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The cabin was cozier than Bo had been expecting. It was a modest size, but then it didn’t need to be very large. Din had few possessions, and Grogu was the size of a large melon.
There were two beds, a table, a small kitchen area, and two doors. Bo assumed one led to a ‘fresher and the other to storage.
“It’s a nice place,” she said, coming back outside.
Din was unloading supplies from the Gauntlet. She had picked them up in town on the way by at his request. She had also taken the opportunity to refuel, but wasn’t in any particular hurry to return to Mandalore. A few days wouldn’t hurt. Or it would, and she’d have to put down a rebellion.
Bo wasn’t thinking about that.
Mandalorians were fractious by nature, and trying to integrate factions who had been trained to hate each other from childhood had proved… difficult. To be honest, she was glad that she had had an excuse to escape the planet and politics for a few days. Satine had always been the one with the head for politics.
Bo had only really wanted to lead a group of warriors, not an entire people. But fate (or the Force) had put her in this position, and she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to rise to the challenge.
A bag of fruit floated by her head, Grogu following behind it, his face a mask of concentration.
“It’ll do for now,” Din temporized. “I hope we can return to Mandalore someday.”
“It’s not much of a place right now. We’re living in worse conditions than this,” she said, gesturing to the lush landscape surrounding the cabin. The farms were verdant, but other than that, the only color on the planet was the green tint of the ruined atmosphere off the blasted glass surface.
“It will take time to rebuild.”
“I know,” Bo said. “I… hmm… it’s hard to describe what it’s like to live there.”
He carried a box into the small storage room, put it down, and closed the door. “That was the last of the boxes. Would you like something to eat?”
She nodded, and he turned to the stove. A few minutes later, the three of them were sitting at the table, bowls of pog soup in front of Bo and Grogu. Bo still felt a tiny bit guilty eating in front of him, while he couldn’t eat in front of her, but she shook it off. It was his choice, after all.
“Could you try? To describe Mandalore before the Purge?” He asked.
Bo chewed for a moment, thinking. “By the time I was growing up, most of the planet had already been blasted to sand by our own Civil Wars. That’s the reason it’s glass now, we had already ruined it. We lived in domed cities, perched on the edge of survival. The only truly independent civilization.” She gave a rough laugh. “For whatever good that did. You know my sister was once Duchess?”
“Satine,” Din confirmed.
Bo nodded. “She was a champion for peace, for passivity. It got her killed. By the Darksaber. I never forgot that, as long as I held it. We were never… close, after childhood. She believed in a political solution to the Republic’s pressures. I believed in a martial one. She loved a Jedi once.”
Grogu’s ears perked up. Bo glanced over at him. “I knew a few Jedi before the fall of the Republic.”
“Bakoo!”
“Obi-Wan Kenobi was the Jedi that Satine loved,” Bo said. “And you’ve met Ahsoka Tano, although she was not a Jedi… well… that was a long time ago.”
Grogu nodded, and returned to his soup.
“You’ve lived a lot of lives,” Din said.
Bo gave a half smile. “Sometimes it feels like thousands.”
They lapsed into silence for a few minutes, surprisingly not an uncomfortable thing.
“I had a family,” Bo said. “My sister, parents. None of them lived to see the Purge. My nephew… I’m not entirely certain what happened to him. I don’t believe he lives now, but if he does, he does not claim Mandalorian heritage.”
“Your nephew was your sister’s son?” Din asked. “He was the son of a Jedi?”
Bo smirked. “Officially, Korkie was both of our nephew. But we were our parents’ only children. Take that how you will.”
“After the Purge, we truly thought all human life on the surface was gone. Or we would have gone back for the survivors.” She had to tell herself that, or the gnawing guilt of knowing she had lived on Kalevala for years in relative luxury while people, her people had suffered and scraped by on the surface would eat her alive.
“You did what you could with what you had,” Din said.
“Did I?” Bo asked. “My entire family is dead, and I’m ‘Queen’ of a dead planet.”
“A dead planet wouldn’t have green growing things,” Din countered. “And your entire family isn’t dead.”
“Isn’t it?” Bo asked, rather more harshly than she intended. “A Sith killed my sister, my parents were killed in war by our own people, and I’m the last of my House.”
Din didn’t reply, only appearing to stare at her flatly.
“But you’re right. Mandalore isn’t dead. It’s just… hibernating. It’s going to take decades, if not centuries to bring it back to even a basic level of habitability.”
“You need to recruit,” Din said. “Farmers. Terraformers. People who know how to turn a blasted wasteland into a home again.”
“And those people are all already busy rebuilding after the fall of the Empire,” Bo said. “I’ve contacted dozens of them. No one is interested in doing it for no pay. Because what do we have to pay them with? Glass and thunder.”
Din was silent again, clearly thinking this time. “I guess I’m not the best judge of who could be convinced to be a Mandalorian,” he said, finally.
That startled a laugh out of her. “Well, considering that I thought your covert was an extremist cult when we first met, no, perhaps not.”
“Have you considered sending someone out to apprentice with the terraformers who won’t come to you?” He asked.
“No, actually,” Bo said. There were Mandalorians returning to Mandalore every day, people who had been part of a faction who escaped the Purge. Perhaps among them was someone who was willing to learn the skills and art necessary to make Mandalore fertile again? She filed the thought away for later.
She finished her soup while Din and Grogu had a conversation that largely involved Din explaining the finer points of starship navigation theory while Grogu babbled in response.
Bo was surprised by how much the child seemed to understand. She knew he was about her age, by years, but it had seemed like he was an infant when she had first met him. Now, Grogu was clearly a child, one old enough to understand complex topics. Perhaps he was just mute? He had flown the N1 to get her to come rescue Din from the Mines, after all.
A sudden wave of exhaustion washed over her, and she covered a yawn with a gauntleted hand. She had only slept a few hours before being awoken by the holo, and it had been a physically demanding fight. The warmth of the room and her full stomach were making her tired.
“You need to sleep,” Din said, not a question.
She nodded her agreement, and started to stand.
“Sleep here,” he said, gesturing to the bed that was clearly his. “It’s softer than the bed on the Gauntlet.”
Bo hesitated for a moment. Even he had to know what offering someone your bed meant, but the bed did look soft. And she had slept in too many hard beds in her life to deny herself a soft, safe one when she was this tired.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Of course, Lady Kryze,” Din said softly.
Those words sent a strange frisson up her spine.
It was entirely too pleasant a feeling.
Bo-Katan ignored it.
-
When she woke, the cabin was dark, the only light a faint glow from the control panel on the kitchen. She glanced at her vambrace display, and it showed the local time as very early morning. She had slept for almost fourteen hours. And it had been a much better sleep than she had had in, well, years.
Bo was not thinking about that when she rolled out of the bed, and quietly crossed the room. She pushed the door open, and revealed the pale light of predawn, the horizon a faint grey line.
The light in the cockpit of the Gauntlet was on. Glancing behind her, the faint light spilling in showed only Grogu in his bed.
Din had… offered her his bed, and then slept himself in her ship? It had a few bunks, but still…
She shook her head, and went back inside. Grogu was awake, the light or the cold, she didn’t know. He was sitting up blearily, rubbing a hand on his face.
“Patu?” He said, looking around. He spotted her, then, “Bobobobo! Bakoo!”
“Good morning, Din Grogu,” she said formally, offering the child a half bow.
He hopped out of bed, waved his hand at it to arrange the blankets, and toddled over to the table. Then he looked at her expectantly.
“Bakoo,” he said. “Bobo.”
She snorted with laughter at the unexpected demand.
Apparently she was getting him his breakfast this morning.
“You want fruit? Blue milk? Green milk?”
He nodded. All of them, evidently. Bo went to the refrigerator, examining its contents. She found fruit and blue milk. Grogu’s dishes were clear, being sized appropriately for his small hands.
She poured him a cup of milk, chopped up some fruit, and then on a whim, checked the fridge again. There were a few mysterious pots of sauce. Bo pulled off a glove with her teeth, setting it on the counter, then stuck a finger in one of them. It wasn’t exactly what she was looking for, but it would do.
Glancing out the still open door, the light in the Gauntlet’s cockpit was still on, and Din’s figure could be seen moving around. She gave Grogu the milk, then turned to the stove. Her belt pouches were slumped over Din’s night table (she ignored what that implied), and a few seconds of rifling through them brought up what she was looking for.
A life spent travelling meant she had gotten used to very bad food, so she carried spices with her to cover the flavor. At the bottom of that pouch were the few precious containers of the particularly Mandalorian spices. She had had the droids grow them on Kalevala, a thought that briefly made her wonder if that garden still lived, if it could be moved to the farms under Mandalore.
Combining the soured cream with the spices and the fruit made a simple breakfast, but one that would’ve been familiar to any child on Mandalore. Any child who had grown up on Mandalore before the Purge. No. Any child on Mandalore. There were children on Mandalore again.
She rifled through Din’s kitchen further, and turned up a loaf of bread and some kind of jam, just the sort of thing that would accompany the fruit with its sauce. Did he have? Yes, he had eggs too. She was just cracking six of them into a bowl and mixing in the same spices (in different combinations) when he came into the cabin.
“I see you’ve made yourself at home,” he said.
Bo froze. She had assumed…
“It’s nice,” he said, “Not to have to feed the black hole that is Grogu’s stomach.”
She relaxed her tense shoulders, and reached for a pan. “Good morning. You didn’t have to sleep in the Gauntlet. I would’ve gone.”
The creak of his armor told her he had shrugged his shoulders, even though her back was to him. He sat down at the table.
“I didn’t want to wake you. I assure you I’ve slept in far worse places than a dry, warm, padded dropship.”
“So have I,” Bo said, pouring the eggs into the pan.
A few minutes later, she turned around with three plates in her hand, one carefully balanced on her forearm. “Grogu was hungry…”
Din reached for one of the plates and put it in front of the child, who immediately began to devour it. She sat on an overturned supply crate at the table, as they had only two chairs, and then she looked up at Din, and could’ve smacked herself in the face. He couldn’t eat in front of her. His own son, maybe, but not her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “This is your home. I’ll go eat in the Gauntlet.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “I can just tip it up. It’s fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course.” His helmet seal released, and he stuck a fork into the eggs, and then his mouth. Din chewed for a few seconds, then took another, bigger bite. “What did you put in this?”
She rattled off the spices and herbs, “they’re all native to Mandalore. I figured neither of you had probably ever had them.”
He didn’t say anything, just took a few more bites. Grogu, meanwhile, had consumed his entire breakfast, licked the plate, and was eyeing hers. She started eating herself, before the kid levitated it into his mouth.
“I’ve never tasted my own culture like this,” Din finally said, quietly. “The Armorer grew up on Mandalore, I know that, but we didn’t learn these kinds of things from her.”
Bo nodded. “There’s so many pieces of our history and heritage that have been lost. I hope even a fraction of it can be regained, so that the children who will grow up on Mandalore will have the chance that you didn’t. That I barely had the chance to have.” She looked at Grogu and sighed. “I know some people who are probably rolling in their graves that he’s a Mandalorian.”
She pushed the remains of her breakfast toward Grogu, and he fell on them like a loth cat who hadn’t been fed in months. Bo turned her head to look over Din’s, and out to the Gauntlet. It was time for her to return to Mandalore, but she had never wanted to return home less.
“I don’t remember that much about my own birth family,” Din said, voice only half modulated as he was still eating. “The covert raised me, and they saved me, and I owe them my life. And for a long time, I thought that was all that there is.”
“For a long time, it probably was. That was the only way you knew how to be a Mandalorian. Just because it turned out to be merely a facet of what a Mandalorian could be doesn’t mean it’s not what a Mandalorian is,” Bo said. “Kriff, just look at me and my sister. We were born into the same circumstances, but couldn’t have been more different. I was almost a decade younger than her, and it was clear that she was being groomed to be the Duchess.
“My father died when I was very young, I don’t remember much about him, but my mother made it very clear to me as a child that the greatest thing I could do in life was to marry into another clan to make an alliance marriage. She also died before I was grown. Satine raised me for the last few years of my childhood.”
“An alliance marriage?” Din said, cocking his head. “I didn’t think Mandalorians went in for that kind of thing.”
“Typically they don’t,” Bo said. “Marriages are made between people who view themselves as partners, to strengthen family bonds, but not for political reasons. At least in theory. You have to remember that I was born the younger sibling of the most powerful house on the planet, though. I was a bargaining chip that everyone was willing to expend to preserve whatever they wanted. And look where that got them. For what it’s worth, after I made it clear in my teens that I was not interested in marrying for any reason. Satine never did bring it up again.”
She paused for a moment, considered, and forged ahead. “The Armorer thinks I should make an alliance marriage now, to cement the refusion of our culture. I’m… still undecided on that one.”
If that particular revelation phased him, Din didn’t show it. He only finished his meal, and resealed his helmet. “I’m sure you’ll make the right decision.”
“I can only hope so,” Bo said. “I’ve been hoping that a lot lately.”
Din stood, gathered the dishes, and took them to the sink to wash. “How long are you staying?”
Bo’s stomach rolled at the suddenly short tone of his voice. “I wasn’t planning to outstay my welcome,” she replied.
“You’re welcome as long as you want,” he said, his voice softer. “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I’m only wondering if I need to get another bed.”
“I was planning to leave today,” she said. “I have a feeling that Mandalore will literally fall apart without me. Shatter like glass, if you will.”
“Ah,” he said. “Before you go, I do have one favor to ask.”
“Oh?”
“I want to let Grogu fly the N1 by himself. Well, with R5, but with only him in the cockpit. And I would like to borrow the Gauntlet to follow him in case he has a problem.”
That was not at all what Bo-Katan had been expecting, but she was more than happy to oblige. “Of course,” she said.
“Excellent,” Din said. He put the dishes to dry, then turned, pulling on his gloves. She hadn’t even realized he had taken them off. Even the briefest glimpse of tan skin made her cheeks heat uncomfortably. And she wasn’t wearing a helmet.
“You want to go now?”
“Patu!” Grogu said, and he was already toddling off toward the N1.
Bo laughed, watching the child go. He was a true Mandalorian, after all.