Chapter Text
The Arrival (27 BBY)
It had been a traumatic week for young Din Djarin. The first time Master Nuvan, a blue-skinned man had visited, they’d played games. Din had guessed pictures on his viewscreen correctly, which had pleased the visitor. He moved some pebbles in the man’s hand, and he opened a glass picture box. Opening the box had really made Nuvan happy, and he praised Din. His parents told him how proud they were. Then things went wrong.
The blue man returned to Aq Vetina to see Din again. This time, though, Din’s mother had packed a bag with pajamas and some of his toys. She told him that he was going to Coruscant, a place that meant nothing to him, and he would become a Jedi Knight and have all kinds of adventures. It sounded exciting, but his mood changed when the time came to leave. His parents hugged him and wept, telling him how much he was loved. This seemed wrong. Why were they crying?
Din suddenly didn’t want to go. He grabbed his mother’s red robes, silent tears running down his face. The baby, his sister, wailed in her arms and reached for him. The blue man spoke reassuringly to his parents, saying that this was normal, and that Din would be well taken care of and make friends with other children like himself. Din still had to be prised from his mother, but he didn’t scream or fight.
Master Nuvan took him to a ship already loaded with several other children, and he watched the domes of Aq Vetina shrink below him. They landed on Coruscant several days later. The surface of the planet was buildings—buildings on top of buildings. No earth, no rivers, no streets. Speeders flitted between structures in mid-air like they were on invisible roads. Nuvan pointed out the Jedi Temple, which jutted above the top layer of the city. It grew bigger, broad and tall and scary, and they landed on a roof larger than the marketplace back home.
When they got out, a warm breeze carried the scent of ship exhaust and—flowers? to them. Din had never seen or smelled a place like this before. Robed people were everywhere, quietly walking from place to place. Underneath the sound of voices and roaring speeders was a steady hum of activity. It wasn’t machines, exactly, but something deeper, softer.
An older woman joined their group, and introduced herself as Eidre. She took the hand of the smallest child and led him to a lift. Din and the others followed. Nuvan brought up the rear.
“Welcome to the Jedi Temple,” she said, tapping a group of buttons and placing her hand against a pad on the wall of the elevator. “We’re going to a special place just for kids, called the Crèche.”
The lift opened onto a colorful hallway with paintings of banshee birds and wandering staga. They were shepherded to a room where more adults greeted them and helped them get situated in temporary sleeping areas. There were already several children there, including some who weren’t humanoid. One had mouths on her neck, and wore a translator collar so the other kids could understand her. Another had a long furry face with tusks.
Din was curious, but being around so many strangers made him shy—until he saw a little Twi’lek girl trying to hide her tears. He went over and offered his sleeve.
“Thanks.” She dabbed her rose-colored cheeks. “Pretty, red.”
“We wear red. I’m Din.”
“I’m Betha.” She sat down and held her tooka doll closer. He sat next to her.
“What’s tooka’s name?”
“Smutch. ‘Cos she’s dark.”
“I have an akul. Bazal.” Bazal was packed with his pajamas; Din usually slept with the stuffed feline.
Eidre came over then and introduced them to their sleeping places. They were in different rooms, probably because Betha was a girl and he was a boy. The Temple hummed in the background, like a hive of bees.
The next day, Nuvan awoke the boys. Din sat up and discovered a sand-colored tunic, loose tan pants, and a belt stacked on the table beside his bed. His boots were still there, but the rest of his clothing was gone.
“Master? Where are my clothes?”
The blue man pointed to the folded items on the table. “This is your Jedi uniform. Similar to what I’m wearing.”
Everyone seemed to be wearing similar clothing in the Temple, but … “We wear red.”
Nuvan nodded. “Your family are Disciples of the Whills; I remember. But these are special clothes for your training to be a Jedi.”
Din was convinced to put on the strange outfit and join the other boys in the outside room. Betha was there, still holding her tooka doll, but dressed in a uniform, too. The room was filled with low tables this morning, and they were offered boiled mealgrain with poptree syrup, nerf slices, nuna eggs, breadroot patties, and pta fruit.
Icha, the girl with the long neck and the twin mouths, was eating ooglata eggs, starfruit, and another fruit Din had never seen before, taking turns with one mouth while another one talked. She drank a bubbling green tea with it, which Din found especially distracting. Eidre explained that while Icha could eat most human food, the children should not trade food with her.
After firstmeal, the tables and dishes were cleared away, and adults came to meet with them again. One woman with an elaborate headdress sat with Din and held his hands in her dark ones, studying him with her brilliant blue eyes. She introduced herself as Master Masali Sa, and asked him questions about his world and family, what games he played, what stories he liked. He answered as best he could. The entire time, she continued to study him. He could feel her gaze grazing his skin like strips of silk.
“You have powerful nurturant and protective instincts, Din Djarin,” she finally said. “You will be joining Clan Mudhorn, which is the youngling clan I oversee. The children in the clan will become your new family, and I will be your primary teacher.”
Din was confused; he didn’t know some of her words, and others confused him. How could he belong to a new family? You couldn’t just change the family you already had. Could you?
The woman’s face softened. “There is family you are born into, and then there are people you meet later who become your family. You’ll see.”
Din got his bag, which had been repacked, and he, Betha, and a boy named Waylen went to another large room with an entirely different group of kids. Unlike the ones he’d traveled with, they were of different ages. They introduced themselves, but by now the words and names were just floating past his ears in thick air. There had been too many changes; as soon as he started adapting, he got taken someplace else. The emotions were pressing in on him from all sides.
Master Masali could tell that he’d had enough, and set him up in his new bunk.
“This bed is yours,” she said firmly. “You’ll be living here. I think you need to rest for a while.”
Din, who was exhausted, agreed. He woke up for latemeal, but said little. Around him, the strange children chattered. He sat next to Betha and watched her talk to the other girls. Masali drew him to her side after the meal, which was nice, but he wished he were home with his parents, wearing his red clothing, and sleeping in his own bed.
The Secret Nursery
He went to bed again at “curfew,” which was another word for bedtime. A nanny droid helped the younger children get dressed for sleep. Din changed into his red pajamas. At least they hadn’t taken those from him. After everyone else went to sleep, the air was thinner, quieter, and Din lay there, holding Bazal, waiting for sleep to return. It didn’t, and he felt alone and sad.
When he’d been too upset to sleep at home, his mother would hold him and tell him to listen to the birds, listen to the wind, listen to the Force whispering. She would stroke his hair while he dutifully obeyed, and it helped.
Now, he listened until he heard the hum of a distant heating unit. The noise of a droid cleaning the hallway. Then, something else.
lonely
Again:
lonely
Din slid out of his bed and padded into the main room. A side door was open, and he could see Master Masali sleeping there. No one was awake besides him, but there was a nanny droid wheeling around the room. He backed into the shadows, watching. The droid left after a click, and Din crept to the exit. He poked at the buttons, but it wouldn’t open for him.
lonely
“Door locked,” he whispered.
The buttons beeped, and the door glided open.
Din checked the corridor before leaving. He followed the lonely until he reached another door. This one opened without his asking.
A soft light filled the room inside. He saw a desk, two chairs, and a crib made from transparent material. Din moved closer to the crib and peered through one of the sides. There was a blanket, a toy, but no baby.
Then, the toy moved. It was the baby.
lonely
Din pressed his face closer to the plastic. It was smaller than even Bazal. The baby was green-skinned and had large ears. It sat up and stared at him with huge dark eyes. The tunic it wore was doll-sized and finely stitched.
“Hello,” Din whispered.
hello, the infant replied, making a small coo aloud.
Din climbed up the side of the crib, using the gripsoles of his pajama feet for traction. He lowered himself inside carefully, afraid of squashing the occupant.
“What’s your name?”
Grogu.
“I’m Din.”
Din.
“Where’s your mommy?”
“?” Grogu squeaked. What is mommy?
“You don’t know what a mommy is?” He must not have one. Din patted the tiny head. Since no one else was here, he should stay. You shouldn’t leave a baby alone. Din curled up in the crib, which was too short for him, and pulled the blanket over them both to keep the baby warm. The baby snuggled against his chest, grabbing his pajama top with his claws. The pair dozed off.
A voice temporarily pulled the boy out of his slumber. “Get Master Yoda. We have a situation in the private nursery.”
Din went back to sleep, but not for long.
He became aware, the next time that he awoke, that it was brighter, and eyes were staring at him. No one was yelling, so perhaps if he just kept his eyes closed …
“Awake you are,” a voice said. “Asleep, you are not. Eyes, you should open.”
Din obeyed and found himself staring directly into a face at his height. A green face.
“Greetings. Know you, I do not. Your name?”
He studied the person looking at him, who was short and not human. The green skin, the shape of the face, the ears were familiar. The stooped figure, the cane. “Are you Grogu’s grandpa?”
Behind the grandfather, a woman snorted. She was dressed in a white uniform, like a medic.
The large ears lifted. “Hmm. His name, you know. Given it to you, he has. Your name, what is?”
“D-Din.” He was in the wrong room in the middle of the night. Grogu’s grandfather was here, and he talked funny. He was hard to understand. Din was in big trouble.
“Young Din, hello. Yoda, my name is. I am wondering, why are you here?”
“He was calling.”
“Calling, was he?” “Yoda” peered at the infant, who was burrowing deeper into Din’s pajamas. “To you, was he calling?”
Din flushed. “He’s lonely.”
“Hmm. So to him, you came?”
“Yeah.”
“Proper to come, since you heard him.” Yoda studied his face. “New here, are you? Which clan?”
Clan? It took Din a moment to remember he was supposed to be in a clan. “Clan Mudhorn.”
“Ah, Clan Mudhorn. Call Master Masali, I will. Worried, she must be.”
Master Masali arrived a short time later. She was fully dressed and alert. “Grand Master Yoda. My apologies, sir; Din must’ve slipped out and gotten lost. He’s new here.”
“Lost, he was not. New, he must be. Young enough to still have his own pajamas, he is.”
“Come along, Din,” the Tolothian woman said. “We should let the baby go back to sleep.”
The caretaker in white leaned over the crib and gently started to pry the baby’s claws from Din’s pajama top.
The baby clutched tighter and let out a tiny squall, much like a newborn tooka. In Din’s head, and everyone else’s, though, the protest was much louder:
NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! KID STAYS!!!!!!!!!!!
“No!” Din shrieked in response to the cry. “Let go! My friend, he is!”
The pair refused to be separated without major tantrums. Yoda and Master Masali decided to let Din spend the rest of the night with the infant. Everyone was tired, and the children were both upset. Taking Din back to the Mudhorn quarters in his current state would probably wake the rest of his clanmates.
In the morning, Masali returned for the boy. He and the baby, a member of Master Yoda’s species, were eating sliced nuna eggs. She waited until Din was finished, then announced that it was time for class, and he needed to get dressed. They were already behind schedule, but that was normal when it came to three-year-olds.
Shortly after the door closed behind them, Grogu realized that his friend wasn’t coming back, and threw a fit. His first instructor arrived to a room full of whirling toys, broken furniture, and plate shards. The baby chittered at him.
WANT MY KID!!!!
“Calm down. Grogu, calm down,” Master Tevo said in soothing tones. The baby wailed, and the Pantoran found himself floating.
Oh, kark no. He Force-pulled himself back to the ground. “Grogu, it’s time to stop.”
The items fell to the floor, and Grogu slumped in his chair, which was thankfully bolted to the floor. Master Tevo checked the baby immediately. He was breathing, but didn’t respond to Tevo’s pokes. Instead, he began snoring.
The Jedi put Grogu back in his crib, then set the furniture upright. He stepped outside before sending a text to Grand Master Yoda. He didn’t want to have his back turned if his pupil woke up.
Yoda sent the childcare staff to check on the baby. The first time, Grogu was still sleeping, but the second time, the nursery was tearing itself apart again. The baby was squalling and would not be comforted, although the caretaker tried her best. She wasn’t Force-sensitive and couldn’t hear his cries. Instead, she got a headache. Things crashed around them until the child passed out again.
The pattern repeated, with the baby collapsing for longer times. He wouldn’t eat. They tried getting fluids into him, but he pushed the feeding bottle away.
Meanwhile, Master Masali was orienting her new students to their new environment and daily curriculum. It wasn’t a rigorous one at their age, mostly instruction in meditation, simple math, and reading. In the afternoons was tumbling and playtime. A lot of playtime.
Young Din was trying to listen, but he was concerned about his new friend. Masali could feel his worry at the back of her teeth. By now, he should have been distracted by his new environment and companions, but he was still thinking about “the baby.”
“The baby” was also thinking about him; at latemeal, one of the childcare staff came to request that Din return to the nursery after he finished eating.
“Does he need his pajamas?” Masali asked.
“Probably. And clothes for the morning. We’ll try to batten them down somehow.”
She did not want to know why clothing would need to be secured. “Give me a few minutes, I’ll get a bag.”
Another of the workers was bouncing the limp and whining infant when they entered the nursery.
“Grogu!” Din shouted, and ran over.
Din! My kid! The baby started squirming and stretched out his claws.
“Hold him gently,” the man said, placing Grogu into Din’s arms.
Din pulled the baby to his chest. “Missed you,” he said, stroking the ears. He was rewarded with relieved whimpers.
“Could you give him some nutrient solution?” the man asked, offering him the feeding bottle.
The boy shifted positions, remembering how his mother held his sister when she fed her. When he brought the bottle close, Grogu grabbed it and began drinking.
“Very good. You’re handling him like a champ.”
Din looked around the room. Only one stool and the crib were standing; the rest of the furniture had been turned over. The baby’s toys were scattered all over the place, too. Shouldn’t they clean up after him?
The Jedi Meet and The Arrangement
The following day was a repeat of Din leaving and Grogu wearing himself out with tantrums. When the boy was brought back to the nursery, the baby calmed down again and was willing to eat. They tried separating them once more, and this time Grogu curled into a ball and grieved, which was scarier than the tantrums.
The Masters needed to deal with the situation. Master Yoda claimed a meeting room and requested the presence of Obi-Wan Kenobi, new member of the Council, Master Minas Velti, who trained most of the younglings, and Master Kelleran Beq, who oversaw the Jedi Trials.
Grogu’s life at the temple had been mostly solitary except for his tutors and tenders. The few times they had tried placing him with other children had ended badly. The infants had largely unformed thoughts and were interested in the sensory environment, while Grogu was already communicating with the Force and craving socialization. They weren’t proper company for him. The result was cranky, overstimulated babies and a frustrated Grogu. Putting him with toddlers hadn’t worked, either. They would set up blocks, and Grogu would knock them down with the Force and giggle. They communicated with words; Grogu used the Force. If there was a disagreement over toys, Grogu always won. The Crèche staff, who had all been vetted by Master Yoda before being allowed to see the child, referred to him as “The Tiny Tyrant.”
Older children were out of the question; despite his abilities, he was still very vulnerable and would be for decades. Darth Maul had murdered Master Qui-Gon a mere handful of years ago; where there was one Sith Lord, there was always another. If a young Jedi familiar with Grogu turned to the Dark Side, the baby would be in great danger.
The hour was late. Jedi were never supposed to show discomfort at the privations of life, but Yoda had caf brought in to prevent slippage. He put the situation before them in short form: Grogu, the infant being raised in the private nursery, had contacted another youngling through the Force and brought him to his side. Neither wanted to be separated from the other.
“So, the Dark Lord of the Nursery has summoned a minion,” Obi-Wan said with a faint smile. “Where is the boy now?”
“In the crib with Grogu, he is. Asleep, they are.” Yoda brought the sugar sliding closer with a crook of his claw. “‘Tell no one where he is,’ I instructed Master Masali. Decisions must be made. Formed a Force bond, boy and Grogu have.”
Minas’ eyes widened. “A Force bond? Is that even possible between children who aren’t twins?”
“Quinlan Vos and Aayla Secura, a precedent. Bond, these two have formed. Communicate, they can.”
“With a Force bond, a true separation would be harmful,” Obi-Wan said. “Could the boy be trained beside him?”
“Their needs and experience would be very different,” Minas said. “They might be able to meditate together, or possibly share some of the Force training, but Grogu’s skill with the Force is far beyond a normal three-year-old’s. And Grogu is not ready for the same physical and combat training young Din should have.”
Another complication, there is,” Yoda said. “The boy’s companionship, Grogu wants, at bedtime. Separate him from his clan, it would.”
“Yes, it would isolate him from his classmates,” Master Kelleran said. “How long has the boy been here?”
“Four days,” Yoda replied. “Second night at the Temple, Grogu he heard.”
Minas Velti marveled again. “He’s untrained, but heard the child anyway?”
“Familiar shade of red, young Din’s pajamas are. Disciples of the Whills, parents are. Not trained, but perhaps already listening.”
“Still,” she said, “he must be gifted. Did anyone else sense the call?”
“No,” Yoda replied, “But when they are parted, quite detectable indeed, Grogu’s objections are.”
Kelleran set down his nearly full cup of caf. “Would Grogu abide the concept of having his friend leave for his training in the morning, and return to the nursery in the evening?”
“Understand, possibly. Abide, uncertain I am.”
“What about the boy?” Minas pressed. “Would he want to spend his time every evening with an infant?”
“Friend, he says the baby is. Bond, they have formed. Like returning to family at night, it might be.”
“We must ask each of them,” Kelleran said. “If both agree, the boy’s recent arrival provides us an advantage. We could have Masali tell his clanmates that he needs separate evening quarters to offset Coruscant’s gravity or atmosphere, but it wasn’t immediately apparent on arrival.”
“Hmm. Excellent suggestion, Master Kelleran.”
The proposal was put before each child separately. Din would go to classes with the other students, but spend nights and most evenings with Grogu. If their Force abilities overlapped, they might receive some instruction together. Minas insisted that Din have some evenings free for extracurricular activities with Clan Mudhorn, while Yoda argued that Grogu might take instruction better if another student were present.
Fortunately, both children agreed to the proposal, although the baby believed he should get to go to class with Din. Yoda dissuaded Grogu from this by telling him that the classes were terribly boring, and his snoring would disrupt the lessons. He then imitated snoring sounds, which made the baby giggle.
Din’s items, which were few, were moved into the nursery. A bed was placed near the crib so the boy wouldn’t have to sleep scrunched up. Din put Bazal next to Grogu so he wouldn’t have to sleep alone. Fortunately, the baby considered it acceptable.