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Din never believed in anything about fate. Things happened and he would have to deal with it. Even things that had changed his life for the better, such as when he got Grogu. Things could have easily gone a different way. He easily could have decided not to take a mission or taken one of the other many ones that Karga offered him.
Every time he thought about it, he was glad that he had taken that mission. He was glad that he had found Grogu and that now he was his son. Grogu was a handful, but Din loved that he had the chance to raise him. He just wished that he would be around longer to see what Grogu would be like when he grew up.
Grogu was very special and would make a huge difference in the Galaxy. Din was going to do the best to make sure that he was trained to be the best Mandalorian possible. He wondered what good things Grogu would do for Mandalore in the future.
He wished that he would be there to see it.
But Grogu was a different species and would live so much longer than Din.
Grogu wasn’t the only one who Din had let into his life now. Now Din actually had people close to him. He actually had people who cared not just about Grogu but also him.
For a long time, he didn’t think he would ever have that. He didn’t think he would have a family. He was really lucky.
And now he had somehow gotten even luckier. When he first met Bo, he didn’t know what to think of her. She was in many ways the opposite of what he had been taught. One of the first things he had learned as a Mandalorian is that you couldn’t take your helmet off. That doing so wasn’t the Way.
Bo had taken off her helmet when they first met, but she had been so confident in how she was Mandalorian. At first glance, she seemed so confident in everything that she did. Din couldn’t keep his eyes away from her.
But he thought that would be that. He would be attracted to her and maybe they would sometimes help each other since they were both opposed to the Empire, but… well… it didn’t turn out that way.
They had been brought together and for awhile she had even joined the Watch. The two of them had grown closer every day. They weren’t the only two who had. Grogu adored Bo and it was clear she was a mother figure to him. Bo loved Grogu too.
And today the three of them were getting to spend some time together. Din and Grogu didn’t get to spend nearly as much time with Bo as he would have liked. He missed the days when he saw her all the time. But she was ruling Mandalore like she was meant to do. Din was teaching Grogu to be a Mandalorian by taking select missions that the New Republic gave him. He only selected missions that could in some way help Mandalore.
He wanted to make sure the missions that he did would help not just Mandalore, but also Bo, even if he couldn’t be around her as much as he would have liked.
The three of them were in Bo’s ship today and Grogu was sitting on her lap and babbling at her.
Bo laughed. She had a beautiful laugh and Din wished that he could hear it more. He knew that Bo hadn’t had much to laugh about during her life though. It had been hard. He wanted to make sure that she could find some happiness now.
“He’s turning into a talker,” Bo said with Grogu as he kept on babbling at her.
“Patu!” Grogu exclaimed as if he was saying something very wise and profound.
Bo smiled and ruffled the tuft of hair on his head.
“Yes,” Din said. “I hope he has his first word soon.”
“I bet it will be dada or buir,” Bo said. “He really adores you.”
Din beamed. He couldn’t imagine how happy he would be if that was Grogu’s first word. He loved Grogu more than he thought he could love anyone.
But his feelings for Bo… well, he cared deeply for her but in a different way.
“You think?” Din asked, he couldn’t keep the joy out of his voice. Just thinking about it made him grin even wider.
She reached out and took his hand. “I would be surprised if that wasn’t his first word.”
Din didn’t know about that but the thought of it made him grin so wide that his face hurt. The three of them kept talking and checking up until they finally got to Concordia, the moon that Din had grown up on and first trained on.
It was where he had learned to be a Mandalorian.
He remembered when he used to look toward Mandalore and think about going there one day.
And eventually after they had met with some people who lived on Concordia still, Din looked over to Bo.
“To think that when I was here, you might have been on Mandalore,” Din said, but then he realized that he wasn’t correct at that. Bo had been born on Mandalore and spent most of her childhood raised there and Kalevala, but she had been a teenager when Din was a preteen on Concordia.
“I wouldn’t have been on Mandalore then,” Bo said as she looked toward Mandalore as well.
Din put Grogu on the floor and he made a chirping noise and then pulled out a toy frog that Bo had given him earlier. Grogu was obsessed with that toy frog.
“You would have been in Death Watch then,” Din said. It wasn’t a question. The Watch was a off shot of Death Watch, but although the groups had many things in common, they had many differences too.
And Bo used to tell Din about her time in Death Watch. She had told him about how she felt horrible about the things that she had done under Pre Vizsla’s command. She told him about how she would never forgive herself for betraying Satine.
Din thought that she needed to. Satine had forgiven her after all. Bo had been a child when Vizsla had started to raise her and he had done a good job of brainwashing her. Satine had understood that and forgiven her. Din imagined that Satine had her own regrets.
Satine would be proud of Bo now. She was such an amazing person.
Bo wouldn’t mention it much, but sometimes she implied or briefly said things that had been done to her when she was in Death Watch. Those things made Din despise Pre Vizsla and sometimes wish he was alive so he could make him suffer. No one should hurt Bo.
Not now and definitely not when she was young.
“Yes,” Bo said and then she looked at him. He looked into her eyes. They were so green. Sometimes he felt like it was hard to look away from them.
He didn’t want to look away from them either. Not when they were so captivating to him.
To think he thought this about someone. He never believed that he would.
“We could have been here on Concordia at the same time,” Bo said with a sigh. “If things had gone a little differently then we could have met here.”
She was close to him now. Their shoulders were even touching. He put his arm around her shoulders and she cuddled closer to him. Touching her always felt right.
Grogu looked at them and cooed. People in the Watch used to always say that it was clear Grogu wanted the two of them to officially be together, and that clearly hadn’t changed.
“We could have,” Din said. He would have had a crush on Bo even then. Yes, she had been a troubled teenager, but he had been far from a saint when he was younger also. He still wasn’t a saint.
He would have thought that Bo was an ideal Mandalorian.
And of course he would have thought she was beautiful. He would be enamored by her. He still was.
“It’s a miracle that we did meet,” Bo said.
She wasn’t wrong in many ways. The Watch and the Nite Owls didn’t spend much time around each other. At least they hadn’t then. Now they were united and Bo said many other Mandalorians were returning to Mandalore including some who used to follow her sister.
Din now was glad that Mandalorians could all be different and still get along. That they could be united against all the threats that were in the Galaxy.
And united as Mandalorians.
“I think we were meant to meet, Bo,” Din said after a moment of peaceful silence. He hadn’t meant to say that, but he meant every word despite what he had thought earlier. He just knew this.
“What do you mean, Din?” Bo said. “You don’t think it was just chance that we encountered each other? If I wasn’t there, you would have drowned.”
He would have drowned without her two times already. He moved slightly and took her hands in his.
“It was more than chance,” Din said and then he said something he wouldn’t have believed in until he met her. “It was fate.”
There was a peaceful silence and then Bo smiled and pressed her forehead against his helmet. A Keldabe kiss.
“I missed you when you were gone,” Bo said in a small voice as she moved away from him. She took his hands again.
“I missed you too,” Din said, squeezing her hands. “But I meant what I said. I will serve you until your song is written.”
“Patu!” Grogu exclaimed and he came over to them. Bo smiled and let go of Din’s hands and picked up Grogu.
“We’ll always be there for you,” Din said.
Bo nodded. “And I will be there for you.”
Whether it was fate, luck, or something else entirely, Din knew that the three of them, his clan of three, would always be united.
And that he would always love Bo-Katan Kryze.