Work Text:
Din limps onwards like a mortally wounded dog. Destined to die, forgotten in some back alley, to be picked at by rats and slowly disintegrate into a pile of bones, skin, and maggots.
Yet, Din moves forward. He throws himself into the bounties Boba provides for him and says no to the support Fennec offers. He's a dead man walking anyways– there is no point in dragging someone down with him. There is no one for Fennec to save anyways.
Din is dead, even if he continues to breathe. And the moment he takes his last breath, that will be the final note to his song. There will be no symphony to welcome him into the stars. He will not be going there. There will be no rest or joining with the rest of the Manda as he speaks his last words, because he will not be accepted among their noble warrior ranks. His life has hit a permanent caesura. He has run full tilt into his cold ending. Din’s song will not pick up after this silence. The musicians will not lift up their flutes, the drummers will not hit their drums, and the strummers will not pluck their strings, because everyone has left the stage.
Din is dar'manda, a breaker of creed, and he is dead. He has removed his helmet and for that his soul has been forfeited. He will not get to watch from the stars as Grogu takes many hundreds of years to grow old. He will not be able to watch Grogu become the great jedi that Din knows the child is meant to be. He knows this in his bones, and he will not get to see it. This, perhaps, pains him more than the fact that his soul will get not even the generous fires of haran, but only the concluding nothingness of being killed in both body and soul and identity. The unique make of soul, gone. Nothing left remaining. All his thoughts gone, blown out like a wick. All his emotions, forgotten like they were never important. Everything he is and ever was and ever could be, utterly eradicated from the cosmic web of life and afterlife.
It's all Din can think about, when his ears are not filled with an adrenaline rush and the screams of his bounties. He is all the crueler for it. It is difficult to think about the feeling of eyes on his face when the bounties are struggling against his hold as he drags the wounded men and women aboard his loaned ship. It is difficult to linger on his soulless existence when he focuses on hitting the smaller joints of a bounty with his blaster rather than the easy bullseye of their torso. And if he leaves the quarry tied up with accidentally loose ropes in his cargo hold rather than in the secure carbonite freezer, then it is not worth mentioning. He's too busy putting stab wounds into desperate-to-run sentients to feel the ever encroaching desolation that waits to meet him on all sides when he is unoccupied.
The bounties he drags back sometimes have all their limbs and sometimes they are recognizable, and that's all that really matters.
"No more bounties," Boba tells Din, lounging on his throne with false ease, Fennec chewing on nerf jerky with a purposeful relaxation in her body as she sits on the arm of the throne next to him.
"Give me a bounty," Din demands. His last piece of work lays on the ground between them, blood a lazy river that's spilling from their gaping stomach wound down onto the trap doors, sliding past the metal bars and into the sand pit beneath. They're tied up, hands pulled behind their back, but it's no matter. The bounty died in the cargo hold after Din eviscerated them when they tried to make an ill advised escape attempt.
"If you want to kill someone, go and kill someone," Boba says, waving a hand. "Go find a slaver to rip apart. Go out into the sands and find some poor kriffer to tear limb from limb just for the kicks." He leans forward, arms resting on his knees and helmet visor nailing Din's boots to the floor. "Go and kill someone who no one will miss. Fill your time with their deaths and screams and running away. But I will not give you another bounty." Boba's head tilts. "I am not a good man, but I won't have my reputation become that of an owner who sends out his massiff to mutilate any who crosses its path."
Din would hate Boba if he had the soul to do so.
"Give me another bounty," Din demands, like he had not heard the other man's words.
Fennec raises an eyebrow. Glances between Din and her employer.
"No," Boba repeats. He leans back into his throne and props his helmet up against a fist.
"Give me another bounty," Din insists. His gloves are caked in blood. Flakes and chips fall to the floor when he clenches them.
"No."
"Give me another bounty."
"No."
"Give me another bounty."
"No."
Boba's picking at the grit or dirt stuck in the cracks of his throne arm. He slouches like he could sit there all day denying Din.
"Give me another job." He doesn't know why he changes the wording. It's pointless. It's the same request dressed up in a pair of sandals rather than boots.
Boba sighs. "I'm not going to give you a bounty."
"Give me–"
"But I will give you a job."
Din's silence is expectant.
"I need someone to clear out the basement levels of the palace. It's filled with old junk from Jabba's reign that Bib Fortuna never put effort towards getting rid of." Boba looks back at Din. "Think you can manage that without getting blood on my floors?"
Din pauses.
Din nods.
"Then get to it."
"What's my payment?" Din asks, unmoving.
"Nothing," Boba replies without remorse.
Din leaves for the basement levels of the palace.
The basement levels of the palace reek of spice, perfumes, and the rank of Hutt and dank dustiness. Every room is cluttered to the ceiling beams, even the hallways, and it's no wonder that Bib Fortuna never bothered to touch it. They would never have the spine or the dedication to getting their hands dirty clearing it all out. Din has no such qualms. He's done, touched, and waded through far worse. He's cleaned urine and feces off the floor of his loaned ship multiple times after bounties die on the durasteel because they're not in the carbonite freezer where they're supposed to be.
In the basement halls, there's plenty of rodents living luxuriously between the moth-eaten fabrics, boxes, and junk, and even if Din had agreed not to get blood of Boba's fancy palace floors, he shoots them anyway, leaving behind ugly blood splatters and small corpses. It's hard to see the stains and bodies past the clog of useless clutter, so Din can convince himself that it doesn't matter.
Shooting the rodents doesn't really help, but he does it anyways. He doesn't spark a sense of joy, doesn't give any type of release. Din does it because he can. Because the sound of a blaster is familiar and the feeling of one in his hands is more so. Sometimes if he knocks into a big enough nest of the infesting animals, he can fall into a sort of trance, killing them off and hunting the escapees down through the maze of picture frames, bar stools, and mattress sheets. Between the rodent massacres, Din cleans. It's not like taking bounties. It requires too little of his mind. He hauls bags of glass trinkets, cheap jewelry, and kitchen cutlery up and down the stairs in bags, a boring and repetitive cycle. And with the boredom in creeps the thoughts he'd been so desperate to run from.
Will Grogu remember him 400 years from now, when he is at his prime and Din is but dust in the wind?
What was the point in living the life he's lived if Din is now not even a person?
Din is baggage. A maggot in a stew. A shameful coward begging for scraps under Boba's table. A tick sucking the blood from those foolish enough to let him stay latched. He is soulless– inhuman– honorless– creedless– soulless– waste of breath and yet he stays here providing only inconveniences to those around him. He has achieved his last mission– reunite Grogu with his own kind– and yet Din lingers in this life. His last job is done. Why has he not stopped? Why does he continue? He ought to lie down in the sands and let the dunes consume him. Leave behind his armor for Boba to give back to the covert to be melted down for better use than protecting his soulless husk that needs and deserves no protection.
Trash bag after trash bag is lifted over a shoulder. Footstep after footstep takes him up and down the stairs. When one hallway is clean he moves onto another. When one room is emptied he travels to the next. It's a mindless march and when he runs out of bags he uses the random containers strewn about to haul things up to the surface to be burned or sold off at Boba's discretion.
Perhaps this is the rest of Din's life. A servant to Boba's will. A tool, a pack horse, a mule and a slave to any desire or job that needed done. At least then his existence would be of use to someone. At least he would not be a burden like he continues to be now.
Din hates it, but he doesn't want to die. He doesn't want his song to end. To be wiped from the galaxy. He does not want to die, but he does not want to live as this soulless animal, cursed to wander the world only half-alive. It would be better for him and everyone if he were to put a blaster bolt between his teeth. He would honor his creed and covert by purging himself and his sins from the world. It would be eliminating the leech who takes and takes but has nothing left to give.
Yet Din cannot make himself. He stares at the blaster and then he puts it away because his hands start to shake. He stands on the highest points of the palace and contemplates how high he'd have to be for the fall to kill him, but he always takes the spiral staircases back down when his knees start to get weak. He tried walking out into the dunes four times but he turned around and came back to Fennec waiting at the door to the palace after every attempt.
It's a coward's way out, but Din stops eating. If he starves, he starves. He has no appetite anyways. No sense of hunger. He's hollowed out inside and Din knows this is just tangible evidence of his dar'manda status. He drinks because he can't stand the dryness of his mouth and how it makes his tongue stick to his teeth, but he ignores all invitations Boba gives him to eat at his table.
This half-hearted plan works until Din collapses clearing out a tunnel and mouse droid tattles on him before he can pull himself back together enough to continue the work he'd been tasked to do.
"Eat," Boba demands, sitting across from him at a table in the man's personal rooms, the day after his collapse. It's a shitty table between them, one Boba must have gone searching for specifically, because everything in this palace is far too extravagant for a normal person's tastes.
"Eat," Boba orders again, rapping a knuckle against the side of the sweating glass Boba's put in front of Din. It's filled with some sort of pink nutritional smoothie and has a lime green straw poking out of the top. It's unappetizing because Din isn't hungry and because Din has once again found a new way to inconvenience his leash holder. He's forced the other man to monitor even his eating schedule. Din knows it's his sleep schedule that will be up next for dissection. He's wasting the daimyo's limited time.
It's a type of waste that's difficult to quantify. What is the point in feeding a dead thing? What is the point in letting Boba pour all this time and effort into Din, when Din no longer has a story to be sung? It is akin to dumping water into the sand. It's calling out into an empty echo chamber for a response. Boba will get nothing out of this. Boba thinks he's helping. Believes he's investing time, thought, and resources into someone who will come out of their funk and become a person again. This is not the truth. Boba is putting fertilizer on a dead plant. Trying to breathe life into something that is unable to hold it. There's a hole somewhere in Din's lungs and all the air is leaking out.
"Eat," Boba repeats. He pushes the glass forward until the cold and sweating side is pressed against the sliver of skin bared on the back of his wrist. Boba is always repeating himself to Din these days, yet he never sounds irritated. Din doesn't deserve this level of patience.
"If you don't eat yourself, I'm putting a nasogastric tube down your nose and feeding you that way," Boba says. Promises.
Din's not sure which would be easier. The thought of tasting the thick shake makes his stomach clench.
He drags it forward and stares down on it. Seeing the way the condensation beads up on the marbled glass and runs down into the chunky liquid. Where he grips it with a hand, his glove becomes uncomfortably damp.
Boba makes a 'go on' gesture.
Din unseals the helmet but doesn't raise it off his head. Even after all his transgressions, he can't bear to take it off.
He doesn't deserve the privacy. The comfort of the beskar. The protection of its metal face. He ought to take it off, cast it aside, and never don it again in respect to the precious metal and what it represents.
But he's a coward so Din continues to wear the armor he can no longer claim ownership to.
Pulling the straw to his mouth beneath the lip of the helmet (it's the helmet, not his helmet) he takes a sip of the shake. It's unreasonably thick and he has to take a strong pull for any of it to come up the straw. But when it does, it hits his tongue in a burst of painful sensations. His jaw spasms and he has to pull back in his seat and fight the rolling nausea it induces upon the dizzy nausea he already has from not eating in four days.
Boba sighs. "Gonna try again?" he asks, arms crossed, watching Din. His expression is open for viewing without his helmet, but it doesn't make him any less readable.
Din twists the glass between his fingers, leaving behind pools of water on the scratched up table top.
If he tries again, he'll surely vomit. If he doesn't try, Boba will put a tube down his nose. It would be easier. Din wouldn't have to taste a thing.
But a NG-tube would mean taking off his helmet.
Din leans down and sucks at the straw again.
Boba pats his back when he vomits in the fresher sink.
Six failed eating attempts later, the NG-tube going down is uncomfortable.
Not as uncomfortable as having the helmet off.
Even when the tube is attached to his face with purple-patterned massiff tape– that Fennec had managed to scrounge up from somewhere (probably the kid's section in a corner store)– Din doesn't put the helmet back on. He stares at it instead where he'd laid it on the table in Boba's room and thinks that the helmet shouldn't exist anymore. It should have been ripped off his dead body, melted down, and given to the foundlings, as is only right when someone breaks the creed and forsakes the Way.
Yet, there it sits, taunting him.
Where before, the idea of removing the helm had brought with it a dread that had him gasping, now the opposite is true. He can't even bear to touch it. He had to strip off his armor like it was hot enough to brand him, suddenly unable to stand the weight of it. The weight that had steadied him in the past now a suffocant. It stacks in a pile in the corner, already gathering dust that he can see dulling its shine in the sun beams.
He can't bring himself to polish it and touch it– even with gloves on.
So he sits and stares. At the pile of bones in the room corner and at the skull on the table. Thinking and unable to stop thinking. Simmering. Broiling in his guilt at the edge of Boba's bed.
His thoughts and feelings are corroding him from the inside-out like an infestation of rot.
It's the guilt today.
It eats at him, gnaws at the back of his throat, screws his tongue to his palette, and drives stake after stake through the gaps of his ribs and into his wheezy lungs. It eats at him for tricking Boba, Fennec, and Cara like this and like he continues to do. They think they're housing and doting on a friend. That Din is their comrade in arms and is sick and needs help. None of them know that the one they claim as 'friend' died the moment the helmet left his head and he showed his naked face.
Din is just a soulless drone that walks in that friend's footsteps. The guilt of his trickery tears at his mind every time he is confronted by the companionship and compassion of the others.
Selfishly, he lets them. Lets them talk to him. Lets them linger in his sphere of lies. Lets them take care of him even as he puts in no effort to help them.
He is an imposter. A changeling. A skin stealer. A fraud that's soaking up the attention and time that should have been for a different person. He stands in the place of a deadman, wearing a deadman's face, wearing a deadman's name, and living a deadman's life.
Din's tube has to be refitted. The reality of it all makes him vomit again, displacing the NG-tube.
It's the visiting Cara this time that crouches by his knee after his NG-tube is refitted by Boba.
"If you keep spilling your guts like this, you're gonna wear off your teeth enamel," she says, smirking half-heartedly, unable to withstand Din's lifeless atmosphere. When he doesn't respond, she awkwardly rubs at her neck, sitting back on her heel next to Din at one of Boba's many door-windows. He thinks he makes them nervous when he gets so close to the drop.
"What set it off?" Cara asks. "Boba said that it might have been the length of the tube or too much food intake or something like that."
Now's my chance, Din thinks. I can purge myself. Tell the truth. Show Cara what type of corpse actually sits before her. Let her know that Din is dead and now it's time for her to start mourning. His lips sting from dryness when they crack apart. A few simple words and she'll understand that it's best to leave. Best to put that bullet in his head that he's too cowardly to put there himself. Just a few sentences and she'll understand she needs to take revenge on the person who killed her friend and now sits in his place.
"I don't know," Din lies.
Cara doesn't believe him. It's painted all over her face, so he doesn't look, instead staring out over the drab browns of the square buildings and to the distant horizon of rolling dunes.
I should have set off the bombs while I was still in the krayt dragon's stomach. Then both it and him would be dead.
Vanth was kind. He would have taken good care of Grogu if Din had died.
"Din?"
He must have zoned out again, because when he blinks he notices that the twin suns are setting. He'd been sitting by the window for hours.
"Din?" Cara repeats, the name Din had requested to be called by. Being called 'Mando' would only rub salt in the wound.
Cara stands, and after only a moment's hesitation, grabs Din under the arm and pulls him to stand too. Her touch feels like the cauterizer being pressed into his flesh. His knees crack from sitting unmoving for so long.
"C'mon. Boba said you gotta eat before you go to bed."
It doesn't matter. Din wouldn't be sleeping.
Din's only just managed to come off the NG-tube fully when the Armorer gives him some semblance of hope that his existence is not destined to be scraped from the floor of the universe and swept into the trash.
The living waters.
He knows what he must do.
There is no other option.
It is a suicide mission, with no hope of success.
But he marches towards that impossible finish line like a good soldier. And he would have died on this mission too if it wasn't for Bo-Katan saving his life.
And when he nearly drowns in the waters meant to give him back his life and soul, it feels like the world is testing him. Trying to see if he's really worthy of crawling up the stone steps and gasping the air of a new world– a clean slate.
Cin vhetin.
It does not feel like the fresh start it's meant to be. His siblings in creed clasp his shoulders, greet him warmly, and the friendly welcome falls on a deaf heart. When did that glass wall rise up around him? When did the world begin to feel so muffled? The sun so grey and the world so yellow? That haze that fell on him in Boba's palace has stuck around like a souvenir or a scar, welding itself to his skin and zip-tying itself to Din's bones.
"Cin vehtin," the Armorer tells him as he sits before their forge. "You know its meaning."
Does Din really know? He can repeat the definition back like rote, but does his heart understand it? He has been given this once in a lifetime fresh start, yet his mind is wasting it and lingering on the wounds that it refuses to stop licking. At this point, it's just keeping the scars fresh and irritated. Yet, Din doesn't know how to move on. How can he leave all his sins behind, just like that? How does he start anew, when his mind carries the weight of his deeds whatever path he walks?
"You are staining the snow, Din Djarin," the Armorer says. Each clang of their hammer shakes Din's fragile skull. "Carrying old blood and old wounds to a new battlefield. It has never done anyone any good." Their tongs lift the beskar from the flames.
"I know," Din says. His vocoder levels his voice, but the Armorer sees through him as they sees through everyone. They turns to study him, helmet tilted.
"Then why do you linger in the past?"
"I… don't know."
The Armorer takes a dead man's greeve and takes it to bake in the forge's flames. They are melting down the cracked armor of the fallen to make new ones for the foundlings and warriors of their tribe. It's an old ritual, one he knows well and has watches a hundred times from a kneeling position. For some reason, it all feels different today. Like his kneeling is a lie, like the Armorer stands on a knife's edge of tolerance– even though they are no different than they ever were– and that forge's flames are not as entrancing as they used to be.
Being able to claim the tribe as his again is a bitter-sweet thing that makes his mouth sour and his eyes wet.
"Why did you allow Bo-Katan to take her helmet off?"
The words are out of Din's mouth before he realizes he wants to ask them. He'd never allowed his mind to linger long enough and put words to the acid sizzling on his skin and boiling in his chest and stomach. Even after being released into the air, Din's insides still burn and twist and gurgle.
Why? Why does Bo-Katan get such lenience– such privilege? When she had been all but a foreigner to their ways. And yet, Din had not been given a second thought. Thrown out the moment he breached his creed, even when it was for the sake of a foundling.
"We as a people were weak and shattered, living off scraps in the shadows, being killed off covert by covert," the Armorer says. "She was necessary. She was raised by her people, but inducted into ours." A freshly made beskar ingot is set off into a growing pile with that sharp ringing sound of beskar against beskar. "A person like her was the perfect candidate for bringing a diaspora people back into a single fold."
"So she is the exception? The one and only exception?" he asks, tone mute and static filling his ears.
The hammer falls like a gavel.
"Yes. The only exception."
It burns.
It burns. It burns. It burns. It burns. It burns.
It burns so much that Din realizes it's not grief tormenting him, but anger.
This is our creed! A way of life! The promise you make! Din screams in his head. It's not something you can wave away and make exceptions for! If it's really that easy, to make that exception, then what's to stop everyone from being an exception? Why does anyone abide this creed if forgiveness is as simple as being in the right place at the right time?
Does this creed mean nothing? Does it mean nothing to the Armorer? Is the creed something to sweep aside when it suits them?
"Bo-Katan is not Mandalorian," Din says. Because she can't be– not like Din and the Armorer are, at least. She does not follow their creed. She is not Mandalorian in their sense of the word, even if the Armorer says so.
"She walks both worlds," the Armorer corrects.
The bones in Din's fingers ache as he clenches them in his lap.
"This…this is not the Way."
The fall of the hammer echoes once more before the ringing ends quietly. The Armorer turns, and for the first time Din feels like he's truly being given full-regard and acknowledgement since he's entered the forge.
"I have mote it so," the Armorer corrects, abandoning the forge to face him fullying. "I am the Armorer. It is my station. That means I decide who is and who is not one of us."
"You are wrong."
The Armorer's form towers over him as they step forward. "Am I?" they ask. "Have we not had great success and been united with the help of Bo-Katan Kryze?"
"It does not matter," Din refutes. "She is not Mandalorian. She is not of the Creed. You accept her among us like she is one of us but she is not. She wears no helmet. She has not sworn herself to our ways." Din stares up at the helmet eyes staring down from above him. "She has removed her helm, at your word no less, and she is still respected as a swearer of the creed."
"This is not the Way!" the words punch the space between them.
There is a bout of silence, the Armorer looking down at him. With contemplation? With hatred? Are they disgusted by his insolence? Do they hate him? He can't tell.
"Perhaps this is a new way," the Armorer says.
"Then why was I cast out by you all?!" Din shouts, rushing to his feet all at once so he can be beskar-face to beskar-face. "Why was I apostate and she was our savior?!" He steps up and forward, the low table just an obstacle between them, putting them chest-plate to chest-plate. "Why am I the warning story told to the ade? Why am I the shame you hide in the basement when others come knocking at our doors? Why is Bo-Katan so special and why am I not?!"
Din heaves for breath.
The Armorer stands unmoved.
He knows their loudness has attracted attention. He can hear the shuffle of indiscreet footsteps somewhere in the halls behind him.
When the Armorer doesn't respond he steps back. "How can you stand there, up to your nose in your own hypocrisy, and not suffocate beneath it?"
Again, no response.
"Why can't you answer me?" he demands. "Because you have no defence?"
The Armorer finally dares to speak. "You are stuck in the old ways, unwilling to embrace–"
"The 'old way' is the Way!" Din refutes, not letting them finish. "Are we abandoning our Creed? Is that what this is? Because it is too inconvenient to keep to it?"
"Those that do not change with the times are left behind to fertilize the soil of those who come after them," the Armorer declares. The Armorer gestures around them– at their people, at their planet, at the world. "Would you have us be the bones that feed the new children who take our place?"
It is Din's turn to be silent.
"We must learn to adapt to our environment. Our old hunting strategies work no longer. It is time to learn to be different if we want to survive." The Armorer turns back to the forge, running their hands around the circular edge. "There is tragedy in the death of old ways, but there is joy in getting to live another day."
"Then why?" Din croaks, his voice raw and his eyes and head aching. "Why was I left behind?"
His words echo through the space like the ring of the Armorer's hammer. Their hand falls away from the lip of the forge.
"Your rejection was a mistake that belonged to no one but me."
It is a candid admittance, and a bold one when they both know there are listening ears.
But, for some reason, the Armorer's honestly doesn't help.
Din still aches, Din still burns, Din still doesn't feel like the person he used to be.
And this cin vhetin is not the virgin snow it was intended as. It feels like every old and infected thing has risen to the surface, belly up and smelling of rot.
Din knows he's doing better by Boba's standards, even if the man never mentions it. It's telling in other ways.
For one, Boba would have never have made him a cake before, knowing that Din wouldn't be able to stomach it. Din can at least bring himself to appreciate the effort now, seeing how Boba went out of his way for him. It's also hard to be dreary when Grogu is so overjoyed at so much dessert before him and has dug face-first into the slice given to him. And now that every waking moment is not cloaked in a sense of oily misery, Din can enjoy the sweet smell the frosting puts into the air as he picks at his own piece, sneaking bites up under his helmet while watching Grogu revel in his frosting-covered hands.
"Are you taking that land plot on Nevarro?" Boba asks, feet kicked up on the corner of the table and a fork and plate of cake in his own hands.
Fennec, stretched across Boba's bed like she owns it, looks up from her own cake. "You mean the place Karga offered him?"
"Yes. That." Boba waves his fork at Din. "So?" He's got that sharpness in his eye that speaks of secondary motives behind the question.
Din shrugs, taking a napkin in hand and scrubbing the excess spring-green frosting from Grogu's face and arms before it drops onto the floor or gets on his robes. "Maybe. It'd be a good place to raise the kid." And that idea still feels novel to Din. Having taken Grogu has his own, having shared his last name with him. Having a claim to the child as his son after all of this hardship and heartbreak… it's both a strange and fulfilling sensation. Nothing about Grogu has changed except his choice in occupation– becoming a mandalorian rather than a jedi– but everything about their relationship feels sparkling and renewed.
Grogu gurgles, waving a hand at Din's ministrations, little clawed fingers curling around his fingers to push the napkin away from his dirty face. He looks up at Din with an offended expression.
"Patoo!"
Din slowly strokes the top of Grogu's small knuckles with his own and the youngling is distracted from the napkin, fiddling with the bare skin he can get access to by pulling back the edge of the glove. The sensation of tiny fingers touching the vulnerable tendons of his wrists has never felt heavier. The weight is something he happily carries.
"He needs a safe place to grow up. A school to go to. Other kids to play with," Din says, remembering all of those things that he did and did not have in his own childhood. "And he'll need a place that will welcome him as their own after I die."
Grogu's head jerks up with a distressed cry and Boba stiffens up in his chair and Fennec slowly levers herself upright against the headboard.
"Why do you say that?" Boba asks, all infinite patience and controlled serenity.
Abruptly, Din realizes that neither Boba nor Fennec know how old Grogu is and think that Din has just admitted to pre-planned suicide.
"Grogu's species is long lived," he explains, stroking the green velvet ear in comfort. Grogu leans into his palm, his little head fitting into it so easily. "He's already fifty years old. I'm not going to be able to see him to adulthood whether I want to or not." Grogu whines at the conversation topic, big eyes watering up and both of his hands patting– or possibly hitting, actually– at Din's thumb. Din picks him up, cradling the child close to his chest and beneath his helmet chin. Grogu coos, pushing their cold button nose against Din's throat. "Integrating him into a community is for the best."
"I see," Boba hums, stroking a finger down his jaw in thought. Both him and Fennec and significantly more relaxed, though the choice of topic is hardly light.
"You won't leave him with your covert?" Fennec asks.
"There is no more covert," Din admits. "Only Mandalorians on Mandalore."
"But you don't want to raise him there?" Boba asks, interlocking his fingers in front of his face.
With Grogu hiding against his neck, he can't see the child's face, but he can feel the tight hold he has taken on the collar of his cloak. "No. Mandalore has never been an end goal for me, even if having it back is worth celebration. It's just a planet– even if it is not cursed like the songs said." He sighs, rubbing a hand up and down Grogu's back. "For now, I want to be closer to allies. I can likely make a deal for some Mandalorians to regularly visit Grogu, at the very least make a contract to make sure they stop by Nevarro so he can take his vows when he's old enough."
Boba leans back in his chair, tipping it onto the hind legs, staring out the window that billows with a gossamer curtain. "I'll look into finding some long-lived species that might be interested in keeping an eye on the ad'ika." He glances at Din from the corner of his eye. "You'll vet them, of course. And they can hang around long enough that you can get a read on whether you want them sticking around."
Din squashes down the knee-jerk reaction urge to veto the idea– both out of a nervousness at the concept and a desire to not inconvenience Boba further and make the man go out of his way for their clan of two.
Because it's… not a horrible idea. And if he doesn't like any of them, or if he feels one of them might be a danger, he can always kill them.
"I'll take you up on that offer," Din agrees slowly.
Boba physically perks up at this, shoulders lifting and one side of his mouth twitching.
"Happy to be of service."
Din stares and comes to a realization.
Boba's not lying or being polite. He actually is happy to help.
It's strange that he only notices it now. Din looks between Fennec and Boba. Both of them have relaxed and pleased expressions on their faces.
They enjoy helping me– they aren't doing this out of a sense of obligation or honor.
They want to do these things for me because they care.
Grogu coos again and Din folds around him tightly.
A little clawed hand reaches up under his helmet, tugging and poking at his chin.
He'll trust Boba with this. He doesn't want Grogu to be alone.