Chapter Text
skira||revenge
Din thinks there’s a lot of things that are strange about Jedi, but he’s learned to accept that after any amount of extended time with them. The emotions they let go, the way they centre themselves on the light of the living, all of that eventually makes sense to him.
What he does not understand is vengeance, or their lack of it. Jedi take no vengeance, let everything slide like it’s never injured them. He gets the logic, gets the concept that holding onto that when you carry so much power will lead to nothing but imbalance, but it’s the stubbornness in him that makes him question it.
There's a saying: Mando’ad draar digu, A Mandalorian never forgets. He’s heard it used as an explanation as to why he could never let go of his hatred of droids, the petty bits of revenge he’d sometimes take. He is a Mandalorian, and they don’t forget any drop of blood spilled, no matter how small. There is nothing small, when your life is spent in the spaces between stars.
But Jedi, somehow, someway, manage to let go. Somehow, they can let go of even the most personal slights, the deepest set scars. It’s fascinating, almost as if they have forgotten all this world's sins. How could you face such pain and injustice and not seek to settle the score, to level the playing field? How could you just simply…forget? Let go and keep going like nothing ever happened?
And then they find the…what had Ahsoka called him? The Inquisitor, and Din is certain that he will see something he understands in their confrontation. Something familiar, something that just makes sense–because nothing has made sense for months now, and he just wants normalcy–
They fight and they fight. Din sees the exact moment she could go in for the kill and just end it, but she does not. She hesitates, her eyes darkening as the Inquisitor’s odd, sickly, eyes meet her’s. They smile, and laugh. “You are still a Jedi, Ahsoka Tano, no matter what you declare. You will never be able to escape, take your revenge.”
“I have nothing left to avenge,” she says darkly, disengaging one of her sabres, and slamming the hilt against the Inquisitor’s skull. Din is hoisting them up before she even has to say anything, the pair of them walking in silence towards where his ship, Crestfallen, and his carbonite freezer lays in wait. The Inquisitor freezes easily, and he stares at his frozen face for a long moment, and never forgets it again.
It is not until they are in hyperspace, sat in the cockpit, that Din breaks the silence. “You said you have nothing left to avenge,” she nods mutely, and he tilts his head toward her, voice betraying his bening curiosity. “But, don’t you? You Jedi, your people, they lost everything. Your balance was thrown away. You were cast out and left behind–”
“Tell me,” she says, an odd hint of amusement threaded into her voice, clear as the ringing of a bell. “Do you seek revenge for your own expulsion?”
The reminder stings like a slap to the face, and he shakes his head after a moment of consideration. He knows what he did. He knew the price he was to pay. She hums as he says, “No. I only seek repentance for what I did.” It had hurt, yes, but they were right, of course. The armourer has always been right, always correct in her assertions. Din had broken the one thing he had. Destroyed everything he had for a child that could never be his.
Why would he seek revenge for the truth? All that there was redemption. Water and redemption.
“That wound has healed, saved my life,” she says. “My master has found his peace. Those that I lost I have mourned, and I have avenged. The War is over, Mando. I am willing to take revenge, but I have none to take. This world has finally begun to heal. I must heal with it.”
“The war never ends,” he says suddenly, glancing at her through the side of his visor. She is watching him as well, eyes open and curious as he continues, “That’s what my–Mandalorians believe. There is rest, but the galaxy will always have a war to fight. There is always a wound to heal, a score to settle, an argument to finish.”
“That is your belief,” she says with a shake of her head, turning her eyes the colour of the endless sky heavenwards, towards the stars and their judgement. “But it is not mine. I am no Jedi, not anymore, but I do believe in the force. I do have visions and dreams and hopes of peace. Revenge does nothing to further peace. It only creates more turmoil.”
“That Inquisitor helped bring about the downfall of the Jedi Order,” he presses. “You heard what he said. He hunted your people through the galaxy, disgraced and ruined what you all were. How could you not hate a man like that? Have you truly forgotten what he did?”
“I would sooner die than forget what happened to The Jedi,” She vows, something dark and warning coming into her voice. But her eyes reveal the deeper truth, as a flash of an old hurt crosses her features, only to be quickly smoothed away by a thin sheet of demure calm across her face. But he knows the look of a hunter, lean and hungry. The Great Warriors of Shilli, they call the Togruta. To Hunt is to live, so he has learned.
“I do not doubt that,” he finally manages to say, fiddling with a frayed thread on his flight suit. “I just. I don’t get it. How? ”
Ahsoka’s face softens, her eyes reflecting the light of hyperspace. The Mandalorians prayed to old gods, once, but then they put their faith in only the Manda and the Ka’ra, having learned to never trust gods. There are no gods or stars in Hyperspace. There just is. The Force, maybe. He doesn’t know. He barely knows what the Force really is.
“Many of the Inquisitors were groomed for their roles. Survivors of the Purge who had anger and pain in their hearts, who could not escape Vader and his fist. They had no say in what happened to them, being turned to darkness and pain without their consent. They were twisted,” She says softly. Din’s eyes close and he rocks back as the words settle over him. “How could I hate someone who had never had any say in what happened to him?”
↢⚒↣
The Mandalorian carries a great pain with him. This much is obvious, but Ahsoka makes no move to try and intervene. His pain is his own. She has no need, nor any right, to pry her way into another man’s pain like she understands this. But he carries pain with him. It’s obvious in every inch of his existence.
She wants to believe, however selfishly, though, that he knows how to let go. She catches, more times than he thinks he realises, staring out at the stars, their light reflected in the endless and inscrutable black of his visor, and wonders. What thoughts darken his mind, what council wages a war in his head, hidden from all else by that helm of gleaming beskar?
She doesn’t know why they’re travelling together, and she suspects he has little idea himself. But they travel together, break bread together, and say very little to one another. They hunt inquisitors and ghosts, and he is a faithful man, loyal to her cause. She remembers that first glimpse of him, in the forest of Corvus, remembers how the Force had sung and how deeply her heart had ached as she wondered.
“You travel with a dog,” someone had told her, once, as they dined in a great hall on a planet where the wind smelled like flowers and summer always lingered. He was the Lord of the planet, eyes lined in Gold, eyes burning with the look of a man who had seen the fire that came with war. His lip had curled, twisting his face with it as he looked at the door Mando had disappeared through, so that he might break his bread alone. “Do you know what they say of the Mandalorians, Great Huntress?”
Great Huntress, this Lord on his island with his golden eyes calls her, harkening back to the few years she spent on Shilli as a babe, the home of the Great Hunters of the Outer Rim. The Togrutas have always been hunters, and this is a man who knows his history, and who knows it well. She has the look of a huntress, and yet the dog she travels with is the real hunter.
“No,” she says, although it is a lie. She has travelled to more planets than this man dreams of in his wildest fits of fancy and higher power. “Tell me, Lord. What do they say of The Mandalorians?”
“They say they care only for themselves. They say that they never forget what is done to them, that there is no throat they will not open for the right price. A lonesome Mandalorian is a Mandalorian who has lost everything, and a Mandalorian who has lost everything is a Mandalorian hell bent on revenge. Is he clanless, your Mando?” He asks, and she does not grace him with a reply to that question.
Because she doesn’t know. She does not know the Mando’s name, know his pain, know his heart. She knows he has all three of those, because she understands Mandalorians better than this man could ever hope to, but he’s not far off in what he is saying. Ahsoka knows little of the man she travels with. All she knows is that he looks to the stars for answers, and that his pain burns in the air around him, even with the beskar. She cannot imagine what it would feel like, without the beskar to dull it to her.
“I would watch your back, Huntress,” The Lord finally says when she does not reply. There is a genuineness in his eyes, so much so that Ahsoka cannot help but straighten slightly and listen. “That man has lost more than you know, I’d say. And when he gets reason to start settling his scores, I would recommend you be on the other end.”
She nods and says nothing more to him, for she has no words to trade with the Lord and his foolish notions of how the world works. The Force sings to her, and the Force is fond of this Mandalorian. He has a role he is yet to play, she knows. And she knows, deep in her heart, that it would be best for her to be the white shadow at his back, lest he dive down a path no one could bring him back from.
It is not until a month later that the Lord’s warnings come back to her. They are pinned and cornered in a thin alleyway on another planet, halfway across the galaxy. Stormtroopers encircle them, and back to back with him as she is, she can not only feel the thin band of tension in the set of his shoulders, ready to snap at a moment’s notice, but the anger that rolls off of him in waves.
Ahsoka carries two blades. Her shoto and her full length one, beacons of pure white in the low light of the alley. The Mandalorian at her back is decked to the nines, but in his hand is a spear of pure beskar that she gave him after a fight that feels like a lifetime ago. It is already stained with blood, and she knows more will coat it when the Mandalorian is done with his work.
He lashes out viciously, and before long, there is one left. She stands at his shoulder, and sees the light of her blade reflected in his expressionless helm and it’s visor, but mostly, the spear he has poised to strike above the man’s sternum. He is dying already. A blow like that will only heighten the pain.
“Mando,” she says softly. His eyes dart to her through his helm. She is not sure how she knows this, btu she does, and not a moment later, some of the fight bleeds out of him. They are thinking of the same thing, no doubt. The Inquisitor. Her mercy that day. The only question is if the Mandalorian could ever extend the same mercy. “He did not kill your people. He only serves what did.”
“Mando’ade draar digu,” he growls, in Mando’a. She does not know that phrase, but she was raised amongst the vode of the Grand Army of the Republic. Mando’a is not hard to mistake for something else. And that is the voice of an angry and vengeful man. Her eyes soften. His guard slips further.
“He is dying, already. Better a quick death, than one born from a vengeance that he cannot fill. This man had nothing to do with your pain, my friend. Let him die easy,” she tells him, softly, the white light of her blades gleaming in the smooth planes of his beskar armour. She wonders how he came about it, after all that has happened.
In the end, The Mandalorian stabs his spear through the man’s neck, and they walk away together, trading no words, even as they enter hyperspace and the galaxy bleeds by. The Mandalorian wipes his weapon down with a red cloth, and Ahsoka Tano sits, and wonders at the galaxy.
adate||culture
There is something to be said about how after centuries of divide and of bitter war, the Galaxies greatest enemies not only fell within two decades of each other, but they fell to the same evil. Whether one calls them sith, darjetti , or just all together evil, they were the ruin of two religions that for centuries, had entrenched themselves in rivalry and opposition.
Din’s grown up with hundreds of stories and songs of Mandalore past, the great hours of triumph, but across all of them, stories of The Jedi order have failed to be told. The wound still gushes, he supposes. Great enemies always respect one another, and he supposes that the massacre of the Jedi race is a wound to the greatest enemies, ancestral fights forced to be forgotten, and children killed as well. All children, even Jedi ones, are worthy of life to a Mando’ade.
Ahsoka’s been quiet this whole mission, because of that massacre. She’s been kindly asked by The New Republic to clear out Darth Vader’s Imperial Castle on Mustafar. It’s ridiculous, how simply they can just ask her to do that, pack her life up to clean up after The Empire. Totally not because their joint job has turned into a joint clean up mission.
It’s quiet, on Mustafar, in the grand scheme of things. The castle is not quite in ruins yet, but it’s clearly been empty since the end of the war. They walk shoulder to shoulder through the halls, dust kicked up under their feet on what must have once been immaculately polished floors. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see that Ahsoka looks a little sick.
“It’s so…cold,” she finally says, her voice barely above a whisper. “This place is strong with The Dark Side of The Force. So much pain lives on in these walls.” As if caught in a trance, she traces a carving on the wall, her eyes wide and holding a bone deep sadness that Din himself knows too well. She always hides her emotions so well, even without a helmet. He cannot imagine how strong this must all be for it to show so plainly on her face.
And finally, they come to the throne room, and Ahsoka finally stops, her eyes closed. Din pauses besides her, feeling distinctly out of place in these walls. This is a place for Jedi to clean away the evil of the Sith, destroy what’s left of their terror. It is not a place for a wayward Mandalorian to walk, their ancient enemy. They sacked their temple once, and stole a blade. Stole the thing that hangs from his belt like a trophy.
“Can I tell you a secret? The truth?” She asks, taking Din aback. He nods mutely, finding himself drawn in by her voice, “Darth Vader was a Jedi once.”
Logically, Din knows this. It makes sense, of course, and he’s not actually all too surprised. Ahsoka has taught him things, when she has time. The history of their peoples, of how the Sith have always played into their conflicts. What surprises him is the pain in her voice as she continues on, “And I knew him. His name was Anakin. He was my master, my friend, my brother. He was a good man, and he turned into one of the greatest evils the galaxy has ever seen. He fell.”
Her eyes meet his through the visor, “He’s Luke’s father.”
All breath has been knocked out of Din’s lungs as he stares blankly at the once Jedi in front of him, searching for the words to say. I’m sorry? What good is sorry when you’ve just been told that the woman you’ve fought side by side with had to watch someone she so clearly cared for fall into darkness? He tries to imagine anyone he grew up with doing the same, but that just brings of memories of the pile of helmets on Nevarro and his expulsion, so he pushes them away.
“He turned into a Monster, ” she spits, but her eyes soften just as fast, the anger released with a shaky exhale. Her fingers press against the door, “The man who told me silly jokes and pleaded with me to return to the order massacred them just the same, and nearly did the same to me. He took our men’s will, and made them slaves, like he had once been. Vader’s fist.” She scoffs. “Good men. Our men. Our friends. Or so I thought. He used them anyways.”
“And now you’re here,” he supplies with a tilt of his head, pressing his own fingers to the door, examining the small, intricate carvings that adorn it. “The heart of his evil. You are alive, and Vader is not. Have you not won, in the end?”
“And now I’m here,” she agrees. “But I did not win. Not when we fought. I do not win as I walk through these halls and feel what he felt. I thought it would be easier…but I can feel him. Feel the anger of his final moments as Anakin, the scars that linger…” she trails off, her eyes closing again as she presses her brow to the door, with a whispered name that he doesn’t recognise.
But just as soon as all those mixed up emotions took her, they bleed out of her, her shoulders dropping as she takes a deep breath and opens the door. Din hesitates just a moment behind her, before he himself steps in, taking care to close the door behind him. He stands for just a moment before the unbearable feeling of wrongness all but sweeps him off his feet.
But if he can feel the wrongness in the room, that must mean that Ahsoka feels it even more than he does. His head turns to her, standing near what looks like a display case, standing completely still. Unnaturally still, even for a Jedi. She looks more like a Togrutan Hunter, but she had told him weeks ago that she was never one for the true hunt. She hunted Akhul, as is tradition, but never much more.
Against better judgement, he comes to stand next to her, and finds himself staring at a collection of lightsabers and strange helmets. Something is wrong about the scene, but he doesn’t quite know what until she says, voice distant, “Those are Padawan training helmets.”
It takes a second to click, for him to apply the word to his understanding of ranks in the Jedi order, but when he does, his stomach lurches. Ahsoka looks as sick as he feels, her arms wrapped around her stomach. He turns to her, and thinks of a warm fire and all his most comforting memories as he slowly reaches out to lay a hand on her shoulder, squeezing once as he asks, “Do you want to stay here? I can make sure the place is abandoned. Do a sweep for unfriendlies.”
She nods mutely, and he can’t get out of there fast enough, his stomach spinning. He goes through the motions, sweeping the halls and noting what doors open or don’t; either due to blockage or the control panels being destroyed. It’s silent and empty as the grave, every sound he makes echoing against the walls and through his skull. It’s rare he’s the loudest thing in a room. He knows how to move silently. Somehow, that feels indefinitely more dangerous here, to walk like a ghost when you are alive.
When he returns to the throne room, Ahsoka’s at least moved and found a box, in which she is reverently setting the lightsabers and helmets and other odd trophies that hang around the room. He steps over and nearly smiles at the fact that somehow, she found a blanket of silk to lay them on in this dump. The Galaxy is an odd place, he’s found. Things always fall into place.
“Do you need my help?” He asks, unsure if she'd want a Mandalorian touching these objects that mean so much to Jedi. He knows that if he was in her position, he wouldn’t, so he can’t fault her if she says so. The thought is clearly on her mind, but to his surprise, she eventually nods, pointing towards the other display case.
“There’s his most treasured things,” she says, “If you could?”
He nods, going over to the other display case, and examining the contents. There’s three sabres, and he’s cautious to handle them as carefully as Ahsoka carries the other ones, clipping them to his belt next to the Darksaber. There’s a few other odd trinkets–a strange beaded cord, a few odd mechanics, and other objects that Din doesn’t recognise.
He comes over to Ashoka and unclasps the lightsabers and beaded cord, holding them out between them. She’s not paying attention when she gives them a cursory glance, but right as her eyes flick back to her box, she goes completely still. Her eyes slowly track back to the sabres he holds, and he’s just about to ask what’s going on when she whispers, “ By The Force. ”
She takes one of the sabres from him, somehow even more gentle with them. It’s silver, with black accents on the bottom, and when she ignites it, it’s a vibrant blue. Her face breaks into a wide smile as she twirls it a bit, a girlish light in her eyes. “This was his,” she whispers, “Before he fell.”
“It’s…” he pauses, the other two sabres still outstretched to her. “Very elegant.”
“They’re supposed to be,” she says as she disengages it, running a hand over the metal, “They’re the weapons of a Jedi Knight, people who are supposed to be protectors. In Anakin’s hand, it was less than that, but when Luke carried it, I suspect it was used for nothing but good.”
“Luke carried this sabre?”
“For a time, yes,” her face darkens, “He lost it with his hand, when Vader revealed his lineage to him. I wonder how Vader found it.”
And then her eyes turn to the other two sabres and the strange beaded cord. Din’s pretty sure he doesn’t imagine the pain that crosses her features, or the way she tears herself away from the objects, putting Anakin’s sabre away carefully.
He crouches down next to her, still offering them out to her, “Whose were these?”
“Mine,” she says, and he knows what he hears in her voice is an old, old, pain. “All mine. I lost the silka beads when I left the order, along with my sabres. I didn’t know what happened to the beads, but Anakin kept the sabres and modified them. The last time we saw each other, he gave them back to me. And no less than a week later I was forced to give them up.”
“Why?” He asks despite himself.
“Order 66. I had to make it seem that I died with my men, so I wouldn’t be hunted,” Something guarded crosses her face as she takes the blades and stands, leaving the beads with Din. She takes a deep breath and ignites them, giving them a cursory spin before she closes her eyes and disengages them, putting them in the box, “But they are relics now. They aren’t mine anymore.”
“And the beads?” He asks, offering them to her.
She shakes her head, “Put them in the box. I’ll figure out what to do with them one day.”
↢⚔↣
Mando is a quiet man, private if you will. It seems to Ahsoka that when he isn’t in the company of his son, he sees no need for commentary or conversation when it isn’t necessary. They’ve been working together for almost a year now, and they’ve had only a handful of full blown conversations in that time. He seldom initiates conversation, and she has no idea what she could ask him, when the opportunity arrises.
It doesn’t bother her, though. Silence was a commodity when she was younger, something she only ever truly found in the Jedi Temple. But when she looks back on those years when silence was rare, she knows it’s because so much of her life was spent on battlefields and in the heart of war. Warfare did not beget silence, between the firing of blasters and screams of the dead and dying and the orders of men. Silence meant peace. Ahsoka never really knew peace.
He’s not just silent physically. He’s quiet in the force, likely a byproduct of his Beskar. Ahsoka knows that all Beskar blocks the force in one way or another, but his is so pure that she can only barely sense his force signature, not to mention any emotion. He’s a void in the force, silent and still. A ghost in the land of the living, a shadowy wraith who haunts all who he follows.
So, when they’re running through forgotten tunnels on an outer rim world, trying to escape some people they pissed off, and she hears him say, louder than she’s ever heard, “Oh my gods,” everything in her snaps to attention. The sound of his voice–loud and broken and afraid, most of all–is what snaps her out of her stupor, but her words are what call her attention.
She knows, vaguely, that Mandalorians believed in Gods once, a long time before either of them. And while the faith had faded into parables and lessons, that did not mean that her Mando friend didn’t know of them. So for him to exclaim in their name, call upon Deities that very few, if any, modern Mandalorians believe in, that means something.
And then as she comes to stand next to him, she sees what it is. There, caught in the beam of his flashlight is a pile of Mandalorian helmets, arranged in a way so precise it could be nothing but intentional. Words curl around the pile, carved into the rock, and while it’s too dark to make out, she can tell that it’s not Mando’a. This is no grave.
The sound that escapes her friend is strangled and anguished, and she can only watch as he takes a few listless steps forward before he crashes to his knees in front of the pile. Something stirs in her as she begins to count the helmets, her stomach lurching as the number grows higher and higher. This is a massacre. This is a threat. This is opening something within Mando she does not understand.
She remembers Vader’s castle, the surprising gentleness in Mando’s voice as he offered to go, offered to help. She herself could dredge up such softness and questions, but she knows the answer. For better or for worse, Ahsoka Tano, while not a Jedi, is an aruetii, and she has no right to Beskar and has no right to honour the fallen children of Mandalore. Traitor, foreigner, and outsider are the same words to Mandalorians. She is at least one of those.
That is his duty, and his alone. She suspects he won’t leave for a time, so she sits down where she stands, gazing up at the wall where the script lies, pointing her own flashlight on the script which she recognises as Aurebesh. Although it's in basic, the carvings are difficult to read at points, but she manages to finally decipher what has been carved into the wall.
look upon those who resist
The words send a chill up her spine, and she looks at Mando once more, still on his knees in front of the pile, head tilted upwards as he examines the massive task in front of him. Slowly, she watches him rise to his feet unsteadily, and reach for the top helmet, an intricate white helmet that while caked in dust, is still as gorgeous as ever. Beauty even after death. It almost makes her smile.
“I can’t…” he exhales, and something coils within her at the helplessness of his tone. “I can’t leave this here.”
She stands once more, crouching down behind him. In a split second decision, she places a steady hand on his shoulder, closing her eyes and releasing all the mixed emotions filling her as she feels the shake of his body under her hands. “What are you going to do, then?”
His inhale is shaky, his hands resting listlessly on his knees, “I don’t know. I should melt the Beskar down, but I have no skill in the forge, let alone have one around. I can’t carry these back with me. But I can’t leave this here either.”
She’s about to tell him something when the tunnels around them begin to shake. The two of them share a look, and she stands, offering a hand to him. He hesitates, then shakes his head, turning away from her. “Mando, we have to go. If we don’t they’ll find us, and then we'll be just as dead as all the people here.”
“I can’t leave it like this, Ahsoka,” he snarls. “These are my siblings, my people. My duty is to them, I have to honour who they were in life. I have to make them pay.” He talks like the Mand’alor he swears he is not, her mind supplies darkly, but she does not say that, knowing it would only bring this king in his exile to even more grief.
So, instead, she crouches down again, taking him by the shoulders, “I understand, but right now, your life is the priority. They have already marched on, and so you must allow them to rest. I swear that we will come back, and make this right, but today is not the day for revenge. Today, we live.”
A mangled sound rips out of him, a scream mixed with a sob that he’s so clearly trying to keep inside himself. The Force is bright with his pain, and she nearly winces at the fact, wondering how much it must be eating him away for her to feel it even with the Beskar on him. How much he’s already endured, how many times he’s already seen this sight, so that this pain burns so radiantly in him.
“Promise me,” he almost screams, his hands tightened into fists of rage, pressing over her heart. It beats steady as any war drum. “Promise me that we will come back and fix this.”
“I swear on The Force that we will return here and honour what was lost,” she swears, pulling him into a hug before she can think better of it. His arms wrap around her tightly for just a moment, and then they both force themselves away. She rises, offering a hand to him, which he takes.
He stands unsteadily for a moment, his visor fixed on the mound. Their pursuers are drawing closer, but she doesn’t dare stop him as he steps forward, pressing his head to one of the helmets in the pile, his voice soft as he whispers, “Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum. Ni kelir yaimpar. ”
kyr’am||death
Once, when he was much younger, The Goran told Din that the forge reveals memories, reveals what one can never forget.
“Mando’ade draar digu, Din,” she’d said, voice like a bell of death. “We do not forget, never. We remember what they did to us, and we take that from them too. When someone strikes you down, never forget what they did. Do not give into irrationality, but do not forget. Mando’ade draar digu. This is the way.”
“This is the way,” he echoed. She went to beating out some armour, and the clangs brought up the memories again. The heat of the flame was torturous, the click of the droids gun like the sound of death. Fear had made itself his god, in that moment. And then the Mandalorians descended from the heavens that they call holy, and Din Djarin was born again as a Mandalorian.
(Well over a decade later, he stands on a platform, and she says, You are a Mandalorian no more. He lets himself believe her, and walks away, head hung in shame, the banging of her hammers following him as he did. This is the way. This is the Way. Never forget what they did to you. Mando’ade draar digu. Mandalorian no more. This is the way)
Ahsoka Tano, the Jedi who says she is not one, asks, once, about why he does not like droids. He knows he is not the most subtle of people, especially in that regard, and still, the fear takes him by the throat. Tell her, and he shows his belly to her. She could do whatever she wanted to him, with knowledge like that. She would know him better than most people who have ever known him do.
And the ones who know him better are dead or lost, so Din does not answer. He shrugs and gives a half answer of, “I was no more than eight when the Clone Wars started.” She nods, her eyes bearing into his helmet for a long while after. He pretends it doesn’t bother him, but he knows it does. He turns to their fire, and ignores her.
The fire casts the world in dark and long shadows. As the night continues on and the stars creep across the sky, the fire dies, and the shadows get longer. If he closes his eyes, he thinks he’d hear the distant echo of a hammer swinging down on metal, and when he opened his eyes, he’d be home. But he keeps his eyes open, because his home is gone, and his Tribe is long since dead.
The Goran had piled the helmets. She sent him on his way, time and time again. She fought for him, and he threw it all away like it was loose change. What a man he is. Throwing away everything he’s ever been given like it means nothing to him. Wasteful. Ungrateful. Selfish. The words cut into his mind like knives, and yet, he lets them come.
Neither he nor Ahsoka sleep much through the night. There is something on the horizon, and they can both feel it. He knows that neither of them know quite when it will come, but he keeps his rifle close at hand anyway, and keeps his ears peeled. They both take quick naps, enough to keep their eyes open, and no more.
And when the sun is creeping out above the horizon, washing the sky in shades of red and orange and gold that remind him of the forge and her heat, they come. He hears the footsteps in the distant grass only a moment after Ahsoka does, and without a single exchange of word, they both are on their feet. They douse the fire, pack their bags and hide them, and wait around the ashes of the fire.
And so they come through the trees, and Din realises that memories are not just for the forge. He sees their curved domes and their black metal and their guns for arms, and feels like nothing more than a boy again, a boy who sits in his bunk and cries in fear, so much fear. Because the droid that approaches him is the same type as the one that killed his first parents, that swept through his home, and sent him hurtling down this path.
(This path which led you to Grogu, something in his mind says, and Din ignores it. He has no need for the whispers of ghosts. He needs only himself.)
Ahsoka must sense his fear. She glances at him with concern in her eyes, and says nothing as he rushes into the fight, a beast of fury and pain. She is only a half-step behind, and soon enough, they are back to back, besbe’trayce and kal, weapon and blade, Mando’ade and Jetii, Mandalorian and Jedi, equals and opposites.
And then she cries out in pain, and it is only Din this time. There’s two droids left, and he makes too quick of work of them, chest heaving for breath as he stares at their ruined remains, head buzzing. His parents bodies were destroyed in a blast, but the droid was not blown to pieces, just filled with holes. He’d stared at it, from where the Mandalorian held him. It looked just like that.
He turns to Ahsoka. Her arm is grazed, and she’s staring at the red and angry gash with open resentment, her lips pulled back into a snarl as she presses against it with her other hand and rises to her feet unsteadily. Din rushes to meet her as she sways, squeezing her forearms once in comfort. She looks at him, a gentle look in her eyes.
“Are you alright?” He asks, and she nods, peeling her fingers back so he can get a better look at it. It’s not all that bad, he supposes. He’s certainly seen worse, but he’s also certainly no medic. The quilt of scars across his body speak to that well enough. “It will scar, though.” He tells her, as if he doesn’t know that Ahsoka Tano wears her scars like a queen would wear her crown.
“I will survive,” she says, voice soft. Despite her assurances, it is clear that the wound does hurt, and she complains little when Din gathers both their kits and they walk to his ship at a brisker pace than they would most of the time. He helps patch her arm up ocne they get there, doing his best to ignore how her eyes dig into him, like she’s looking for something. She looks at him like that a lot, he’s come to realise. He doesn't ask why.
But still, he wonders if she can smell the scent of death on him. It clings to him, he knows, because it must. So many of those around him are dead, dead because of him, because he was too slow. He reeks of death, and Ahsoka Tano must smell it on him. She simply must.
↢⚕↣
Ahsoka found, rather quickly she may add, that Mando is not a bad person to end up in a gunfight with. He’s a damn good shot, and has one hell of a quick draw. Not to mention his armour is some of, if not the best, armour she’s ever seen. And next to her and her twin sabres, they’re really a force to be reckoned with on most occasions.
But he’s still got flesh and blood under all that armour, skin that is brown and warm, a heart that beats. He’s still able to bleed, despite everything, and when the lucky shot hits right under his arm, just below his heart, she is forcefully reminded of that. All men bleed. Only gods do not bleed, and the Mandalorians left their gods behind a long time ago.
He sways, still shooting, but he’s not moving, and he’s open. Ahsoka tries to rush to him, but the fire on her grows more concentrated, and it takes everything she has to deflect the blaster fire back, a few lucky shots grazing her arms, the pain immediately bleeding into the force.
She goes through the motions, fighting her ways backwards as Mando’s grunts edge closer to being clipped screams, then silence as she hears the sound of him hitting the floor. The mercenaries are bleeding through the trees now, and she cuts them down with precision, careful to not let her anger get a hold of her, but sure that they die.
Too soon, the fight is over, leaving nothing but corpses around her and Mando’s unsteady breaths. She’s at his side in a moment, turning him over and swearing when the hand that cups his head comes away bloody. She lifts him under her arms as best as she can, slowly dragging him to his ship that lies about 200 metres away.
The walk is arduously slow, and Mando’s clearly out of it but fortunately conscious, his groans cutting through the silence that's fallen over the forest. Soon enough though, they reach his ship and she all but discards him on the floor, finding his medkit in an instant. She doesn’t give herself the chance to think before she is pulling his armour and the top half of his flight suit off.
He is frighteningly silent as she rubs bacta over the burns and stitches up the lacerations given to him in the final close quarters fights he was engaged in before he fell. His chest rises and falls in an unsteady pattern as she pulls away, hands resting on his belly as it heaves for breaths, his body wracked with shivers. His pain is everywhere, in the Force. She nearly cries from it all. This is what he has been carrying, this whole time?
His voice is raspy, distant, “Let me die,” he softly orders, “Let me die a warrior's death.” She gathers him in her arms instead, grabbing his hand that isn’t pinned against her side tightly, squeezing it once, and suddenly, she’s a padawan again. You know, it’s a little silly how the force runs its course, in the end. How at the end of things, patterns and threads always fall together, for good or for ill.
Ahsoka’s lost count of how many people she’s carried to the grave a long time ago. Only the force knows how many of her friends, her brothers, her men, she’s carried through their last moments. How many tears has she wiped away? How many hands has she held until their grip went slack? There was Vaughn and the 332nd, and Rex–and that wound still aches like nothing else ever could, all these three long years gone, now. He died happy though.
But carrying The Mandalorian to his death feels wrong, more raw than anything before. He’s not young, but the way he clings to her makes her feel like a girl in the midst of a war, holding clones who were so young, in the grand scheme of things. He’s shaking, and even with his Beskar dulling the force, his fear hangs in the air like a dark cloud. He doesn’t want to die. No one ever really does.
Rex said he did. He was one of the last. Ahsoka could not deny him, knowing he was flying home. Fives probably received him. Jesse, too, she hopes, but thoughts of him bring tears to her eyes when left out, so she turns her mind away, and puts the iron of the Mandalorians into the timbre of her voice, playing at a strength she cannot muster in her heart.
“I refuse to carry another one of my brothers to the grave,” she says, voice firmer than she feels. He flinches slightly. “I have carried many to their untimely deaths. Don’t let yourself be one of them.”
His chest rises and falls in a familiar beat of hyperventilating, his hand clammy, his body wracked with shivers. His brown skin is paling, and the wound in his head is bleeding all over the floor. It’s now or never. She holds his life in her hands, and all she needs is for him to give up everything all over again.
“Please,” she begs. She can heal him, close the wounds with bacta if he just lets her remove his helmet. She’s already taken so much, his armour piled into a corner and him stripped down into nothing but his kute, but will he cross this line? Will he sacrifice the only sense of stability he still has, strip the very thing that makes him who he is off, and lay himself bare to a person who should be his enemy?
She doesn’t know his name. Every clone brother she’s carried to death she has known the name of, every name still remembered in her mind and heart. She doesn’t know this man’s name, and she is uncertain if his child he does not call his own does either. Live for him, Mandalorian. Live for your son. Live so that one day you will truly call him that.
A nameless and faceless Mandalorian is bleeding in her arms, anguished as he defends what’s left of who he is. She can’t ask this of him, but she must. “Please, Mando. Let me save you. Don’t let Grogu grow up in a galaxy without you.” The blow is low, and he flinches as a result, his grip slackening a bit, but Ahsoka just tightens hers. “He loves you more than you realise. Don’t deprive him of his family.”
The man shakes more, his gloveless hand in hers. His fingers are long and brown and sturdy and sure, calloused but gentle as he clutches her hand. She wonders where he was from, before he became what he was. Who his parents were. What they wanted him to be. She unwinds their fingers, pressing her bloody fingers to the side of his helmet, “I can’t carry you to death too, Mando. Let me fix this.”
She has the distinct impression that through his helmet he's met her eyes, his voice cracking as he finally says, “My name is Din.” His head turns to the side, his hand reaching out listlessly, scrambling for purchase on the metal floor of his ship. When he speaks again, he sounds afraid, more afraid than she’s ever heard, “Din Djarin. I don’t want to die.”
“Din,” she whispers, leaning forward, her brow pressed against his helmet. He shudders at the gesture, and she knows his defences are crumbling. “It’s going to be okay. Let me fix this.”
She doesn’t want to carry one more person to grave, put on a brave face anymore. Mando, Din, is so much like her: born into a dying order, clinging onto old traditions, afraid to move on and accept what’s passed. A child at heart, forced to grow up before they were ready, unsure how to navigate the world like an adult. She has no revenge to take but the bitter wounds still ache.
And Din has just as many. They’ve carried each other through a violent year side by side, scars laid bare by fireside vigil. Midnight talks where voices are soft and curious, prodding at the history between their people. He’s scared and angry to her hurt and tired, pressing on through the world like a ghost who doesn’t quite know his place.
What feels like a lifetime ago, she stood with Ezra in the world between worlds, watching as he had to tear himself away from Kanan and let him go. She let Anakin go. Let everyone go because that was what the Jedi did. A lifetime ago she told Din to let Grogu go. And he did, and she wonders if that was the right call, or if she clung to what she had been told, the thing that destroyed them all, in the end. Luke saved his father through love. The Jedi Order feared to love, at the end of days.
The Jedi are a dying race, just like Mandalorians. She can let her fellow Jedi go because the force will always persist, as she did before, but letting this man go somehow feels raw and wrong. Mandalorian creed and doctrine lives on only in those who are alive to pass it on. And he’s her friend, and saving his life feels so right in her heart, she can’t ignore that she knows that this is what must be done. She can’t let go, not yet at least.
“Okay,” he says after a long moment. Her breath catches in his throat, but her hands stay steady as she pries the helmet off his head and stares into his eyes. They’re brown, like all the clones she’s carried to death. Tears form in them, the light in them unfocused as he breaks the eye contact, soft crying finally heard without the helmet.
She sets it down gently on the floor of his ship, and resists the urge to close her eyes and remember the graves she dug, the helmets she wiped blood off of. The feeling that settled over her as she looked upon the graves of her fallen men and did not weep. Jesse’s cog, dirty and bloody, his eyes blank as she found his body and buried it. Too heavy a task for a seventeen year old. For anyone. And yet, there she was.
Her fingers are steady and sure as they grab the bacta spray, her other hand cradling his head. The spray mixes with his blood and unruly hair, soaked into the skin. She sighs in relief as it begins to heal over, pressing a hand to his chest. His heart is a wild thing behind his ribs, bur she knows he will live. Knows, more than anything else, that Din Djarin, this Mandalorian, will prevail.
Under her fingers, and despite his crying, his chest rises in even patterns, forced calm. She wonders what’s going on in his head, what he’s telling himself to rationalise his decision. Din, her mind repeats over and over again, His name is Din Djarin, and he will not die today.
solus||unity
She’s crying even before they get on the ship. Silent, contained, tears, but crying none the less. Her eyes stare out at nothing much, silver streaks of salty tears tracking their way down her face. Her blades are white knuckles in her hands, her body trembling from the weight of however many emotions she’s so clearly biting back. Din guides her forward, a hand between her shoulder blades, if but just so she doesn’t forget he’s there and get startled, or dissipate into a world beyond reality.
Her cries grow louder as soon as they’re gone from the planet, soon as the streaks of Hyperspace light Crestfallen in a wash of blue. He pauses in his cockpit for a long moment, wondering how he can gather his strength, how he can do anything to help this woman who he so barely knows. He could offer her shiny words of empty comfort, but he knows she won’t take them.
So, he takes a deep breath, and walks into the belly of his ship. Ahsoka is quieter now, but no less bright eyed. He sits next to her in silence, waiting for her to break the silence, for her to speak on what just happened. He had heard the words from the man, same as she. But she is the one with the knowledge as to what they mean.
Did you weep, Ahsoka Tano? The Imperial Shill had asked, voice like a nail across a chalkboard. Did you weep, tell me, and tell me truthfully. Did you weep when you hewed your men’s bodies? When they turned against you, and you saved only one? Did you weep as you buried them in the soft ground, knowing you alone had caused their deaths. That if you died, they might have lived?
She’d stuck him through with the end of her blade, Din’s gun closely trained on him. She muttered something to him, something private, in his last moments, and watched him fall with a curled lip and a cold expression. And then the tears had come, and she’d disengaged her blades, pressing her fists to her brow as she wept in solemn silence.
“Who were they?” He asks finally, offering up his hand, palm up. Ahsoka stares at it for a long moment before she finally presses her hand to his, squeezing once, for strength.
“They were my friends,” she begins, voice soft and torn. “They were good men. Some of the best I ever knew, I’d say. They were so bright in the force, so kind and good. Honourable and loyal, all the things they always had been. And then they were just–” she chokes on the words here, and her grip returns to his hand, squeezing the life out of it. He does not pay it ant mind. “They were gone, Mando.”
He gave her his name, in the forest, in his ship, and yet, she still does not use it. They both know that the confession came from the fear of death. It is best not to speak on what a man says when he is afraid for his life, afraid of what may come into the shadows and try to haunt him. So, when she calls him Mando, he just listens and nods.
“I was seventeen years old,” she says with a breathless laugh. “Seventeen, when the Jedi were massacred in their own home. When our friends, our men, our companions through the darkest night had everything stripped from them and made them slaves. Rex and I spent days, burying the dead. They were the closest thing I ever had to a family. I felt more whole with them than I have ever felt anywhere else. The Rebellion. The Fulcrum Network. The New Republic. They were my home. And now they are gone.”
Din thinks of the tunnels of Nevarro, first, and then of Aq Vetina. But he understand this pain, the grief of loosing everything in one fell blow, the feeling of everything being ripped from your hands and beaten down while you could only watch. It creates a hopeless so vast that it tears out hearts from between ribs and makes cowards of great men. It destroys. It takes. It ruins. And when it is done, it binds itself to you and never lets go, becoming a part of the very marrow of your bones.
“The Imperials Massacred my covert,” He finally confesses. This is the pain that has eaten away at him, and he wonders if she can tell from the very quake in his voice. “They revealed themselves to defend me and the Child. And for that, they were slaughtered. I wanted to stay. More than anything. BUt the Goran gave me a duty to fulfil, and so I did. But all that got me was…this.” He gestures broadly, and looks around.
Crestfallen is a good little ship, but it’s still not his, not how the Razor Crest was. The N-1, when he uses it, is snappy and lovely, but it is no home. That’s not his weapons wrack. That’s not his bunk. That’s not his carbonite freezer. That’s not his armour stand. None of this is his, it is things he has bought from other people on the road. Nothing here is DIn Djarin’s save for his weapons, a spear, his armour, a silver ball, and the ache in his heart.
“They always are effective,” Ahsoka says with a humourless laugh following. Din does not laugh along. She turns her eyes away, wipes away the tears, and when she speaks again, her voice is stronger. “I wept for days. I cried myself sick, after it all ended. Rex did too.”
A sad smile crosses her face. “I’d only seen him cry once before all that happened. It was after we lost Echo. But it wasn’t like that. I’d never seen him look so defeated. Those were his brothers. He’d known Jesse for years. And he still didn’t listen to him. He was right across the hangar, and of course, Jesse never listened. And now Jesse and Rex are dead, but I’m not.”
“For what it’s worth,” Din says, gently tapping his elbow against hers to get her attention. “The world is better off with you alive.” He pauses then, gathering his thoughts before finally exhaling heavily and settling back. “I’m not great with history. I never have been. The elders eventually just gave up trying, and let me live with whatever notions of the world I had. It makes me a good bounty hunter.”
“But there’s one thing I do know,” he says, turning to look at him. “The Rebellion, and by extension, the Galaxy, owes a lot of itself to the actions of Ahsoka Tano. You were one of the first in the rebellion, I know that. You fought harder than any other for the clones, for the Jedi, for the downtrodden. You settled the score. You made all that had happened worth it. They did not die in vain.”
She smiles sadly at the comment, pressing her side to Din’s. “You’re a good friend, Din Djain, and a good man.” He startles only slightly at the use of his name, laughing slightly when her smile shines just that much happier. “We’re rather alike, aren’t we? Exiles and vagabonds who are making our way through the galaxy, settling our scores and aching from wounds we can’t heal.”
He considers the words, and nods a bit. He lets some humour slide into his tone, glad to see her smile for it. “That does sound an awful lot like us, now that you do mention it. So what do you say, Tano?” He offers up a hand. “Us against the world?”
She takes it and shakes, a fire in her eyes. “Yeah. Us against the world.”
↢⚒↣
Once, Ahsoka had found herself wondering if she’d ever be able to trust anyone at her back again. After the Order, after everything fell apart in a fury of flames and desperation, that felt nothing short of wholly impossible, a feverish dream born from a better time. She and Rex had separated. Anakin was gone. Padmé was dead. The Clones were turned. The Jedi Order was gone, and Ahsoka Tano stood alone at the end of the world.
And in the Rebellion, she learned to trust again. There was Ezra and there was Kanan, survivors and a new hope. There were her Fulcrum spies, and there was the indescribable feeling of knowing she was making a difference, knowing that she did not stand alone, not now. And then there was Malachor, and things were wrong again.
Anakin had trained her to fight anything that came at her. His training had saved her life during Order 66, but to turn that all right back against him was almost so painful she couldn’t breathe. He’d looked at her, with his yellow eyes, and said her name, like he was still there. Like Vader hadn’t taken everything she loved from her Master and twisted it in upon himself until Anakin Skywalker was gone, leaving only Darth Vader.
But now, back to back with Din Djarin, she feels something she had not felt since she was seventeen years old, cutting through the skies of Mandalore, her men at her back. Familiarity, camaraderie, and trust, most of all. Din Djarin guards her back and she guards his, and they cut through things like a knife through water, a terrible and unaccounted for force.
Mandalorians are truly one of the most dangerous forces in the galaxy. Watching Din Djarin fight is like watching a dance, especially with his spear in hand. He cuts through things with his spear in hand, and barely a moment later, he’s unholstered his gun from his back, and he’s electrocuting a man within an inch of his life. It’s a dance, the spear whistling and the gun singing in tune with the hiss of her blades through the air.
Din kicks one of their assailants in the chest, and Ahsoka has only a moment to register the sound of something cracking before the man is thrown back by the force of a kick, and he falls in a heap. But despite all of this, they keep coming, and she and Din may be very talented fighters, but they’re not eternal wells of energy. They will fade before long. They need something new.
“Ahsoka!” He grunts. She turns to look at him, but only for a moment, so she doesn’t get fully distracted away from the fight. He continues, “I need you to cover me! I think I can get this place to blow, but I need you at my back!”
She just nods, shifting into position as Djarin takes off in his jetpack, towards an outcropping on the wall. Her blades are scythes of pure white in front of her, moving so fast it’s impossible to see exactly where they are in the air. She sees the semi-terrified faces of her assailants, but she does not let herself linger on it for too long. She focuses on herself, on her blade, and the glimmer of Din Djarin in the corner of her mind.
She hears him swear, rather loudly, but she does not let her attention be diverted. She slams a few people against the other wall, and they’re dead before they hit the floor. She cuts through them without hesitation, gripping her blades so tight her knuckles are white. But when anger rises, and it does, she lets it go. There is no need for anger, not when she can finish this all here.
They’d been kidnapping kids, looking for force sensitives. Ahsoka’s mind prickles every time she thinks about this, remembering a similar plot from the Imperial Days. She’d gone into it because she did not want any child of the force to suffer under their hands, and Din had been a half step behind her, because there is nothing as important as children to the Mandalorian people. They’d been one in their goals and their disgust.
A bolt singes her arm, but she does not feel the pain. There is only her blades and the force and Din Djarin at her back. There is only them and their goal, against these monstrous creatures, with their experiments and their sadism. There is only the Force, and there is only Ahsoka Tano and her blades of white. There is only the fight, and there is only Din Djarin at her back.
“Let’s go!” He shouts at her, jumping off the platform and rolling as he lands, jetpack engaged. He’s on his feet and running not a moment later, rifle and spear at his back, a simple pistol in hand as he moves. Ahsoka follows not a moment later, catching up to her companion and his long strides with ease, their pursuers not having as easy of a time.
They rush through the winding hallways, alight with blaring emergency alarms. Many more fall at their hands, but Ahsoka knows, in her heart, that it will all work out. The children are safe on Crestfallen, and they’re just here to make sure this group can never recover what they’ve lost. They’re here to make sure they die, simply put.
And die they do, in a great explosion. She glances at Din and sees the fury and the flame reflected in his visor and upon the silver of his helmet. His head is tilted down slightly, giving him an angrier countenance about him, grip firm on his blaster that still lies in hand. Ahsoka, for her part, disengages her blades, crossing her arms as she watches the base of operations crumble in on itself, inflamed and destroyed.
They take the walk back to the ship in silence, never putting their weapons away as they do. There could still be things waiting for them around any corner, after all, and Ahsoka knows they do not need anyone coming after them for this, not with the precious cargo they have aboard.
But nothing comes for them. They reach his ship without incident, and she busies herself with making sure the force sensitive littles are buckled up, while he gets ready to go. Once she’s certain they’re all strapped in, she comes into the cockpit and sits next to him, neither of them saying anything as he lifts off. Like every other time, they only speak once they are in hyperspace.
“Some of them don’t have places to go back to,” Din says, sounding troubled. “Some certainly still do have families, and we’ll get them back there, but just as many won’t. What are we to do with them?”
Ahsoka thinks about it for a moment. She can picture the planet in her mind, green and lush and unblemished by the massacre or the Empire’s cruelty. Ossus has survived, when so much else has not. It is quite the place to make a new Temple. She’d told Luke Skywalker just as much, when he’d reached out to ask if she would like to help. To the question, she’d said no.
“We take them to the Jedi.”