Chapter Text
Centaxday, barely.
The Senator you’re trying to reach is unavailable right now… While we understand your call is important, we also ask for understanding that the New Republic Senate is currently on Nakadia time. To continue to the office line, please press One. To hear these instructions in Qr–
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You’ve reached the office of Senator Leia Organa. Please leave a message after the tone...
beeeeeeeep
"Hey Lei... good news! You're an auntie now! And also a sister-in-law! Yay! Also can you please send some more of that allergy cream to my coordinates because woah the plants on this planet are mean! Also do Mandalorians shake hands? Or is that a major faux pas? Call me when you wake up! Love you, see you soon!".
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His com was ringing. His com never rang unless it was one person in particular: everyone else respected the sacred Jedi rule of Texting Only. Which meant he had to remove himself from the rather warm pile of blankets and find the device before it woke anyone else up.
Waking any of the others up would result in slightly more chaos than he was willing to deal with; mostly because the oldest-yet-youngest of them all had yet to appreciate the art of the lie in. And if he had to go crawling around in puddles again before the sun had risen, Luke was going to lose it.
There was only so much that letting his emotions flow into the Force could achieve.
The only worse thing would be waking R2 from sleep mode. His supposedly loyal droid had never once missed a chance to get him into trouble, and Luke highly doubted that today would be the first.
Clambering over the non-droid metal lump taking up far more than his fair share of the floor, Luke located his trousers and rooted around in the pocket. They were still damp from their daytime activities, and he was probably going to regret not hanging them up. Oh well, he’d see if he could dry them over the fire in the morning. For now, the priority was to stop the blaring ringtone.
Ah-ha! There it was.
He pulled the com out with victory.
Then he remembered who was calling, and the euphoria died down.
He stumbled out of tent, and sat down next to the remains of their campfire. This planet was pitch black at night, only the stars in the distance and the three moons providing any light. It wasn’t the worst place he’d ever bunked, even though the nature had it out for him.
Why did plants even need prehensile tentacles with poisonous suckers on? Why did they need to have sticky yellow pollen that made his skin itch? They didn’t, and if there were an authority to complain to he’d be sending them a holomail.
The Force had brought them to this place for a reason, was telling him that this was somewhere he needed to be. Maybe not permanently, but for long enough that something was going to happen. If the Force could maybe move to direct messaging and not just hunches, he’d be very appreciative. It was hard to do everything alone, and having something a bit more ferrocrete would definitely help.
Taking a deep calming breath, he answered the call.
"Oh hey Leia, did you get my message?", he greeted. Smooth. She’d never suspect anything.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M AN AUNTIE NOW!? I TOLD YOU NOT TO WEAR THOSE TIGHT TROUSERS ON A PLANET KNOWN FOR INVASIVE TENTACLE PLANTS BUT DID YOU LISTEN!? NO!", his twin screeched. “I KNOW YOU’RE INSATIABLY CURIOUS BUT PLEASE FOLLOW SOME DEGREE OF PROTOCOL?” Oh boy, she was worked up. And it was barely morning on Nakadia. Maybe Ben had kept her up all night?
He’d read somewhere that four-year-olds were mostly nocturnal. Or was that bats? He couldn’t remember. Getting hit around the head by a pissed off Mandalorian didn’t make for good thinking.
“I can explain!”, he interrupted as she took a breath. It was best to stop her before her blood pressure got too high. The med droids were already exasperated with her without adding more to their workload.
“I can explain, he says, as if I’ve not been worried sick.”, she snapped, and his spine straightened from instinct alone. He’d triggered the General, and would need to tread carefully for the rest of the call. “You’d better tell me right now that you’ve just been on the holonet reading forums on relationship advice again and you didn’t actually do anything stupid.”.
Somewhere in the Force, her irritation twanged. It made his ear itch. Why did it always make his ear itch?
Then again, it was better than when she was truly angry, normally at some politician or other.
Whenever that happened, his nose got all stuffy and his teeth ached. Obi-Wan had never told him that being connected to every living thing in the Force meant that he’d be affected by them on a physical level. His twin could be on the other side of existence, and yet he was always aware of her mood.
Were the other Jedi aware of his moods? Were they aware of his loneliness and want for community, or did they not get live emotional feeds every waking moment?
If any of them ever decided to contact him back, he’d make sure to ask.
A loud snore came from the tent he’d just vacated, and he froze. Shit. On the other end of the line, he could hear the blood vessel in Leia’s neck pulsing as she too registered what she’d heard. His nose tickled.
“Luke…”, she snarled. Oh yes, definitely up all night with his nephew. He hoped Han didn’t like his balls, because one wrong step today and they were off to the chopping block. Thank the Force that he himself was far enough away that his sister couldn’t come for his.
Taking a breath, he prepared to meet his doom. An ember-covered log popped, and he took that as a sign to just get on with it.
“Alright alright… so…”.
Two Weeks Earlier…
When he’d decided to explore the galaxy in order to re-establish the Jedi Order, he’d been rather unprepared for one thing in particular:
Nature.
Dagobah hadn’t caused him to break out in hives, Yavin hadn’t made his skin itch so badly he wanted to peel it off and wear it as a cloak. But for some reason, every other planet he’d visited was apparently doggedly determined to murder him.
And that was before he tracked down the Imperials he was looking for.
Once he was clean, he was going to make a very pointed lesson about why you were not supposed to use grabby-hands on unfamiliar flora. To make the objective even clearer, he’d make some flashcards he could drill Grogu with. That’s what Han did for Ben whenever he needed to learn something new, so maybe it would work on his green companion.
So he could, in his opinion, be forgiven for not noticing when his attempts to scrub pollen off of himself were punctuated by a stranger’s approach. The itch on his back was unbearable, and a much more pressing matter. There would be no way he could function the rest of the day if he wanted to peel his skin off at every moment.
Besides, Grogu was meant to be on the lookout, and tell him if anything dangerous was happening. R2 was back with the X-Wing, in case they needed a quick getaway. It was supposed to be teamwork.
“Grogu!”, he scolded as he turned, “You’re meant to tell me if we’re under attack.”. He mentally added another flashcard set to his shopping list.
The child didn’t answer him, but he did grin and wave from where he was perched in the Mandalorian’s arms.
Ah.
That… was a surprise. Wasn’t the Force supposed to tell him about that sort of thing?
For once, the Force was silent, and the whooshing of the wind through the trees felt slightly mocking. Was the fabric of the galaxy calling him an airhead again? Because that was one time and he’d actually very successfully managed to put out the fire, with minimal damage to the surrounding area, thank you very much. His calculations had only been off by a hair of a fraction, which, considering he’d solved them in the condensation of his windshield, was pretty impressive in his eyes.
But that didn’t solve the mystery of the Mandalorian man managing to magically appear.
“Oh, hello!”, Luke said, covering his emotions with a plastered-on smile. Worked every time. No one ever expected Jedi to have emotions, so he’d spent hours carefully locking down every smile to look exactly like the one his uncle’s old insurance provider had worn. “We weren’t expecting you… well, ever.”. His back still itched terribly, but most of the pollen was gone, so he supposed the correct thing to do was at least attempt to be hospitable.
Wading out of the water, he held his hand out to shake the Mandalorian’s. Uncle Owen had told him that every man appreciated a strong and confident grip. Biggs had agreed, but he’d then gone bright red so Luke wasn’t completely convinced that his childhood friend actually understood how one went about completing a business transaction.
The Mandalorian didn’t shake his hand, and Luke withdrew it. That was rather rude of him, or was it a cultural thing? Luke wasn’t sure. He’d have to ask Leia the next time she called. If he called her again in the middle of the night just to ask a silly question she’d start singing old Crooner songs down their Force bond.
He’d lost three weeks of valuable archaeology work the last time she’d done that. All of his files had been labelled with lyrics and had made no sense upon review. It had made his presentation to the Galactic Committee of Whatever very awkward. They’d still granted him his funding though, so it had all worked out in the end.
But that didn’t matter in the current moment, and he looked at the Mandalorian with the peaceful expression he’d practiced in the back of the falcon all those years ago.
His unlikely companion said nothing, and just stared.
“Is… is there something I can help you with?”, he asked, and the other man jolted.
“Uhm…”, he started, “You’re… naked.”.
Ah.
Well then.
That explained a lot about the overall awkwardness of the entire situation.
After he’d apologised profusely and redressed, Luke had led the Mandalorian back to the camp that he and Grogu had set up when they’d arrived on the planet. It wasn’t much, but it would do for now: it was more important to him that they find the perfect spot before they make any changes that could cause damage to the environment.
He trusted that the Force would tell him when they’d found the right place where the galaxy fell into balance. So far, it had led him to this place, and if he ignored the allergies, it was truly a peaceful planet.
“What brings you here, Mandalorian?”, he asked his unlikely companion.
The man in metal stilled, almost as if he’d turned to stone. The hand that had been stroking Grogu’s head fell away to be cradled in the other. Shame, guilt, and a touch of desperation; the Mandalorian seemed to be in trouble. Was the other man aware of how his movements telegraphed everything to an audience who cared to look? His helmet gave nothing away of his expression, but his body language screamed out entire three act space operas.
“I wanted to… see him again.”, the man said with a stilted voice. Even through the vocoder, his discomfort was apparent.
"Well, you’ve seen him. I don’t want to sound callous, but, well, Jedi don’t really socialise much.”, he replied. That was mostly true. Maybe in the past there had been more of a community feel; when the temples had stood and the people he’d never known had had a home. The few who had survived, however, wanted very little to do with him.
Maybe he needed pamphlets? He’d ask his sister: Leia would surely know how to better approach the issue.
“Oh.”, his companion replied. “So I should just… leave?”.
“That might be for the best. I’m sorry.”, and he truly was. He didn’t want to cause anyone pain, but Grogu needed to train and the only way Luke knew that to work was in total isolation. Backwater planet plus unholy amounts of groundwater was what he understood to be the perfect environment for Padawan 101.
He offered to escort the Mandalorian back to whatever ship he’d used to get to them, and the other man agreed. As they walked through the forest in silence, Grogu cooed at him and sent images through to Luke via the training bond. Memories of happy times spent together, of the fun they’d had, and how at every turn the Mandalorian had done his best to protect the child.
Though he also liked to take him into the blaster fights he was often protecting Grogu from, so maybe he wasn’t the most responsible guardian out there.
“Can I ask you something?”, the Mandalorian asked once they’d arrived at his piece of shit ship. A rental, by the looks of it.
Something in the Force buzzed at the back of his mind, but it was most likely just Leia getting excited over some policy or another that had just passed. His twin was such a nerd, but at least she was happy.
If R2 had been nearby, he’d have blown a circuit laughing at Luke’s audacity in calling anyone a nerd. However, he wasn’t, and therefore Luke could pretend like he didn’t read electronics manuals for fun.
“Sure.”, he replied, because Grogu was starting to fall asleep and Luke was also rather looking forward to his bed.
“I… You were never meant to see my face.”, he was told.
Was that supposed to be important? Luke had been rather distracted at the time. Thinking back to that day, all he could really remember was some crying and a bad case of helmet hair. Grogu had refused to share his own memories, guarding them jealously. Which, was fair. He was still young and was still a little too attached to his guardian. They’d meditate on that.
He bounced the child a little, getting a tiny giggle. Too cute.
“Ok. Well, I can just pretend I didn’t?”, he suggested, but the helmet shook in disagreement.
“It’s more serious than that.”.
Did he want money? Because in that case Luke would need to see a contract. Aunt Beru always said do nothing until it’s written down and verified.
“So what do you want me to do about it?”, he enquired. The Jedi were dedicated to helping people, so if he had to fulfil a side quest in order to get the Mandalorian to leave them alone, then that’s what he’d have to do.
“We have to get married.”.
Well, that wasn’t what he’d been expecting.
“No thank you.”, he said cheerily, “The New Republic has ruled any and all marriages conceived through coercion, and-or politically-slash-religiously motivated unions without explicit consent to be illegal throughout all of its territories.”. He’d been thrilled when that had been passed, to the point he’d thrown a little party with Chewie and Han. They’d been pleased too. They’d all read one too many of Lando’s holonovels to sleep easy knowing that some people thought marriage could be a bargaining chip. Gross.
“It’s not like that!”, the Mandalorian exclaimed, “I need to save my soul!”.
“Look those are just rumours from the rebellion. And most of them aren’t true. I’m good, but not that good.”, he clarified, because Force-darn it they were all blabbermouths. He’d massaged one shoulder muscle and now people wanted their souls saved.
“What are you even on about?”, the other man asked.
“Never mind.”, he said, ready to turn around and head back to camp. “You’ll have to find another way to save yourself.”.
“I’m trying that as well!”, the Mandalorian exclaimed with an astonishing amount of exasperation, the first emotion other than bland that he’d shown. So he was human underneath. Luke was intrigued. Maybe Grogu’s memories hadn’t been overly-embellished after all. “But until then, this is a quick fix.”.
“Promise?”, he checked.
“Yes.”, tired, with a sigh. Oh yeah, the Mandalorian clearly didn’t want this any more than he did.
He made up his mind.
“Ok. Sure, why not.”, he agreed. It was late and he was tired. If this got the Mandalorian off his back, then he’d do whatever it took. Before he committed himself though, he made a final check. “It’s reversible though, right?”.
“Should be.”, the other man nodded. If they were getting married, Luke was going to take some liberties. He mentally renamed his soon-to-be-husband as Mando. It suited him. “As soon as possible, we divorce.”, Mando clarified.
“Cool.”, Luke said. “Let’s do it.”.
They repeated some words in a weird language he didn’t understand, and then Mando sighed in relief. He thanked Luke profusely, and said a tender goodbye to Grogu that brought a small tear to the Jedi’s eye. Farewells always made him a bit soft, and he was a married man now. Perhaps he should get an apron and learn to bake?
Or not. That sounded deathly dull.
Speaking of deathly, at that moment, the buzzing in the Force that had been in the back of his mind reached a crescendo, and he realised a split second before it happened that a spanner was about to be thrown into his droid-pit.
The clackety old ship groaned and rumbled as Mando pressed the starter fob, before bursting into a fireball higher than the treetops.
Luke threw his left hand up, shielding the three of them from any of the shrapnel that was raining down upon them. With his right, he started to ward away the flames, coaxing them out of existence.
Within moments, it had all died down, and he turned to see two identically blank expressions, which should have been amusing considering one was a literal helmet. But instead, he just felt exhausted. Not from using the Force, oh no, but from the prospect of having an unexpected tent-guest for the near future.
He’d need to tidy the tent, and wasn’t looking forward to it.
“Hold up.”, Leia said, interrupting his story. He paused, because that was the polite thing to do.
He might not have grown up a prince, but he did have manners. Beru Whitesun-Lars had not dragged him up just because he’d been born in a dustbowl. In her memory, he maintained some semblance of civility, and that alone prevented him from living out his natural state of being. Yoda wasn’t the only gremlin blessed with the Force.
One day, when his work was done, Luke fully intended to live his retirement as a crazy old hermit. No one asked crazy hermits to get involved with politics, or change diapers, or anything else. Crazy old hermits got to pull pranks and play in the mud or the sand or whatever environment they’d decided to wallow in.
“You’re telling me that you were tracked down by a bounty hunter, who then propositioned you?”, she clarified. “And after that, his ship fireballed.”.
Well, when she put it like that, of course it sounded ridiculous. Though he thought she should be more pleased at his memorisation of Senate bills.
“Where did I lose you?”, he asked, because there was a lot of detail to include, and unfortunately, all of it was rather relevant to his tale.
“You lost me somewhere about the time that this guy somehow worked out that you needed to marry him or you’d both die.”, she said. Ah yes, that was a rather important thing to keep track of.
“Gotcha. Well…”.
Two weeks before all that.
He stumbled on his way to the window. Napping had always left him disoriented, and this time was no different. Outside, he saw his father’s speeder pull up, and Din started to panic. The last thing his father had told him before leaving to grab the onions was to make sure the Kowalkian monkey-lizard was defrosted for dinner, but it was still in the conservator, rock solid and nowhere near ready to cook.
If he didn’t get it defrosted in time, he was doomed.
Scrambling for the kitchen, he managed to find the meat and pull it out. How was he meant to defrost it in such little time?
An idea struck, and he turned on his flame thrower, aiming it towards the food and hoping it would be enough.
The door opened behind him, and his father was stood there, watching him with such sadness in his eyes.
“Din? How could you?”, he said, his voice mournful and soft. Devastating. “Our guests will be here any minute.”.
He apologised, but it went unheard, and Father drifted into the other room, where Mama was setting the table. Her dress was made of lots of snakes. Din didn’t like snakes. The dress changed to glitterwings… much better.
The meat was charred, which surely meant it must be cooked through, and he plated it up. Taking it into the dining area, he placed it among all the other dishes that had been prepared. Just as he did so, their guests arrived.
It all went dark, and flames burst from the centre of the table. In them, he saw the hammer and tongs, and echoing footsteps approached. He looked up.
Standing there, his Armourer gazed upon him, and he was so small, his red cloak was like a shroud draped over him. Her helmet gave nothing away, but he knew she was disappointed in him. Over him she loomed, the spikes on her head almost brushing the ceiling.
“You have broken the Creed.”, she boomed, and he cowered.
In the distance, his mother screamed, and he whipped around to see her sobbing as Father held her. I loved you!, she cried, I loved you!.
He wanted to shout back, but his helmet had been turned off, and then Paz’s hands were yanking it off his head. Without it, the world was too bright, too colourful, and his eyes swam as he tried to focus.
“You let another see your face.”, the Armourer chastised. “You have drifted from the Way.”. His helmet was handed over to her, and she crushed it as if it were nothing. His entire identity was crumpled in her grasp.
His knees hit the floor, and he begged for forgiveness. But she ignored him, and took her seat at the head of the table. She took her tongs from Mama, who’d fetched them from the flames. Her hands blistered and bled, but she didn’t scream, she only repeated her final words, ever eternal in his mind.
The Kowalkian monkey-lizard he’d prepared was offered, and the Armourer bit into it with her tools. Except it wasn’t the monkey-lizard.
It was Grogu.
The Child was passed among the members of the party, each taking a piece. When it was put on their plates, a tiny Grogu sat up, cooing, and giggling at them. They couldn’t have him though! He was Din’s child, not theirs.
Light gathered at the opposite end of the table, and there was the Jedi, taking his own piece of Grogu, and holding him in his arms. The Child was wearing a tiny version of the Jedi’s outfit, but Din had already bought him pyjamas with frogs on. They even had booties!
Din called out for him to let the child go, that Din had changed his mind, that he wanted Grogu to reconsider. To come back to him. But the Jedi laughed at him, a high-pitched laugh that lanced at his soul.
“He chose to come with me.”, he goaded, “He hated your singing and your cooking and he chose me instead! You broke the Creed and he still chose me!”.
I broke it for him!, he wanted to plea, but his voice had been lost with his helmet. His Mama was holding the crumpled metal, and his father was sobbing as he kissed the forehead over and over again. Please! I broke it for him!.
“Only Clan can see your face and live.”, the Beroya said to him from where he was sitting on the ceiling. Gravity was making his helmet slip off, slowly revealing the rotting chin and nose Din would swear he’d never seen on that horrible day. Blue lips smiled at him, revealing crooked yellow teeth. “If they were Clan, you wouldn’t have broken the Creed.”.
Someone laughed, someone else screamed, and the dinner party went on. Music played, and the tiny Grogus danced and danced…
He bolted upright.
That was the last time he was ever drinking after a job.
Sweat was pooling under him, was bleeding through his shirt. He ached to take it all off, to exist without the weight of his sins. But the capsule bunk he’d rented afforded no such luxuries. The thin curtain between him and the rest of the galaxy never enough for him to abandon the Way.
Except, he’d already abandoned it.
But he’d done so for Grogu! So that the Child might remember him, remember Din Djarin and not just the Mandalorian.
He’d done it to be selfish. Given up the secrecy that allowed his people to live, all so he alone could live on in memory.
It had to be fixed. It had to be fixed so that his soul could rest and his people could live on.
But how?
He reached under the useless pillow for Bertha, who always provided him the comfort he needed. Holding her close, he snuggled into his blaster like he’d once snuggled into the stuffed Maorpf his Nama had made him from one of Pama’s old shirts. Bertha wasn’t as fuzzy, nor did she roar when he squeezed her, but she provided him solace all the same.
The lighting in the hallway buzzed with the same frequency as a particularly vicious Kubindi mosquito, though thankfully not a Kubindi msqito, drilling into his brain like those little suckers liked to try and drill into his beskar to get to his blood.
…Grogu liked to eat mosquitoes…
…Grogu…
In a split second, his dream came rushing back; how the Armourer would condemn him when he eventually found her again, how Paz would take pleasure in removing his helmet…
How the Jedi had taken the Child, and how Din had agreed it would be for the best.
But the Jedi didn’t know that Grogu liked mosquitoes, that he liked to chase frogs and would sick up baked treats if he didn’t digest properly! Super-powerful god-like space wizards would never be able to understand little green gremlins whose only desires in life were to cause chaos and inconvenience others while also looking adorable.
Din dearly wanted his little companion back.
If he could be with Grogu, then he wouldn’t have to worry about breaking the Creed, because he could make Grogu clan and solve the issue. Sure, it would be retroactive, but Mandalorians were all about bringing people into the fold and forgiving the past!
Should Mandalorians ever be able to live without hiding, Din was pretty convinced one of their selling points to gather new people to the Creed would be that they accepted anyone and everyone.
The pamphlets practically wrote themselves!
So he would go and find Grogu, make him officially clan, and then continue on with finding the remains of the Covert. It was simple, really.
Except there was one problem.
The Jedi.
The Jedi had also seen his face, had looked him in the eyes. Had smiled at him. Din could remember in worrying detail the last people who’d smiled at him while holding his gaze. Space wizards didn’t belong in those precious memories, but there he was: tranquil and serene and witness to Din’s greatest sin.
There had to be a solution that didn’t involve the suicide attempt that would be removing the Jedi from existence. Creed stated that anyone who saw his face had to die, because they couldn’t live with the sacred knowledge of his soul. Which, when the person in question had dispatched a batalion of Darktroopers without breaking a sweat, was a rather nerve-wracking thing to consider.
He stroked along Bertha’s barrel, taking comfort in her uniformity. If anything could help him come up with an idea, it was her. Whenever he needed to think, cleaning the blaster put him into that perfect meditative state for plotting. She never disappointed him, never jammed when he was in a firefight, always helped him. She didn’t whisper insidious, and worse, political things into his mind.
That last comment was mentally directed at the Darksaber, and the ghosts inside of it grumbled and called him a rude name. He didn’t care, they could groan all they wanted. They weren’t going to possess him like they’d wanted and if they tried, he was going to throw the damned contraption into deep space until it either disintegrated or Kryze hunted it down.
One of the great Mandalorian Forefathers took a moment to berate him, but the dialect was so old it sounded more they were being choked to death on gravel. He wondered when the clans had decided to speak with more recognisable phonemes. Surely there must have been a linguistic shift somewhere between eras, because the language being spat at him currently was far beyond what his own larynx to produce.
Linguistic quandary did not solve his problems however, so he shelved it for the time being.
Back to the issue at hand.
If adopting Grogu would make him clan, and Din would be his father and not just as his father, then that solved one part of the problem. Besides, it also meant that he could more easily legally will all his stuff to the child, so that when Din was gone, he wouldn’t be left entirely alone. Bertha would still be with him, along with Din’s beskar. Fett had also mentioned something about life insurance, and that would surely come in handy for Grogu’s future.
But it still didn’t solve his Jedi problem.
A couple in the hallway were fighting, and it was really starting to annoy him. Maybe if he shot at them, they’d shut up. Bertha was an excellent problem solver for many reasons, and this would be another chance for her to prove it.
But if he were to do that, it would mean he’d need to get out of the capsule, and he didn’t want to do that. Thin as it was, it was still the nicest mattress he’d laid down on in a while, and his back was thankful.
One of the frustrated lovers shouted that they’d wished they’d never married the other, and Din agreed that being married to a fog horn did sound exhausting.
Wait.
nO
Marriage.
yOu’Re DrUnK.
That could solve his problem, until he found a more permanent solution. He could hunt down the Jedi, adopt Grogu, marry the space wizard, and then continue hunting down the remain of the Covert. Once all that was done, he could dissolve the marriage and forget the entire ordeal.
It was the best idea he’d ever had.
tHaT’s ThE sTuPiDeSt IdEa YoU’vE eVeR hAd, the Darksaber moaned at him. AnD yOu OnCe LiCkEd CaRbOnItE fOr A dArE.
“Piss off ghosts.”, he mumbled, shoving the sword into his boot. Let it fester with his socks for a while, and then he’d see if it wanted to have an input on his life.
Plan sorted for the immediate future, he resettled in his capsule. A few more hours of sleep, and then he’d get down to business.
The hunt was on, and he was going to get himself a husband and son and save his soul in the process.
iDiOt, the Darksaber hissed from its stinky prison, but Din just rolled over. The sword was just jealous that Bertha had helped him work things out instead of it.
Back to Centaxday… possibly Taungsday by this point
“…so you married a Mandalorian on a whim, a Mandalorian whose name you don’t know, and whose maybe-child you agreed to train?”, his sister said with disbelief. “Luke, you’ve done some really stupid things, but this one takes the uj cake.”.
“Well when you put it like that, it’s never going to sound sensible.”, he said, “But it’s the best option for Mando. He’s… he’s going through some stuff. His religion and people are dying out, and he’s doing what he can to not abandon his faith.”.
She sighed, and he knew she understood. He and Mando were both clinging to legacies that the galaxy wanted to forget, and she was trying to pull together all the pieces of the home she’d lost. If anyone would know what it was like to want to bring the past to life, it would be her.
“And now you’re on a random planet with your newly minted husband, trying to set up a school?”, she asked, her tone of voice telling him that she was pulling up whatever data she could find on both the planet and the husband. Unfortunately for her, there was very little for her to find. Mando was anal about being tracked, and well, his only mode of transport had gone bye-bye rather explosively.
“The Force brought me here for a reason, so I’m going to stick around for a while, see if I get any answers.”, he replied. He left off the bit about finding Mando’s lost people, that felt a little too private to share so openly.
“Send me the coordinates.”, Leia instructed, “I’ll send supplies.”.
“Thanks Leia.”, he said, beaming even though she couldn’t see it, “You’re the best.”.
“And don’t I know it.”, she replied, before ending the call.
After a few more moments staring out into the void, he unfolded himself from his position and went back into the tent. In the morning, they’d do some exploring, but until then, this would have to do.