Chapter Text
Fortress Inquisitorius is a rather grand waste of resources.
Granted, it is grand in other ways, too. Stepping into the heavily secured, heavily fortified walls undoubtedly puts something to rest in his chest. Glancing out the transparisteel windows to see nothing but underwater depths — nothing but an ocean, impenetrable and vast. It's humbling, in a sense, to be faced with such an unmoving force of nature.
The Fortress, in its own right, is another force of nature.
But when Moff Gideon looks at the fortress, he thinks mostly of how much it must’ve cost to build — how much of the Empire’s precious resources, depleted as it is after its fall, having spent in erecting and maintaining such impenetrable security measures. How those resources could’ve been used for other, more useful, more important things.
After all, it doesn’t take that much to break a Force-sensitive. Gideon knows by experience.
He and his little entourage are met at the entrance of the Fortress by a waddling, silver-plated protocol droid. He listens idly to its formal droning and customary greetings — to ‘how graceful of you to spare us some of your time, we are ever so grateful, truly-’.
His mind moves to other, much more interesting things whilst his gaze drifts away to stare out the window. He meets the eye of a rather curious fish and watches it swim away into the unfathomable deep.
And then his mind moves to the Asset, who he stands behind him. Gideon can feel the utter strength of his gaze, boring into his back —not quite a glare, and instead more the stare of someone who knows nothing else is worth his undivided attention.
“I had a meeting scheduled,” Gideon drawls, putting a final stop to the droid’s unending babble. He cocks his brow and says, pointedly, “I’d rather not be late.”
Stiffly, with none of the grace or power of his Dark Troopers, the protocol droid bows. It immediately turns to lead them through the halls, step by waddling step.
How much of the Empire’s resources were wasted on this? — Gideon wonders. If it trips, he was going to shoot it. Such a hazardous, unnecessary, scrambling little thing wouldn’t even be present on his cruiser.
But this isn't his cruiser. And he is here, technically speaking, as a guest — thus he relents to be guided through the underwater tunnels, with nothing but a slight sneer. He entertains himself by watching the ocean, regarding the clueless marine life and the idly swaying vegetation on the other side, heedless of their march.
It is mesmerizing, he’ll give it that. If nothing else, a serene view.
...Perhaps he should invest.
Soft, blue-tinged light beams through the transparisteel, broken only by their moving shadows. Eventually, they step away from the windows and further into the fortress depths. Stormtroopers and purge troopers alike stand at attention as they walk, postures stiff and speaking utterly of their respect for him.
Gideon offers them nothing in return. He wonders instead when they’ll get there.
The droid walks them at an excruciatingly slow pace, occasionally piping up to explain or gesture at a particular aspect of architecture, or the inner workings of a machine. Eventually, Gideon has just about had it, the harsh words of a berate at the tip of his tongue, before he realises that the droid is glancing behind him, every time it speaks — explaining not to him, but to someone else.
He knows exactly who, following behind him and surrounded by stormtroopers of his own, would be listening with such rapt, unfaltering curiosity.
After a short moment of consideration, he decides to allow it. Asset would do good to learn. Gideon tires of having him just sit there, limp and lifeless, perking up only when he’s spoken to.
Sure, even if the child was truly comatose, he’d still be worth the resources to keep alive —the success of his Dark Troopers as an example.
But the Asset is not comatose. And Gideon is determined, if he is to keep the child, to have him live to his full potential. He is determined to do anything to accomplish that.
Thus, this damned visit to Fortress Inquisitorius —where it’s boasted, with not an ounce of shame, Force-sensitives and Jedi come to break apart. Other than an interesting view and an impressive amount of enforced doors, he sees not of what makes them shatter.
Until they arrive, finally, at what must be the Central Interrogation chamber, and Gideon thinks, simply —Oh.
“Esteemed Moff!” He hears. A human dressed in a crisp Officer’s uniform strides towards them, arms spread in a welcoming gesture. They are grinning, a gesture that doesn’t reach their eyes, as they say, “Welcome to Fortress Inquisitorius! I hope your travel here went smoothly.”
Gideon tilts his head, brow cocking. “You are…?”
“Ah- I am the acting Warden of the Fortress, sir.” They bow, bending forward at the waist and sweeping one arm to their chest. “Forgive us for the delay, but the security of the Fortress is paramount, you see.”
Security?
“You mean all those ridiculous authorization protocols?” It’s unbecoming of him to snort, but Gideon nearly does it anyway. He mutters, “Such a waste.”
“Sir?”
“Such a waste,” he says again, louder. Gideon gestures dismissively at the Fortress as a whole, at the interrogation chamber and at that particular ‘equipment’, for lack of a better term, at the centre.
He eyes the straps and the prongs and imagines the Asset there —all he does is scoff. “It’s unnecessary.”
The Warden blinks at him, baffled and visibly taken aback. “Sir,” they say, slowly as if they were carefully picking each word before it slips past their teeth, “you- Please, understand, Force-sensitives are a very volatile group of individuals-”
“And yet here I stand before you,” Gideon gestures at himself, and then behind him, “alive and successful. I didn’t need any of this.”
The Warden hesitates, eyes still on his face, before they finally follow his motion. Their eyes go wide.
And for the first time since they've arrived, Gideon allows himself, too, a look back at the Asset.
He, who stiffens up as soon as he sees Gideon’s gaze on him, shoulders drawing up and spine going rigid. His ears twitch, their tips pricking upwards in attention. By his front, Asset twists and pulls at his fingers, before forcing himself to still.
He’s not wearing cuffs. He hasn’t needed to, in a while.
It’s surely this part of him that causes the Warden to breathe in, sharply. The smattering of stormtroopers surrounding the Asset doesn’t assure them of anything — they know, as much as Gideon knows, that if Asset were to go rogue, it’d be all too easy to break through such pitiful ‘defences’.
Gideon knows, however, that Asset is much too far gone to even consider such a thing. The stormtroopers are a courtesy. He honestly much prefers it when it’s just the two of them in a room.
It works better that way.
“I- You-” The Warden takes a step back. They glance back at him, eyes wide and fearful. It’s hilarious, almost — Asset is small, and this much larger human is stepping away as if he were a beast from hell. “Sir, I- Sir-”
Tiredly, Gideon sighs. Their fear, it seems, is a hard-engrained piece of their psyche—it’ll take more than words to stave it off. Suppose he will have to show them.
“Asset,” he pauses, “kneel.”
He hears the tell-tale thud of Asset’s knees on the floor —familiar, enough. A mixture of a bit of pride and satisfaction makes its home in his veins. Had they been anywhere else, Gideon might’ve rewarded the behaviour with a smile.
The Warden goes still, blinking rapidly at the sight of utter submission. They stare at him—jaw gaped and lips parting, not unlike one of the fishes from earlier. “‘Asset’?”
“Asset,” Gideon confirms. Glancing back at the subject of their conversation reveals that Asset has yet to look away from him —watching, waiting, for any quiet command that Gideon may give him. Like a hound at the behest of his master.
Gideon cannot help but smile, then. A soft, fond twitch of the lips.
Asset’s eyes go wide. Gideon can see him swallow and, ever so slightly, lean forward. Drawn to him as if he were a star, helpless under the force of gravity Gideon exudes.
Yet another force of nature.
“You must wonder,” Gideon says, for the Warden is much too busy gaping to continue the conversation, “why I’m here, then. You expected a Force-sensitive to break, but I’ve already dealt with the matter. Why did I bother making the journey here?”
The Warden blinks. Slowly, they drag their gaze back to him, and Gideon sees that same question rippling in their eyes.
He returns their gaze evenly, for a while. Then, he glances back towards the Asset.
“I don’t need you to break him,” Gideon says. “I need you to train him.”
“Slaat’takur, slow your descent. You’re coming in too fast.”
Gritting his teeth, Din ignores the warning spoken through a crackling comm. He speeds past and through the atmosphere, feeling the way the pressure shakes the hull of his ship enough to rattle —feels that vibration through the soles of his feet, and into his bones.
“Slaat’takur-”
“Get me Kryze,” he bites out. Din’s grip on the controls tightens. “Now.”
For a moment, there’s only silence.
Then, a muffled curse. “Fine,” the Mandalorian on the other end grits out. “Try not to crash into us, shabuir (asshole).”
Wordlessly, all Din does is grunt. Sheets of rain crash against the windows of the cockpit.
Kalevala, home planet of House Kryze — a planet that never seemed to tire of rain, is howling it out now. Thunder rumbles, roaring some wretched wrath, and amidst the unending sea of clouds, flashes of lightning spark a harrowing warning.
In a brief moment of weakness, Din thinks that if the lightning strikes him down, he’d thank it. That if the galaxy sought to give him that final reprieve, he would adore it.
Then he breaks through the clouds, and Castle Kryze comes into view —Din’s weakness fades, leaves him nothing but some quiet shame.
No lightning comes to strike him out of the sky. Nothing comes, save for Kryze herself — a figure Din can see, standing in the storm, heedless of its torrential wrath, and already waiting for him by the landing pad.
When Din lands, and climbs out of the ship, she gives him a single brow-raised look and says, “Nothing?”
“Something,” Din returns, thinly. Without much thought, one of his hands ghosts over his side —over the stinging, throbbing pain there. “Met your rival.”
Kryze’s eyes darken. “With how often you come across him,” she huffs, “he might as well be your rival.”
Without another word, she grabs Din’s arm on his uninjured side and slings it over her shoulder. They walk in silence, for a while — with Kryze supporting a good amount of his weight, Din finally allows himself to breathe a puff of relieved air.
“Did you…?”
“Does it look,” Din retorts, “like I won that battle?”
Kryze grunts. Din sees the way her eyes skitter away, staring at the ground. “It’s embarrassing,” she seethes. “How one Imperial dog keeps getting the better of us.”
“He’s Force-sensitive,” Din reminds her, quietly now—always quietly, when they brush past particular subject matters of this variety. “They’ve always been our match.”
They step into the Castle depths. The door shuts behind them —the rain turns muffled.
“Of your Child?”
Din doesn’t deny the possessive ‘your’. “Nothing.”
Kryze spares him only a second to grieve — a second to mourn, over the absence of a little one by his side. Over the absence of wide owlish eyes, of curiously twitching ears, of the sound of delighted and delightful laughter.
For a second, and only a second, Din mourns the absence of his-
Son.
The realisation had hit him too late. Grogu was —is— his son. Din wants nothing more than to see him again, just to be able to say it to his face.
Thirty standard years. Din wonders, is Grogu still so little?
(Is Grogu even alive, still?)
Kryze spares him only a second. Then, she is tugging him through the castle halls and is asking him, “Of the Moff?”
Din huffs a sigh. He gestures, at his utility belt, with a wave of his other arm. “Datastick. Didn’t get a good look yet, before-”
“Before you were attacked.”
Ambushed would be a better word for it. “It’s like they knew we were coming.”
Kryze is quiet, for a while. “...Force-sensitive.”
Din grimaces. “Dank Farrik-”
“We need to get rid of him.”
“He’s your rival.” Din jerks his head up, just enough to stare at her through the periphery of his visor. “Every time I face him, it’s hard to win without actually winning.”
Kryze’s grip on his arm tightens into a single squeeze —Din knows she is thanking him, in a way she would never say aloud. “We’ll face them,” she swears, “and I’ll challenge him for the Darksaber.”
“Demagolkae (monsters) do not have a sense of honour.”
“We won’t give them a choice.” There is a certain darkness, to the way Kryze smirks. Din isn’t fazed. “I've devised a plan. We’ll set a trap, lure them in-”
“With what?”
“With you, Din.”
Din stumbles to a stop, and Kryze halts with him. He thinks, surely, he must’ve lost so much blood that he’s just gone mad —delusional and feverish. “What?”
Kryze gives him a second, before she is tugging him along again. “It’s like he’s fixated on you,” she says, in the tone of some quiet wonder. “I’ve noticed. On every mission you’ve been on, Asset always makes an appearance.”
Din gapes at her. When his brain finally reaches the end of its churning, his jaw shuts with a quiet click. “I’m bait.”
"You’re bait.” Kryze glances at him, through the corner of her eye. “...What?”
Din huffs. “It’s embarrassing-”
“It’s necessary. When I win the Darksaber, we’ll be one step closer to our goal.” Her tone and words are as firm as her grip on his arm. Not harsh, no — just not gentle either.
“Our goal,” Din echoes, nearly listlessly. “That is?”
“Gideon.”
Just like that, the name is some sort of spark. Din pulls his legs underneath him and steps with a bit more intent. A renewed sense of purpose —not fresh or rejuvenated, but rather well-worn and familiar. It is a mental fortitude, to pair with the physical beskar on his body.
Gideon means Grogu.
“When are we leaving?”
Din Djarin’s first impression of Asset is that he’s a cocky, cheeky little bastard.
A good five-or-so standard years ago, Din had been chasing a lead on Gideon’s location, storming through yet another Imperial base. The plan was as it had always been —find Gideon, find the kid.
And then, came Asset.
“Breaking and entering?” he sneered from across the room. The console that Din had been using to pry into Imperial databases was reduced to nothing but a hunk of sparking, useless junk. Asset glanced behind himself, at it, and added, “Not very noble, for a Mandalorian.”
Din wordlessly unsheathed his spear from his back. Asset is small, barely even waist height, but Din still smarted from where he’d been bodily kicked away from the console — he knows there is strength, hidden in such an unassuming build.
“...nothing?” Asset huffed at his silence —an ugly, distorted sound with how intensely his voice is modulated. He paced in front of the broken console, hands folded neatly behind his back. “Jeez. Father said you’d be boring, but I thought, you’re a Mandalorian! You've surely got to have something.”
Oh, Din thought. This one likes to talk. Okay, no problem, he can work on getting himself out of here while-
“You can’t go back the way you came, by the way,” Asset cut in, driving Din’s thoughts to a screeching halt. He tilted his head, red-tinted visor glinting in the light, and his shoulders shook gently with his laugh. “You think so loudly, Mandalorian. I can hear you through the beskar.”
Din stiffened. “How-”
“How? Eh-” Asset shrugged. “The real question is, are you really going to run?”
It’s a challenge, if you could call it that. An immature, cheeky taunt. Din gritted his teeth —he had better things to do than to entertain someone so childish, and certainly the pride to not stoop so low as to accept.
But then Asset unclipped something from his belt, and brandished it out towards him like he wanted Din to see —gloved fingers clutched tightly around what looked like a hilt of a sword.
Asset lit it.
The Darksaber thrummed into the air, humming some sick melody, and casted light upon them both.
Sharply, Din breathed in —eyes glued to the blade. A frigid, almost burning too-cold, sense of horror rested on his shoulders. Surely, he thought, his skin will be flaking and peeling in a matter of seconds, tinging blue with frostbite.
He could hear the self-satisfied laugh tinging every single one of Asset’s words. “How about now?”
“He said ‘Father’?” Kryze will ask him, later. She was stiff and tense throughout the whole of Din’s report. He will learn later that it took the combined efforts of multiple baar’ure (medics) to keep her from storming in and practically yanking him out of the bacta tank before he was ready. “Who’s his father?”
Stiffly, still grimacing in pain, Din shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“It might. You said he was Force-sensitive?”
“Yeah.” Asset was very Force-sensitive, as Din was reminded of constantly throughout their battle. “Is he a Jedi?”
“No. The Jedi don’t work with the Empire. We call those Siths. Darjetii.”
Din mouthed the word to himself a couple of times. “...dark Jedi?”
“He wielded a lightsaber, didn’t he? He wielded the-” Kryze took a seat, then — flopping down onto a chair as if, suddenly, she lost the strength to hold her own weight. Din could see her wide eyes and furrowed brow, as she leaned in to bow her head into the palm of her hands.
“Dank Farrik," she whispered, nothing short of horrified, "he wielded The Darksaber.”
Din tilted his head up. He stared at the ceiling and blinked. “Does that make him Mand’alor?”
“He’s an aruetii (outsider), Djarin.”
“We’ve had one of those before.”
Kryze scoffed humorlessly, rubbing at the bridge of her nose. “As much as I’m glad Woves’ history lessons are rubbing off on you, no. He can’t be Mand’alor. He can’t, because I’m-”
Din glanced back towards her.
Kryze had her eyes squeezed shut. She looked like she was nursing a headache. “He’s as much of a Mand’alor as Gideon was,” is what she said, at last, instead. “Which is to say, not at all.”
Din frowned. He shifted up, straightening his spine. “You told me Gideon had the Darksaber.”
“I did.”
“That wasn’t Gideon.”
“...no,” Kryze mused, “it wasn’t. Asset must be- associated with him, somehow. Close enough for Gideon to trust him with the Darksaber.”
They must’ve reached the same conclusion at the same exact time.
“Gideon’s his-”
“Yeah. Osik (shit)-” Kryze stood. She began to pace, fingers curling and uncurling into tightly clenched fists. She muttered, “Talk about a twisted family.”
Din couldn’t help but agree.
Asset, Din will discover throughout their many encounters, is something called an Inquisitor. A Force-sensitive tasked mainly with hunting down other Force-sensitives.
And if it was possible, Din liked him a whole lot less after finding out what a threat Asset could pose to Grogu. If possible, Din hates Asset nearly as much as he loathes Gideon —sometimes, he even thinks he hates Asset more.
Gideon, at least, treated him with some twisted semblance of respect.
Asset spares him none of that.
All throughout their battles, it’s like it’s impossible for the Inquisitor to shut up, even for a second — as if he’ll die if he stops talking. Din isn’t fond of admitting the way the Inquisitor can easily get underneath his skin.
But in all honesty, perhaps it had been his fault.
Once, when Asset was pressing the Darksaber against the beskar of Din’s spear and both their visors were mere hair-breadths away, the Inquisitor breathlessly asked, “Who’s Grogu?”
It got Din to freeze. Asset took the opportunity to slice downwards. With a yelp and groan of pain, Din staggered away —quickly on the defensive. His leg throbbed.
Asset didn’t advance immediately, although it would have been all too easy to put an end to it all right then and there. Instead, what Asset did was merely tilt his head.
“You think about him a lot,” he said. “Who’s he? Important to you?”
Quietly, wordlessly, Din snarls.
“Oh? Oh! Ooh, I struck a nerve did I?” Asset hopped on his feet —a delighted little dance. He cackled. “Finally! Will you tell me about him? I wanna know!”
When Din still didn’t grace such sentiment with an answer, too busy hissing in his agony, Asset comically deflated.
“Oh, well,” he sighed, his words tinged at the end with the whine of a disappointed child. “Maybe I’ll have to pay him a visit myself.”
The roar Din let out then was nothing short of monstrous.
The trap they’re setting up is exactly that. For some reason, when Din hears of the plan, he hears Asset’s voice in his head —sneering something of how resorting to trickery is unbecoming of a Mandalorian-
“You are thinking loudly.”
Din has to firmly catch himself from jolting. He’s not sure how successful he was. He glances through the corner of his eye, to the Mandalorian who’d sidled up to him, and huffs a bitter sigh. “You’re not the first person to say that to me.”
“Ah,” Boba says, and it’s as much verbal sympathy as Din will ever get from him. “Thinking about the little Inquisitor?”
“Kryze’s plan better work.”
“He infuriates you.”
“He’s infuriating.”
Boba hums. His visor is angled out the window —to the planet that Din had been staring at, where they’ve chosen to lay their trap. It’s an unremarkable thing, on the outside, but apparently secretly houses another Imperial Remnant base.
(And as always, before he goes on these operations, Din wonders if this one will finally be the one in which he’ll find his son.)
(Thirty standard years of hoping. It’s a notion grown rather jaded.)
“He stands in the way of acquiring the Child,” Boba says. He crosses his arms over his cuirass. “He has to go.”
Din gnaws on the inside of his cheek. “You don’t-”
Boba cuts him off with something that’s both a sigh and a groan at once. “Are you seriously going to ask me every time?”
“I released you from your debt.”
“Yeah, and I told you that was bantha shit. Unless you’re going to take this,” Boba knocks a hand against his cuirass, “away from me, I’m staying until you find the Child. That was our deal.”
Din looks away. “That was thirty standard years ago.”
“You think the kid’s out there still?”
Din doesn’t answer. He can’t.
From the edges of their vision, he sees a single ship speeding towards the planet. Din knows Kryze and her warriors will be on that shuttle —he knows he is meant to go down to that planet himself in five standard minutes.
“Until you can say ‘no’,” Boba says, “I’m staying.”
Din sighs, and only turns away to get ready.
Right before they left Kalevala, Din had approached Kryze with a request.
“Force-suppressing cuffs?” She’d gaped at him, as the pieces no doubt clicked. “Hang on- You’re not-”
“He’s close with Gideon. He knows about Grogu.” Din splayed the palms of his hands open. He doesn’t often beg —doesn’t really beg— but if she’ll ask this of him, he will. He'll drop to his knees right here in this hallway.
Asset is a lead, and Din is more than desperate. Din had past the point of desperation twenty-odd years ago.
“Disarm him. Beat him in battle- I don’t care if you want to kill him after, but-”
“Kriff-” Kryze stepped away from him. She paced a couple of steps, footsteps echoing through the large, deserted hallway. The rain on the other side of the windows pattered slowly, almost as if the planet itself loathed to intrude.
“Kark,” Kryze cursed, again—her features collapsing into themselves. “You can’t-”
“Please.”
“How am I supposed to-”
“Please, Bo-Katan.” Din shifted on his feet. After hesitating for only a second, he bowed his head to her — he will bare himself open, if it means finding the Child again. He will sacrifice every piece of himself to the wolves.
He’ll, even, swear allegiance to a not-yet Mand’alor.
If that’s what it takes.
If that’s what it takes, anything.
Kryze stared at him in silence, for a while. Then, she heaved a sigh.
The trap almost immediately breaks.
Boba splits away from him to clear the others’ way, for when Asset arrives. Din, in the meantime, does as he always does whenever they storm an Imperial base — find the Child.
He scrounges through every nook and corner of every cell, rakes through and downloads every datalog he can get his hands onto, and interrogates every enemy he defeats. He doesn’t always kill them.
Usually, they do that themselves.
Din finds himself in the main control room, bent over a console, when he hears;
“Found anything interesting yet?”
Din bites on his tongue; grits his teeth, and hisses out a sigh. He quickly downloads the log he’d been poring over, all the while slowly unpeeling himself from the console. His hand goes to his spear immediately, and he unsheathes it whilst he turns around.
Asset is leaning idly against a shut door —a presence that Din’s sure wasn’t there, when he’d entered the room. For all his inability to bite his own tongue, Asset sure knows how to sneak up on someone not easily snuck up on.
Asset tilts his head, regarding him there. “For all the mess you’ve been making,” he says, in a tone quietly teasing, “I sure hope you did.”
Usually, at this point into their encounters, Din would be fighting for a way to escape with his life. But he’s meant to stall until Kryze arrives, so this time, instead, he asks, “What do you want with me?”
“Me?” Asset snorts. “You’re the one in the Imperial base. Stealing, too. Don't you know that's bad?”
“You’re never there for the other Mandalorians.” Din widens his stance, tightening his grip on his spear. “What makes me so special?”
For a moment, Din thinks he must’ve genuinely caught the Inquisitor off-guard. Asset says nothing —at loss, for once, of a witty remark or a scathing sneer.
Then, Asset huffs, clicking his tongue as if he's somehow annoyed at something. In the next second Din recognises the Darksaber's hilt — quick, as if it simply materialised into Asset's gloved hands.
"Your duchess won't get here in time before I kill you," Asset tells him. "Oh, yeah. Did I mention? You're horrible at keeping secrets."
Din doesn't have to wonder about it for too long.
'Din!' Kryze hisses in his ear. 'He's cut us off- It's an ambush!'
"'Ambush'," Asset quotes, two of his three fingers bending down in a gesture — somehow, although Din cannot question it right now, able to hear Kryze's words exactly. "Pshaw. I think- Hm, I think ‘attack’ is really just a better word for it, no?"
Asset drops his hand enough so that, when he lights it, the Darksaber's blade burns into the floor. The concrete turns hot white —an ugly, glaringly dark streak follows when the Inquisitor begins to circle him.
Din moves as the Asset moves. They circle each other —two predators in their own rights.
“You thought you could trap me here?” Asset asks, softly.
Din doesn’t answer a question he knows Asset has the answer to.
“Hah-” Asset stops walking. He ducks his head, chuckling to himself. “Okay, fair. Was just testing you. I didn’t think you’d pass.”
Silently, Din offers up an apology to Kryze. He’s not going to make it out of here alive without the Darksaber.
And despite his growing moments of weakness, Din Djarin does not want to die.
Asset slips into a stance, lifting the Darksaber over his shoulder. “Father always said you were a fool,” he tells him.
Then, he strikes.
Asset is quick —this, Din knows. In a second, the Inquisitor crosses the distance and is upon him. Din lifts his spear up just in time to block a blow that would’ve struck clean through his visor. The beskar reverberates deafeningly.
Din shoves forward. Asset steps back, twisting the hilt to fight against Din’s advance. The Inquisitor stands his ground —Din can hear him growling, a modulated rumble, like thunder or static.
Quickly, Din spins his spear and stabs the tip forward. Asset slips to the side—Din’s spear catches the very edge of his sleeve, and the beskar tears a hole straight through.
As soon as the tip collides with the floor, Asset flings out a hand in his direction.
Din’s back informs him, loudly, when it collides against the back wall. For a second his head rings in tune with the beskar. He grunts, forcing himself up to his feet, bracing on both the wall and spear.
Asset stares at the hole in his sleeve. “Uh oh,” Din thinks he says, softly. “Father's gonna be mad.”
Din snarls. He leaps across the distance, back into the fray. Every blow of his is met evenly with Asset’s Darksaber —sparks fly into the air like stars from their battle. For every successful blow Din manages — a fist against a shoulder or a speartip slashing across a thigh — Asset never falters, and merely returns it with equally devastating blows of his own.
He can feel himself wearing out. As every pant of his grows heavier, more laboured, Asset’s jeers pick up in intensity.
Until finally, the Inquisitor spits, “Father told me about Grogu, you know. Seeing as you wouldn’t.”
Din stiffens. He shoves hard against his spear and the Darksaber, pushing Asset a couple of steps back —widening the distance, between them, just so that he’ll have time to breathe-
Quickly, Asset flips backwards to recover, landing on his feet. “I figured out why he’s such a touchy subject,” he huffs. “I thought Mandalorians adored kids. You call them Foundlings, don't you-?”
“Shut,” Din growls, “up.”
“But you?” Asset lifts the Darksaber, pointing the tip of it in his direction. In a rumbling growl he accuses, devastatingly, “You’re not fit to call yourself a Mandalorian. Not when you killed him.”
Something in him, some quiet fortitude, breaks.
“SHUT UP!” Din roars. He closes the distance and slams his spear down —gracelessly, ruthlessly. Asset is scrabbling to get away, bringing the Darksaber up in a manner obviously defensive, caught off-guard by the very strength of his grief-fueled anger.
Din is barely aware of the way he’s snarling, reaching for Asset with both spear and his very bare hands. When he gets his hands on the damn Inquisitor, Din was going to strangle the very life out of him.
He was going to make it slow.
He strikes his spear against consoles and floors and some chairs that Asset throws in his direction, the adrenaline rejuvenating — the tides, just barely, but just about enough, finally turning in his favor.
Asset steps away from him. His visor shifts, just barely, just enough to let Din know that the Inquisitor is glancing backwards.
Din sees his opportunity —he takes it.
With a vicious swipe of his spear, he knocks the Darksaber out of Asset’s hands. It clatters to the ground a few distances away from them, blade retreating into its hilt.
“No-!” Asset stares after it, then snaps his head upwards —just in time to see the way Din is lifting his spear over his head, teeth bared in an unseen snarl-
Asset shoves both his hands outwards.
Din immediately knows what’s coming. He buries the tip of his spear into the concrete, just in time to feel that unstoppable Force slam into him. It renders him utterly breathless, and does push him back a couple of paces. His spear leaves behind a deep, awful gorge in the floor.
Asset reaches a hand out in the direction of the Darksaber. Din sees the hilt waggle.
He abandons his spear, and moves as the hilt moves—as it’s shooting back towards Asset’s outstretched palm-
Din catches the Darksaber out of the air. He lights it and swipes up in a single, smooth arc.
Asset falls onto his back. His helmet makes a heavy clunk, as it collides with the floor.
For a moment, all is quiet. For a moment, Din cannot think around how heavily he is panting. For a moment, the blood roaring in his ears, Din feels alight.
Then he realises that Asset is still twitching —that he is panting, as well, and that the sound of it echoes Din’s own breaths.
Din stares at him, for a while. His fury is a difficult thing to wrangle down back into submission. Din isn't sure he won't do anything...rash, if he approaches before he's ready.
The sound of a door sliding open snaps his attention elsewhere. Din looks up just in time to see Kryze barreling into the control room, her blaster raised and her shield activated — a minute, simply, too late.
Din knows the exact second she sees him standing there, Darksaber in hand. For a moment, Din feels…sorrow. He takes a step towards her, an apology at the tip of his tongue-
But just then, hears Asset softly groan. His attention immediately snaps back to the matter at hand. For as everything ends in a screeching halt, what remains constant through thirty years, is that Grogu is his only priority.
And Asset, irritating as he is, is still a lead.
“Kryze,” Din croaks out —his voice an aftermath of his roar, earlier. “The cuffs.”
For a moment, Kryze doesn’t move. For a moment, Din fears the worst.
Then she fishes a pair of Force-suppressing cuffs from her belt and throws it to him across the distance.
Din catches it, deactivates the Darksaber, and kneels by the Inquisitor. He is sure to keep the blade well out of Asset’s reach, but no move is made towards it —an enemy, finally, well and truly defeated.
Din feels nothing —no sense of satisfaction, no relief— as he clamps those cuffs around Asset’s wrists. He feels but bone-karking-tired.
Asset jerks bodily away from him. “What are you doing?” he asks, and his voice is small, as he draws his now cuffed-hands to his chest. “What’re- No, no please, I- I can’t see-”
Din pauses. He glances towards Asset’s helmet and sees a broken, gaping maw of sparking machinery. The blow had struck a swipe straight through the red-tinted visor, and the edges of that swipe curls material burning in vivid orange heat and sparking embers.
The Inquisitor is panting, and the pained tinged edges to every breath do not escape Din’s notice.
…it’s cruel, to leave him like this. Needlessly cruel. Din’s already won.
Asset’s helmet has relatively large protrusions coming out from its sides. Din slips his hands under them, then slips his fingers under the lip of the helm.
Asset yelps, desperately trying to wrench his head out of Din’s grasp despite the jerks of pain his body involuntarily makes at such acts. Even when Din's trying to help him, he can't help but make it harder, it seems.
Hissing softly, Din braces an arm across Asset’s shoulders to hold him still, and then pulls the helmet off of his head.
He drops it, immediately after.
Din isn’t quite sure of what he’s seeing. He doesn’t quite believe that it’s-
But he knows that face. He knows those ears, pinned flat against Asset’s head. He knows those eyes, scrunched up tight in his fear. He knows that brow, furrowed and- and bleeding, from their fight.
Their fight.
Din breathes, as if it’ll damn him, such quiet way;
“Grogu?”
Grogu doesn’t respond to him —doesn’t react to that name. It’s only when Din shifts, leaning closer —still in some deathly disbelief that this is his son his boy his baby boy — does he snap his eyes open to stare at him.
There is an unending ocean of fear, in those eyes.
(Fear of him.)
“Hey- Hey-” Grogu croaks. His gaze flicks rapidly from one object to another — from Din’s visor, to the Darksaber, to Kyrze, to the cuffs, to his helmet. His lip twists in a grimace, then upwards in a shaky, crooked, nervous smile.
His voice, finally unmodulated, feels raw to hear. Real, and shaky, and rasping. Genuine.
“We can- We can talk about this, right?" Grogu swallows, quickly continuing in a rush, "F-father says you’re all savages but I never believed-”
Din cups his son’s cheek in the palm of his hand. “Grogu,” he breathes, and oh, what a wonder it was to be alive in this very moment. Din can feel the very galaxy stitching itself back together —can feel a piece of him becoming whole.
Din laughs, breathlessly, “You’re alive. Oh, Grogu, you're alive!"
Grogu goes still. He blinks. “...you’re talking to me.”
Din traces his thumb along the line of Grogu’s cheek. “Yeah, I- Kid, I-”
“I’m-” Grogu’s brows furrow. He looks, genuinely, confused. Even a little bit concerned. “I’m not- My name’s not- Grogu is-”
It all comes crashing down, then. Din realises three things at the exact same time.
One; exactly where the kid must’ve been, these past three standard decades.
Two; Din realises all of the times they’d come across each other — Grogu had been right there-
And, three, most devastatingly; Din realises who Grogu calls ‘Father’.
His throat constricts — a pain so visceral he feels it physically. “Oh, Grogu,” he breathes, in some horrified whisper stemming from the distraught in his chest, “what did he do to you?”
Grogu’s features go slack. Rapidly, he blinks. His gaze stops darting around —Grogu stares straight at him, straight through his visor, meeting his eyes.
His ears twitch. “...you’re telling the truth,” Grogu breathes out.
It’s not a question.
Din swallows. He shifts on his knees, and lifts his other hand to cup the kid’s face in the palms of his — and the rest of the galaxy can go to hell, for Din has everything he needs, right here. Right now.
“I wouldn’t lie to you,” Din croaks. “If- Oh, if I’d known it was you I wouldn’t have-”
Din thinks of every harsh word, every equally harsh blow, every bit of scorn he’d directed at the Inquisitor — Asset — Grogu. He grimaces, bowing his head, the crown of his buy'ce lowering. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, kid, I’m sorry-”
He can’t stand it anymore- Din cannot stand it any longer. He pulls the kid against his chest, burying his visor into the crook of Grogu’s shoulder, and feels it so right that he has to squeeze his eyes shut and clamp his jaw closed, lest he start bawling. Before he starts howling like some wounded animal finally finding reprieve.
He feels what must be the kid’s cuffed hands squashed between them —feels the way the kid’s fingers twitch, before he slowly braces his palms flat against Din’s stomach. Grogu doesn’t push away.
He just stays there, silent and still.
It’s impossible to describe it. Din feels as if, all these years, he’d been nothing but a corpse —trudging, bumbling around, lifeless and listless. Only now, with the feel of the little one —the feel of his little one—breathing and alive and here, the rise and fall of Grogu’s chest a physical reminder of his presence-
“It’s alright,” Din rasps, and it’s…true. It’s the truth, resounding like a tuning fork in his bones; the melody of his being, finally rightening. “It’s alright, ad’ika. You’re okay.”
Very slight, under it all, he hears what must be Grogu's talons scraping against his cuirass. Not a blow to harm. Instead, almost as if some subconscious part of the kid was looking for something to hold onto.
The Darksaber rests on the holotable's surface. As of right now, its blade deactivated, it's nothing more than a hilt. Almost unassuming. A sword Din almost could, any other time, simply chalk up as having broken.
Though, that would probably be more trouble than it was exactly worth. As most things regarding the Darksaber usually are.
A circle of Mandalorians surround it. Din, Bo-Katan, and Boba Fett are among them, along with Woves and Koska, and a couple of Al’verde (commanders) from Kryze’s army.
Kryze’s army. Because it was Kryze, to who the sword is meant to belong. Because it's Kryze who’s meant to be storming onto the ship, Darksaber held triumphantly in her hand and the rousing support of the Mandalorians at her back.
Instead, the Darksaber had hung from Din’s belt, a secondary thought.
More importantly, in his arms, Din had carried his son.
Din glances back to him, now. Grogu sits on one of the seats lining the walls. His cuffed hands hang limply, as he’s bracing his elbows on his knees.
The kid’s got the emptiest of emptiest stares, looking at the wall of the ship directly across from him, and undoubtedly seeing none of it. The bit of bacta that Din had forcefully convinced a baar’ur to give him worked, already, to mend the cut on his brow.
He looks so small, sitting there. His Inquisitor’s uniform much too ill-fitting. Without the helmet, Grogu looks like a child playing dress-up.
One of Grogu’s ears twitches. He glances towards Din and immediately meets his eyes, impossibly, through the visor.
Din realises he probably thought that last bit a bit too loudly. He grimaces, at least somewhat apologetic.
Grogu cocks his brow. He almost looks amused. Mostly, he looks dazed, and a bit condescending.
“First things first,” Kryze says, pulling Din’s attention back to their gathering around the deactivated holotable. She’s bracing the palms of her hands on the surface —she looks like she’s aged a million years, since before the operation. “Let's address the mythosaur in the room."
She draws in a breath and says, akin to ripping open a bandage or cutting off a limb, "I don’t have the Darksaber.”
From the Mandalorians not surrounding the table, the crowd that instead fills in the space, there is a wave of uneasy muttering. Din feels the weight of all their gazes, both visored and not, and can’t help but grimace again.
“You can take it,” he tries to say, desperately. “I don’t want it. I yield.”
Kryze stares at him. “You know that’s not how it works.”
It isn’t, but it was worth a shot. Din doesn’t want to be Mand’alor —all he wanted was the kid. Din doesn't want to be here, standing around this table. He doesn't want to deal with that blasted saber-
He has only ever wanted one thing, these past thirty years.
And that — he — was sitting somewhere behind him, waiting.
Across the table, Din realises Boba is staring at him. He's got a slight quirk to his brow, and after a second, turns to Kryze and says, "We'll have this discussion some other time."
Kryze snaps her gaze towards him. Thinly, she echoes, "'We'?"
"We," Boba repeats, firmly. He leans back, slightly bracing his shoulders in the same motion as he's crossing his arms over his chest. "I'm not too sure about you, but I'm dead tired. I don't think I'd trust myself to make any decisions that'll affect nothin' short of our entire population."
It's a blunt way of putting it. But it's also true. Din is nearly bowled over by his gratitude — instead, all he does, and all he can do, is bow his head in Boba's direction.
Boba returns the gesture. There's the ghost of a smile on his face, something Din only knows through experience, and the worth of all the years they'd spent. He wonders if, now that Grogu's been returned to him, will Boba inevitably...leave?
A twanging in his chest convinces him to file up that line of thinking, shelving it for another time.
Kryze stares contemplatively at the deactivated holotable. She moves her gaze slightly up, and for a while gazes at the Darksaber — so close and yet, so damningly far. Din spies a muscle in her jaw tensing up.
She sighs. "Fine," she straightens up, fitting an expression of regal steel, "some other time."
Din is stepping away from the table before she's even finished her sentence, ready to slip through the crowd and rousing chatter of the gathered Mandalorians.
Before he can get too far, however, Kryze calls him back with a sharp, "Djarin."
Din turns. Kryze leans over the table, picks up the Darksaber, and chucks it at him. "Don't forget," she drawls, as he's forced to catch.
Din thinks he's gritted his teeth hard enough to turn them to a fine powder. He makes himself take the Darksaber in hand and clip it onto his belt; the sound, quiet as it is, somehow ringing deafeningly all around the ship. It feels like a guillotine — some sort of death sentence.
As he turns, again, he finally starts to see the crowd break apart. Din spies Boba standing where he was, although the other Mandalorian makes no move closer. There is a certain kind of patience, with the way he holds himself — as if Boba knows Din will make time for him later, but that it will have to be later. That Din has something much, much more vital on the forefront of his mind.
Once again, Din feels...thankful. More than thankful. His gratitude is not something that can be described — only felt, in the sureness of the blood still thrumming in his veins.
Grogu looks up as Din approaches. His eyes narrow, and his ears twitch-
And then, his lips curl into a sneer. "Trouble in paradise?" Grogu scoffs, lip curled just barely to flash teeth. "Why, don't you like having the Darksaber? Aren't you proud of having won?"
Din freezes in place. That small, almost habitual flash of irritation is unceremoniously dampened by the gravity of it all. Instead, in its wake, Din feels only sorrow.
"Grogu-"
"You're delusional, Mandalorian." Grogu's eyes narrow. "And you've gone mad. I'm not who you think I am."
Din hesitates — falters, for a second. Most of the other Mandalorians had all but left the area, and now Din feels as if it is all much too quiet. His thoughts, in comparison, feel devastatingly deafening.
He moves slowly. Stiffly. Hesitating, even as he takes a seat next to the kid. Grogu eyes him all the way; wary and distrusting.
"...I-" Din begins, "I don't blame you, for forgetting me-"
"Yes," Grogu drawls. "Because you're so forgettable."
Once again, the irritation is fierce. Din forces it back down — he thinks, through the periphery of his visor, he can see Grogu tilt his head just barely, almost as if he was curious.
"It's been a long time since I lost you," Din at last manages to grit out, after a while, with the annoyance mostly out of his voice. "And Gideon-"
Grogu stiffens. "You don't get to talk about him."
Din turns his head to look the kid head-on. "...who is he, to you?"
Grogu stares back. For a while, that's all the kid does.
Then, he lifts his chin up, and sniffs haughtily before he says, "My employer."
It's ridiculous, Din thinks. Din knows. Grogu knows Din knows. Din knows that Grogu knows that Din knows. This is entirely unnecessary.
Grogu turns his head away from Din, resuming his pondering of the wall across. It appears to Din as if the kid is trying to say he was quite done with this conversation.
Din sighs. He turns to look at the wall, too. "Here's what's going to happen," he says, and can only pray Grogu is still listening. "We're going to regroup. We'll make sure you're not hurt anywhere else. Then, maybe, get us both cleaned up and fed-"
"So you can slaughter me in front of a crowd later?" Grogu interjects, his voice bitter and his words thin.
Din stiffens, as if the kid had stabbed him in the ribs. "No," he replies, vehement, though he keeps his visor facing forward. His fingers curl into his palms, into fists. "No, Grogu. I'm not going to kill you. And I'm not gonna hurt you."
He thinks he can see Grogu look at him again. After a second, Din turns his head back around too, just to return the gaze he meets — those furrowed brows and that sneering, sceptical look that, with every passing second, fades into something more profoundly confused.
Baffled, for lack of a better word, is how the kid eventually ends up looking at him with. That, and a simple disbelief.
Grogu hesitates. And then he says, halting and hesitating as if the words sound foreign to him, as if the sentence is nonsensical even as he's speaking, "...you're still not lying."
Din nods, after a second. "I'm not."
Grogu contemplates this. And then, eyes narrowing, he accuses, "Or you're just exceptionally good at it."
Somewhere inwardly, Din groans. This was going to be work. Horrible, awful work. And he's not surprised if at every turn, Grogu was going to make it so impossibly harder than it needed to be.
But it's worth it, he thinks, even as he's watching Grogu resolutely turn his head away. Always, so worth it. Because at the end of it all — the end of the day and at the end of the known galaxy as it was — Grogu is here.
And so, hidden under his helmet, Din cannot help but smile at his son, and say, "Guess you'll just have to find out."