Din Djarin's body may have been slowly healing, but he felt like his mind was only getting sicker.
Over the next several days, Din's nightmares got progressively worse. Every night, Grogu came to Cara's room to get her help. Waking Din up so that he'd stop flailing and possibly hurt himself.
After a few nights of the same routine, they were exhausted. Din more than all of them.
Cara had started insisting they hit the rack early to try and offset the inevitable wake-up that came in the middle of the night, but it was still rough.
Luckily the kid napped when he wanted, and Cara could get used to almost any sleep schedule after her years in the field, so they were faring somewhat okay.
When he was healthy, Din could go days without sleep if necessary. But he was still recovering, and it was wearing down the wounded Mandalorian.
On the fourth night in a row that she was pulled into Din's room by Grogu, Cara made a decision.
"Okay, that's it. We need to look at this situation tactically, and I think it's time we made some changes. Obviously doing the same thing we've been doing hasn't been working. So, we need to do something different."
"Like what?" Din asked, looking across at her sitting on the other bed. He was holding Grogu in his lap, the boy had dozed off after bringing Cara into the room.
The amount of weariness in Din's voice was not lost on the ex-shock trooper and it worried her. She couldn't afford to have him give up on her.
"We need to eliminate one of the factors and the only one that I know of right now, for sure, is this."
She got up and walked to the fresher and switched on the light, then used the controls to dim it quite a bit, leaving the door open.
Every night after Cara woke Din, she would stay in his room for a little while and try to get him to talk. Usually it worked, even if he didn't remember much about the nightmare. He tried and that's what was important.
The night before, Din had remembered a detail, something he hadn't previously.
"I think it was dark." He had spoken softly, and Cara almost didn't hear him.
"What?"
"There. When I was in that place. There's something about it being dark."
"Okay, that's good."
"And I think I've actually been waking up a few times, not just once."
"That makes sense. Your sleep is wacked-out right now."
"I wake up and it's dark."
"And it reminds you of being there?"
"I think so. I don't know if I was putting that together. I would just try and go back to sleep."
"But then you kept having nightmares after that?"
"Yes."
"Okay, good. I think knowing the cause is a step closer to a solution."
Now, Cara turned back to Din after leaving the light on in the fresher.
"If darkness is a problem, we illuminate the dark."
"Cara, I'm not a child that needs a light on at night to scare away the monsters so they can sleep."
"Good, because that's not what this is. Look, if we were in battle and an enemy had darkness on their side, we would eliminate it, right? We would use lights or wait for sunrise, or whatever, we wouldn't just go in with them having that advantage."
Din tried to argue, but honestly, he was just too tired to put up more of a fight.
"Okay, sure," he agreed with a shrug, yawning. "You said 'first.' What's second?"
"This."
Cara got up and walked to the door of Din's room. He expected her to leave, and he wouldn't have blamed her one bit. She was probably more than done with all of this nonsense that was keeping her awake unnecessarily. He was tempted to ask her to keep Grogu in her room just so that the kid wouldn't keep having his sleep interrupted as well. There was no need for anyone to go through this except for him.
But instead of leaving, Cara closed the door and came back into the room. She walked straight to the other bed and got into it, kicking off the slip-on shoes she wore with her sleeping clothes, before pulling the covers over her legs and up to her chin.
"Cara you don't have to do that. There's no need for you to keep missing sleep like this. I don't even want Grogu to miss sleep anymore. Maybe you should keep him with you at night."
Din was lucky Grogu had fallen back asleep during this conversation, otherwise the little one would have definitely protested that suggestion. Din had managed to convince Grogu to move to a cot next to his bed, afraid that he would hurt him if he moved too much during the nightmares. The child hadn't liked it, but he had agreed after some convincing.
"Nope. I'm not leaving. This is another tactical maneuver. I need to observe the situation to see if I can help come up with another battle plan. I also need to see if our current strategy works at all. You know how this goes. You can't just try something and assume it will fix the whole problem. We've got to come at this from different angles."
With that, Cara rolled over, facing away from him.
Din didn't have any energy left to argue. He put Grogu in his cot, touching his little hand briefly as if to get comfort from the child, then settled into his own bed. He closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep. It took a while, but eventually he drifted off again.
Sometime later Din woke up with a gasp, his heart racing from a fear he could never name. But instead of darkness continuing to pull him down into the nightmare before he could grapple his way to wakefulness, his eyes opened to a gentle glow in the room.
The sight of the familiar space calmed the Mandalorian. As he blinked and looked around, he remembered where he was. He reached out to the cot next to him and put a hand on Grogu's back, sighing at the familiar feel of the child's robe. Rolling over to the other side, Din saw the outline of Cara sleeping in the other bed. The sounds of their breathing soothed Din even more, reassuring him that he wasn't in that place.
Din moved to lay on his back and breathed deeply for a few minutes, then slowly closed his eyes again. Morning was only a couple of hours away and he slept until then. It wasn't a huge improvement, but it was something.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
The next morning, while Din and Grogu were eating, Cara went to talk to Med in the exam room down the passageway.
"I thought that might be the case. He didn't tell me, but I had a feeling he was having nightmares. Who wouldn't after what he's been through?" Med said with a sigh after Cara filled him in on what had been happening.
"Is there anything we can give him? I'm not saying I think drugging him up is the answer but maybe if his body got a little more rest, he could get ahead of this."
"We don't have any sedatives on the ship," Med said, shaking his head sadly. "We didn't have many supplies when he was rescued. But even if we did have them, I don't know if that would be a good idea. Din's always had a sensitivity to heavy meds like that. We tried things in the past when he had major injuries and sometimes the reaction to the drugs was worse than just letting him ride out the pain."
Ah, that explains why he's usually trying to deal with pain rather than ask for help. He's learned the hard way.
"That really sucks," Cara said. Her eyes shifted towards the door as if looking at the room where Din was.
"Tell me about it. Believe me, I didn't enjoy getting him through those times."
"It's not all meds though, right?" Cara said. "I've been with him when he's injured, and he's taken painkillers for some of them."
"No, it's not all of them. We figured out what works, and he knows now which ones he can take. But not all meds work for all situations, and if he's in a spot where the ones he can take won't work, then he's just got to suffer through it."
"And sedatives are a no-go?"
"Pretty much. If it's a serious injury then we can use the heavy ones to knock him fully out, but we can't use something to just help him sleep. Not unless you want him wandering the halls or stealing a jetpack and flying out a window."
"Tell me that didn't actually happen." Cara was aghast.
"Yes, it did. He wasn't even trained to fly the thing at the time, so he could've killed himself. Luckily someone else caught him. Our friend Paz, who gave Din hell relentlessly about that for years." Cara caught how Med's voice softened as he ended the last sentence. He didn't elaborate and she didn't ask. Cara knew the sound of loss when she heard it.
Med cleared his throat, and his voice was back to normal when he spoke again.
"Oh, and keep in mind that he also does that at the end of high fevers. If you have to wrestle him back to bed, then you know the fever is about to break or has just broken."
Cara chuckled. "Okay, thanks for letting me know. I'll keep that in mind for future reference, the next time he decides to almost die on me."
"Ah, I see you've discovered Djar's propensity for nearly getting himself killed on a regular basis."
Cara smiled at the nickname.
"Oh yeah, we've done a few missions together. At first, I thought all that armor made him practically indestructible, but it turns out when a pissed-off Moff shoots an entire box of ammunition next to you at point-blank range, even beskar won't keep you from getting your bell rung. Hard."
Med heard the gruffness in Cara's voice. He hadn't heard this story yet, but it sounded bad.
"How did he survive that?" Med asked wonderingly. He knew his brother was tough but that sounded like a fatal blast, even with a beskar helmet.
"We got lucky. He somehow survived long enough for me to drag him to safety, for the kid to hold back a wall of flames from an incinerator trooper, and for a reprogrammed IG-11 droid – who I think used to own that suit the kid now walks around in, don't ask me how that happened – to get Din alone and convince him to remove the helmet so he could get a bacta infusion."
Med didn't say anything for several seconds. If Cara didn't know better, she'd swear the man's jaw had dropped.
"And that was just the first time he nearly died on me," she added.
"Well, I did say he was good at nearly getting himself killed."
"Yeah, but he's usually doing it for a really good reason, which makes it so much harder to yell at him. I mean, I do still yell at him, but it is harder."
"What was the good reason that time?"
"The Moff wanted the kid. The kid was outside in the middle of a firefight. Din went out to save him. End of story."
"I wouldn't have expected anything else."
"Yeah. Of course, Din got the Moff back when he got the Darksaber."
"The Darksaber?"
"Oh, you don't know that story? You should ask Din and Bo for their side, but I was there on the bridge - the bridge of this cruiser, in fact - when Din came in after that fight."
Cara smiled as she remembered that day.
"You should have seen it. It was glorious. Din came marching in with the Darksaber in one hand, his kid tucked in his other arm, literally kicking the Moff's ass onto the bridge."
Med laughed. "I wish I had seen that."
Cara shook her head at the memory, then sighed.
"You know I give that buckethead a hard time, but I do have to admit the man's got skills."
"I know, it's annoying, isn't it?" Med said. "He's been showing me up since we were kids."
Med thought about something and decided to ask.
"That Moff you mentioned? Is that the same one that took, and we assume tortured him?"
"Yeah, it's the same one."
"I can think of a few things I want to do to that man."
"You're not the only one, believe me."
As they talked a bit more, trading stories and trying to come up with ideas to help Din, Cara noticed something interesting about Med. Or, more accurately, about his armor.
Most of Din's clan, the Children of the Watch had armor in different colors. Bo's clan, the Nite Owls tended toward more blues and grays, and all looked similar. Din's clan had no such similarities. In fact, the easiest way to tell if it was a member of his tribe was if the Mandalorian's armor was unmatched, sporting bright colors such as yellows, greens, reds, blues.
Din stood out in both clans with his unpainted beskar. It was distinctive for its very lack of distinction, its subtleness standing out in a world of color.
Med's armor was similar, though he didn't wear pure beskar. That was a luxury Din had earned by capturing a bounty that no one else had been able to get. By being the best bounty hunter in the parsec.
Of course, he had then stolen that bounty and become a fugitive for a while, and now that bounty was his child. But still, he had technically earned it.
Din's armor was simple and without paint, which gave it a naturally silver hue. His leathers and underclothing were dark brown, so dark that sometimes they looked black or gray depending on the light.
Med's armor was the typical painted alloy used by most other Mandalorians, but he kept it all one color. His was painted a silvery gray, in a shade not dissimilar to Din's beskar, also with brown leathers and underclothing. Med didn't have the massive weapon array that Din had, but then again not all Mandalorians did. Each chose their own weaponry, and all were as different as their armor.
Nor would Med need as many weapons, being that he was a medic. He did have a belt with a small bag on it, and Cara wondered if that held basic medical tools such as a scanner, so that he could help assess injuries whenever needed.
Med also had a helmet similar to Din's, one that did not include a rangefinder. Again, it was something that made them stand in the crowd, as most other Mandalorians had that piece of gear on their helmets.
The painted color of Med's armor, the similar underclothing and padding, as well as the simple helmet design, gave his uniform a look and feel much like Din's.
Cara had already heard the two of them refer to each other as "brother" and knew some of their backstory. If she didn't already know that Din had lost his entire family, she would have suspected he and Med were in fact blood brothers. It was as if, because their features couldn't be seen, the two men had chosen similar armor to suggest familial ties.
Cara now knew that when she met Din, he had just gone through the trauma of taking on an entire group of bounty hunters to rescue a child that had once been his quarry. At the time, he thought Med had died in that battle. It made her further understand his heartbreak when he had collapsed in the tunnels in Nevarro, after spotting the pile of armor in the dirt. All while still barely healing from head trauma after nearly sacrificing himself to save Grogu, Greef and herself.
Given that the two of them were clearly brothers in all but blood, it gave her even more respect for Din. She never would have guessed the loss he'd been suffering when they'd met in that backwater cantina. Then again, not many guessed the loss she had suffered, even when it had been fresh. Soldiers learned to shove their pain away into a far corner of their soul or they wouldn't survive the next battle.
Apparently, Din was just as good at that as she was.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Later that day, Din and Grogu had finished their dinner and they were all relaxing before going to bed early.
Suddenly Din got up and ran to the fresher, closing the door behind him.
As soon as he got up from the bed, Grogu whined. Then cried harder when the door was closed.
"Hey kid, it's alright. Sometimes a man needs a minute alone. Give your dad a break."
But Grogu kept crying, staring at the door with a pitiful look. He made no attempt to leave his cot, accepting that Din needed to be alone, but not happy about it.
A few minutes later Din returned looking pale and shaky as he usually did after such a trip to the fresher. Cara wasn't happy to realize this had become so routine she'd almost come to expect it.
The weary Mandalorian collapsed on his bed, pulling Grogu into his lap.
As soon as he was in his father's arms, Grogu stopped fussing and snuggled into Din's stomach.
The child was becoming stressed by his father's increasing nightmares, not helped by the fact that Grogu was also missing sleep, which made him cranky.
While there had been some improvement after they tried the light and having Cara in the same room, it hadn't been much. Though he was usually able to get back to sleep after a while, Din was still waking up several times a night, only sleeping a couple hours at a time.
"Sorry," Din said, patting Grogu on the back. "I see he's getting more and more clingy. He's been doing it a bit ever since I got back. But it seems to have gotten worse recently for some reason."
"Who can blame him? You were gone a long time and then you came back fighting for your life. And now…" She didn't elaborate, but it was clear she was talking about the nightmares and vomiting.
"He's probably afraid to let you out of his sight again," she finished.
"Maybe you're right. I swear he won't leave me alone, not even in the fresher." He shook his head. "He started doing that recently, right before you got here."
"Oh really?" Suddenly Cara couldn't help but grin.
He saw her look. She looked ready to burst into laughter.
"What?"
As clearly as if she had projected it to him, Din saw where Cara's mind had gone.
"Cara, no! That's not what I meant."
"You said he followed you in there."
"I mean he sits outside the shower like a loth-cat. Or he'll just sit on the sink and watch me brush my teeth, or shave."
"Hey, I'm not judging," Cara held up her hands. "It's not weird when it's your kid. I have some friends with little ones, and they say the first couple of years you don't get any privacy, not even in there." She hiked her thumb to the fresher.
"Sure, I get it but it's just now I have this image of him watching me while I'm sitting on the.."
That was it, Cara couldn't hold back her amusement and started laughing. Din clamped his mouth shut, but he couldn't stop the grin. He shook his head at Cara.
Seeing his grin, which she didn't see very often, Cara couldn't help but laugh harder. She liked the way the wrinkles around his eyes got deeper the more he tried to keep from laughing.
Soon they both dissolved into laughter. Din's was more of a strong chuckle, but it was there.
After a while they were feeding off each other. Laughing harder and harder until they could barely remember why. Even Grogu, who hadn't really understood what was happening and was just happy Din was back in the room, joined in. His baby chortles sent the two adults into further fits of mirth.
Din put a hand on his ribs. "Oh, I have to stop. My ribs. Stop making me laugh."
"I'm not making you laugh anymore. Besides, you started it."
Finally, they stopped and caught their breath, then took turns in the fresher to get ready for bed. Din took Grogu in with him so the kid could brush his little teeth as well. Once they were both done, Cara went in for her own ablutions.
Occasionally, the two adults would look at each other and one or the other would chuckle again. Din's stomach was hurting from laughing more than he had in years.
Cara finished in the fresher, dimming the lights, and walked to her bed. Din was lying on his side, facing away from her bed.
As she slid off her soft shoes, Cara spoke softy.
"Good night Grogu, good night, Din."
"Good night, Cara."
"If you need to go to the fresher in the middle of the night, be sure to bring him with you," she added wickedly.
Din felt the laughter building up again, which Cara had done on purpose.
"Or I could always hand him to you when you go in there," he replied.
He heard Cara snort, trying to hold back her laughter.
Din covered his face with his hand, his eyes pinched tight trying to stop his laughter, but Cara could still hear his muffled chuckles from her bed.
The sound only made her laugh harder.
"Go to sleep," Din said.
"You go to sleep," Cara ordered.
Within seconds they had collapsed into full-on hysterics again.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
It had become Bo's habit to walk into the medical bay and check on Din before she went to sleep. She was still doing it, even with Cara now keeping the recovering Mandalorian company.
Now as she got near his closed door, Bo heard Din speaking in a strained voice.
"Ow, it hurts. I can't breathe."
Bo sprinted to his room and pounded on the door keypad to open it, running in and ready to call for Med.
What she found made her slide to a stop.
The two friends were doubled over in laughter on their separate beds. Grogu joined in from his own cot, his baby giggles just as loud as the other two, his little feet kicking under his robe.
"Well, I'm glad to hear that sound."
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
While Din did still wake up with his usual nightmares, Cara could feel that at least the laughter of the previous night had done him some good. Once Bo had come in, they'd made an attempt to explain what had been so funny. She hadn't really gotten the joke because, let's face it, you had to be there. But their laughter had still been contagious and soon all had collapsed into mirth.
The next morning Cara decided it was time to start building up Din's strength slowly. She wanted to start with short walks, not just to regain his endurance but also to get him out of his room.
While he'd been healing, rest was exactly what he had needed. But being cooped up all day wasn't doing him much good any longer. She wanted to get the Mandalorian out of his own head and looking around at things. She felt like it would be good for him to work off some of the nervous energy he had from lack of sleep, and maybe help him relax more at night.
They started doing short walks a few times a day around the medical wing since no one else was allowed on that floor. It gave Din the chance to get out without worrying about being seen out of his helmet.
Though the Armorer had given him permission to be without his beskar and show his face to whoever he wanted, Din had decided to keep it to just his friends. He knew Axe had seen him as well, but after the rescue he considered the man a friend, too. At some point Din wanted to thank Axe for his help, but he wanted to be well when he did it.
It didn't happen right away but after a couple days of going for walks, Cara could feel Din's discomfort about something. She finally put her finger on it when she noticed how he would attempt to fold his arms on himself when they walked.
Though Med had found short-sleeved scrubs, Cara noticed that Din always wore the long-sleeved ones. In fact, he usually doubled them up, putting a long sleeve shirt under a short sleeve one.
At first, she had written it off as a form of modesty, from a man who had been used to being dressed in multiple layers, the top of which had been heavy beskar armor. She figured the extra layer of clothing felt more familiar, perhaps even more secure to him. But as it kept happening, Cara became aware of Din's demeanor, and she realized it wasn't just about the exposed skin.
Though healing, Din still bore the marks of his imprisonment and torture. There was hardly a place on him that didn't have a healing wound, puncture, or burn. Some areas were covered with bruises of impressive colors, some had stitches, and all of them were noticeable.
Once she realized it, Cara wondered why she hadn't grasped it sooner. The man didn't even have any shoes. Though Med had found scrubs in the supplies, he'd found nothing in the way of footwear. Again, it hadn't mattered when Din had been basically bedridden. But now it did matter.
Once she felt like she knew what the issue was, Cara decided to have a word with Bo and maybe the Armorer as well. She didn't think Din should be in his full armor yet, his body was still in need of a lot more healing, but maybe there was a compromise. Maybe something could be made for him to wear in the meantime.
When Cara spoke to them, the other women agreed with her assessment.
"I will have the clothiers start immediately. You're right," the Armorer said. "I should have thought of this myself."
"Me too," Bo agreed. "We should have realized this might be a problem."
"You guys got him home, you were a little busy bringing him back from the brink of death to worry about clothes," Cara reassured them.
Cara turned to Bo. "I can't imagine what it must've been like to find him in that place. I know you were in that cell alone and that you got him on his feet and out of there."
Bo shook her head. "He did that himself. I don't know how he walked, or how he was even talking to me. Any other person would've been dead, I'm sure of it. I thought he was dead for a second when I found him. How he was even breathing at that point after all they'd done to him, I still have no clue."
Cara saw the emotion from what must've been an awful memory reflected in Bo's somber face.
"Stubborn. That's how," Cara said with a sad smile.
"Yeah. Very stubborn," Bo said through watery eyes.
"I'm glad you were there if I couldn't be. It's good to know he has other friends he can count on. For a while there I felt like I was alone in watching after that buckethead."
"You're not alone," Bo said.
"Anyway," Cara cleared her throat to push down the emotion she hadn't expected to feel during a simple conversation about clothes. "I think this will definitely help him get on his feet and back into the right mindset. I think he's done being looked at and feeling like an invalid, even if he is still healing."
"We'll have something ready as soon as possible," the Armorer promised. "But when that happens, your job will be to keep him from doing too much once he has it, as I'm sure he will be tempted."
"I will do my best. Though we all know how stubborn that man is."
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Despite the walks, Din still woke up throughout the night. While it wasn't as bad as before, he was beginning to feel like he was never going to get a full night's sleep again.
"What is wrong with me? Why won't this nightmare end?" Din whispered fiercely after yet another terrifying dream he couldn't remember, frustrated but not wanting to wake Grogu.
"I feel like I'm taking two steps backward for every step forward. I'm never going to get back into the Fighting Corps if I can't even sleep or eat. Those are basic requirements to live, let alone fight."
"Din, you've got to stop being so hard on yourself," Cara instructed, sitting on her bed with her legs crossed, the blanket pulled over her lap.
"You're not the first warrior, the first soldier to need a little more time to recover after something like this. We'll just keep finding what's wrong, fix it and move on to the next thing. Isn't that what we do? Solve problems? You're a bounty hunter. Treat this like a hunt. It's a mystery to be solved. Except it's not just one, it's a whole series of mysteries. I'm sure you've had bounties that gave you a run for your money and challenged you to find them."
Din chuffed out a breath. He could think of a few like that.
"So, this is one of those elusive bounties. It keeps staying one step ahead, but also every time you find a solution, you get that much closer."
Din nodded, it helped to see it as something like a hunt. A series of problems to be solved. It didn't make it all better, but it gave him some hope in that moment.
"Can you keep fighting for me?" Cara asked.
"I'm trying."
"I know, I know. You're right. I'm just laying it out for you, giving you a path."
"I just wish I could sleep," Din said, pressing the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. "I've never gone this long without steady sleep before. Not even when I've had injuries that kept me awake. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I have trouble with most heavy sedatives. When we've tried them in the past I…"
"Oh, I'm well aware of what happened," Cara interrupted. "Med told me a brief version of the story. Even if we had any sedatives on the ship, I would have no desire to see a repeat of you stealing a jetpack and taking off outside. That's bad enough planetside, but here you'd end up blasting out into space without a suit and no one's got time for that. I'm just glad someone caught you the last time it happened."
"Yeah, Paz…" Din was thoughtful.
"Sounds like he was a good friend," Cara said, going with the instinct that told her this other Mandalorian had passed away. Probably in battle, if she had to guess.
"He was. I mean we fought a lot, but we were still friends."
"Sometimes you fight with your friends, doesn't make them any less your friend."
"True. We've certainly proven that."
"But we just need to keep working together, and I promise I'll do whatever I can to help.
"Thank you, for everything you've done. I appreciate it."
"That's what friends are for, right?"
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
The next morning Din and Cara walked around the medical wing again. Din hadn't told Cara, but he was beginning to feel more and more uncomfortable in the scrubs. When he'd been healing, he'd just been happy to be out of a robe. Plus, he'd been mostly in bed.
Walking around, not just with no helmet but no armor as well, made him feel strange. He didn't even have any shoes. It was all yet another reminder that he wasn't himself, that his body was just a weak thing he barely recognized.
Cara noticed Din getting more uncomfortable. She had a feeling the new clothes would be there that morning, so she decided to let him go back to his room alone. Though Cara had been sleeping in one of the extra beds in Din's room, she still kept her things in her own room. It was good for both of them to have their own space. It also gave her an excuse to leave him alone to find what was waiting for him.
When they finished their walk, Cara told Din she wanted to look in her bag for something and she'd catch up with him later. Din shrugged and nodded in reply, then went into his room and closed the door behind him.
Din walked to his bed with a curious frown, noticing a bundle on top of the blanket. As he got closer, he realized it was clothes. All were very well made, and his eyes opened wider as he inspected each piece.
One the top of the pile was a soft cream-colored shirt that buttoned up the front, folded below it was a pair of pants in dark tan. The next item was larger, and Din unfolded it to find a brown suede flight jacket with gold metal buttons and a high collar. As he looked more closely, he found that each button had a Mythosaur symbol engraved on it. He also discovered the right upper arm had a patch with his Clan Mudhorn signet. Next to the jacket were two-tone gloves, dark green with light tan fingers, in a style like his old ones.
At the bottom of the stack, he found more items. There were spare shirts in brown, green and tan, as well as other things, including socks and underclothing. It was a complete new wardrobe with everything he might need.
As Din tried to figure out how this had happened, he noticed one thing that wasn't new. He saw them at his feet, next to the bed, and sat down to pick up the last part of the gift.
His short ankle boots had been returned, cleaned, and shined to perfection. The detachable pieces that wrapped around his calf, which usually held extra ammo, were missing but he knew he'd get them back when he needed them. For now, it felt good to have one piece of his usual armor. For he considered the boots as much a part of his armor as anything else he wore.
He fingered the well-worn leather, remembering not the horrors of his most recent time wearing them. But of better days, such as when he'd first gotten the boots and worn them proudly.
The colors of the new clothing were nothing like his beskar, but they still felt familiar. The colors reminded him of his old armor. The last set he had before he got the unpainted pure beskar. It gave him a sense of comfort, a reminder of who he was.
Din noticed that a note had fallen out from under the jacket, which he had missed before. He picked it up and read it.
Until you are ready for your armor, this is better suited for your station and for restarting your training.
Din smiled and Grogu cooed, gently touching the jacket.
"Do you like it, buddy? Me, too. Should I try them on?"
Grogu nodded enthusiastically, jumping up and down on the bed.
"Okay, give me a minute. Let's see if they fit."
Din had no doubt they would fit him perfectly. His clan had excellent clothiers. He eagerly started pulling off the scrubs and changing into the new gear. A while later he was pulling on the last article, the gloves, when there was a chime at his door.
"Come in," Din said.
The Mandalorian turned to face the door with a smile, looking forward to Cara's reaction. He had no doubt that she, Bo, and the Armorer had made this happen. It wasn't the same as being back in his armor, but the new clothes made him feel a little more like himself and less like an invalid.
Cara grinned when she saw Din in his new gear. She was impressed with not only how quickly the Armorer had gotten the clothiers to turn out everything, but at the quality as well.
"Whoa, Mando! Where did you get these?"
"The Armorer sent them," Din said, tugging at the gloves one final time to set them in place, then rubbing his hand appreciatively over the sleeve of the jacket.
"Though I have a feeling you had something to do with it, and maybe Bo, too?" He looked at her with one eyebrow raised.
Cara just shrugged noncommittally, but her grin told him everything.
"Come here, let me take a look. Wow, those clothiers in your clan do amazing work. Just wait till all the lady Mandos catch sight of you in these digs."
As if on cue, Bo walked in the door and stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of Din in his new outfit.
"Not bad, huh?" Cara asked, waving an arm at Din, who gave Bo a crooked smile.
Bo swallowed and tipped her head with a thoughtful frown as her eyebrows shot up.
"Nope. Not bad at all."
Soon both of them were clucking over Din like two aunties, straightening the collar on his shirt, adjusting the jacket on his shoulders, brushing off non-existent lint from his sleeves.
Din snorted and flicked their hands away after a minute, but if he was honest with himself, he actually didn't mind their attention all that much. It was nice to be looked at with something other than worry or pity from his friends.
"Wow, Djar. Where did all that come from?" Med walked in the door and gave a low whistle at the new clothing.
"The Armorer, the clothiers. Instigated by these two, I'm sure." Din said, hooking his thumb at Bo and Cara.
"Actually, it was Cara's idea," Bo said.
Din turned to his friend gratefully. He should have known she would figure out he was uncomfortable walking around in those scrubs. He couldn't hide much from her.
"Thank you, Cara. This helps a lot."
"Just doing my job," she said with another shrug.
Med was inspecting everything, lifting Din's arm to look more closely at the Mudhorn signet on his shoulder. The medic still remembered finding the awful burns under the pauldron with the same symbol. Somehow, he felt like the clothes were going to help Din heal even more.
"I like it. I like the whole outfit. Do you know what it reminds me of?"
"My old armor?"
"Your old armor."
"His old armor?" Cara and Bo asked together.
"Before the pure beskar," Din clarified.
"Oh," Cara said. "I guess I never thought about what you had before."
"Me neither," Bo said. "Somehow, I just assumed you'd always had the beskar. But of course, you would have had something before that. If this is what it looked like, it's very different. I like the colors though, they work for you."
As Bo talked, Cara found herself wondering if Med's previous armor was alike as well, seeing how their current armor was so similar.
Cara watched Din talking with Bo and Med, and she was happy to see him smile a bit more. There was still exhaustion in his eyes and tension gathered in his frame, but she hoped the clothes would be another step toward his recovery.
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SUPER-LONG A/N AHEAD!
Hi folks! I just wanted to mention that we're getting close to the end of this story. Maybe another three chapters (depending on what the muse has to say) and we're done. So, I wanted to let you all know that I've been furiously working behind the scenes on my next Mandalorian story. Or should I say my next series.
About a month or so into this story, I caught the BoDin ship bug and decided to try my hand at a BoDin slow burn romance – which quickly turned into a series of epic proportions. I don't use that phrase lightly either. Currently that series, which I see as being probably a bunch of one-shots posted under a single story, with perhaps a few separate multi-chapter fics – is around 120,000 words. Nope, not a typo, it really is 120K words so far.
As I said it will start out as a slow burn romance for Bo and Din, but it will also feature other characters and everything from drama and angst, to whump, hurt/comfort, action, family fluff and more. The moment I started it, the plot bunnies started breeding like mad and they haven't stopped.
I should mention that this story is not a part of the series, though it (and my other story Reborn and Redeemed) could be seen as pre-BoDin if you squint. I wanted to start the series in canon, with Bo never having seen Din's face, so it will pick up right after the S3 finale.
For those who are enjoying Med in this story, you'll be happy to know that he will be heavily featured in the series. I've also given him a bit of a slow burn romance, with a wife and family of his own, though I'm not saying who I'm pairing him off with just yet. I just couldn't have Din and Bo happily married with their own little family and not give Med that same happiness. It just wasn't fair to a character I've grown to love so much.
Med will also get some of his own whump and angst because apparently, I can't resist Med whump and angst any more than I can resist Din whump and angst.
So, while this story is winding down, never fear, you'll be seeing plenty more Mandalorian fanfiction coming from me in the future.