Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Do you still take jobs?" was the first thing out of Luke’s mouth as soon as Din stepped out of his ship.

Din's jaw dropped in shock, and he was grateful that he still wore the helmet despite feeling unworthy of it. He thought all jetii were hippy-dippy souls who meditated on their relationships with irksome people instead of hiring people to solve the problem more directly and permanently.

"...yes", he managed to say. "What sort of job do you have?"

Then his brain caught up to his mouth and noticed the bags under Luke’s red-tinged eyes, and the creases in his face. And the fact that Grogu was standing next to Luke, but Ben Solo was not.

"Ben ran away," Luke said. "I need you to bring him back."

"How old is he now?" Kriff, he shouldn't have needed to ask.

"Just turned sixteen."

Din clenched a fist. "In some jurisdictions, that makes him a legal adult. Just so you know."

"Can't you still bring him back, though?"

 The jetii seemed dangerously close to pleading. Din thought of the less savory jobs he'd taken, back when he and the Tribe were desperate. And this was a man who was worried about a child. Teenagers were children, despite what many legal systems would have you believe.

The potential legal adult status could be tricky-if Ben didn't want to come back, depending on the system, Din’s contract would be invalid and his efforts to haul Ben back to his family could be prosecuted as kidnapping because he'd not been charged with a crime. He'd bent and broken laws before, but things had changed. He was technically a planetary ruler-Bo-Katan took every opportunity to remind him of that.

Grogu shuffled over to him and hugged him around the knees.

"Missed you, buir".

He patted his son on the head. "Missed you too, ad'ika."

"M'glad Ben’s gone," Grogu said into Din's shin. At sixty five, Grogu could talk, and express his many opinions. Apparently his first full sentence was "Shut up, Ben."

"Oh?"

Luke looked to be on the verge of tears.

"He said I could have his room and all his stuff. Most of his stuff is boring, but his room is bigger than mine. He gave me a whole box of cookies to not say anything until he left."

"You don't want to talk too much about who pays you, kid." Well, at least he wouldn't have to interrogate Luke about the possibility of an abduction disguised as the actions of an angsty teen.

Grogu picked a blue cookie out from a pocket in his robes and crunched down. "I know," he said around the crumbs, "but Luke figured it out. Mind reading."

Cookie gone, he screwed up his tiny green face in thought. "All his paint is black, " he continued. "I want more colors."

Luke crumpled. He'd been disgustingly composed every time Din had met him to drop off or pick up his kid for the past fifteen years, even when Grogu was at his surliest and Din was half-asleep and his armor was splattered in muck, oil, and other people's blood. Din picked him up off the ground and awkwardly patted him on the shoulder in what he hoped was a soothing manner. He unclasped his cape and offered it to Luke, who wiped his sopping face and dripping nose.

" 'rrry."

"It’s fine." It wasn't, but they were trying.

"Do you know why he left?"

Luke pulled himself together enough to produce a creased, crumpled piece of paper. This message was written in a flowing old fashioned hand:

Uncle Luke:

I am leaving. You always treat me like a child, or like a bomb about to explode. Your expectations are ridiculous . At least Vader was honest with others and himself.

Grogu is a brat and takes my stuff all the time, so he can have it. I am going somewhere people will appreciate me. Tell Mom this isn't her fault. Dad can go back and get the Falcon himself-I know he's got at least five trackers hidden in it. I deactivated them, but I paid for lot space and reactivated them after I got other transport. He loves that ship more than me so he shouldn't mind getting it.

That's all for now. Goodbye forever. Don't worry I'm not killing myself, I'm just leaving this kriffed up excuse for a family and heading out on my own. I'm better off without you and you're better off without without me.

Don't love you,

Ben Solo

Din read the letter three times, and wondered if Grogu would write a missive like this one day. Then, he remembered that he'd be dead by Grogu’s rebellious teenage phase and was at once relieved and terrified for the sake of whoever came after.

That, too was a discussion they needed to have, later. They'd all assumed that Ben would look after Grogu when Din and Luke died. Even Ben, for a while. Ben used to be surprisingly practical and talk about places for them to live, savings accounts, and how he wouldn't make Grogu eat vegetables or go to bed before ten. Grogu seemed happy with this arrangement, but maybe something happened between the two of them. Grogu kept chewing on his Mythosaur pendent in the way Din learned he did when he knew more than he was saying.

No, Ben’s true fight was with Luke, Din decided. The letter was addressed to his Uncle, despite the fact that Grogu could read a little now. And despite Grogu’s abilities, Din was confident that their vast differences in age and maturity meant that he was capable of sneaking past him without resorting to bribery.

One thing stuck out in the letter.

"Who's 'Vader'? Is he someone that you think Ben might have gone to stay with?"

Luke started crying again, real sobs this time. Grogu just cackled and clapped his hands together.

"It’s just his dead grandpa that he writes poems about sometimes. Really bad poems. The same guy who went crazy and murdered most of the other kids in my school."

"What's so funny?", Din asked cautiously. If you don't laugh, you cry, but Grogu’s sense of humor was...interesting.

"It was so pointless. Even if he really hated everyone there, all he had to do was wait fifty years or so and then everyone's dead or mostly dead anyway! That's hardly any time at all."

Din raised an eyebrow. Grogu could tell because he sighed.

"Well, except for me. But I hardly knew that karking guy existed in the first place. Idiot."

"Did you two get into an argument about...Veeder? Do you think he left because of that?"

Grogu shook his head.

"He left because I was too hard on him and said some things that were...unkind", Luke admitted wetly.

"I don't think so," Grogu said. "You weren't helping, Master Luke, but I don’t think it was actually about you. He was shielding pretty well so I didn't see everything, but he kept talking about getting a job. His own credits, his own place, maybe a ship someday. He had all these stupid daydreams about it. I know, I watched them."

"Who would even hire him?" Luke threw his hands into the air, possibly asking the Force. "He has had twelve internships, all of which lasted a week or less. Because he karked up every single one of them."

"I'm sorry, but I can think of any number of places that would hire him and keep him for at least a year. "

Luke smiled like he was being gutted. "Well, work experience would be good for him. Maybe you could just contact him, let him know we're worried, see if he needs anything..."

"None of these places would have anything like a job he should be working, at his age. No guarantee he'll survive."

"Oh."

"I'll probably need to start looking with mercenary companies that don't ask too many questions of their new hires. Could be tricky."

"I will pay anything," Luke said too quickly.

"You gave me fifteen years of childcare for free, I'd say we're even."

"I'm not a child," Grogu grumbled, but stopped when Din opened his pack and rummaged for this visit's gift for his son.

Chapter Text

It was disappointingly easy to run away, even when he had broken this task into multiple steps. The first phase involved a quick message to his dad: Come and get me, please. To Han’s credit, he came and got Ben without asking any questions. For all Han’s bluster about the “woo-woo magic” of the Force, he’d always had a sixth sense of when something was Wrong.

Ben waited and furiously paced in the intervening hours-if he didn’t have transport off this planet, he was scared he’d drop-kick Grogu into the sun and have a real fight with Luke. Or Luke would snap and pick a real fight with him, and that thing simmering under both their skins would boil over and one of them would die. As he huddled under his comforter, bags already packed and letter to Luke written and hidden for his uncle to find, he made a list of things he would accomplish on his own in his diary:

Get a job.

Get my own place.

Do something illegal.

Try sex.

He stared at the list. The voice in the back of his head hissed about greatness and destiny, but this list encompassed everything he actually wanted to do but couldn’t, hemmed in by his parents and uncle and annoying little sort-of cousin. These seemed achievable too, and Luke was always going on about specific, measurable, realistic goals. He didn’t enjoy working for other people, but he needed money to get his own place. The “something illegal” item was harder to define for now- but he reasoned his job could be something illegal. 

As far as sex went, he hated the glimpses of it he got out of other people’s minds, but his body was developing a mind of its own now. Maybe it would be different if it was his body instead of the desires and memories of someone else. But then he’d have the other person’s thoughts clogging up his head, and if they were distracted by him, he might have to see his skinny arms and hair in weird places and questionable moles through someone else’s eyes. But if he tried, he was sure he could tell if the other person was actually into him or just going through with it out of pity. Most people who weren’t total losers had sex, so Ben would have to try it at some point.

 Han bought him condoms a month or so ago, and made him put one over a cucumber while lecturing him about respecting himself, respecting others, and being safe. His mind’s shield slipped at that last point, and Ben learned why he was getting this talk. He caught a glimpse of a positive pregnancy test result and his mother weeping, his father going into hysterics and fleeing to get drunk for a week, returning laden with bags of baby clothes and determination to do the right thing.

“I’m gay,” Ben blurted, hoping to end this torment. So he was an accident. Not a surprise, but it was better when it was only a suspicion. “I’m not getting anyone pregnant.” That was sort of true. He’d seen a few girls who did interesting things with their clothes and hair, but they were pretty in the same abstract way a flower or a piece of artwork was pretty. He dropped things and babbled like an idiot every single occasion he was forced to spend any time near Poe Dameron, so he guessed that this was sexual attraction. But maybe that just meant that Poe was unfairly hot and Ben wasn’t blind.

 And there was that one awful, embarrassing and confusing dream about Grogu’s dad, but that dream also featured a lot of prep work to do for Leia’s charity gala set at his old school that was also his parents’ house and a tower of creampuffs and man-eating seagulls, so that just meant his subconscious was bored and trying something new that night. He would take having to sneak a load of sheets in the laundry and the quiet shame over the dreams about the old guy with a face like a ballsack, Luke with his green blade humming at Ben’s throat, Grogu’s corpse, his parent’s bodies, a frightened young girl, and lots of viscera. 

“Okay,” Han had said without missing a beat. “That’s fine, that explains a lot, actually. You can still get diseases, though, that’s where you need condoms. And there are some specialized things you need to consider for safe an—”

At that point, Ben plugged his ears with his fingers and started screaming. 

Now, the condoms sat in the bottom corner of his duffel bag. He’d need to buy new ones if he was ever going to have sex-using condoms his dad got for him seemed gross. He also didn’t want Grogu to find them and think they were balloons, so away they would go. He’d chuck them in a dumpster when he got the chance. His best calligraphy supplies were also stowed-Grogu could take the cheap stuff Leia had sent him before he’d gotten good enough to know what he wanted. And his lightsaber, wrapped in some socks. It fizzled and crackled in a concerning way and Luke kept telling him that he’d made his own when he was in his twenties, he could try again in a few years, but Ben hated being compared to his stupid famous uncle and he’d keep this one thing he accomplished before his teacher did.

There was a cautious knock at his bedroom door. “Hey, kiddo. Ready to go?”

Ben scowled, picked up his bags, and opened it. “Yeah.”

Han grabbed the big bag of clothes and led him away. “Do you wanna talk about what’s been going on with you and Luke?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to talk to him about this?”

“No!”

Han sighed. “Got everything?”

“Uh huh.”

“Do you want a hug?”

“Not really.” He wasn’t a child, he shouldn’t need one.

They went into the Falcon, and Ben glared at his father, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Han needed to say something cutting now, so leaving him would be easier. Instead, Han made him a mug of hot chocolate once they made hyperspace. Ben held it and searched its depths for words to describe the feelings roiling in his gut, but there was nothing.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk now,” Han said. “But later, if there’s anything, let me know. I know I’m gonna kark some things up. I’m bad with talking about feelings, but I’m trying, okay? You’re my son, and I—I love you. I don’t say it enough.”

Ben sniffled into his mug of hot chocolate (made with blue marshmallows, just the way he liked it). But this gave him an opening, and the mean little voice in the back of his head prodded at him until he took it:

“I know. I’m the only reason you and Mom haven’t gotten a divorce yet.”

Han inhaled sharply, and they did not speak for the rest of the trip. They both knew it was the worst possible thing he could have said because it was true. After he’d left, his mom and dad would be free of him, and then of each other. They’d be happier.

When they landed, Ben went straight into his room and laid in bed pretending to sleep until the small hours of the morning, then he tiptoed out and grabbed the keys to the Falcon. He nicked the side against the edge of the hangar bay on the way out and winced. Oh well. She’d been in actual battles, this was fine. As soon as he could get off-world and park this thing, the better. He was bad at estimating the distances he had between his own overgrown limbs and other people and objects; this uncertainty extended to ships. He could get one with a targeting computer. 

When he reached hyperspace, he realized that piloting a ship without adult supervision or a license was illegal, but that was a super lame illegal thing to do so it didn’t count. He set up autopilot and pulled out his datapad, researching the cheapest ship long-term parking-he wanted a locked gate and a tall fence. He didn’t have much money, but he didn’t want his dad’s ship to get stolen. Honest Unkar Plutt’s Park n’ Fly on Jakku was more than within his budget, and it had the advantage of being far enough from home that by the time his parents realized where he flew the ship, he’d be gone. Saving money needed to be a priority because he’d be booking three different public transport flights off-world and taking none of them- he’d work for his passage or pay a small fee to be taken on a cargo freighter.

He needed a new identity. “Ben Solo” would get him dragged back to his mother by anyone from bounty hunters to well-meaning strangers. He published many of his poems on the holonet under the pseudonym “Kylo Ren”, but he feared he’d be recognized by his online presence. But then he looked back at his account and learned that none of his works had ever received more than ten likes, and none were bookmarked, so that name was probably safe. Alright. One less thing to figure out. 

Now to work out the best way to hide his face. He could say it was for religious reasons-uncovered faces and immodesty begat vanity, which begets Sin. He could repeat this line-he’d heard Grogu’s dad say it once to explain why he didn’t show his face. He also said it was The Way, which Ben would not use because he figured he didn’t want a real Mandalorian to catch him pretending to be one. Plus, Din would be disappointed in him if he ever found out, and that would hurt more than disappointing his parents and Luke, for some reason. I have the best dad, Grogu said in his memory. Of course he’s better than yours. But it was more than that- Din seemed to believe that most people were fundamentally good, or they were trying, at least, and it would hurt to shatter that perception of the Galaxy.

No, you just haven’t disappointed him yet, the voice in his head whispered. You’re just a face in the doorway that he sees when he gets his son. He doesn’t know you. He wouldn’t like you if he got to know you. Nobody does. But I’m different, Kylo. I see you. I love you. You need to break free of their little minds and little lives and be great. You have power flowing through you that you never use. Together, we can rule the Galaxy.

“Shut up,” Ben-Kylo, he’d have to get used to using it now- muttered. He set an alarm to wake him when he reached Jakku, and fell into dreams about a tiny girl with elaborate braids, a staff, and sharp teeth that dripped blood. As his weird dreams went, this one was relatively dull. 

Chapter Text

The meeting with Ben’s parents was illuminating. Leia seemed reasonable enough at first, but Han took one look at Din’s armor and exited the room as quickly as he could. Through the second story window. 

“Jabba’s dead, nobody’s paying for you,” Din said as he tried to talk the man into relinquishing his grip on the gutter and letting his wife pull him back into the room. He practically itched at the sight of a man who once commanded such a high bounty walking (well, hanging) free and all payment worthless now, but such was life.

“And the Sarlacc got Fett,” Leia added. “Come on. He’s a Mandalorian, but they don’t all know each other.”

Din flinched. He thought of telling Han and Leia that Boba was alive, well, and steadily building up a new criminal empire on Tatooine, but he considered that he relied on these two for knowledge of their son’s last hours before running away. They didn’t need to know about Boba’s resurrection; when would they go to Tatooine? And besides, establishing himself as a friend or even casual acquaintance of that particular hunter could hinder this investigation. He shook his head at the thought of what he got away with at age sixteen under relatively close supervision. Ben was alone now, or worse, he wasn’t. Din would have bet his N-1 “midlife crisis” ship and his house on Nevarro that this possible company would not be good for the boy.

“That’s right, Mandalorians don’t all know each other,” he said, which was strictly true. “Mr. Solo, why don’t you come back inside and tell me more about Ben so I can work on finding him?”

Han begrudgingly let Leia tow him back to the couch.

“It’s Han Organa, actually,” he corrected. “I’m married. Corellian marriage law makes me her property. If you want to collect my bounty, take it up with the woman what owns me.”

Leia rolled her eyes and gave him a weak kick to one shin.

“Noted,” Din said. “Why do you think Ben’s so upset right now, and where might he have wanted to go?”

“I was too hard on him,” Leia said, just as Han countered with: “I wasn’t strict enough, he thought I didn’t give a flying kriff what he did.”

Interesting. Manda (and Force?) help the whole Galaxy when Grogu reached the developmental stages where he would cry a lot, become horny sometimes, and develop opinions about fashion. Right now Grogu’s mischief was confined to sneaking into the kitchen to attempt cooking and cutting up everything that he could reach or levitate with his craft scissors to make collages  and that was already difficult for Din to handle.

“Alright. I guess I was trying to ask if there was one event in particular that set this off.”

Leia pursed her lips and fidgeted with her sleeves. “He seemed different lately, but I couldn’t put my finger on why.”

“He’s been fighting with Luke,” Han said flatly. “I knew about it, I tried to talk to each of them to figure out what was going on, but that just made them both turn on me.”

Leia rounded on her husband. “And you didn’t ask ME for advice?”

Han sighed. “Leia, I wasn’t helping. And you and Luke might have…”

“We might have what?” 

Din backed himself up and away from them until he was pressed flat against their living-room wall.

“You’re his twin sister,” Han said. “You two were always your own thing. That would make stuff complicated if Ben’s caught in the middle. I wasn’t about to put you in that situation.”

“I’m his mother. I should have known.”

“Yeah, you should have, and if you’d been home enough to know what’s normal for Ben, you would have! And you wouldn’t have just blown me off every time I tried to talk to you long enough to try to explain it!”

Din turned down the audio feed on his helmet. They were both too loud. Leia was vibrating with rage, and Han was brandishing one finger like a loaded blaster.

Din coughed. Maybe Ben Solo would let Din camp out with him; they could avoid the Organa-Solos together. 

“Ahem. Yes. Let’s focus on what direction or sector Ben could be traveling in.”

Han grinned and pulled out a fob from his pocket. “That’s easy. I put trackers in The Falcon, my ship. Little womp-rat stole it, he flew it to…”

He squinted and frowned as the fob interfaced with his datapad: “JAKKU?! What the kark? She’ll have no calcinator left and the scavengers will have her up on blocks! When I find that boy, I’ll—”

Leia put a hand on his shoulder to steady him. “Ben will have left Jakku by transport, now. I believe there are not many ships leaving that planet.”

“He’ll have booked decoy trips,” Din warned. “Freighters often take passengers, too. If I wanted to disappear, I’d have booked multiple trips and taken none of them.”

Leia smiled too brightly. “Well, it’s a good thing that my son is a sixteen year old boy instead of a seasoned bounty hunter. We’ll start with checking the passenger manifests. He didn’t have many credits-that would have been a waste for him.”

“While you do that,” Han said, “I need to pick up my ship.”

Han vanished for a few hours and returned with a tall Wookie and a borrowed four-seater cargo trawler that had seen better days.

Here you go again, running from your mate when you are upset, the Wookie rumbled.

It seems that avoidant behavior runs in this family, Din agreed in the same language.

Han’s jaw dropped. “How do you know Shryiiwook?”

“I had a language learning app, and I spent some time on Kashyyyk, once.”

My name is Chewbacca. Your accent is decent, for a human.

Thank you. My name is Din Djarin. This was one of the more difficult languages that I have ever studied, and I hope that I do not dishonor your tongue overmuch.

“Thirty years and I can barely get by,” Han muttered.

Do not trouble yourself, Han. Though you are not the cleverest of my traveling companions, I do owe you a life-debt and you’re friendly and cute.

“I’m like, his third dog,” Han explained. “Wookies can live for centuries.”

A domestic non sentient animal would have been a more suitable housepet, but a much less entertaining one. 

Din did know about the difference in lifespans- Shryiiwook did not have many ways to describe units of time shorter than a week. Maybe he should try to talk to more Wookies. From the few he’d known on Kashyyyk, they seemed quite community and family-oriented and the villages he’d visited reminded him of the Tribe.

“Well, you get what you get,” Han said, punching in the hyperspace coordinates for Jakku. “I’ve often thought the same thing about having a kid instead of a bunch of tooka-cats.”

They made Jakku and pulled up to a fenced junkyard.

“Honest Unkar Plutt’s Park N’ Fly,” Din read off a sign.

Han marched up to the stall of a blobby gray being that must have been “Honest” Unkar Plutt and they yelled and wobbled at each other respectively until Plutt was satisfied that Han was the ship’s rightful owner.

“When this ship was parked here, it was parked at the owners’ risk,” Plutt warbled. “I am not responsible for damage from space-junk, weather, or Acts of the Force.”

Han glared at him, and Plutt gave him the key-fob to the ship and to the gate of the rusty wire fence.

When Han lowered the ramp, he sighed. “I know those sleemos stole my calcinator.” They entered the ship, and Han began to check for damage.

“Yep, they siphoned off my fuel but didn’t cut my lines, thank the Force for small miracles, calicinator’s in one piece too…oh nice, Ben didn’t find my stash either…”

There was a prickling feeling at the back of Din’s neck. This retrieval process was easy. Too easy. Someone or something was watching them. He needed to get out of this confined space, and—

He tripped on a whip-cord tangled around his shins and went down, hard. His ankle popped in a concerning and painful way as he fell onto it. When he cut the cord and staggered up, ankle screaming, a tiny girl with her hair in three buns was pointing a blaster at Han and fending off Chewbacca with a staff longer than she was.

Ugh. He had to become the hunter instead of the prey he was in this moment. His companions seemed too shocked to take action-it was if they were being mauled by a porg. So he did the sensible thing; he pulled out the Darksaber, ignited it, and sheared off the point of her staff. He took advantage of her astonishment to tackle her, grab her blaster, and cuff her wrists behind her back.

“Alright, kid,” Din said behind gritted teeth. “Where are your parents? Did they put you up to this?”

“They left me here,” the girl said. “I don’t know where they went. And they didn’t leave me any money, so I’ve been selling scrap. Mister, I’m sorry, but I thought you were a droid.”

Din blinked.

“What would you have done with me if I was?”

She bared her crooked little teeth. “Disassembled you and sold you. That much durasteel could get me—”

“It’s beskar.”

“Oh.”

“Are you going to sell me, now that you caught me? I don’t think I’m worth very much and I’d be too much trouble to sell.”

Han inhaled sharply. “Nobody’s going to sell you. But can you tell us about the person you saw parking this ship and leaving it in the lot?”

The girl gnawed on one of her lips briefly. “He was tall. Silly floppy dark hair. He cried when he got out to lock it. There would have been good eating on him, too.”

“Do you…eat people often?”, Din asked. She bore a striking resemblance to Grogu despite the difference in species. Maybe it was the cannibalistic tendencies.

“No, can’t get them,” the girl continued. “And I meant that if I took and sold all his stuff, I would have been able to get enough portions to eat for a month. Not eating a person. Especially this one. He looked too stringy.”

“If you come with us and tell us more about what you saw,” Han offered, “We can get you more food.”

“Just talking to you, right?”

“Right.”

“And can I leave when I’m done talking to you?”

“No,” said Din. “We’re taking you somewhere. We can give you a list of places to go and you can pick one, but you can’t stay here.”

At this, the girl screamed until she fainted and tried to bite Din when she woke up and realized that the Falcon made it into hyperspace. Din got a cup of water and lifted it to her lips until she drank.

“My parents said they’d be back for me,” the girl whispered. “I don’t want them to come back and find me gone.”

Din rummaged in his utility belt pockets until he found a small packet of Grogu’s favorite cookies. He opened it and held one out to her. She scowled at him, but then hunger won out and she ate them from his fingers.

“On Jakku, what would happen to you if you didn’t get enough portions to eat, or you got hurt scavenging?”

“I’d be gone,” the girl said, and sniffled.

“Yeah.”

Din knelt beside her for a while.

“If I take the cuffs off, can you promise that you won’t try to hijack this ship?”

“...no.”

“That was very honest. Well done,” Din said in the same voice he started using to talk Grogu out of a tantrum. “Would you like some dinner? I think I can cuff one wrist to something so you can feed yourself.”

“ ‘es. Do I have to pay for the dinner, and how much can I have?”’

“It’s free, and you can have as much as you—” Din considered what unlimited food could do to a half-starved child and modified his promise: “As much as you can keep down. Maybe one plate to start, a little more if you’re still hungry, no more than two. If you want snacks later, I can get you snacks.”

“Okay.”

Rey (that turned out to be her name) cried when she ate her dinner. And then she tried to stab Din with her fork. If she would never accept or even consider me as her finder, her rightful buir, that might be for the best , Din thought. The idea of Grogu and Rey together in the same household was giving him a headache. Grogu had so many things that could become improvised weapons, and those two would eat so much he’d have to take regular hunting jobs again.

Chapter Text

Ben clenched his datapad between his fingers and rocked forward. His head ached, and he found himself constantly darting glances from side to side because his new facemask severely limited his peripheral vision. 

The first thing he had to do was hide his face. He wished he could do this ever since his nose and ears grew too big for his head and his acne started coming in. He found a piece of scrap in a dumpster on Jakku-perhaps a piece of fender grille. Some paint and a bit of glue later (he found a piece of chromium that brought a little panache to it, he thought), he had a mask. He used the headband from an old welding mask to keep it on. He wanted a voxcoder to make him sound older, but those were expensive. If he needed to convince someone to not turn him in to his mother or a hunter, he could mind-trick them if he had to.

He mind-tricked his way into getting this freight security job-all it seemed to consist of was sitting on crates of things to be shipped and looking alert if his supervisors came to check that it was still there. Though he spent days doing nothing but scroll on his datapad and checking locks, his heart pounded in anticipation. He was going to Tatooine. Tatooine! The one place his family would never look for him because they all hated the planet. Luke was haunted by the burnt out shell of the Lars homestead, and his parents had nothing but bad memories of Jabba the Hutt’s palace and sail barge. He needed real credits, though. This job just gave him room and board. He opened PluggedIn, the largest job board website in the known Galaxy.

All the jobs that paid well on Tatooine unfortunately required skillsets he couldn’t successfully mind-trick large groups of people into believing he possessed- exotic dancer, barkeep, Tusken sign interpreter, vaporator repair specialist. There were more general housekeeping jobs, but he didn’t want to start his career as the notorious Kylo Ren by vacuuming rooms and making beds. 

You are destined for greater things, the voice hissed in his ear. And I don’t understand why you insist on going to Tatooine. There is nothing for you on that planet.

“You wanted me to stay on Jakku,” Ben said. “Tatooine is basically the same thing. I thought you’d be happy.”

The voice faded out, grumbling about young idiots and Destiny. Jakku was terrifying. He was worried someone would catch him out and call law enforcement to report a stolen ship. And while he was parking at “Honest” Unkar Plutt’s, the back of his neck prickled with the feeling of being watched by something small and hungry. That was behind him now.

He kept scrolling through job listings. No, he didn’t speak Bocce. No, he couldn’t repair ships or droids. One caught his eye, though:

Force user wanted! Gain valuable career development experience in established Tatooine organization. Asset protection, threat elimination, basic administration work, and other duties as assigned. Health benefits included: bacta-tank use, access to emergency body modification (specialist kept on retainer).  No resume or cover letter needed; give us your contact information and demonstrate your skill in-person at the Daimyo’s Palace.

Ben grinned and filled out his chaincode and signed up for some possible interview blocks. His lightsaber crackled at its place on his belt. Yes, this could be the job for him. It checked all his boxes-Tatooine, not affiliated with the Hutts, opportunity to show off the specific skills he fought for his entire life.  He’d seriously been working on his katas and sparring with Luke before he left. He nearly won against his uncle a time or two.

He could have been letting you have that, the voice needled again. He was holding you back.

“Yes, I know, and I left. I don’t need to talk about this anymore.”

Someone coughed. Ben-Kylo looked up and saw his shift supervisor staring at him with their big watery Mon Calamari eyes.

“Sorry,” he muttered, and made a show of adjusting a nonexistent earpiece in his helmet. “Look, I’m working, I’ll call you back, okay? Bye.”

The Mon Calamari burbled disapprovingly at him. “Please limit your personal calls on company time. The main deck needs mopping.”

Kylo glared at them through the mask. “I thought I was hired for security.”

“The job description included ‘other duties as assigned’.”

He sighed and grabbed the mop. The thing about space travel and advanced tech was that you could automate menial duties, but this automation would suck computing power and fuel from the main vessel. Those things could be expensive, while one person who could do that job and just needed to eat was relatively cheap.

He struggled against the sloshing weight of the mop bucket when the surface level headache deepened and he found his teeth reflexively grinding against each other. Every solid object gained a flickering aura.

“Religious observance,” he grunted to his boss, and dashed into a supply closet before he could throw up. At least nobody bothered to ask him which religion.

He closed his eyes and counted breaths like Luke had taught him, but he felt the weight of something pressing down on him like a cosmic anvil.

Ben. I wanna talk to you.

Great, another one of his recurring hallucinations. This one said her name was Rey, and she’d appeared in all of his odd dreams in various incarnations-a carnivorous, violent child, a willowy and equally violent young lady, a black-robed figure with golden eyes. Luke told him desert stories from Tatooine once, and in those stories naming a thing gave it power over you, so Ben only ever addressed her as “hey, you.”

“It’s ‘Kylo’ now,” was on the tip of his tongue, but in those stories you never wanted to give anything your name either. Kylo didn’t believe in any of the old superstitions, but that didn’t mean he wanted to test them either.

When Leia sent him to a therapist, Ben told the therapist about the people in his head, but then he read the therapist’s mind and saw an alternate future for himself- more specialized schools and camps, and cocktails of antipsychotic drugs with unfortunate side effects. So he made the therapist forget he said anything. The therapist had an aneurysm one week later and died. Ben cried when he heard about it, but Grogu told him that things like this were normal the first few times you mind-tricked anyone and he’d get better.

Kyle-o?

The girl’s face swam into focus with more bursts of pain. Her skin looked two shades lighter without all her customary grime. Her hair was not in its usual maze of braids, but someone had carefully put it in two plaits with a blue ribbon threaded through them. Usually, this hallucination was distinguished by the smell of unwashed feral child, but now Ben’s nostrils were assaulted with the astringent smell of cheap soap.

That sounds like a stupid name. Ben. Kyle-o. Whatever. Listen, you need to help me.

“You aren’t real. You’re my inner child or something.” That was the best explanation Ben could come up with for her. They were polar opposites-rich and poor, boy and girl, on the cusp of manhood and still losing baby teeth. And his insecurities about his masculinity or whatever meant that his subconscious created a whole new person to project his feminine side onto. And because Ben was “emotionally stunted”, to quote his doomed therapist, she hadn’t grown up alongside him.

Ben’s personification of femininity stomped her foot. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard, Kyle-o. You are the most…eggocentric person I know, and I was almost a slave a few times. I am not a symbol. I am not a hallucination. I am a person, and our destinies are linked. And I’m in trouble. 

“Eggocentric?”

It means only thinking about yourself, I think. And I only know words like this because I hear your thoughts sometimes. They are depressing. But whatever. I’ve been captured and tortured.

“What?”

Rey gestured to her scrubbed skin and stiff new blue tunic. This lady looked at me and told me I needed a bath and new clothes. I said no. She said that wasn’t up for negotiation so she took off all my clothes and threw me into a tub, and held me down and scrubbed me with a scratchy brush. It hurt. And then when I thought we’d be done, when the water turned black, she made me do it again. She took out my braids and washed my hair! They took away my weapons, too.

Ben blinked. “When was the last time you bathed before this?”

I scrub off the gunk with sand. It works. I don’t have my staff. I don’t have my blaster. They’re locked up. This guy-the man who captured me gave me to him-said that I can have them back for a few hours to practice if I behave. I asked what that meant, so he made a chart with things I’m supposed to do and he said he’d fill it in with stickers if I did them. STICKERS! These people are treating me like-like-

“A child?”

Yeah, and I’m not! 

“How old are you?”

Not sure. Doesn’t matter. I can take care of myself, and these people aren’t letting me. She held up one wrist to reveal a cuff.

This beeps if I go anywhere near a door without permission. I can’t disable it. I’ve tried. It makes the door lock. Listen, if you help me get out of here, I’ll do anything you want. Anything at all.

“I want you to go away,” Ben said.

Great! I don’t think I can do that because of the Destiny thing, but I can try! All you need to do is find this base and break me out.

“I have no reason to do that. You’re a child, and someone is taking care of you.” 

You’re underage in most sectors, Rey waspishly remarked. Her brow wrinkled in thought. Okay. If you rescue me, I’ll marry you.

“Why would I want to marry you? You’re just a kid.”

So are you. We can wait to do married-people things until we’re older, that’s fine, you’ll get prettier. You look kinda ugly now, but in ten years or so you grow into everything and start taking care of your hair. I’ll grow boobs and stuff, I think. But you’ll still want me around before then. I’m a good cook. I can make bread. I can kill your enemies.

“I don’t really have enemies.” The closest thing to a nemesis he ever had was one boy several grades ahead from the last fancy private school they tried sending him to. Armitage was tasked with tutoring Ben in remedial math; the school theorized that the most talented students could help those who were struggling. That was not the case. Armitage hated teaching, and Ben despised school. Halfway through that term, Armitage had been abruptly withdrawn. Some said he’d managed to graduate early (and he had been loudly working towards this goal), though others said his family ran out of tuition money.

You want enemies, though. 

Ben nodded. Unfortunately, she was right. 

So come find me. 

“How?”

The Force. 

“Rey, who are you talking to?”, someone said. Rey snarled.

Nobody.

“Well, I’m sure it’s past Nobody’s bedtime too.”

Another figure crystalized in Ben’s field of vision- someone wearing blue armor, and a helmet that covered his entire face like Din’s. He peered over the girl’s shoulder into what Ben hoped was empty air.

“Alright, you have two options now, ad’ika. You can lie down and be quiet if you can’t sleep, or you can come with me and help me finish the laundry and clean out the sink.”

I’ll lie down. Rey pouted.

“Attagirl.”

I’m going to kill all of you and leave this place.

“You can do anything you set your mind to, kiddo,” the man said. “But first, you need to start by getting a good night’s sleep. See you in the morning.”

Rey made a rude signal that even Ben didn’t recognize as her captor retreated.

You see what I have to deal with?

“I’m not coming to find you,” Ben said. “I’m going to get a job. Live my life. It seems like you’re doing fine here.”

You’re nothing alone, Rey countered. You need someone to guide you, Granddad says.

“Granddad?”

He’s been trying to help you. He’s happy you left home at least, he says that’s a start.

Someone was pounding at the closet door.

“We’re done,” Ben said. “I left home to get away from all of the Force weirdness.”

He staggered out to receive his dressing-down and replace all of the hand towel rolls in the restrooms. Only a few more days to Tatooine. He couldn’t wait. The Daimyo sounded super cool, whoever they were. If he could impress them and stay employed there for a year, he could go anywhere next.

Chapter Text

Din supposed he should have expected a captain of a privateer fleet with a moniker like “The General” to be an ex-Imperial. But the New Republic gave out titles like party favors and The First Order did loosely operate under the auspices of Republic control. They were pirates who hunted down other pirates, bounty hunters of ships and fleets instead of individuals. Din sneered at privateers and larger mercenary companies in the same way that an Armorer would scoff at plate and helmets mass-produced in some soulless factory.

This “First Order” fleet did have a reputation-it was disgustingly profitable, but on the backs of teenagers who ran away from home. Because they were based in Corellia and didn’t ask too many questions of their new recruits (who usually had lifespans measured in months), Din supposed it would be a natural place for Ben Solo to enlist. 

“You tell me what to do, I might as well join an army and get paid for it,” Ben used to grumble at Luke. Luke retorted that he’d never witnessed his nephew willingly rising earlier than nine in the morning; he’d not last long. No, Ben wouldn’t become a saber or blaster for hire. Din was mentally kicking himself for considering it.

Especially for this pasty man with a vein twitching by his eye as he fired round after round of a curious blaster that produced no laser trail at Din.

“We meet again, Mando”, the Imp sneered, a hunk of greasy red bangs coming unglued from its hair gel. “I knew you would. You people hold grudges and chase vengeance to the forth generation.”

Din had heard ethnic slurs that sounded less derogatory than “You people”. He shot back at “The General”, who ducked and rolled . He looked too young to be a captain of privateers; perhaps only a few years younger than Paz’s Ragnar. But he had purple bags under his eyes and a worry line between his brows.

“Really? I’ve never heard that one before. And who the kriff are you? I’ve never seen you before in my life.” Din aimed his blaster. Honestly, killing this kid with this mysterious chip on his shoulder and his funky gun would be shamefully easy.

The young so-called General fumbled with a clip and shot again, one of the laser-less rounds piercing the beskar swifter than any spear and exploding into his shoulder, and he dropped to his knees in agony. This was sharper than the laser-burn of a blaster round. The edges of things began to look fuzzy, and he numbly realized that the red shine on his paulron was blood.

The boy stalked over. “This, Mando, is a slug-thrower”, he said, gesturing to the gun. “They were used against your kind in one of the earlier wars. Shoots balls of solid lead. Old-fashioned, perhaps, but effective. Hard to find, though. It took my mother years of searching to find a model, and longer still to restore this piece to its former glory. But she said my protection was worth every credit.”

“I still have no idea what you are talking about,” Din said through gritted teeth.

The boy’s eyes bulged with fury. “You killed my father,” he spat. “And now you have come back to finish the job, even though I never laid a finger on your green baby.”

“I-I’ve killed a lot of people,” Din managed. And then, he took advantage of the younger fighter’s Imperial tendency to monologue and grabbed the Darksaber in the hand attached to his good arm, staggered to his feet, unholstered it, and swung it towards the boy’s chest.

A dagger slithered out of his opponent’s sleeve, but he froze, mesmerized by the humming dark crystal.

“Alright,” he murmured. “But now I have reinforcements.”

“Cap?” Footsteps echoed against the durasteel of the port hangars. Din glanced to the side and realized they were surrounded. Kriff. A tall woman with shiny chromium armor and a silver-veiled face had a blaster trained on Din’s back. Platoons of worryingly baby-faced troopers in scuffed green armor stood, waiting.

“I didn’t come here to kill you,” Din said. 

“Oh?”

The Darksaber hummed. The slim dagger shook in a black-gloved hand. Behind them, someone nervously coughed.

“I came to ask if you have a new recruit by the name of Ben Solo. Or Kylo Ren. I am prepared to offer compensation for any credible information.”

The boy’s jaw dropped, then he burst into a hoarse, barking laugh. “Ben Solo. Ben Solo! Stand down, you lot. And Mitaka, come see to his shoulder-he’s got a ball in it.”

A shuddering teen with a med-pack trailed by a droid fell upon him. “I’ve, uh, never actually done this outside sims,” he said, and proved it, but the med-droid delivered enough local numbing agents and fixed this kid’s mistakes efficiently enough that Din didn’t mind too much.

“I honestly thought Solo would be dead or in jail by now,” The General mused, when Din had been cleaned up, deposited on a couch with suspicious stains, and offered a drink. (He declined. One of the many rumors about the First Order was that they poisoned their competitors.”

“What makes you say that?” He still couldn’t place this boy’s face. Then, he remembered the last time Grogu had been captured by Imps. He had shot a redhead then, some potbellied officer. He disintegrated when the pulse of his Amban rifle hit his smarmy bearded face. And there had been someone else in that shipboard office. A very small boy with a black eye, trembling behind a desk. Din had thought to take him back as a Foundling for a second, but the fighting grew more intense on the way to rescue the kid he already had, and when he passed by that corridor the child had disappeared.

“We went to school together,” The General replied. “I was a few years ahead, they assigned me as his Algebra 1 tutor. He was hopeless at it. He wasn’t what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“A rich, spoilt little boy,” he said, sipping a glass of brandy. “And he did deliver on that part. But the way the Force moved around him was surprising and disturbing. I say this as someone who knew a Force-user, before. The one I knew was very different. But I suppose that I’d only known her as an adult in full control of her powers with a history I’d never fully comprehend, and Ben was just a kid. With less structured training than their kind had in previous generations, from what I could gather.”

“You knew other Force users?”, Din asked, shocked. Ashoka never mentioned associating with the Imps. This man-child was too young to have met the main Imperial ones, Pal-Patine or…Veeder. And this one was a she. If Luke’s depression worsened, Grogu would need another instructor.

“Just the one. And she’s retired.”

Din experimentally stretched out his wounded shoulder. It still hurt. “What made her so different than Ben Solo?”

“Like I said; one was a middle-aged woman, the other was a little boy. And my— the Force-user I know had difficulty expressing any sort of emotion at all. She had it mostly drilled out of her, I think. Ben Solo had all of them at once, and we knew it. She thought about things so much that even normal household tasks were a multidimensional game of holochess. Ben Solo just broke things because he liked the noises they made. He–he…” The man gulped.

“He what?”, Din said.

“Once,” The General said faintly, “he forced his way into my memories and goaded me with what he found there until I snapped. I beat him bloody with a Bocce-ball stick behind the dining hall. He lay there and took it, laughing all the while. When I came to my senses and stopped, he choked me and threw me against the wall. One of the teachers found us. He mind-tricked the entire staff of the school into thinking that our injuries were from tripping on uneven flagstones, and to this day every path at Chandrilla Select Academy has two handrails, even the ones on level ground. All he would say when I pressed him is that my anger tasted delicious.”

“Oh.” Din tried to reconcile this image of Ben with the child who levitated toy ships into the air around Grogu’s head, who gamely tried the frogs Grogu caught for him, and cried when it came time to harvest the lettuces they’d grown in the garden because it was cruel to nurture something and then cut it down.

“I hope you find him,” The General muttered. “The Galaxy will be safer with him out of it. Now, what do I owe you?”

“Why would you owe me anything?”

The General rolled his eyes. “You’ve done hits, right? Usually, if someone gets a life insurance policy payout, what’s your cut?”

“ What?”

“My stepmother, Maratelle, took out a very generous policy on my father before he took me and kriffed off to the Unknown Regions. And she’d seen the writing on the wall, so she made sure to go to a politically neutral firm, not using anything connected to the Empire so that even when her assets were confiscated and her accounts were frozen at the end of the war, there was one pot of money they couldn’t touch. They used that money to move off-world, pay for her medical treatments, send me to school. There’s still some left-they wanted me to go to uni and become an engineer or some such thing, but when Maratelle had her first stroke I had to step up and run the business. What do you usually charge?”

“I’m not an assassin,” Din said. “Nothing. And didn’t you want to avenge your father? I did kill him and deprive you of a lifetime of his care.”

The privateer snorted.

“Honestly, I was better off without him. It’s more that we were all annoyed that we couldn’t kill him first, but the timing and clear lack of connection to any of his family members was convenient,” The General explained. “My mother wanted to kill him for a number of reasons. Maratelle wanted to kill him because he cheated on her with my mother, I wanted to kill him because he beat me. We had our own grudges and secret plans. And then you came along, and with one shot he disintegrated into ashes. Nothing is permanent, I realized after that day. Everything goes. But I did have nightmares about you coming back for me. And my mothers had to evict me from the foot of their bed. I dreamed they’d disappear too. I think they had nightmares that I’d turn into him. ” By this time, the brandy glass was empty.

“ Gar taldin ni jaonyc; gar sa buir, ori'wadaasla.” The proverb came to him unbidden.

“What’s that mean?”

“Nobody cares who your father was, only the father you’ll be,” Din translated.

His informant chuckled. “I went and got a vasectomy. My line ends with me. Go home and look after your magic baby. And don’t worry. After what I saw him do to some of the Stormtroopers, I was too scared to look at him.”

“He’s a small child now. Not a baby anymore.”

“Ah. Time flies, Mando. I hope we never meet again.”

“Likewise,” Din said. He staggered up and limped away back to his ship. Slugthrower. If this child of the Empire knew about that archaic but deadly weapons technology, who else did? He’d go and ask Boba Fett about them; he knew lots of obscure things. And after he did his research to determine how many people might have it, he’d need to devise a plan to protect his people from it. A thing that could pierce beskar like a stone through water was an existential threat to every Mandalorian.