Chapter Text
Returning Grogu to his people is rewarding in the worst of ways. Din has done it. He’s completed his task, reunited his charge with the Jedi that he belongs with, he’s ensured the kid is finally safe. He’s done this all, at the cost of so much to himself. He’s forsaken his Creed, removed his helmet and let his face be seen by others. He’s without the child he’d kept so securely in his care. He’s without his ship—his home.
Din has lost everything, but he is Mandalorian. He will survive. He may love Grogu, may give his life to protect him should it come to it once more, but he also knows that to love someone sometimes mean you must let them go. He is Mandalorian. His will find a new home in a new ship, just as those before him spread themselves across the galaxy, finding their new homes on new planets. He is Mandalorian. He will redeem himself in the eyes of the Creed and swear never to remove his helmet again. This is the Way.
First he just has to… redeem himself. And get a ship. And get over the sense of wrongness filling his chest anytime he looks towards his side and doesn’t see the Child there as well.
How hard can it be?
Harder than you’d think.
Three days. Three days Din has spent without a ship and what has this experience gotten him? Stuck collecting a bounty on some shitty backwater planet that doesn’t even have the decency Tatooine does in having entertaining locals. He’s been trudging through the swamp for days, supposedly looking for his target, but Din’s not convinced at this point. All he’s found so far is leeches and way too many different species of creatures that want to strangle him alive. If he had a ship, maybe he could have landed closer to where his target was hiding, but nope, he’d been forced to hitchhike and essentially space-dive as the pilot flew by. As you can imagine, that’s hardly the most accurate way to land on a planet.
His socks are wet.
He wants to go home.
He activates his HUD, scanning his surroundings, the visor easily identifying a structure not too far away. It’s a building of some kind, though given the decrepit state it’s in, Din’s not sure it can really be called a building anymore. He doubts his target is hiding there, but Din heads towards it regardless, thinking that it might be nice to have some dry land under his feet instead of mud that he sinks several inches into each time he takes a step.
He reaches the land in five minutes time, surveying the building that sits atop the small hill closer now that it is within eyesight. It’s… disgusting. As is everything on this planet, Din is coming to realize. What little structure remains of the building is covered in vines and mud and probably mold, the ground looks like bantha shit, and there’s a few flowers clinging to the vines wrapping the building that smell like rotting meat. All in all, it’s horrible.
But the ground is dry and there’s space for a campfire to be built. Given the state Din himself is in, he’s both happy and willing to take what he can get. He trudges over to the hill, climbs it, and finds a nice flat rock to call his base, and then makes camp.
It takes an hour or so to collect what he needs for the campfire, but once he has everything and then has it built, he finds himself thinking that maybe the extra hour of wading through the mud was worth it. Maybe.
Once the fire is properly burning, he sits down on the flat rock he’d deemed suitable for sitting and begins the Herculean task of taking off his water-logged and mud-covered boots. He winces in sympathy for the poor things as he takes the right one off and a veritable torrent of water comes out along with his foot. He shakes the boot, wrings it out, and then sets it aside and repeats the task with the other one. After that, he sets both boots down by the fire and considers his pants. The thighs are dry. Everywhere below the knees? Not so much. He doesn’t particularly want to sit pants-less in the swamp, but he’s not a fan of the way the fabric sticks to his calves like a wet blanket either.
Ultimately, he decides against the idea. His pants will dry. Eventually.
Din leans back on his rock, placing both hands behind him and—
The rock beneath his left hand shifts, turning a full one-eighty, rolling Din’s wrist and causing him to pull his hand back in a mixture of surprise and pain. He has the time to clutch at his wrist, curse his existence and this wretched swamp, and notice an odd light filling his vision before suddenly he’s tumbling through nothingness. Lights flash around him. The sounds of everything and yet nothing fill his ears. He can’t breathe. He’d assume he’s gone into hyperspace by the way the stars fly by him, but he’s not in a ship of any kind and he’s pretty sure his body shouldn’t be able to go at light speeds without one.
When he lands, he lands hard. He hits the ground with a clang that reverberates not just through the air, but his entire body. It feels like he’s been rammed by the mudhorn all over again. Scratch that. Worse.
Dazedly, Din stares up at the ceiling above him. There are industrial style lights built into the ceiling that are just a bit too bright for his liking. The structure seems to be duracrete, though maybe it’s ferrocrete and his eyes are just failing him—
Wait.
Building?
Din bolts up, body complaining the entire way, and stares at the structure around him. It’s a building alright. No swamp in sight. The fire he’d built is gone, and similarly, his shoes are also gone.
Din’s mind doesn’t even take the time to lament the loss of his shoes, too busy trying to figure out where the kriff he is. He’s in a hallway, that’s for sure. It’s a long one. That’s about all Din can gather from what he can see.
Groaning, Din makes to stand. His body complains even more than it had when sitting up, but Din ignores it in favor of rising to his feet so that he can hopefully hobble towards something that will tell him more about where he is. He checks himself over. Body? In pain, but functioning. Darksaber? Still attached to his belt. Beskar spear? It fell off his back at some point, but sits only a couple feet away now, unscathed. Shoes? Regretfully, not on his feet.
He sighs and toddles over to the spear, picking it up off the ground and fastening it to his back. Instincts tell him to keep a good hold on it in case he’s ended up in a dangerous environment, but he elects against it, instead opting to hold his blaster loosely by his side. The blaster is more likely to be useful to him, anyway.
From there, he looks left and right at either ends of the hallway, eventually deciding on heading right because… well, because. His bare feet pad against the flooring as he walks, making far less sound than his boots ever would. His eyes search his surroundings carefully, looking for any indication as to where he is or how he got here.
After two minutes of walking, he finds a door. It’s the hidden kind, the ones with minimalistic handles designed to look like another piece of the wall, but Din’s HUD sees through the disguise easily. He pauses outside the door for a brief moment before coming to the conclusion that if he didn’t go in, he’d just have to keep walking down this hallway.
He tightens his grip on his blaster and presses the door open. It unlocks with a click, swinging inward to reveal a dark duracrete room. Din gives the hallway one last look before going inside.
In the center of the room, he finds a man being held in a containment field. The blue energy holds him a meter above the generator, with magnetic cuffs attached to his wrists and ankles holding him firmly in the field’s grasp. The man rotates slowly in the field, like a Kowakian monkey-lizard being roasted over a fire.
A door lies on the opposite side of the circular chamber—clearly the front entrance—but other than that and the prisoner, there is nothing else of note in the room.
Din’s not entirely sure what to make of the scene. When the prisoner rotates around and spots him—full beskar armor, no shoes—he clearly isn’t sure what to make of what he sees either.
“Who are you?” The man asks immediately, one eyebrow raised. He looks to be about Din’s age, with copper-brown hair that stops about halfway down his neck and a beard that frames his face. He’s dressed in robes of some kind, with a belt tied around his waist and boots that reach his calves on his feet. Din’s a bit envious.
Din doesn’t deign him with a response to his question, though. He’s not interested in giving out his name when he’s not even sure what planet he’s on. Instead, he steps forward, walking around the circumference of the circular room, giving the hidden doorway he’d just come from a decent inspection on his way. There’s nothing to note, really. It’s just a doorway, just as this is nothing more than a room with a prisoner in a containment field.
The man takes his silence as an invitation to ask another question. “Are you here to torture me?”
Din stops his inspection of the room long enough to give the man a curious look. The man straightens somewhat, projecting an aura about him that says he’s not scared—although, Din thinks he is.
“No,” Din responds truthfully.
“Oh.” The man relaxes somewhat, sounding pleased to find that he’s not going to be tortured today. “What are you here for then?”
Din considers his words before landing on, “I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure?”
Din shakes his head. He continues on his trek around the room, going towards the door on the other side. He flicks on the thermal sensor in his HUD and finds that two guards stand on the other side of this door, facing away from him. Past them, there’s several more people standing in a large open space. Okay… well he’s both found an exit and found a route he doesn’t want to take. He turns back to the prisoner.
“Why are you here?” He asks. The man doesn’t look particularly dangerous, but Din doesn’t judge a book by its cover.
The man is halfway through another rotation at the moment, meaning Din can’t see his face, but he answers nonetheless. “I learned of Dooku’s plot to build a droid army and I—“
“Droid army?” Din interrupts, alarmed.
The man’s rotation lines him back up with Din’s face now. Hope and apprehension flash equally across his features.
Din’s mind spirals downward, remembering explosions and blaster fire, battle droids destroying everything and everyone in their path, smoke filling his lungs and tears clouding his vision as his parents carried him, stumbling through the streets. He remembers the cellar, the explosion that rocked even the ground itself, and he remembers knowing then and there that his parents were dead.
His features set, jaw tightening under his helmet. If whoever this Dooku is is building another droid army, trying to start another war like the one that began the Empire, Din will put a stop to it.
“Yes,” the man in the containment field says, voice bordering on excitement. “Yes, Dooku is building a droid army, he’s going to start a war. I need to get back to Coruscant to inform the Republic about this.”
Reasonable enough. Din can get behind that plan, though he can also get behind his plan, which is to kill Dooku and blow up his droid army before he ever gets the chance to deploy it. He likes his plan slightly more.
“Where’s Dooku?” He asks, grip shifting on his blaster.
“What?”
“Dooku.” He hopes he’s saying the name right and not just gibberish. “Where is he?”
“Well—I don’t know. He came and spoke to me a couple of hours ago, but hasn’t been back since. From what I understand, my execution is set for tomorrow.”
Din nods. “I’ll set you free and then you’ll lead me to Dooku,” he says, knowing quite well that such a move could backfire on him. This prisoner might try to attack him and then run, but Din is willing to test his odds.
The man nods, pleased with this plan, and Din takes several steps forward towards the controls for the containment field. He’s never seen one of these up close before, but he’s sure it’ll work the same way as any other person-holding device would.
Right as his hands are hovering over the device, the door behind him opens. Din whips around, blaster drawn, and finds himself staring at an older man in robes similar to that of the prisoner’s, the shock on his face clear as day.
“Ah,” the prisoner says. “That’s Dooku.”
Ah.
Din pulls the trigger.
A vrwmm sound fills the air and the blaster bolt is deflected, striking the wall behind Din’s left side. A red glow fills the room now, emanating from an oddly familiar weapon. Din narrows his gaze and fires again, three quick shots in a row. Two of them are deflected towards the wall, but the third hits Din in his own armor. The beskar rings in response but Din doesn’t feel the hit.
He recognizes this weapon. Or at least, weapons like it. It’s the laser sword the Jedi use. Or… lasersaber? Light sword? Regardless of name, he’s fought against a wielder of one of these weapons before. She was fast, agile, and moved in ways Din hadn’t been prepared for at the time. He’d honestly survived the encounter solely because of his beskar. The other time he’d seen someone with this sort of weapon was Luke Skywalker. He’d watched the man cut through a veritable army as though they were nothing more than target practice.
Din isn’t stupid. He knows Dooku is dangerous if he wields one of those weapons. But he also knows that regardless of the danger, this is a man trying to build a droid army. A man trying to start a war.
Din grew up in war. He’s seen the horrors of it, watched his people die, watched Mandalorians get slaughtered for their Creed and their precious beskar. He’s seen droids kill people and rip apart families time and time again. He will not let it happen again.
Grogu may not be under his protection anymore, but he won’t let his child grow up in a galaxy at war.
Din puts his blaster away and pulls his spear, rushing Dooku and forcing close-quarters combat. Dooku’s surprise has fallen, his jaw set and his hands steady on his laser sword. The saber hums in the air and wooshes with each movement he makes, and if Din remembers Ahsoka Tano’s weapon correctly… if he listens closely… he can tell what the weapon is doing without being able to see it.
His spear blocks the first strike with ease. Dooku’s eyes widen in shock. Din wonders if he’s ever seen a weapon capable of stopping his own.
Din uses the moment of shock to force the advantage, kicking out with one foot and forcing the man to stumble backwards. Din lashes out with his spear, the tip going straight for Dooku’s heart.
It’s blocked at the last second. Dooku raises a hand and Din is flung across the room. Right. The magic. He can adapt to that—he’s seen Grogu use such maneuvers plenty of times. Dooku will likely use it to immobilize him, throw Din off of him, or throw objects at him. The room is largely empty, so he shouldn’t have to worry about the latter. The first two though…
Din steadies himself and lets Dooku come to him.
Dooku doesn’t though. “Who are you?” The man asks, his voice gravelly with age, his eyes suspicious.
Din still doesn’t give an answer. Instead, he says, “You’re creating a droid army. Why?”
Dooku frowns. “Because the Republic is flawed.”
“So you’re going to war over it?” Din scowls.
That must be the wrong thing to say because Dooku returns to the attack, his laser sword slicing through the air in an arc that ends near Din’s exposed feet.
Low blow, Din thinks bitterly. Literally.
Din and Dooku return to the fight, Din’s beskar deflecting each strike with ease. Dooku attempts to adapt, moving to strike in the places that Din’s beskar doesn’t cover, but that’s the thing about armor—it’s not designed to be easy to get around. Din’s primarily on the defensive, but not entirely so.
The way Dooku wields his lasersaber is different from Ahsoka, he notes. She’d held hers in a reverse-grip and used a more offensive style, while Dooku holds his sword normally, his movements both aggressive and graceful.
If Din had more time, he’d think about the implications of there being multiple forms of laser sword combat. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the time at the moment.
Din blocks another strike with his spear, and another, and another. Dooku’s moves are fluid—nothing like the harsh hits of a Mandalorian or the Jedi he fought previously. It’s frustratingly difficult to counter. There are few holes in his defense.
Din will just have to make holes.
He kicks out with one foot, blocking another light sword strike with his vambrace at the same time, and his foot connects with Dooku’s abdomen sending the older man stumbling backwards. Din doesn’t hesitate. He rushes forward, spear pointed forwards, and makes a circular motion with the staff the second it connects with Dooku’s wrist. The man’s weapon goes flying, deactivating halfway through its careen across the room, landing with a clatter somewhere behind the prisoner.
Dooku’s eyes widen with fear and understanding in that moment.
Then, Din readjusts his spear and drives it straight through Dooku’s shoulder.
The man cries out in pain, the sound piercing the air and sending satisfaction through Din’s system in a way most kills don’t. Din drives the spear in further, forcing Dooku backwards until he’s pressed up against the wall, the tip of the blood-soaked spear against the duracrete the only thing stopping Din from going any further.
Dooku’s face contorts with agony. Din leans in close, his voice a growling promise. “Your droid army will not tear this galaxy apart. Not again. Not while I live in it.”
And then Din promptly gets hit in the head with the hilt of the stupid laser sword. He wants to say that he was badass enough to shake it off like it was nothing, but truth be told, having the hilt of a lasersword bludgeon you in the back of the head isn’t exactly as painless as Din wishes it was.
Dooku forces Din off of him with his stupid Jedi magic, gripping his light sword tightly in hand. It’s the opposite hand to earlier—Din’s spear is still embedded in the man’s dominant shoulder. Din, now laying on the ground several feet away, feels oddly proud of this accomplishment.
Din activates his flamethrower and lets the fire torch the evil-Jedi. He doesn’t think it’ll have much effect—it rarely does—but it lays down enough cover for Din to pull himself to his feet and prepare his blaster.
What he wouldn’t do for his old Amban sniper rifle right now… the electricity on that thing alone would probably take this guy down, not to mention what the disintegration setting would do.
The second the flames stop, Din fires. The bolt hits Dooku square in his other shoulder, forcing him to drop the lasersaber once again. Din takes a step forward to reassert his dominance over this confrontation, but before his foot can even touch the ground, Dooku rips the spear free from his shoulder with a pained yowl.
And then the man runs.
Din watches as the man—dignified as he had been earlier—bolts towards the door, clutching his wounded shoulder to no avail. His steps are hurried and limping, but he’s fast for a man of his age, as he crosses the barrier to the door, blood dripping at an alarming rate behind him.
The door shuts. Din switches his HUD to thermal again and watches as the man continues to run, head swiveling from side to side as though barking orders at the subordinates around him. After a moment, Din realizes that’s exactly what he’s doing. The guards around the door and rest of the figures in the space outside all turn towards the door Dooku had just fled from, weapons raised, body temperatures spiking.
Din turns off the thermal and turns towards the man in the containment field.
“I’d say we have about twenty seconds,” he guesses, striding towards his spear, picking it up off the ground, and slinging it back into its spot on his back.
“I think it might be less than that,” the man says, his voice a little faint.
Din grunts. He’s probably right. Reaching the controls again, he finally finds the button to deactivate the containment field. “I hope you know where the exit is,” Din says as he presses the button, “because I don’t and I can’t fight that many people by myself.”
The man falls from the meter-high position he’d been held at, but shakes it off quickly, standing and brushing off his shoulders while giving Din a look that seems to say, are you sure about that?
Din’s quite sure.
There were a lot of them.
“We don’t have much time,” Din reminds him.
“Right,” the man says, and turns on his heel, heading for the door Din had come from previously. Din follows him without argument.
The second they pass through the doorway, the other one opens, and dozens of bug-like soldiers stream through. Din shuts his door quickly and shoots the controls, hopefully disabling it long enough for him and the former-prisoner to get a decent head start on the pursuers.
They rush through the halls seemingly at random. The other man leads, though he seems less confident and more like he’s flying on instinct. They take two rights, a left, dive into a hole in the floor, take another right and another left, and only when Din is positive they can’t be going the right direction does he speak up.
“Do you know where you’re going?” He asks, rather scathingly. In his defense, running in this armor with no shoes on is both exhausting and uncomfortable.
The man hesitates before responding. “This… feels like the right path.”
Oh great. It feels like the right path.
They take yet another hallway at light speed before they come across a grate situated at the end of the passage. Din slows to a stop and stares at it, breathing heavily. He’s not even out of shape—that run was just plain absurd! Kriffing—
“This is it,” the man says, peering through the grate to the other side. “My ship is right there.”
Din nods.
The man begins studying the grate, as though perplexed on how to open it. Din pushes him aside and proceeds to blast the grate in four different spots, effectively weakening it, before kicking it down. His foot stings from the impact, but it’s not going to cripple him.
“After you,” he says once the dust settles.
The man blinks at him for a few seconds before nodding and heading through the space left by the grate. Din follows him out onto the rocky and painfully hot surface of a planet Din sure as hell doesn’t recognize.
Din, being a Mandalorian bounty hunter, is certainly an expert when it comes to planetary navigation. There isn’t a system in the galaxy he can’t recognize. Given that, it truly means something when he says he has no kriffing clue where he is.
His best guess would be Tatooine, but no, he knows Tatooine. Tatooine has two suns. Tatooine doesn’t have a droid army being built on it. And Tatooine definitely doesn’t have thousands of ugly bug creatures serving an evil Jedi.
So, it’s not Tatooine.
He nearly asks his newfound companion where they are before realizing how odd of a question that would be. Not that this isn’t an odd situation…
They reach the man’s ship a few seconds later and Din realizes that there’s a slight problem with it.
“That’s a one-man ship,” Din points out, coming to a stop. His feet are burning from the heat of the ground.
“Yes?” The man says. “Do you not have your own ship?”
Din doesn’t want to even think about what happened to his ship.
“No.”
“Ah. I see.”
Din considers the craft. Maybe it has a storage compartment he could hole away in? Or perhaps the cockpit has more space than it looks like it does? Or maybe he can pressurize his—
“We could both fit in the cockpit if you put all of your armor in the storage compartment,” the other man suggests.
Din turns to stare at him judgmentally. Din would literally rather die.
“…I take it you’re not a fan of that idea.”
“I’ll stay in the storage compartment,” Din says. If it’s big enough to fit his armor, it can fit him too. Hopefully. “Just don’t crash.”
The man huffs a small laugh before heading towards the cockpit. “Oh don’t worry, unlike my Padawan, I enjoy safe landings.”
Din doesn’t know who this man’s Padawan is—or what that term even means—but he’s sure he doesn’t want to meet them. Or, at least, doesn’t want to be in the same ship with them.
Din nods stiffly and heads towards the place he’s assuming the storage compartment is. He finds the latch easily enough, sighs as he notes the space, and crawls in. The hatch clicks behind him and Din settles in for what has to be the most humiliating flight of his lifetime.
Only after he feels the ship take off does he realize he doesn’t even know where they are going.