#force sensitivity

It was early, far too early, to be awake. Nightmares, well, nightmare was more like it, haunted your dreams; flashes of a time you can’t quite remember, but can also never forget. You were young during the Clone Wars; when the droids came and annihilated your village.That was what you dreamt of every night, without fail. In the dream, the faces of your parents, now blurred and hazy with time, were filled with fear and desperation as they dragged you from bed. Your father picked you up, your legs too small for you to keep up as they fled the only home you’d ever known. Explosions, blaster fire, and smoke filled the streets you played on. When your father screamed and fell, you tumbled free from his arms, cracking your head against the stones. Blood dripped into your eyes as your mother spared only a moment to mourn your father before scooping you into her arms and running, leaving you to watch over her shoulder as your father’s body grew smaller and smaller.

“Hide her,” your mother begged, thrusting you into the arms of Din’s father. She’d said his name, but you didn’t remember it. Grown up names didn’t make sense. It was just mother and father, uncle or aunt. His parents hadn’t been blood relatives, but those born of struggle that yielded an inseparable friendship and familial unit all the same. You’d only ever known them as uncle and aunt.

“The cellar,” your uncle had said, checking the windows when an explosion rattled the glass.

“We won’t fit,” said your aunt. “It’s half caved-in as it is.”

The grown ups looked at one another, not saying anything. You’d always found that to be strange, to say nothing but feel everything. It didn’t seem so odd now that you were grown, but then you didn’t understand how they weren’t all screaming and shouting about the end of the fucking world happening right outside their doorstep.

Uncle saw something then out the window that made his eyes go wide. He put you on the ground, ushering you towards Din, who’d been holding onto his mother’s skirts. “Din, take her out back to the cellar. Climb down, close the hatch, and don’t open it for anyone, not until it’s absolutely silent. Do you understand?”

Din took your small hand in his and nodded, “Yes, father.”

Tears streamed down your round cheeks as you reached for your mother, not understanding why she couldn’t come with you. She squeezed you so tightly and you remember being so confused at seeing tears on her cheeks as well. You’d never seen your mother cry.

A blast sounded right outside. “Go! Now!”

Din pulled you after him, your shoulder aching as he tugged you along. As you fled out the back door, the front crashed in.

“Whatever happens,” he said, not looking back as he pulled you along. “Stay with me. I’ll keep you safe. Just stay with me and I won’t let anything happen to you.”

He let go of your hand as he threw back the tarp that covered the hatch to the cellar.

“You promise? To the three moons and back?”

He cracked open the cellar and started to climb down. He offered a small smile as he turned to help you down. “To the suns of Tatooine."

A shiver ran down your spine, causing the hairs on the back of your neck to stand on end. It was the briefest sensation, but in that flicker of time all of your senses roared to life. You felt power surge through your small body followed by the sound of Din shouting and the hatch slamming shut, dulling the sound of his voice as he fought to open it back up.

Two droids broke down the back door, their mechanical eyes whirling and zeroing in you. You swallowed fearfully, stepping back cautiously. A small whimper climbed free of your throat as they raised their blasters.

Their shots went wide as a masked figure rolled and jumped off of the low hanging roof, a green light slashing through the bots, sending their halved frames to the ground with a metallic clatter. The figure peered through the window, cursed under his breath, and scooped you into their arms.

“You’re safe now,” they’d said as they absconded with you away to a new life.

You’d been too shell shocked by what had happened to cry out to Din, to tell the mysterious stranger that there was another child in need of saving.

You never knew if he survived, and that guilt is what haunted your dreams and robbed you of sleep night after night, year after year, without fail.

•

You live independent of the others, choosing to leave the communal housing in your early twenties. It is commonplace for everyone to stay together, such is the way of your village, but you’d never felt truly connected to them enough to stay.

This is a village of jedi and other force sensitive individuals, some family, but mostly people much like yourself, rescued from war torn areas before the Empire could have you hunted for sport. Most days you are grateful for the second chance at life. Others, you’re exceptionally bitter about having been stolen away to an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar customs.

The strangest to you is the insistence on wearing masks to hide your faces, or rather. to protect your identities, as the masters would explain.

“Only take it off in private, when you’re alone.” They’d said. “If no one knows your face, then no one knows who to target.” You’d resisted it at first, like any other child not liking to do what you’re told. It had felt strange and uncomfortable and you felt lost in the sea of anonymity, unable to recognize which adults were which as you’d navigated your strange, new home.

Children wear half masks, only covering their eyes. When you turn thirteen, you enter the rite of passage, similar to the one younglings endure to discover and create their own sabers, and are given a full facial covering; one decorated and carved by the masters that are meant to represent your true nature, though you’d always taken that with a grain of salt, unsure what gives them the right to make that determination.

Your dwelling lies on the outskirts of the main village, where there’s more farmland than concrete between homes. Your closest neighbor is a fifteen minute walk and the village square takes another half hour. You like to think you’re rather self sufficient, subsisting largely off of what you grow on your own land and the few animals you tend to. Your home is tethered into the power grid, so you have running water and electricity. Anything else you need, you get on your weekly trips into town.

You do work, for yourself mostly, but pay a small tithe in coin or wares to the master that rescued you so many years ago and trained you in the arts of smithing and weaponscrafting. There aren’t any weapons that are unfamiliar to you, from blades to blasters and sabers, though you’re not capable of wielding the latter. As you make your way to light the forge outside your home, tallying the orders in your head for the various alloys required for creating the more mundane aspects of crafting and refining lightsabers, a vision of metal and smoke flashes across your mind’s eye. You stumble and blink hard, but the flashes continue; a glint of silver, the pitch black ‘t’ of a visor, a ship, a small, green creature. By the time the visions stop, nausea rips at your belly and you have to hold the wall to keep from getting sick.

Of all the ways in which you’ve been able to tie into the force, you’ve never felt it so viscerally reach into you. Whilst other younglings refined their understanding and abilities wielding the force, treading further and further down the paths towards future roles as guardians and consulars, you remained an initiate; your connection to the force only ever being strong enough to create ease in your day to day life whether that was tuning in to the needs of your livestock, healing minor injuries, or perceiving danger earlier than others. In certain situations, you have had the ability to move things with your mind, but you can count the amount of times that that had happened on one hand, and it was almost always under extreme duress. You knew individuals that were gifted with clairvoyance and strong telekinetic abilities, but you’d never been able to tap into that vein of power. You’d never been able to wield much control over the force at all, despite years of trying and failing. You’d have to confer with your master about these flashes and what they mean next time you go into town.

When the nausea passes, you straighten and enter your forge. After striking a blaze, you spend the early hours of the day smelting alloys, sweating and laboring in the heat of the fire. When you pour the liquid metal into their casts to cool, you finally take a break, stepping away from the fire and using the long fabric of your tunic to wipe the sweat off your face. Your fingers skirt over the scar tissue splitting your brow, a reminder of the day your village had been destroyed. When you wear your mask, it’s covered; and you’ve always hated that. It feels like hiding a part of who you are, which you suppose is the point of it all. Acting as a single entity, an indivisible unit, allowed anonymity to thrive and deter those who’d seek to do you harm. This had always sat strangely with you. It’s rare for many travelers to come through your town; it is a fairly remote part of the planet after all. Even rarer is it for people of your township to travel; usually only high ranking jedi daring to visit other locations rumored to house more beings in tune with the force. In all your time here, you’d never left.

You feel the hairs rise along your arms and look to the East, eyes keen as you feel a disturbance. Moments later, far into the distance, there’s a blip in the fabric of the sky as a ship blinks into existence. You watch as it makes a rapid descent to land somewhere deep inside the forest. Your body moves before your mind can catch up, rushing inside to don your mask, tuck several daggers into your belt, and return outside.

With mental prowess, you call for your horse. Within moments, she comes charging over the hillside; her tusks gleaming in the mid-morning sun as her dark coat bounces with every strong stride of her hooves. You praise her through your mental connection and quickly ready her for travel. If you saw that, you know the jedi in the heart of the village had seen it. Something deep inside you spurs you on, something urging you to respond as quickly as possible.

Climbing onto the mare’s back, you pat her on the neck before digging your heels into her flank. She releases a loud whinny as she takes off into the forest, her large hooves tearing up clods of grass as you race through the trees towards unknown danger.

•

The ship is massive, at least as far as your understanding of spacecraft goes. It looks like it’s seen better days, signs of being fired up and crash landings evident in the framing. You had released your mare to graze several clicks back and stalked quietly to your current hiding place, drawing on the force to dampen any sounds you made as you’d traversed the woods.

A hissing sound emits from the ship as a ramp descends. Your muscles tense, your heart rate increasing as long shadows yawn out from the ship’s hull. You hold your breath, waiting for someone, or something, to emerge from the ship. A minute passes, two, three, but no one comes. You tuck your hand around the hilt of your knife, readying yourself for a fight.

It’s then one tiny, green, clawed foot springs free of the shadow; followed by another. As the small figure emerges, your lips part in surprise. You’re not entirely sure what you’re looking at as the small creature toddles down the ramp. It has large black eyes and long green ears that bounce softly as it teeters down the incline. A butterfly floats by and it becomes distracted, reaching towards it with his tiny hands. Is it a child? More so, is it alone?

You feel a natural inclination to go to it. Checking your surroundings, there is no one around as far as the eye can see and you can’t detect any immediate threats. With caution, you rise from your hiding place and step towards the child as it chases after the butterfly. It takes a few seconds for it to realize you’re there. When it sees you looming over it, it releases a small gasp and takes a wobbly step back.

You sense it then, the power within the little one. As soon as you lower your gaze to meet its big, shining eyes, a connection immediately snaps into place between you two and you recognize it as the small green creature from the flashes that had assailed you earlier. This creature is like you. Through the mental connection, you tell the creature your name and learn his in turn: Grogu.

You can use the Force.

The child makes a small sound of affirmation. Perhaps he was rescued by one of the masters in town…but then again, they never would land so far outside the city limits.

Do you travel with other jedi?

Grogu shakes his head and the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. If he wields the Force, but does not travel with Jedi, has he been kidnapped by those who would seek to eliminate him? This whole thing could be a trap. The thought barely forms when you feel the danger before it strikes. Spinning on your heel, you act first, removing the dagger from your belt and throwing it. It spins end over end before burying itself in the soft spot between the helmet and armor of a stormtrooper’s throat. A blaster strike goes wide, clipping your shoulder, as he gurgles and falls to the ground. From behind the trees, three more stormtroopers emerge, weapons drawn. Instinctively, you tuck and roll, wrapping an arm around the child to carry him out of harm's way behind the wing of the ship. Blaster strikes ping off the metal as you place the child behind one of the landing gears. Grogu whimpers as you press a hand against your bleeding shoulders, grunting in pain as you pull away red-stained fingers.

Stay hidden.

You turn and risk poking your head out, the firing having ceased for now. The stormtroopers advance, blasters raised. Your eyes fall to the ground where the fallen stormtrooper's blaster rests on the ground. Mustering as much strength into your concentration as you can, you reach out with your mind and hand, summoning the weapon to you.

“We just want the child!” Barks a stormtrooper. “Release him to us.”

You can’t focus on what they’re saying. The blaster twitches from its place on the ground. Sweat beads along your forehead as you pour more energy into summoning it. You’d never managed to pull more than a fork across a table, let alone something this size. Something inside you called to protect Grogu and that drives you to give this everything you’re able. Something wet leaks down your face, seeping into the clay of your mask. It takes a moment to realize its blood. Your nose is bleeding. The stormtrooper says something, but it’s distorted as if underwater. When black spots begin to dot your vision, you fear your attempt will be futile, but then a rush of energy slams into you and the blaster flies into your hands.

You don’t even think before fully emerging from your position of safety. Blasters are child’s play in terms of use. Your finger flutters over the trigger and you don’t hesitate to squeeze it, aiming at the chests of the stormtrooper’s. The first two fall easily, not suspecting their own weapon to be turned against them. The last one standing is not so foolish. He takes cover behind a thicket of trees, emerging only to take shots at you. You seek shelter behind boulders neighboring the ship, mirroring his tactics.

As he fires at you, you duck down, taking cover behind the rock face. A sudden cry followed by the sound of a body dropping puts you on high alert. He didn’t fall by your hand. After a minute of silence passes, you risk checking your surroundings and find no one except for the fallen bodies of all four stormtroopers.

The child.

You hold the blaster close to your chest as you jump to your feet and sprint across the short distance to where you left him hiding behind the landing gear. He smiles and coos upon seeing you and you breathe a sigh of relief as you fall to your knees in front of him. A wave of dizziness washes over you and you have to squeeze your eyes shut to avoid fainting. It’s been ages since you’ve expended that much energy to tune into the Force and your body feels the toll, but you’re not out of danger yet. Grogu teeters over to you where you kneel, chest heaving as you try to catch your breath.

He raises a hand and closes his eyes. You watch, confused, as his small features pinch with concentration and tiny grunts emit from him. It’s not until you feel the torn and tattered flesh of your shoulder start to knit back together that you realize what he’s doing. The second the wound closes, Grogu releases an exasperated sigh and collapses onto his butt.

You quickly scoop him into your arms, breathing a sigh of relief when you realize he’s not been harmed, he’s just fallen asleep. Unsure what to do, you rise on shaky legs, still not fully recovered from your own use of the Force. As you move out from behind the safety of the ship, you feel the cool metal of the barrel of a blaster press into your hair.

“Release the child,” commands a modulated voice.

You breathe in slowly through your nose, not turning around for fear of the wielder’s trigger finger. You swallow and speak calmly. “Are you sure you want to play this game? Or did you miss what I just did to your friends?”

“Friends,” he says, even through the modulator, his voice is laced with disdain. “Did you miss the part where I took care of the last one?” He says, and the sound of the hammer clicking into place makes you squeeze your eyes shut. You adjust your hold on the child, unsure why you feel so compelled to keep him safe.

Muttering a quick prayer to nothing and no one in particular, you drop to the ground, drawing on the Force to drive your movement even harder as you kick out your legs to sweep those of your attacker. He grunts in surprise as he falls and you reach for the knife on your belt, shouldering Grogu’s weight into your other arm. You slash out and your blade screeches against metal, not so much as scratching the silver armor.

What the—

Before you can process what’s happening, a gloved fist collides with your face, shattering the clay of your mask. Stars whirl across your field of vision as the broken shards of your mask slice into the skin of your cheeks before falling to the ground, and you to your knees right along with them. The same gloved hands carefully peel the child from your arms as you mutter a strangled, “No.”

Despite feeling naked in front of a stranger without the cover of your mask, you raise your eyes to your attacker, your vision doubling as he tucks the creature into a bag on his hip. At first you think he’s some kind of stormtrooper, but the armor is all wrong. As your eyes rove over the wide planes of his chest and broad shoulders, you realize that once you take in the helmet just who and what he is: one of the Mandalorian.

If he is the one who has taken the child, then the creature is in far more danger than you originally realized. The Mandalorian’s hatred for the Jedi runs deeper than any abyss and the feeling is mutual, though the masters encourage not thinking in such black and white terms.

“We have people that can train him,” you say weakly, tasting the blood from all the cuts in your face. Though your movements are awkward, you shift your weight to your knees. The Mandalorian is quick to level his weapon on you. You look up from beneath your lashes to find the barrel of the blaster aiming right between your eyes.

“If you’re going to kill me, I’d prefer to be on my feet. Let me have a little dignity.” You slowly drag your limbs to cooperate, your earlier use of the Force completely betraying your body as you shakily find your footing. “By the fucking three moons,” you grumble as blood rushes to your head causing you to stumble, but you still manage to draw up to your full height.

For the first time, the Mandalorian’s hand twitches. “What did you just say?”

You blink hard, trying to find the energy to tap into that well of power and save yourself, but it’s dry. “I said I’d like to die with a little dignity.”

The Mandalorian takes a step towards you and you flinch back. “About the three moons, what did you mean by that?”

“Nothing,” you answer, though you’re not sure why you’re explaining yourself at all to someone about to kill you. “It doesn’t matter.”

He hisses through his modulator, voice commanding. “Where are you from?”

Everything the masters have instilled in you over the years tells you to lie, even moments before certain death, lie. For some reason, you feel compelled to share the truth. “Aq Vetina.” There’s nothing left of your village as far as you know. It’s not like he can go there and wreck more havoc than what’s already been done.

The Mandalorian’s hand shakes. You can’t see his face to read his expression, but it’s as though he can’t decide whether to keep it leveled on you.

“The scar of your forehead,” he says, pointing with his blaster. “Where did you get it?”

This line of questioning causes the hairs along the back of your neck to stand on end, not quite like the way they do when you feel a ripple in the Force, but as if a ghost is passing through you. No one outside of your master has seen your scar. After they’d cleaned your wounds, they’d given you your half mask. No one in your village knows of it. The only people that had ever seen it would’ve been when it was freshly hewn; your aunt and uncle, your mother, and…

“Din?” Your voice shakes. You’ve not said his name aloud in well over a decade.

The Mandalorian lowers his weapon. He breathes out shakily through his modulator as he says your name.

The world around you slams to a standstill. You don’t feel the pain from the cuts on your cheeks, just a dull ringing in your ears. As the ground rises up to meet you, Din leaps forward and catches you as you fall. He scoops you into his arms and quickly boards his ship, lying you down on a small bed that must’ve belonged to him.

Your name sounds strange in his modulated pitch as he smooths your hair back from your bloody face. You taste the iron tang of it on your lips. You blink heavily, once, twice. Din removes the child from his hip and places him in a hammock overhead where he continues to sleep, the use of the Force having taken a far heavier toll on his small body. He then turns his attention back to you, muttering curses to himself as he crouches to inspect your face. He curses under his breath and rises, blurring with the quickness of his movements. An overhead hatch clicks and there’s a rattling as he searches for something. He grunts a sound of approval when he finds what he’s looking for and crouches back down beside you with a bin of medical supplies. You focus your eyes on him as best as you’re able.

“Take—” you start and stop, taking a deep breath as your vision blurs. You’re far too out of practice for what you’ve done today. Your master would have your head if he knew that you’d long since abandoned your daily practice sessions with the Force. “Take your helmet off.”

The Mandalorian’s fingers stiffen, tightening around the vial of bacta spray in his hand. Something of a sigh emits from his modulator, “I can’t do that.”

“Says who?” you counter, irritation mounting.

He shakes his head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me,” you bite.

“I’ve taken an oath, a sacred vow, to uphold the way of the Mandalore.”

You balk at this, shifting your weight to sit up, which only causes your head to spin. Din’s hands shoot up on instinct but you slap them away. Black spots dot your vision as you narrow your gaze on him. Hot tears prick the backs of your eyes. You speak slowly, almost through your teeth. “For twenty years, I have mourned your loss. This entire time I thought you were dead because of my cowardice, because of my inability to cry out for you when I was taken away. Every night I am plagued by nightmares of that day, of my parents falling, of your parents falling. Do you even remember their names?” Tears spill over your eyelids, diluting the drying blood on your cheeks and stinging your open wounds. “Because I can’t. I try and I try, but they don’t come. Yours was the only name I could remember. Yours was the only one I held onto because you were the only family I could remember having in this sea of anonymity. When I finally got the courage to speak up, to beg them to take me back to find you, they told me it was pointless; that no one else would’ve survived the attack on Aq Vetina. Now, after twenty years, you suddenly reappear in my life and you can’t even show me your face because of some oath you took up after being ripped away from the only life you knew? By people who didn’t even know you before you took on this identity?” You swipe an angry hand across your face, smearing tears and blood along your sleeve. Your voice cracks when you speak again. “Did you try to find me? Did you ask them for help? Or did you just fall in line like the little soldier they wanted you to be?”

He says nothing. You stare into the black T of his visor, recognizing it as the one from the vision. You wish that you could see his eyes, to look into the same ones you did as a child, but all you see is the reflection of your own, bloodshot and rimmed with tears, staring back at you.

You push past him, standing and wobbling for a moment, before moving through the ship towards the exit. “That’s what I thought.” Holding the wall for balance, you’ve nearly rounded the corner when you hear an unmodulated voice speak.

“I never stopped trying.”

Your blood runs cold as you hear his voice, his real voice. It’s deeper than when you were children, but you recognize it all the same. You squeeze your eyes shut, what tears remain slipping down onto your cheeks. On shaking legs, you slowly spin on your heel, a soft gasp escaping your lips when you see him.

You barely recognize the man standing before you. His dark hair is a mess of curls, flattened by the helmet. You’re shocked to find he has facial hair above his lips and scruffing the sharp bones of his cheeks and jaw. His nose hasn’t changed and neither have his eyes, shining and sad beneath the dim lights of the inner cabin.

“Din,” you breathe.

“I never stopped,” he says, a tear slipping down his cheek now.

You’re not sure who advances first as you both move towards one another. With trembling fingers, you reach up to brush the backs of your knuckles against the sharp line of his jaw. Tears well in your eyes, hot and heavy as you shift you bring your other hand up to cup his face in your hands. His brown eyes shine with uncertainty, his irises flicking over your face, both of you seeing the children you once were in one another’s faces despite the gentle lines betraying the long years you’d spent apart. You break the silence as a sob breaks free from your throat and you throw your arms around his neck. Din immediately swallows you into an embrace, holding on to you with tight desperation.

“I never stopped looking,” he repeats, voice choked with emotion. He rocks you back and forth in his arms, his gloved hands splayed in your hair. “I knew I’d find you again someday.”

“I’m sorry,” you breathe, and Din pulls away, brows drawn together.

“For what?”

“What I said,” you begin. “We both did what we had to do to survive. I said what I said in anger. I just—” Your vision blurs in and out, your body reminding you of its injured and exhausted state. Your knees wobble and Din has to brace an arm around your waist to keep you from falling to the floor of his ship. No longer protesting, you allow him to guide you back to the bed. Your limbs feel heavy and your eyelids just as weighty, your body craving rest.

“Din,” you say weakly, fighting to keep your eyes open.

He crouches by your side, taking your hand into his. “I’m here,” he answers.

“Please,” you start and stop, blinking your eyes hard to fight your fleeting consciousness for just a moment longer. “Please don’t leave me.”

“I won’t,” he promises, squeezing your hand. As your eyes drift shut and darkness curtains your vision he says, “I’m not going anywhere.”