Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

During his training in the fighting corps and then later as an apprentice under the beroya ^{[bounty hunter]} Din had learned a great deal about overcoming problems. You might even say he had become adept at it. Blaster out of charge or reach? Your body is a weapon many will underestimate. Not sure if a client is trying to fleece you? Grow a bartering backbone learning the ropes with Tuskens and Jawas. Ship falling to pieces? Employ some creative piloting methods and aim for a survivable crash.

None of that training had prepared him for his current situation.

His quest was, miraculously, complete – even if at a terrible cost. Grogu had a teacher and was with his own kind. Din had a broken clan and creed, a hole in the ground for a ship, and a glowing laser sword that apparently made him king of a dead planet.

No, worse than that, Din had somehow managed to become both dar’manda ^{[no longer Mandalorian, an exile]} and Manda’lor ^{[sole leader, title for the ruler of Mandalore]} in quick succession. If the titles and their meanings weren’t so integral to the history and culture of his people, and the circumstances had been less bizarre, he would have laughed.

He had laughed, though it was tinged with hysteria, once he had sat still for long enough in the hold of Fett’s ship for the reality of the day’s events to catch up with him. 

His solution to that problem, of course, was to avoid sitting still.

How he had ended up on Fett’s ship in the first place, he wasn’t entirely sure. Everything after the doors had shut on the Jedi and the kid – his kid – was more than a little hazy. Some of that was no doubt down to the aches he was beginning to feel in his back and shoulders. Under his flight suit he was certain a multitude of bruises were busy blossoming. Even his head had joined in, beginning to hurt as it was in entirely new and creative ways with a pain not dissimilar to an overstretched muscle taking up residence in his temple.

If he hadn’t spent years building up mental fortitude through near constant exposure to the more morally dubious elements of bounty hunting as a profession, Din might have assumed that he’d finally lost his mind.

Maybe he had. At least madness would explain the incessant ringing noise that emanated from the small black blade on his belt and sat, barely perceptible, at the edge of his hearing, providing an unrelenting reminder of his less-than-ideal circumstances.

Eventually his pacing slowed and he slid back to the floor, tipping his head back until his helmet hit the hull of Fett’s ship with a metallic thunk, and tried to compartmentalise.

Go back to the basics. List your problems, Djarin, then work through them one by one.

Problem one, his son was gone.

His son was gone.

No, correction. His son was with the Jedi, and was finally free to become who he was meant to be. As for the gaping ache in his chest and his inability to draw a full breath, whatever their cause they paled in comparison to the safety and happiness of his child.

So, problem one.

By Creed, he was no longer Mandalorian. He had removed his helmet and, yes, he had also put it back on and, well, it was proving difficult to regret the reason in light of the memory of a ghostly pressure, a tiny hand caressing his face – no don’t think about that.

But if he wasn’t Mandalorian, then who was Din Djarin? What did it mean that Bo-Katan and Boba Fett both had no issue proclaiming themselves Mandalorian and had the lineages to back it up, but showed their faces freely?

Just thinking about it was worsening his delightful new headache.

Mentally, he put problem one under 'existential crisis to return to later once you've slept for more than two hours'.

Problem two, he had accidentally become king of Mandalore courtesy of a weird laser sword and for reasons he couldn’t fathom, Bo-Katan had refused to remove it from his possession. This did not help with the whole ‘maybe not Mandalorian anymore’ issue. Was it even possible to be Manda’lor if you weren’t Mandalorian?

Either way, unlike his other dilemma this one should be easy enough to sort out. All he had to do was hand said laser sword off to someone else, ideally Mandalorian, and it would no longer be his problem.

Problem three, the ringing. The karking ringing. On the off chance it wasn’t solely being caused the so-called darksaber and might be an actual medical issue, he'd need his buir ^[parent].

Next issue, he had no idea if his buir was alive nor where to find her. Of course, there was a good chance the Armourer would know, but that meant finding the Armourer and if he did that, he would have to admit his transgressions and face the possibility of being cast out with no answers.

He could only hope his buir would be forgiving.

Osik ^[shit]. He’d never introduced her to Grogu and she’d been pestering him about making her a ba'buir ^{[grandparent]} for years.

He knocked his helmeted head against the wall a few times in the vague hopes it would make the concussion he undoubtedly had bad enough to cause temporary memory loss.

New problem. When - if - he found her, his buir was going to kill him.

For nearly thirty years, Din had lived blissfully free of the high-pitched staticky sound that had haunted his first days in the company of his rescuers.

Loud noises were a hazard of Mandalorian life, and of his chosen profession in particular, but it had been the explosions that took his birth family from him that did the damage – long before his hands ever wrapped around the grip of a blaster, or pulled the pin from a grenade. Still, the covert looked after its own and newly found, newly orphaned Din was no exception.

The moment they had realised his lack of response and understanding was a result of injury rather than a lack of education his finder had taken him directly to see the baar'ur ^[medic].

Within a few days of their first introduction one of the covert’s medics had managed to coax the first smile out of him since he’d been pulled from the bunker on Aq Vetina, resolved his hearing issue and adopted him, all with a brisk and awe-inspiring efficiency.

Kark, he missed her.

The pile of armour in the sewers on Nevarro had haunted his sleep for months after the Armourer had sent him on his quest. On the worst nights he had imagined a familiar green helmet with orange stripes amongst the pieces of the fallen.

He had wondered once or twice on the flight to the Moff’s cruiser if Mayfield had spotted the implants, if it had been a glimpse of the metal behind his ears usually hidden from sight along with his face, that had inspired his declaration of Din’s supposed deafness in the Imp base. As though his buir would ever have allowed shoddy work that left him to the mercy of the ringing sound.

No, Din’s silence was usually a choice. At times even a weapon of its own.

Plenty of those Din had encountered across the years, allies, and targets both, had assumed that his imposing yet soundless stare was because he had been raised by monstrous fighters who valued bulk and brawn over dialogue. Some, he knew, believed him illiterate, capable only of violence.

Whatever they were imagining, the reality was far worse.

Din Djarin hadn't been raised by monsters. He'd been raised by medics.

Any baar'ur worth their salt was required to master the art of taming Mandalorian warriors, becoming capable of getting even the most stubborn and argumentative to sit still and shut up with nothing more than a pointed stare, visor to visor, before they learned to hold a scalpel.

There was a reason that in Mandalorian culture medics were treated with a level of respect that was on par with armourers.

Din didn’t mind the reputation, not really. It meant that his bounties tended to underestimate him, which in turn made the jobs easier and as a result he came home with fewer injuries for buir to lecture him about.

Occasionally, he had to make a trip home because the helmet had failed to fully protect him from a hit and the ringing came back.

Aila had never questioned his continued aversion to droids, even long into his time serving as the tribe’s beroya, an honour bestowed upon only the fiercest of warriors. Part of him wondered, sometimes, if his reaction to the med-droid in those early days had been what motivated her to adopt him in the first place. What had happened exactly, he couldn’t recall, only that when he’d come back to himself, he’d managed to throw both the droid and a bunch of tools and equipment across the room. The next day Aila had spoken the gai bal manda ^{[the Mandalorian adoption vow]}. It was practical. Helmets could be removed amongst clan, he had an injury that would require his face to be seen for it to be treated, and medics took an oath to cause no harm to their patients.

Of course, if it had been practical to start with, it didn’t stay that way long. Aila was one of the few people who had felt warm and safe back then, and over time she became much more to him until eventually she became buir.

As such, no one else suspected that there was anything more to his unplanned visits to the covert than a good son appeasing the whims of his ageing parent – Aila had made certain of that.

So, when he started to hear the ringing sound again on Moff Gideon’s cruiser, he worried for a moment that one of the blows he had taken to the head had damaged his implants in some way and his first thought was buir would have words for him, going toe to toe with a dark trooper like a di'kut ^[idiot]. His second, once he had shoved down the flash of premature grief with an ease brought on by repeated practice, was that he might have a serious problem.

Not an immediate one, thankfully he had kept up his sign and between that and the transcript software he could run in his HUD he’d be able to follow what was happening, but he still had no idea if Aila had survived Nevarro. If she hadn’t – well, despite his eventual willingness to accept help from IG-11 the last thing he wanted was for a droid to start messing about inside his head with decades-old, custom-made medical equipment.

As he powered down the darksaber, intending to hold it out to Bo-Katan to fulfil that deal so he could take Grogu and go and panic about this new issue privately, the buzzing sound abruptly muted.

For a moment he looked at the weapon in his hand, thrown, as Bo-Katan and Gideon started snapping at each other saying something along the lines of ‘must be won in combat’ and ‘ruler of Mandalore’.

He tuned the clearing sounds out. Instead, he turned the darksaber on and off again a few times just to make sure, ignoring the eyes he could feel watching as the occupants of the room tried to work out what he was doing and whether they should have been more concerned about potential head injuries.

It was definitely the blade causing it – which meant it probably wasn’t the implants, a small relief. This was just what the darksaber sounded like once the adrenaline of the fight had faded.

“You have got to be kriffing kidding me,” he murmured to himself.

Finally, he turned the blade off and let the tension leech out of his shoulders as the residual ringing faded away once more. Then, he started to focus on the exchange happening and realised he probably should have been paying attention all along.

Din stepped off Fett’s ship onto the familiar ashy ground of Nevarro and wondered what came next.

For the duration of their journey through hyperspace, what happened next had been a problem for future Din. Now he was future Din. Future Din continued to have no idea what to do. His head, past the persistent ache, felt vaguely floaty.

“Mando?” The ringing sound was still there. “Din?”

Attention caught by the use of his given name, he forced his focus to the people standing around him. Judging by their expressions, it hadn’t been their first attempt to get a response from him. Cara was frowning, the carbonite slab housing Gideon, comically captured in a moment of outrage, floating behind her. Fett and Fennec were hovering on the ramp of the ship.

“Yes, Cara?” he asked.

Her frown smoothed out and to his immense relief the look her face settled on wasn’t one of pity. “You got any plans? Anywhere you want to go?”

He hadn’t. His plan had been to return Grogu to his kind and that was done. If he had a home to return to then he might have headed there, but the Crest was gone and so was the covert. Getting on Fett’s ship hadn’t been a conscious decision and its destination had been out of his control.

“Not really,” he said with a light shrug and immediately regretted it when various scrapes and scars reminded him of their presence.

On second thought, maybe a med-centre would be a good call.

“Well,” Cara continued, “I need to drop this waste of space off for the New Republic to pick up. The reward is yours, of course, for bringing him in.”

Din wasn’t sure if credits were really going to be much help at this point. “Thank you,” he said anyway, because it was only polite.

“It would be more than enough to get your own place here,” Cara continued with a soft smile, gesturing at the port which had become considerably more respectable during his travels. “Or a new ship if you wanted, though I certainly wouldn’t mind a hand keeping the ruffians at bay. I’m sure some have crawled out of the woodwork whilst I’ve been away.”

“We’re heading to Tatooine soon.” Fett spoke up behind him. “Wouldn’t mind extras hands whilst we get established there, and I’ve got a spare bunk on board.”

“Or,” Cara returned, turning her attention to Fett and folding her arms, leaning casually against the carbonite with her hip, “I have an actual bed with an actual mattress and a bottle of spotchka that needs drinking.”

“Thought you’d never ask,” Fennec interjected with a smirk.

“Sorry,” Cara shot back, “Mando gets first shot. He owes me an arm-wrestling rematch. Maybe some other time.”

Din looked back and forth between them feeling oddly like a spectator at a bolo-ball match. Were they – fighting? Over him? Something new was aching in his chest and he fought the urge to rub at it.

It was jarring going from having no idea what to do to suddenly having multiple options. To have people – dare he say friends and wasn’t that strange because he’d not had friends outside of the covert since, well, since they’d first taken him in, not when their secrecy was their survival – willing to give him a place to stay until he found his feet again. Nice, but strange.

Over his head, the argument continued. Fett seemed to be trying to claim him through the common history as mando'ade ^{[children of Mandalore]} and Cara on the basis that she had been the first trusted with his name.

The ringing noise and his headache were getting harder to ignore. In a way he was thankful for it because the pain brought focus and clarity both.

He had no home at present, but there might yet be a way to find one that he had lost.

“I appreciate the offers,” he managed to bite out. They all fell silent at his words, quiet though they had been, and turned expectantly.

“But?” Cara asked after a moment with a knowing look.

“But I have something I need to do.”

She nodded in simple acceptance, and Fett and Fennec seemed to back down a little.

“We’re not in a rush.” Fett offered.

Cara simply reached out to clasp his forearm in a warrior’s grasp. “Just promise you’ll stop by to pick up the credits before you head off-planet?” she asked.

“I will,” he said.

With careful steps, he began to trace a path he had taken many times before, heading deep into the depths of Nevarro.

There was nothing but dust and dirt in what had once been his home, the echoing halls of his covert. A phantom rhythmic clanging of hammer on beskar moved through the space as Din knelt in front of where the forge had once stood.

As expected, the Armourer had left no trace - at least none that the ordinary eye could see.

With a tap to his vambrace, heat sensors overlaid his vision, catching on the warmth of his own hand as it brushed debris from the floor. Beskar was too precious these days to be used for anything other than armour, but trace elements of durasteel did the job just as well.

To anyone else, it might have looked as though something had sparked and left a spray of marks across the floor. To a Mandalorian, the flecks of cold metal formed a short, simple message in Dadita.

Considering that the covert had been long emptied the last time he had left these rooms behind, the co-ordinates could only have been left for him.

Memorising them, Din used his flamethrower to disrupt what remained, erasing the final remnants of their presence. It felt wrong to eliminate those last traces.

For a moment, he simply sat in the heavy silence and contemplated. Even the ringing seemed to calm.

Then, he pulled out his vibroblade and the stick of incense that he had picked up at the market. The incense he placed inside an empty shell casing for his now destroyed Amban rifle and lit it with a quick and efficient burst from his flamethrower. The vibroblade he dug into the floor, slowly and methodically carving the symbol of his people.

Mandalorian culture had its own mourning ritual, but Mandalorians themselves were from many different cultures. Where possible, they were encouraged to merge customs together.

For Din, that meant lighting incense before he recited the words, a finger pressed light to his forehead, then to the centre of his chest, the mirror of his parents at the village shrine.

“Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum ^{[daily remembrance “I'm still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal”]}.”

He did not know for certain which names should follow, so he left them unspoken and vowed to add them to his daily remembrances once he found the Armourer and confirmed who had marched on.

Traditionally, his parents had waited until the incense stopped burning before they moved on. Din didn’t always have the time for that and so was grateful for the times when he did have the luxury of pausing.

Taking a moment to gather himself, he considered the next step in his journey. He would need a ship to reach the place the Armourer had chosen. Of course, he could simply not go, but he wanted what may well be his final actions as a Mandalorian to be honourable.

Besides, if he could, he would prefer to return his armour to his buir. He owed her that, at least.

Breathing deep, or as deep as his abused ribs would let him, he tried to sink into the calm state that his parents had taught him, into that place where everything faded away and yet was so overwhelmingly present. It wasn’t dissimilar to what Grogu had done on the seeing stone he knew, just without the kid’s special powers and the glowing column of blue light.

Strangely, the closer he got to that place, the quieter the ringing seemed to get, and the gentler his headache became.

Perhaps Grogu was rubbing off on him, if Jedi powers could do such a thing.

Only he’d never know because Grogu was gone. He was a clan of one again, soon to be a clan of none if events unveiled as he expected them to do. The mudhorn signet he bore would be returned to the tribe and reshaped for the foundlings, as was the way.

Taking another breath, he did his best to push the thoughts away and return to that calm space again. Or at least, he would have if he hadn’t heard approaching footsteps which put him straight back on guard.

“Mando!” cried Greef Karga down the tunnel, ever exuberant. “I thought I might find you down here.”

Slowly, Din drew his hand back from where it had automatically gone for his blaster. He could pinpoint the exact moment that Karga rounded the corner even with his back to the doorway because the man’s gait stumbled as he realised what he was walking in on.

“Ah, my apologies,” Greef tried again, more subdued. “I did not mean to intrude.”

Din tipped his head to indicate that he didn’t mind.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Ah, yes,” Karga shuffled. “Cara caught me before she called the New Republic and explained your - situation. I actually had an offer for you, a nice tract of land has become available down by the lava flats, not too far from the trading port. Cara mentioned that the Empire had deprived you of your ship. A tragedy to be sure, she was one of a kind.”

Safely hidden behind his visor Din blinked, bewildered. Was everyone he knew going to try and give him lodgings now, or had they all been struck by a bizarre generosity today and would regain their sanity tomorrow?

“I – thank you,” he spluttered as he tried to kick his brain back into full gear. “Perhaps another time.”

“Fair enough, I know you’re a busy man.” The incense stick Din extinguished between gloved fingers as Karga moved up behind him with an aborted noise of surprise. “I didn’t know you were an artist, Mando.”

Din glanced down at the mythosaur freshly carved into the floor. It wasn’t the neatest work, but looking at it gave him another idea.

Pushing himself off the floor in a flurry of rattling beskar and restoring energy, he clapped Karga on the shoulder, jolting the man back a step with the force of it.

“Thank you,” he said, hoping he managed to convey the earnest feeling behind it.

“What for?” Karga’s voice rang after him as he strode towards the exit. “What did I do?”

The Armourer could wait one more day. Mandalorians were taught that a warrior is more than his armour, and that family is more than blood. They had ways of recognising both which could not be so easily removed as a helmet, nor so easily broken as a Creed.

He knocked on the door to the Marshall’s office, the beskar in his vambrace giving it a melodic edge.

Care Dune looked up and offered a smile, one hand already reaching for a rather sizable bag of credits, presumably the reward for turning in the Moff, but before she could say anything he held up a hand to forestall her.

“Cara, are you any good at drawing?”

Cara’s widening eyes darted between the hand he was holding aloft, or more accurately the flask of ink and a thin metal pen with a hollow pointed tip in his grasp, and his visor as she worked out his intention.

“Kriffing hells, Din” she blurted. “I guess if you buy me a drink first.”

It had a been a day. The ringing was still driving him mad, his headache wouldn't go away, and he knew that everything he was bottling up would have to come out eventually.

For now, though, Din let Cara’s shocked bewilderment buoy him and laughed.

Chapter Text

Cara refused to do anything until he’d had some sleep.

Din wasn’t sure if it was because she’d been keeping track of his rest and lack thereof, or that he’d come across as even more manic than he’d felt. Sleep was not something he expected to come easy to him, not now that he had given up everything – his home, his Creed, his son.

Not now that the darksaber was happily humming away at that grating high-pitch even whilst deactivated.

He stared at the hilt of the blade, laid on the table by the bed in Cara’s house – well, perhaps glared would be the more accurate term – and tried to work out if there was a way to get the noise to stop.

First, he tried adjusting the settings on his implants, but it seemed the darksaber was somehow impervious to the sound cancellation his buir had programming into them. Next, he tried leaving the darksaber in a separate room to see if distance made a difference. It did seem to help a little, but left something in him anxious that, unprotected, the weapon might end up in the wrong hands, that anyone could take it, including those who were not Mandalorian.

It was a Mandalorian weapon after all, an heirloom of their people. It certainly had Mandalorian stubbornness.

Finally, he gave up, resigned to another broken night. Leaving the cursed thing within reach, he settled down onto the mattress, armour off, helmet on – which he tried not to dwell on – and swore he would throw the darksaber at the next Mandalorian he saw and run, legends and Creed be damned.

In response, the blade’s humming seemed to kick up a gear, growing more discordant and heightening the already thumping pain in his head.

I will use you as a kitchen knife, Din thought viciously and with a dose of sleep-deprived hysteria. I will give up bounty hunting and open a cafe that serves darksaber toasted bread.

The humming abruptly vanished.

He tipped his head to the slide so he could look at the hilt, momentarily thrown.

“Thank you?” he said after a long moment and tried not to think too much about the fact that he was speaking to an inanimate object.

Now that the ringing had vanished, he became aware of other things. Namely that the bed was karking soft, like sinking into a cloud. Maybe he would take Cara up on her offer for the sake of his poor back.

Still, he kept watch on the darksaber, as though expecting the sound to come back the second he so much as blinked.

It didn’t, and to his shame his blink became less of a blink and more of a twelve-hour rest for his eyes entirely without his permission.

When he woke, he felt different. Calmer in body and mind, more settled, but no less convicted in the decisions he had made the day before. The streets of Nevarro were more present, more vivid as he traversed them. How at the end of his very frayed rope he must have been. The only thing that had not improved with rest was the darksaber situation. When he woke, the humming sound greeted him, but it was quieter now, subdued.

Maybe Cara had been right to wait. If he’d drifted off in the middle of the process it might have ruined her line work.

“I’m not drunk enough for this,” Cara muttered, brows furrowed together in concentration. “And you’re definitely not drunk enough.”

Din snorted but otherwise held completely still as she finished tracing the design onto his skin.

“Should I be worried?” he asked.

Cara leaned down to pick up his discarded pauldron and held it against his shoulder, considering.

“Nah. Looks fine,” she said, setting aside his armour and moving to uncap the ink. “Fair warning, I’ve not done this in a long time.”

“Neither have I,” Din admitted.

Cara wasn’t exactly subtle as she glanced down at his forearm again, where his pel’gam tome’tayl ^{[Markers of the Way (lit. “skin memory”)]} were exposed to the morning light.

The Markers of the Way were no longer as clean or crisp as they had been when he was young, but they still revealed the story of his heritage and he had to resist from covering them from the eyes of an outsider. It had been hard enough stripping down to his flight suit, let alone pulling an arm out of it so Cara could give him another marker even though his helmet was firmly on his head, so used he was to being completely covered.

Oddly, the buzzing at the edge of his hearing was now not dissimilar to the noise made by the machine used to draw his first pel’gam tome’tayl, so he didn’t mind it so much.

“You did those?” Cara asked.

“No.” The first two he had been granted the right to wear only few years apart, and he wouldn’t have trusted himself to get the line neat, not young as he was. The third hadn’t been awarded until over a decade later. “My buir did them.”

His buir should be doing this one too. If she’d been there on the day the Armourer welded his new signet to his shoulder, she would have sat him down the first opportunity she had.

She would have been so proud.

“What’s a buir?” Cara asked, tripping slightly over the word. “Do you mean an Armourer?”

Din nearly choked at the thought. Cara flicked him lightly with a finger, which did the job of reminding him that moving was not advised when someone was about to start tattooing you.

“Hold still,” she commanded, before pressing the point of the pen into his shoulder. The pain was barely noticeable, nothing compared to what he had endured only a day ago, or indeed anytime in his years as beroya for the tribe.

Nothing compared to the pain within, the ache that someone else should be pressing the mark into him.

“Not what,” he managed, “who.”

Cara leaned back to inspect the beginning of her work and raised an eyebrow in question.

“Buir means,” he rolled the word around in his head as he tried to find the best translation, and then to work out how much he felt comfortable sharing. Cara was technically an outsider, but, then, by the rules of his Creed so was he, even if he was king of Mandalore.

Cara was perhaps the closest thing he currently had to aliit ^{[family / clan]}.

“Buir means parent.”

“Oh,” Cara said, making the next few marks with a surprisingly steady hand considering the glass she had downed before starting. “So, the Armourer’s not your mum?”

It was only the knowledge that it would ruin the lines that prevented Din from twitching at the thought.

“Kark no,” he replied, amused. “She’s the alor ^{[leader / chief]}, our leader. My buir is Alia, our baar’ur.” His instinctive use of the present tense to refer to her nearly derailed his thoughts again because he didn’t know. “Medic,” he translated, before Cara could ask, and to distract himself before he could fall down that hole again.

Cara shot another glance at him, which this time lingered on his scars. There were a few that had earned him a full afternoon lecture, but he knew that without Alia’s teachings, there were also a few that he would not have survived, and for that he would be forever in her debt.

Once he was sure Cara had moved away for a moment, he followed the explanation up with, “though I suppose, by your standards, the Armourer would be my aunt.”

Cara spluttered but recovered quickly, smacking him lightly with her free arm.

“You know what? That explains so much,” she teased. “So, if Alia is your buir, and the Armourer is your aunt, what does that make me?”

“A pain in my shebs ^[backside],” he replied without thought.

Another snort. Cara had clearly understood the intent behind his words even if not their exact meaning.

Cara’s eyes drifted down his arm again, sobering. “Can I ask what they mean?”

Din smoothed a finger over the markings. Usually he would be cautious to share information about his – about Mandalorian –culture, but if he trusted Cara enough to do this for him, then he could trust her not to share his secrets, at least whilst they were still his to share.

That thought had a lump building in his throat. He wanted her to know, wanted to be able to crack open his armour and show something of the man inside.

“This is my clan symbol,” he began, indicating the smallest and oldest one.

“I thought this was your clan symbol?” Cara asked, tapping the other end of the pen against the half-finished mudhorn design.

“Both are,” he corrected. “As beroya, the provider for the tribe, I earned the right to begin my own clan, but I will always be a part of my buir’s as well.”

“And the other two?” Cara asked, squinting as she started to work on the smaller details.

“All Mando’ade have a right to this one once they pass their verd'goten ^{[the name of the traditional rite of passage in Mandalorian culture in which a Mandalorian youth is accepted as an adult]},” he explained. He’d received his the day he swore the Creed. “The verd’goten is a rite of passage, a trial for future warriors. Many see it as a coming of age, the day a youngling or foundling becomes a true Mandalorian.”

Cara paused again to take a closer look at the mythosaur encircled by Mando’a ^{[the Mandalorian language]} on his skin. “When did you earn it?”

Din had to think on that for a moment, which served only to remind him that his head was still hurting. No painkillers seemed able to touch the strange headache that had taken up residence in his temples.

He wondered if the darksaber was to blame for that as well.

“I was fourteen.”

“And the last one?”

“The symbol for the beroya. To be trusted to provide for the tribe was a high honour,” he fought against the urge to sigh, “and my buir insisted it be commemorated.”

Cara hummed. “I like the sound of her.”

Din rubbed his thumb back and forth over the mythosaur symbol, the ink in his skin that identified him as Mandalorian, and wondered what his buir would think of him now.

Pel’gam tome’tayl were earned. They could not be taken away. There was some comfort in knowing that even if he was stripped of his armour, there were some things that were not so easy to remove.

A claim that labelled him as once mando’ade would be forever with him as, now, would his clan.

The idea settled in his soul, finding a place alongside the memory of Bo-Katan’s words and her ways, alongside his upbringing and beliefs, and it didn’t jar as much as it had the day before.

“Thank you for sharing that with me.” Cara’s voice drew him out of his thoughts, as did her serious tone. She too knew the value laid on preserving dying cultures. “But seriously, what even is your pain tolerance?”

“High,” Din replied, voice dry as the Tatooine desert.

Cara rolled her eyes but dipped the pen back into the ink and returned to finish her work, the scratch noticeably sharper as though she were trying to get a response out of him.

“Ouch,” he said as she did, just to annoy her.

Din should have stayed on Nevarro. He could have been enjoying a proper mattress right now. Instead, he was standing in a freezer with five butchers and a bail jumper worth enough credits to get him to Tatooine where Peli Motto was waiting with a ship and Boba Fett with an offer of more work. Together, that would hopefully be enough to get him to the Armourer.

He was doing his best to ignore the weight of the other bag of credits tucked away on his person, the reward for capturing Moff Gideon. When Cara refused to let him leave without them, he had vowed that they would all go the Armourer, to the tribe, as reparation and penance both.

“I can bring you in warm,” he said, remembering all the times before that he had recited the words. Before it used to get his blood pumping with the thrill of the chase, but his heart hadn’t been in it since he’d given Grogu to the Jedi, no matter how much he tried. “Or I can bring you in cold.”

The darksaber, it turned out, was not only stubborn but temperamental. The noise it made had, over the course of the various bounties he had taken on, jumped between barely noticeable to strong enough that it re-ignited his lingering headache with renewed bursts of pain. Tragically, it also seemed to have worked out that he was unlikely to go through with any threats.

Din had taken to blaming it for his mistakes to make himself feel better.

For instance, Din was currently blaming the noise it was making – that apparently only he could hear – for preventing him from noticing the butcher behind him who had tried to take a chunk out of his hand and had caused him to drop his blaster.

Fine, he thought. If you’re going to be like that, you might as well be useful.

The blade snapped out and sliced through the first guy who came at him with a satisfying ease. Quite literally through.

Huh, that was handy.

Still, something felt off and it took another couple of swings for Din to realise that the blade, which at first had been as light as air, was getting heavier – right up until it wasn’t.

He couldn’t help the cry that escaped him when the edge of the blade singed a line of bright, burning agony up his leg.

Taking as deep a breath as he could and chanting a continuous stream of increasingly creative swear words in his head, he somehow managed to push through the pain to finish the fight, albeit messily.

With the blade extinguished the moment it was safe to do so, he took a second to blink back tears and to work out if he was going to collapse if he tried to put any weight on his injured leg. The first shaky step caused him to suck in a tight breath as black dots encroached on the edge of his vision, but he stayed upright – just.

K’atini ^{['suck it up' / it's only pain]}, he told himself. You’ve had worse, it’s only pain.

With every excruciating step he cursed out Bo-Katan, and Moff Gideon, and everything that had led him to this, which didn’t make his leg hurt any less but certainly helped in other ways.

It wasn’t until hours later as he shakily applied bacta to the injury in a back alley with just enough earned credits left in his pocket to board a public transport to Tatooine – not ideal but the best he could do if he wanted to be able to walk – that he realised that the blade hadn’t made so such as a light hum since he last turned it off.

“If this is an attempt at an apology,” he grumbled as another stab of hurt blossomed across the burn and he had to pause again to catch his breath, “then it is very much not accepted.”

Would it be considered blasphemous to hate the darksaber, Din wondered?

The issue wasn’t just the ringing sound or the title that came with it - though he would be overjoyed to get rid of that as well - no, all he wanted was to go back to when life was simple. One foundling to keep safe from relentlessly hunting Imperial remnants. Plain, if infuriating goal of finding the possibly non-existent Jedi, who turned out to be less non-existent than he had hoped.

Din had exactly zero experience with Jedi weapons prior to acquiring the darksaber but if they had all been like this one, he could understand why the Jedi might have been labelled enemy sorcerers. Mandalorians were renowned across the galaxy for their prowess with weaponry, yet when he had tried to wield this one, he felt like the butt of a bad joke.

He was convinced that the blade had to be at least partially sentient because dank farrik the thing could hold a grudge. Even now the freshly healing scar on his leg ached, and so what if Din had left the heirloom of the Mand’alor in a cargo crate for the flight to Tatooine? He wasn’t above a bit of passive-aggressiveness when it was needed and besides, the blade had made its opinion of him clear. If anything, it should have been glad for the opportunity to spend some time apart from his unwanted company.

Part of him hoped that Bo-Katan or one of her lackeys would pop up at the starport on Tatooine and challenge him to a duel just so he could make the most of the saber’s reluctance to work with him and get it out of his hands for good. Or perhaps, once he informed the Armourer of his actions, she would take it from him and pass it onto someone more worthy.

Buir would be able to tame it, he mused. Anyone who could intimidate Paz Vizsla into silence wouldn’t have any trouble with an old, clearly faulty, laser sword.

He’d pay good credits to see that. Or rather, more accurately, he’d pay good credits to see Bo-Katan’s face.

Honestly, he shouldn’t have been surprised.

“This isn’t a Razor Crest,” he sighed.

“Look, you want to go and spoil your little gremlin?” Peli asked, having demanded an explanation the moment he failed to produce her favourite visitor. “You did get the details for visit days, right?” Her eyes narrowed at his lack of response. “Right?”

Din stared at her blankly, feeling faintly as though his soul was slowly leaving his body. Visit days? What the kriff did that mean?

“Nevermind.” Peli slapped the side of the junk pile again. “I promise you this baby will be the fastest ship in the parsec. You’ll be back with your kid in no time.”

Din swallowed around the urge to inform her that there would be no visiting. Ahsoka Tano had made it clear that Jedi didn’t need attachments and Grogu had chosen to go with the Jedi on the cruiser freely. They had left without even sharing so much as a name.

No, Grogu would be just fine without him and Din – well Din would just keep putting one foot in front of another until he couldn’t anymore.

“Look, at least let me put her together before you make up your mind,” Peli offered, softer.

Din sighed, torn between a desire to get his planned meeting with the Armourer over with as soon as possible and a guilty impulse to just – not go at all.

Peli, of course, took advantage of his dilemma and subsequent silence immediately. “Ha! That’s not a no!”

“It’ll take days to fix.” He gestured at the pieces laid out around the skeleton of the star fighter, but the words didn’t quite come out as the complaint he had intended them to be.

“It’ll go quicker if you help,” Peli needled. “You can stay at my place if you need. Or I’m sure your friend from Mos Pelgo wouldn’t mind putting you up.”

Din blinked.

Did he look as weary as he felt? It seemed to be the only explanation he had for the way literally everyone he knew kept trying to offer him a place to rest his head.

Rather than reflecting too closely on that, or that he seemed to have people willing to offer him shelter in far more places than he expected, he picked up on the other thing that had caught his attention.

“You know Marshall Vanth?”

 Peli waved a hand vaguely. “The jawas do. I dated a jawa once, you know. Quite furry.”

Din mouthed Peli’s words to himself behind the safety of his visor and wondered what fresh new insanity he was getting into.

Three days later Din was ready to take all his uncharitable thoughts back because Peli’s little scrap pile had transformed into a thing of beauty. She wasn’t the Razor Crest, that was for sure, but this little starfighter had her own charms. She was winning him over far quicker than he liked.

And she was really kriffing fast.

“How’s the manoeuvrability?” he asked of the other key feature in any ship he was expecting to engage in aerial combat in.

“You tell me,” Peli replied over the comms, her voice beginning to cut in and out due to the sheer distance the ship had put between them in so little time, so it was a strain to catch her next words. “Point your navigational disposition between the two suns. You’ll come up on Beggar’s Canyon.”

Ahead of him, Din could see a small gap between the towering rocks, a quick glance down at the readouts confirmed that the canyon was full of tight twists and turns.

Perfect.

“Let’s see what you’ve got,” he murmured and then he put all his focus into the corners, aware that any miscalculation could turn the ship and him both into a nice smear on the cliffside.

It had been a while since he’d had to focus to this extent. Piloting the Razor Crest had become as natural to him as thought over time, but the starfighter wasn’t the Crest – far from it.

He wouldn’t have dared to take the Crest into Beggar’s Canyon.

The further into the rocky passageway he got, the more relaxed he became. Flying had always been something he enjoyed. All it took was the right balance between skill and instinct, working with the ship, feeling the way it moved through the atmosphere, and following his gut as it told him where to go next, what was coming up that needed avoiding or shooting at. His gut was rarely wrong.

Finally, after a rapid sequence of turns he decided he was satisfied that the ship was indeed as good as he’d thought. He pulled her up out of the canyon and, with a crackle, a concerned Peli burst back to life in his ears.

“You better not have crashed on me, Mando! How’s it going?”

“She tracks tight,” he confirmed, unable to keep the impressed tone out of his voice. “Real tight.”

“What’d I tell you?” Peli shot back, but he could tell she was pleased too. “Pfft. Razor Crest.”

After that, she set him loose to push the starfighter to its limits. By the time he made it back to the hanger, speed fully tested and New Republic patrol evaded, he was grinning. Adrenaline buzzing through his veins at the incredible speed the thing was capable of. He hadn’t felt this good since – since he had held Grogu safely in his arms on the cruiser.

And just like that the warmth and the light were gone, leaving him bereft and empty once more.

“So?” Peli asked.

“I’ll take it.”

“Told you so.” Peli looked smug but then she seldom looked anything other than smug. “Enjoy the view looking down on the canyon? It’s quite the landmark.”

“I wasn’t really flying over it for long enough,” he responded absently, still running through the power-down sequence, guided by muscle memory more than any real intention. “The canyon itself was good practice though, lots of tight turns.”

“Hold on a minute,” Peli interrupted sharply, tensing, “you flew that thing through Beggar’s Canyon?”

Din looked up at that, caught by the unexpected touch of distress to Peli’s voice.

“That’s what you said to do.”

“I said over, you idiot!” Peli exclaimed. “Beggar’s Canyon’s part of the old pod racing course. You’d have to be insane to fly through it at speed. Not that I’m calling you insane of course. But you are.”

“Huh,” said Din. His mind was whirring, flashing back to the odd calm in the cockpit, that constant certainty of his next move. Had it been skill, or something else? Could Jedi powers rub off on people?

Was that why the darksaber was always there at the fringes of his awareness, humming away? Had he been with Grogu long enough, working with him to practice his powers once he knew how, to pick up on something?

Din swallowed.

He had always been so sure of who he was before. He was Mandalorian, a bounty hunter, then the protector of a Foundling.

Now, he was none of those things. He was dar’manda. He was Mand’alor. He was Din Djarin, an identity long buried and barely beginning to be reclaimed in the hopes of sharing who he was with his son.

He was a lost little boy looking up at the stars with a ringing in his ears, wondering which light was now home.

He had questions only one person could answer.

At the other end of a set of co-ordinates burned into his memory, the Armourer awaited.

Chapter Text

Perhaps, Din considered as he watched the blue streaks of hyperspace enveloping the N-1, it would have been a good idea to return to that little ‘existential crisis’ box in the back of his mind in before he’d inputted the co-ordinates left by the Armourer and committed to an imminent meeting.

From his belt, the darksaber picked up its humming in a brief crescendo.

If Din were feeling charitable, he’d say it was laughing at him.

“Shut up,” he grumbled, already far beyond the realm of fed up with the blade’s shenanigans.

As beroya, Din had grown used to having a plan of action and a set approach to conversations, should they be necessary at all. Then after, with Grogu, he’d at least had something to guide him.

It was discomforting that he had no idea how the upcoming confrontation was going to go. There was no script for this, no map pointing him towards the place where his identity had been remoulded from beroya to buir and where it was surely about to be remoulded again.

Under his fingers the controls of the N-1 provided solidity, and he flexed the joints a few times in the hopes of easing the tremors.

At least if everything went – not well, exactly, but along the lines of what he was expecting – then some of the problems he’d identified back on Fett’s ship had a chance of being solved.

The Armourer might be alone. There might be others from the tribe there. There was a possibility that buir would be there.

It had been a long time since he’d craved the embrace of his buir as much as he did now. To savour one final act of intimacy before he revealed the extent of how he had let her down.

The darksaber’s humming shifted again, dropping into a lower register that didn’t bother him nearly so much.

Of course, at the more positive end of things, there was also a reasonable chance that regardless of how things went down with the Armourer, that he’d be able to get rid of the laser sword.

Just like that, the sound jumped back its normal piercing ring and Din squashed down the bizarre rush of relief that came with it. He’d hate to think that a supposedly inanimate object, which had brought him nothing but trouble and literal pain, was trying to comfort him.

No, soon the darksaber would be someone else’s problem and, considering everything that had happened to him since Tython, that was one of the few that was just fine with him.

On a distant and unfamiliar world, the resonance of hammer on metal guided him home.

For how long he would be welcome he could not guess. Between the massacre on Nevarro – a result of his actions even if others did not see it that way – and the fact that he had broken the Creed, he expected that his stay here would be brief and would likely result in leaving without the armour he had spent over half his life earning. If he left alive at all.

When he entered the new covert, he expected to see only the Armourer, so it was a welcome sight to find others gathered in the rooms around the forge. Despite his best efforts, he could not prevent a quick scan in the hopes that Alia’s green helmet would be amongst the mix.

It was not.

Din embraced the flash of grief as an old friend.

“You have completed your quest,” the Armourer observed from her place at the forge.

“I have,” he confirmed, the crack in his voice thankfully concealed by the vocoder in his helmet. “I returned the child to his kind and I have brought credits for the tribe.”

With fingers that only slightly trembled, he retrieved the pouch with his part of Gideon’s reward and placed it on the table in offering. The Armourer reached out and lifted the bag in a hand to judge it contents.

“This will support many foundlings. This is the Way.”

“This is the Way,” the scattered Mandalorians in the room echoed.

Din could not bring himself to join them, not this time, and there was little chance that his reticence had escaped the Armourer’s notice.

“Come, beroya,” the Armourer declared when it became clear that he had no more to offer. She indicated toward the room behind the forge and the privacy it offered. “I sense we have much to discuss.”

Forcing one foot in front of the other, Din followed, the darksaber ringing in his ears and growing ever-heavier on his belt.

The Armourer’s first words to him once the door closed behind them did nothing to ease his nerves.

“What troubles you, Din?”

Din swallowed. Now that the moment had arrived, he found that there was a not-insignificant part of him that was unwilling to confront his transgressions. It wasn’t – cowardice, exactly – so much as a desire to delay the inevitable just a little longer.

“I – much has happened since we last spoke.”

“Indeed.”

The Armourer gestured to the soft cushions on the floor and Din lowered himself until he was kneeling on instinct. Across the room, the Armourer busied herself with putting away her tools giving him the time he desperately needed order his thoughts and formulate a response.

“I found a Jedi,” he started. “I completed my quest. Grogu is safe with his own kind.”

His eyes were trained on the floor in front of him but he could feel the Armourer’s gaze burning into him.

“And what did this journey cost?”

Everything.

“My ship,” he said around the lump in his throat. “Our secrecy. My – my -”

Creed sat of the tip of his tongue, branding him with its inability to pass his lips.

A rustling noise had his head snapping up as the Armourer settled across from him.

“You are unsettled,” she observed. “Are you injured?”

There was an undertone in her voice that Din had heard many times before from another, one that warned that he should not hide when he was hurt, that it was foolish to rely only on himself when he had the tribe.

Or rather, that should be if, not when now, he corrected.

“Not physically,” he replied, which was technically true. The burn on his leg no longer bothered him, and the rest he had managed to get on Nevarro had eased the other wounds gained on Gideon’s cruiser.

“And otherwise?” the Armourer continued, entirely too perceptive.

“There’s,” he struggled to find the words to articulate the ringing – the darksaber’s strange effect on him, his crisis of identity and faith both.

Instead, he raised a hand and waved vaguely by the side of his head, at least in part to indicate the implants that only buir and the Armourer knew the true purpose of.

“I see.” The Armourer said. “Remove your helmet, please.”

The breath caught in his chest.

Had she read it in his posture? How had she known? It was too soon. He’d wanted to give his armour to his buir if he could.

He wasn’t ready.

Between one blink and the next, she was leaning forward, her steady presence encompassing him. Hunter’s instinct almost had him flinching back, but then the Armourer reached out and clasped hold of his arm, gloved fingers seeking the gap between flight suit and vambrace and settling unerring over his pel’gam tome’tayl.

Her thumb pressed down, almost to the point of bruising, over his original clan marking. The sensation, small though it was, grounded him nearly as much as her accompanying words.

“Although we have followed different paths, we are clan, Din Djarin. We are alone. It is permitted.”

The air left him in a rush.

Right, he was being an idiot. Of course that’s what the Armourer was thinking. She wasn’t a mind-reader. A distant memory of her bared just as he was about to be, before she had donned the helmet of her station, resurfaced.

Instead, he now feared what she would read on his face.

Clenching his hands briefly to smother the subtle shaking, he lifted them and let his fingers find the catches. One deep breath, two, an attempt to smooth his expression even though he knew it was likely hopeless, and then he lifted.

The seals broke with a hiss and the unfiltered air of the covert seeped in, tinged with a soothing tang of metal and spice.

Carefully, he set his helmet down and did his best to lift his eyes to meet the Armourer’s. It was hard, harder than he’d expected considering the recent practice he’d had staring at his son. Saying goodbye.

Another swallow, this one in the hopes that it would help him fight back against the burning in his eyes.

“You have grown much, Din’ika.” The Armourer’s voice sounded approving and it hurt because she didn’t know. “May I?”

Her hands hovered by the sides of his head and he hesitated, wondering what exactly it was she wanted and yet knowing he would not deny her regardless – not whilst she was still his alor. He nodded.

With a firm touch, she tilted his head to the side and brushed his hair aside, the curls long enough now to obscure Alia’s masterpieces from prying eyes.

“How long have you been hearing it?” the Armourer asked.

“A few weeks,” he replied, still caught off guard by the sensation of someone, or at least someone who wasn’t his buir, touching his face that he’d managed to temporarily ignore the soft humming. “Even the cancellation isn’t able to silence it.”

“Then I am afraid this is likely beyond my skill.” Another guiding hand had his head turning the other way so that she could inspect the other side for any obvious signs of damage, the gold gleam of the Armourer’s helmet barely visible in his peripheral vision. “I never had Alia’s skill for such delicate work. I am sorry, dinui ^[gift].”

At the mention of buir’s name, or perhaps the use of her old nickname for him, Din felt his breath hitch.

He didn’t know what had happened on Nevarro, but the Armourer would.

“Did buir – was she?”

The question went unfinished, the words trapped in his throat, but thankfully the Armourer understood his intention.

“As far as I am aware, my sister escaped the purge on Nevarro. Where she went afterwards, I do not know, but she knew the waypoint. If nothing else has befallen her, then she will find her way home.”

He slumped in sheer relief. It was no exaggeration that there was little in the galaxy capable of besting his buir. If Alia Senn had survived Nevarro, she would endure.

“This is the Way,” he murmured.

“This is the Way,” the Armourer echoed, a hint of amusement in her tone.

At the ritual words, the darksaber seemed to perk up, the sound gaining intensity, and bringing with it an accompanying spike in the lingering pain behind his eyes that had him wincing. He had forgotten that his expression of discontent was not currently obscured in the privacy of his helmet and the Armourer noticed immediately.

“Does something else ail you?”

A guilty conscience.

If only he could find the courage to bare his now tarnished soul.

“A persistent ache, here.” He raised a hand to indicate the space between his eyes. “I am not sure if it is caused by the noise, or if it is the result of another injury.”

The Armourer hummed, gloved fingers reaching and soothing in a soft brush over his furrowed brow. Din barely prevented himself from leaning into the contact.

“For that, we can help,” the Armourer stated. “We have a sufficient supply of painkillers that it would not be a drain on us to offer you some relief.”

“Thank you,” he murmured, eyes drifting shut at the rhythm of continuous light circles the Armourer was tracing into his skin.

“The rest,” the Armourer continued, “we may not be able to cure.”

“I can endure,” he replied. He had been enduring for weeks now. A little longer would make no difference.

The Armourer hummed, her hands still warm against his eyebrows, his hairline.

“Just because you can does not mean you should have to,” she said, a kindness he was no longer sure he deserved.

Under the weight of her care, he began to break.

“I defeated Moff Gideon to save the child,” he confessed into her palms. “He had a weapon that once belonged to Mandalore. Bo-Katan Kryze refused to take it from me, even though she wanted it.”

With fumbling hands, he unclipped the darksaber from his belt. Judging by the way the Armourer startled, she recognised it.

“The darksaber,” she whispered.

“Please,” he asked. “I do not want it. Take it from me.”

“I cannot, Din,” she replied, her gaze fixed on the hilt. “It must be won in combat.”

The crack widened.

“But I am no longer Mandalorian,” he begged, darksaber resting on his palms, held out as an offering as the words spilled out of him in a sudden flood. “I removed my helmet.”

The Armourer froze and slowly lifted her head to look at him.

He had no idea what his face was doing, no idea how he looked, only that it must be pitiful. Cold from the floor was seeping into his knees, making the aging joints ache, but through force of will he kept his eyes on his alor as she judged him.

“Was it removed by an enemy?” the Armourer asked, helmet tilting to the side.

“No,” Din denied, taking comfort in the knowledge that at least that shame was not his to claim. “I – I had to remove it to find the child. It was the only way.”

There was a pleading edge to his voice, though whether it was born of a pursuit for understanding or condemnation, Din could no longer tell.

“You removed it to protect a foundling?”

“I – yes.” Din knew where the Armourer was going with this and part of him hated her for the attempt at mercy. The tenets of the Creed were supposed to be held as equals, but in reality, the protection of foundlings often came before all else. As the golden helm observed him, Din forced himself to admit what remained unsaid. “The first time.”

Silence, expect for the racing of his heart in his ears and the humming of the blade in his hands.

“And the second?”

Now, Din closed his eyes, no longer able to bear it. “I wanted to say goodbye.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “I wanted him to know me.”

“Had you spoken the gai bal manda?”

If someone had taken the darksaber and embedded it in his chest Din was certain it would have hurt less than the reminder that he had never claimed Grogu as his son until it was too late.

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” he choked around the gaping hole in his soul. “Others were there. The jetii ^[Jedi].”

“I see.”

How long they sat with that revelation, Din did not know, only that when the Armourer reached her conclusion, his arms were beginning to shake with the strain.

“Whether you want it or not, you are Mand’alor,” the Armourer finally declared. “I cannot judge you for your actions, it is beyond my station.” Din blinked as her hands reached out and curled his fingers back around the hilt of the darksaber, pushing it back towards him. Then, his helmet was gently lifted and placed back in front of him. “I cannot give you the answers you seek, Din Djarin” the Armourer continued, voice softening. “Not this time. Your journey is no longer for me to decide. But you are welcome to remain here until you have healed and have worked out what it is you need to do.”

The leather of her gloves smelled like beskar and fire as they wiped away the moisture on his cheeks with an almost painful tenderness.

“I will not tell the others.”

“Thank you,” he whispered to his knees.

And then he was alone.

He stared into the visor, at his own reflection in the unpainted silver beskar, feeling unmoored until the ache in his legs became impossible to ignore.

It wasn’t until he was safely in the rooms the Armourer had set aside for him that he realised he had put his helmet on again without thinking.

Unlike on Nevarro, what little rest he managed to get in the covert that night did not provide clarity.

Din had been so certain that the Armourer would turn him away, cast him out. She hadn’t.

He didn’t know what to do with that, just like he didn’t know what to do with the stupid ancestral sword that the Armourer had refused to take from him. Noise aside, he couldn’t even use it without burning himself or gouging holes in the floor. Some Mandalorian he was.

An idea occurred to him. It was a stupid idea, driven by desperation and a lack of sleep and sense. Though, as his buir had once said, if an idea seemed stupid but it worked, then it wasn’t stupid at all.

The caverns of the covert were too small for weapons training and considering what he intended to do, Din would not risk the foundlings by fumbling around with a deadly weapon in such close quarters.

So, he walked out into the pre-dawn air of the small clearing beyond the cave’s walls and drew the darksaber.

If the Armourer wouldn’t accept his sins for what they were and claim the laser sword and the title that came with it, then surely all he had to do was get someone to challenge him for it.

It shouldn’t be too hard. Although he was well respected as a strong combatant amongst the covert, prior experience had shown he could barely swing the darksaber without risking his own limbs. The moment someone saw how clumsy and inept he was with such a formidable and desirable weapon – the heirloom of their people no less - they’d undoubtedly be lining up for a chance to win it from him.

Lifting the blade in two hands, he ignited it and winced as the ringing abruptly increased in volume until it was loud enough to deafen him.

Look, he thought, bitter, you clearly don’t like me and quite frankly the feeling is mutual, so let’s just get this over with, alright?

As with the previous times he had used the darksaber, the first few swings were fine, muscle memory moving him through the basic blade forms he had been taught as a boy. Then the strange and unnatural heaviness began to seep in.

Din fought against it, trying to move into the next set of motions, sweat beading on the back of his neck at the strain.

Come on, he willed the empty cave entrance. Someone come out and see.

Finally, he gave up and let the blade drop, turning it off before it could singe the grass and start a fire. He gave himself a minute to recover and stretch out his arms, and then he tried to start again.

Tried being the operative word.

The blade, now silent, wouldn’t turn on.

“Seriously?” he muttered, frustrated. “What are you playing at?” Could a lightsaber sulk? Because it certainly felt like this one was. “Don’t you want to be rid of me?” he asked it, voice hushed because whilst he wanted to be free of the darksaber, getting caught arguing with a weapon would be sure to tear what remained of his pride to pieces.

Finally, the blade ignited, but this time he didn’t even manage to complete the first swing before the weight was back. Gritting his teeth, he pushed straining muscles as the heaviness grew and grew, to no avail.

“Dank farrik,” he cursed as the weight forced his arms downwards and he had to let go with one hand to steady himself against a tree lest he topple over.

Then suddenly, the weight was gone. The sweep of his downward movement continued almost naturally until the blade was held at an angle, slightly behind him and to the side, as light as air.

Almost naturally.

“What the kriff?”

For a moment, he had been sure that the darksaber had – tugged his arm in that direction.

Hesitant, he tried lifting the blade and this time, it came up with minimal resistance, until suddenly it didn’t, leaving him pushing against an almost invisible barrier with the darksaber held at shoulder level, pointed forwards and parallel to the arm he had raised to steady himself.

Indignant, he tried striking instead and found to his surprise that the blade allowed the motion, at least partially, until he felt another tug that had the darksaber held at a slightly different angle.

“Huh,” he said as he frowned at the hilt in his hand because whilst the movement hadn’t been the one he had intended, it had nevertheless made sense as a strike. “What are you trying to do?”

For Mandalorians, weapons were part of their religion. Understanding them was fundamental to Mandalorian life - a deep-seated urge within all who took the Creed.

This was bad news for Din because, faced with the darksaber’s strange behaviour, his indignation was fading into curiosity and he hated himself for it.

Testing, he began to push the blade in a few directions, letting the changing weight and the strange tugging lead him through a few movements. It wasn’t until he tried repeating the motions strung together that he worked out what was happening.

It was a kata. Not one he knew, and nothing like the forms taught to him in the fighting corps, but a kata nonetheless.

Emboldened, he began to shift his feet, piecing together the footwork, letting years of skill gained from combat guide him. To his mounting delight, the strikes and blocks which had moments before been awkward began to fit like a familiar dance. Even the humming faded into the background as he followed the guidance of the blade until he reached a point at the end of a lunge where it grew heavy no matter what he tried to do.

“What now?” he asked, breathless at the unexpected rush of energetic exercise. “Unless,” he considered his pose again and then thumbed the switch that deactivated the darksaber. It vanished and he could move again.

The end of the kata, it had to be.

Rewinding his steps, he halted once he had enough space to run through the full sequence, then he adjusted his grip – one handed now – on the hilt and moved back into the first position.

With his feet wider and knees bent a little, centre of gravity lower to the ground and favouring his back leg, he ignited the darksaber again.

This time it turned on with no trouble.

Relying on his memory and the subtle changes in the blade, he began again, and again, and again. With each repetition, the kata became smoother, his body relaxing into the motions until he could run through the whole set without any interference. Then, he sped up.

Focused as he was on learning this strange new kata he didn’t even notice the sun breaking over the horizon, nor the emerging foundlings and their guardians who stood by the entrance of the caves and watched.

Finally, muscles burning delightfully and drenched in sweat from a good workout, Din held the final pose, breathed deep, and deactivated the darksaber for the last time.

The clapping, he was ashamed to admit, made him jump.

Whirling around, hand going to his blaster he was startled to see a line of Mandalorians bathed in the dawn light.

The foundlings were applauding and cheering. Many of the adults were watching with approving postures. No – awed. The Armourer was amongst them, her arms folded over her chest.

Not one of them looked ready to challenge him.

Oh kark.

They’d seen him wielding the darksaber. Seemingly well. They’d seen him wielding the darksaber, the symbol of the Mand’alor.

Karking kriffing hells.

Well, there went that plan up in smoke.

Chapter Text

Deep in the corridors of the covert, eyes follow him.

They weren’t exactly subtle about it, the helmets that turned to track him as he moved around the space. No one had said his unwanted title to his face yet, but he feared it was only a matter of time.

Though the stares and whispers were probably not helped by the new addition to his routine.

Every morning he went out to the clearing before dawn broke over the horizon and ran through katas with the darksaber. He hadn’t intended to, especially after the initial display had caused people that he considered friends and comrades to start treating him with an unearned reverence. Only, it turned out that appeasing the blade by learning its preferred style had earned him a reprieve of sorts. A blessed reduction in the blade’s ringing sound which seemed to be tempered by running the unfamiliar drills. Between that and the medication his buir’s second had provided him for the pain in his temples, he was nearly back to normal.

Strange how it took their absence for Din to recognise just how much they had been affecting him. There was a lightness to his thoughts and movements now that he wasn’t being weighed down by a chronic headache. He knew he couldn’t rely on the drugs forever. Eventually, he would have to work out the true cause of the pain and the noise and treat them properly – if they could be treated.

For now, though, each morning he trained and each morning, once the sun had risen, a crowd gathered to watch him.

Besides, the foundlings seemed quite taken by the display, and that alone would have been enough to convince him to continue.

After the original kata had been memorised, he had once again found himself following the nudging and weight of the blade, learning others through trial and error. Some of the sets he preferred more than others and he prioritised them accordingly. The darksaber didn’t seem bothered by his neglect of some of the katas, though whether the blade picked up on his inclination towards the more aggressive styles or it was simply content to be used correctly, he wasn’t sure.

Either way, it was worth it for the more considerate way the blade seemed to treat him in return. It wasn’t quite the silence he had experienced after the incident in the butcher’s room, but the noise it emanated now didn’t bother him, not really.

Of course, he also didn’t mind the practice. A Mandalorian needed to be master of their weapons and the darksaber was proving harder to master than most, but he was beginning to get the sense that it could be mastered now.

Still, even once he reached the point where he could comfortably complete a set at full speed and the blade began to feel less like a hinderance and more like an extension of his arm he couldn’t shake the sense that there was something he was missing.

Ten days after he first knelt in front of her and confessed his sins, Din found himself summoned back to the forge.

In a way, he was impressed it had taken the Armourer this long. She had been observing his training with the blade unerringly, stood in silent vigil behind the foundlings. He had wondered, briefly, if she was merely waiting for him to become competent enough with the blade for an honourable challenge, but he had dismissed the idea just as quickly.

She had every right to have claimed the blade in light of the revelation that he had broken the Creed, to take it as her due from a man who no longer had the right to call himself Mandalorian, but she hadn’t and he had retained his identity as Mandalorian for just a little longer. A little longer became a day, then a week.

At first each time he thought of himself as Mandalorian it came with a flash of guilt. As the days passed, the feeling had mellowed and vanished, and then he had felt guilty about that instead – that he was betraying them by acting as though he had the right to consider himself one of them, as though his actions had meant nothing.

With his head heavy with thoughts, he approached the forge, following the invitation to the Armourer’s private room with gratitude that whatever was about to happen wouldn’t be shared with curious onlookers.

“Din,” she greeted once the door to the covert closed behind them once more and he found that he was also grateful that she hadn’t addressed him as Mand’alor.

“Alor,” he offered in kind as she sat opposite him.

“How are you?”

Din blinked at the question, having been expecting something more than an inquiry after his health considering the formal summons he had received.

“I am well.” His hands were itching to fidget with a loose thread on his flight suit. “The headache has improved. I thank you for the aid.”

“Good.” The Armourer nodded, clearly pleased. “And the ringing?”

“Settling, I think. I am -” he took a moment to find the words, “- coming to terms with it.”

The Armourer hummed, and Din wished she would stop talking around the bantha in the room. His shoulders bowed under his sins, his unwanted titles, everything he had admitted to which she claimed to be unable to judge, at least for now.

“Your skill with the darksaber is improving.”

Ah, there it was.

“It is,” he agreed, grudging.

“Have you decided on a course of action?”

In truth, he hadn’t really thought about what came next since Grogu had left with the Jedi. Without his son, without the direction provided by his quest, there hadn’t really been a next to consider. At first, he had hoped the Armourer would provide him with direction, but then the darksaber had got in the way.

Of course, he wouldn’t have the darksaber forever. Would the Armourer’s judgement change once he lost the blade that granted him the right to lead all Mando’ade?

He ruminated once again on the idea of removing his armour and never putting it on again and had to restrain a shudder at how wrong it sat.

“I wish to atone,” he said with sudden conviction. “What must I do to redeem myself?”

Whatever it was, he would do it. There had to be a way.

“Traditionally,” the Armourer began, “in matters where no clear judgement can be offered, redemption is only possible by submitting to the Living Waters.”

Din’s mood, which had risen with sudden hope, dropped like a stone.

“The Living Waters are only found on Mandalore.”

“They are.”

“And Mandalore is cursed.”

The Armourer sighed, long and deep.

“What the Empire did to Mandalore turned much of the surface to glass and poisoned the atmosphere.” Din nodded, resigned. This much he knew, having heard the tale several times from various members of the covert. “However,” the Armourer continued and his treacherous heart jumped, “it has been many years since then. There is a chance that Mandalore may one day be habitable again, and as I have not visited the planet since the Purge, I cannot say for certain whether the planet is truly cursed. Until I saw the darksaber in your hands, I had believed it lost, and I was wrong about that.”

It was the slimmest of possibilities, but more than he had expected, and he found himself resisting the urge to break down and weep because there was a chance, however small, that he would one day be able to proudly call himself Mandalorian again.

He hadn’t lost it all – not yet.

“Then what must I do?” he asked.

“This, you must determine.” The Armourer replied, not unkindly. “Perhaps others have visited Mandalore since, and can provide a clearer picture of the planet’s condition,” she offered. “Otherwise, it may be a journey that you must take alone.”

An image of bright red hair burst into his mind. Memories of a mission that had, at the time, seemed pointless to him but which now might be just what he needed.

“Then I know what I must do,” he said. “Thank you, alor.”

“Jate'kara ^{[luck, destiny (lit. “good stars”, “a course to steer by”)]}, Din Djain,” the Armourer replied.

It took a few weeks of searching, in the end, of following rumours of an Imperial cruiser that was no longer under Imperial control, but he finally found Bo-Katan Kryze on Kalevala. A mere stone’s throw from home, yet somehow also distant.

Unlike Mandalore, Kalevala had mostly escaped the wrath of the Empire. There was no beskar to be found under its surface and what little fortification could be found on the land was hardly enough to stand against the might of the Imperial Army.

In many ways, it was a blessing in disguise, because it meant at least some of their culture had been preserved in the architecture and records stored on the agricultural world.

“Bold of you to show your face here,” Bo-Katan greeted him, lounging on what Din suspected had once been a throne.

“I want to join your mission,” he stated simply.

Bo-Katan scoffed. “There’s nothing to join, Djarin.” She waved a hand around at the room which, now that he was no longer focused solely on her, was suspiciously empty of Mandalorians. “When I returned without the darksaber our plans were put on hold.”

Speaking of the missing Mandalorians, something else was glaringly missing too.

“The cruiser?”

“With Woves and Reeves,” Bo-Katan replied. “They’re taking mercenary jobs and keeping an ear out for news.”

“Mercenaries?”

Bo-Katan gave him a look that had him fighting not to shift uncomfortably from foot to foot. “We have to sustain ourselves somehow, Djarin.”

Feeling increasingly unmoored as the conversation went in a direction he hadn’t anticipated, Din swallowed down a new rush of guilt at the thought that his actions had forced the proud warriors he knew into taking such dirty work to survive.

Then he forced that down too because all Bo-Katan had needed to do was tell him what the darksaber was before they landed on the cruiser and he would have never taken Gideon on in the way he had. He would have found a way to bring the fight to her so she could claim the blade for her own.

Many things were his fault, but that was not one of them.

“I need to go to Mandalore,” he said.

“And?” Bo-Katan asked with an affected air of disinterest, but the rest of her posture betrayed her. Din had spent most of his life around people who didn’t show their faces, he had learnt to read body language in the way others learnt to read expressions. Kryze was intrigued.

“You intended to take back Mandalore,” he continued. “How did you plan to do so when the planet isn’t habitable?”

Bo-Katan sucked in a sharp breath, likely at the reminder of what had been done to her home planet.

“Mandalore’s atmosphere may not be breathable yet Djarin, but it’s survivable for short periods with the appropriate mitigations, which is now than we could say a few years ago. With time, it will heal.” Her voice was sharp, chastising almost, but Din didn’t care because the Armourer had been right to doubt the stories – the planet was recovering. “Why do you need to go the Mandalore?”

“To visit the Living Waters.”

 “For what? The mighty sin of removing your helmet?” she sneered, bare-faced.

Din barely restrained a flinch.

“Your help would be appreciated.”

“Are you asking, or commanding me as Mand’alor?” Bo-Katan asked, hitting the bullseye without so much as a by-your-leave. How she always managed to target his weak spots, he didn’t know.

“I didn’t want this,” he hissed, hackles rising. “If you had just explained the story behind the darksaber all of this could have been avoided.”

Bo-Katan sat up straight at that, bristling.

“And you wouldn’t have taken advantage? Wouldn’t have claimed it for your precious tribe instead of letting someone who doesn’t walk your way lead your people?”

“No!” Din exclaimed, not entirely sure when his voice had risen to a shout. “I don’t want the darksaber Kryze, I just wanted my son back!”

The words rang in the room, but although he knew they had passed his lips, Din didn’t hear them. He didn’t hear the first time he had claimed Grogu as his own because the darksaber apparently decided to use his denial of it as an excuse to resume its piercing ringing with a vengeance.

Whatever magic the morning exercises had done on the blade vanished in an instant and Din was immensely glad for his helmet because at least Bo-Katan couldn’t read the pain on his face. It took everything he had to keep his hands by his sides and not tear off his helmet to cover his ears like he desperately wanted to in some deep instinct that wouldn’t even help.

In desperation for it to stop, he fell back on threats.

If you don’t stop, I will let the foundlings turn you into an art project, he thought over the pounding in his head. Just - please stop! I swear I will use you as a paperweight. Then, in a sudden fit of spiteful inspiration, I’ll stop doing katas with you.

Silence.

Cautious, he squinted his eyes open from where he had clenched them shut and was met with the sight of Bo-Katan slumped back on her throne, deflated. Din was unsure if it had been his claiming of Grogu or his failure to respond to whatever she may have said after that had drawn the fight out of her. She looked – tired.

“Please,” he managed, throat dry as though he had been screaming even though he was certain he had let no sound escape. “I cannot do this without your help.” When that failed to rouse her, he fell back on the idea that had led him here in the first place, the chance he had seen to remove at least some of his burdens. “If you do this, you can challenge me for the darksaber in front of the tribe. No one will ever doubt your claim with them as witness.”

Finally, Bo-Katan looked up, considering.

What did she see when she looked at him? He doubted the answer was ‘the Mand’alor’, but then he wasn’t asking her as the Mand’alor.

He didn’t feel like much at all in that moment, still wrung out by the darksaber’s sudden outburst and its aftermath.

“Very well,” said Bo-Katan slowly. “We have a deal.”

They shook on it, a warrior’s forearm clasp. Din wondered absently if Bo-Katan had pel’gam tome’tayl too, if his hand was covering clan markings just as hers was wrapped over Mandalore’s claim on him, her fingers digging into the mythosaur inked on his skin.

As Din circled the N-1 around the clearing, looking for enough room to land both his ship and Bo-Katan’s, it immediately became clear from the crowded space that in the short time he had been away more members of the covert had found their way home.

Paz’s blue armour was a dead giveaway, the bulk of the heavy gunner standing out amongst a cluster of foundlings.

Din scanned quickly in the hopes of spotting green and orange but couldn’t find his buir. Unlike before, he was calm, anchored in the knowledge that his buir had not been lost on Nevarro. Alia would find her way home in time.

Still, it would have been nice to have her here. Bo-Katan had provided the readings from the probe she had sent to the surface of Mandalore from the cruiser to fulfil her part of their deal. From that information, Din knew that they needed an experienced baar’ur to advise them on what would be needed to create a short-term antidote to the toxic gasses in the air, because if Din was going to submit to the Waters, then he was going to do it properly. And that meant going in without his helmet.

Even though Alia was not there to greet them, Din was nonetheless glad to see Paz. He had not always been on the best of the terms with his brother in arms, but Paz was one of the few remaining that Din had known from his very first days with Mandalorians.

“Beroya!” shouted the foundlings in greeting, rushing up to him as he climbed from the cockpit.

“Where have you been?”

“Do you still have the laser sword?”

“Can you show us? Please!”

Paz, who had been approaching to join the greeting committee, stopped dead in his tracks.

“Laser sword?” he questioned and there was an undertone to his voice that had the hairs on the back of Din’s neck standing on end.

“Din Djarin carries the darksaber,” announced Bo-Katan from behind him with precisely zero tact.

If possible, Paz became even more rigid at her voice, the air turning thick, dangerous. Was she willing to risk their deal for her own amusement, or was she just that cocky that even the threat of possibly having to fight off Paz for the honour did not faze her?

“Kryze.”

“Vizsla,” Bo-Katan returned in kind and Din’s headache, which he had been nursing steadily since the darksaber’s latest tantrum, blossomed fully once more.

Thankfully, Paz decided to ignore Bo-Katan rather than start a fight with her.

That didn’t mean that Paz wasn’t going to start a fight at all.

“Is what she says true?” Paz demanded.

Din sighed, accepting the now inevitable confrontation and hoped he would be able to cut it off before it escalated into a full-on duel. He may not have been raised by the Vizslas in the end, but he had spent enough time with them to hear the stories of their ancestors. Back then, he had thought them children’s tales, now he was not so sure.

“It is.”

“Show me.”

Carefully, he unhooked the darksaber from his belt and held it out so Paz could see it. Paz twitched in an aborted motion, as though he were about to reach out and grab the blade before he remembered himself.

“This blade was forged by my ancestors,” Paz declared. “It belongs with House Vizsla.”

“It belongs to whomever is proven worthy,” spoke up a new voice as the Armourer joined them, drawn by the conversation - if it could be called that. “To be proven worthy, it must be won in combat. Do you challenge for it, Paz Vizsla?”

Din held his breath, not entirely sure what he was hoping for. If Paz challenged, he might be rid of the darksaber, but that would mean breaking his promise to Bo-Katan. Though, he supposed she could always challenge Paz in turn and perhaps that had been the plan behind her blunt pronouncement; to sort out a clan feud at the same time - but then would she consider their deal void?

Or would he rather that Paz didn’t challenge so that he could hold to his deal with Bo-Katan and continue his quest to reach the Living Waters with her assistance assured?

A final, more discomforting thought rose up - did he really want to let the darksaber go?

As soon as the idea crossed his mind, he tried to banish it because he didn’t want it, he had never wanted it. He didn’t want it.

“I challenge,” Paz said.

And just like that, Paz once again threw all of Din’s plans in disarray, as he had always had a habit of doing. What was it his buir used to say? No plan survives contact with the enemy?

“Do you accept the challenge, Din Djarin?”

Din hesitated. To turn down a challenge was to look weak, a trait not well received in Mandalorian culture. If it had been anyone else, perhaps he would have been willing to accept that shame, but this was Paz and Din still had some pride.

“I do.”

He had almost forgotten Bo-Katan was there until she was hissing in his ear and proved her antagonism had been just that – not a plan at all. “You’d better know what you’re doing Djarin.”

Manda ^{[the collective soul or heaven],} so did he.

The Armourer gestured for the foundlings to move back and in their place the adults of the covert formed a rough sparring circle.

Din tuned them out, focussing on Paz. Historically, Din had been the better fighter in close quarters. It was why he had been chosen as beroya over the others, but Paz could pack a punch and when his hits did land, they landed hard. He’d have to be careful of that and let the beskar absorb the worst of it if he wanted to win.

Din did want to win this fight. For many reasons. Some of which he probably didn’t want to examine too closely.

Across from him, Paz drew his vibroblade and activated his shield. In turn, Din unhooked the darksaber and ignited it, falling into the opening position of his favourite katas without thought, leaving one arm free to block if needed.

Kark, if the blade decided to play up in the fight he was going to be in trouble.

Paz didn’t give him time to dwell on that potential problem. The Armourer had barely announced ‘begin’ before he was striking.

Din moved, flowing easily from offensive to defensive, forcing Paz to adjust his lunge to prevent the darksaber from slicing his vibroblade in two. Reassured by the lightness of the blade, Din let himself fall into the rhythm of the fight, mind calm and clear in a way that it hadn't been in a while, each move calculated to avoid strikes aimed at vulnerable spots in his armour until a gap in Paz’s guard revealed itself. With a swift swing, Paz’s vibroblade fell from his hand to the floor, the metal superheated and cleaved clean in half.

A normal person might be drawn another weapon or yielded, but Paz, being Paz, did something only an idiot would do when faced with a saber that could only be deflected by pure beskar – which Paz’s armour was not. He charged.

Din fumbled, thrown out of the flow of the kata as he was forced to redirect his lunge so as to not kill Paz outright because as much as he thought Paz was stupid sometimes, Paz was his brother, and Din wasn’t sure he’d survive another loss so soon after giving up his son, especially not one caused by his own blade.

Din had committed enough sins. He would not add another to the list if he could avoid it.

Then Paz crashed into him and, unsteady was he was with his footwork disrupted, the impact sent him flying backwards. As he struck the ground and Paz landed atop him, the hilt of the saber was flung from his grasp. Trapped under Paz’s weight, Din struggled to get into a position that would allow him to twist free whilst above him, he could feel Paz’s weight shifting as he too tried to reach for the darksaber.

Suddenly faced with the very real possibility of losing the blade, Din panicked.

No – not like this.

Where the thought came from, Din didn’t know, only that it gave him the push, the strength he needed to buck, wrapping a leg around Paz in a way that pushed him off balance and he reached out a hand himself, knowing somehow that the blade was within reach. Blindly, he used the momentum of his shove to reverse their position and pin Paz to the ground.

Between one moment at the next, his flailing hand must have landed on the darksaber because the blade forcibly snapped into his hand like magnets coming together – it must have been doing it’s nudging thing again – the sound of its humming singing in his ears as his fingers wrapped fully around the hilt and ignited it.

“Yield,” he commanded, bringing the blade swiftly to bear in a reverse hold against Paz’s unprotected throat.

For a second he worried that Paz wouldn’t give up, not with his family’s pride on the line, and the thought that he might have to hurt him had nausea rising in his throat.

“Yield!” he repeated, pleading, quieter.

Beneath him, Paz struggled a little more, but it was a token resistance at best with death so close, then went limp. “I yield.”

Din pulled the darksaber away, and slumped back onto the grass. The blade he deactivated with trembling fingers as the adrenaline from the fight and the unexpected emotions it had brought up battled against his self-control.

He looked up and found Bo-Katan watching him with an expression that he would almost call surprise – though at what he couldn’t say – maybe that he had shown mercy where she would not.

Around the circle the whisper picked up anew.

“Mand’alor.”

Slowly, he dropped his head back down to the ground and closed his eyes with a wince.

There would be no escaping it now.

In his hand the darksaber rested, a familiar weight now, and hummed softly.

I’m glad one of us is pleased, he thought, but he couldn’t really summon up the discontent to go with it.

In the aftermath of the challenge, the Armourer insisted they rest for the night before they discussed what would be needed to travel to Mandalore. In an unexpected display of diplomacy, Bo-Katan decided to stay on her ship, whilst Din had been ushered first to the baar’ur to check for injuries, and then to the room he had called his own when he had first returned to the covert.

He had expected that the events of the day would keep him up, but between the lack of sleep he’d had on the journey back and the adrenaline crash it took no time at all for sleep to claim him.

That was until he jolted awake, knowing that it wasn’t yet dawn, and found a blue ghost at the end of his bed.

“What the kriff.” Before he could even think about it the darksaber was in his hand, swinging towards the intruder, but the blade - which had melted through a durasteel table like it was butter - didn’t leave so much as a scratch.

“Hello there, Manda’lor,” said the ghost, completely unaffected by the attempted stabbing.

“What the kriff,” Din repeated, blinking as though it would make the man go away.

It didn’t.

As the remnants of sleep faded and his gaze focused, he started to notice things. The robes weren’t dissimilar to the Jedi that had taken – that he had given – Grogu on the cruiser. The pose was similar as well and utterly relaxed, though the ghost had a beard and was stroking it with one hand.

“Wait,” he said, brows furrowing and posture relaxing just a little as he recognised the mannerisms and clothing style. “Are you a Jedi?”

For all he knew this might be normal for his son’s people. That, or he was going mad.

In response, the man laughed, full bodied, deep and resonant.

“So, he wasn’t mistaken,” the ghost replied.

“What?” Din repeated again because there was out of his depth and then there was this.

“I do wonder why it is you ask,” the man continued, “considering that of the two of us, only one is wielding a lightsaber, and it isn’t me.”

Din looked down at the darksaber, then back at the ghost. He wondered briefly whether it would be more childish to hold onto the blade or throw it away.

Then his brain caught up to what had been happening and he slowly turned to look down at his vambrace.

He had gotten into the habit of turning on the noise cancellation for his implants at night, partly because he’d spent so long travelling alone that he could barely get an hour’s sleep with all the noise the others in the covert made, and partly in the hopes that someone would try and challenge him for the darksaber and at the time he’d wanted to give himself every disadvantage that he could.

There was a slowly growing sinking feeling in his stomach that after the display with Paz no one else was going to try.

At least he had Bo-Katan.

“I can hear you,” he said, only now realising that he wasn’t so much hearing his own voice as feeling it vibrate in his chest. “How can I hear you?”

The ghost smiled at him. “Maybe you should look into that,” it said. Then it vanished.

For a moment Din stared at the space where the ghost had been, then he slowly laid back down and stared at the ceiling instead. It’s official, he thought, I’m losing it. The darksaber's finally got me to crack.

He considered worrying about this, but then he considered that no one would want a madman as Mand’alor, which proved a much better thought to fall asleep to.

Chapter Text

“Well,” said Vaya, adjusting the image enhancement on the equipment, “the good news is that it is possible to synthesise something that will help you survive the atmosphere. It won’t be pleasant by any means, but you’ll be able to breathe the air without causing significant damage to your lungs.”

Din looked at the sample that Vaya was analysing. Bo-Katan had brought it in from her ship first thing in the morning for their medic to look at and, in his buir’s absence, Vaya had become the baar’ur for the covert so the task had fallen to her.

The four of them were crowded around the small lab at the back of the room. The Armourer was impassive as always. Bo-Katan appeared nonchalant but he was beginning to get the sense that a lot of her posturing was an act.

He vaguely remembered that Vaya, as a rambunctious kid before she had taken the Creed, had already had traditional Mirialan tattoos long before she earned her first pel’gam tome’tayl. As children of baar’ur, they had spent a lot of time together, hanging around the medbay after training and although they had drifted apart once they had started their different apprenticeships, Din still recalled that time with fondness.

“And the bad news?” he asked.

“The bad news is that I don’t have everything here that’s required to make it.” Vaya made a gesture with her wrist and a hologram of a plant appeared projected above her vambrace. “If you want me to make this for you, I’ll need one of these flowers. The nectar contains a chemical that’s basically impossible to synthesise.”

“Alright, then.” When he’d heard ‘bad news’ he’d been expecting far worse than that. “Where can I find them?”

“Mikkia,” Vaya replied. “And Mikkia only. They’re native plants, finnicky enough that they haven’t been successfully grown elsewhere and they’re rare at that, which makes them valuable to the locals.”

Din considered his options with what he knew of the Mikkian people. If the plant was scarce and valuable, trade might be out of the question, Mikkian’s held themselves to a code of honour which often meant they were less willing to be flexible in negotiations, and Din had precious little to offer them in return. That left tracking one of the plants down himself.

It wasn’t his usual sort of hunt, but he’d been one of the best bounty hunters in the sector for a reason and his mentor had ensured he had a good grasp all kinds of tracking. You never knew when your ability to navigate and understand the local wildlife might mean the difference between life and death, after all.

“I’ll find one for you,” he said with a firm nod, already running mental hyperspace calculations. “If I leave soon, I can be back within two cycles.”

There was no question that he was going. After the display with the darksaber the previous day, he’d already had far too much attention on him and found himself on edge during every conversation, half expecting his unwanted title to come up at any given moment.

Two cycles, and then he could be on his way to Mandalore, to redemption. One step closer to finding the peace that had eluded him since the cruiser, since his son had been returned to him, then so abruptly parted again – or maybe even since Morak, that first sacrifice.

Once he had submitted to the Living Waters he would be able to face Grogu again as a true Mandalorian.

And he would see him again. He would.

He had promised.

“Very well.” Vaya sent over the details and they began to run on his HUD. “I can get started on the rest in the meantime.”

Behind Vaya, the Armourer shifted, clearly sensing that the conversation was coming to an end. Bo-Katan said nothing either, but she’d been watching him closely - and strangely - since he had defeated Paz. Perhaps she thought he was going to back out on their deal now that he’d beaten a challenger.

Unlike her, however, Din didn’t break his word.

Still, she gave him another lingering glance before followed the Armourer out of the room. Din made to head after them, but the sound of Vaya’s voice had him pausing in the doorway.

“Is there anything else you need from me?”

Din hovered, looking back at the baar’ur. He hadn’t brought up his strange experience from the previous night, mainly because now, in the light of day, he wasn’t entirely sure it had been real and any injuries from the fight with Paz had been treated the night before.

Then Vaya made a subtle motion, her fingers forming a triangle – like the shape of his implants - then the signs for ‘sound’ and ‘question’.

Din blinked, thrown.

Of course, it made sense that Vaya would have been read in. Until his buir returned, she would be the person most qualified to help, but more than that the question brought with it a realisation.

The headache had not abated still, though it had been dulled by the stims the Armourer had given him, but the humming was – well it wasn’t gone, but it hadn’t flared since the episode on Kalevala and it hadn’t really bothered him at all since the duel with Paz.

If anything, the sound seemed to have faded into the background, only noticeable now if he actively tried to focus on it and even then, it wasn’t – unpleasant.

“No.” He managed, caught between dwelling on the possible implications of his revelation and ignoring it entirely. “Vor entye, vod.”

Somehow, he just knew that Vaya was raising a disbelieving eyebrow, but she let it go. “Be careful, baar’ur’ad.”

Before he could even consider heading to the N-1, Bo-Katan intercepted him.

“I’m coming with you,” she announced as she fell into step with him, leaving no room for argument.

For a moment he was tempted to ask if she always spoke to the Mand’alor with so little respect, but he settled for a smaller slight instead. “Did Goran’alor tell you to come?”

“No,” Bo-Katan replied, not at all discouraged but his lack of enthusiasm, nor the implication that she was at the Armourer’s beck and call. “But considering how keen you are to visit the Living Waters, I though you might be grateful for an extra pair of hands to speed up the process.”

Din doubted that was the true reason. More likely, she was unwilling to let him, and by extension the darksaber and all that came with it, out of her sight.

With a deep sigh, he relented. “Fine, but I’m piloting.”

Bo-Katan took a few steps to respond, likely working out that the N-1 wouldn’t carry two and therefore it would be her ship he commandeered for the trip, and whether or not she was willing to swallow her pride.

“Fine,” she replied and for a second Din thought the matter was settled. “Also,” Bo-Katan added, smug, “the Mand’alor can’t just go running around the galaxy without protectors.”

Din wondered if it would count as a challenge if he just punched her. Before he could test his theory and give her some choice words on his ability to protect himself thank you very much, Paz butted in.

“In that case, I am also coming.”

How Paz had managed to sneak up on him, Din didn’t know, though he hated how it gave Bo-Katan’s words more credence when he had to restrain a flinch. Maybe he was more distracted than he thought.

“Paz,” he said, turning towards him but not slowing in his walk. “I am more than capable of looking after myself.”

“I know, Djarin,” Paz replied, pointedly not using his new title. “But I don’t trust her not to pull something.”

If Din hadn’t been convinced he would survive the trip with just Bo-Katan for company, then he was even less certain that he would survive one with Bo-Katan and Paz’s apparent rivalry and its potential to boil over.

“You don’t even know where we’re going, or why!”

“Then you can fill me in on the way.”

With a firm stride, Paz swung in front of him, physically blocking his route onto Bo-Katan’s ship. It was clear that he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

Din sighed, already done with this and unwilling to delay further. “Fine,” he bit out, waiting for Paz to step aside before starting up the ramp.

Kark he missed his buir. He was not in the mood for the bickering that was sure to start up between the two of them. If buir had been here he could have got the information he needed and been on Mikkia before anyone else even knew he’d gone.

Still, he mused, she hadn’t left him completely without hope.

Taking a precaution for the sake of his sanity, he adjusted the controls for his implants before he took off and the tension drained out of him as the sounds of growing squabbling faded into blessed silence.

As Din had suspected, the Mikkian’s were not willing to trade.

They had chosen to land near an area of dense forest - a likely candidate for finding the plant, but the only place clear enough to actually put the ship down was by a small village.

Once the landing checklist was complete, Din had reluctantly turned off the sound cancellation and had found, to his surprise, that the ship was silent. When he had turned in the pilot’s chair he had half expected to find two dead bodies, but instead Bo-Katan and Paz were sat carefully ignoring each other and he was mildly impressed that they’d managed to get through the flight without a physical fight breaking out.

It was his suggestion that they head into the village and introduce themselves so as not to scare the locals. True, the decision was also made partly in the hopes that a trade would be possible after all, and also because they might at least be able to get a rough idea of where to search if not.

Initial discussions had not proved promising.

The village elder had eventually met them, after a bit of a tense stand off between them and the few adults who were guarding the settlement.

Problem one, it turned out that the plant itself was considered sacred to the Mikkians, which made them extremely reluctant to give one away to foreigners and Din tended to respect other’s beliefs where he could because his own were so often thrown back at his face by people trying to get under the armour.

Problem two, nearby villages had been reporting attacks on other settlements and nearby areas where the flowers grew, raiders who were interested in the plant not for its supposed properties, but for its monetary value. Hence the guards.

By then, it had been clear to Din that they’d get nowhere with negotiating a trade and likely wouldn’t get any pointers either. Neither Bo-Katan or Paz seemed to have reached this conclusion yet so Din let them continue their efforts, mainly for his own amusement at this point.

Stood leaning against the outside of the elder’s hut, he listened to Bo-Katan’s current attempt, though most of his attention was on his surroundings.

The village itself was a lot like Sorgan. It was clearly a peaceful place and his gaze caught more than once on a few children who were playing by the pond, chasing something through the grass.

Sounds of nearby laughter cracked in the helmet’s audio processor as the children rolled around on the ground and it reminded him suddenly and achingly of Grogu who loved catching frogs –

No, he told himself firmly, don’t let your guard down.

Din had given his son his word, and his word was his bond. There was no point dwelling on the past. He would see Grogu again, and when he did, he would do what he should have done a long time ago and say the gai bal manda and make their clan of two official.

Inside the hut, the sounds of discussion cut off and Bo-Katan’s approaching footsteps drew him fully back to the present.

“This is hopeless,” she said. “We’d have better luck just heading into the forest and hoping to stumble across one.”

Pushing himself off from the side of the house with his shoulder, Din nodded and waited until Paz joined them. He thanked the village elder for their time because it never hurt to be polite, then pulled up what little information Vaya had been able to provide on the plant’s ideal habitat and compared it with the readings his HUD was giving him on the surrounding forest.

One direction seemed to have a river, which would be a good start if nothing else. The plant liked moisture-rich soil so if they found a source of water, they should be able to follow it until they found what they were looking for.

“The river is probably our best bet,” he said, indicating the direction.

Bo-Katan let out a long breath. “Lead the way.”

The foliage of Mikkia’s forests wasn’t as dense as it appeared from above, the trees spread above with wide, long branches that created an excellent canopy. Thankfully, this meant that the trek towards the river was relatively easy going.

Or at least it was until Bo-Katan got bored and decided to start talking.

“Back in the covert, Vaya called you baar’ur’ad,” she observed.

“She did,” Din confirmed, not letting his focus drift from the data his HUD was picking up, nor the rough path he was following through the detritus littering the ground. “What of it?”

“It’s not what I was expecting,” Bo-Katan admitted, picking her steps carefully through the fallen leaves. “I thought the Armourer was your buir.”

Behind him, Din heard Paz let out a huff of laughter.

“You wouldn’t be the first to assume that,” Paz muttered.

Ahead, Din caught sight of something and threw up the sign for hold. To their credit, both Bo-Katan and Paz immediately snapped back into full alertness. Creeping forward, one hand hovering over his blaster, Din peeked around a tree to get a clearer look.

They had found the river and, on the bank, three Mikkian children playing.

Between the path and the distance they had travelled to reach the river, he suspected they were from the same village they had left maybe half an hour before. A quick scan revealed no sign of the plant, but the river looked to be significant and fast flowing so it should be easy to follow.

Din was just starting to relax at the false alarm when the sensors picked up something else and this time there was no doubt that the threat was very real. Pulling his blaster from his holster, he flicked to internal comms.

“Djarin?” Bo-Katan queried in his ear.

“Raiders,” he said. “Eight of them. Heading towards the children.”

Paz cursed and Bo-Katan drew her own blasters in response, both of their hackles raised by his words. To Mandalorians, children were revered and their protection was of the utmost importance. They would not let the raiders harm children if they could prevent it.

Unfortunately, either the raiders knew this and had spotted them and approached the children deliberately, or their own singular focus on the threat to the adiik proved to be their downfall, because before Din could let off a single warning shot, something heavy and distinctly not Paz-shaped slammed into him, knocking his head hard back against the tree, sending the world blurring and spinning out of focus and the blaster flying from his hand.

Blindly, Din lashed out, drawing his vibroblade, and managed to catch one his attackers judging by the yell and the thump beside him. Another grabbed his arm and Din twisted – which only made the dizziness worse – pulling himself out of the lock and flipping the unfortunate soul who had grabbed him straight into the very tree he had himself been introduced to.

With the brief reprieve, he was able to get a quick sense of what was going on.

Bo-Katan and Paz were both engaged with three or four raiders each and there were already far more than the two he had taken down laid dead or injured on the forest floor.

Din wasn’t without opponents either and, to his alarm one of them was picking a familiar black hilt up from the ground. Reaching behind him, Din’s hands closed on empty space where the darksaber should have been hanging – the impact with the tree must have damaged the clasp.

It jarred, how wrong the darksaber looked in someone else’s hands because whilst the blade would hopefully be passed on soon enough, right now it was his.

Before Din could even think about reclaiming one of the heirlooms of Mandalore, the remaining two combatants not currently engaged with Bo-Katan and Paz tackled him, forcing him to put all of his focus into avoiding blows and getting a hand onto either a vibroblade or blaster.

Whilst he was struggling, he caught glimpses of the raider who was trying to work out what to do with the darksaber. They couldn’t seem to work out which end was dangerous.

You would what would be funny, Din thought in a moment of dazed hysteria as he blocked a stab that might have been lethal if it had connected. Imagine if it turned on right now and sliced that guys arm off.

For a long moment nothing happened, and then there was a familiar sound and a scream and several pairs of boots scrambled backward, including one of the raiders who had moments before been trying to kill him. Something heavy hit the floor, followed by something squishy.

The pause was all the time he needed to get a hand on his discarded blaster and with two neat shots, he downed the two who had been pinning him down.

Din turned just in time to see the darksaber turn off, laid innocently beside a severed limb.

He couldn’t help it, he giggled.

Actually, honestly giggled. He might have a concussion.

Good job Din. He wondered if it was possible to pat a lightsaber on the back. Good job darksaber.

Scrambling to his feet, he grabbed hold of the now deactivated darksaber and slipped it into a more secure spot on his belt. Then he turned to help Bo-Katan and Paz, who seemed to have found a second wave of raiders from somewhere.

You would think the massacre of their fellows might have put them off, but no such luck.

He had taken two steps towards them when suddenly all the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and he had the intense urge to turn around. Drawn as though by an invisible, soundless call, he pivoted and saw, to his horror, that whilst most of the raiders had ignored the children in favour of the larger threat, not all of them had and one of the raiders was trying to drag the oldest child away from their friends.

“Paz!” he called.

“I see them, go!” Paz shouted back between bursts of blaster fire. “We’ve got this.”

Din didn’t hesitate, he sprinted out of the tree line blaster raised and ready, taking out the two who were approaching the remaining children with ease, but he didn’t dare shoot at the other – not when there was a chance that he might hit the child.

Holstering his blaster, he let the beskar deflect the pot shots the raider took at him and barrelled into them both, forcing the raider to let go of the child in favour of preventing a knife entering his throat.

Not that freeing their hands did the raider much good. In two brisk and efficient swipes, Din had eliminated the threat.

Breathing heavily, he let the body drop and searched for the children, hoping they’d had the sense to run to safety. They hadn’t. Two of them were stood on the bank of the river, clinging to each other and sobbing. One shouted something, but whilst Din spoke many languages Mikkian wasn’t one of them. Spotting his attention, the child shouted again and pointed to where the third child was laying, unmoving, face down in the water.

Din’s blood turned to ice.

Manda, no.

Frantic, he plunged into the river and grabbed hold of the tiny and frightening limp body, immensely grateful that their clothes seemed to have caught on the branches of a fallen tree, preventing the water from carrying them away.

Every second it took to fight his way back to the shore with his precious cargo, working against both the pull of the flow and his own wet clothes, felt like an eternity.

Finally, his knees hit the silty earth and he carefully turned the child over and laid them down on their back.

A tap to his vambrace brought up a new feed on his HUD and he had a blink a couple of times to bring the results into focus because this shouldn’t have happened, he had killed the raiders he was sure of it, had knocked the child out of the final one’s grasp.

Oh kark. This might be his fault.

Then a symbol flashed on the readout and his training kicked in, forcing all thoughts and emotions aside in favour of doing what needed to be done.

No obvious signs of life – he had to start compressions.

Shifting up to a higher kneel and bracing with one hand to give himself more leverage, Din positioned his other hand on the centre of the child’s chest and double checked the instructions on his HUD to make sure he had the right place.

Then he pushed down, rhythm dictated by an ancient Mandalorian chant.

Beneath the palm of his hand, he could feel the bones and muscles straining and under his breath he repeated a continuous stream of ni ceta, ni ceta, ni ceta, because bruised ribs were no joke – he knew that from personal experience.

But better a few treatable injuries than dead.

He was reaching the end of the round of compressions, so he checked his HUD even though he already suspected what he would find. Compressions wouldn’t be enough. His buir had trained him in this, he was familiar with the next step.

“C’mon kid,” he murmured as he completed the final few.

The readings weren’t looking good. Still no regular heart rhythm, no breathing. Not willing to completely trust his armour’s sensors after his collision with the tree, he held a vambrace in front of the kid’s face, glad now that he had never painted the beskar because it would make what he was looking for more easily visible, but there was no exhale to fog up the metal.

Behind him, he could hear Bo-Katan and Paz still fighting off the raiders. Across from him the other children were watching, tears running down their young faces.

He couldn’t put this on them and he couldn’t afford to waste any more time. Every second counted.

With one hand, he tipped the kid’s head back, careful not to damage the tendrils on their head whilst his other hand reached up for the latch on his helmet and there was a hiss of air as he ripped it from his head and dropped it onto the grass.

In front of him, one of the children gasped but he barely heard it, too busy making sure he was working with a clear airway. Then he inhaled, pinched the kid’s nose shut, and started rescue breaths.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see a small chest rising as he breathed for them, then falling as he pulled away to suck in another lungful of air.

He repeated the process twice more, then resettled his hand to start the cycle over – this time without helmet providing him with live updates on the kid’s vitals – there was no time. Not pausing, he pulled the glove off his free hand with his teeth and fumbled to find a pulse point.

“Please kid,” he gasped between compressions, between the numbers he was counting up in his head. Twenty-five, twenty-six. “Gedet'ye adiik. Breathe.”

Still nothing.

The checks were quicker this time, his body moving on autopilot. Rather than the HUD providing instructions, it was the memory of his buir’s voice running through the steps that guided him.

Then, on the second rescue breath, sudden movement beneath his hands.

Din moved back just in time to avoid the spray of river water as the kid gasped and began to bring up everything they had swallowed.

It was instinct that had him pulling on a shoulder, rolling the small figure onto their side so that they wouldn’t end up choking on it again.

“That’s it,” he said, voice as soft and comforting as he could make it considering his own rapid breathing and the rush of relief that joined the adrenaline running through his veins. Although it wasn’t quite as exhausting to perform the technique on a child as it was an adult it was still more tiring than most people expected. Absently, he rubbed one hand up and down their back. “In and out, kid. You’re ok.”

A rustling sound had him twitching, freeing a hand to reach for his blaster, but when he looked up he found himself staring at a blue helmet.

An unfiltered blue, one that looked much brighter than normal.

Oh.

He dropped his gaze back down and found his own helmet discarded in the grass beside him, the final confirmation that his face was visible.

Just as quickly as it had loosened, the tightness in his chest was back.

What would Paz do? Would he finish him then and there rather than let him live with the shame of becoming aruetii? Would he demand Din remove the rest of his armour and abandon him here? What would Bo-Katan do about the darksaber?

Before his thoughts could spiral further, Paz shifted, slowly crouching down to kneel opposite him. The visor tilted down, dropping away from his face to the child shaking and coughing in Din’s arms.

Then the visor moved back up again and Din knew without a doubt that, if he hadn’t already, Paz had just become the first Mandalorian outside of his clan to see his face.

There was a trembling in his hands that could have come from either the child or himself, but Din met Paz’s gaze regardless. Now that it was sinking in, so was an unexpected truth.

He had a lot of regrets, but what he had just done to save the life of a child was not one of them, even if it meant becoming dar’manda in Paz’s eyes.

Even if it meant breaking the Creed.

The armoured shoulders rose and fell in a deep sigh as Paz worked through whatever it was that he was thinking, and then Paz came to a decision and spoke.

“How can I help, baar’ur’ad?”

His cheeks were wet as he talked Paz through the scans and checks they would need to run before they could commit to moving the kid. Din blamed it on the plunge into the river even though it couldn’t possibly have been the cause.

The child Din had saved - Cit’ra their friends had informed them - wouldn’t let go of him. They had clung to his armour until Din had given in, and lifted them into his arms for the walk back to the village.

Bo-Katan and Paz didn’t put up a fight, though Din suspected that was less to do with the child’s wishes because Din was far from in the best shape himself, and more that his status as baar’ur’ad and beroya both meant that, of the three of them, he actually had the most medical training.

It had been so easy to slip his helmet back on. So natural.

Paz still hadn’t said a word about it.

On their arrival at the village they were greeted with a mixture of frantic shouting and aggression, and it took Din a moment to work out what it must look like – Cit’ra now asleep and therefore limp in his arms.

Thankfully, before anyone could do anything drastic one of the other children piped up, regaling the gathered adults with the story of how Cit’ra hadn’t been breathing but then the armoured man had saved him.

A woman was battling her way through the crowd, calling for her child, and Din passed Cit’ra over to her – the boy’s eyes opening weakly but for long enough to confirm his sibling’s tale – and carefully explained that they would need to be seen by a medic to ensure there was no lasting damage.

“Thank you,” the woman choked out, one hand grabbing hold of his arm and squeezing. “Thank you.”

Behind the woman, the elder carefully tapped their staff onto the ground, once, twice.

“We owe you a great debt, Mandalorian.”

“You owe me nothing,” Din replied, overwhelmed by everything that had happened and falling back on the lessons that had been forged in his heart. “Children are the future.”

The elder hummed thoughtfully and then stepped aside, revealing another Mikkian who was holding a pot with one of the sacred flowers out in offering.

“A debt for a debt,” they said and Din got the sense that the words had great meaning to their culture. “A life for a life.”

After everything that had gone wrong for him lately, Din took hold of the feeling of something going right and held it close to his heart – just like the flower that would convey him safely on the final leg of his journey to the Living Waters.

"A debt for a debt," he repeated to accept the offering and breathed deep, catching a hint of a delicate scent through the helmet filters that smelled like the forest, and fresh air and hope.

Chapter Text

Din was anxious. No, scratch that, Din was beyond anxious and well into approaching breakdown territory.

On his belt, the darksaber had been suspiciously well behaved all the way back to the covert – no sudden bursts of ringing, no unexpected weight changes. That alone was unnerving. The good behaviour had continued as Vaya finished synthesising the medication that would let him survive Mandalore’s toxic atmosphere without his helmet.

Once the loaded stim had been pressed into his hand, Vaya had taken the time to give him a full run-down of what to expect. She held nothing back, one baar’ur’ad to another.

The antidote was experimental. It was, in itself, toxic - which was why he was only getting the one dose and no more and he would only have an hour as a result. Having it running through his bloodstream would hurt. In the aftermath, he would need to return as soon as possible for medical care, to make sure that neither Mandalore’s poisonous air nor its countermand had caused permanent damage.

Din had wanted to laugh at that, as though he hadn’t been in constant pain since he had said goodbye to his son, living with a gaping hole in his heart the size of his missing clan.

Even as they spoke, he was dosed with painkillers to calm the never-ending headache that had been bothering him since the cruiser.

Any of these things would be cause for worry, yet it wasn’t the darksaber, nor what he was about to put himself through for the sake of redemption that was bothering him.

Bo-Katan accompanying him to Mandalore had been a given. Not just because of their deal, but because of all the mando’ade he knew, she was his best bet for successfully navigating the mines.

He hadn’t expected Paz to insist on coming along.

Paz, who had seen his face on Mikkia, Paz who had said nothing about it on the flight back to the covert, nothing during the day they spent preparing, nothing even as he boarded the ship with them, claiming only that whilst Bo-Katan had so far been honourable, he still didn’t trust her.

At this point, Din was tempted just to take his helmet off again, if only to get Paz to do something.

Finally, several hours into hyperspace, the hulking Mandalorian opposite him sighed, looked up from his clasped gauntlets, and said, “We need to talk.”

Din’s first reaction, of all things, was relief.

“Alright,” he said.

Paz sighed again. Din began to wonder if this was how others felt when he did much the same.

“I have been – thinking about the Creed a lot recently,” Paz started, slow and hesitant and, well, that was not how Din had expected this conversation to open.

“The Creed?” he prompted, his gut telling him that this wasn’t about what he’d thought it was about.

“With the child,” Paz continued, still subdued, “you didn’t even hesitate. Even if it meant becoming dar’manda.” Finally, he looked up and they assessed each other, visor to visor. “You saw what needed to be done, and you did it. You saved him.”

The words hung between them.

“What are you saying, Paz?” Din asked, wanting to cut to the core of the matter, feeling his heart pounding in his chest.

“I’m not sure I would have been able to do it.” The words were whispered and pained, as though Paz had to forcibly push the confession out. “To take off my helmet -” A harsh exhale came through the vocoder. “What kind of Mandalorian does that make me?”

There was an ache in his chest now for an entirely different reason, a heaviness not of the darksaber but rather another burden. The weight of the Creed and balancing it against the life of a child.

Din had never felt the weight of his unintentional title as he had in that moment, because this wasn’t Paz Viszla seeking answers from Din Djarin. This was Paz Viszla looking to someone he considered his Mand’alor for guidance.

Ironically, Din suspected that if his own Creed hadn’t already been in tatters by the time they reached Mikkia, he’d be having the same crisis. There was no doubt in him that he would have done it anyway, he was baar’ur’ad and although he had apprenticed as a beroya, his training had reflected that.

The words he spoke were chosen with great care.

“You are one who is finding a new Way.”

“Just as you are,” Paz responded. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

Paz nodded and slumped further into his seat and at last addressed their intended destination and what it might entail. “Do you think you will find answers there? In the Living Waters?”

For a moment, Din let himself truly consider why he was going to Mandalore. At first, it had been for redemption – to atone for removing his helmet, but if he were honest, he didn’t regret any of the occasions he had borne his face to others. If he had to, he knew he would do it again.

Paz’s sudden doubting of the Creed had only heightened his own.

Could you really seek redemption if you didn’t believe you needed it?

At some point, his motivation had shifted, and he hadn’t even noticed it. Not his drive – because that had not once faltered since he had made the decision to reach the Livings Waters, but his reason for the journey was not the same.

Was it answers he sought? Some sort of enlightenment that only Mandalore itself could offer?

All he knew was that, deep in his soul, he recognised that he needed to go to the Waters. That there was an urge in him that could not be denied. It terrified and energised him in equal measure.

“I hope so,” he whispered into the quiet hold.

Mandalore was dead. It was one thing to know it academically, it was another thing to see what the Empire had done to his people's ancestral planet.

Din stared down at what remained in horror. By the way Paz was standing, joints stiff and trembling, his reaction was much the same, Bo-Katan’s was more subdued, likely tempered by time and previous encounters.

Under the roiling clouds and endless thunder, the surface of Mandalore glinted, sand turned to glass from the sheer heat of the bombardment, cities to rubble, then dust. If Bo-Katan hadn’t said otherwise, Din would have thought that the Armourer had been right all along, that the planet was cursed, that nothing had survived and that their journey was for naught.

The place that Bo-Katan chose to land seemed no different to anywhere else. It was difficult to find any sense of landmarks amongst the devastation, yet Bo-Katan strode to the ship's ramp with a confidence that spoke of familiarity.

“The Empire tried to destroy everything,” she said to them on the cusp of stepping onto the rock that had once been her home planet. The melancholy in her voice was clear. It could have been either an attempt at comfort or education. Din was grateful either way. “They nearly succeeded. You are lucky, Djarin, that the mines were deep enough and lined with sufficient veins of beskar to survive the weight of the destruction above.”

“Are they even accessible?” Paz asked, his own voice sounding choked and completely void of antagonism.

What did petty feuds matter in the face of such desolation?

“If you know the way, yes.” Bo-Katan replied, the edge to her own tone long gone. They stood for a moment longer, just letting it sink in. Three children of Mandalore, all from vastly different backgrounds returning home together. “Let’s move,” said Bo-Katan after a long moment. “The quicker the better, our helmet filters will only buy us so much time."

Din double-checked his belt, hand brushing over first the darksaber, it's humming had become tainted with something Din would, if pushed, describe as mournful, and then over Vaya’s stim.

With each step they took, Mandalore’s surface crunched with cracked glass. Din didn't dare look down, fearful of what he might see through the semi-transparent layer when he was already hanging onto his composure by a thread.

Bo-Katan led them unerringly to a gap in the surface, and they dropped down, jetpacks allowing them to descend safely through the crumbled remains of a settlement.

“Sundari,” Paz murmured, looking around. Bo-Katan didn’t correct him, so Paz must have been right, though how he could tell, Din had no idea.

Finally, they travelled below the deepest city structures and the walls surrounding them turned from chiselled stone to natural cave until finally they could go down no further and landed on solid ground.

“This way.”

Din wasn’t sure if the air was actually getting thinner, or if it was just anticipation that was making it hard to take a full breath. They passed the remains of what had surely once been great stone doors, through caverns where their helmet lights illuminated the occasional glow of silver in rock that could only be unmined beskar.

Then, after what felt like hours of silence, the distant lapping of water on stone.

“Is that?” Din couldn’t finish the question, the lump in his throat too constricting as the enormity of what he was about to do finally hit him.

Helmet lamps illuminated the room ahead, dancing off the gentle waves of the Living Waters. What he knew of them, he only knew from stories, legends. The elders had taught him that the Living Waters were where the first Mandalorians took their vows, where criminals were tested, and from which those deemed unworthy never returned.

Breathe, he told himself firmly.

Forcing himself to cross the final few meters, he joined Bo-Katan and Paz at the entrance to a great cavern. Beyond the doorway was a small raised area of stone, then stairs that led to the dark waters below. They didn't look like much, but looks could be deceiving. Din knew that better than most, he'd seen a tiny child lift a Mudhorn.

“The Living Waters,” Bo-Katan confirmed.

Now that he was here, the anxiety faded away. Instead, every moment he held back it felt like he was fighting against a pull that drew him to the waters, like two magnets coming together.

Just like that, he knew that whatever happened next, this was what he was meant to do.

Stepping forward up to the top of the stone steps, he reached up and removed his jetpack. When he had first taken the vows, he had done so without any armour, his only weapon a vibroknife tucked in his boot. Now, he let intuition guide him, his blaster and larger weapons joined his jetpack. The darksaber he hesitated over, but when he reached to unhook it the humming picked up and became uncomfortable to hear again for the first time in several days, so he left it be rather than risk upsetting it again.

Stripped down as far as he felt comfortable, Din stood on the threshold of a new chapter to his story and pulled the stim from his belt.

Taking a deep breath, he raised it to his neck, finding the right spot with a mixture of muscle memory from all the times he had patched himself up in the field and hours of lessons in the med bay, thumb hovering over the activator. This was a potentially lethal risk, but he trusted in Vaya, in his buir’s training. With a hiss, the drug entered his bloodstream.

Almost instantly, it began to burn and Din had to force himself not to react, not to let up until full dose had been delivered. Then he dropped the now-empty stim carelessly to the ground and did his best to work through it.

Once the burning had settled into a more bearable ache, he reached for his helmet. Moment of truth. The sound of the seals breaking had his two companions shuffling anxiously and Din found himself holding his breath even as he bared his face. Slowly, he let it out. He trusted his buir.

The first inhale was stuttered, uncertain. It hurt, just as Vaya said it would, but it gave him sufficient oxygen to prevent him from suffocating and the pain only served to sharpen the sense that whilst he was breathing in toxic air, he was alive.

The next breath came easier. And the one after.

Relaxing, he carefully bent down and laid his helmet on the ground. A moment later, he reached up again, deactivating the mag-clamps holding the external elements of his implants in place. His buir had designed them to withstand sonics and rainstorms, but he had no idea what a full submersion would do to them and he’d rather live with the ringing for a few minutes than have to put up with it indefinitely. Placing the small pieces of metal beside his helmet, he straightened his shoulders and faced the Waters.

“I submit to the Living Waters,” he murmured.

“I witness,” Bo-Katan replied, her words echoed by Paz a moment later, and he heard the sound of boots moving as they turned away so they wouldn't accidentally see his face when he emerged, just before the ringing swallowed up everything else. If he needed any further proof that his implants were perfectly fine and that the noise that had been bothering him was the darksaber he definitely had it. The high-pitched drone he heard now was distinctly different to the hum of the saber.

It was time.

I swear on my name and the names of the ancestors, Din recited as he stepped down into the Waters – not aloud, but in a way this felt better, felt right. This vow was between him and Mandalore. That I shall walk the way of the Mand’alor.

Now, with just his head above the Waters, Din took one final deep breath, filling his lungs.

Then he let himself fall under.

And the words of the Creed shall be forever forged in my heart.

Fully under the water, Din opened his eyes to unexpected light.

On the surface, the Living Waters had seemed dark, but as he sank into the depths, they came to life. Great clouds of blue and green blossomed as little lights - tiny glowing creatures maybe - swirled around, growing until he was completely surrounded by colour. It was unworldly, yet beautiful.

“Who are you?”

Whirling around at the voice - or rather voices, layered and ancient which penetrated the ringing with ease, Din couldn’t prevent his gasp, nor the panic that followed it because he couldn’t breathe water, he would drown.

Only, despite the mouthful of water he had just taken in, he felt fine.

The source of the voice (voices?) slowly became clear, the swirling blue-green lights coalescing into a figure that Din could have sworn he had never seen before but that he knew, deeply and intimately. Armoured in familiar beskar’gam, the T-visor of the helmet brought solace that whatever this was, it was Mandalorian. The shape of the helmet itself indicated that, like several members of his covert, like his own buir, this figure – or at least the shape they had taken – was not human.

He was dreaming, he had to be. There was no other way to make sense of what he was experiencing. Just as he couldn’t breathe underwater, no one had ever mentioned the Living Waters literally speaking.

The creature laughed. "Oh little one, why did you think they are named the Living Waters?" Din had no answer to that. "I ask again, who are you?"

“I am,” the words ‘a Mandalorian’ rose up and were swallowed down, “Din Djarin.”

He got the impression that the figure was smiling behind the helmet.

“I am the Guardian.” Perhaps, Din mused still struggling to comprehend what was happening, this was what his vode had meant when they talked of the judgement of the Waters. Maybe this was his test. “I watch over the Waters, and all mando’ade who swear to the Creed, but it was been a long time since one like you arrived, let alone carrying the blade of the Mand’alor.”

Din glanced down and found the darksaber floating, still attached to his belt but hovering as though it were reaching out to the figure.

“Like me?” The figure titled its head, the motion almost appearing blurred as the lights took a moment to keep up.

“You are ka’ra riye’miit, Din Djarin.” Star blessed? It seemed as though the Waters were just as fond of riddles as some of his covert’s elders – even the Armourer sometimes because the statement meant nothing to him, though it clearly meant something to the figure, this Guardian. “What do you seek of the Waters, Din Djarin?”

“Redemption.”

“What for?”

“I broke the Creed. I removed my helmet. I wish to atone and reclaim my vows."

That got a reaction, but not the one Din expected. Confusion radiated from them. “And how exactly does removing your helmet equate to breaking the Resol’nare?”

Din opened his mouth, a half-formed rebuttal on his lips, and froze because that was the question he’d been asking himself without even realising. Ever since he had shown his face to his son and an outsider without an ounce of regret.

He knew now that others observed the Creed differently – had seen as much in Bo-Katan and her followers, Mandalorians who had long ancestry on this planet. How much more of a step was it to consider that the Resol’nare could be interpreted differently? That the command to wear armour didn’t have to be observed so strictly?

Din felt as though he were fumbling, on the boundary of a revelation that would change everything.

“Who are you?” the Guardian asked again.

“Din Djarin,” he repeated, voice barely above a whisper.

“What are you?”

“I - ”

A ghostly hand pressed against his chest, over the diamond of his kar’ta beskar. He almost didn’t expect to feel it, but the weight was there. “What does this tell you?”

Before, the answer to this question had always been guided by others. He had never actually taken the time to consider the implications of his own identity before. Once he had been Aq Ventian, then a foundling, then -

“That I’m Mandalorian.”

“Then Mandalorian you are.” Surely it couldn’t be as simple as that? “To be Mandalorian is a choice,” the Guardian continued, the fingers made of light a firm but not unwelcome pressure. "It is not something that is decided at birth, nor something that can be decided for others. You will not find the redemption you seek here, Din Djarin. There is nothing you have done that requires the atonement of the Waters.” Where Din should have felt relief, all he felt was confusion. The hand pushed, pressing over his heart. “Only you have the power to absolve yourself, Mand’alor."

The next words he didn't so much hear as feel reverberating in his soul.

Embrace the gift of the Waters. Stop holding back.

And with that, the Guardian shoved him into the darkness where present and future merged into one.

Din was standing in a room not dissimilar to Bo-Katan’s keep on Kalevala, the darksaber lit in his hand. In front of him were more Mandalorians that he could ever have imagined seeing in one place. Amongst the sea of helmets, some worn, some held by armoured sides, he could spot familiar ones – Bo-Katan, Paz, the Armourer, his buir.

There was a cloak draped over one of his pauldrons, the colour the deep red of his home world. On the other pauldron, the Mudhorn signet gleamed.

“Will any challenge?” he asked.

In front of him, hundreds of fists met beskar in a salute.

Din was fighting. Across different places and different times, he battled for his people, for his right to his place amongst them. He held the darksaber in a forward grip, then a reverse and swung it with ease. The blade clashed against beskar armour as the Mandalorian he was duelling failed to block the move in time.

“Do you yield?” he asked, the humming blade held against vulnerable throats.

“I yield,” said one.

“I yield,” said another.

“I yield, Mand’alor.”

Din was curled up on a chair in a cosy living space, a fire crackling in the grate, most of his armour stacked neatly on a stand nearby – including his helmet.

Perched on his knees sat Grogu, perhaps a little bigger than he had been on the cruiser. The tan clothing was gone, replaced by beskar mail and colourful robes and the pendant on the necklace was not a mythosaur but a Mudhorn signet. Clawed fingers move to replicate the sign that Din was teaching him, modified to allow for fewer fingers.

“Well done ad’ika!” Din praised, delighting in the smile that lit up his son’s face.

“He’ll be fluent in no time,” said his buir behind him.

Grogu looked over his shoulder and formed another sign with a grin. Ba-buir.

Alia laughed, voice rich and unmodulated. “That’s right bu’ad.”

Din was leading a group of Mandalorians out of the smoking remains of an Imperial stronghold. In his arms was a small boy with dark skin and no name. Others in the squad were also carrying children. Paz was holding two.

“Good riddance,” hissed one bearing painted markings of Nite Owls. It took Din a moment to place her as Bo-Katan’s second, Koska Reeves.

The boy in his arms looked up at him. “Who are you?” he asked, small and frightened.

“I’m a Mandalorian,” Din replied to his latest foundling, “and I promise that you will be safe with me.”

In response, the boy snuggled into his shoulder. Din pulled the red cloak around him protectively.

Din was alone in the darkness, far from home, broken, hurting, angry. It would be so easy to lose himself to it. Instead, he pictured Grogu, his friends, his family. He recalled their warmth and love and laughter. Light began to blossom, driving away the black until it was once again contained – ever present but held under tight control.

Din was on a distant moon.

Across from him was a warrior wearing a green helmet with pointed horns and orange stripes, the colours of duty and freedom. The same stripes he had tried so painstakingly to replicate on the hull of the Crest.

“Buir?” he asked, heart clenching in painful hope.

The helmet turned and its bearer clearly startled.

“Ner dinui,” exclaimed Alia Senn.

Din closed his eyes, the exhaustion pulling him under, but it was ok now. His buir was here.

He was safe.

As the visions faded, he was once again choking, caught beneath water. Still disorientated, he flailed, reaching for something – anything solid to hold on to, for a sense of up and down.

Small beams of light above him had him kicking upwards and just as the burning in his lungs began to become unbearable he breached the surface, sending water splashing in all directions. The first thing he heard was muffled shouting. With the ringing in his ears, he couldn’t pick out the words, but in that moment he didn’t care because he needed to breathe.

Only the air that he drew in burned even worse than the water, which could mean only one thing.

His hour was up.

It couldn’t possibly be true, there was no way he’d been in the Living Waters that long – he would have drowned – but the prickling on his exposed skin and the ache in his throat suggested otherwise.

Coughing, he prioritised and ignored his implants, grabbing blindly for his helmet. At any other time, he would have done so because his first instinct was to cover his face before anyone could see only - he didn't feel that urge anymore, rather he reached out in a desperate need for oxygen, something only the helmet could currently provide.

As the seals and filters engaged, Din sucked in a gasp of stale but beautifully pure air and slumped back onto the stone steps in sheer relief as he gulped in several deep breaths and felt the burning sensation begin to fade away.

With his body calming, his mind kicked up a gear, trying to process what he had just experienced.

There were no words to describe it. The Guardian, the visions, the impossible length of time he had spent submerged. If he hadn’t gone through it personally, he wouldn’t have believed it. He could feel something building in him, another hysterical laugh, perhaps, at the increasingly strange turns his life he taken that he was seriously pondering on what most would consider an oxygen-deprived hallucination.

Din had no explanation beyond that he’d seen his son do weirder.

The noises that he could pick up above the ringing seemed to be growing more frantic so, with a groan, he pushed himself upright and turned. Bo-Katan and Paz were where he had left them, still facing away, their postures tense and panicked.

“I’m ok,” he managed, knowing the sound of the vocoder would give Paz all he needed to know it was safe to look. “I didn’t have time to put the implants back on, so I can’t hear you.”

Paz twisted, took a step forward and froze. Bo-Katan, following his lead, did much the same and for a long moment they stared at him.

Twitching under their scrutiny, Din knew his voice came out sharp. “What?”

Instead lieu of speaking or even signing, Paz simply pointed at his chest. Following, Din tipped his head down, wondering what on Manda had caused such a reaction. Beyond the full-body ache that the antidote had caused he didn’t actually feel any different even after what he had just been through so what –

His cuirass was glowing.

Din startled at the distinctive blue-green light of the Waters shone back at him from his own armour.

Frowning, he lifted a hand and tried to brush the glow away, but it was as though the bioluminescent creatures of the Waters had melded to his beskar’gam. Still, his attempt to remove them, however futile, did make him notice that the coverage wasn’t total. The shape they formed nagged at the back of his mind until he realised that he was seeing it upside-down.

Curled around his kar’ta beskar was a symbol. With some mental gymnastics, Din was able to twist the image around and – well, he could understand why Paz and Bo-Katan were staring at him now.

It was a mythosaur.

Branded upon him by the Living Waters was the icon of Mandalore itself.

Across the galaxy, a lone Mandalorian tended to a fire. Her helmet glowed almost gold in the light, but the green paint temped the colour.

Suddenly, she stopped poker held in a lax hand, helmet fixed on a spot opposite her that appeared empty, but wasn’t, not in that moment.

Alia Senn had known for a long time that she, like many of her race, was ka’ra touched. Not enough for anything meaningful, nor to attract the attention of certain parties and considering all that had happened in her lifetime she was grateful for that.

So, when she sensed her son reaching out, his call to his buir, Alia heard him.

Ner dinui, she thought.

Then, she banked the fire and stood, searching the stars above her for the one that her sister had indicated. It was time to come home.

Chapter Text

Din Djarin was seven years old when he woke – disorientated and cold – in an unfamiliar place surrounded by heavily armoured faceless people.

It took several shaky minutes for him to piece together the memories and several more before he could get the burning in his eyes to stop. Remembering his – his mother’s lessons on calming himself on being disciplined in self, in his mind he began to make a list of what he knew.

His parents were dead, their lights blinking out above him, the pain of loss overwhelming even now. He was an orphan. These people had rescued him. They had taken him with them far away from home.

The piercing ringing in his ears which was stealing all other sound from him wasn’t going away.

Somewhere between the cellar, the chorus of explosions, and being inducted into what he would later learn was a Mandalorian covert, the sounds of life had morphed into an overwhelming discordant noise that made him want to tear his hair out because it just wouldn’t stop.

When he opened his mouth to speak, he couldn’t hear his own panicked words as they spilled from his lips. New tears threatened to spill from his eyes but he held them back because he had a feeling that this was a place where it would not do to show weakness.

Still, at least he knew he was saying them because his rescuer, who he recognised by the image on his shoulder, carefully pulled him to his feet and led him somewhere with gentle hands that almost overcame the cold. Where they were going, Din couldn’t tell, his preoccupation with the sound causing reality to slip in and out of his fingers.

It was sudden warmth that brought him back to himself. Sat on a chair, he was in a bustling med bay and another metal-coated warrior – this one was mostly green coloured – was carefully running a scanner over his head.

Once they noticed that he was following their movements a piece of flimsi was handed to him.

Are you aware of where you are?

Instead of trying to speak again, afraid that he wouldn’t be able to hear it, he nodded.

The green Mandalorian, who must be a medic of some kind, placed the scanner aside, crouched down in front of him, pulled a cap from a pen, and for some reason started to scrawl in bright white on their own chestplate. For a terrifying moment, Din struggled to understand what they were writing, the letters making no sense to him even though the general shapes were definitely familiar, and his breathing kicked up again.

Before he could sink fully back into panic because surely that meant there was something even more wrong with him, the Mandalorian stopped writing, helmet titled. Dropping the pen, they shook their head and put their hand dramatically on their hips in a way that made Din certain they were exaggerating their gestures to an almost comedic extent.

Then they raised a hand, pointed at themselves, and knocked themselves on the head with a light and chiding fist.

Din giggled, and then startled at his own reaction.

With another full-bodied sigh the medic scrubbed the word out and started writing again. The letters were wobbly, but this time they were at least the right way up.

Aila. It read. An arrow pointed upwards towards the helmet.

“Ay-lah?” he tried, and swallowed around the worry at still not able to hear anything over the ringing, but he must have spoken loud enough because the head shook and the shoulders raised and lowered in an exaggerated laugh.

I must apologise for my bad handwriting. The next piece of flimsi read. Din was surprised to find another tiny smile pulling at his mouth, only the second one since – no don’t think about it.

After a moment, the Mandalorian gestured at his face, gloves brushing by his eyes, then ran their finger under the first few letters. It took him a second but it clicked. “Eye-lah? Aila?”

Frantic nodding and mock cheering greeted him and the smile blossomed properly this time quite without his permission. The Mandalorian tapped their name and then pointed at him.

“Din,” he offered.

Picking up the abandoned pen, he carefully wrote his name on the front of the jacket they had given him. It was only then, as he looked at the letters, that he realised the irony, as his ears rang in the likeness of his name.

After several hours of stilted writing and enthusiastic gesticulating Aila had explained that his proximity to the explosions in the droid attack had damaged something and that, because he had basically shut down after his rescue, they hadn’t realised the problem in time to treat him with bacta.

It turned out that ringing noise had a name – tinnitus - and that it might well go away on its own. Aila was quick to reassure him that if it didn’t there were ways to treat it.

Over the following days of frequent visits from his rescuer’s rooms to the medical bay, Din grew to attached to Alia. There was a warmth to her even through the armour, though part of it was probably because she didn’t coddle him. She treated him like he was one of them from the start. Took the time to make sure he was comfortable and that he understood everything she was telling him and, most importantly, she let him make the choice when the ringing persisted rather than making it for him.

And if, when she suggested using the medical droid he blanked out again and knocked a tray of tools away – not that he heard the crash – she simply moved on as though nothing had happened, well that would be their little secret.

After that, Alia ensured that everything he needed she did herself.

Despite his best efforts, when he woke to two sharp aches just behind his ears and blessed silence he couldn’t stop himself from tearing up again. When his reaction caused Aila to start frantically checking him over they flowed freely but all he could do was grab onto her and sob in relief.

After a moment, her arms wrapped around him, warm and welcoming and with such a sense of safety that he never wanted to let go because she was the closest thing he had now to home.

Her voice, when they started to adjust the implants, was melodic and soothing and almost exactly how he had imagined it in his head.

“These put pressure on the nerves that were misfiring,” Aila said with a light tap to one of the implants, “that’s what was causing the ringing sound.”

“And this?” he asked, pointing at the other control on his vambrace. His vambrace. That Aila had given to him.

“Controls the sound cancellation. You can set them to come on automatically to protect you from loud noises if you want. Might prevent this happening again, or worsening, especially once you start training with blasters.”

Din nodded, carefully brushing a hand over one of the small pieces of metal tucked behind his ear. “What if they get damaged?”

His voice didn’t tremble, but it took effort. He had been with the Mandalorians long enough to know what would happen if he wanted to take the vows.

Aila carefully tipped his head to the side so she could check on her work.

“There might be precedent,” she said after a moment but he could tell she didn’t believe her own words, “if the work is too delicate for droids, exceptions can be made for essential medical care.”

Din stayed silent. They both knew that the work would be well within a droid’s remit.

“Ok,” he whispered into his lap because at least she had tried.

For a long moment Aila stared at him, helmet tilted as though in deep thought. “Unless,” she mused. “Din, I may just have an idea.”

If Alia Senn knew one thing, it was that Din Djarin could not stay with the Vizslas. Not because they had been mistreating or neglecting him, quite the opposite, but because of all the clans represented in her covert, they were amongst the most prejudiced against those who were ka’ra touched.

Although she counted both herself and her sister amongst those who were at least slightly sensitive to the mysterious energy of the universe, Alia had never had trouble keeping it quiet.

Din was a different story.

From the moment Din had lashed out in fear with a painfully familiar power, sending a tray of equipment to the opposite side of the room – and never had she been so grateful that she insisted on privacy than in that moment – she had known.

A child who had received ka’ra’s blessing but had not yet learned control would not be safe in House Vizsla.

Of course, when the incident occurred, Alia had no other option than to let him go with them, but now?

Well, she was pretty sure she wasn’t imagining the faint connection between them. What little she had learnt about reading others had shown her how Din had shone once she had managed to resolve his tinnitus. She had never seen him so bright as when he was in her arms.

Still, it wasn’t until he brought up a very good point regarding his quite understandable aversion to droids that the idea popped into her head.

It was the prerogative of baar’ur to take on foundlings that they thought would make good medics. A baar’ur’s claim could overrule that of even the most powerful House. The vast majority of children brought into baar’ur clans would go on to train with them – but not all.

Alia had no doubt Din would make an excellent baar’ur if he chose to go down that route, but she was well aware that his quiet temperament made him an unusual choice. Baar’ur usually favoured the bold – those who were willing to stand up to their elders and superiors. Yet, Din was curios, sharp in mind, and bold when he felt safe.

In time, she hoped he would come fully out of his shell, but for now she had to convince her alor that Din would be a good fit for her clan.

Especially so considering she had only recently finished her apprenticeship. It wasn’t unheard of to take on a foundling so early, but she had told Fayve only a few weeks ago that she wanted more time to further hone her training without having the pressure of looking after a child.

Ahead, Alia could hear the forge, the sound of twin hammers suggesting that Fayve and alor were working on something.

Stepping into the room, Alia did a quick scan and found Tal Vizsla amongst a small group in the corner, as she had hoped.

Then, she approached the forge itself and waited.

She didn’t have to wait long. Fayve spotted her first, golden helm turned to face her in question. Alia merely held her posture, hands clasped loosely behind her back whilst the other figure paused in their work to see what had disturbed their apprentice.

“Alia Senn,” said their Armourer and alor, “what brings you to the forge?”

“Has Din Djarin been claimed?” she asked, loud enough that her voice rang around the room.

The discussion that had been going on in Tal Vizsla’s corner abruptly cut off and the room fell eerily silent. Alia held her nerve. She was fairly certain that Din hadn’t been formally adopted by the Vizsla’s, only that, as his rescuers, they had a right to claim.

Fayve had put her tools down completely now, and Alia just knew that if her sister could, she would be giving her a firm interrogation on her sudden change of stance towards taking on a foundling.

“No.”

It took effort to keep her relief out of her stance at the Armourer’s confirmation. Thank the ka’ra.

“Then I submit a claim to him,” Aila said, firm. “As is my right as baar’ur.”

From across the room, Tal Vizsla took a single step forward. Alia had been expecting as such, she knew that Tal’s son Paz was fond of his new playmate.

The Armourer had spotted the movement too.

“Tal Vizsla, as Din Djarin’s cabur’dar, do you challenge Alia Senn’s claim?” the Armourer asked.

The warrior in blue armour stared at her, visor tracking to the spot where Aila’s hands were clasped behind her back. Alia held his gaze, unerring, and refused to so much as twitch. She would not show weakness, not to Vizsla, not for something as important as this. She was baar’ur, and it would serve Tal Vizsla well to remember that.

If it came to it, she would fight for Din with everything she had, but she was well aware that fighting wasn’t her speciality.

After what felt like minutes, Vizsla broke the standoff with just the slightest slump of their shoulders, whatever they had seen in her enough to dissuade them and Alia knew it was over. No one else had a strong enough claim, nor would they challenge after Tal Vizsla backed down.

Before Alia could proceed, though, they gave her one last test.

“What do you see in him?” they asked.

Alia knew what they were really saying, of course. They wanted to know why Alia believed Din would make a good medic. There was only one acceptable answer and Alia would have to choose her response carefully.

She had seen the steel in the child, the quiet strength, the potential. The word itself came unbidden, but it rang with truth.

“Mandokar.”

The lights on his armour had stopped glowing.

Where exactly they had disappeared, Din could not tell, but he suspected that they weren’t gone, not exactly, that they would be with him as long as his armour was.

The things he had seen in the caverns of the Living Waters haunted him all the way to the surface, making it hard to keep track of where he was.

Were they visions of the future, or just possibilities? What did the Guardian’s challenges mean for his Creed and how he followed it? Had any of it been real?

What about his deal with Bo-Katan, now that he was no longer so keen to part with the darksaber, that he had perhaps even grown fond of the possibly sentient weapon?

Whether through distance or time the hold of the Living Waters on him slowly loosened enough that he could finally take in what was going on around him. A quick sitrep informed him that he was back on Bo-Katan’s ship and he must have put his implants back on because he could hear the vibration in the hull and the humming of the engines which indicated that they were in hyperspace.

Of course, where they were going was another question entirely, and hopefully one his companions could answer.

“Where are we?”

Across from him, Paz startled.

“Nearly back at the covert,” he replied, leaning forward with a shift of clinking beskar. Din was certain that behind the visor, Paz was frowning. “Me'vaar ti gar?”

There was no easy answer to that.

“I, it’s hard to explain.”

“Try,” Paz pressed, all bottled energy, “because we were pretty certain for a while there that you were dead. No scratch that, you should be dead.”

Ah, that was where the sharpness to Paz’s voice had come from. If Din had seen someone go underwater and then come out alive an hour later, he’d been on edge too.

“I was in the Waters, but I think I was also elsewhere. Other places. Time seemed to pass differently.”

It wasn’t the most eloquent response, but it was enough to prove that he really was back and was aware of what had happened.

“And now?”

“I’m,” well, he wasn’t exactly fine, “I’m here.”

“Good,” came another voice – Bo-Katan from the front of the cockpit, “because so are we.”

That was all the warning she gave before the ship dropped out of hyperspace with a lurch. Someone had strapped Din in whilst he was out of it, for which he was now very grateful.

Beneath them, the small moon the covert had taken up residence on grew larger and larger in the window and Din eyed it with trepidation, wondering what he was going to say to the Armourer, to his friends.

If he took off his helmet again, would they cast him out? Did he want to?

Bo-Katan and Paz were watching him, he could feel their eyes burning into his back as he unstrapped and headed for the lowering ramp and the bright clearing beyond, though what they were watching him with he could not say. Concern, perhaps even wariness.

The Living Waters had not been what any of them had expected.

As had become his habit, Din scanned the gathered figures for the green and orange helm and –

He stopped dead halfway down the ramp and Paz cursed as he barely managed to avoid walking directly into him, but Din didn’t care because had he seen?

“Buir,” he gasped.

There was no way Alia could have heard him across the distance, but her helmet turned regardless, visor fixing straight on him. Then, she was moving, pushing through the Mandalorians training in the clearing without a care for her own safety.

Din was moving too, half convinced this was another vision, that she would vanish if he so much as blinked.

That notion was torn to pieces the moment Alia grabbed hold of him and yanked him into a firm embrace, helmets colliding in a mirshmure'cya that rang through the clearing with the lyrical sound of beskar on beskar, just as it did in his ears.

Deep inside him, something settled as a piece slotted back into place. Alia’s arms were comfort and safety and home.

“Buir,” he whispered into the space between them, a declaration, and a question.

“Ner dinui,” Alia replied. “I have you, Din’ika, I have you.”

Before the Armourer could ask her questions, before Bo-Katan could issue the challenge she had been promised, Din was led to the medical bay by a buir on a mission. The paint on Alia’s helmet was chipped in places, but the impact on her stare on the Mandalorians that hurriedly scattered out of her way was no less intimidating for it.

Neither was her ire when she turned it on him. “You di’kut! What’s this I hear about you taking experimental poisons for the sake of visiting a cursed planet?”

“Buir -”

Alia didn’t even pause in her lecture, keeping one hand on his shoulder as though to prevent him from leaving whilst the other ran the scanner.

“I trained you better than that, dinii.” Whatever information the scanner was giving her, it made her huff and reach for a hypo. “You need to take better care of yourself, Din’ika, or Manda help me I will chain you to the med bay.”

Din got no warning for the hypos that were jabbed into his neck in quick succession but he bore them silently and the sting of the treatment was quickly replaced by the relief they brought to the ache in his lungs and muscles.

By the stars, he had missed her.

“Buir,” he tried again.

“Tayli'bac?”

Din sighed. There was no point arguing with Alia once her mind was set on something. “Elek, buir.”

“Good.” Alia seemed to run out of steam at his lack of retort and her hands on him softened in their investigation. “What about the implants?”

Din carefully reached up and pulled her hands away from where they had settled on either side of his helmet. “They’re fine, buir.”

Alia’s helm titled, curious but not accusing. “Favye told me you’d been having trouble.”

Din had almost forgotten about his confession to the Armourer. “It’s fine, buir,” he said, promising himself that he would explain everything later, once they were in private. The darksaber, the Living Waters, his vision of her, everything. “Whatever was causing it is gone.”

For now, though, he had things he needed to do, before rumours could start to spread of things that were not true.

“Alright,” Alia conceded, “but the moment they start playing up, you come to me, ok?”

Din smiled. As though he would go to anyone else.

A knock on the doorway called their attention back to reality. The Armourer awaited them, lingering on the threshold. Behind her hovered Paz and Bo-Katan.

Din took a deep breath to steel himself as Alia motioned for them to come in.

“Is your quest complete?” the Armourer asked as she made herself at home on the bed opposite him as though she belonged there.

Din heard the unasked question – have you been redeemed – and technically he was. Though perhaps not in the way he expected.

“It is,” he replied.

The Armourer nodded. “Tell me.”

So, Din did. At the points where he could not account for what had happened, Paz and Bo-Katan stepped in, backing up his words at witnesses to the strange happenings of the Living Waters.

If the Armourer was surprised by anything he said, by the barely believable tale he was spinning, she didn’t show it.

Eventually, he ran out of words, having described the shape of the mythosaur on his cuirass as the final thing he recalled clearly before he had come back to himself on Bo-Katan’s ship.

The Armourer looked at him for a long moment, seeking something, whilst their audience of three shifted uneasily.

“I have heard of such things,” she admitted. Bo-Katan visibly startled. “A visitation of this kind has not been heard of since the time of Tarre Vizsla, the one who created the blade you now wield.”

On his belt, the darksaber’s hum intensified briefly. Din had almost forgotten it was there.

Had it been the darksaber that had caused the visions, he wondered? But even as that thought occurred, he dismissed it. Surely, others had entered the Waters with it since, yet apparently none of them had experienced what he had.

Din got the sense that the Armourer’s words had been carefully chosen, that she was trying to tell him something. He could sense that his buir was radiating nervous energy.

What did it mean to be ka’ra touched?

“What does it mean?” he asked.

The Armourer, to his astonishment, shrugged, clearly as lost as him.

“That is not for me to determine,” she replied, before giving him both a blessing and a challenge. “It is in your hands now, Mand’alor. This is the Way.”

With the Armourer satisfied, she had Alia had withdrawn to discuss something and Paz had departed to find his own foundling, leaving Din, who was possibly even more confused than before, to walk Bo-Katan to one of the spare rooms where she could spend the night.

Now that he had been reminded of the darksaber’s presence on his belt, he had also been reminded of his promise to her.

The very thought of possibly having to let the darksaber go was oddly discomforting, but if he wanted to sleep at all that night, he knew he would need to clear his mind as much as possible. If that meant duelling Bo-Katan, or at least issuing the challenge to be fulfilled later, then he would do it.

He was unlikely to get a better chance than this.

“Bo-Katan,” he started, words quiet enough that they wouldn’t be heard by anyone else - the sound obscured by their footsteps - because whether he liked it or not, he was a man of his word, “about our deal. I – ”

“I will not challenge you,” Bo-Katan interrupted.

Din stumbled to a stop in the middle of the forge and heard Bo-Katan do the same a step or two in front, gravel scraping beneath her feet as she twisted to face him.

“Bo,” he started, wondering when he had become so familiar with her. “I am not a person who breaks my word.”

“I know,” said Bo-Katan in reply. “Which is why I’m breaking it for you.”

Around them, the covert had fallen silent, the light of the fire glinting off numerous helmets.

“I don’t understand.”

Bo-Katan sighed. “Din, I can’t explain what happened on Mandalore, but it settled something I’d been thinking about for a while.” Something in her tone had him rooted to the spot. Maybe it was the fact that she had just used his given name for the first time. The next words sounded as though they had been torn out of her. “I misjudged you,” she said, voice strengthening, “but Mandalore didn’t.” Then, to his shock, she lowered to one knee and raised a fist to her heart. “You have the allegiance of Clan Kryze, Mand’alor.”

Around the room, whispers broke out.

Din paid them no mind, too stunned by Bo-Katan’s actions, her abrupt change of heart.

“Bo-Katan,” he started, uncertain about what to say. The visor and painted helm looked up at him dared him to refute it – the title, the offer, the mantle of leadership.

Only, he couldn’t. At some point, the address of Mand’alor had ceased to bother him. It still didn’t feel like his, still not completely right, but he no longer had the urge to reject it outright.

In lieu of any words, he offered her a hand to draw her back to her feet. Witnessed by the forge of a covert on a barren moon, a Child of the Watch and a Child of Mandalore clasped hands.

Another weight lifted from Din’s shoulders.

Din woke from a suspiciously restful sleep to a banging on his door and distant commotion.

“Beroya,” called a child’s voice. “Your buir’s asking for you!”

A bleary glance as his vambrace informed him that it was barely dawn. The unusual nature of the bustle was enough to have him snap to full awareness, a hangover of years of training and bounty hunting work both.

Reaching for his helmet more out of habit than any real urge to cover himself, the dissonance of the thought struck him for a long moment, before shouting forced him from his own head.

Pulling it on and grabbing the darksaber, he hooked the sword it to his belt, reassured by its now familiar and gentle humming.

Snapping on the rest of his armour took mere seconds, fuelled by a sense of urgency.

Following the foundling who had woken him, he hurried past the eerily empty forge, and a pit grew in his stomach at the thought that they might be in danger, just when everything had started to come together. One hand rested on the hilt of the darksaber, just in case.

Bursting out into the early light, Din found a group of Mandalorians gathered, tense but blasters holstered for now, obscuring the source of their disquiet from view with the bulk of their armour.

“Din!” That was his buir’s voice.

The crowd parted easily. Between his displays with the darksaber and Bo-Katan’s very public swearing of allegiance, it seemed as though the covert needed no further convincing to accept him as Mand’alor.

Following the sight of a horned helmet, Din made his way to the front of the crowd – and froze.

An X-Wing was sat in the clearing.

A very familiar X-Wing. One that he had last seen flying away from Moff Gideon’s cruiser with a very precious piece of cargo.

The Jedi looked much the same, though his robes were a lighter colour, more like the clothes the blue ghost that had visited him that one night had been wearing. His hands were clasped causally in front of him, and he seemed completely unbothered by the aggressive welcome committee.

Din found himself scanning around, his traitorous heart hoping for a glimpse of green ears.

Then the Jedi clocked him and seemed to relax a little, though the first thing he said did a respectable job of ruining any remaining sense of mystic.

“There you are. Are you actually incapable of staying in the same place?” the Jedi asked, somehow both a rebuke and a tease in one. “We’ve been chasing you around for days.”

“We?” Din blurted like an idiot, and then cursed his mouth for its betrayal, for the reckless hope.

In response, the Jedi gestured, movement slow and unthreatening, towards the X-Wing. “Someone decided it was time to come home.”

From the cockpit came a painfully familiar sound that had Din’s legs turning to jelly and he remained upright only through sheer force of will.

Then a little clawed hand appeared, two large ears.

Grogu.

His ad.

Everything else faded away. Din was sure that the Death Star itself could have appeared overhead and he wouldn’t have noticed. All that mattered was the small figure climbing, flipping – karking hells when did he learn to do that – and then Grogu’s weight was slamming into him.

Din caught him mostly by instinct, his son settling into his arms as though he had never left and Din hadn’t noticed how off-balance he had been without the weight until it was returned.

“Ad’ika,” he greeted, reverent.

Chapter Text

Grogu was getting smears all over his armour as he patted enthusiastically at Din’s pauldrons, cuirass, even the bottom of his helmet. Din couldn’t care less. So what if his armour was smudged and dirty? His son was back in his arms where he belonged and that was all that mattered.

The Armourer was saying something to the Jedi, leading him away from the crowd, and Alia was practically bouncing with restrained energy beside him as she saw her bu’ad for the first time.

“Hi kid,” Din whispered, the words only for Grogu. “I’ve missed you buddy.”

Grogu chirped, smiling, and reached up for his helmet. Usually, Din would catch his hands and gently discourage the motion, but not anymore. He wouldn’t waste any more time.

The galaxy was rarely kind to him, and Din had no intention of letting this opportunity go to waste.

Carefully, he raised Grogu a little higher until he could press their foreheads together. Even if his ad didn’t understand what the motion meant, it was a familiar one to him and Grogu reciprocated the movement happily, which only fanned the warmth in his heart.

The words came easily, the vow imprinting itself in his soul. “Ni kyr'tayli gai sa'ad, Grogu.”

And just like that, Clan Djarin was once again a clan of two – clan when together, clan when parted.

Din hadn’t truly understood the impact of being apart until they were back together. It was hard to quantify, but he felt good, light, and happy in a way he hadn’t in a long time.

Even the headache that had been bothering him since the cruiser seemed to have gone.

“Oh,” said Alia softly as Grogu planted his hands on either side of Din’s helmet in an attempted hug. “Din’ika, he’s precious.”

His cheeks hurt, he realised, with the force of his smile as he carefully turned Grogu to face his buir. For a moment, they studied each other, green skin to green paint. Then Grogu burst into another easy smile and reached out.

“Ad’ika,” Din said as he handed his son over to his ba’buir, “this is Alia, my buir.”

“I-ah!” Grogu greeted to a chorus of barely audible ‘awws’ from their audience.

“It’s lovely to finally meet you, Grogu,” Alia replied solemnly and with a wry tilt of her helmet towards him that told him he would be getting another lecture later.

With his son safely in his buir’s arms, Din turned his attention back to where the Jedi and the Armourer was conversing in the shadow of the X-Wing. Joyful though their reunion was, Grogu had been away for less than a year. Surely that wasn’t enough time to learn all he needed?

The fear that this was but a temporary break in his son’s training rose up again. Perhaps the Jedi was here because something was wrong, or because their attachment had meant he had changed his mind - like Ahsoka Tano.

Sensing his approach, or perhaps even just his attention, the Jedi turned to greet him with a face that was open and relaxed.

“You must be Grogu’s father,” the Jedi said and Din ached at the ease of the acknowledgement of his role in his son’s life. The Jedi offered a hand, “I’m Luke Skywalker.” Carefully, Din grasped and shook in a warrior’s greeting, relieved when the Jedi – Skywalker – returned the hold with confidence. “I’m sorry that I didn’t get in touch sooner. Whilst Grogu’s training is not yet complete, I will not keep you from each other, that was never my intention. I didn’t realise you were his father at first, or I wouldn’t have separated you at all.”

“You – you wouldn’t?” Din asked, hesitant.

The Jedi blinked, surprised at his tone. “Of course not! Especially once I realised that you’d formed a Force bond I knew I had to find you again, but unfortunately,” here, Skywalker shrugged and grinned, “you were a surprisingly difficult person to track down.”

There was a lot of unpack from just a few sentences. Din wondered if all Jedi spoke in riddles, or if it was just a coincidence that the two – three if you counted the blue ghost – he had met were outliners.

“Force bond?” he asked, gaze slipping to find Grogu because that was a jetii thing if he’d ever heard it.

At some point, Alia had slipped into their circle, his son happily perched on her shoulder with his hands grasping one of the horns on her helmet.

The question had a strange impact on his buir as both she and the Armourer tensed subtly and for a second, he worried – but no, they’d both accepted Grogu as family.

Skywalker smiled again, either missing the shift or intentionally ignoring it. “Yes. The bond between the two of you is strong, and beautiful. I must apologise again for separating you,” he continued, frowning a little. “I know that the strain of a bond that strong stretched across great distance can be – uncomfortable – for those who don’t have the proper training.”

Alia had begun shifting her weight from foot to foot, a sure sign of unease that was rubbing off on Din. Was Skywalker suggesting what Din thought he was suggesting? Only, it made no sense, it couldn’t be true. He would have known – right?

Then his buir spoke up and all his certainty flew out of the metaphorical window.

“That would explain the headache. Is this because Din is ka’ra touched?” she asked. “Like his ad?”

Was that what it - no, it couldn't be. Yet, in the Living Waters, the Guardian had described him in the same way. Then there was the ringing from the darksaber that only he could hear. The blue ghost. Even, he thought, the sense of warmth and safety that had radiated from Alia Senn during his first weeks with the Mandalorians.

If Din was completely thrown – perhaps even a little betrayed by his buir’s apparent knowledge – the statement that followed had him questioning his assumptions in an entirely new way.

“Like me?”

Din whipped his head around to stare at his buir, because surely he should have noticed – Jedi were hardly subtle – had he completely missed the signs?

“Ka’ra?” Skywalker asked, rather than answer the question.

The Armourer translated, and the Jedi smiled again, bright as a sun.

“Star-touched,” he said. “That’s a lovely way of describing it.” Then he continued, as though he weren’t about to further rock Din’s world. “But yes, all of you are Force-sensitive to different extents.”

“I’m not like him,” Din found himself saying. “I can’t be. I can’t do anything that Grogu can.”

The Jedi nodded as though this made complete sense. “Connection to the Force can express itself in different ways. Some people have strangely good intuition, or reflexes, or are just unusually lucky.”

With an uncomfortable feeling growing, Din recalled how his instructors had always praised his aim, how sometimes he had made shots that should have been impossible, or without looking, and wondered how he had never, well, wondered.

Then there was his buir, who had known, and had never told him. Who had powers, like his son, gifts beyond his comprehension and she had kept it all from him.

“I think,” said Alia slowly, Grogu beginning to fidget, “that Din and I need to talk.”

For the second time in as many days, Din followed his buir to the med bay.

This time, he kept a little distance between them, his mind heavy with thoughts and his soul with questions, his earlier optimism that his fortune was changing destroyed by the painful revelation that Alia had been withholding vital information from him for as long as they had known each other.

By the time they reached the medbay, Alia had drifted into baar’ur mode, her entire being fixed on the task ahead.

In silence, she locked the door behind them, checked they were alone, pulled off her helmet and began to talk. Her eyes didn’t look directly at him, but rather slightly over his right shoulder. It felt, he thought, oddly as though she were reporting to a superior rather than speaking to her son.

He was torn between appreciating the distance and despising it.

Alia Senn told the story with the thoroughness of one of her medical exams. Of how she had worked out early in her training that her ability to emphasise with people bordered on supernatural. The research she had attempted to do made difficult first by internal conflict on Mandalore and the involvement of a dar'jetii of her own species, then later made near impossible by the Empire’s purge. The close calls that forced her to back off with but the barest of knowledge for her own safety.

Both hunter and prey, Din thought.

His buir had always been open, but now she bared her soul to him. She spoke of the incident in the medbay that helped her recognise the power in him, and her insecurities in working out how to raise him so that he, too, would be safe from the Empire and from those within their own ranks who might potentially turn on him both.

Along with the revelations about what exactly had happened that day, came one about his life before the Mandalorians had rescued him – an unexpected, but not unwelcome insight.

“Your birth parents,” Alia said, voice growing hoarse, “must have known. They’d given you a lot of what you needed, and I thank them every day for that.”

Meditation, a tool vital to maintaining control, was apparently something he had been unconsciously practicing, the ritual embedded within his birth world’s prayer customs and then integrated seamlessly into the daily remembrances by his buir.

“You always settled easiest when you had incense,” Alia reminisced.

Din recalled her seemingly endless supply and wondered what else she had done for him that he hadn’t known about.

When her words ran out, he thought he would be satisfied. So many of the mysteries of his youth now made sense, and he found that, really, he couldn’t fault her for hiding it. If he’d been in the same situation with Grogu – he would have done the same. Yes, Alia had withheld information from him, but she hadn’t done so maliciously. She had been trying to keep him safe.

She had done the best she could with the limited knowledge she had of the gift they had been given in a galaxy that was incredibly hostile to their kind. It was likely his ignorance had saved him more than once.

Yet, there was something else he needed to ask, one insecurity that remained.

“Why did you adopt me?” he asked, voicing the question that had been haunting him so subtly that he hadn’t even known he had been asking it until the words hung in the air.

Alia slumped inside her armour as though it had physically hurt her. “I will not lie. Knowing for certain that you were like me was what gave me the motivation I needed to finally act. You wouldn’t have been safe with the Vizslas.”

Having grown up close friends with Paz, he could understand what she meant. The Vizsla elders had been particularly disdainful towards any mention of the mysterious sorcerers that filled the stories of their history. Paz was more open to change, as he had demonstrated on Mandalore. Din doubted Tal would have been so flexible.

“But I didn’t adopt you because of that Din, I adopted you because I had grown to care for you.”

Her words came out soft, almost broken, and so unlike his buir’s normal tone of voice that Din was, in spite of everything, worried that he had damaged something he hadn’t meant to - had in his anger, taken a step too far.

Then Alia squared her shoulders, and looked at him face on. Even without the helmet she had always been better than him at hiding her emotions. She was making no such effort now. Din could read everything she wanted to say on her face and he knew, even without the ring of honesty that accompanied her next words, that they were the truth.

“You are my son Din Djarin, and I love you. Nothing will ever change that. No mystical Force, no title, no Creed.” Din shook at the affirmation. His eyes burned. He wanted to hold Alia tight and never let go. “I am so sorry that I ever gave you cause to doubt that. Ni ceta, Din.”

The ritual words had Din swallowing hard. Ni ceta was not an apology any Mandalorian offered lightly and he wanted to beg Alia to take them back.

And yet, part of him had needed to hear the words.

Finally, he moved, pulling off his own helmet, and drew his buir close.

“There is nothing to forgive. Cin vhetin, buir,” he whispered as their foreheads pressed together. “No more secrets.”

“No more secrets,” Alia agreed and they clung to each other, two bright flares in the darkness, and wiped away each others tears.

The conversation with Alia settled him, like the final moves on a cu'bikad board falling into place.

For a long time, he had been questioning who he was – whether he was Mandalorian or not if he no longer followed the way he had been raised with, whether he was Grogu’s father or but a temporary guardian, if a foundling from Aq Ventina could lead a people or if the darksaber coming into his possession had been nothing but a fluke.

In reality, he’d only been running from answers he already had.

Not anymore. No matter what happened next, he had his family and he had friends scattered across the galaxy and they would stand by him Creed or no Creed. He knew that now.

The last few months had changed him. He could not be the leader Bo-Katan wanted, but maybe the old ways were no longer what Mandalore and the mando'ade needed. In embracing a new Way, he would show those in who had raised him, his siblings in all but blood, that they no longer needed to hide.

Striding into the forge, he found that the Mandalorians of the covert had drifted back inside. Skywalker was nowhere to be seen, but a quick word with Paz assured him that the Jedi had been called away on urgent business. This time, though, he had not simply up and vanished, leaving a comm link for the many questions they would undoubtably have.

The Armourer was sat by her tool case, Grogu in her arms. When he reached for his son, she gave him up easily, but all Din did was turn and deposit Grogu into his buir’s grasp and stood awaiting the Armourer’s attention, one hand resting on the hilt of the darksaber, now visibly displayed on his belt.

Once he had it, he reached up and lifted his helmet off and tucked it against his side.

For a second he sensed utter panic in his aunt - this was a sin she could not explain away, could not find an exception for - and the cavern echoed with shifting armour and gasps of shock. The only exceptions, he noted, were Alia and, of all people, Paz.

“Alor, do you accept my claim to the title of Mand’alor?” he asked before anyone could do anything rash.

The silence felt heavy as the Armourer attempted to gather her words, and work out what he was doing.

An awful lot hinged on the choice she made.

“I do,” she said, cautious, and Din relaxed even though the tension in the room was still as thick as syrup. A goran's word held a lot of authority and sway.

“Our secrecy was our survival,” he continued, speaking directly to the Armourer, but also to the whole room. “Our survival was our strength. But our enemies are weakened, and we have a different kind of strength now.” Behind the Armourer, Bo-Katan’s helmet titled in interest. “Our way has served us well, but it does not define us as Mandalorians. This I learned in the Living Waters, and so I chose to follow the Resol’nare, and walk my own Way." Every eye was on him now, the mention of the Living Waters catching many off-guard. "I am not asking any of you to abandon your Creed, I would not expect anyone to follow me in walking a new Way. But I do ask you to answer, if I call on you as Mand'alor."

One of the younger Mandalorians, who Din remembered as a talented but hot-headed teen, began to step forward, clearly intent on challenging him.

Paz’s arm stopped them.

Then, to Din's surprise, he too reached up and pulled off his helmet revealing dreadlocks and dark skin. The action startled the kid, coming as it was from the strict Vizsla clan.

“This is the Way,” Paz said.

The words hung in the air, poised. Then, the Armourer repeated, “This is the Way.”

Din shivered a little as the cold air hit his skin.

Nevarro was hot during the day, but the temperature had a tendency to drop in the evenings, and drop fast. Normally, he would be in his armour with all of its environmental controls and wouldn’t even notice the difference, but now he was in the central hut of the Mandalorian settlement on the plot of land Greef Karga had offered him all those months ago, face and arm bare.

Around him, his newly-formed council watched what was to many of them a historic moment.

“Hold still,” Alia instructed, carefully tracing the lines onto his arm.

After his declaration to the Tribe of his commitment to the Creed, his Way, and the role of Mand’alor, she had insisted that the new step in his journey be commemorated in the traditional way. Even Bo-Katan, who had been upset when he hadn't immediately moved to advance the plan to retake Mandalore, had softened when she discovered what they intended to do, expressing her delight that the practice was being continued. Din had wondered, then, what hers represented. Whether, considering her history, she had one to mark the same journey he was about to undertake.

The design of his fourth pel’gam tome’tayl wasn’t as complicated as the others, but it was perhaps his favourite.

With a steady hand, Alia made the final touches to the mudhorn signet and the surrounding star map of the Mandalore system, all encompassed with the words of the Resol'nare. It was both a statement and a reminder of the vows he had taken to both his clan and his people.

Shifting back, she let him look the design over.

Around them, the spectators leaned in eagerly to get their own glimpse before it was inked permanently into his skin.

“Looks good, Djarin,” Cara said with a smile, one of the few outsiders invited to join them, alongside a suspiciously quiet Greef Karga.

Upon discovering that Cara had been responsible for the tattoo on his shoulder, Alia had invited her to observe the tradition as completed in the Mandalorian way. Din got the sense that Cara had been somewhat touched by his buir's compliment of her work, as her face had done something best desrcibed as complicated before she had accepted the offer.

Returning his arm to rest upon the flat surface of the Armourer’s anvil, still a little warm from the work of the day, Din indicated that he was ready.

Alia picked up the tattoo stylus, the buzzing a comforting sound, and began.

As always, the Armourer was the first to contribute to the songs by telling the story his journey to first taking the creed, and his adoption into her family clan. Then Paz picked the thread with plenty of teasing tales about his verd’goten. Vaya described his training under the baar’ur, and then to his surprise, Greef and Cara were invited to speak on his time and growth from beroya to buir.

Finally, Bo-Katan retold his quest for redemption in the Living Waters, giving Din unexpected insight into the reasons she had decided not to challenge him for the darksaber upon their return.

“When I saw Din use the Force during the duel with Paz, I knew that I was seeing something we had not seen in centuries. The darksaber belonged in his hand that day, just as it belonged in his hand on Mandalore.”

Distracted as he had been by the recital of the songs, Din had barely noticed that the subtle sting of the tattoo stylus had slowed to a stop until Alia spoke up with the closing words to seal the new additions.

“Just as this pel’gam tome’tayl will forever tell your story, may the words of the Creed be forever in your heart, Din Djarin.”

“This is the Way,” Din replied, the words echoed around the circle.

Normally, once the words had been spoken, the observers would leave and go on with their days, but Din and Alia had one more surprise planned for them.

As Din stood, he took the tattoo stylus from his buir.

“Alia Senn,” he said, recapturing the attention of his family and friends, who turned back in confusion. “Do you wish to mark a new stage on your journey?”

“I do,” she replied, and he could hear the smile in her voice.

Carefully, she pulled off the top half of her flight suit, baring her own arm upon which Din had painstakingly traced his clan signet earlier that afternoon.

Behind him, he heard the Armourer gasp as she realised what was happening.

It was a clan leader’s prerogative to invite new members to join. Once, Alia had sought her clan leader's agreement to offer this to him, giving him a home in a time when he had been so lost and alone. Now, he returned the favour to honour all that she had sacrificed for him. Swapping out the ink for one that would better show on Zabrak skin, Din settled onto the seat opposite her.

When he lowered the stylus to his buir’s skin, he was fairly sure he wasn’t imagining the shake in the Armourer’s voice.

He was slower than his buir, not having had the practice she had he didn’t want to mess up the lines, so he took his time to ensure they were all neat and clean. The voices speaking around them faded into the background as he worked.

Finally, he moved away, swiping gently over the inked mudhorn with a cloth to clear away the excess ink.

“Alia Senn,” he said, placing the tattoo stylus down and reaching out to bring her helmeted forehead to rest against his skin in a Keldabe kiss, “Clan Djarin welcomes you.”

That night, Din discovered just how rowdy Mandalorian parties could be.

No longer afraid of drawing the attention of unwanted eyes, they had set up traditional drums, reciting chants that they wouldn't have dared to sing during their previous residence on Nevarro. Around the hut, Mandalorians in various states of inebriation, some drinking through straws, others helmetless, mingled freely. The arrival of Boba and Fennec at Din's invitation had caused a brief ruckus, but Bo-Katan and her group of followers had either had enough tihaar, or were sufficiently buoyed by the presence of so many of their people in one place, that they didn't grumble too much at their involvement.

Din only hoped they would change their attitude further once they discovered the potentially lucrative trade deal he had been drawing up with the new Daimyo.

Cara and Greef looked right at home as they joined him at the makeshift bar, Grogu busy bothering the local wildlife under the supervision of the few Mandalorians not indulging - delighted by the appearance of the native lava frogs as dusk fell.

"So," Cara said, words only slightly slurring, "I heard that all Mand'alor's have a title."

Din sighed, already regretting having waved them over to join him, the Armourer and his buir.

“Historically, yes,” he said.

“So, what’s yours?”

His internal debate into whether to admit that he hadn’t yet chosen his title was cut short when Paz, who Din had last seen engaged in a drinking contest with Axe Woves, stumbled over and blurted, “How about Mand’alor the Impulsive?”

Cara’s smile slowly grew into a grin that promise trouble. Across from his Alia’s shoulders began to shake and Din barely resisted the urge to bury his face in his arms.

“No, no, no,” Cara replied, clearly remembering what he was like when he first came into possession of the darksaber. “The Reluctant, surely?”

The Armourer snorted, nearly inhaling her drink.

“The Fortuitous,” Greef added.

“The Unhinged,” offered Boba from behind them. “That story about this madman flying full-speed through Beggar’s Canyon had been doing the rounds on Tatooine for months.”

With a groan, Din caved and let his head drop to the tabletop. Alia’s hand patted his shoulder in commiseration, but it was shaking in time with her laughter.

Later that night, once his family had run out of steam suggesting increasingly ridiculous titles, Din collected a very full Grogu and joined Alia for their nightly remembrances.

Once again, his buir produced incense from seemingly nowhere, and whilst he lit it, she did her own routine, carefully painting Iridonian tribal markings onto her face, which Grogu seemed fascinated by.

With a finger pressed to his forehead, then his heart, Din recited the remembrances with his buir. His ad was not yet old enough to say the words but Din could sense that he understood the intention.

Then, together, they meditated before turning in for the night.

Unfortunately, rest did not come easy for him. Full of restless energy, Din eventually gave up on going to sleep and instead took the darksaber the perimeter of the Mandalorian camp to run through some early morning katas.

Only to be once again interrupted by his sporadic ghostly visitor.

“Maybe they should call you Mand’alor the Blessed,” the ghost offered as he ran through his favourite katas to work off the tension of a long, and important day.

“I’m not blessed,” he replied, not missing a step.

“Your blade suggests otherwise.”

Din paused at the end of the kata, and finally acknowledged his nocturnal visitor. “How so?”

Part of him wasn’t expecting an answer. Skywalker was ok, for a Jedi, and had helped Din and Alia greatly in understanding and developing their own skills, but he had a habit of avoiding questions, or speaking in riddles. It clashed somewhat with the Mandalorian culture of bluntness.

“The crystal likes you,” the ghost said simply. “It didn’t always, but it does now.”

For a moment, Din looked at the hilt in his hand and considered the words and their implications. “You mean it’s sentient?”

“Not exactly.” The ghost stroked its beard. It had a habit of doing that, Din had noticed. “Kyber doesn’t think, precisely, but it does tend to resonant, even bond, with those it favours. Jedi initiates used to travel to kyber caves to choose their crystals, though more accurately, the crystals chose the Jedi.”

Thinking about it, that would explain a lot about the darksaber’s strange behaviour – and why only he could hear the ringing.

“There’s a humming sound, sometimes,” he indicated towards his ears. “These days I don’t really notice it, but it was annoying to start with.”

The ghost hummed. “I suspect the darksaber sensed that you didn’t want it and reacted in kind. With your latent sensitivity, well.” the ghost waved a hand in his direction, “it must have translated into the sound you heard.”

That – made an alarming amount of sense.

Clearly the darksaber had known long before he had that he was destined for this.

“Wait,” he said as a discomforting thought occurred to him. “Does that mean I’m a Jedi?”

In response the blue ghost buried his face into his hands and sighed. “Why is it always me?”

After the celebrations came the time to begin planning in earnest. There were still days when Din felt he had no idea what he was doing, but they were increasingly outweighed by the ways he could see things coming together – each member of council, his people, contributing.

Even Skywalker’s occasional visits and guidance over holocalls were paying off. The first time Din managed to levitate something, Grogu had watched in awe and then spent the rest of the day bringing him things to try and lift.

In time, he knew, there would likely be challenges, but for this short time, he could honestly say that the Mandalorians were at peace.

Until, one evening on the way back from a council meeting, he was ambushed by the most unexpected person.

“Ow,” Din said as he laid flat on his back in defeat. Perched atop his cuirass, Grogu chirped at him in delight at his scheme paying off. In truth, Din may have slightly exaggerated just how much the Force push Grogu had thrown at him had pushed him off balance. “Oh no,” he continued, voice dramatic. “Grogu Djarin, you have defeated me in combat, now you must claim your prize and take up the title of Mand’alor.”

Grogu giggled as Din, with only a little wobble, carefully floated the darksaber up from its usual place on his belt.

“Not how this works,” Bo-Katan’s voice interrupted as she passed by, but it was said in good humour.

Din sighed and let the blade drop into his outstretched hand, where it hummed, content. With his other hand, he steadied Grogu on his walk up towards his helmet. “It was worth a try, right ad’ika?”

“Boo,” Grogu agreed.