Bright white lights magnified the pain in Din's head. Every muscle ached from the aftermath of the crash. Adrenaline long gone, myriad injuries made themselves fully known, rudely dragging Din back to consciousness. A tight pinching from his leg helped him recall what had happened. Where had been a mortal wound, stitches now held the skin together.
The Mandalorian's memory flooded back. Then came panic. He thought his final act had been to hand Grogu over to the woman in the nurse's uniform, begging her to save his foundling. Since he had survived, that would mean that Grogu… he couldn't bring himself to think it.
Din rushed to sit up, but something stopped him. Broad leather bands bit into his wrists and ankles, binding him to a bed. His breathing quickened as the desperation of his situation became clear— whoever had saved him didn't seem to have good intentions. The asylum's chill made him shiver. His flight suit and armor were gone, replaced by a hospital gown. Oddly, his helmet remained. A thin tube clipped to the bottom of it blew a stream of cold, dry oxygen onto his face.
Din took stock of the magnitude of the mess he'd gotten into. In the corner of the room, a camera blinked, watching his every move. Dark liquid trickled into his veins from a bag dangling above. All that kept him from bleeding out was the thin line of stitches sewn into his thigh. Everything hurt to move— not that it mattered— he was bound hand and foot. Whoever had saved him had put him on oxygen. He had needed help breathing. He didn't know how close to death he had come, but he knew it had been, and probably still was, close. Din sighed in frustration. He wouldn't be able to fight his captors in his current state.
Likely scenarios flooded Din's thoughts. The beskar was likely already sold on the black market. The only reason he was still alive was probably because someone wanted a higher bounty. The liquid being injected into his veins was either a slow-acting poison or a truth serum. His helmet only remained to be used as a pawn during interrogation.
Din startled at the creaking of a door. The woman that he had handed Grogu to walked in.
"Where's the kid?" Din demanded.
"Mandalorian," her voice carried with it a soothing authority. "You must stay calm. You've been badly injured."
"I asked you to save my foundling. Where is he?" Din growled.
"He's resting." She answered. "I'll take you to see him, but you must stay calm."
She exchanged the bag of dark liquid that had been dripping into his veins.
"What's in the bag?" Din asked.
"Blood." She answered without looking away from her task. "You've used a lot of it."
"Why did you save me? And how did you save both me and the kid?" Din questioned.
"Because I could and because it was right." She answered. She chuckled at the second question. "When you're the only medic at the Galaxy's most notorious mental institution, you get creative." She extended her hand. "Akili Merak. Good to officially meet you."
"Din... Din Djarin." The Mandalorian stuttered. Using his real name still felt so foreign.
"I'll get you a hover chair." Akili offered.
"I can walk."
"I'm not so sure about that." She cautioned. She left and reappeared with a hover chair floating in front of her.
"I'm not…" Din stammered as the chair came to a stop.
Akili balled her hands on her hips. "If you want to see your child, you are."
Din huffed, frustrated and embarrassed with himself in his current state. Pain stabbed from the wound on his leg as he pushed himself to his feet. He hesitated as he moved from the bed to the chair. Shaky breaths echoed from beneath his helmet as he fought the pain that increased with every second. In an instant, Akili's hands were on Din's sides, helping him into the waiting seat.
The hover chair seemed to move too slowly. Worse than the foreboding of the darkened, ancient hospital hallways was vulnerability— a helpless feeling Din did all he could to avoid. Here though, without his armor, his weapons, or even the ability to stand on his own, vulnerability was inevitable.
Harsh light beamed from the next room into the corridor.
"Almost there." Akili said, her soothing timbre but a whisper.
She steered Din's hover chair into the room. The harsh, bright light beamed from a surgical lamp that shone into a crib. Inside the crib, Grogu lay on his back, eyes closed, unmoving. A white bandage coiled around his head.
Akili bent over the crib. She checked the baby over then cradled him in her arms.
"You may hold him." She whispered as she crossed the room to Din. "Careful, he's just come out of surgery."
Din held his founding delicately. Grogu's long ear hung over Din's forearm, radiating soft warmth where usually was cold beskar. The gauze neatly wrapped around the baby's head chafed against Din's elbow.
"W… what surgery?" Din's voice barely got past his helmet as he began to ask the questions that terrified him.
"There was bleeding on his brain." Akili explained. "I had to drain it."
"Brain surgery? He had brain surgery?" Din stammered.
Akili gave a tactful nod.
"W… will he be okay?" Din relied on his Mandalorian training to hold himself together, to be strong for Grogu.
"Time will tell." Akili answered .
The kid looked so pale, so still.
"Grogu, I'm here now, I'm back." Din's words wavered as he began to weep. His calloused fingers curled around the baby's unmoving hand. "Can you hear me?"
Grogu lay still in Din's arms except for the same, even, comatose breaths he had breathed since the crash.
Din's fingertips trembled as he held his foundling's limp claw. "Wake up, buddy!" He begged. "I need you to be okay."
"Perhaps this is too overwhelming." Akili suggested as she stepped in to retrieve Grogu.
"It's…not." Din lied. He embraced his foundling once more before she whisked the kid away.
"Both of you need to rest." Akili advised as she laid Grogu back on the stiff sheets of the crib.
Din stifled a sob beneath his helmet as he watched his foundling lie helpless and alone. "I want to stay with him."
"You need your rest too." Akili said as she steered Din's hover chair back into the hallway.
Din sat still and silent as Akili propelled the hover chair back down the shadowy corridor. His muscles tensed with the knowledge that the deranged denizens of Bedlam Institute lurked close by and posed a threat. Din wasn't even sure he could trust Akili, he had been stripped of all of his armor except his helmet, and he'd been left unable to even stand, wholly at her mercy. Helplessness and suspicion gnawed at him. Akili had saved him, and she had kept Grogu alive, but none of it made sense.
Din decided to fight, even if he had to fight on his mortally injured leg— he had to at least get Grogu to safety.
Din's heart sped up as he readied for battle. As his pulse pounded in his chest, he remembered the heart monitor adhered to his skin. Akili would know.
The hover chair stopped. Akili rushed in from behind. Concealed concern etched tiny wrinkles on her face. "How are you feeling?"
"Where's my armor?" Din demanded.
Akili positioned the hover chair next to Din's bed. "You don't need your armor right now, you need rest."
"I'm getting my armor, I'm getting my foundling, and I'm leaving." Din stood. A bolt of pain shot from his leg to his brain. His vision grayed and his stomach lurched. He gripped the bedsheets to keep from throwing up or falling down.
Akili's gentle hands met Din's waist, steadying him. "You and your foundling are both too unwell to go anywhere." She helped him into bed. Her gaze meet his visor. "This is frightening and confusing for you, I understand, but you can trust me."
Din lay still, not deeming Akili's assurances worthy of acknowledgment.
"Mando! Are you awake?" She implored, alarmed at her patient's stillness. She glanced at Din's heart monitor and gripped his shoulder, probing for a conscious response.
Din shrugged her hand away. "Why should I trust you?" He turned his gaze back towards the dark hallway. "Isn't this place full of deranged criminals?"
Akili's steely eyes flitted towards the doorway. "We do have a wing of high security patients." She said. A gloom washed over her. "But most of the people here have simply lived difficult lives. They've been dumped here, forgotten by the system, some since the early days of the Empire."
A solemn silence followed her account of the asylum.
"I didn't see any other staff. How do you take care of everyone?"
"Staff?" She laughed. "The staff left long ago, after the Battle of Endor."
Apprehension colored Din's voice. "If you're not staff, you're a… patient?"
"I'm a strandcast." She clarified. "I was grown on an Imperial gene farm, but the scientists got their calculations wrong." She pulled down her collar revealing a cybernetic implant that pumped life sustaining medication into her chest. "I have a genetic disease that gets worse with time. They left me here when I was a child. Bedlam's head doctor made me his apprentice and taught me everything he knew. I'm all the patients of this hospital have."
"Just you and a whole wing of deranged criminals doesn't seem safe." Din said as he tried to sit.
"It's not easy, but we manage." Akili stopped him. She hung a bag of antibiotic solution from the hook above the bed and connected it to the IV on Din's arm. "You need sleep." Akili said before leaving the room. "Try to get some rest."
Akili shut off the lights as she left. Only the low luminescence from a lamp disk in the corner of the room washed the walls in an eerie blue glow. Akili's footsteps faded to silence.
Guilt, condemnation and self-hatred haunted the Mandalorian— how could he have handed the Kid over to the patient of an insane asylum? Now Grogu lay helpless and alone in an operating room, just down a hallway from the most crazed, most dangerous criminals in the Galaxy.
Sorrow and shame encroached like the asylum's dark shadows. Din blinked tears from his eyes as he stared at the bag of medicine that hung above him. He detested the shameful state he was in and the thin tunic that he'd been dressed in. He was a Mandalorian, meant to wear armor, not a hospital gown. He dared to move his leg. The minor movement triggered a spike of pain from the wound— the wound that should have killed him. He should have died in battle, in his effort to save Grogu, like the Mandalorian law said. Now he had to fight a harder battle—now he had to fight to survive to protect Grogu.
Din let one sob escape. He stopped himself. As a Mandalorian he had to be strong. He forced himself to even his breaths, to relax. The silence of the asylum became noticeable, even nefarious. There was something darker than normal about the darkness in this place.
Din willed himself to sleep. He had just about drifted off when a loud crash from down the corridor startled him awake. He leered into the corridor's inky blackness, fearing the worst.
"Dank farrik!" Din spat the curse as he stood. Waves of pain rolled from his injured leg as he shifted weight onto it. Din limped to the corridor. His suspicion was confirmed—down the corridor a cell door hung open.