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Din Djarin fights for as long as he can, the poison wreaking havoc throughout his body, and then he collapses into the brush. His strength has left him completely, and he stays where he falls. His beskar'gam will lie in the forests of Nal Hutta, unable to be returned to his people to be reforged. His helmet has been removed, and those who have seen his face still live. But as his consciousness fades, the only thing that matters to him is the desperate hope that Grogu has made it safely off planet with the Anzellans. With that thought, Din Djarin accepts the darkness as it comes. He does not expect to wake again.
And yet, he does.
Opening his eyes and blinking off the confusion of sleep, Din Djarin is pleasantly surprised by what he sees around him. He can hear the familiar sounds of Mandalorians in armor before he is even fully awake—whatever awake means to someone who is no longer alive—and it is a great comfort to him. Despite everything, despite having been forced to break the Creed for a second time, he is still, somehow, Mandalorian enough to march on with the lost members of his covert. It is strange, he can admit to himself, that this afterlife has taken on such a form, but perhaps it has been chosen to reflect something familiar to them?
He can recognize the walls of the catacombs that his covert had once lived in, some time before they had been forced to relocate to Nevarro. The catacombs were ancient and sprawling, and their existence had been all but forgotten even before the Empire had come to the planet to suppress its native population and their history. They had been a near perfect place to hide, for much the same reasons as the sewers on Nevarro had been after them. The catacombs were large enough to house all of the members of the covert along with their supplies and the Armorer's forge. The various offshoots had meant that they could retreat without being easily followed. And there were multiple well-disguised openings that came up near a couple of different settlements, which gave the beroya options. But the covert'd had to leave, eventually. They hadn't been forced out, exactly, but it had been a very close thing, and in the end they had chosen to leave when the danger grew.
Din Djarin's tongue feels heavy in his mouth with mingled joy and grief. He had never been one to talk much, even if he had learned to do so for Grogu's sake. Speaking to his fellow Mandalorians now feels near impossible, and none of them greet him either. Instead, he stays where he is, sitting against a stone wall, and watches them greedily. Many of these Mandalorians had been lost on Nevarro, when the remnants of the Empire hunted them down, but some had been lost earlier than that. And others— his heart clenches at the sight of Paz, who had sacrificed himself to retake Mandalore and who had left a son behind in the process.
And then the Armorer walks into the room, and Din Djarin goes still, every muscle in his body taut. The Armorer isn't dead, or she hadn't been before he had been dragged to the Twins by Embo. Before his capture, he had been reachable at his homestead, at the very least, and Bo-Katan would have contacted him immediately if something had happened to the Armorer. Wouldn't she?
He hadn't paid much attention to himself before now, but a glance down his own body reveals painted durasteel alloy armor with a short, threadbare half-cape, and now that he's paying attention he can feel how it sits differently than the full beskar set he's been wearing for years. Not wrong exactly, but off. Something he has outgrown. From the feel of stubble on his chin, he is not too young, at least. If he was a betting man, he would wager that he was in his mid-twenties, back when his covert truly had lived in these catacombs. Back during the height of the Empire. Years before Grogu had come into his care. He feels sick.
Bracing himself on the wall behind him, Din Djarin staggers to his feet. "Armorer," he calls, aware that he is being rude even as every helmet in the room turns toward him. "I ask to speak with you."
The room is silent as they wait for her reply, and he is hyper aware of his breaths against the inside of his helmet. "Very well," she says finally. "Come with me, then, Din Djarin."
She turns towards a path he knows leads to the forge, and he follows.
There is a rhythm to such things, and he is not eager to disrupt it. He doesn't speak first, once they are alone. He sits down and waits as she pulls out the project she had been last working on. A repair to a back plate, from the looks of it. The Armorer has never been one to stand being idle in her own forge.
With the clangs of her hammer come the memories, but Din Djarin is not haunted by his childhood as he once was. Aq Vetina is a scar that will never heal, but the fears that reverberate through his mind now are not for himself. Grogu, on Nal Hutta, flying away in the Anzellan starship. Grogu, smaller than he had been when Din Djarin first found him, alone. Scared. Hungry. He isn't sure how long Grogu had been on his own before the Imperial bounty had been placed, but he knows how desperately the kid had latched onto a bounty hunter who had placed him into as much danger as he'd protected him from.
One last ring of metal echoes through the air as the Armorer douses the piece and angles her helmet towards him.
"Your thoughts weigh upon you," she comments.
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "I do not understand how this can be real. But I have seen many things that I would not have believed possible."
She hums thoughtfully, pulling the back plate out of the water and setting it aside before turning her attention to him more fully. "And what is it that causes you to doubt your own senses?"
"Before I awoke," he starts, and the words stick in his throat. "Before I awoke, I was on Nal Hutta. It was... the future. Twenty years from now, maybe. I was poisoned. I died. And then I woke up here, with the covert. And I thought I had marched on, joined the others. But then I saw you. And I knew I was wrong."
"Twenty years," the Armorer repeats. "Din Djarin, have you kept the Creed? Have you taken your helmet off in front of others, or has it been taken from you?"
He swallows hard. "I was named apostate once. I redeemed myself in the waters of the Mines of Mandalore and brought back proof."
She shifted her weight in surprise but didn't interrupt him, sensing that he was not finished speaking.
"Earlier today, my helmet was removed from me by force, by those who sought to take revenge on me and who threatened my child. I reclaimed the helmet and escaped with the child, but I was poisoned and was unable to either leave the planet to seek redemption or to turn back and kill those who had seen my face." He blinks rapidly against the tears welling up. "When I woke up here, I was... I thought the Manda hadn't rejected me after all."
He lets his chin drop down to his chest, the click of beskar against alloy a further reminder of his circumstances. He isn't quite sure what the state of Mandalore is in this time, but he at least knows that the Mines are not lost.
"You have been given a second chance," the Armorer says, and his head shoots up to look at her. "Those who have seen your face may yet live, but their knowledge has been stolen from them by forces beyond our control. If the Manda has seen fit to return you to us, then I will not name you apostate, Din Djarin. Do you swear to the Way of the Mand'alor?"
"I do," he swears.
"Good," she says, turning away to arrange her materials. The matter is settled. "Is there more you wish to speak to me of?"
"My apprentice," he says, and it is half a sob. "My foundling. My child. He is from a long-lived species. He ages very slowly. He has been in danger since the rise of the Empire. I do not know where he is now, but I know he is not safe. I fear that he has no one looking out for him. That he's hungry. That he's afraid."
"You wish to look for the child."
"His name is Grogu. We are a clan of two. If he had other family, his own people, I would let him stay with them. I know him as my child, but he doesn't know me yet. But as far as I know, he doesn't have anyone looking out for him now, and he chose to stay with me in the future. I cannot abandon him. I don't know where to start looking, but I have to do something. As devoted as I am to the survival of the covert, I can't just stay here."
The Armorer tilts her helmet in his direction. "Children are the future. This is the way."
"This is the way," he repeats.
"Then you must look while you hunt, beroya."
He slumps in relief. He hadn't allowed himself to hope for this outcome, but it is the best option open to him here in this no-longer-familiar time. He can be both Din Djarin, beroya to his covert, and Din Djarin, father to Din Grogu.
His friends are lost to him, at least for now. Greef Karga, Cara Dune, Bo-Katan Kryze, Boba Fett, Fennec Shand. The people he’s worked with in the New Republic. None of them will know him, except maybe Peli Motto. But Kuiil is alive. Cobb Vanth is alive. His covert is alive. The Mandalorians who had resettled Mandalore before Gideon took the Darksaber are alive. Even Alderaan hasn't been destroyed yet.
And there was a reason that he hadn't wanted the expectations that came with being the bearer of the Darksaber. He doesn't know Galactic politics or the big picture. But he can take this chance to do right by his people, as many of them as he can manage. He promises it to himself, and to them. It will be harder without full beskar armor, and he misses that set of armor terribly, but he can't truly regret its loss when it means that his child hasn't had to live through being treated as a bounty and an experimental subject on top of everything else he's had to endure at such a young age.
Hang in there, little womp rat, he thinks, Mando's coming for you.