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Coming here was a mistake.
Din stood, tense and quiet as this so called Bo-Katan Kryze stared him down. Her expression was mostly unimpressed, with the corner of her mouth curled just enough to feel mocking. Her two friends bracketed her, one leaning against a wall with arms crossed, the other looming.
They claimed they were Mandalorians, but they couldn’t be. They took off their helmets, they told him their names with little care of who could hear or see. They broke Creeds as readily as one breathed, and they judged him for his adherence to it?
The air was still in the quiet, backwater cantina, the fan spinning lazily above their heads as the two sides of Mandalorians stood poised, anticipating one side to act that they must react to. Din kept his hands to his sides, his palm hovering flat over the Kid who crooned worriedly from the safety of his bag, ready to protect him if things came to a head but dared not to be the one to make the first step into a fight.
If they wanted to fight, they would have to be the ones to initiate.
The building unease ruptured with a loud bang of the cantina door against the wall.
“Beroya!” the armored man called, cheer audible even through his helmet as his boots thumped against the dirty floorboards. His ratty red cape fluttered around his shoulders and his gait favoring his left and making no move to try to hide the fact as he walked in, entirely oblivious to the tension. “Beroya, I found your Jetii!”
“That can’t be a Jedi,” Bo-Katan stated, eyes narrowing at the figure who’d trudged in after the first.
Din wouldn’t admit that at first, he’d agreed with Bo-Katan. The man was... scruffy was the best description. Loose V-cut style tunic, utility belt full of pouches and holsters for both knives and two blasters, high leather boots worn at the toes and in need of a good polish, paired with his slightly unkempt beard and floppy brown hair, he wouldn’t look out of place on an Outer Rim spaceport.
But maybe that was the point, Din mused a second after the first impression. He couldn’t say he knew Jedi, wouldn’t even begin to know what they looked like. And if they had been hunted down like the remnants of the Empire were trying to hunt down the Kid, then looking like an average Spacer was an easy way to go undetected.
Smart, Din thought, mildly impressed. If it was true.
Bo-Katan’s comment didn’t get much of a reaction from the Spacer, but it did draw attention from the other Mandalorian.
“Bo-Katan Kryze, is that you?” His identification made the woman jerk back, eyes snapping to him in almost shock as she took in the Mythosaur crest on his armor. “Why, I haven’t seen you since you were a wee sprog!”
“Who are you?” Her hand had dropped to grip her blaster, which caused her two comrades to straighten up, ready to step in at a moment’s notice.
“He’s with me,” Din butted in before things could escalate further, turning partially so he could look at his friend while also keep an eye on the three… maybe Mandalorians. “Cabur, are you sure?”
It wasn’t that Din didn’t trust Cabur. Cabur had been the first Mandalorian Din had met that had been outside his Covert weeks before his mission that brought him to the Kid. He wasn’t part of Din’s Tribe, but he kept his helmet on, followed Din’s lead as well as any from his own Tribe, and told great stories from the Mandalore of old from before the Empire and even before the last Republic. It made Din wonder how old Cabur was, but as a certain Elder, he was given the respect he was due for being a seasoned warrior of his age even without being a part of his Tribe.
The Armorer certainly had been interested when he mentioned him, but, well… there were bigger things to worry about now.
And when things went belly-up, Din sought the only person he could trust to watch his back.
“I am.” The black and red trimmed helmet tipped towards Din. “Why don’t you introduce yourself, kid?”
“I’m in my thirties,” the Spacer-maybe-Jedi stated with an amused huff. But his eyes had drifted down to Din’s bag, where the Kid’s big dark eyes peered back, ears wiggling as if he was trying to pick up a radio frequency. “Kyle Katarn.”
“What sort of Jedi is named Kyle?” the male behind Bo-Katan muttered, receiving a sharp elbow to the gut from the female.
The Spacer- Kyle- merely shrugged, but his attention was still on the Kid, his head cocked a touch to the side.
The Kid cooed and smiled.
Good enough for Din.
“Let’s go.”
Din was happy to let the door slam shut behind them on Bo-Katan’s face before she could make any move to retort.
----
“Your kid has a lot of trauma to unpack.”
Din set the Crest’s autopilot before turning his seat around to look behind him. Kyle was seated on the floor now they were out of the turbulence of exiting the atmosphere, legs crossed and hands resting neatly on his knees. The Kid seemed to have taken an instant liking to him and had crawled into his lap instead of sitting opposite him, ears drooped a little as he fidgeted with the knob from Din’s ship that he’d stolen without him realizing.
“Oh.” Din didn’t know how to feel about that. The Kid had been through a lot after he’d gotten him, but there was no telling what happened between him and the Imperials prior to their meeting. “Will that… affect your decision to take him?”
Kyle blinked.
“Take him?”
“Beroya was told to take the kid back to his own kind,” Cabur helpfully supplied from his seat nearby, rubbing his fingers between the gaps in his knee guard to ease the nerve pain with pressure. “Back to the Jetii. He thinks that means it’s permanent.”
Din shot Cabur a glare, knowing the man could read it through the armor.
“Oh, well, they used to do that, I believe.” Kyle reached down to run his hands over the tiny tufts of hair on the Kid’s head, who leaned into it happily. “Luke mentioned reading something like that, but with how far and few between we are, I don’t think we can afford to, y’know, split families. Even if Luke says no, I sure as hell won’t tell you to keep your distance.” He smiled then, a lopsided thing that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “’sides, if Luke didn’t want familial attachments, his sister would’ve come down and kicked his ass the moment he tried, and I always hedge my bets on Leia.”
“That means you can finally give in and tell the little blighter the gai bal manda.” Cabur’s smile was audible.
Din’s shoulders curled up.
“But I don’t even know his name,” he admitted quietly, even as the Kid’s big dark eyes honed in on him, already crawling out of Kyle’s lap to fling himself at his shins with a squeal.
“It’s Grogu,” Kyle supplied helpfully, a knowing grin on his face as he stretched his legs out from their crossed position.
“Grogu.” Din whispered it like a mantra, kneeling down to be closer to the Kid- to Grogu. “Would you… would you like to be part of my Clan?”
He didn’t know why he was so nervous about it, not when Grogu immediately held up his arms and screeched excitedly, ears wiggling away.
And so a Clan of One became a Clan of Two. Just like that.
-----
“Why don’t you guys use names?”
It wasn’t the worst question to ask about the intricacies of his Creed. Kyle had stuck around with them instead of heading off into the wider Galaxy, seemingly keeping his word in letting Din and Grogu be family while also training Grogu in Jedi ways. And over the weeks, Din could admit that Cabur was right and that the scruffy Spacer of a man was something mystical as he’s seen him lift things with his mind and leap to the top of a sheer cliff without the use of a jetpack.
Din thought it’d be awkward, for two Mandalorians to keep to their Creed with a non-Mandalorian sharing the same space, but Kyle had the intuition to know to knock first or when to turn his head away.
The only true surprise was that it took him this long to ask.
“Our Creed forbids us to share out name with outsiders,” Din answered readily. “Mandalorians cannot show their face or share their names. It keeps us safe.”
“But that lady from the cantina did.”
“…It’s complicated.”
Kyle hummed, not even flinching when the metal knob stopped mere inches from his face while Grogu giggled away.
“Slower, kid,” he gently corrected, floating the knob through the air as if buoyed by invisible waves. “We’re not trying to launch it to hyperspace, as fun as that might be. The Force is here to help you.”
Grogu stuck his tongue out before closing his eyes to try again.
-----
“There are many different ways to be a Mandalorian.”
Din sat on a crate in storage as Cabur talked, watching him gently clean the old armor Din had been given in trade for his services from the Marshal on Tatooine. Cabur hadn’t been with him on that trip, having stayed in town to help get supplies and do odd jobs for Peli, but when he’d set eyes on the damaged Mandalorian armor he had gone quiet. He’d taken up to cleaning it, something sorrowful in his hands as they scraped away dust and acid-chipped paint.
Din couldn’t bring himself to ask if he’d known them.
“By the rise of the previous Republic, there was no less than six hundred and forty seven registered Creeds, why, it seemed there were more with every passing day! Almost every Clan had their own variation.”
“Even ones that let them take off their helmets?”
“Most of them allowed that much, I’m afraid.” The brush was set down by Cabur’s knee, hands reaching for the cloth and oil. “The Creed you’re familiar with is much more restrictive, but also much older and steeped in tradition. The secretiveness of it is most likely why your Tribe survived the various purges the Empire orchestrated.”
Din mulled over it for a bit.
“So… Bo-Katan is… not slandering her Creed by taking her helmet off, even if it would mark you dar’manda in mine?”
“That’s correct.”
“You don’t follow my Creed either, do you?”
Cabur set the cloth down to face Din.
“I mean not to trick or betray you,” Cabur’s voice was soft, gentle, a balm to the ice that had sunk low in Din’s belly. “When I saw you were of your Creed, I wished to show you the respect you deserve by following suit. You helped me and let me stay with you on your ship, the least I could do was follow the same rules you abide by yourself. It’s no hardship to be respectful, but I should have told you sooner, it simply…”
“It never came up.”
“It didn’t.” Cabur watched Din quietly, and Din wanted to be mad. He wanted to be upset, to feel betrayed by it all that Cabur had been lying to him. But he hadn’t really been lying, had he? Cabur figured out Din’s creed before Din even let him onto his ship, and had respected him for it. The older man wasn’t like Bo-Katan, he meant no harm nor mockery for his Creed.
Cabur was… too damn nice and patient. Always had been.
“Does it bother you?” he asked after several minutes, Cabur having gone back to clean the lost armor.
“If it did, I wouldn’t be here with you.”
Din could trust the Elder’s honesty at the very least.
-----
There was an unfamiliar man standing at the foot of the ramp to the Crest.
Kyle was proving himself to be an excellent guard, his arms crossed as he stood on the top of the ramp, hip cocked against the door frame as he looked rather nonchalant at first glance. But his eyes were slightly narrowed in the way Din knew he was ready to throw hands. The reason the stranger wasn’t thrown across the clearing by mystical space magic was because the man made no move to force his way up.
“Bah?”
Din put a hand on Grogu’s head as he peeked out from his bag, the other falling to rest on his blaster as he made his way closer, confident in that Cabur wasn’t too far behind with the rest of their supplies and would back him up if needed.
The man who turned to him was bald, his head and face terribly scarred. The robes were woven in a bantha wool weave Din recognized as traditional from Tatooine, and the gaderffii on his back pointed to a very close relationship to a Tusken tribe.
Seeing him in the forest clearing where they’d landed on this planet with no spaceport was very unusual.
<Falls-As-Arion greets you> Din risked moving his hands away to sign, testing the man’s authenticity. The scarred ridges of his brows quirked briefly before his hands up as well to sign back.
<He-Who-Crawls greets you> he returned, before verbally saying “I’ve come for my armor.”
“Armor?” That pulls Din up short, his hand falling back to his blaster.
The scarred didn’t even blink at the potential threat, instead gazing at him head on.
“The armor you took from the Marshal,” he said in that slow, steady, gravelly voice, unbothered. “It was not his to give. It was mine, and I want it back.”
“By any means necessary, yeah?” Kyle still stood leaning against the doorway, his eyes still narrow. “Explains the sniper in the trees. You’re never one to leave no stone unturned, Boba.”
The man- Boba?- tipped his head just enough for it to be an acknowledgement.
“It won’t come to that.” And he sounded so sure of the fact. “I have proof, that the armor is mine, off the armor itself. I only need to show you.”
“There’s no need.”
It took all of Din’s training not to start as Cabur’s voice sounded behind him. His steps were slow as they flattened the grass, a shaky breath escaping him as his bucket was pointed towards the scarred man in a stare.
“You’re… you’re Jango’s son.”
The man’s eyes widened slightly, setting his feet so he fully faced Cabur.
“I can see it,” Cabur continued, his voice trembling on something vulnerable as he crept ever closer. “You… you look just like him.”
The stranger’s eyes narrowed, searching Cabur’s hidden face for any scrap of lie or mockery. He would never find it, not when Cabur was always so honest.
“The armor is his, Beroya.”
“Well, whatever weird family reunion is going on here,” Kyle’s voice broke through the strangeness as sharp as a whip’s crack. He was no longer looking at them, but upward towards the blue skies. “You better wrap it up. We got company.”
And just as he spoke, an Imperial battle cruiser dropped in through the atmosphere.
-----
Din had never fought so hard in his life.
The Imperials had tried to get the drop on them on planet, but they managed to leave the surface in one piece. The scarred stranger, Boba Fett, as he introduced himself as he strapped on his armor, ended up joining them on their ship in the confusion, with his ship being left in the hands of who turned out to be Fennec Shand and Kyle, who’d somehow managed to flip his way through the trees and onto the other ship instead.
Not that it mattered, as both got trapped in the tractor-beams and dragged forcibly on ship.
Which was when more ships dropped out of hyperspace and things got weird and their group was jumbled once more.
“Aw fuck naw!” Kyle’s voice sounded from down an adjacent hallway as Dark Troopers swarmed ahead. “I thought we took care of this shit years ago!”
“Focus on the task at hand, Katarn,” Boba warned from the same corridor, followed by a heavy thunk of the gaderffii and the sharp snap-hiss of something plasmic.
Din ignored it in favor of stabbing one of the Dark Troopers through the chest with his spear, aiming for the delicate wiring near the neck of another. He barely managed to duck a third before it went careening into the wall by an invisible force, Grogu’s little claws extended out before him from his bag.
“Good job kid,” he told him before diving around the corner.
All around him more shouting could be heard reverberating down the corridors:
“New Republic Navy! Put your hands up!”
“Exterminate the intruders!”
“Get the Child!”
“Where’s the Moff?! Where is he?!”
Din grasped his spear and dove deeper into the heart of the ship.
-----
“Well, I suppose congratulations are in order.”
Din blinked, lifting his head up to peer at the serene Jedi standing beside his slumped form. He didn’t even look winded, his hands tucked carefully in the sleeves of his tunic and watching the Republic soldiers extract the data from the ship’s computers.
If Din hadn’t seen the path of destruction in the Jedi’s wake, he would’ve though the man hadn’t done anything at all.
His aching muscles and ribs made him only a touch bit jealous.
“Congratulations?” he asked numbly.
“I hear winning the Darksaber makes you… king?” He tilted his head, gazing down at the strange lasersword he was trying half-hearted to keep Grogu from chewing on.
Din let his gaze turn to gaze across the room. He didn’t know when Bo-Katan and her ilk arrived in the confusion, but she was here now, face as flushed as her hair and whispering in hissing tones at Cabur. The Elder was flanked by both Boba and Kyle, who were both ruffled and a little singed but nothing worse to wear, and Fennec lurking just several paces away keeping an eye on them as well as the Republic officials nearby.
“Is that what they say?” he jerked his chin towards Bo-Katan.
“Your friend there is arguing with her for the otherwise,” he hummed, cocking his head as if listening. Perhaps he was, with his strange magic. “She’s telling him she doesn’t listen to dead men or idiots who pretend to be someone who’s dead. Oh dear.”
Din watched on as Cabur took his helmet off. He could only see the back of his head from this angle, catching glimpse of dark hair with a small smattering of salt in the strands and tanned skin. Whatever he looked like, it made Bo-Katan physically reel back in shock and Boba freeze as if he’d been trapped in carbonite.
“Do you know what a… bah booer is?” the Jedi beside him inquired politely, watching the scene unfold across the deck with the enraptured expression of one watching a rather thrilling soap opera.
“Grandparent,” Din mumbled, his chin drooping to his chest as Grogu crooned and reached up to heal him, only for him to gently push his hand away with a tired sigh.
His head hurt too much to care about the drama going on right now.