Parental Duties
By Rey
Chapter summary: One child has suddenly multiplied into fourteen.
Warnings for: allusions to Order-66, Din's not-so-good childhood
7. Din: The Children
Being tossed onto one's back by a force-field is so absurd and embarrassing.
Worse, Grogu is behind that field.
And worst, Din can't try to find a less blunt way to deactivate the field but to rush at it, because another ship is landing not far enough from his for comfort.
He looks at Grogu's silhouette, safe behind the force-field, then at the exhaust line trailing in the air from the passage of a ship not much bigger than his own, curses emphatically, and tears down the hill.
He must prevent whoever is in this other ship from even knowing that Grogu is here, and he can't do it from up the hill where Grogu is.
He really doesn't appreciate it when he is waylaid by someone dressed in robes and a hooded cloak before he can even pass his own ship on the way to the other one.
He appreciates it even less when the stranger, apparently not a Jedi and not a hunter seeking to kill or capture Grogu, nonetheless threatens the child's life. Via somebody else's hand, at that. For armour. The armour he got from Cobb Vanthe back on Tatooine and toted all across the desert. A Mandalorian armour. While the stranger claims himself as not a Mandalorian and not adherent to the Creed.
Before any of them can speak more on the matter, however, Fennec Shand – perched atop the cliff by the Crest, the one who promised to snipe Grogu – exclaims in bafflement, "Oh! That many kids, Mando? Where did you find them? Nobody said anything about kids, just the one, and we didn't see more than one, either, before or just now."
`What? Kids?` Din is no les flummoxed. But, still, he turns round only when the robed stranger does, facing the hill where Grogu is.
And it's just as three sleek, sharply pointed starfighters of unknown make appear over the hill all of a sudden.
Well, they're unknown just to him, maybe, because the stranger then grumps, "Oh, just my luck. More kids, more Mandos. What next? More Imps?"
"You shouldn't say that, Boba," Fennec chuckles, even as the unlikely trio watch the fighters spiral in for an admittedly beautifully executed coordinated landing, half-way between the line of children now stampeding down the hill and where Din and the stranger are, with their noses pointed towards the path.
Din does his best to divide his attention between Fennec who's now quickly approaching where he is, the stranger – Boba? – as well as the starfighters which are now indeed disgorging each an armoured being draped in hooded robes, also the… ten? No, eleven children quickly getting close to where the latest newcomers are, led by a speeding Grogu. Then, taking a gamble between exposing his back to the stranger and Fennec and scooping up his boy before anybody can get bright ideas about spiriting the little trouble-maker away for credits, he jogs towards his trouble-making foundling and picks the latter up. Just as the excited child streaks past where the three robed, armoured pilots are gathered, blocking the other children's way. He can't care less that Fennec and her new buddy follow him here only after a long, long pause, though he's thankful that they didn't use the chance to shoot him down.
Cradling the panting, wriggling, grinning little menace close to him, he grumbles, "They're all midgets, Grogu! I told you to search for a Jedi!"
Interestingly, the three fighter pilots stiffen up warily on the word "Jedi," though he doubts non-Mandalorians or those unaccustomed to being surrounded by armoured people can detect that. They even ask why he's searching for a Jedi. In unison. `Eerie.`
Well, the children of various ages now pooling at the base of the inclined path are no less wary, either.
Not to mention dingy and filthy – most of them, at least. And toting various weapons – from makeshift clubs to blasters – expertly. Even the littlest ones. Who would be just as high as Din's hip if they were side by side, probably.
War orphans, most likely, or even child soldiers.
`Kriff. Where did Grogu find them?`
And then the single child standing in front of his peers, one of the wariest and filthiest of them all, toting an old, battered rifle at a ready on his shoulder, asks him, "Do you mean harm to us?"
`What a question!`
"No." `Of course not! Who do you think I am?!`
He can't – won't ever – forget what he indeed did to Grogu, though, so he holds his tongue.
And then the rifle-toting child – just old enough for an early verd'goten if he were a Mandalorian, it seems – offers as if relinquishing himself to a death sentence by doing so, "I am a Force-Sensitive. I used to be a Jedi. Can I help you?" then adds more desperately and despairingly, "Can we do this after we're off planet? We aren't safe, right now. And, um, can I and the others hitch a ride? Just till we're all safe?"
`Ka'ra, what do the Jedi say about us Mandalorians? Child-killers? Slavers?`
Even the purported Mandalorian fighter pilots – who are apparently Jedi Knights, whatever it means – are still wary of him, and their spokesperson shows it when they offer the children to all cram into their starfighter for the journey off-world.
`I'd rather you join them in my ship,` he grumbles to himself, noting the youthfulness of the "Jedi Knight"'s vocoder-amplified voice, which lends to just one theory of why the three pilots are shorter than average humanoid adults, even as he demurs and directs the children – the main bulk of the children – to his ship.
It really doesn't improve his mood when he turns round and finds "Boba" garbed in the armour he got on Tatooine. `So it's why they didn't immediately go after me.`
"We didn't finish talking," is all he can say, though, as he strides back towards the Crest with Grogu safely nestled in his arm. There's just no time to fight for the armour, and Fennec might snipe the kids if he instigated anything with her new buddy.
And the lout striding beside him replies so easily, so readily with, "We'll protect the little ones until it's safe and the situation is stable."
Fennec even chips in from behind them, beside the first rank of the children tailing after him, "We're not the only ones searching for you, you know that. We heard Moff Gideon's getting close, himself."
`They've planned this.` But Din can't deny how tempting the exchange price is, and how necessary, given how many children Grogu's… summoned? Made? Grown? And he can't deny how comforting it is to walk beside a Mandalorian once more, either.
Because, however much "Boba" would like to deny it, the lout walks like one, not an imitation of one as forced by the necessity of walking in armour like Cobb Vanthe did.
This reminds him, though. "I don't even know your name." The armour's colouring and patterning are somewhat familiar, as if he once passed by or encountered the lout a few times. But "maybe" and "certainly" make for very different outcomes, information-wise, and he can't afford any blunder or sloppiness at this point. Fourteen uncared-for, most likely traumatised children are currently under his responsibility, after all, however competent they seem with the weapon – or weapons – each of them totes.
And, "Boba Fett," the lout inclines his head.`
`Oh,` is all Din can manage, for a while. Then, "Last I heard, you're dead, killed by the rebels Jabba caught, along with Jabba himself. The sarlacc didn't like the taste of you?"
Fett snorts a flat chuckle. "Quite," he agrees.
Then they arrive at the Crest, and Din has to peel away, situate his extra midgets in the cargo hold so as to maximise their comfort and safety without compromising the ship's integrity, warm up the said ship for take-off, and somehow make sure Grogu isn't doing any other bizarre, impulsive thing.
Well, he has to make sure some stragglers come in, too, it turns out. Annoying. But also too understandable, sadly, with the background he suspects the younglings share with each other.
He just never suspected one of them to have found a tracking beacon after a small jaunt – or some kind of inspection? – along the outer hull of the Crest.
`Oh, Ka'ra – who? – And I got many children with me–! Is this why that former-Jedi kid urged us to go post-haste?`
He lobs the – still active – beacon as far away as possible from the Crest and desperately prays that nobody has managed to track them here. Even friendlies. Because he just can't deal with anything right now.
Only when the Crest is rising to meet the three starfighters – Whistling Bird class, as the Mando'a script on the navcom informs him – and a Firespray does he realise, `Wait, did Boba Fett put that on my ship?`
He asks the other man just that, as they climb up through the atmosphere side by side following the fighters, barely leashing down his fury and betrayal.
Fett's adamant denial mollifies him a little. Aimless chatter coming from the Whistling Birds through the open comm channel distracts him, to boot, further sanding down the most jagged edges. But it's not until an Imperial light cruiser looms in orbit so near to their exit vector does the rage-hurt-suspicion-fear-defensiveness-betrayal vanish from his heart and mind.
It leaves him feeling cold and clammy instead.
`Imps! – But the ship was clean, last time it's checked over! Someone on Nevarro must have betrayed us. Karga? It wouldn't be the first time….`
The thought-feeling-sensation turns into full-blown panic when, after evading the cruiser and jumping into hyperspace, the rifle-toting spokesperson of the children climbs up the ladder, introduces himself as Obi-Wan Kenobi, and reports that there is one child unaccounted for among the group Grogu magicked into being. The littlest one, in fact.
`Manda! We can't go back – we must go back – there's an Imp cruiser in orbit – but there's a child left behind!`
He forces himself to report the new, horrible, alarming, frightening finding on the still-open comm channel the moment his panic is slightly more manageable. In Basic, so he won't be tempted to curse floridly instead of reporting this crucial news. Suppressing as much of the panic as possible, too, so everyone will hopefully not panic along with him.
And he is so glad about the decision when, instead of the voice of a teen, a little child answers him.
The previously missing little child.
`False alarm. It's just false alarm.`
But still, the extreme swing of emotions that these few hours have treated him with leaves quite a mark. He now feels so exhausted, so fed up with everything, longs more than anything to just curl up in his sleeping compartment with Grogu, tucks himself away from the universe in this ship he is wholely familiar with and in hyperspace where many troubles can't reach him.
The rifle-toting youth is still standing behind and to the side of his chair, though. So silent, so still, so outwardly calm, even if even Din can clearly see how tired and beaten up this youngling is, through his bleariness.
So he dismisses the boy, lets the poor, high-strung child soldier breathe free amidst the latter's friends – or at least peers – without losing face to him. Then he takes a few deep breaths, slides down into a slouch, turns to the side facing the isle between the pilot's chair and the rarely used secondary navigation's seat – rarely used at least before Grogu came to be under his care – and, supporting a concernedly cooing Grogu against the raised leg, lets out the pitiful whine-groan-sigh he's been nursing deep in his chest.
He is. So. Tired.
"Grog'ika, what did you do?" he whispers to the tiny form now firmly nestled in beskar and body after a long, long pause in which he just stays and breathe and stares at the starlines of hyperspace, feels the chair thrumming softly with the hyperdrive engine online, and listens to the accompanying hum and the lack of chatter downstairs.
Silence answers him. And, when he reluctantly stirs a little to peek at the little nest his body makes on the chair, he finds that the little menace has dropped fast asleep, looking tired but satisfied.
Din snorts. `Little menace, indeed!`
Well, he just has to deal with ten – no, nine – more children, then, now. If they haven't gone to sleep as well, that is. But he doubts they have, even if the silence downstairs might allude to that.
He is a stranger to them, after all. A well-armed, adult stranger. They all are more well-developed than Grogu, at that, hence less easily mollified with simple things.
But if he can do at least something for them….
He goes down the ladder, and lets himself be seen for a beat, and surveys the sea of little and not-so-little heads in the cargo hold in kind.
They all look just as run-down and tired as he feels. And, when he mentions food, most of them can't stifle their signs of hunger.
Seeing hungry but all-too-wary looks plastered on young, mostly gaunt faces is painful, makes him remember the children he couldn't save during bounty hunts, makes him remember the foundlings in the covert-that-is-no-more when they were newly found.
Hearing their spokesperson try to deny himself and his peers that necessity of life so as not to be taken advantage of later is even more so.
Din has no words to try to argue with the kid, so he doesn't. With Grogu still asleep soundly in one arm, he just pries open his last crate of ration bars and has its contents distributed among the children till everyone gets one. Even him and Grogu, as Obi-Wan Kenobi personally approaches the crate, picks two of the bars and silently passes them along.
`Probably to make sure the bars weren't poisoned or drugged,` Din thinks. `Clever idea.`
Before he can comply with the clever boy's silent test, however, another section of the crowd stirs, and so does Grogu, who whimpers in his sleep.
`Ka'ra. Yet another trouble,` he sighs to himself and, with a bow of his head towards Obi-Wan Kenobi to convey his gratitude and reassurance, stashes the ration bars in one of his belt-pouches.
The children part before him as if by unspoken order or consensus or habbit when he hurries towards the source of the new trouble: a boy in what looks like the robes the fighter pilots wear, just far more torn and filthy, with some kind of bright-green chest plate peeking out of the top, clutching a ration bar in a punishing grip, crying silently with scrunched-up, red face as if holding back far more than that.
`Manda.` Din freezes in front of the teen for a long, long moment, his throat closed up. `What can I do? What should I do? I'm not good with this kind of things! He doesn't know me, I don't know him, and–.`
"Mister Mando?" a timid voice pipes up from the boy's side. Another teen. Not hiding an armour behind the rags but looking like he is accustomed to having a few pieces on.
Accustomed to constant battle, more importantly, as his wary, ready, guarding stance suggests.
`Child soldiers,` Din's numbed mind confirms for the however-many-times it has been.
He forces his neck and head to move, to tilt towards the speaker, to acknowledge the boy if silently.
And the boy dares to continue, "He's… used to armour. I mean, we, there's a war, and our brothers…" his words stutter and hitch and hiccup "… they wear armour. A little like yours. And they like – liked –" another hitch-hiccup "– to hug us. Often. And sleep. In a pile – a cuddle pile – so… it's… familiar, to us. It's all right. It's… fine. I mean, if it's okay, with you, but if not, I think… I think we can… other things. We can find another thing, to break him away from this."
Din looks on silently. And, perhaps realising that he hasn't gotten to the point, the boy exhales a wet, shaky breath and finishes with, "Please, if it's okay with you, Mister Mando, and if you're not gonna hurt him, could you, please, hug him? For a little while?"
Din complies.
And the weeping boy clings. And whines. And sobs. And tries even more to be one with Din.
It's the first non-violent, non-necessary contact Din ever got from anybody since his life changed forever, early in his childhood, and it's jarring.
His body twitches and quivers. His mind likewise. And his soul, perhaps. Definitely his heart.
His own breaths stutter and hitch and almost hiccup when, slowly but surely, while crunching through their ration bars, the other children crowd closer and closer and closer. Not to cage him in but to snuggle.
Casual. Suddenly trusting. As if it's natural. As if they'd done this countless times before.
And Grogu, now seated on the clinging boy's shoulder and cuddled in the crook of Din's arm, hums in contentment.
Something else – something in the air, it feels – hums as if in response, and the children just snuggle tighter, reaching any part of him they can find and nestled against their peers in the meantime.
And Din can't deny that this feels… right.
He can't deny the missing four, either, when the Crest lands in a woodland clearing in a barely inhabited planet alongside the other ships and they all meet and three of the children from the Crest boast about being hugged by "Mister Mando."
Fett cackles. Fennec, likewise. And Din sends them a rude gesture over the shorter sea of heads surrounding him for the second time. But he can't say he's not… happy… with this predicament, twice endured.
Only for the second time in his new life with the Mandalorians does he feel wanted for something other than duty, skill, beskar, morbid or sexual curiosity, or body.
It's… nice.