Chapter Text
It was supposed to be a simple job. Find a man, bring him in. A task about as close to his old life as any assignment he had taken since he cut ties to the Guild in the most spectacular of ways. Given all that had transpired since, it felt strange going back to this kind of work. Unsanctioned and off the books, of course. But nonetheless, a well paying client seeking a body brought in alive, rather than how he preferred most of his targets these days – dead by any means necessary.
“Call it an extraction,” Carson Teva countered, when informed by Din that he no longer took regular bounties, his interests now strictly Imperial. “A former freedom fighter I know, her husband disappeared, suspected of being kidnapped in retribution for their actions against the Empire.”
“Why isn’t the New Republic helping?” Din knew the answer before he even asked. Grogu’s ears twitched in the pod beside him. The reasons were always the same.
“You know how it is,” Teva replied apologetically. “The NR is overtextended, they won’t commit the resources.” He shook his head. “But this is a friend of mine. Got me and my team out of more than a couple of scrapes in the past. I’m just trying to return the favor. Anyway, you’d like her,” Teva smirked, “she’s a shoot-first-ask-questions-later type. Probably would go get her himself,” he added, considering the thought, “but she just had a baby.”
A husband and a father.
The information tasted sour in a way Din chose not to investigate.
“You bring him in, she’ll pay you a fine reward,” Teva continued. “They were set to depart from Kanavan IV to join a protection program to stop the repeated attempts on their lives.” He paused, reaching into his pocket to produce a tracking fob he handed to Din. “It’s sad, having to leave everything you’ve ever known behind, looking for a safe place to raise a family. Wherever they end up, I hope they’ll find it.”
Din activated the tracking fob. “Manurius Sluvan” the name read in Aurebesh. Dark hair and eyes, face framed by a strong brow and prominent nose, swarthy with a mustache and stubble. Something about the image caught his attention, tugged at something he couldn’t quite identify. Flicking his eyes away Din tucked the device into his bandolier and turned to leave, almost making it out of the building before Teva’s voice stopped him.
“Hey Mando!” he called out, as if Teva already knew Din was planning on finding another starfighter big enough to fit an extra person. “If you need another ship I got you covered.”
Back to a life of dingy cantinas and skug hole planets.
It was the latest of many such places Din found himself since he and Grogu started working covert operations for the New Republic. Backwater worlds on the outer rim, never important enough to merit the attention of the Galactic Empire at its height or the NR in the present day. Most people he and Grogu encountered wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference anyway.
Life on the outer rim was desperate and short for most sentients. Sure,there were pockets of prosperity, where independent worlds had managed to thrive. Nevarro, for example, as he fondly thought of his good friend, High Magistrate Greef Karga, or Plazir-15, he recalled with more complicated feelings as green eyes and red hair flashed behind his eyes. Mandalore was doing well post-recapture. Bo-Katan was the leader he always knew she would be. Sure, his people still struggled, deep in the trenches of reconstruction, but they were united with rare purpose and opportunity. Some might say, under the tutelage of their Mand’alor, they were on their way to fulfill a great destiny.
But overall in his travels, most of the rim was mired in misery, full of hard living amid sentients laboring under even harder times. And this place where he and Grogu had landed was no exception.
They were sitting at a table in a tavern on Barkahl, a terrestrial body seemingly devoid of any current technology save the former Imperial hideout they had just blown up, surrounded by a ragtag group of villagers drinking cheap grain-wine, arguing over strategy. The conversation focused on taking out the local Chieftain in power; the only remaining obstacle between the Barkahle people and their freedom.
Finding Manurius had only been the start of what was becoming a trying ordeal, far more involved than Din had anticipated. The husband and father had indeed been kidnapped by rogue Imperials, left to rot in a holding cell that was almost laughably easy for Din and Grogu to infiltrate. What they hadn’t banked on however, was Manurius’ gregarious personality, earnest and committed to every lifeform he came across. Having cemented bonds with his fellow prisoners after time in shared captivity, Din’s purported bounty had become so invested in the lives and well-being of the other inmates that he took up their cause, a campaign for the liberation of their people and their homeworld.
At first Din had insisted on leaving. He had a job to do — bring Manurius to his wife and continue working towards his own objective, tracking Imperial threats to Mandalore. He had no intention of getting involved in the lives of the Barkhale people.
The same couldn’t be said for his quarry.
And Manurius was persuasive, the kind of loquacious neighbor or friend who flooded his associates with enthusiasm and a dazzling smile, capable of convincing even the most skeptical and hardened to commit to whatever scheme he might present.
It was a gift Din’s charismatic bounty honed while committing small-time swindles, eking out a living on his colonized homeworld during the high reign of the Galactic Empire. For most of his life Manurius survived through charm, wit, and a flexible moral code. At least, until he met his Girl as the man said imperfectly in accented Basic, referring to the wife that had contracted Din via Carson Teva to bring him home. Upon meeting her, a daughter of lost privilege burning with revolutionary fire, Manurius relinquished a life of grifting for full-time insurrection, with newfound commitment to the promise of freedom and independence, for all.
Manurius insisted he was not noble. He was adamant in fact, that his actions on his homeworld were not driven by any higher purpose or lofty ideal beyond affection for friends and winning over his Girl. But to Din there was a fine and nearly indistinguishable line between the actions of a hero and the type of person who would pledge oneself without thought or consequence in order to help others. Especially when such friends were local dissidents and rabble rousers of only scant acquaintance. Though he claimed otherwise, Manurius clearly operated with a fervent belief in something greater than himself.
And Manurius, as mentioned before, was very, very persuasive.
Or just plain stubborn.
“What else can I do? They need us.” Manurius stood at full height, nearly taller than Din, arms outstretched, pleading his case. “You must help! You are Mandalorian! Your people have honor.”
“What about your wife and child?” Din sniped, between gritted teeth.
“My Girl will understand.” Manurius shook his head. “She is the one who taught me that we must always fight for what is right.”
This is how Din found himself organizing a strike team to depose Biellan Staje. The wealthy Barkahle Chieftain who had colluded with the Empire in indenturing his fellow Barkahles into servitude in exchange for ruling the planet with an iron fist.
The plan was simple. Staje relied on a droid garrison to enforce his authority over the general population. Din and Manurius would travel to the interior country, and take out the control center from which the droids received their commands. Capture the control center, disable the droids, thus leaving Staje’s remaining sentient forces outnumbered. The rest of the villagers would lay in wait for the droids to shut down, and then make their move.
Raxen and Kairo, two men among the group, each from separate tribes on Barkahl nodded, confident in their ability to rally residents of their respective villages. While an unmistakable tension simmered between the two men, they had established an uneasy truce in the face of a common enemy. Din had learned that the Barkhale had been fighting in tribal antipathy for centuries, with warring chieftains constantly vying for power. Raxen and Kairo were descendants of rival lines of chieftain blood, and carried the burdens of their ancestors with them into the present.
“We will wait in the East,” Raxen confirmed, with a pointed glance upward across the table to Kairo.
“And we will be ready in the West,” Kairo affirmed, returning Raxen’s look with a steely glare.
“When you see the droids shut down, that will be your sign to advance,” Din reiterated. “Move into position and wait for our return.” The assembled men nodded their heads in agreement. “You should be able to overpower Staje’s remaining sentient guards on your own, but with air support there should be fewer casualties.” That the borrowed HWK-290 light freighter Din was piloting wasn’t much more than a bucket of bolts held together with chewstim, a relic found on the back lot of Adelphi Base, was not something he felt he needed to share. He had seen Staje’s ground installation when entering Barkhale air space, and it was not that heavily fortified. The armament on board the ship, even if antiquated, would be adequate for a swift victory, once the droids were dealt with.
“Then it is all settled,” Manurius announced. “We will depart early tomorrow.”
The celebratory cheers from the villagers filled the tavern, all ready and eager to lay down their lives for the promise of freedom and the right of self-determination. And while Din was not thrilled to be stuck here, on this backwater planet, he couldn’t help the stirring in his chest. He understood all too well their fervor. He and Manurius – the windfall of experience and firepower the two of them represented: a fearsome Mandalorian and a seasoned freedom fighter, both unexpected off-world visitors who would help them with their cause, buoyed the villager’s spirits. It let the Barkhale people believe that their future might be brighter, that they could have a song to write and sing as their own. He really couldn’t begrudge that.
Din leaned back into his chair, observing Manurius hold court among the villagers. A natural storyteller, Manurius fell deep into regaling his new brothers in arms with stories of revolution and liberation on his homeworld, entertaining and inspiring them in the same way he must have when they were all jailed together with no hope for escape.
As he watched Manurius speak, there was something about the light in the room, a gleam to the way the lanterns cast off of the other man’s features. Perhaps it was the tilt of Manurius’ eyebrow, or the curl of his lip when upturned. It could have been the glossy arc of Manurius’ hair curved uncannily across his scruff-covered cheek. There were many humans in the Galaxy who looked similar – Din rarely took notice. But in this light, at this table, Manurius’ animated features played tricks on his eyes, conjuring faces and settings stored so far back in the recesses of Din’s memory he had all but forgotten them.
The warmth and security of a hearth table, soft comfortable clothes, a paternal hand, reaching out to lovingly tousle the locks on his forehead...
It was a recollection that had often haunted him upon meeting Grogu, a call from a prior life that refused to remain dormant, impelling Din to protect the child that would later become his son. But this time a crucial detail he hadn’t recalled before stood out to him, always present, but never quite as clearly articulated before now.
The other hand wrapped around the waist of a maternal presence, a current of feeling, mysterious and sweet. The energy running between the pair of adults pulling him into their orbit, twin suns blazing, an anchor at the center of his own adolescent galaxy.
A clan of three, together — a family.
Din’s attention darted to Grogu, his pulse racing. His son stared back, keen eyes already picking up on his father’s subtle signs of distress. He and Grogu had become particularly attuned to each other over the past months, a connection amplified by often being the sole source of each other’s company, something Din was coming to regard as both his greatest solace and curse.
Nothing seemed to get past the kid.
Mentally shaking himself out of his unease, Din attempted to focus his attention on the present.
Later in the night with the villagers halfway in their cups, Din slipped out of the tavern to get some fresh air. Naturally wary and cautious about his surroundings he remained near the entrance to the building. Looking up overhead the stars gleamed against a backdrop of navy ink. Though positioned at an unfamiliar orientation from this edge of the galaxy, he managed to find the configuration he was looking for, a clear and unmistakable pattern he would be able to pick out anywhere. It had been decades since he had ever had a place he considered a home. Perhaps the closest thing was the Razor Crest. But now, home – in quiet times he was able to admit he longed for it. The cabin on Nevarro didn’t count, even though he and Grogu stayed there between jobs, and technically by the generosity of Greef Karga, it was his.
Dank Farrick.
The subspace radio transmitter on the HWK-290 light freighter he was flying had been malfunctioning since he left Adelphi Base, a feature not detailed in its latest maintenance report. The Dusty Raven, Din groused, recalling the name of the starship Carson Teva brought him to, a quaint relic tucked away on the edges of the outpost’s back lot. Currently all communications in and out of Barkahl were controlled by the chieftain they were trying to depose. It was not often that he was able to reach out to speak to Bo-Katan, but when he could, the sound of her voice on the other end, the spark of desire to be settled, to be home… Din let the thought hang unfinished.
Sighing, he made his way back inside the tavern.
Din, Grogu, and Manurius left the small Barkhale village before daybreak. Their pursuit of the command center would swing wide, towards the uninhabited reaches of the planet, across a broad grassy plain, to the edge of a crater, where the command center remained hidden amid dense scrub brush. They would travel in the Dusty Raven and camp overnight before staging their attack the following morning.
“This is your ship?” Manurius inquired, as he boarded, looking up at the worn metal paneling scratched and nicked with use surrounding him.
“No, it’s borrowed. My ship is much smaller. Most of the work I do these days doesn't involve bringing back a live body.”
Manurius raised his eyebrows.
“Imperials,” Din explained as his hands darted across the controls, bringing the freighter engines roaring to life.
Nodding his head approvingly, Manurius chuckled. “It’s a dangerous life, for you and your son?”
“Yes, but life has always been dangerous for our kind. Mandalorians don’t exactly live easy lives.”
Manurius merely smiled. “Indeed, my friend.”
Flying the Dusty Raven over the plains of Barkhal Din imagined himself cruising over the glassy surface of Mandalore. The two planets couldn’t be more different, but both reminded him of a set of irises encompassing a full range of green — shifting from brilliant to dusky, depending on her mood. The last time he saw her was the day he left Mandalore.
Red hair lit like the dawn, blowing lightly with the wind across her cheek, urging him to reach out and brush the errant strands into place…
“Let me know how you’re doing, even if you don’t have new intel. You can just reach out to say hello anytime,” she said, her voice thin and plaintive, her gaze searching. One arm cradled her helmet, her other hand hovered at her hip.
“Always,” he nodded, the word catching in his throat.
Those green eyes pulled him in, drawing emotions out of him that had been growing harder to deny. Feelings that circulated around her, anchoring him to her presence, whispering like lost dreams lying just out of reach. It was almost enough to silence the shame he felt from the beating of his heart, pounding like a hammer, insisting that he should stay.
With their staging ground in sight, Din nodded to Grogu signaling to his son to initialize the freighter landing sequence. Grogu’s piloting skills continued to improve, a testament to the long hours they were putting in traveling across the galaxy. It would be years before Grogu could act fully as a single pilot, the sole captain of his own ship, but each job they took continued to build a solid foundation for that day. His son had already proved competent on limited, short runs. And on more than one mission, including this one, he could be trusted to bring their starship in range for boarding after Din and Manurius captured the command center.
Din smiled to himself. They had been working hard these past months, running jobs as they came, training on the lava flats in between. Having one’s own land did not entail much loafing. He and Grogu kept busy, as idle was one thing a Mandalorian’s life was never meant to be.
If there were other reasons Din resisted having too much down time he didn’t dwell on it much. He could deny it all he wanted, but he knew what he was doing by ensuring they never had enough time between jobs to fully rest, and more importantly, to think.
Later in the evening Din, Grogu, and Manurius reclined in front of a campfire. They had finished scouting the perimeter of the crater containing the command center, confirming the intelligence they had been able to gather about the station.
Drawing from the memories of the Barkhale who had been conscripted to work maintenance duty at the command center, they observed the number of guards and their shift patterns, finding that indeed at the late morning hour there was a window of time where the installation was lightly staffed. Early the next morning Manurius and Din would take out the sentry guards, advancing as a team until they reached a checkpoint three quarters of the way into the crater. An experienced sharpshooter, Manurius would use this area to set up and take aim, disabling the generator in the middle of the compound. Once that task was completed, he would cover Din’s advance before joining him.
Once they breached the station they would disable the control signal for the droids garrison, operating on its own independent channel off an internally protected sub-system wired to Staje’s stronghold. Grogu would act on Din’s confirmation to bring the Dusty Raven to pick up Din and Manurius, allowing them to return as quickly as possible to provide air support to the villagers.
After setting camp Din brought Manurius to his on-board weapons cache. Pulled from the N-1, the trunk contained assorted blasters, rifles, and concussion grenades, a combination of Din’s own personal collection and whatever he happened to pick up while traveling; like the slugthrower gifted to him by the Menahuun on Lamaredd, or the class A-thermal detonator swiped from a dead Stormtrooper Grenadier.
Though first and foremost gifted in the art of persuasion, Manurius had spent years fighting the Empire on behalf of his people, and had developed an appreciation for the swift resolution achieved by blade or ballistics under the right circumstance. Having been previously stripped of his blasters after his capture and imprisonment, Din had already provided Manurius with another blaster pistol and tie down holster. But this weapon Din reflected, as he pulled it out of the storage container, would be a particularly enjoyable treat. Grinning underneath his helmet, he lifted a T-7 Ion Disruptor Rifle for Manurius to behold.
“This is illegal,” Manurius responded, even as the corners of his mouth upturned while he reached to take the weapon from Din’s proffered hands.
“It is,” Din smirked.
Manurius’ smile took on an appreciative gleam as he chuckled. “The way you think, Mando. I like it.”
Satisfied that they had prepared as much as they could for the next day, Din and Manurius decided to use the remaining time to ensure all were rested and fed. Sitting by the fire as the sun set, the Barkhale night came heavy and sweet, blue hues glowing in contrast to the orange and red of the flames before them.
As the stars emerged, twinkling in the oncoming night, Din was once again gripped with longing, as that familiar configuration emerged low on the Barkhale horizon. He noticed Manurius watching Grogu playing near the campfire. It was a contrast of sights, all things considered. His son, a diminutive child levitating rocks, swirling them playfully as if they were a small galaxy in rotation. Yet the same child had already killed his fair share of Imperials with Din by his side.
“Mando, did you talk to my Girl before you came here?” Manurius asked. Something in Manurius’ voice caught Grogu’s attention, as he paused his play, letting the rocks drop onto the dirt as he inched closer to the fire.
“No, I only spoke to Carson Teva on her behalf.”
“I have not yet met my child,” Manurius revealed, somewhat wistfully, eyeing Grogu.
Din startled at the revelation. “But you’re still here. Fighting a fight that isn’t yours. We could have taken you home at any time.”
“I know,” Manurius sighed. “But how can I leave here, be with my Girl, and my child, knowing my friends would not share the same freedom?”
Din didn’t have a good answer for that.
“Do you have a Girl?” Manurius asked him, pointing a large long finger at him, eyes animated in the firelight.
Din stiffened as Grogu’s upturned face tilted towards his father’s helm, bright curious eyes far too intent on his answer.
Manurius glanced down at the diminutive green child and nodded his head knowingly. “Ah, you do.” He paused. “Or maybe a Boy?” He chuckled and held his hands up in supplication. “In my culture, everyone loves everyone, it is all the same thing to us,” he placated, fingers tented against his chest. “But you,” he eyed Din, finger pointing direct and straight again, right at the crux of Din’s poorly erected defenses. “You have someone,” he added, before mercifully dropping the subject.
Some time later, after an evening meal of re-hydrated rations and with Grogu asleep in his pod, Din and Manurius reclined by the fire, biding time before retiring to take turns on night watch.
“My Girl,” Manurius began, “I was her first.” He looked over at Din, clarifying exactly what he meant. “But she was the one who taught me about love.” He inhaled, as if breathing in a sweetened memory. “Your Girl,” Manurius inquired, with a tilt of his eyebrow, “was she your first?”
Din laughed, a full guffaw suffused with genuine amusement. He shook his head. Did he seem so uptight and awkward to this man that this would even be considered a legitimate question? Perhaps, Din sighed. Most sentients in the galaxy had developed odd preconceptions about Mandalorians. “No,” he answered, as a blur of faces whose names he had mostly forgotten or never asked for flared before him, dissipating with the wind like smoke from the campfire. “But before her I knew nothing about love.” He paused, swallowing bitterly. “We’re not together by the way.” The admission heaved out of him.
Manurius’ brows tweaked, ever observant and attenuated to the shifting emotions of those around him. “Why not?” he asked gently.
“It’s… complicated,” Din began, unsure of how he would even start to explain. “I have a duty to my son. She has a duty to our planet.”
“But you love her?” Manurius asked.
Din hesitated. The words of a nearly forgotten language, learned before Basic or Mando’a welling within him. “Yes,” He conceded softly, resisting the impulse to respond in that other tongue.
“Does she know? How you feel?”
“I don’t know,” Din replied, shaking his head, unable to fathom how he ended up here, on this forsaken planet pouring his heart out to a near stranger.
A smile spread across Manurius’ face. “You should tell her.”
“And if she doesn’t feel the same way?”
Manurius shrugged. “What if she does?”
“My son should be enough,” Din confessed, finally acknowledging the undercurrent of guilt shadowing him these past months, giving words to the feeling that gnawed at his gut.
Manurius’ features, illuminated by the fire, glowed warmly with unfettered passion. “There is no such thing as enough or too much. Love, wherever you find it, is a gift.”
Despite being quite sure that he and Manurius were close in age, Din couldn’t help feeling like a youth being counseled by a paternal elder. Manurius had a point though. After decades of closing himself off, what did he really know about loving and being loved? He glanced at Grogu’s pod, closed tightly, and pictured the child ensconced inside sleeping soundly.
Later during his turn at watch, as the fire burned low and dark, crumbling the last bit of charred wood into ash, Din shifted to look up at the sky. The twinkling lights blinked back silently with nothing to offer as evening clouds skimmed overhead.
Searching for peace in the stars would remain unsuccessful.
They would provide no solace tonight.