The Mandalorian kept the villagers at the very edge of his visual range, using his usual toolkit to make sure he was not only on their trail, but not leaving much of one himself, either. The walk they took was a long one; he watched the sky change as an hour ticked by, then another, as they went deeper into a jungle that skillfully hid the trail. It was a trail, though, designed and cut deep and with a few switchback tricks and other gimmicks to throw, say, a nosy kid or busybody trader off and send them back to the village.

The heat signature was so faint at first that he almost missed it. A place where the trail began to widen, began to become something more used. He let himself lag back even further, his senses tingling as the jungle terrain stopped being thick, staying uneven as it opened up.

He looked around and found a likely looking set of ropey vines going up along a tree so broad it might as well be a wall. He slipped up it, staying under its thick boughs and keeping its rough bark core between him and what he realized had to be a large structure, hidden deep within the forbidding jungle.

It took him a moment to recapture a visual on the villagers. When he did, he frowned inside his helmet. Three more energy signatures with them, active life. He clicked off the heat vis and took in the scene with only his own eyes and instincts.

Yeah, some black-walled facility loomed just ahead, so thick it read cold as stone at first on most sensor scans. The villagers stayed huddled together, talking with a particularly long-necked Ithorian wrapped in a rich brown robe, and a pair of large figures bracing him.

The prickle along his skin came back at the sight of the two green-skinned guards in full laser-resist armor, with only a hint of broad, round nose and sharp tusks coming out of their helms. That was never a good sign. The Mandalorian didn't like to make too many easy assumptions about society in the Outer Rim, especially post-Empire, but over all his hunts with the Guild, he'd personally seen Gamorreans five times. All five times meant the same damn thing.

A Hutt was close.

He grimaced under the helmet and studied the villagers. The body language alone told him plenty, and their faces said the rest outright. Fala Deera took the lead here, and now he read off a real expression on her face: honest loathing. She focused mostly on the Ithorian, who was probably what passed for a diplomatic go-between here. But a solid theory was already coming together in the Mandalorian's head, watching the village men lean back from the guards, obviously not wanting to be here.

A remote village like Witchmoat would be easy pickings for a gang, or worse, cartel. Continue to isolate them, control what little supply they had coming in and out, and their survival would rely on keeping the new crime lord happy. The village was now a free workforce and loot laundering facility. The finer details were still up for guesswork, but the outline seemed pretty clear. And it answered why his welcoming party hadn't been startled by a Mandalorian showing up - and gave another reason why why Fala Deera, this unhappy envoy to the Hutt's crew, had been with the group from the start.

The Mandalorian rattled a quiet sigh in his helmet and continued to watch as Fala argued about something or other with the stoic leatherneck, making sure of what he was seeing. But the rest of the scene reinforced his theory. No juiced-up speederbikes, true, but they would be worthless in terrain like this one. But he saw the faint outline of what had to be a pleasure skiff's storage hold on this side of the fortress, where the field had been cleared out widely enough for maneuvering. Probably didn't bring it out much, though based on the dirt tracks he saw, he wagered it was specially rigged for a higher hover range. Get a nice view of the jungle, a little sunshine while swigging down expensive and probably illegal spirits.

There, a guard tower camouflaged by jungle canopy. And another, flanking the rear of the place. Swirling marks in the dirt that suggested hover-pallets overloaded with illicit deliveries. Droid tracks - here he hoped they didn't have an IG unit. For multiple reasons, if he were honest, but for right now he focused on the fact that one of those on site likely meant whoever ran the place had some pretty good backing. But no, closer study at the scuffing said Gonks on a routine, making sure the various generators were holding up.

He squinted at the walls and realized there were some nice automated defenses in place, too. Well, it's not like he'd planned to wander on up and ask questions. Yet, anyway.

The Mandalorian slid gently back down from his roost and decided this would be a good time to pick his way back up the trail and return to the inn. He had a lot to think about.

Especially about whether or not any of this actually mattered to him.

. . .

Din slept, and slept well and heavily, and when he woke up, groggy from the luxury of being secure and wildly comfortable for once this year, he momentarily forgot all about his late night walk and its worrisome revelations. He looked around in a fast daze, his face bare and chilly despite the shared heat in the building, and found that the little one was still completely zonked out. Honestly, he was a foundling and part of Din's family now, so it wasn't like it would break every rule he knew. But it was habit, and Din felt it was a damn good one. He put his helmet back on first and glared at the soft pillow under his elbow, as if it had deliberately conspired against him.

Then he remembered, grumbling an 'oh' under his breath with actual hostility. He could have simply had a nice, week long vacation in this place, waiting for enough fuel to get scraped together for him to start bargaining, but no, the fuel was probably going to have to get quietly bartered for and slipped to him (or blackmailed to him?) under the auspices of a Hutt, and the village could be spying on him, and his communications systems were probably out, and hell.

"Dammit," said Din to himself, more grumpily than ever, and because the spirits and the stars in the sky were full of bastards, now the kid woke up and fixed on his shiny face with the happy, blatting delight of that genetically perfected monstrosity: a morning person.

Din dropped backwards onto his mattress in defeat, trying to not sigh as the child clambered over towards him to bap and chirp, eagerly, right into his field of vision.

. . .

By the time he coaxed the child downstairs, it was the tail end of breakfast. A few villagers were still lingering, finishing up a quick breakfast before working at their hard-fought fields or moisture vaps or whatever, and they glanced up at the Mandalorian with amiable nods.

Dyrric and his father were still manning the kitchen, however, and the child at Din's feet clambered up onto a stool to wave his little green hands at his new friend. Dyrric mustered a small, tired smile at the foundling, and pulled out a wooden tray already loaded up with a full breakfast, still steaming fresh. "Figured you two might sleep in a bit, my dad says space travel out here can be really tiring."

"Yeah," said the Mandalorian taking the tray, looking the kid over without being obvious about it. Dyrric shot his dad's back a glance when he was done, a small frown creasing the young face. He handed the cup of poaching egg and broth to the little one, who grasped it with his tiny clawed hands and immediately started slurping. "Good call. Thanks for keeping a tray warm for us, Dyrric."

The boy flicked a glance up at him, thankful and then oddly furtive in the way of kids that have a secret and are sometimes bad at it. Then he looked at his dad again with his face much more restrained from longer practice, busying himself with a set of dirty trays that needed his attention.

The prickle hit Din anew. The kid knew, the kid wasn't supposed to know, and it ate at the kid daily. Which almost certainly meant the dad knew, which means the whole village knew what the score was. Probably some word came down last night, new tithes for the Hutt or a bad delivery incoming. He didn't know. But the village didn't want to make a situation out of it, either. No one stared at his back. Another farmer dropped off her tray as he thought, giving him a friendly nod.

He simply couldn't smell a trap here. If he was ever going to end up in the net, too, it wasn't because of these people. They were genuine.

He chewed all that over, but he couldn't stand there and look at the boy and his dad for long doing it, either. "Is it okay if I leave the kid down here with you for a while?" He lifted the tray to indicate the obvious.

"Sure thing," said Dyrric, and a little life came back into his voice. "Just leave your tray on the counter wherever, it'll be fine. Or I'll come up and get it, if you want."

"I might take a nap," said Din, and that was probably true. "You're right, I'm pretty wiped out. Be easier on me if you come grab it. About a half hour?" He waited for the nod and then left the foundling at the countertop, slurping and chirping happily.

. . .

Dyrric gave him closer to forty, which gave Din more time to think over, in a half-doze, a few tactical approaches. He liked kids well enough, but talking to them was a different kind of energy than filling out a bounty board, and his endurance wasn't as strong there. The foundling was exhausting in a completely different way, one he'd never been expecting to deal with so personally, and now he had this to wrangle, too.

He stayed seated on a chair by the window, nodding a greeting when the kid came in. Dyrric looked around the room, a trained eye looking to see what his dad might want to clean up or launder later. Which wouldn't be much; the Mandalorian was raised to be fastidious, especially in outsider places. "Good breakfast, Dyrric. Thank you again."

The kid nearly jumped out of his skin. Yeah, he was wired up about something. That prickle came again, telling him to wait, to see what the kid did next. Maybe this was going to be a lot easier than he thought.

"I'm glad," said Dyrric, not looking at him. His hand shook as he picked up the tin drinking cup and put it back on the tray. The next question came out of him with all the smoothness of a bantha's hairy rump. "What do you think of Witchmoat so far?"

The Mandalorian didn't say anything for a long, deliberately uncomfortable moment, waiting for the kid to start sneaking furtive, telling glances his way. "The people seem nice, Dyrric. A quiet, pleasant village. A real break to find, all the way out here."

Dyrric's face fell, but only for a second. He looked away, busying himself.

Inside the helmet, Din allowed himself a wry smile. "Shame about that Hutt fortress out in the jungle, leeching off the place."

Dyrric nearly lunged at the Mandalorian, his face desperate for that acknowledgment he had been craving. "I knew it! I knew you'd figure it out! My dad always said Mandalorians couldn't be fooled, I knew that - did you know before you came, are you here to help us, can I do anything, can-"

"Hey." Din reached out and gently but firmly put a gloved hand on the boy's arm, his voice quiet. "Keep it down. No, unfortunately, I'm just a traveller that got low on fuel."

And realistically he should just remedy that little situation and get going, shouldn't he? He wasn't the galaxy's fix-it man. He had a clan of his own now, he had his own responsibilities to look after…

Responsibilities that meant making it safer for other foundlings after his. Safer for kids like he had been, once. Kids like Dyrric, who shouldn't need to make violence part of their future. Much less any of the other brats he saw playing in the dirt streets this morning.

The growl fighting its way out of Din didn't make it to his throat intact. It came out like one of his usual sighs instead. His mouth took off, his brain defeated once again by his own idiot, soft heart. "I figured it out last night, saw some of the villagers take off down a strange trail. I followed them, found the fortress. They're controlling all contact in and out, aren't they? Keeping your supplies barely on life support."

Dyrric nodded, his eyes still bright with hope. "Dad tried to get word to some of his old friends a while ago, but the fortress people wouldn't accept his message. I don't know what happened because of it, but I saw Dad cry. I wasn't supposed to, but I did."

Jerrit, a big, hearty, man with a gift for dry humor. Crying alone in the dark to keep his kid out of it. That, too, hit at Din's chest.

A blaster shot right under the rib cage would be faster. The sardonic part of his mind couldn't stop trying to protect him from his own nature. A coo came from the staircase. The foundling was coming back just in time for this emotional scene. Great.

Dyrric turned to reach down for the little guy's hand. Green claws wrapped around a couple of the boy's fingers, and the child beamed up into his face. As if telling him it would be all okay. That they had good people looking after them. Tears sprang into Dyrric's eyes, and he wiped them away, dropping onto the floor next to the child.

The child reached out to Din, bapping out warm and brothy breath strong enough to get picked up by the helmet's breathers, his broad ears drooping a little as he sensed his father-figure's emotional state. He dropped onto Dyrric's knee, his feet flexing worriedly under the short robe.

"Yeah, I know," said Din, not actually understanding what the hell went on in that green, ball-shaped head. He reached out to stroke the soft hair, despite himself. "Dyrric."

"Yeah?"

"I'm going to be out of the inn most of today. Can you cover for me? If anyone asks, I'm sleeping. And you don't bother a sleeping Mandalorian, not if you like having kneecaps." He jutted the chin of the helmet at the child. "Keep him busy, too."

"Are you going to do something?" Way too eager.

"Not yet. Need some more information." The Mandalorian leaned forward, armored elbows clanking onto his equally armored thighs, looking at the two kids at his feet like they were all part of some secret conspiracy. Hell, at this point, they were. The important thing right now would be to keep the village out of whatever he did, until he knew for sure he could do anything at all. "I'll keep you in the loop," he added, suspecting that would be just enough of a tag to keep the boy from doing anything too wild on his own.

"Thank you," said Dyrric, and the tears were back. Relief, like a long-dammed lake, hitting the kid right in the gut. "Thank you so much, sir."

Dammit. Damn it. Well, he was stuck now.

The child, innocent and beaming, lifted his ears and cooed approvingly up into Din's mask. As if he understood the shift in Din's mind somehow. Maybe he did.

Fine, though Din Djarin, Mandalorian and professional bounty hunter, ground down to the bone by two children, one of whom couldn't even talk yet. I guess I'm just going to have to figure out how to ruin a Hutt's whole life.