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Sometimes…
Late at night…
Long after Grogu had fallen asleep curled against his side…
Long after the palace had settled into silence…
Din would sit at the window overlooking Mandalore.
And remember.
Not one memory.
Not one moment.
But all of them.
Like stars.
Individual lights.
Some beautiful.
Some unbearable.
All connected.
⸻
You are not hidden
A garden.
Sunlight.
A tooka kitten.
A little laugh.
Then—
Smoke.
Blaster fire.
A scream that still lived somewhere inside his bones.
Empty arms.
⸻
There’s never been a moment you were forgotten
A vow.
Not spoken to anyone else.
Only to himself.
Find him.
Keep coming.
No matter what.
⸻
You are not hopeless
A corridor.
Eleven o’clock.
Every day.
The same footsteps.
The same guards standing to attention.
The same door.
The same room.
The same child who looked at him with unfamiliar eyes.
“Leave.”
⸻
Though you have been broken
Day after day.
Week after week.
Month after month.
He kept coming.
Even when every instinct begged him to run.
Even when hope became something thin and fragile.
Even when people stopped believing.
He kept coming.
⸻
Your innocence stolen
A nightmare.
Cold sheets.
Empty arms.
A dream where his little boy had smiled at him…
Only to vanish the moment he woke.
⸻
I hear you whisper underneath your breath…
A chair.
Flying through the air.
Blood.
Stitches.
“I’m okay.”
Then—
Bo’s hands on his face.
“Din, stop.”
A whisper.
“…I don’t think I’m okay.”
⸻
I hear your SOS
Your SOS
An observation room.
Cold glass beneath shaking hands.
A father whispering love into a window.
Not because anyone answered.
Because love didn’t require permission.
“I love you.”
Again.
“I love you.”
Again.
“I always will.”
⸻
I will send out an army to find you
Friends.
Cara carrying pieces of the kingdom so he could carry his son.
Boba refusing to let him collapse.
“Eat.”
“Get up.”
“Keep coming.”
Mayfeld holding the Mand’alor while he sobbed on the floor of a guard tower.
Bo standing before an anxious people every morning, protecting a king who no longer had the strength to stand before them himself.
The Armorer reminding him that healing himself was another way of loving his child.
Axe.
Always there.
Always beside him.
Greef…
Calling him kid.
Son.
Teaching him that even fathers deserved someone to come for them too.
A tiny therapy office.
Cookies.
Core beliefs.
“Daddy always comes.”
A room full of adults crying because a child had just spoken the truest thing any of them had ever heard.
⸻
In the middle of the darkest night
Sleepless nights.
Tiny hands reaching through nightmares.
“Daddy…”
Rocking.
Singing.
Kissing little ears.
Holding trembling shoulders.
Watching the sunrise because neither of them could sleep anymore.
⸻
It’s true
Slow healing.
One peaceful night.
Then another.
A laugh returning.
A smile that no longer looked afraid.
Small feet wandering from Din’s lap to Cara’s.
Then back again.
Always back again.
⸻
I will rescue you
A silver ball.
Pressed into his hand the night before battle.
“For tomorrow…”
A father trying not to cry in front of his child.
Failing anyway.
⸻
I will never stop marching to reach you
One last goodbye.
“I love you more than life itself.”
Tiny tears.
A promise.
Not a question anymore.
“Daddy always comes.”
⸻
In the middle of the hardest fight
War.
Fire.
Steel.
Brothers fighting shoulder to shoulder.
Justice finally catching the man who had built his empire on a little boy’s suffering.
Axe falling.
A brother smiling through his last breath.
“Go home to your baby.”
⸻
It’s true
And then…
Home.
Really home.
For the first time.
No fear.
No Empire.
No glass between them.
Just…
Arms.
Warm.
Safe.
Whole.
“Daddy always comes.”
“Always.”
⸻
I will rescue you
A grave.
A little green hand resting on cool stone.
“Thank you.”
⸻
I hear you whisper underneath your breath….
I hear you whisper you have nothing left…
An observation room.
No longer a prison.
Just a memory.
A child learning where his father had waited.
A worn place on the floor where love had refused to move.
⸻
I will never stop marching to reach you
A year.
Peace.
Council meetings interrupted by little feet.
Garden afternoons.
Bedtime stories.
Morning cuddles.
Tooka kittens.
Laughter echoing through halls that had once echoed only with grief.
⸻
It’s true
The Empire had wanted to create a weapon.
Something to break the Mand’alor.
Something to destroy him from the inside out.
Instead…
They forged something else.
A father whose love became stronger than fear.
Stronger than despair.
Stronger than pain.
Stronger than death itself.
They had underestimated one simple truth.
Love…
Is relentless.
⸻
I will rescue you
Din looked down.
Grogu had wandered into the room while he was remembering.
Sleepy.
Hair sticking up.
Blanket dragging behind him.
Without a word…
The little boy climbed into his lap.
Exactly as he had done a thousand times before.
Din smiled.
“What are you doing awake?”
Grogu shrugged.
“Wanted Daddy.”
Din wrapped his arms around him.
Held him close.
The stars glittered over a peaceful Mandalore.
For a long time…
Neither of them spoke.
They didn’t have to.
Everything that mattered had already been said.
In hospital corridors.
Behind glass.
On battlefields.
In therapy offices.
In nightmares.
In lullabies.
In whispered promises.
In tiny core beliefs.
In every choice a father made to come back one more time.
Din kissed the top of Grogu’s head.
Not because he feared losing him anymore.
Just because he could.
“Anything for you, baby.”
Grogu smiled without opening his eyes.
“I know.”
And somehow…
Those two words were enough to heal every wound that still remained.
Because in the end…
The story had never really been about war.
Or kings.
Or empires.
It had been about a father…
Who kept his promise.
Every single day.
Daddy will come.
To your rescue your body.
And then he’ll lead your heart home.
Until his little boy believed him.
And once he did…
Neither of them ever had to wonder again.
Oh, I will rescue you