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If Din put half as much effort into being Mand'alor as he did avoiding being the Mand'alor, Paz was fairly certain they could have conquered the entirety of the New Republic by now.

"You're a disgrace," he said, slapping a blaster on the table. "A coward."

"Yeah," Din said, leaning against the same table with one foot propped up on it, and vibroblade in hand. He was using it to carefully pick dried mud out from between the treads of his boot. "I am. So I shouldn't be Mand'alor. You should definitely tell more people that."

"I should kick your ass out of my armory is what I should do," Paz said.

"It's technically my armory," Din said. "Apparently I'm Mand'alor. Not sure if you heard. I have a throne and a fancier cape now."

"You're not even wearing it," Paz said.

"I don't like it," Din said, still bent over and focused on his boots. "My old one is better."

"Disgrace," Paz said, and then fished around in bottom of the armory locker where he'd been storing a jumble of bes'bevs in preparation for being melted down to new weaponry or to wait for someone with actual musical talent to claim them. Right now, they mostly served as camouflage for something else; he hoisted up one of the jugs of tihaar he'd been brewing on the sly in a makeshift still in the back of an abandoned locker. "You want some?"

"Fuck, yes," Din said, and Paz poured a hefty amount into an old helmet he'd been pounding the dents out of, and they passed it back and forth between them, each automatically turning away when the other lifted his helmet enough to drink. In between sips, Din finished picking at his boots and was now fiddling with something on his left vambrace. He'd unhooked the Darksaber from his belt and put it on the tabletop next to him. After a while, he jerked his elbow back and swore as something on the vambrace sparked, and the table jolted. The Darksaber rolled off and fell to the ground with a metallic clank.

"Kriff," Din muttered. "Hand me that."

"That's not going to work," Paz said. "I'm not falling for a cheap trick like that, di'kut."

"It's closer to you," Din said.

"Fuck off."

Din grunted and finally bent over and picked it up. He flipped it over in his hand so that the hilt pointed towards Paz. "There's a New Republic Senator who said we're a savage group of warmongering barbarians whose diminishment from the galaxy was long overdue and can only benefit it," he said. "If you take the Darksaber, you can decapitate him the next time we're invited to Chandrila."

Paz turned his back, took a long gulp of tihaar, and shoved it back to Din. "You're the king now. Go… king at him, then. Do king shit. Or whatever you do."

"King shit is mostly just other Mandalorians trying to stab me for the Darksaber," Din said. "Or shoot me. Or Kryze making me sign trade route documents in font so small I can barely read them and then I get a headache." He sounded morose, even for Din. "I think she does it on purpose. The angrier she is, the smaller the font gets."

"Sounds awful," Paz said. "Have fun."

"You could be king," Din said coaxingly. "Clan Vizsla created the Darksaber. You should take it back. For the glory of Mandalore and Clan Vizsla."

"Yeah, no, fuck that," Paz said. "That's all you, Mand'alor the Reluctant."

"Mand'alor the Kriffing Tired," Din said just before he froze and then dropped and shamelessly ducked under the table when there were footsteps outside the armory door. Paz sighed, got up, and moved in front of the table so that he was in direct line of vision with the door.

Woves poked his head in, helmetless. "Where's the Mand'alor?"

Paz shrugged and started aggressively breaking down his heavy repeater. "Don't care."

"Asshole," Woves said, without much heat to it. "He's not answering his comm."

Paz shrugged again. "Someone challenging him?"

"No, he's supposed to be at a briefing about the Senate agenda rollout ahead of the Senate meeting that's coming up next week."

"A meeting about the schedule about another meeting," Paz said. "That seems like a good use of time."

Woves rolled his eyes. "Some problems require more nuanced action than just shooting at them."

"Haven't run into one of those yet," Paz said. He jacked the repeater to test for jamming, raised it up to swivel back and forth to check the balance, and then continued breaking it down. "Next time I see him, I'll tell him. Regular council meeting room?"

"Just send him to the throne room, there's less escape routes to seal off," Woves said, and shut the door behind him.

Paz waited for another minute or two, and then put the repeater back on the tabletop so he could crouch down to look under the table. "You're supposed to be at a briefing about the Senate agenda rollout ahead of the meeting next week. Go to the throne room."

"They're wrong," Din said, still hunkered down. "I can cut a new escape hole out of the north wall in the throne room where those decorative screens are. I already tried the Darksaber on it. It went through them like butter."

"Go king your ass off already, you lazy piece of bantha shit," Paz said, and tried to kick him. Din made a half-hearted swipe at him and then heaved a sigh that seemed to originate from the soles of his boots and travel to the very top of his helmet, before he extricated himself from under the table and stalked off to the throne room.

Din eventually got back at him with a vengeance by officially naming Paz to his council, which meant Paz couldn't just hide out in the armory and clean weaponry anymore; he was expected to attend meetings and pay attention to briefings and offer opinions, and they were even supposed to be useful. The only thing that made it bearable was that Din didn't even make it halfway through the third council meeting Paz attended before he stood up, slammed the Darksaber on the table, and made an official council directive as Mand'alor, interrupting a fight between Reeves and some asshole from Clan Rook whose name Paz hadn't bothered to retain.

"We have been hunted by the Empire and forced into hiding. Our ranks have been diminished and we are still rebuilding. It's a long road, and we have to stand together. We have all sworn to the Creed, even if we honor it in… different ways. We can't allow ourselves to be distracted like this." He took a deep breath and then sighed. "Face punching is allowed in all council meetings, but no murder. And you gotta clean up afterward."

He started to sit down and then straightened up.

"And stop throwing chairs. Our funds are low enough without having to replace the kriffing furniture each time we have a meeting."

He paused again. "This is the Way."

"This is the Way," Paz and the rest of the room echoed, and as soon as Din sat down, Reeves shot a whipcord cable from her vambrace, yanked the Rook representative across the table, and punched him solidly in the face. The meeting continued without further disruption, and it even ended on time for once.

Mandalorians continued to trickle back to the planet with new ships arriving each day, never many but always a steadily increasing number. Din began having to hold regular hours in the throne room to greet the arrivals and field the occasional challenge. A few were in earnest, though most seemed to be ceremonial in nature, paying lip service to the ritual before begging for shelter or help. Din rarely used the Darksaber during them, preferring to keep to his beskar spear or regular weaponry. Paz remembered one particular match against a challenger who couldn't have been more than fifteen, arriving in dented armor that gapped at the joints, where the only new thing about it was the bright red paint covering both pauldrons, the chestplate, and running like tear tracks down the front of the helmet. Din had disarmed him in less than half a dozen moves, stopping as soon as the kid's salvaged E-11 blaster and antique-looking beskad sword had been kicked away to the corner of the throne room, and then striding forward to help the shaking kid up with his own hands, murmuring something to him that was too soft to hear. He'd sent the kid and the two unarmored foundlings he'd brought with him—apparently all that was left of their covert after an ambush on Sullust—off with someone to get them fed and housed, and then he'd ended the audience and disappeared for a couple hours. Paz had followed him far enough to make this sure was just a normal occasion of Din skulking around and having private emotions, and not some more permanent disappearance like he was always threatening.

At the meeting the next day, Din hadn't let Kryze start the usual routine of discussions of which incremental concessions they could potentially allow in the next round of Senate talks and what vague promises the Senate were likeliest to actually deliver.

"This isn't working," he said as soon as everyone was in the room. "Nothing is working. All we do is go around in circles with the kriffing Senate and the New Republic, and meanwhile we're just barely scraping by. I know what we're not willing to give them, and I agree. Our beskar stays with us. What is possible that we can afford to offer to make them give a shit about us?"

Kryze folded her hands on the tabletop and gave him a level stare. "In a word: Connections. Alliances. Engagement."

"Words, not word," Paz said. Both Din and Kryze ignored him.

"We are engaging," Din said. "I engage with them every kriffing week."

"The other kind," Kryze said.

"I thought we weren't supposed to fight with them," Din said. "Isn't that the whole point?"

Kryze sighed. "You don't read anything I give you, do you?"

"...I skim," Din said.

"You should get married," Kryze said flatly. "I have a folder of five hundred potential candidates and the pros and cons of their connections, sorted by how powerful the connection, distance from Core and Outer Rim, gender and age, and how willing they'd be to put up with you and the concept of marrying someone without seeing their face first."

There was a long, awkward stretch of silence where Din appeared to be manually hard-booting his brain back online, and then he jolted and said, "What?"

After that incident, Din and Kryze avoided each other (or Din avoided Kryze, and she in turn gave him more grace than usual in tracking him down for council shit) for three politely brittle days. And then it collapsed spectacularly and they had it out in a yelling match so loud that Paz actually heard it in the west wing armory a floor down from the throne room. When he'd come up to see what was going on, no less than nine different people were plastered against the throne room doors shamelessly eavesdropping, and six more were using their various weaponry's scouting scopes to listen in, not that it was really necessary with every angry insult about each other's personalities, leadership qualities, handling of the Darksaber, heritage, chances of said heritage engaging in sexual congress with barnyard animals, personal ability to field-strip a EE-3 carbine rifle in under thirty seconds, and general state of existence clearly audible.

Paz had observed for a while and considered his options—go in and interrupt the fight and probably get yelled at by both Din and Kryze; go in and escalate the fight and probably get yelled at by Kryze but maybe not Din; go find someone else willing to go in and get yelled at by Din and Kryze; or just to go back and finish sorting all the shit he'd left uncategorized in the armory. In the end, he went over to the door and elbowed Woves out of his way so he could have a good listening spot for himself.

"So," he said.

"I think it's good. They're clearing the air," Woves said.

Paz gave that the pointed, judgmental silence it deserved. "How long've they been going?" he asked after another minute of yelling.

"I mean, they started with the arranged marriage proposals, but they already yelled about the Darksaber three times, the revisions to the Axis trade route thing with the Senate, the allocation of the funds for the terraforming versus the beskar mining surveys, and he also said the fur trim on the new ceremonial cloak is stupid and itches too much," Woves said. "No one's said the c word yet, though."

"—should have expected it from a KRIFFING CULTIST!" filtered through the door, Kryze at a volume high enough to shatter transparisteel.

"Never mind," Woves said. "Hey, are you in on the drinking game Koska came up with for this? That's worth at least two shots of tihaar."

Before Paz could answer (he was, though he objected to some of the values of the forfeits she'd selected) the doors burst open and nearly everyone immediately scattered or tried to look like they hadn't been listening in. Din came stomping out at full speed, cape (sans furs) streaming behind him, and plowing directly through anyone who didn't get out of his way fast enough; Kryze was right on his heels, still yelling as she elbowed aside anyone who Din hadn't managed to hit first. They went right across the foyer and through to another hallway, like the galaxy's briefest, angriest parade; the doors slammed shut behind them, and the ringing silence was gradually replaced by the buzz of various Mandalorians gossiping at high speed and pitch.

Next to him, Woves sighed. "Is he really against marriage as a concept, the Core prospects specifically, or does he just not want to be told what to do?"

"Yes," Paz said, and left it at that.

After that, Din simply up and disappeared for a full kriffing month, sneaking out in the middle of the night on a rattletrap pre-Empire ship he'd stubbornly acquired and refused to give up instead of his N-1 or the sleek cruiser that he was supposed to do his official Mand'alor traveling in, and vanishing off all radars without a trace of where he'd gone. Kryze was caught between being delighted at running everything without interference and having a rage stroke; she spent all her time loading up data-pads with all kinds of horribly complex economic and political briefings she was going to throw at him, probably literally, for whenever he showed up again. Paz checked the armory to see if Din had made off with anything indicating he planned to either blow up the Senate and/or start some kind of intergalactic war, and eventually decided that it was possible but unlikely, and therefore not his problem.

Din finally returned with as little fanfare as he'd left with, except this time he walked out of his shit-ass ship with another person accompanying him, someone short and slight enough that Paz nearly took whoever it was for another rescued adik at first, until he pushed back the hood of his black cloak with one gloved hand to reveal fair hair and a bare face that was young but definitely not an adik. Pretty. No armor at all, so an aruetii, then. A very pretty one. The young man looked around with interest and no fear, and he was holding Din's foundling in the crook of his other arm. When Din's foundling put a tiny hand up to grab at the man's hair, he smiled down at the kid and hitched him up so he could reach better.

Din looked around as well, putting a hand on the other man's shoulder and turning back to briefly check on the kid, gently untangling the kid's hand from where it was clutching a couple strands of hair. The kid didn't want to let go, and Din had to use one hand to prize those tiny grasping fingers loose and the other one to tuck the piece of hair back behind the man's ear. Just then, Kryze, who had probably clocked Din's ship as soon as it had broken atmosphere and immediately jetpacked over from wherever she was across the city in order to get first dibs at yelling, came striding towards his landing pad. She had her helmet jammed under one arm and looked ready to try and rip Din's throat out with her teeth.

Before Kryze could say anything, Din moved his hand to the stranger's shoulder and stepped closer to him. "This is Jedi Master Luke Skywalker. He's been teaching the kid," he said in Basic.

"I know exactly who he is," Kryze said shortly in Mando'a. "And if you think you're going to get out of—"

"He's my consort. We're married. He's going to live here on Mandalore now," Din interrupted, still in Basic.

Kryze stopped dead, two flushed spots high on her cheeks. The man, Skywalker—a Jetii? Kriff, Din never did do things by halves, the little shit—bowed his head slightly and nodded politely at Kryze. "Hello," he said. "I'm honored to be allowed to set foot on your ancestral planet."

Kryze said nothing for a full thirty seconds. She just stood there with her helmet under her arm and the other arm dangling down, and simply stared, expressionless. Din remained stolidly next to Skywalker and didn't say anything either, in a stance that could shift from bored to fighting with just a quick bit of footwork. The kid whined a little, and the Jedi made a soft hushing noise, bouncing him in his arms.

And then, at long last, Kryze actually smiled. Toothy and terrifying, and as far as Paz could tell, completely genuine.

"I see," she said, and then actually inclined her head. "My apologies, Mand'alor. If I had known you were already involved with such a personage, of course I wouldn't have recommended the previous candidates. Knowing you were already so… intimately connected."

"…Yeah," Din said after a long pause. "That."

The Jedi smiled. "Of course I don't officially serve the New Republic," he said cheerfully. "I've been more of a freelance contractor, I suppose."

"Regardless, your accomplishments and reputation are well-known," Kryze said. She tilted her head. "Particularly once the news of your relationship with Senator Organa became official."

Paz wondered if that meant Din had stolen someone else's spouse.

The Jedi laughed. "Leia's reputation and accomplishments completely dwarf mine," he said. "My sister's a remarkable woman, and responsible for a lot of what people credit to me. She's spoken of you as well."

Ah. So they probably wouldn't have to go to war with a New Republic senator. Good to know.

"But I'm happy to facilitate whatever I can," Skywalker said. "I've gotten pretty good at creatively filling out expense reports, anyway. They almost never got rejected. The grant requests are a little trickier, but I think I'm wearing them down. I'm looking forward to their response when I send the next batch and list Mandalore as my current residence."

"I'm sure you're too modest," Kryze said. "At any rate, we'll get an immediate announcement out to the people of Mandalore about this joyful turn of events, as well as the New Republic, and start planning official recognition of it."

"I think it'll be out there pretty soon anyway," the Jedi said, somewhat apologetically. "The Mand'alor and I had to make a few stops before we came out here, and one of them was on Chandrila so I could store a few of my things with my sister. The press saw us leaving together. There was… some excitement."

Kryze frowned and pulled up a feed from her vambrace. She scanned it for a few seconds and then looked at Din. "Did you headbutt an investigative journalist from the Galactic News Service in public?" She scanned further. "Did you headbutt three journalists?"

Din shrugged.

Kryze pursed her lips, but shrugged as well. "Well, at least people won't think it's for show or fake, anyway."

"It's real," Din said, a testy edge audible even through his modulator. "Anyone who doesn't think so can kriff off. We said the vows to each other."

"Well, you'll need to repeat them,” Kryze said briskly. "We still need to have some kind of public event.”

"Fine. You can plan it," Din said. "I need to talk to the Armorer about some things."

"Fine. Just to be clear, you and Skywalker have to be at the public event. The whole time," Kryze added. "I'll handle everything, but you have to do what I say and show up."

"Fine," Din said. He was already edging away, dragging the Jedi and his kid with him in the direction of the Great Forge. "Just comm me about it."

"And you have to wear the fur cape," Kryze called after him.

Din made an indeterminate noise, while the Jedi waved over his shoulder. "Very nice meeting you," the Jedi called back, as he kept pace with Din, cloak flapping around his legs. The baby waved as well.

Kryze stood there for a few more seconds while looking vaguely distracted, like she'd tripped and landed in a large hole filled with beskar and couldn't decide whether to deal with the pain or the treasure first. Eventually, she straightened up and her look sharpened to an appraisal of everyone in the near vicinity, who all immediately decided they had other things to be concerned over. She let them squirm for a few seconds, before she put her helmet back on, raised one fist in the air, and called out, "Our Mand'alor has found his Alo'riduur and returned in triumph. Oya manda!" to an answering cheer of "OYA MANDA!"

She strode off in the direction of the palace. Once again, Paz considered his options. With the headstart Din had had, Paz probably wasn't going to make it to the forge before he did, and as much as he'd give good credits to be a fly on the wall and see Din announce his marriage and introduce his spouse to the Armorer, there were other important things to be concerned about.

Easily the most urgent action was to share the gossip immediately.

***

"He did what," Fett said flatly through the commlink. He actually sat up from his throne and leaned forward.

"Just showed up with his foundling and a Jedi and said the Jedi was his consort and they were married so Kryze could toss out all the arranged marriage proposal shit," Paz said, feet propped up on the table while he worked on cleaning some ancestral munit'kad halberd that was probably very important, and was very ugly, and badly needed to have its shaft rebalanced. "And that they were both going to live here. The Jedi's name is Skywalker. He looks like he's barely old enough to shave."

For someone who refused to identify himself as a Mandalorian and had worked with the Empire, Paz rather liked Boba Fett, to his own continuous surprise. He didn't like many people outside of his covert, and he didn't like a lot of people inside his covert either, but he liked Fett, or enjoyed his company at least. For one thing, Kryze hated Fett, so Fett automatically started out with points in his favor for that alone. For another thing, Fett had never met Pre but he had some kind of bitter inherited hatred of his own for the old bastard, and since Pre was the one who'd fucked over most of the clan with his ambitions and sullied their reputation and lost the goddamn Darksaber to begin with, Paz approved of that as well. Further, the man knew how to fight, and he knew how to fight dirty, and either were admirable on their own, but Fett was very good at the latter, and Paz could acknowledge that out of professional appreciation.

And lastly, Din had decided Fett needed to be on his council as well, despite the fact Fett spent most of his time on Tatooine; since Fett mostly just commed into council meetings and rarely had to worry about getting punched in the face, it meant he also rarely had to worry about softening or filtering anything he said, and he took full advantage of that. Paz found it was a novel experience not to be considered the biggest asshole or political liability in the room. It didn't happen very often.

There was a whoop in the background, the sound of glass breaking, and a voice yelling something inaudibly that Fett turned to look at off holo. "Oh for fuck’s sake," he muttered.

"Fight?" Paz asked.

"No," Fett said a bit sourly. "My associate thinks I owe her money on a bet that she HASN'T WON YET."

The last three words were clearly directed off screen to whoever was whooping. Paz decided he didn't care. "Do you know anything about the Jedi?" Paz asked. "Useful shit, I mean. I'm sure Kryze has a datapad full of boring info and stats and political connections, but I want the good stuff. I thought all the Jedi were gone."

"If it's Skywalker," Fett said, and then fell silent. "Hmm. Are you sure Djarin isn't just…" He flapped his hand around aimlessly for a second. "Fuckstruck?"

"Hmm," Paz said. Thinking about Din having sex made him feel vaguely uncomfortable, though he knew it must… happen. Until recently he'd rarely had any reason to let it cross his mind, so it was difficult to establish a baseline for Din's level of sexual activity.

It was happening, though. It had likely been happening for a while. Din and the Jedi were sharing the same quarters and there was only one bed in there. That wouldn't have been conclusive necessarily on its own, and Paz wouldn't have put it past Din to have gone out, found, courted, and married a Jedi specifically just to piss off Kryze and ruin her marriage treaty plans. No, it was other pieces coming together, looking back in retrospect. The way Din had always returned from his mysterious previous jaunts in a better temper than he left, a different spring in his step. His one sacred hour every night where he'd lock himself in his quarters for his mysterious private commlink calls, and threatened death upon disturbance unless the Imps were returning to glass the entire planet. His familiar hand on the Jedi's back as he escorted him from the ship, tucking that piece of hair behind his ear. The casual, natural intimacy of their stance together, and the way Din seemed to trust him with the kid.

And, well, Paz bribing his way into the guard duty rotation that first night, waiting until it was closer to morning than night, and then setting off a flashbang in the hall and hammering relentlessly on the door until Din flung it open and nearly put the Darksaber through Paz's visor in the process. Most of his upper armor was buckled on over a sleeping shirt that was straining at the shoulder seams and gapped above his hips; likewise, the hems of his pants legs were riding above his ankles. The Jedi was right behind him, and he hadn't been wearing anything, except a sheet around his waist and three bruises on his neck, shoulder, and chest that looked the right shape and shade to have been bitten and sucked into existence by a mouth very recently. He had slightly darker nipples than Paz would have expected, going by the color of his hair

Din had looked at Paz, looked back at the Jedi, looked at Paz looking at the Jedi again, put two and two together, extinguished the Darksaber, and then lunged for him with a vibroblade. Paz had blocked it with his vambrace and then swung a fist at the gaps between the armor over his torso, and they'd rolled around on the floor for a few minutes, bumping into the narrow corridor walls while Paz mostly worked Din's ribs over and Din did his best to set Paz on fire in the limited space available. Eventually Din took advantage of the tight quarters and Paz's lesser mobility enough to get a leg up and then plant his ass on Paz's cuirass, using both hands to briskly bang his head against the ground while simultaneously trying to choke him. Paz was working his left arm out from where Din's foot was pinning it and just deciding whether it was worth the future bitching if he committed to actually breaking some of Din's ribs or if he should just go for the less long-term damage and much more immediately satisfying option of punching him in the balls, when there was a soft cough from the open doorway.

They stopped fighting because it felt like the air was solidifying around them, and it was like being wrapped in a wet blanket or trying to swim through mud, the same relentless downwards pressing sensation as on a high gravity world. The Jedi had stepped out into the hallway, this time also wearing an oversized shirt that was definitely Din's. Still no pants. He'd looked down at them and cocked his head, and then the pressure of the air lessened and it was possible to move again.

"You're going to wake Grogu up if you keep doing this," he'd said quietly. "I think we should all get some sleep now, if nothing's actually wrong."

"Better listen to wifey and go back to bed," Paz had said in Mando'a, because he knew one of the reasons Din had gotten the beroya position over him on Nevarro was due to Paz never being able to keep his mouth shut when he should, so now that they were out of the sewers and somehow Din was Mand'alor and Paz was on his council, Paz mostly just leaned into his own verbal impulse shortcomings.

"I will skullfuck you so hard your descendants will be feeling it in their eye sockets three generations from now," Din warned him in Mando'a—Din, using that many words over the whole affair was as good a confirmation as actually catching him balls-deep in the Jedi—and then he'd turned his head and apologized in Basic to the Jedi. "Sorry. There was a… misunderstanding. This is—one of my covert members, from Nevarro. He's not an enemy; he just oversteps himself sometimes."

The Jedi just hummed a little. "I'm really glad to meet any part of your covert. But it's late. Or early, I guess. Maybe we can do full introductions tomorrow. Today." He'd yawned, a brief pink flash of mouth and tongue, and then covered with his hand.

"Hello, Jetii," Paz had said. "Nice sheb'ika." Din's knees jabbed hard into his shoulders, and his thumbs jabbed harder into the underside of Paz's jaw.

"It's nice to meet you, too," the Jedi had said. He'd frowned a little and then fumbled a heavily accented though mostly comprehendible formal Mando'a phrase. "I hold the gift of your friendship in my—oh kriff, sorry. I tried to practice this, I swear, but it's late and I'm tired. Thank you. Can I have my husband back?"

Through the thermal imaging in Paz's HUD, he'd watched Din's facial temperature increase in the exposed skin of his throat and the underside of his chin.

"I'll go back to guard duty," Paz had said.

"You'll fuck off and never pull shit like this again," Din had muttered, but he'd climbed off Paz with as much dignity as he could muster in his current apparel, gone back into his rooms, and shut the door with a resounding slam.

In the morning, Paz had lurked in the back of the dining hall until Din and his Jedi had shown up; the Jedi had a pleasant, impervious smile for everyone, an additional bruise on his collarbone, definite beard-burn on his neck, and Paz watched him lower himself into his chair with care and a nearly invisible wince. Din had pulled the chair out for him, handed him the kid, and then filled two plates and brought them over. While the Jedi was feeding the kid, Din skulked off to the back of the mess hall, slipped furtively into the kitchens, and then re-emerged with a steaming mug of something disconcertingly muddy-blue that wasn't tea or caf. When the Jedi had taken a sip without looking first, he looked surprised, and then lifted his face to smile radiantly at Din; Din had leaned down without hesitation to press his forehead firmly against the Jedi's and the baby's in turn, one hand curled into the hollow of neck and shoulder so he could cup the back of the Jedi's head while his thumb stroked gently against the Jedi's neck.

So, definitely fucking. Possibly fuckstruck. But also demonstratively open and, well… tender in a way Paz felt like he hadn't seen out of Din in years, or possibly ever. Maybe the closest thing he'd seen to it was when he'd landed in the middle of a Nevarro street full of blasterfire to find Din fighting and pinned down in the heart of it, resigned to death but still crouched protectively around the small bundle of the baby.

"I mean, he's fucking the Jedi," Paz finally said, after thinking while he polished harder and harder circles into the halberd's blade. "But I think he actually likes the Jedi, too."

"Then Djarin's fucked," Fett said flatly. "Skywalker's a trap that might as well have been built and baited for him personally. He might not look it, but he's dangerous. Both in what he's trying to do, and what he can do."

"What does that even mean?" Paz asked. "Is he going to suck the Mand'alor's brain out his dick and then try to stab him in the afterglow? Because that's the shit I need to know. I'll tell Din he needs to add a ven'cabur to his armor; I don't know why he doesn't have one. Idiot."

Fett leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and didn't say anything for a long moment. "No," he said, and blew out an annoyed-sounding sigh. "That's not Skywalker's style. For what it's worth, I don't think Skywalker has any ill intentions towards Djarin. It's more that things happen around him. He brings trouble."

"What kind of trouble?" Paz asked. No matter what Woves said, there really weren't many problems that couldn't be solved with a good blaster shot.

"For one, he's doing his best to resurrect the Jedi order. He's gone all over the galaxy, trying to collect anything that had to do with them. That kriffing cult should stay dead."

"I've heard the stories about Jedi," Paz said. He rotated the halberd to check it for any remaining spots of rust, grunted in satisfaction, and put the scouring pad away. He took up the honing rod, and started working on the blade with short, hard strokes, trying to resurrect the original edge. He'd heard the stories. They were more than just stories; they were an inheritance, handed down through his clan's interactions with the Jedi specifically, and it was hard to disagree with Fett's assessment. If Fett said the Jedi was dangerous, he probably was. Never mind the pleasant smiles and soft mouth and deceptively slender build that looked easy enough to knock over or hold down. And Paz had felt whatever shit that was in the hallway that smothered their fight. That more than anything was worth keeping an eye on.

As if sensing his thoughts, Fett continued. "He can fight. Don't be fooled by the way he looks. He's a skilled pilot and combat capable. He's also a dramatic little shit who probably has more kriffing magic power in his little finger than you or I could fit into an entire set of armor. And," Fett huffed and finished with another long-suffering sigh, "he's very, very pretty. Yowls like a tooka in heat when he's getting fucked. At least I assume that was him I heard. Djarin's always struck me as more of the silent or grunting type."

"Ugh," Paz said, thinking and then trying not to think about that. He shook his head. "How do you know about that shit?"

"They were both here on Tatooine before they came back to Mandalore, stayed in my palace. They were down the hall and you could still hear them going at it." Fett leaned back, almost out of the holo's projection range and stretched his legs out.

"Hmm," Paz said. He might not have needed to set off the flashbang, if he'd just arrived a little earlier in the night and listened at the door for confirmation. Or at the end of the hall, apparently. Or just called Fett sooner, but he'd had a lot of people to relate the news to and Fett didn't always pick up the comm.

They sat in silence for another moment. Paz finally stretched and put the halberd down. He could fix the shaft another day.

"So, are you going come to the official wedding celebration party that Kryze is making him have?" he asked. "I might need your help."

Fett finally started to chuckle. "Oh, I wouldn't miss it for the karking galaxy."

***

Even Kryze, with all her best laid plans, wasn't quite going to be able to pull a full celebratory event and all its trappings for the entirety of the Mandalorian population out of her helmet within a standard week, though it looked like she was going to be able to manage it within two. She was in her element, striding double-time through every hallway and barking orders either into her comm or at whichever of the gaggle of her selected planning staff was frantically trying to keep up with her. Din had gone along with it for exactly two hours, after which he had blatantly abandoned ship and duty. He couldn't get off the planet this time, though; Kryze had programmed every hangar with an alarm keyed to his biometrics, and threatened him with more wardrobe fittings and council meetings about decisions on mercenary work security contracts if he tried to run. He therefore spent most of his time sullenly occupied with the repetitive task of fighting the uptick in throne challengers.

And there were more of those, both serious and casual. Paz thought maybe it wasn't even the Mand'alor they wanted to take the measure of, but his new riduur. The news of both the planned celebration and marriage had caused a noticeable increase in arrivals, and also in funding; apparently several lucrative trade route agreements that had been lingering in senatorial no-man's land had suddenly been finalized, all the red tape neatly cut through and resolved, signatures on the line.

"Connections," Kryze said with both satisfaction and more than a little disdain. "Skywalker comes through. Or his sister does. Either way, we have some surplus now, even with the increased population." She looked around. "Where is Skywalker, anyway?"

And wasn't that the million credit question.

Everyone wanted to see the Jedi, which was directly related to the increase in throne challenges. Very few actually had. Apart from what he'd related to Fett, Paz really hadn't had much opportunity to observe Din's Jedi at length since he'd first met him in the hallway and what few glimpses he'd had after that. Somehow Paz kept getting assigned to armory duty instead of guard duty, which would have normally been a good thing, except he knew it wasn't a kind gesture but was actually Din being petty as hell after the hallway incident, because he'd replaced Paz's guard duty slot with Woves. Rumors flew wildly about Skywalker: he was a New Republic spy; he was a swindler and only pretending to be a Jedi; he was a holo film actor who'd played a Jedi; he was an adult holo film actor who'd played a Jedi; he was a battle droid made in an Empire lab; he was a real Jedi planning to bring Mandalore down from within by controlling the Mand'alor; he was deformed; he was so attractive that the Mand'alor jealously wouldn’t let anyone else look at him because he didn't wear a helmet, and so on, and so on.

Some of the rumors were obviously wrong. As far as Paz could tell, Skywalker was a real Jedi and he wasn't deformed. And, as Fett had unnecessarily noted, he was exceptionally pretty, though Paz doubted Din was hiding him away just for that. Whether or not he was doing any kind of Jedi wizardry on Din's dick or mind, or had any kind of ominous plans towards Mandalore remained to be seen. Paz hoarded the information from the few reliable sources he knew had firsthand knowledge—Fett and Reeves, mostly; Kryze probably knew much more than she was letting on, but she was not inclined to share—and what he could glean from the holonet and his own limited chances for observation.

The Jedi's physical characteristics looked like his combat strengths were probably agility and speed rather than brute force, though brute force wasn't off the table: Paz had seen the security footage from Gideon's light cruiser. Reeves had been doing a brisk, lucrative business in selling bootleg holos of it, and Paz didn’t know any Mandalorians who hadn't bought or viewed it from a friend. There were a number of versions floating around; some of them included Kryze and Reeves and Fett's assassin friend and Din's ex-shock trooper friend fighting, but most of them were just clips of either Din stabbing storm troopers and his confrontation with Gideon, or the Jedi cutting a swath through the battle droids.

There was even a version that someone with half-decent editing skills (likely Reeves, though Paz wasn't sure Woves didn't have something to do with it) had spliced together that cut back and forth between footage of Din and the Jedi fighting, complete with slow motion and artfully enhanced lighting and swelling romantic music overlaid on top. It was the second most popular version after the Gideon confrontation, and it climaxed with more footage added in from the newscast airing of Din and the Jedi's departure from Chandrila, where Din had indeed headbutted multiple members of the press, and ended with a slow, heart-shaped fade and an excessive number of sparkles. Reeves was selling that one as the riduurok edit, and it had a fifty percent markup.

Paz had managed to watch and rewatch nearly every version, including the edit, so he could accurately piece together as much as possible of what had happened on the light cruiser. Everything available was cut off when Skywalker came to the bridge. None of that footage could be found anywhere for any number of credits; none of the party who'd fought on the cruiser had anything to say about it. Paz had accepted begrudgingly that he wasn’t going to know exactly what had transpired between Din and the Jedi in their first meeting, but that didn't mean he was going to give up.

(He had paid Reeves an exorbitant number of credits for the consolatory prize of the otherwise unreleased hallway bit footage of Din getting his shit kicked in by one of those battle droids. That had been fun.)

He knew something had happened on the bridge; he knew that Din had removed his helmet. He knew that Din had spoken with the Jedi and given his child to him, and the Jedi had left. He knew at some point Din had been reunited with both the Jedi and his child. Din had told the Armorer as much. Whatever passed between Din and the Armorer over that had also gone unshared.

"He showed his face," Paz had said.

"He did," was all the Armorer had to say on the matter when Paz pressed. "He has told me when, and why. And now those who show their faces also walk on Mandalore. Shall we drive them away, the ones who fought beside us to take back our home?"

"How is this the Way?" Paz had asked. "We were taught our secrecy is our survival."

"Our survival is our strength. Once, our numbers ensured our survival, and then we no longer had that. Our survival remained our strength, and our secrecy ensured our survival. Our survival is still our strength, and our unity is now our survival," the Armorer had said, which sounded impressive in the abstract but also damnably frustrating.

"Has the world so changed that we must change our values?" Paz had asked the Armorer, the closest he could come to challenging her. She had been the constant enforcer of their Tribe's tenets for so long; to have the fundamental beliefs he had grown up with shift beneath his feet seemed impossible. "Is the world not as it was?"

"The world is as it always has been, Paz Vizsla," she said calmly. "It is we who perceive it who have changed, as our senses grow more acute. The world is both less and more bearable to us, with these new perceptions. Do we not forge our armor and weapons ever stronger or differently over time to win new battles?"

She'd paused. "Our survival is always our strength. This is the Way."

And eventually he'd bowed his head in acceptance, even while he struggled for his own footing under the new, strange gravity of it all.

Meanwhile, Din kept his foundling and Jedi close, and Paz was no closer to understanding it or having reconnaissance success. The closest he'd come was the night he'd been lurking in the tucked away courtyard garden that was located nearly beneath their chambers. There was a small window to one of their outer rooms about three stories up, which wouldn’t have been an issue for his jetpack, but he wasn't sure if Din had either any kind of pressure or proximity alarms rigged to it. While he'd been lurking and scouting if it was a viable way in, he was distracted by the impossible fact that the garden actually had growing plants in it, and Din ended up catching him mid-lurk.

Most of the things currently grown on Mandalore were in hydroponic controlled environments, in the underground caves or the new transparisteel greenhouses. What he found in the small courtyard was evidence of recent, ordinary gardening work: freshly built growth beds, both open on the ground and in raised containers, with new earth and fertilizer added to them. A small fountain had been cleaned out and activated to dispense fresh water again. Plants were growing in the beds and containers, mostly herbs and vegetables, though there were a few flowers as well. But that was where the ordinariness ended, because they weren't just growing, they were flourishing. The only logical explanation was that they had been recently imported from off world and transplanted, but they had the look of established growth, as if they'd naturally come out of that dark, rich soil. There was a tree growing in the middle of the courtyard, taller than Paz was, and he knew it hadn't been there a few weeks before. Sometimes the leaves shifted and moved disconcertingly, despite the lack of wind.

Paz was poking the tree carefully with his vibroblade when Din found him.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Din asked suspiciously. He had a small container or jar of some kind in his hands.

"The Armorer wanted behot for tea. What are you doing here?" Paz countered, because the best defense was a good offense. It wasn't even a lie; it was just that the Armorer had said that two weeks ago and presumably had found some in a normal place like the palace kitchens since. It was evidence of Din's possibly compromised state of mind that he didn't challenge Paz further, just looked vaguely shifty even through his helmet and thirty pounds of beskar.

"What's in there?" Paz asked, nodding at Din's hands.

Din's gloves flexed around the container like he wanted to hide it, but then relaxed and he held it up. There were several small somethings inside, moving. Lots of legs. Paz looked closer.

"Glass spiders,” Din said, a little stiffly. "They keep turning up in our rooms. Must be a nest somewhere.”

The irony of the name didn’t escape Paz; they’d been common household pests long before the planet had been glassed, and they’d survived afterwards. They were semi-translucent and mildly venomous and could give a bite that itched for a day or two, but they mostly preferred to spin their webs and be left alone. He flicked the jar and watched them scurry around inside, seeking escape.

"You’re letting them go outside?” Paz said. "Just step on them like a normal person.”

"Luke won't–” Din started to say and then shrugged. "They’re inconvenient, but Luke just moves them if they’re in the way. He doesn’t like to kill them.”

"Where does he move them?” Paz asked.

"...Mostly behind the couch,” Din said.

"What the hell. Step on them. How many spiders are living behind your couch?” Paz demanded.

"It’s almost not worth thinking about,” Din said. "Probably a lot. And the kid will eat them if we’re not watching him, so it’s just easier to put them out here instead.”

Skipping right past the disclosure that Din’s kid ate spiders for fun, Paz pointed at the courtyard and gardens and the tree and waved his hand. "Did you do all this for him? When?”

Din shook his head. "Luke and the kid did it,” he said, turning in a circle to take it all in. "They spend a lot of time out here. Luke’s trying to decide where he wants to set up permanently to teach, but this is a good place for just the two of them to… do Jedi stuff.”

"Jedi stuff,” Paz echoed. "Like what? Coddling spiders?”

"Meditation. Training,” Din said. "Not too different from what we do. Except they can also use their powers to do things like this, make the plants grow. That tree, too. Bo-Katan was excited."

Excited was probably a polite way of saying she'd lost her shit and already had plans to strap the Jedi in a harness, aim him all over the planet, and see what happened. Paz grunted. "Why are you hiding your Jedi?" he asked, coming straight to the point.

"I'm not hiding him," Din said. "I'm letting him get settled before he has to deal with all of the shit that comes with—" he shrugged one shoulder. "—this. He's teaching my kid. Our kid. He uprooted his whole life and plans to come here. It's only fair."

"No one knows anything about the Jedi," Paz said. "Except that you chose him."

"So?" Din said.

"People want to see him," Paz said. "The more you keep him away, the more they'll keep challenging you. Or him."

"Let them," Din said. "I can handle it."

It was hard to argue against that. Even as more came, each challenge seemed to be over more quickly. Paz could begrudgingly admit that Din had always been an excellent fighter, balancing between ingrained training and his own natural instincts. Even his previous lack of fluidity with the Darksaber had disappeared, and he used it from start to finish more often during his challenges.

"Can he?" Paz asked. "Are you afraid that if he goes out on his own that someone will take a shot at him?"

Din snorted. "They can try. It won't go any better for them."

Also hard to argue against that, based on the video, though it had been droids getting mowed down and not sentients. Paz didn't quite want to admit to watching the video to Din, though. He tried another angle. "Kryze didn't suggest you perform the ritual courtship fight for everyone at the celebration?" he asked.

"I don't have to fight him for his hand. We said the vows; we're already married," Din said testily. "I keep telling everyone that."

"So? By now, enough of them have seen you fight. Most of them probably just want to watch you fight him," Paz said. "They want to see what a Jedi can do."

"They mostly use a jetii'kad instead of a blaster, and they also make you talk about your feelings a lot," Din said. He knelt down and unscrewed the top of the jar, shaking the spiders out on the ground. He stood up and pointedly jerked his head towards the courtyard gate. "It's late. I'm going back to my bed. Fuck off."

"Check for spiders behind it," Paz said, and exited with as much dignity as possible. The tree's rustling leaves sounded a little like laughter.

After that, Paz finally just took a move out of Kryze's playbook and put a biometric tracker alarm keyed to Din on the most likely places he thought Din would go, besides the throne room and the dining hall. It paid off two nights later when he got a ping at fuck o'clock in the morning that Din had accessed the most recently restored training hall. Paz hauled ass to get over, not to the training room, but to the main communications and security building so he could take a different cue from Reeves this time, and slice into the video security feeds. And he was in luck, because not only was Din there, but so was Skywalker, and they were sparring.

The feed had video but no audio at first, and Paz was only able to watch while he fiddled with settings and tried to get the sound on as well. Din was in his full armor, but Skywalker didn’t have on anything, except light training clothes, a change from his usual black clothing, and he still wasn't wielding anything except his lightsaber. The sleeves had been torn or cut away from his shirt, and after some squinting and more fiddling with the video settings, Paz could see faint marks that looked like extensive scar tissue branching all over.

They were talking to each other, as far as he could tell. Or at least Skywalker seemed to be talking quite a lot, so Paz could only assume Din was responding, probably. They'd fight for a moment or two, and then break away. Sometimes they'd repeat the same moves, and sometimes they would change. It took more than a quarter of an hour before they had a sustained stretch of sparring, but it was worth waiting for.

Din was using the Darksaber and the Jedi was using something different for once, the beskar spear. Din made a move that Paz didn't expect and thought was a mistake at first: if it had been him, Paz would have gone for a downward smashing blow that would create an opening against an opponent who was both shorter and weaker; Din's came in at more mid-section and seemed to be trying to rock Skywalker's center of gravity by causing him to shift the spear downwards.

But the Jedi, despite giving up what had to be four inches of height and at the very least forty pounds of weight to Din in his armor, didn't yield an inch or lose balance while absorbing the blow. He struck upward at the same time Din came in, and used the spear as a brief anchor, then let the shaft of it slide through his hands and all the way to the floor, and knocked Din off his feet with the leverage and Din's own force.

Din went down, but he was rolling as he went; he avoided the strike of the spear towards his cuirass, and he somehow still had the Darksaber lit; when he swung it up in a wide, sloppy arc, Skywalker struck at his arm for the easy disarming move, but it was a feint after all. Din bent the lightsaber back towards himself, letting his armor protect him from his own blade and taking the spear's blow on his vambrace; in the distracting shower of sparks, he kicked Skywalker hard in the side of the knee and knocked him down.

Both of them came back on their feet quickly and circled each other for a few seconds, evaluating. This time Skywalker made the first move, stabbing the spear right towards Din's midsection. Din didn't swing the Darksaber; instead, he grabbed for the spear and yanked both it and Skywalker towards him. It should have been close enough for Din to claim submission and a match win with a potential killing blow with the Darksaber against the Jedi, since he had no armor to protect himself. But Skywalker let himself be pulled instead of resisting, and flattened himself against Din. Din's blow missed entirely, and they were going down again as Skwyalker tangled their legs together. The spear clattered away and the Darksaber went out.

Din tried to roll them as they fell and drop his armor's weight on Skywalker to trap him, but Skywalker kept an arm around Din's waist and jabbed sharply in the ribs where the beskar didn't reach; they landed on their sides, still tangled. Din wrapped up the Jedi with both arms and headbutted him hard. Skywalker didn't take the blow straight on, managing to jerk aside, but it dazed him just briefly enough for Din to fully get on top and try to pin his arms down with his knees

Paz thought it was over then, but the Jedi did something that he couldn't see. He had no idea how the Jedi got his legs together and up high enough or where the leverage came from, but he did. He had the flexibility of no armor, and he pulled both knees up to his chest and somehow thrust Din off him. The Jedi rolled into a backwards somersault and then vaulted to his feet. Din stayed crouched for a few more seconds, and then rose up as well.

They circled each other, ignoring both the spear and Darksaber, even though they were both within reach. Skywalker was still talking, as far as Paz could tell. They traded another series of blows: six quick back and forth ones; two feints; three more, then five, then another quick pair of feints. Skywalker was quicker than Din by far, but three of Din's blows had landed hard on Skywalker and Paz could see him favoring where they'd hit. They just kept circling each other and not picking up either weapon, which was causing Paz physical pain to watch, even as he kept trying different settings to bring on the sound.

Din suddenly charged and used his flamethrower at the same time. Skywalker didn't brace himself, which would have been the stupid move, and he didn't move right to get away from the flame coming from Din's vambrace, which was the move Din was probably hoping for. He swung left instead, light on his feet, and then ducked under the flame and grabbed at Din's elbow at the same time, forcing it down.

If he'd had a weapon or blade, he could have had his own match-ending kill blow right into Din's belly, where the cuirass stopped. If he held on, he could have dislocated Din's elbow or shoulder, or broken his arm. Instead, he went for using Din's weight against him and socked his hip to Din's hip, looking like he was going to try and flip Din with his own momentum. But his hands briefly slid against Din's armor and he fumbled the grip; Din stomped his boot down on the Jedi's foot.

And then, just as quickly as it had begun, they both just stopped. Skywalker ran his gloved hand through his lank, wet hair and grinned. He went and picked up the spear, handing it back to Din. Din picked up the Darksaber and returned the spear to his back. Skywalker nodded, and took his own lightsaber off his belt. They faced each other, and Skywalker's face went blank and peaceful; he went into a stance and held it with total stillness. Din copied the stance. Skywalker then started doing a drill with his saber, a continuously flowing pass with all sorts of different footwork and arm positions. It looked both simple and tremendously complicated to Paz's eyes; he kept trying to catch the pattern of it. Din said something. Skywalker stopped, and then started again from the beginning.

Midway, Skywalker started talking again, and Paz thought he might be explaining the moves. He doubled his efforts to find the right audio setting, and finally gave the control panel a single hard blow with his fist in frustration. There was a buzz, a click, and the audio finally came through.

"—was imagining some kind of altar," Skywalker said, arm curved above his head and saber held steady as he slid to a stop. "Nice flat surface. Gauzy robes and flickering candles and maybe some sacred oils or something."

"I'm pretty sure I'll be speaking at a podium, on a stage," Din said. He shifted and went into the same stance as the Jedi had; after a few seconds, he started copying the routine the Jedi had just gone through, much more slowly. "It would be hard to fuck on a podium."

Paz blinked.

"Not impossible. But not optimal," Din continued. He continued the motions: overhead strike, pivot, dropped elbow, pivot, jab, jab.

"Square your shoulders," Skywalker said. "It wouldn't be much harder than fucking on a X-Wing engine block."

"Funny," Din said. "I don't seem to ever remember doing that."

"Well, I've got a very good memory of it from a long time ago in the Rebellion," Skywalker said. "You could have had one too, if you didn't complain about how Artoo was watching when I tried to convince you."

"He would have kept bringing it up forever," Din said. "You know him."

"Yes, but it would have been in binary," Skywalker said. "You wouldn’t have known what he was saying."

"Oh, I would have known," Din said. "He would have made sure."

"Do you want to try with blasters now while I use my saber?" Skywalker asked. "Or you could use the spear. I'm worried I'm going to mess up the pronunciation of the vows during the ceremony."

"Let’s go for a mix. You said them fine the first time," Din said. "I'm pretty sure Bo-Katan would have told us it was an option if there was some kind of public sex ritual she could dig up for the ceremony. There would have been choreography and practice sessions."

He removed a vibroblade from his boot and lunged at the Jedi; the Jedi flipped backwards and landed somehow atop a rack of practice blaster targets, improbably balanced.

"Is it bad to admit I'd rather let you fuck me on an altar in front of hundreds of Mandalorians than have Bo-Katan glare at me when I stress the wrong syllable in dhar'tome again?" the Jedi asked from his perch.

"Are you still wearing the flimsy robes in this one?" Din asked. He pulled out his blaster and shot three times; the Jedi leaped out of the way.

"Oh, no, you tear them right off me before we get started," Skywalker said cheerfully, and did another handspring that let him flick Din's helmet insolently as he vaulted out of reach. "Right up on the stage. You rip them starting at the collar, and pull them right off me and show me off to everyone, completely naked. No one else gets to touch, though. And then you sling me on the altar—"

"Which we don't have," Din said, slashing upwards. "Not completely naked. There'd be the vambrace and pauldron on you from the ceremony. No. The other outfit. The one Boba left in the room when we were in Tatooine."

"Eurgh," Skywalker said, from where he landed on the floor. He didn't get up right away, sprawled out. "All that maroon and gold. I don't know if that's my color scheme."

"Black," Din suggested. Skywalker made another ehh noise in his throat. "Dark blue," Din said. "And silver. Beskar cuffs."

"Nipple piercings," Skywalker said, and laughed in triumph when Din visibly flinched, as pleased as if he'd landed a physical hit. "Wait, is that sacrilegious? Not what beskar's for? You don't want to plug me up with something big and shiny? Make me bend over and spread my legs to show the crowd."

"You know, I'll let the Armorer know you've got a special request," Din said, and Paz flinched, imagining that conversation. "Something to manage troublesome Jetii."

And they kept on talking like that, though it became increasingly clear to Paz that it was mainly Skywalker doing his best to distract Din while they fought, by continuously, shamelessly talking with full, lurid enthusiasm about any sexual fantasy that went through his head, sparing no detail. He wondered, in vague horror, if this was what Din had meant about talking about their feelings. If so, Jedi were diabolical.

Din seemed to be used to it, or maybe Skywalker really was doing some kind of wizardry on Din's dick while they trained. At least it explained why Din was dispatching all challengers with barely any effort of late. He didn't react or slip in his responses either when Skywalker changed it up, and started talk about going the other way, and Skywalker could deflower him on the altar instead, holding him down with his Jedi powers.

"Naked?" Din asked dryly. He'd gotten one of the longer beskar halberds out from the training racks and was using it to extend his reach, making quick jabs and trying to herd Skywalker towards a corner of the hall where he wouldn't have as much free space to pivot.

"No, the armor stays on," Skywalker told him, and slipped around the halberd, coming in too close for Din to be able to use it. Even their hand to hand looked more like foreplay now. "And the helmet. But everything else would come off. Easy access. I could still hold you down with the force even while I suck on you. But you won't just give in and come. You can’t disgrace Mandalore like that. And I wouldn't touch you with anything but the force while I tell you how good you're being."

"Isn't it sacrilegious to fuck someone with the force?" Din said.

He did one of those spins that Skywalker had been doing and managed to twist under his guard with the vibroblade in one hand and the Darksaber's hilt in the other. Skywalker instinctively jerked away when the Darksaber activated and Din was driving the vibroblade towards his ribs. Skywalker let himself fall instead of trying to block it, and with both Din's hands occupied, he couldn't grab him and Skywalker could twine himself around Din like a hafa vine and they both wound up on the floor yet again.

Despite all the… smut being discussed, Paz couldn’t tear himself away. The Jedi fought so differently from a Mandalorian, and Paz didn’t think he was using his magic shit much at all. Even so, he was blindingly fast and unpredictable; he had the instincts and an almost preternatural sense for where moves and openings were going to be before they occurred, and then he went straight for them.

When they went saber to saber, it was no contest at all; Skywalker tapped Din in five different unprotected parts of his body in the first two minutes, leaving light scorch marks on his flight suit. In hand-to-hand combat, he was much more vulnerable, and Din pinned him four times with the Jedi being unable to escape without using his magic, though one of those times, he broke free after leaning up into Din and telling him how much he wanted Din to wrap him in beskar chains with his arms and legs spread wide, so he couldn’t move an inch while Din pierced his nipples with beskar rings and then jerked off on his face and hair and chest.

"Dank farrick," Din said when Skywalker rolled free after that one.

Skywalker chuckled, a little breathlessly. "Ow. You know, we'll have to wrap up eventually. Leia has some meetings and she told me her only free window for a comm is early in the morning, and I missed our last two comms. She'll kill me if I miss another."

"Tell her you've been too busy killing me," Din said. "All right. Ten more minutes and then we're done."

They went at it furiously and silently for the next ten minutes, no more talk of sordid fantasies or distractions. Din fired shot after shot from his blaster and Skywalker deflected every single one neatly with his saber; not only that, he sent them back at Din and bounced them precisely off his armor. Din's flamethrower roared, and Skywalker threw his hands out and closed his eyes, bending the flames around him with an invisible shield. They clashed with sabers and Skywalker forced Din back the full length of the training hall; Din extinguished it, grabbed his spear, and drove Skywalker back the other way across the hall.

As they reached the center of the hall, Skywalker pivoted away, ran three graceful steps, jumped to the top of a vibro-ax cabinet, and then jumped again to go over Din's head and land behind him. But this time Din activated his jetpack and went straight up; he caught Skywalker by the ankle before cutting his jetpack's power and letting them both crash down. Din tried to roll on top of him, but Skywalker was already activating his saber. Din dropped anyway directly onto the saber and Skywalker's arm, and the saber sparked against his armor, then went out.

Skywalker grabbed for the Darksaber on Din's hip—Paz sucked in a breath—but Din slapped at his hand and Skywalker came away with his actual target, Din's vibroblade. They wrestled for that, and even though Skywalker was beneath Din, he was somehow, impossibly, forcing the vibroblade up at Din despite having none of the leverage. Din pulled a trick from the Jedi's book and suddenly yielded; Skywalker's thrust overbalanced and the vibroblade shot past Din's shoulder, scraping across his pauldron and clattering away. Din slammed the Jedi back down, but then stiffened when Jedi, from flat on his back and no weapon, made a pushing motion with his hands and despite not being touched, Din fell back, unbalanced.

Scrambling out from underneath him, the Jedi extended his hand and his saber hilt shot right towards him. Din flipped his blaster from his right and fired with his off hand to deflect the saber hilt away from its path; at the same time, he shot his fibercord whip from his right vambrace and wrapped the Jedi up, pinning his arms to his sides.

"Huh," Din said. "Look what I caught."

Skywalker raised an eyebrow and wiggled his fingers. The lightsaber hilt flew back into his hand and he activated it. But when he tried to tap it against the fibercord whip to cut it and free himself, it bounced right off and he jerked back to avoid getting a faceful of sparks.

"Well," he said. "That's new."

"Beskar tendril," Din said. He tilted his head, almost playfully. "An early ceremony gift from the Armorer. She installed it this morning."

"For troublesome Jedi?" Skywalker asked.

"Something like that," Din said. Rather than hauling the Jedi in, he walked towards him, letting the cord slacken. "Should we call it a night?"

Skywalker reached up and laid one hand on the side of Din's helmet. He smiled up at Din, waiting. Din lowered the Jedi down, one hand relaxing the line so the loops loosened further around his body, and then reached for his helmet with the other hand, thumb sliding under his own chin and then the snap-hiss of the seal releasing. He shoved it up and Paz recoiled away from the screen, slapping his hand down on the control panel to send it blank and shutting his eyes before he could see anything he shouldn't.

The audio was still there. He could hear the rustle of shifting clothes and hands on skin. Wet noises. Kissing, naked mouth to naked mouth, instead of beskar on beskar, or even just beskar on mouth or forehead. There was a low murmur from the Jedi and something back from Din, but Paz turned the audio off as well. He felt unaccountably ashamed for seeing something that intimate, like he had stolen something.

He thought of all the light cruiser holos Reeves had sold, and with careful precision and two-finger-pecking on the control panel, Paz made sure all the surveillance was off before going into the archived surveillance memory and deleting the last hour. Then, he waited there long enough that Din and his Jedi would have surely left the training hall and gone back to their rooms. It had been so late when he got the ping, that the new day wasn't far off. He remained there until morning, for so long that the first guard rotation going by in the hall did a doubletake and nearly jumped out of their armor when they saw Paz sitting there.

Paz ignored them, and continued to stare at the blank screen for some time longer, thinking all the while.

***

Finally, the wedding celebration and public vows recitation took place.

Mandalore being glassed meant it was logistically difficult to do any more real damage to certain sections of the planet, which was fortunate for throwing a big fucking event with a lot of Mandalorians who tended to leave a significant amount of property damage in their natural state, let alone while having a party.

They'd sent out surveyors after taking back the planet. Not too far from Sundari, Kryze had identified a partially protected valley area located at the foot of what had been a mountainous range with rocky soil going deep enough to make trinitaur attacks unlikely, and where supplies and temporary tents and vheh'yaim could be flown in and set up. A plain just outside it provided landing and docking for transport ships, and spillover celebrating. Paz and a few other teams spent several days going over the terrain, scouting for and clearing out any reptavian nests and Alamite packs they ran into, as well as setting up a basic perimeter around the area. That wasn't all the valley was hiding; there was even, miraculously enough, a source of potable water emerging from underground springs and creating a small lake. With work it could be enlarged and expanded, and someday in the future, life and new growth might yet creep across Mandalore's surfaces again.

Din's wedding vows and armor exchange took about three minutes. Din's wedding celebration lasted three days, required two separate shipments of imported alcohol, featured seven different challengers for the rights to the throne, four challengers for the rights to the Jedi, nineteen other unrelated fights, a large fire (planned), two smaller fires (unplanned), a fireworks mishap (mostly unplanned but exciting), the resolution of a one hundred and seventy-year long grudge between two clans, at least three newly established clan grudges, twelve broken limbs, and no deaths. Except for the lack of deaths, it was considered a perfectly traditional and rousing success.

Paz had thought perhaps that the fact the Mand'alor was taking a Jedi as a consort would cause more controversy, along with the whole issue of putting multiple tribes of Mandalorians with different but extremely vehement stances on interpretation of the Resol'nare in one place, but the alcohol seemed to be mostly taking care of that.

It probably hadn't hurt that that Din actually looked like a leader: he'd begrudgingly agreed to wear the fur cape and kicked off the event with a short speech that Kryze had ghostwritten—no kriffing way Din would ever have used the word autonomism on his own—that had mostly gone over to moderate applause and stomping. There was much more enthusiastic celebrating at its climax, when Din said something about repatriation goodwill endowment gesture, paused like he'd just bitten a gruffle, and then simply gestured to the Jedi and the three enormous crates up on the stage with them and said, "Jedi Master Skywalker personally fought for and retrieved these as his gift to Mandalore, to be divided among all past clans robbed by the Empire and for the foundlings yet to come."

The Jedi had looked a little surprised, but he'd lit and raised his green-bladed jetii'kad, and then flicked it across the lock of the crate closest to him, the sides of the crate folding down like the petals of a flower to reveal—beskar. A near obscene amount, dully gleaming bars of it stacked to fill the crate entirely. The crowd had erupted, and then only gotten louder when Din abandoned the podium to take two awkward steps forward and around the crate, and press his forehead to the Jedi's, who'd smiled and lifted his face to him like a flower to the sun.

Kryze, despite every other quality that Paz despised her for, had known how to identify a good dramatic moment to break on, and she had sharply elbowed Reeves; Reeves had whooped and started tossing bottles into the crowd; most of Clan Eldar had started singing Vod An at the top of their lungs, and the festivities officially got underway, all while Din stood motionless on the stage with his Jedi in his arms, oblivious to it all.

Skywalker hadn't fucked up the pronunciation of the wedding vows. He nearly always used Basic otherwise, though he produced accented but carefully memorized Mando'a responses and phrases when necessary, and he managed to mostly balance the rest of his linguistic shortcomings with an unshakably pleasant resting facial expression and an uncannily good ability to guess at what was being said. He wore no armor and carried no weaponry, except for his jetii'kad, though he'd accepted a ritual pauldron and vambrace off Din during the ceremony.

It all conspired to a natural urge to underestimate the Jedi, and that was the one thing Paz did not plan to do. Fett's warning was still fresh in his mind, as was the memory of the Jedi's powers from the hallway and the training hall. Moreover, the only way to get that amount of beskar would have required breaking into and then fighting out of an Imperial base or stronghold, and not a minor or weak one. Din was never one to withhold credit; if he said that the Jedi did it, then he did.

This meant Paz truly wasn't sure how hard it was going to be to abduct the Jedi, only that it was going to be a real pain in the ass no matter what.

He'd put thought into it. He'd checked earlier to make sure the locked cases of additional equipment were still stored by the podium. Currently, Paz had three fibercord launchers, an extra vibroblade, a stingbeam that felt like a child's toy, his personal combat shield, and his plasma thrower. His heavy blaster, as well as it usually served him, didn't seem quite appropriate for this. Din had (violently, even) told Paz earlier to get rid of any Force restraints he'd found in the armory, before he'd even emerged with his surprise Jedi spouse. There'd still been a couple of them rattling around in the depths of the armory, but Paz had left them there, since that was a line he wasn't sure about crossing. Paz had considered a slugthrower, but reluctantly ruled that out as well. They weren't looking for true bloodshed, after all.

Failing all his normal weaponry, he also had a full, extra-large bottle of tihaar, a funnel, and a big sack.

"It's not going to work," Fett said, at his elbow. He'd shown up some time after Din's speech, shoved a gift in Din's hands, and had immediately started a fistfight with Reeves, some running point of honor between the two of them that they seemed to perform on ceremony more than anything else.

Paz grunted and kept staring at the firelight playing off the Jedi's hair as the Jedi tilted his head back, laughed, and leaned against Din's shoulder. Din had circulated (again, begrudgingly) somewhat but mostly hadn't left the Jedi's side throughout the night, which hadn't left Paz any opening. But at some point Kryze was going to forcibly march Din to whichever of the more traditional clan groups was either the most or the least drunk, so he could mutter a few awkward courtesies and words of thanks at them, and that was when Paz would have to make his move.

"He's a squirmy little bastard," Fett said. He had his helmet off currently, taking occasional swigs from his own bottle of tihaar, and eating a ronto meat pie. "You're going to have to think outside the box."

"He's tiny," Paz said, "and he's been drinking. It'll have to kick in at some point."

Privately though, he agreed with Fett. The Jedi had been drinking steadily but had yet to show much evidence of it beyond his flushed face and the slow emergence of his collarbones and bare chest from his increasingly unbuttoned shirt. Every time Din noticed it, he lost his train of thought for at least ten seconds; Paz had watched this happen four times now.

Fett snorted. "He's from Tatooine. It's going to take much more than that."

"Are you going to be useful or not?" Paz asked.

"Where's the fun in that?" Fett asked, and took another hit of tihaar. "Besides, I didn't even get to throw Djarin a last night of freedom celebration. Killjoy."

"He ruins everything," Paz agreed. "That's why we're doing this."

"Oh, for sure," Fett said easily. "Both of those shits deserve it. And each other."

By the bonfire, Kryze was inching closer as she closed in on Din from the right. From the left, a small group of foundlings who must've been allowed to stay up for the night, too old for the crèche but not old enough yet for armor, were creeping up on Din's Jedi with wide, interested eyes and muffled whispering. Both Din and Din's Jedi seemed to be pretending this wasn't happening, the latter with more humor than the former. One bold foundling moved close enough to barely touch the Jedi's sleeve; as soon as her fingers brushed it, she jerked back into the group, all of them giggling and puffed up with pride over their own daring.

The Jedi, still staring straight ahead, raised a hand to his mouth to hide his smile before he whispered something to Din. Din's helmet tilted, and he stood up. The foundlings scattered like birds, but as soon as Din picked up a plate of sliced uj'alayi off the table, they all came back, greedily clustering around him as he and the Jedi handed out chunks to each one. Eventually all of them were served and satisfied, running away again before their frazzled guardians could catch up with them, all waving sticky hands in enthusiastic thanks.

It gave Paz an idea. He was going to need to round up some quick supplies, though.

"Keep Kryze from dragging him away from the Jedi just yet, I need to get something set," he said, and headed off in the direction of the crèche, only stopping at one of the tables to swipe another plate of uj'alayi and strip the entire table of all its decorative garlands, hastily looping up all the frond-grass and ferns woven with vormur blossoms and behot sprigs into loose coils he could drape over his shoulder.

Selecting his exact weapons of choice, enlisting some additional backup support, and then briefing them on positioning and the plan took precious time. Fett gave him the occasional terse update through his helmet commlink, but it was still over half an hour before Paz could hurry back with the adjusted plan in place.

By the bonfire, the happy couple had company. Kryze was sitting stiffly next to Din and nearly vibrating with impatience. At the other end. Fett had planted himself firmly next to the Jedi with one arm over his shoulder and was talking loudly about something. The Jedi, for once, was not projecting an aura of serene friendliness, and seemed on the verge of either crawling onto Din's lap to escape or flipping Fett into the fire, possibly one right after the other, as he snapped back responses to Fett. Din was ignoring Kryze and raptly watching the back and forth between his Jedi and Fett like it was a limmie finals match in overtime.

Fett must have caught his proximity ping, because he suddenly stopped mid-sentence and stands up. "But that's all in the past now, so forgive and forget, Skywalker. Please, accept this token in that spirit."

He started to hand the Jedi his (now over half empty) bottle of tihaar, stopped, took a long pull on it until the bottle had only a quarter left, and then presented it with one hand while wiping his mouth off with the other. The Jedi took it with all the enthusiasm of being handed a dead rawl snake.

"Thanks," the Jedi said.

Without breaking eye contact with Fett, he dragged his own sleeve across the mouth of the bottle, tipped it up, and drank the rest of the bottle empty.

Fett just laughed. "Not bad, Skywalker. I suppose if you're not going to cover your face, you might as well drink like a Mandalorian."

"I've been told I have a pretty face," the Jedi said calmly. "I don't see much point in hiding it."

"Oh, you'll soon be more Mandalorian than I ever will, Skywalker," Fett said. "Just keep swallowing Mandalorian… culture."

He reached over and tapped the Jedi's chin, then pulled back just in time to avoid Din's incoming fist; he managed to morph the gesture to a salute in Kryze's direction. "Meanwhile, there's a buy'ce gal with my sigil on it waiting elsewhere."

Fett had the sense to walk away in a different direction than where Paz was. He strode off towards another raucous clan group with Din and Kryze's gazes following him as he did. The Jedi just held the empty bottle up briefly, like he was looking at the bonfire flames through it, and then he put it down on the tabletop and stuck a stray stalk of vormur blossoms inside it. The flush on his face was still there, but the lines of his body relaxed.

"That the universe not only tolerates but allows the presence of Boba Fett to flourish is all the proof I need to know that Kad Ha'rangir lies dead in the ancestral halls with the blade of Hod Ha'ran in his back somewhere," Kryze said flatly. "All right, he's gone, you can leave your consort safely alone for a minute and go talk to Clan Varad before they all pass out or start trying to stab the decorative arrangements. Skywalker shouldn't be around that bunch anyway; he'll just end up distracting them too much."

Din stood up slowly. The Jedi looked up at him, squared his shoulders, and folded his hands, like a bird unruffling its feathers. He smiled. Din looked down at him with an absurd amount of soppiness implicit in his helmet tilt.

"I'm having a good time," the Jedi said. "Go loom at people and then come back."

"If Boba comes back…" Din said.

"Then he'll probably have more alcohol and I won't have to get up to get another drink, which is useful," the Jedi said. "I can handle it. Go with your advisor. She's looking out for your best interests."

"If Fett comes back and the Mand'alor's consort ends up either accidentally or deliberately killing him, it will solve more than one problem," Kryze said. "I'll help him dispose of the body. Now, hurry up. Clan Rodarch's near Clan Varad, and we can talk to both of them at the same time before they start to fight each other."

Din was eventually persuaded to leave, as drag-footed as a foundling going from sparring drill to book lessons, and Paz could finally, finally make his move.

"Get ready for my signal," he told Fett over the commlink in his helmet. He squatted down for one last round of instructions. "Now, what's your mission?"

The half dozen foundlings he'd personally selected out of the crèche all looked back at him in serious concentration, sticky-mouthed with bribery uj'alayi, and pudgy little hands full of flowers and greenery, clutching them so hard that they were already beginning to wilt. All of them were big-eyed, tousle-haired, and dimpled in various places for optimal impact and effectiveness. One of them even lisped. If Din's foundling hadn't been permanently nestled into the crook of the Armorer's arms all evening, he'd have brought him along as well. Her decision to turn doting had frankly been more of a shock than her change of philosophy over the sharing of faces.

Paz pointed at the first foundling, one of a pair of twins who'd been the first ones he'd recruited. "You."

He lifted his bouquet. A few petals fluttered off. "Give these to the Mand'alor's Consort."

"Good," Paz said. "And then?"

The first foundling's twin—Paz thought her name was Imias, and her brother was Inu, though he might have mixed them—also raised her drooping bouquet. "More flowers."

"Right," Paz said. "And why do we do that?"

"Hands full, can't shoot," all of them obediently chorused together, and Paz grunted in satisfaction.

"Right!" he said. "If you can see your opponent's hands, you know what they can do with them." And then, for fairness's sake, he added, "Though the Riduur'alor probably wouldn't shoot any of you. Even if he's a Jedi."

"Is he really a Jetii?" one of the foundlings asked. "Can he do Jetii magic?"

That broke the dam, and then all of them were talking excitedly.

"Does he have a laser sword like the Mand'alor?"

"Is his sword better than the Mand'alor's?"

"How come he wears robes and no armor?"

"Do they kiss?"

"The Mand'alor's Jedi loves to answer questions," Paz said. "You can ask him anything. Go ahead, go over and give him the flowers, and then he'll answer whatever you want to ask. He probably has more cake, too."

That would have done it, even without the lure of otherness and forbidden weaponry. Paz slipped back to a safe monitoring distance and edged behind a stacked pyramid of already tapped kegs for cover, as a small but determined stampede of excited foundlings bore down on the Jedi. He was still sitting alone at the table, watching everything around him, though he turned his head to see his incoming company. Paz zoomed in with his HUD just in time to catch the change of expression on his face, the shape of his mouth as it curved into a grin and his eyes crinkling in amusement. He turned around from his seat at the table's bench, swinging both legs over so that he could face the children.

"Su cuy'gar, ad'ika," Skywalker said to the group as they surrounded him. "Hi. I hope I said that right. I'm still learning."

Inu shoved his bouquet unceremoniously at the Jedi, and recited, all in one breath, "Briikase riye'miit, these are for you, can we see your laser sword and your magic?"

The Jedi took the bouquet and smiled. "What kind of magic?" he said.

"Jetii magic," Imias said, shoving her way in and dumping a wilted heap of flowers in the Jedi's lap. The rest of them were also crowding forward and depositing their flowers; the Jedi kept reflexively accepting them and his arms were already getting full. "Like, they can fly without a jetpack and blow up the moon."

"You think I should blow up the moon?" the Jedi asked. He clutched the flowers to his chest and looked up, considering. "Well, there are two of them. Do you think anyone would notice if just one was gone? I don't want to get in trouble with the Mand'alor."

Paz switched his audio to Fett's commlink channel. "Do you have eyes on the Mand'alor?" he asked.

"He's in the middle of doing the traditional fealty vow with Clan Rodarch," Fett said at a distance. Paz sent a ping towards his signature and Fett was exactly where he was supposed to be; Din shouldn't be far away.

"Are they doing the part with shots yet?" Paz asked.

"He just downed his third," Fett said. "Two more before he's done, plus the arm-wrestling bit."

"Is Kryze still with him?"

"Confirmed," Fett said. "And he's still watching me like the suspicious bastard he is, so this is probably as good as it's going to get for his distraction level and your opportunity window."

"Copy that," Paz said, and briefly switched both audio and visual back to where the Jedi was by now standing up from the table and was—Paz blinked twice and adjusted his HUD, just to make sure—somehow using his magic shit to make all the plates hover at about head-height in mid-air, orbiting in a slow loop around the table; on the tabletop itself, all the cutlery had apparently come to life and were fighting each other in what looked like fairly complicated melee combat. The spoons and forks had joined forces against the knives, which were in turn working with the tongs and using some of the emptied platters as makeshift shields. As Paz watched, the spoons and forks tried for an inverted wedge maneuver, only to be countered with a phalanx attack. All the foundlings were shrieking with delight.

"Having second thoughts?" Fett said in his ear. Paz could hear the smirk in his voice.

"Wait for it," Paz said, keeping his eyes on the Jedi. Inu was tugging impatiently at the Jedi's sleeve, bouncing on his feet, while his sister hovered nearby. The Jedi shook his head, but his smile was fond and indulgent. He was still holding his armful of flowers and greenery carefully, like they were just as precious as the gifted beskar or any of the other heap of wedding presents that had been mounting up for days, mostly in the form of heirloom weaponry unearthed from one clan vault or another.

"I won't turn it on, I just want to see it," Inu said. "The Mand'alor always lets us hold his laser sword."

"Somehow I doubt that," the Jedi said, still smiling. But he shifted the flowers to one arm and raised his free hand to unclip the weapon at his waist; sensing blood in the water, both foundlings went in for the kill.

"He does," Imias insisted. "He always does when he visits. He lets us fight him for it, and he always loses, and then he lets all of us hold it, and he says we can be Mand'alor, and we would do a better job than him but it's really boring and there's a lot of meetings and so he'll keep doing it for us until we're bigger."

"He—of course he does," the Jedi muttered. "Kriff. That hypocrite. I'm never going to let him lecture me about when I can and can't use the training remote with Grogu again. Also please don't tell anyone I just said kriff in front of you."

"Is your laser sword the same color as the Mand'alor's?" Inu asked.

"Lightsaber," the Jedi corrects. "And no. Mine is green."

"Why?" Inu asked.

"I like blue better," Imias added.

"Well, I did have a blue one, once," the Jedi said. "It belonged to my father. When I made my own, it came out green because of my kyber."

"What's kyber?"

"Kyber is what powers my lightsaber," the Jedi said. "It's a special type of crystal that's attuned to the Force. Each Jedi searches until they find the right kyber that's a match to them. They can feel that it's the right one because the crystals are sentient."

"What's attuned?" Imias asked at the same time Inu said, "what's sentient?"

"Attuned is connected to. Sentient means, uh, able to sense or feel things," the Jedi said.

"It's a rock," Inu said, with the perfect contempt of a five-year-old.

"Crystal," the Jedi said. "It's true, though."

"Where did the Mand'alor get his?" Inu asked.

"Ah," the Jedi said, slightly flustered. He hesitated. "You know, I don't know. It's a little bit different."

"Why?" Imias asked.

"It's much older than me," the Jedi said. "So I don't know where the kyber in it came from. But one of my teachers told me that most of the kyber crystals used to come from the planet Ilum. So, probably there."

"Where's Ilum?"

"Far away," the Jedi said. "It's in the Unknown Regions. It was where the Jedi would look for the crystals, deep in the caves beneath the ground."

"How would they find them?"

"How did they get them out?"

"How do you put them in the laser sword?"

The Jedi's head kept turning back and forth from one twin to the other as they peppered him with questions. "Do you want to know a secret about being a Jedi?" the Jedi asked, and both children leaned in closer. "The crystals sing. And the Jedi learn how to listen for them, so they can find the right one for them. I think it's a little like how Mandalorians choose colors for their armor."

"Armor doesn't sing, it's beskar," Imias said, disappointed. "You just put paint on it."

"You're probably right," the Jedi said. "There's still a lot I have to learn about Mandalorians."

Skywalker looked like he was willing to keep answering questions, but Paz didn't want to risk the children getting bored and wandering off, however much more cake the Jedi kept giving them. He'd been set on a complete ambush, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

"I'm going in," he said to Fett. "Launch on my signal."

"Ke'shuku irtaab, jate'shya be ash'ad," Fett said.

Paz took a few seconds to make sure all his equipment was still at hand– the sack might still be useful– and then came out from behind the kegs and strode over to the Jedi and children for some good old fashioned reverse psychology and misdirection.

"Don't pester the Jedi," he said sternly. "They guard their lightsabers like we guard our armor. It's rude to touch their weapons."

"I didn't mean to," Inu said. "Imias was the one who kept asking."

"You asked too!" Imias said indignantly.

"They're not pestering me, it's not rude," Skywalker said, eyes darting between Paz and the children. "Actually, Jedi younglings start lightsaber work pretty young, you know. I was going to offer a class–"

"But you said," Imias started before Inu shoved her and said, "the Jedi wouldn't let you touch it because you can't even win a dart drill."

"I can too! I hate you! Shabuir!" Imias shrieked, and then burst into tears and kicked her brother. Inu started howling as well and shoved her again. Imias threw herself at the Jedi, grabbing him around the waist and sobbing at top volume; Inu, not to be outdone, mirrored her on the other side.

Paz tilted his head, folded his arms across his chest, and regarded Skywalker silently.

"Oh, hey," the Jedi said, caught somewhere between distressed and amused, arms in the air with the lightsaber still in one hand, the flowers in the other, and clearly not sure how or which crying child to handle first. "Look, it's not a big deal. Let's consider this the first public lesson of the lightsaber class."

He carefully detangled himself and held the lightsaber up with one hand, thumbing at a spot on the hilt. "To start, most lightsabers come with a low intensity setting and a pressure plate. I'm locking my switch off, see? Now, do you think a lightsaber is heavier or lighter than a blaster?"

"Heavier!" Inu said, letting go of the Jedi.

"Lighter," Imias said, still gulping tears and sniffling. She leaned her head against his hip, scrubbed her hand across her nose, and unselfconsciously wiped it off against the Jedi's leg.

The Jedi crouched down to put himself more on her level. "Hold out your hand," he said, and then placed the hilt in her open palm. "See?"

"It's light!" she said.

"Right!" Skywalker said. "That's one of the things many people don't expect when they fight with a lightsaber. They're used to the weight of a solid blade. Now, I'm going to show you how to set your feet and hold it for the first form of lightsaber combat. Hold it upright and put one hand beneath the other. Now, can you make your feet like mine?"

He stepped back and braced with his feet apart, while he also put both hands around the bottom of the bouquet, holding it up in front of him like a weapon and waiting for Imias to copy him. She did, and as she got into position, Paz cleared his throat.

Skywalker gave him a quick glance and shifted slightly in place, a defensive stance. Paz held up one of the flameless sparklerods they'd been giving out to the children to wave and play with, and mimicked the Jedi's hold. After a few seconds, the Jedi's mouth quirked at the corner and he relaxed.

Paz nodded. He tapped his helmet and switched out of night vision. He copied the stance as well, poorly on purpose, spreading his feet overly wide.

"A little closer together," Skywalker said, and came over to show him.

Paz grunted and flexed his elbows out. "Up or down?"

"Relax your shoulders," Skywalker said and pressed lightly on each elbow with one hand, still holding the bouquet.

"How many forms are there?" Paz asked, letting his elbows rise again.

"Seven," Skywalker said, pushing them back down "Traditionally, anyway."

"Fine. Don't panic, this is tradition too," Paz said. He cracked the sparklerod with one quick flex; he could see Skywalker's pupils constrict in the sudden flare of light, blinded, and in that briefest, frozen instant, he grabbed Skywalker around the waist, activated his jetpack, and took Skywalker up and into the air in a rush of shredding greenery and falling vormur petals.

"Now, Fett!" he yelled into the comm, and the world turned daylight-orange as fireworks and flares erupted everywhere. Paz went for a steep vertical climb and then changed direction and shot west. All around him, Mandalorians were whooping and cheering and taking to the sky in a cacophony of noise and lights, swooping in every direction like a summer swarm of brightbugs in full mating swing.

Skywalker had been flailing and fighting in Paz's grip every foot of the way; it was when he suddenly went still and Paz started to feel that same stifling heavy pressure from the hallway that made him worry they were going to crash out of the sky.

He squeezed the Jedi, hitched him up higher into his grip, and gave his jetpack more power. "Don't kill us," he said into the side of Skywalker's head.

"I won't die," Skywalker gritted out, still twisting like a scruffed lothcat as they dipped lower.

"It's tradition!" Paz snapped. "No one's getting hurt, especially you. It's just riduur shereshir."

Even if Din hadn't explained it, he'd assumed Kryze would have said something. She'd masterminded every other detail of the wedding celebration and day, and given the Jedi at least three data-pads of information. Though it would be just like her and her uptight clan to turn their noses up at one of the older, rowdier traditions.

"Fuck," Skywalker said. He squirmed again and Paz nearly dropped him before the Jedi got one arm around his neck. "Where's Din–– why is Fett involved?"

"He has the fastest ship," Paz said, and speaking of that, Slave 1 roared by overhead and the amount of sound and chaos increased as any flying Mandalorians in its airspace frantically wheeled and dove out of the way like scattered birds.

"Are you wearing a tracker?" Paz asked.

"What?" Skywalker asked.

Paz dropped him.

To his credit, Skywalker didn't yell while falling; he only flinched and snarled when he realized the person who'd caught him a hundred feet down was Fett, and then he seemed much more concerned with trying to get his hands around Fett's neck to choke him rather than hang on to him. While they tussled mid-air, Paz took the brief freedom to survey the area from above, looking for either the telltale glow of the Darksaber lit up, or just for Din and his armor's own personal brand of overly conspicuous shininess. Nothing, but he marked his next target area and then looked around for Fett and Skywalker again, still grappling and exchanging pleasantries below.

"Just like old times, eh, Skywalker?" Fett said as he flew them back up to Paz, and then grunted in pain when Skywalker elbowed him hard in the ribs. "Kriff. I scanned him, he's clean. You take him. I need to get back to my ship so I can do the decoy run."

"Who's flying it?" Paz asked. Fett never let anyone else touch the damn thing except that assassin friend of his, and she was supposedly back on Tatooine holding Fett's territory down while he was here.

"Right now? Autopilot routine. So you'd better let me get back to it," Fett said. "Here."

He threw Skywalker back to Paz; both of them looked extremely disheveled, but there was no visible blood on either, and anyone who could swear as virulently as Skywalker was currently doing in Huttese was at least having no trouble breathing. Paz caught the Jedi and also the heel of the Jedi's boot to the upper part of his thigh; he promptly bear-hugged him to avoid getting more of the same treatment. This was why it was important to have a codpiece, and he made a mental note to rub that in Din's face again later.

"I'll explain," Paz said as Fett shot upwards past them.

"Feel free," the Jedi said. He sounded like he was about five seconds from trying to bite Paz's throat out through his flightsuit and beskar.

Paz aimed them back towards his next checkpoint, the stage where everything had kicked off before the celebrations. It was dark and empty, everyone back at the celebration area. He was going to run out of fuel sooner rather than later, and he had to assume Din would also be in airborne search mode soon if he wasn't already. When Paz landed them on the stage, he let go of Skywalker immediately and stepped back.

Skywalker took a single unsteady step and then straightened up immediately, already collected; it reminded Paz of a tooka that had fallen off a piece of furniture and was trying to pretend it hadn't. But Paz was under no illusion that even without his lightsaber, Skywalker wasn't dangerous or incapable of wrenching Paz's arms and legs off. He was certainly staring at Paz like he was figuring out which one he was going to start with.

"What's your waist, 28? 29?" Paz said. Skywalker blinked at him. "I used the arm and shoulder measurements the Armorer had for the pauldron and vambrace Djarin had made for you, but had to guess for everything else."

The crates of beskar had already been hauled away for safekeeping, but the other boxes were still there. He knelt down and opened one of the cases he had stowed beside the podium earlier, deliberately giving Skywalker his back while he took out his supplies. The back of his neck prickled, but nothing happened. When he stood up, Skywalker was still giving him that same long, flat, appraising look.

"Put these on," Paz said, thrusting the bundle of helmet, pauldrons, vambraces, and cuirass, mostly blue and orange and all wrapped up in a dark blue cloak. He hadn't gone for a full armor suit, and it wouldn't have been appropriate anyway. He'd had to haphazardly piece it together from older suits in storage in the armory. It felt wrong to use the more newly available pieces from more recent battles.

Skywalker didn't reach out to take them, running one gloved hand through his mussed hair instead. He'd lost his cloak somewhere before the flight, probably back at the table with the foundlings. His shirt had gotten very unbuttoned. The dishevelment suited him, though. There was a glittering edge to his usual placid calm, like seeing a blade partially drawn out of a sheath. He was more interesting this way, Paz decided. It made more sense why Din had chosen him. Din was an idiot with no self-preservation instincts who stubbornly ran straight at weird, dangerous situations all the time: pissing off the entire BHG, taking Imperial bounties, stealing Imperial bounties, reclaiming Mandalore, adopting green baby Jedi, marrying Jedi. Being friends with Paz, honestly.

"Why?" Skywalker asked.

"For disguise purposes," Paz said.

Skywalker tilted his head. "Sorry. I mean, why shouldn't I see how far I can throw you?"

Paz shrugged. "Riduur shereshir. And riduur geroya."

Skywalker mouthed the words, frowning on the second. "I don't know what that means, and no, no one's told me. So tell me now."

"It's a wedding tradition," Paz said. "It started as something specifically when spouses from different established clans joined, but any Mandalorian wedding can do it."

"Kidnapping?" Skywalker said dryly.

"It's not real," Paz said. "It's for fun."

"Fun for who?"

"Everyone?" Paz said. "It originated as a way to cut down on actual kidnappings and clan grudge-matches, and to establish bonds and conviviality between clans. One person–" he pointed to the Jedi. "—is the haaranovad. They have to be found. The other person is the mar'eyirad. That's Djarin. He finds you. Friends of both wedding parties take one riduur away. Or, the riduur themself can choose to go hide. The mar'eyirad has to find them. They can get help, or look on their own. That's the riduur geroya, the hunt part."

"Find where?" Skywalker asked.

Back when Mandalore was at the height of its powers and expanse, there'd been stories about riduur geroya that had taken entire weeks and went parsecs outside the star systems they'd started at. As entertaining as that would have been, Paz wasn't eager to eventually deal with either Din or Kryze in that situation. Or, quite frankly, the Jedi. Paz liked having all his limbs where they were.

"Traditionally, a bar," Paz said. "The hiding group drinks until the mar'eyirad finds them. When they finally do find their riduur, they have to pay to take them back."

Skywalker snorted. "Another dowry?" he asked.

"No, the mar'eyirad has to pay the tab for all the alcohol the group with the haaranovad manages to drink before mar'eyirad finds them, and do a shot for each bottle that was finished," Paz said. "They're also required to perform or fulfill a forfeit action as part of it. Usually something physical. Or embarrassing."

Skywalker picked up the helmet Paz had been shoving at him. He turned it over in his hands, inspecting it without saying anything. He set it down again and straightened up.

"Din called you one of his covert members the first time I saw you in the hallway," Skywalker said, after a moment of silence. He gave Paz a long, once-over that felt uncomfortably perceptive. "He says you're annoying and judgmental and a pain in his ass. And yet you're the third comm code listing in his contacts list; he gave me your comm code in case of emergencies; and Grogu likes you and has nothing but positive feelings about you. I'm guessing you're also the brother from the fighting corps Din also refers to, when I can pry those stories out of him." Skywalker crossed his arms. "So. What's your stake in all this?"

Din's first comm contact was probably Skywalker, but Paz wondered who'd beat him out for second. Fett, maybe. Hopefully not Kryze. He shrugged. "As Mand'alor, he's already going to have to pay the tab for all this anyway. It's more about the challenge part."

Skywalker waited, expressionless.

Paz tapped a button on his vambrace to bring up a holo projection of his spreadsheet, the long columns of numbers. "I've been taking bets on how long the Mand'alor's riduur geroya will take ever since Kryze put the official wedding announcement out. Almost everyone thinks he'll find you within an hour, two hours tops. I was the only one who took the over."

Fett had also bet the over, but after their previous interaction, Paz figured it was better to not mention that.

But Skywalker was looking at the numbers now with a slightly furrowed brow; the challenge angle had caught his attention, and Paz thought there might be some pride or sense of competition being sparked there. He might have been able to bring Skywalker into the plan from the beginning, if Din hadn't done everything humanly possible to keep them apart.

It was best to be pragmatic when things were time-sensitive. "Look, just put on the disguise and follow me and stay off his radar for another two hours. I'll give you a cut of the credits," Paz said.

"How much?" Skywalker said.

"I'll give you five thousand credits," Paz said.

Skywalker didn't say anything, just tapped one foot.

"Five thousand credits," Paz said.

"You know, normally you go up on the second one," Skywalker said, arching one eyebrow.

"I was going to make him sing in public for his forfeit," Paz admitted. "And record it. And then post it to the Bounty Hunter's Guild message board and everyone else in his comm list."

Skywalker's other eyebrow shot up.

"He’ll have to dance, too," Paz said.

"Well, you should have led with that," Skywalker said. He looked as though he was undergoing some deep internal debate with himself. After a moment, he narrowed his eyes at Paz and then nodded decisively. "Ten thousand credits, the copy of the recording, no posting to the Bounty Hunter's Guild, and some sparring later. I want to practice on someone I'm not going to feel too bad about punching or worry about offending."

"Done," Paz said immediately. He'd have paid the Jedi to do the sparring anyway. Thousands of his ancestors would have shouted at him from the afterlife for passing up the opportunity.

Skywalker made a slight face at the armor, but he started putting it on with a deliberate care that didn't speak of much natural practice but had respect at least for the materials. He finished by settling the cape around his shoulders and putting on the helmet, then tilted his head back and forth a few times. "Oh, this is almost as bad as that time on the Death Star. I can’t see shit," he said, his voice sounding different through the helmet's modulator. He pushed it up slightly to sit on his forehead. "Though I like the colors. Makes me think of my time in the Rogue squadron. No jetpack?"

"No, we're walking from here," Paz said. "Less flashy."

"Good, you can give me the rest of your plan on the way and I can improve it," Skywalker said.

"Hmm,” Paz said. He changed out his own half-cape for a full-length dark gray cape; he had to fuss with it for a minute to make it work with his jetpack, not used to having anything dragging from his shoulders. Even if they were going to mostly walk, he wasn't ruling out another flight, and he didn't want to catch fire.

Skywalker watched him. "Is that your disguise?" he asked dubiously.

"Yes," Paz said.

"Is that all of your disguise?" Skywalker said.

"Yes," Paz said. "I can't change my armor."

"Maybe try to hunch a little," Skywalker said, wiggling his hand up and down. "Or if you let me go back for my lightsaber, I can make you shorter."

"Put the helmet on completely," Paz said. "Cover your pretty face for now, if you can bear to."

"Sure," Skywalker snorted. "I'm used to being chased. Can't let my reputation take a hit by being found too soon." He pushed the helmet down over his face.

"You're funny, Jetii," Paz said as he levered himself off the stage. "Maybe you really will be a Mandalorian someday. We'll see how you drink."

"Who wouldn't swallow all this glorious Mandalorian culture?" Skywalker said tonelessly through his modulator, and Paz was surprised, not for the first time that evening, enough to actually laugh.

***

It had been a lot of effort to end up at close to the same place they'd started at, but that was the point; Paz had figured Din wouldn’t expect him to do something so obvious, and hopefully Fett could keep Din chasing him uselessly for long enough to cover the spread on all of Paz's bets. Once he got tired of that, Paz had paid off enough Mandalorians who favored black armor to wear cloaks similar to the one Skywalker usually had, in order to further muddy the waters.

Some Mandalorians were still making lazy loops back and forth across the sky in long, bright arcs, or setting off fireworks that were reflected in the lake's dark waters. There was a general buzzing hum of excitement across the entire area as word spread that the Mand'alor was currently in the process of his riduur geroya, but the majority of attendees had gone back to general celebrating. Skywalker had walked at his side unassuming and unnoticed in his armor, and no one seemed to take any notice of him.

Paz had picked their spot deliberately: not the biggest bonfire or the one of the ones on the outskirts, enough of a mixture of Mandalorians who kept their helmets on and those who didn't, and a lot of singing. They were on the edge of the area near the lake, as it turned into pebbles and sand. Someone had built the fire on the strip of sand and stacked plenty of crates and kegs around, that in turn got used for kindling as they were emptied. Someone else had dragged a sound system and a small generator up for playing music; there were drums and some other instruments for making it.

Paz had been dedicated by his clan to the Fighting Corps at the age of six, a tradition for second sons and foundlings; he'd grown up on Concordia and then moved coverts several times. Verd's kar'ta was a common affliction for those from the Fighting Corps who went where they were needed or sent regardless of clan affiliation, sometimes bouncing from covert to covert: it was the vague ache and sense of nostalgia for places that he thought he remembered, that he'd fixed certain memories in his mind to as significant. And then, that nostalgia and memories clashing up against the actuality of what he'd returned to and found.

His ba'vodu had called it traveler's disease rather than soldier's heart, and when he was in his cups during holidays, ba'buir called it aay'han, but ba'buir had been old, old enough to remember actual Mandalore before the exile to Concordia, so even if it was dramatic, it had the ring of experience and truth to it. The retaking of the planet was the first time Paz had actually set foot on Mandalore; he didn't know if he had the right to feel nostalgia for a place he'd never truly been before, the place that he'd grown up hearing stories and songs about. The place his ancestors had ruled long ago.

He had imagined it, based on those stories and songs, and from the camaraderie they could still partake in while hiding. In his memories that had never happened, it was loud and rowdy, unrestrained. Everyone sang, and everyone got loud and weepy when the inevitable song about the homeland started. There would be stomping and clapping and banging vambraces and expansive arm gestures to go with the songs, where someone got accidentally clonked in the head nearly every thirty seconds, and no one minded because it was just what happened. Spirit mandatory, rhythm optional, like one of his Fighting Corps instructors used to say.

It was like that. That was all happening right in front of him, right now like it had bloomed from his imagination. But there were also things he hadn't imagined, because they went against some of the fundamental parts of his world.

A group of Mandalorians in Nite Owl armor were popping the caps off of beer on each other's pauldrons and were drinking. One of them had her helmet off upside down, and they were all tossing the discarded caps in there for sport, yelling points for how many and how often they landed. Another group was sabering bottles with their vibroblades, never minding if they contained anything effervescent or not; it all got sabered. So of course, they would drink the whole thing before it bubbled away, and then even more bottles got sabered.

Mandalorians ringed the fire, and the flames reflected off the blank visors of those who kept their faces hidden, and turned other bare faces into masks of gold. They were eating together. They were eating in front of each other. Some of them were roasting things over the fire, chunks of meat or sausages or anything that could easily be poked onto a stick or vibroblade and held over the fire. There were various soups in different pots parked on the coals, and cups for anyone who wanted to scoop some up.

He watched it, and he listened, and his throat tightened at the array of Mandalorian life and joy available and spread so carelessly before him. He had forgotten joy, maybe. The years had worn away at him, and it had been hard to remember joy and beauty and even just fun. It became too easy to forget how gratifying it could be to simply—have fun and celebrate with comrades. He'd tried to train himself away from missing it, and the most effective way of doing that was to train himself to forget what it felt like.

It was important not to miss the things you couldn't have. It just made it worse in the end. Or so he'd always thought, but now they had their world back, and if that was possible, then what else was?

Paz was saved from working himself into a shamefully excessive amount of maudlin emotion by, of all things, the Jedi. Still in his disguising armor, Skywalker had thrown himself into the singing with gusto and volume. He was currently on his fourth song, giving a more than adequate rendition of "All My Exes Live in Raxus", with a number of extra verses Paz had never heard before and suspected that Skywalker had made up on the fly; his knowledge of Outer Rim skughole cities was far more expansive than his appearance would have hinted at.

"—but I'm alive and well in Tatooiiiiine~!" Skywalker finished, holding the high note. Applause erupted around him. Skywalker made a flourishing bow, and then hopped off the crate he'd been standing on top of while singing. Six different Mandalorians were eagerly shoving drinks at him; he plucked a random one from the clustered assortment, shoved his helmet up just enough to take a long swig, and then shoved it back down and flopped down next to Paz.

Paz was still keeping an eye out for Din. According to Boba, Din had only followed his decoy flight for a short period before going back. He was probably working through the crowds now in dogged, determined efficiency.

"Anyway, someone told me once about how singing is hardwired for all races," Skywalker remarked, like they were picking up a conversation they had been having before. He looked around him. "It's in our cells. All of us sing, or have some kind of version. I have no idea if it it's true or not, but right now, I can believe it."

"Hmm," Paz said.

"You don't agree?"

"Mandalorians are a creed, not a race," Paz said.

"I think that supports the theory, actually," Skywalker said. "Look at everyone here."

Paz grunted and turned a bottle of ale around in his hands. He'd swapped the biometric trackers he'd used on the training hall out for various checkpoints along the perimeter of the area, and Din had just disappeared off them. Which could mean nothing.

"Are you going to sing?" Skywalker asked. The easy back and forth tone reminded him of Skywalker talking to Din in the training hall, and Paz shifted uncomfortably.

"No," Paz said.

"Have you thought about what you're going to make Din sing?" Skywalker asked.

"Yes," Paz said. Skywalker waited. Paz was normally good at simply ignoring or bulling his way through any social awkwardness or discomfort, but Skywalker seemed to treat it the same way he did the sparring with Din, slipping inside and getting too close to thrust off. He already had had at least four other Mandalorians from around the fire drunkenly throw their arms over his shoulders and declare him a vod worth dying for, that they'd be proud to stand next to in any battle.

Paz gave in. "Normally it would be a traditional Mandalorian song," he said. "That would be most fitting. Probably a battle one."

"You'll have to translate for me," Skywalker said. "Oh! Though I know most of AKA's songs." He hummed a brief snatch of Waadas Waadas Waadas.

"AKA," Paz said, "are not true Mandalorians."

Skywalker cocked his head. "You sure? They wear the armor." Paz put all the outrage he felt and then some into his glare, and Skywalker met his visor, then started to laugh. "Sorry. I always just assumed they were. Like. Maybe a special sect."

"They were a band that won a holovision contest," Paz said.

"Are you telling me Mandalorians didn’t watch the annual GalactiVision show?" Skywalker said. "I know it's mostly a Core planet thing because they have the most money to throw at and go all out for it, but even on Tatooine, we would hatewatch the finals."

"We watched it," Paz admitted grudgingly. "To laugh at the Core."

"Seriously. It's a joke the way they get automatic qualification just because they foot the bill for the whole thing," Skywalker said. "It's why their entries are always terrible because they don't have to worry about passing the semifinals. I made the mistake of saying that in front of Chancellor Mon Mothma once, and I thought she was going to slap me, since I guess the whole thing originated from Chandrila."

"Hmm," Paz said. "You're not wrong."

"The thing is," Skywalker said, "I thought you can't officially perform in GalactiVision under a planet's name unless you have the funds and the planetary approval. And since AKA won Galactivision the year they competed, for Mandalore… that's why I assumed."

Paz turned his head and stared at the fire. "AKA was made up of Ajaysac Dagg, Kote Orills, and Al'den Cakoun," he finally said. "It was a long time ago. They wore the armor but their adherence to the Resol'nare was… debatable."

This was the most diplomatic way he could think to put the fact that arguing over whether or not AKA were Mandalorian was a topic no one had ever completely agreed on, and which came up constantly as debate in any occasion where more than three Mandalorians were gathered. The GalactiVision winning song, Serocco, had ended up as a galaxy-wide smash hit and it was annoyingly catchy and enjoyable.

"Some of their music wasn't terrible," he added, because honor compelled him.

"I feel like from you, that's a glowing endorsement," Skywalker said. "Maybe I'll merit 'not completely terrible' from you one of these days."

"What's your deal with Fett?" Paz asked, because the best way out of the conversation felt like turning it back onto something Skywalker clearly had mixed feelings on.

Skywalker huffed into his vocoder and then propped his chin on his hands. "He turned my brother-in-law over to Jabba the Hutt for a bounty and he worked with the Empire to do it," he said. "When the Empire had a bounty out on me, he was working directly with them, and along with… others in the Empire to try and turn me in. He beat the shit out of me on Tatooine and shot me in the shoulder there, and tried to kill me a couple other times. I helped drop him in a sarlacc pit, so I guess it evens out. And now he's the kriffing daimyo of the city and planet I grew up on. About the nicest thing I can say about him is that he refused to sexually assault my sister when he was offered the opportunity. And he did help Din and Grogu, and they like him. But we have some unpleasant history and it's hard for me not to hold onto it sometimes."

"Ah," Paz said.

"He's also just a real dick sometimes," Skywalker added, still staring into the fire.

"That's true," Paz said.

"I do need to retrieve my lightsaber at some point,” Skywalker said. "I'm sure Mandalorian foundlings all know how to handle weapons, but it's kind of important I get it back."

"It’s fine. There was a safety switch,” Paz said. "I went to a lot of trouble to make sure you couldn't stab me with it during the riduur shereshir."

The discomfort of talking so much with the Jedi had been slowly disappearing without Paz quite realizing how it was happening. Skywalker didn't seem to mind doing the majority of the talking; he asked questions and observed things happening around him and didn't seem to mind however Paz responded, or if he did at all. He wasn't probing. At first it was like watching someone build a tower of blocks and knock it down, and then it was like walking up a set of stairs that wasn't going anywhere, and then it was just… fine. Disconcertingly satisfying, even, to talk about things he knew and liked to someone who seemed to genuinely want and appreciate hearing about them.

"What'd they just finish singing?" Skywalker asked, gesturing at a group of Mandalorians from Clan Eldar.

"Buy'ce gal, buy'ce tal," Paz said, and then added, "It's a Mandalorian drinking song. It means, 'A pint of ale, a pint of blood'."

It was one of their favorites from the Fighting Corps, actually. The cynicism had appealed to them as teenagers, before they really could experience it. Skywalker made an encouraging noise, so Paz recited the whole thing in Basic. "A pint of ale, a pint of blood, buys men without a name. We never care who wins the war, so you can keep your fame."

"Very mercenary," Skywalker said. "My friend Han would like that. My brother-in-law, I mean."

"Is he one?" Paz asked. "A mercenary."

"Nah, he's a smuggler," Skywalker said. "Well, he was. And still is, just not officially. But he mostly races and does shipping. He's pretty good."

"He's the one Fett turned over to Jabba?" Paz asked. "And he's still alive?"

"Yeah, I know, right?" Skywalker said. "I think he has more lives than a lothcat."

"He must," Paz said.

"So how long as it been?" Skywalker asked. "Are you past the time limit for most of the bets?"

Paz startled; he had almost forgotten to check his timer for the last few minutes, and that realization made him sit up. "In three minutes, actually."

A thread of sound started, and then grew louder and became music. It almost seemed to curl and flicker like bonfire's flames, pure and piercing. Someone had found a use for the bes'bevs after all, it seemed. Paz craned his neck to see; there were four players, two of them without helmets at all, but the other two players were playing them with their helmets shoved up partially to expose their mouths. Not particularly strange, except for the fact that Paz knew both of them; they were from his own covert, they were the Children of the Watch, and even though it was only a sliver of their faces, for them to do so—

It is we who perceive it who have changed. The Armorer's words echoed in his head still. He thought, maybe, that she was right and wrong at the same time. They had all changed, but everything had changed, the world included. He still couldn’t say for sure how he felt about it.

Someone started singing, another familiar voice winding through the sound of the bes'bevs. It was Woves, because the night wasn't strange enough already. He held his helmet under his arm and was singing, unselfconsciously. He had a good voice. Some of his fellow Nite Owls joined in, harmonizing.

"It's so beautiful," Skywalker said next to him softly, and Paz startled. Skywalker had pushed his helmet all the way up his forehead again, and his eyes were closed. "What is it? Is it a love song? It sounds so lonely and longing."

There was a moment where Paz was looking at Skywalker's unguarded face, at the firelight playing on his cheekbones and the crescent sweep of his eyelashes and the cleft in his chin, and he felt the same frission as he did when the bes'bevs had first started. Not attraction, exactly; but recognition of something fine or beautiful. But he knew how he felt about that, and the danger of indulging in it.

The thing was, it wasn't the first, or second, or even seventh time Paz had been envious of something Din had. In fact, that had been a fairly consistent trend in their lives and relationship, from barehanded murder attempts over who got the last slice of uj cake served in the fighting corps mess dinners, to the three months that they didn't have a single direct conversation with each other after Din got the official beroya title and Paz had gone to bed each night angry at the world.

It wasn't entirely one-sided either; Paz had an ancestral name and clan and all the deeply annoying and simultaneously invaluable trappings that went with having a huge fucking family, and Din didn't, and Paz was well aware Din would have swapped every fighting corps accolade and weapon he'd ever earned in exchange for it. Paz also had armor that was at least sixty percent original to said ancestral clan, though he couldn't help that he'd wound up with the bulk and height to outstrip his initial share of inherited beskar. Those bodily characteristics were another thing he'd had that Din hadn't, and been able to lord over Din, at least until Din got his own growth spurt and caught up enough that Paz stopped being able to rest a condescending elbow on his pauldron when they stood next to each other.

They still stood by each other, though: Paz in his ancestral armor, and Din in his single pieces from the foundling reserve, even though it sometimes it felt like they'd been competing with each other their entire lives.

Until they hadn't. Until Din went and shared tables with the Imps, and then their entire covert was killed for it. Eventually, he'd thought Din had died as well, until he returned to them on Glavis. Paz had been tasked to relocate the foundlings to other coverts after they'd been revealed, and he was the only one beside the Armorer who had escaped the massacre on Nevarro afterwards. The resentment of that had been banked coals in his heart, and when he saw Din again, with the Darksaber on his belt and the spear of pure beskar on his back, those coals had leaped into flames. He wanted both those things, and the flames were hot, and he'd stood watching the Armorer casually knock Din around while he clumsily wielded the Darksaber, not even caring what he had.

It had seemed like he could hear voices: his buir, his ba'buir, his ba'vodu. It had seemed like he could hear music, a seductive melody, both dark and bright: come take me, come wield me, come use me. He could. He could choose to do that.

"Maybe the Darksaber belongs in someone else's hands," he'd said.

"Maybe," Din had said.

"It was forged by my ancestor, founder of House Vizsla," he'd said.

"And now it belongs to me," Din had said.

"Because you won it in combat."

"That's right."

"And now…" Paz had said. And then he'd stopped. Din was staring at him warily, like he did when they were both cadets in the Fighting Corps and sizing each other up in the rings. Din had looked at him that way the first night Paz had met him, another foundling in torn red robe who didn't speak out loud for a full week, and who kept a scrap of red fabric under his pillow and then under his armor for as long as Paz knew him.

Paz had felt like he was on some great precipice, higher than where he stood on Glavis. There was a long drop below him. There were stars above him. He could fly. He could fall.

"What will you do with it?" he'd finally asked.

Din had stood still as well. "I don't know," he'd finally replied. "But I would like your help to learn and decide."

And Paz had nodded and walked away, and left Din and the Armorer to their lesson. And the next day, the Armorer had told Paz that they would need to pack up the forge they had just set up, because they were tasked with a new journey.

He didn’t regret it, mostly.

But it was hard, sometimes. They both had things each other wanted. And now Din had a foundling of his own, and a Jedi riduur who was as lovely and deadly as the saber he wore on his belt, and it was hard not to want. He could imagine it, the challenge. But even if such a thing could be issued and won, it wouldn't be worth it. For that cost, it wouldn't be real joy-- just a brief flash of pleasure, like flames leaping before they died, or stars falling out of the sky. It was important to try not to want things you couldn't have.

"No," Paz said to Skywalker. "It's not a love song. The words mean, 'Nobody likes us but we don't care, because we're Mandalorians, and we're the best.' Sorry to spoil the illusion."

"Mm," Skywalker said and shook his head. "I like it my way better."

Paz's timer beeped.

"That's it?" Skywalker asked.

"That's it," Paz confirmed.

"Oh good," Skywalker said, and pushed his helmet up off his face. "Here he comes."

Silver and fire descended from the sky, and Din landed a few feet away. He looked around and then zeroed in on Skywalker first, and Paz right after, and started towards them with intent. Paz was glad he'd never gotten rid of most of his Jedi-kidnapping equipment, and prepared to brawl.

But he didn't get the chance. Skywalker stepped directly in front of him and then went into a dramatic, sweeping bow. "Mand'alor!" he said.

"Time is zero three fifty," Paz announced. "The riduur geroya is over. Will the Mand'alor pay the forfeit in exchange for his beloved riduur's return?"

"We've already prepared a place for you," Skywalker added, gesturing to the center where the crates and sound system were stacked.

Paz immediately started his visual and audio feeds recording, using both his HUD and his rangefinder in separate streams.

"Luke. Cyar'ika," Din said quietly, with an audible tinge of desperation and entreaty.

"Mand'alor, it's tradition," Skywalker said, in a tone as thick and sweet as uj'ayl. "It's not just putting on a show. We have to fully honor and respect the traditions of Mandalore, you know. Even if it's not on an altar."

Din went, if possible, even stiller; Paz figured all his blood might be deciding whether it needed to go north or south. "The stage is still there," Din tried hopefully, in a low tone. "We could go. Now."

"It'll be there after you sing, too," Skywalker said in that same low tone. He then clapped his hands briskly and called out clearly, "Mandalorians! Our Mand'alor's hunt is successful " He removed the helmet and held it carefully under one arm, and tilted his head so the firelight caught his hair and lit him up clearly in trembling gold. He clasped both hands against his chest, working the crowd shamelessly as he leaned towards Din. "I rejoice that you've found me. I ask for this small favor, as your riduur. Gedet'ye."

He got the accent perfectly, that time. He was doing impressive things with his eyelashes, too. Paz thought that if Din didn't hurry up, he was going to have to draw the Darksaber and knock out another few challenges to his throne and spouse before anything else happened.

Din held his ground for another few seconds before making the faintest huff of—laughter, Paz was pretty sure. Not a sigh after all. He stepped towards Skywalker, and bent their heads together, giving him a keldabe kiss that had the crowd roaring.

"Do I get to pick the song?" he heard Din ask Skywalker, almost lost under all the cheering.

"Nope," Skywalker said, and pressed his forehead to Din's again.

And then Paz had perhaps the best idea in his life that hadn't been deciding not to challenge Din for the rights of the Darksaber, and hurriedly stepped over to the sound system to change out the upcoming musical selection. The audience was yelling suggestions, but he knew exactly what it should be.

Skywalker and Din were finally done embracing. Paz stepped forward, and he handed Din the mic. "Vod," he said, and stepped back.

"I'll get you for this," Din said, and then the music swelled, and he stiffened as he recognized it.

Paz saluted. Skywalker had stepped away and left Din in the center. The Jedi started clapping, and the rest of the crowd joined in as well. After a moment, Din raised the mic up to his helmet level. He didn't bother standing on the crates.

"My, my," Din sang in a monotone, "At Serroco, Saul Karath did surrender. Oh, yeah, and I have met my destiny in quite a similar way—"

"DO THE DANCE MOVES, YOU COWARD," Skywalker bellowed, looking gleeful. Din froze again briefly, and then awkwardly bobbed his head a few times as he kept singing. The cheering intensified.

"Dank farrick," Kryze said, suddenly at his elbow. "I hope you've been recording this."

Under Skywalker and the rest of the crowd's loud encouragement, Din had escalated to a sort of shuffling sway, one hand holding the mic and one hand moving aimlessly at his side. "Serroco, I was defeated, you won the war. Serroco, promise to love you forevermore—"

"I have," Paz said, automatically tagging his vocoder and her vocal frequency so he could strip and exclude their conversation from the recording later. He added, "But Skywalker has first claim on the copy."

"Mm," Kryze said. "I'll talk to him. This one might do even better numbers than the riduurok version from the light cruiser. I won't even have to do that much editing this time."

Paz turned slightly to face her, though he kept his rangefinder recording. "That was you?"

"Of course it was," Kryze said. "I had Koska download the files off the ship and start cutting copies, as soon as I found them. I stayed up all kriffing night after Din showed up with Skywalker, putting the damn video together."

"There were too many sparkles in the riduurok video," Paz finally said.

Kryze snorted. "There was just the right amount of sparkles. It had to be over the top. If it looked too polished, everyone would have just called it propaganda. It humanizes him and Skywalker. But the Gideon one was the important one. No real Mandalorian was going to watch Djarin beat the shit out of Gideon with nothing but his armor and his spear, just to protect his foundling, and not realize he could be the leader we needed to take back Mandalore."

She shook her head. "I know what everyone says about me. How I lost Mandalore. How I'm just waiting to stab Din Djarin in the back. I never expected to rule, you know. I wasn't even raised for it. That was my older sister, Satine."

Kryze was quiet. There was an old hurt there, Paz could tell, something that had maybe scarred over but she still felt the pain from. He wondered if she thought she was hiding it. Usually, Kryze went out of her way to keep her helmet off, refusing to hide.

"I loved her. I grew up thinking that I would be her general, her strong right hand. She would handle the rule of Mandalore, and I would fight for her, for the glory and triumph of our family and Mandalore. We would be in each other's story and song, and in Mandalore's.

"And then that wasn't to be, when she and the New Mandalorians turned to pacifism and nonviolence… I was young. I thought she didn't want me. I felt stupid and rejected and young, and I did stupid things because of it, and those became terrible things. My sister died because of things I took part in. Mandalore was lost because of things I did trying to atone for that. I have no excuse. I can never fix it in full."

Her eyes were dry and glittering, fixed on Din and the Jedi for a moment before turning away to look up at the sky. "It's hard to tell who you are in someone else's story, isn't it?" she said. "If you're even in it. If your song is just there to make someone else's seem better by comparison."

Paz didn’t say anything, thinking of standing on a platform in Glavis, watching Din and the Armorer, and hearing the song of the Darksaber in his mind. Kryze stood next to him, close enough to nearly brush against his arm, and the two of them watched Din sing, with the weight of the history of their clans between them. The old and the new ruling houses, Paz thought. And now look at them.

"Songs go on," Paz finally said. "And change. Yours. Mine. Mandalore's. As long as there are Mandalorians, it doesn't matter."

"I guess it doesn't, does it," she murmured. "I suppose that should be freeing."

Din had finished Serroco, but hadn't been able to escape; someone had started Redalu Alor and he was being forced to perform an encore. Skywalker was sitting on top of Woves's shoulders, directing the crowd to dance with exaggerated arm gestures and a lot of chest shaking. Paz checked to make sure his rangefinder was still recording.

"He's so sincere," Kryze said, with more than a little frustration in her voice. "He couldn't be more perfectly built to be the Mand'alor if they'd made him in a kriffing lab."

"I know," Paz said. "It's annoying."

"You know, AKA weren't really true Mandalorians," Kryze said, frowning. "But the GalactiVision song is so damn good."

Paz couldn’t help it; the huff of laughter had to come out despite his own best efforts. Kryze shot him a quizzical look. "What?"

"Nothing," Paz said, "You're right. It's good."

He hesitated, with over forty years of being what he thought meant to be a Mandalorian shaking within him, and then he leaned down and picked up an unopened bottle of tihaar and two of the soup cups. He used his vibroblade to saber the top—it was enjoyable, if pointless—and poured two measures into the two cups. He handed one to Kryze, who stared at him in confusion.

"Here," he said. "K'oyacyi."

And before he could think better of it, he unlatched his helmet just enough to expose his mouth, and held the cup up. Kryze took her cup, and without looking away, she raised it to him in acknowledgement and said "K'oyacyi," return. He drank it in one go at the same time that she did.

"For Mandalore," she said, after swallowing.

"For Mandalore," he agreed.

Din was finally finishing his encore, and looked like he was barely keeping himself from fleeing. Skywalker had removed most of the borrowed armor, climbed off Woves's shoulders, and had draped himself against Din, swaying next to him. As soon as the music ended, Din dropped the microphone and grabbed Skywalker around the waist.

"I love you. Also I want a jetpack, eventually," Paz heard Skywalker say to him. "Let's go."

"Fine," Din said, and without any further niceties, he activated his jetpack and they went up into the sky together to general applause and whooping.

"Oh, that mudscuffer," Kryze said as she craned her neck backwards to watch them go, and she sighed. "I'll never get him back for any clan talks the rest of the night now."

"They're on their way to fornicate on the stage where the speeches were," Paz said. "Possibly on the podium."

Kryze grimaced. "Well, we can just burn that later."

Mandalorians were closing in on the empty space Din and Skywalker had left, new participants climbing on the crates to sing and dance. More fireworks. Paz moved around them to try and gather the pieces that Skywalker had left behind, so he could return them to the armory later. Someone started banging their vambraces together, and then someone else did, and another, until everyone was doing it in union, drawn by instinctual impulse. Paz did it himself as well and the fire was leaping, the noise and the voices rising. He looked up at the sky and saw Din and Skywalker still just in sight, the glint of his armor and the blaze of Din's jetpack taking them both up and away from the joyful chaos below.

Sound crackled in his earpiece. "I take it the loving couple have gone off to other pursuits," Fett said, with satisfaction in his voice. "Are we going to start collecting the winnings?"

"Yeah," Paz said. "After the next song. Come join."

And he went to add his voice to all the music rising around him as well.