metal visible beneath it; and then at the line of his jaw, his nose, until he can bear to meet Cobb's eyes at last. He gives Cobb the barest tiny nod—but like this, hand against the helmet, as good as holding Din's face, Cobb must be able to feel it.
"All right," Cobb says softly. "Back there, you were—" He stops, throat working. "You said some things. And I realize you thought you were seeing me because I was dead—because you were dead, or at least that state of being was imminently approaching. So I ain't going to hold you to anything, you understand, but I ought to say something now, and the thing is you said it for me.
"I was a slave, once. Didn't have much of anything for myself, and didn't want much of anything neither, seeing as there wasn't any point in it. Didn't hardly know what it meant, really. And then I was free, and I came to Mos Pelgo, and folks took me on as sheriff, and I—I wanted things for the town, I guess, or for the people living in it, but there wasn't much I needed, and even less I'd have wasted my time yearning for. Wasn't room for it, in my life, in me. Wasn't in the habit of it."
Din's face feels hot. He doesn't know what to do, where to look; not that it matters, because he can't stop staring at Cobb, those warm steady eyes.
"But you," Cobb says, and Din had the dim understanding that it was coming, that it had to be, but hearing it aloud is still—his voice, the gentle gravel scrape of it as he says it, sends a slow shuddering feeling through Din, all over. "I—well, I do want you, in all them pure stupid selfish ways people do. So, y'see, even if I weren't willing to go on and die on principle alone, I'd still have said yes. Because it was you asking. Because for all the things I was telling myself had to be weighed, whether folks would be willing, whether it was all right to ask, I wanted to, for you."
Din draws a breath, long and slow and shaking. He ought to—thank Cobb, or—he doesn't know what's right, what makes sense. He only knows that what he wants to say is—
"Close your eyes," he hears himself whisper, soft hoarse white noise, through the helmet.
Cobb looks at him, for a long long moment. His breath's coming unsteadily, too, Din realizes distantly, something soft and sweet and unsure in his face.
And then he does it, lets his eyes fall shut.
Din reaches up, and takes the helmet off, and kisses him.
It's awkward. He had known it would be. He's only ever seen it, people on streetcorners, holovids, flashing shimmering advertisements on the walls of cheap transport carriers. He doesn't know what he's supposed to do, where to put his hands, if he's supposed to put them anywhere at all. He feels clumsy, and foolish, and absolutely certain he couldn't have gone another moment without doing it, whatever Cobb thinks of him for it.
And then Cobb inhales, quick, against Din's mouth, and reaches up—
It's astonishing, overwhelming. Din is suddenly, mindlessly aware of every single place where he is touching Cobb, where Cobb is touching him: not just their mouths, but the press of Cobb's nose against his cheek, the scratch of Cobb's bristled chin against the side of his. And now, here, the impossible, staggering wealth of Cobb's hand on his face, Cobb's fingers skimming up his cheek, Cobb's palm against his jaw. The warmth of it, the gentle living pressure, skin—skin, to his skin, and he finds himself shivering helplessly, shoving himself at Cobb, starving for it.
He has no idea how long it is before the kiss breaks, and even once it has, it doesn't feel over, because Cobb hardly moves away at all. Din bites down on the inside of his cheek, and then, daring, stays where he is; presses his temple to Cobb's, leaning into the strong sturdy line of Cobb's new shoulder.
"Well," Cobb murmurs, hoarse. "You sure are full of surprises, Mando."
Din swallows. "Din," he tells Cobb quietly. "My name is—Din Djarin."
"Din Djarin," Cobb repeats. "Okay," and then he's moving, shifting the touch of his fingertips to the underside of Din's jaw, guiding Din's face where he wants it—and his eyes are still shut tight, but Din's aren't. He gets to watch the soft slow smile, blooming bright across Cobb's face, and his heart feels pressed tight in his chest, so grateful his eyes are hot, as Cobb draws him gently in to kiss him again.