The Mandalorian leaves for his ship that night, pushing through the injuries sustained in the firefight with the Niktos. His dogged trek back to the Crest puts his arrival right at the beginning of the Jawas’ scrap haul, and he readily dispatches them with the rifle before assessing the damage to his rig. The Ugnaught helps him here too, piecing the ship back together and fortifying it for flight off-world. The Mandalorian thanks him, and the discussion turns back to the bounty before the Mandalorian is set to depart, asking for assistance with one other project.

“What do you suppose it is?” Kuiil asks. “I worked in the gene fields for years and I’ve never seen its like.”

“A child,” the Mandalorian says. “That’s all that matters.” He’s stooped next to the boy, keeping him steady with a gentle hand as Kuiil fastens a small bracer around his forearm. When it clicks into place it lights up, and Kuiil carefully presses a sequence into it before it emits a high-pitched whine that makes the boy shake his head, tugging at the Ugnaught’s grasp.

Kuiil gently pats his head with his other hand. “The noise will go away after a minute.” Then to Mando: “Do you have the code you wish to input?”

Mando nods and the Ugnaught watches as Mando presses another sequence along the bracer before locking it in place. The Mandalorian grunts, satisfied, shifting the boy’s sleeve back down around the bracer once all of the lights are blue. The tracking fob on the Mandalorian’s belt goes dark and silent. He picks the boy up and settles him against his hip as the boy wriggles his arm free, looking down at his sleeve.

Mando addresses Kuiil again. “I can’t thank you enough for your help. Please allow me to pay you for the trouble.”

The Ugnaught shakes his head, turning to walk away. “There will be no peace until the old ways of the Empire are gone forever. I’m happy to help.“

The Ugnaught stands at his homestead and watches as the Razor Crest swiftly lifts off red clay soil, turning its nose skyward and ascending to break the atmosphere. It does not return to Nevarro.

What follows is a season different from canon, one where the Mandalorian takes different contract jobs where he can but steers clear of official Guild business. The child is always by his side, and though we can’t see Mando’s face we see how he cares for the little boy, providing for and protecting him at every turn. The dichotomy of the Mandalorian’s character is seen in how quickly he falls into the parental role versus how he treats those he deems a threat, readily removing both pauldron and breastplate to let a baby sleep against his shoulder while in the same day snapping a man’s wrist for laying hands on the cradle. He removes his gloves and allows the child to play with his hands as he sits on the floor across from him, provides him with improvised toys, and he even seems to hum as he walks the length of the ship and back with the boy in his arms, bedtime accompanied by a gravelly voice finding use again in soothing a restless child. When the child absently gnaws on his calloused knuckle the Mandalorian lets him, gently stroking the boy’s cheek with his thumb as he pilots one-handed. It’s as though he’d always been meant for this role, slotting seamlessly into place.

The Mandalorian’s vicious protective streak reaches new heights too. Instead of what we’re used to seeing in Din offering everybody at least one chance, this Mandalorian only offers it half the time and even then seems reluctant to do so. He can’t take as many chances— The patchwork armor of trophy pieces and improvised protective gear isn’t as resilient as Mandalorian iron; there’s no full beskar cuirass or whistling birds since he never returned to Nevarro to collect payment from the Client. During all of their travels he fends off thugs, mercenaries, and hired guns of every kind, showing no mercy to those who threaten or try to use the kid as leverage against him, demanding what beskar he does have. Shoot first, ask questions later.

Interestingly enough, however, none of his adversaries are other Guild hunters. Anyone he runs across are people trying to prove something by gunning for a fight (something he’s used to, having been a Mandalorian for almost thirty years now), or trying to scavenge the beskar, or they’re enemies from his past with scores to settle.

The job he takes with the crew at the chop shop has a very different feeling to it. For one, it isn’t Ranzar Malk running the garage but his brother Tyko. Mayfeld is still the same as he is in canon, and though Burg is similar to what we know, he’s not sizing up the Mandalorian like before, and the Devaronian is missing most of one horn. He lingers in the back, his arms crossed as Zero joins them, Xi’an not far behind.

There’s no catty Harley Quinn-esque taunting and flirting with Mando this time around. When Xi'an joins the group she’s collected and silent, watching Mando from the corner of her eye as Tyko briefs the lot of them on the mission and plans out their route to and through the prison ship. Mayfeld, the only one not familiar with Malk’s crew from before, tries for a couple of jabs but none of them really land because nobody else joins in, and we can see him slowly start to feel the creeping unease the Mandalorian gives the others from his presence in their midst. On the Crest the Devaronian and Twi’lek give him a wide berth, keeping to the other side of the hold, and when Mayfeld’s the one to prompt a scuffle, reaching for the Mandalorian’s helmet, Mando reacts swiftly and fends him off. The door to the bunk still opens, revealing the kid, but before Mayfeld can close the gap to pick him up, Mando lands his last blow with a vibroblade straight through the edge of Mayfeld’s shoulder padding, just to the left of his bicep, pinning him to the wall.

Mayfeld’s doing his best not to show his panic, and though the others approached when the fight started they’ve still stopped several feet away, this time telling Mayfeld to back down. That Mando’s still needed for the mission.

Mando lingers with his hand on the hilt of the blade, his thumb hovering over the safety that would switch the vibroblade on and easily slice right into the meat of Mayfeld’s arm. He stays there long enough to make his point clear before jerking it out and letting Mayfeld stumble away, Mayfeld swearing as he does. Zero latches onto the prison ship and they drop down below as planned.

Everything in The Prisoner still goes as it does in canon (though with the characters changed just a little to the left in their regard of Mando), and when Ranzar Malk is revealed to be the prisoner they’re extracting, Mando’s caught in the middle of the ambush from the others, putting up more of a fight when he realizes the betrayal. The sequence that follows is harder hitting and bloodier than we see in canon: Burg eventually gets his hands around the Mandalorian’s upper arms, holding him in place for Ran to get a couple shots in.

“That’s for Alzoc III,” Ran snarls, ramming a fist in Mando’s gut and spitting on the face of the helmet.

The Devaronian lets go of one of the Mandalorian’s arms as he’s doubled over, putting both hands onto one shoulder and wrenching his arm out of socket. The Mandalorian lets out a strangled yell. “That’s for double-crossing us,” Burg growls.

The Mandalorian gasps, barely standing as Burg holds him by the arm. Xi’an ends with stabbing him between the ribs, up close and personal as she digs the knife in to the hilt just to the side of his armor. “And that’s for my brother.”

They shove him into the prison cell, harsh laughter echoing down the halls as they make their escape.

The Mandalorian looks down for the count. We watch as he drags himself, bleeding, upwards against the cell wall, assessing the droids outside in passing. He pants unevenly, gingerly assesses the stab wound with a shaking hand and grunts again in pain. With a steadying breath he steels himself and rolls his dislocated shoulder back into socket, yelling again. One injury fixed, he peers out of the jail cell again with his hand on his side, waiting for the most opportune moment to strike.

When Mando breaks free the hunt that follows is severely personal and merciless. Blood drips down his side and leaves a trail through white corridors. How he separates the criminals is similar to before, getting each of them pinned before ending with his stand-off with Malk. Ran makes the same bargaining negotiation as Qin does in canon and Mando still shoots Zero in the cargo hold before returning to the Roost with Ran in tow.

Tyko pays out the money to the Mandalorian, as promised, though it’s clear the brothers aren’t happy with how things shook out with the rest of the crew. Mando departs, they get ready to fire on his ship, the New Republic X-wings show up as before, having followed the tracking beacon Mando took from the prison ship and planted on Ran, and the chop shop is destroyed just as Mando planned.

The Mandalorian is uncharacteristically stiff in the cockpit, his movements jerky and labored. The kid coos, trying to get his attention, but as soon as the navicomp charts their course and they jump to hyperspace, the Mandalorian exhales raggedly, adrenaline finally running its course as he slumps over in his seat.

The child can sense something is wrong and wriggles out of his own seat, padding over to the Mandalorian. He shakes the man’s leg, worried when he doesn’t respond, and we see his gaze track to where the Mandalorian is still bleeding from Xi’an’s stab wound, his flightsuit darkening by the second.

The child’s eyes widen in alarm and he clambers up over his guardian’s boot, climbing his pant leg and over his lap until he can reach the Mandalorian’s side, blood pooling where his breastplate doesn’t cover. The child strains to reach the injury while keeping his balance, closing his eyes and holding out his hand, and very slowly we watch as the flow of blood beneath the suit stops and the wound knits back together as if it were never there.

There’s a long moment still before the Mandalorian takes a shuddering breath, jolting upright and nearly dislodging the child before catching him on reflex as the boy’s eyes slip close and he slumps against Mando’s chest. The Mandalorian looks around, feels at his side, and— in frustration at not being able to see with the angle he’s looking— takes his helmet off just above the view of the camera. He pulls his glove off with his teeth and he goes to feel his side again, his hand only bloody on its retreat from skimming his clothes. The knife wound from the Twi’lek is healed entirely, the muscle smooth and the skin unmarred. He gasps again, disbelieving, before he realizes the child is unconscious in the crook of his opposite arm. We see over the Mandalorian’s shoulder, just past brown hair going silver at the temples as he worriedly checks for the child’s pulse and breath. The tense moment holds, silence in the flickering light of hyperspace, before we can see the Mandalorian relax with a shudder, reassured that the boy is still alive. He gently tries to wake him, slipping his thumb into the boy’s hand, but the child doesn’t move.

Mando brings the child up against his chest, squeezing him gently in an all-encompassing hug before tucking him under his chin and standing from the pilot’s chair, the audience still never seeing his face. He turns back towards the ladder behind him while the camera lingers on the dash and the helmet smeared with blood, his retreating reflection warped in the visor.

Though we leave the found family on a good note, the next episode begins back on Nevarro with the Mandalorian covert that still remains below ground, having never had to expose themselves because Mando never returned with and subsequently stole the child back in the first place. Above, the marketplace is a buzz of gossip: rumors travel fast in a town like theirs and it becomes apparent to the audience that both the Guild hunters and Imperials from the safehouse are angry about the biggest target that sector had seen in a century suddenly dropping off the grid. Karga, a veteran Guild broker and diplomatic businessman, has his hands full mediating between short tempers left and right. Regular citizens are wary of leaving their homes and Karga sees hunters harassing others in town as competition for work stokes tempers even higher. The Client is furious, his stony expression betraying nothing but the tone of his voice making it quite clear what he thinks of Karga’s “most valuable partner.”

The Mandalorians of the covert discuss their options, knowing that if any of them are seen aboveground now of all times, they’d immediately be considered a target by association and hauled in for questioning, if not killed on the spot. The foundlings are packing bags, tools and supplies and blankets and toys hastily assembled or forced to be left behind. They don’t know what happened to the bounty hunter but it’s clear Nevarro is no longer safe for them to remain there.

Night’s beginning to fall as a rumble of thunder shakes the earth. The Client and Dr. Pershing’s furtive argument is cut short as they glance in the direction of the noise. Civilians halt in the streets, searching the sky for approaching ships. Hunters straighten in the cantina and go to the windows, looking out as others in alcoves outside begin to emerge, on guard. Mandalorians in the tunnels freeze for only a moment before mobilization efforts pick up double time at the Armorer’s orders, all of them knowing trouble when they hear it.

Three ships kick up dust and gravel as they land on the port city of Nevarro, two carrying troupes of sleek, efficient gunmen that pour out into the town square as an Outland TIE fighter descends behind them.

The next episode picks up with the Mandalorian muttering to himself as he unfastens hidden compartments in his ship, obviously in search of something. His visor occasionally darts to the cradle where the child sleeps cocooned in a muted red blanket. Frustrated by whatever it is he can’t find, the Mandalorian sighs and answers an incoming holo from another employer about a job.

When he arrives at his destination he places one ungloved hand on the child’s chest, needing the reassurance that he’s still breathing and just asleep, before he leaves and locks the ship behind him. The hunt follows the Mandalorian like normal— a local fetch and ferry to get enough credits for food and fuel— but it’s clear he’s impatient to return. How the camera moves as he wraps up the job and cuffs the target gives the audience the distinct impression that he’s being followed.

The Mandalorian has to intimidate the commissioner into paying out the full price promised for the job and he leaves silently once the man forks over the credits. He slips between people in the crowded marketplace, and as he rounds a corner the camera follows him, only to reveal an empty alleyway.

Greef Karga scans the alley, confused, and behind him in the blurry background we see a figure silently lower from the scaffolding and drop to the ground, grabbing Karga’s shoulder and whirling him around to slam his back against the wall.

The Mandalorian remains still as Karga yelps, clasping his wrist and breathing a sigh of relief at realizing who it is.

“What are you doing here,” the Mandalorian demands, his voice low and dangerous.

“Easy Mando, it’s just me, I’m sorry—”

“What are you doing here, Karga? Start talking.”

Karga shoves him off, irritable but evidently unafraid of the Mandalorian with a blaster still aimed at his chest. He looks around, lowering his voice too. “There’s a problem. We need to talk.”

“You followed me for two hours to talk with a gun in your hand?” Mando says flatly.

Karga scowls, holstering his pistol. “This is the Ring of Kafrene, you think I’m stupid enough to let my guard down here? Listen, I had to find you— Something’s happened on Nevarro.”

With the finale nearing, it turns out Karga himself was the only one capable of tracking down the Mandalorian, familiar with his old haunts and sources. None of the other Guild members or informants had seen hide or hair of either the Mandalorian or the target— It appeared the kid was listed on multiple registers and posting boards by a number of different entities and clients gunning for him. The Imperial warlord on Nevarro just happened to have the largest reward. When the child’s bio-signature disappeared and all tracking fobs were rendered useless, thanks to the bracer Kuiil was able to configure for the kid to scramble his chain-code, it caused a number of issues between the Guild, the still-operating ISB (through which the Bounty Hunters Guild operates), and posting agencies across the galaxy.

There in the hold of the Crest Karga says he’s there to warn Mando: a few days before this, an Imperial Moff arrived on Nevarro, establishing a despotic hold on the town and holding it hostage until the Mandalorian that disappeared from Arvala-7 returned to his base of operations with the target in tow. Karga managed to persuade the Moff into giving him time, saying he could find the Razor Crest but had to do it alone, and that he could convince Djarin to return.

Until then Mando had stubbornly refused to budge an inch, but when Karga says his family name— one very few are privy to— he jerks in surprised anger and stalks forward and demands to know how Karga got that information.

“The Moff,” Karga says, backing up, hands raised. “He says he has your family as ransom for the kid, that you would know what that meant.”

“My family is dead,” Mando states flatly.

“He had one of them,” Karga says, confused. “Another Mandalorian? A woman?”

At that, Mando freezes. “… Another Mandalorian.”

“Yes!”

“What did she look like?”

“I don’t know, you all wear the masks, she wasn’t—”

Mando grabbed Karga’s collar and shoved him against the bulkhead. “What did she look like?!”

“A gold helmet!” Karga says, floundering. “Red armor, I don’t know, a— a fur mantle! She was still alive when I left!”

Mando dropped his broker back to his feet, stumbling back in astonishment. “They have her?!”

“Yes! I didn’t know who she was, I’ve been hailing the Crest for weeks since you went dark but you didn’t answer, never got the holos, I didn’t have any other comm—”

Mando whirls on his feet and stalks towards the ladder, Karga forced to catch up. “Who is she, Mando? What’s going on?”

Karga followed him to the cockpit where the child lay curled up on one of the seats, still asleep. Mando scooped him up onto his lap and hurriedly flicked through his pre-flight checks, manually priming the Crest for takeoff. “He found the covert.”

Karga pitched to the side as the ship rumbled to life. Mando hardly spared enough time to make sure they were clear of their surroundings, hydraulics groaning under the strain of a cold liftoff. “The- the other Mandalorians on Nevarro, the tribe hidden beneath the city— Karga, there are children down there—”

Karga stumbled again, barely grabbing the other seat behind him; he hauled himself into it and strapped in. The Crest took off at a juddering pace, Mando pushing it to the limits to break atmo and set his course.

“Tell me everything,” the Mandalorian demanded once in hyperspace, turning back to Karga. The child made a soft sound in the crook of his arm, still asleep. “We’re going to get backup, and then we’re going to take back our city.”

—

Whatever allies Mando has made along the way are swiftly recruited to his and Karga’s cause. Kuiil and the reconfigured assassin droid join their ranks (the latter at the Mandalorian’s obvious loathing), one or two others from the season in tow. Either the Moff wiped out the covert, or had the rest of them under armed guard to ensure they didn’t interfere in an attempt to free the Armorer, or she gave herself up as a hostage in order to distract the Moff and let everyone else get out of harm’s way until the Mandalorians could make a coordinated attack against the remnant Imperials. If it’s the latter (and he prays that it is), Mando knows without a doubt who will be leading the charge and says they’ll need to find him first.

If it’s either of the former scenarios, then… Their prospects are much more grim. He says to plan for that, saying it’s possible the rest of the covert may already be dead or well on their way to it.

The child wakes up sometime during the flight and recruitment phase, and the Mandalorian is relieved to see he, at least, is doing better. He’s not exactly sure how the kid did what he did the night of the prison break gone awry, but he can see why the Client and the Moff may be eager to get their hands on him. During the retrieval of their allies we see Mando poring through what appear to be old codices and scrolls of some forgotten religion, finally found in the hidden recesses of his ship. The leather binding is cracked and the pages are yellowing with age, but it’s clear in how reverently he handles them that they mean a great deal to him.

There’s a quiet moment where we see the rest of the crew asleep in the hold while Mando sits up in the cockpit. He allows the child to crawl into his lap, turning the pages to bookmarked passages with drawings so the child can see. The child makes no sign that he recognizes anything Mando points out to him, murmuring the names of things, until he curiously lands on the page with an iridescent drawing of a cluster of crystals. The child perks up, leaning forward to tap the page, looking between the Mandalorian’s visor and the book expectantly. The Mandalorian re-reads the passage to himself before asking the boy:

“You know what this is?”

The boy tilts his head.

“Kyber crystals? You recognize them?”

The boy coos, his ears alert. He taps the page again.

Mando flips through the adjacent topics on either side of the page containing information on the crystals. “Ilum? Christophsis?”

The child doesn’t respond, instead trying to turn back to the page containing the crystal drawings. Mando flipped forward some more.

“The Whills? Jedha?” No response. “The Final Protector? Does any of this ring a bell?”

Still the child showed no interest. No other drawings or names elicited the same response.

Mando sighed. He wasn’t even sure the boy understood Basic, let alone human speech at all. He’d never spoken.

Still, the passage on the crystals themselves gave the Mandalorian an inkling as to why the boy might have latched onto them, and if his hunch was right, there was only one explanation for why the Mandalorian hadn’t bled out in the cockpit after he left the chop shop.

The thought was concerning.

The rallied forces aboard the Razor Crest descend far out from the outskirts of Nevarro’s port city. Not wanting to alert the Imperials should they be listening over the covert’s comm channels or their own, they maintain radio silence and depart on foot across the flats. They access the old pyroduct exit on the flats and Mando leads them down to the lava flow under the city.

Before they make it very far down the tunnels, though, he’s grabbed by hands reaching from the dark and shoving him up against the igneous wall.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve showing your skin around here,” Paz Vizsla growls. Mando’s crew snaps to attention, blasters raising as two other Mandalorians materialize from the shadows, their own guns brought to bear. Mando scrabbles at the infantryman’s wrist as Paz tightens his grip around his throat. His feet dangle above the ground. “I ought to kill you myself.”

IG-11 raises his blaster and immediately fires a shot that ricochets off of Vizsla’s helmet— The action spurs a flurry of activity as other Mandalorians appear, bringing their guns up in a line of defense the same time Mando’s group does. The cacophony of threats only dies down as Kuiil raises his voice above theirs, stepping between both groups and mediating until both sides calm down. IG-11 lowers his blaster, following Kuiil’s command.

Mando brings his vambrace down hard on Vizsla’s gauntlet, forcing Paz to drop him. He’s pretty sure Paz let him go just to see him fall, but he doesn’t care.

“Where are the foundlings?” Mando asks hoarsely, rubbing his throat.

Paz scoffs. “If you cared, you wouldn’t have done whatever blasted fool thing you did to bring the Empire down on our heads. Where have you been? What did you do?”

“I’ll explain when I can,” Mando says. He gestures to the crew behind him. “I brought backup. Are the foundlings safe? How many people do we have left?”

“You’re not calling the shots here,” Vizsla snarls. “The Armorer’s being held until you turn yourself over to the Moff, and if I have to drag you up there tonight myself—”

“There’s a kid,” Mando interjects. “The Moff is after a child.”

Paz glances to his right where Mando’s allies stand, unsure as they look between themselves.

“Start making sense.”

Mando turns to his group, gesturing for Kuiil to come forward with the boy’s pod. The cradle opens to reveal the small green boy with pointed ears, staring curiously up at those around him with big brown eyes before Mando continues. “I didn’t know the target was a kid when I was hired to find him. He’s barely old enough to walk. The client that commissioned me promised a camtono of beskar for him but I would never have been able to make that exchange. I couldn't turn him over.”

Vizsla’s hackles seem to lower at the sight of the boy and Mando’s explanation, the fire in his tirade dying down. “Why would he want a kid? Is it his?”

“I doubt it. I’ve never seen this species before, I can’t find anything about him anywhere. He’s… different.”

“Different how?”

“He’s Force-sensitive.”

“A Jedi?!” Paz asks, incredulous. The Mandalorians’ grips on their blasters tighten again and Mando’s friends shift uneasily. “The Jedi were wiped out, they’ve been gone for decades, how did you—”

“I don’t know, I’ve only heard of them in folklore, but he can do things I’ve never seen before, I didn’t think—”

“You weren’t thinking at all. You picked up an enemy’s child and you kept it.” Paz shook his head in disbelief. “Of course you would, of course you’d grab something that would bring the Empire to our door—”

“They would have killed him,” Mando snaps. Paz turns away and stalks down the tunnel to where a small cache of guns is propped next to some meager supplies. “The Empire destroys anything that doesn’t fit their mold and takes every good thing the rest of us has for themselves. Beskar or the Force or our land, it doesn’t matter, they wipe us out and scavenge the pieces—”

“Us,” Paz emphasizes, straightening up. He jabs an accusatory finger against Mando’s breastplate. “You had other options. The elders only took you in because you wouldn’t let them go without you. You were old enough, you could’ve gone back to the rubble they picked you out of and stayed there and we would have been fine without you and we wouldn’t be here right now and the Armorer—”

It was Mando’s turn to shove Vizsla against the wall, whipping a vibroblade up to hum beneath the lip of his helmet. Paz went still.

“Don’t speak to me of Aq Vetina,” the Mandalorian says viciously, the antechamber deathly quiet. “I lost everything, Vizsla. And I earned my place here. You’re no better than me because you were born into it.”

The cavern is silent for a long moment as they eye each other.

“If you’re one of us,” Vizsla says slowly, “Then what’s your plan to get everybody out?”

—

Vizsla’s and Mando’s groups come to an uneasy alliance, working together to plan an ambush on the Imperial forces. As Vizsla tells them how part of the covert managed to escape when the Imps started flooding the tunnels, his narration provides the voiceover for the scenes as they happened in the days prior, several warriors taking the foundlings out of one of the hidden exits to escape while the rest of them remained behind to fight and stall for time. The Imperials managed to get the Armorer separated from the group, those who took her no mere Stormtroopers but slick, black armor-encased Deathtroopers. She killed six alone before they stunned her, hauling her back towards the entrance they’d blown in the tunnels as the rest of the Mandalorians fought. Though they’d surged after her they were beaten back by a barrage of cannon fire, an E-WEB stationed up on the street that would have annihilated them had the tunnel not collapsed and blocked them in first. Vizsla’s tone is grim as he details the loss of another four Mandalorians who had gone above together in an attempt to retrieve their leader. Vizsla pulled the rest back to regroup and strategize farther outside of town, should the Imperials come back down to finish the job.

After spending the entire night strategizing it comes down to this: Kuiil and IG-11 would leave to take the boy back to the ship for safekeeping while Mando’s group used the tunnels to get up to the cantina on the other end of the main drag with the kid’s floating cradle as bait, and then they’d proceed to negotiate an exchange with the Moff for the Armorer while the Mandalorians placed detonators around the central bazaar. While Karga stalled for time with the Moff, backed by Vizsla, Mando, and Mando’s allies, the rest of the Mandalorians would move into position for an ambush and strike from above, using the Phoenixes to mount an aerial assault. Vizsla would destroy or commandeer the E-WEB to take out the Imps while Mando retrieved the Armorer. With luck, there’d still be enough Mandalorians with jetpacks able to grab each of them on the ground and fly out of range, finishing off the Imperials with the detonation from above.

The rescue party begins to bed down for the night, only a few hours between them and sunup. Paz can be seen looking over at the child’s cradle as Mando rolls out his bedroll. He looks back at Mando.

“How do you know the kid’s really Jedi?” he asks. “What did he do?”

Mando glances at Paz, getting settled. His hand rests on his ribs as he lies on his back.

“He saved me.”

The scene cuts to Dr. Pershing and the Client, frustratedly discussing something between themselves in the lab of the Stormtrooper safehouse. A comlink on the table behind them lights up and crackles to life, a familiar voice saying, “Come in, Doctor. It’s me.”

The two quickly come to the table, the Client picking up the comlink. “Yes? I presume you have answers?”

“Yes,” the voice says. “I can tell you where the child is.”

The next day brought with it a sense of unease. Everything was contingent on their bluff holding up long enough to keep the Moff’s attention while the Mandalorians snuck into the city from the outside, remaining undetected. Mando comm’d Kuiil to have him on standby once he reached the ship, ready to fly the Crest out to them on their escape.

Mando, Karga, Paz Vizsla, and the rest of Mando’s few recruits split off and made for the surface. They cut an exit from the maintenance access grate in the common house, quietly slipping out and barricading themselves behind upturned tables for safe measure. Karga makes his announcement and gives their terms to the Moff from the cantina.

The Moff seems entirely disinterested in what Karga has to say, however, unresponsive and unperturbed. Mando can see his focus turn almost to face him, as though he can somehow see through the architecture blocking him from view. The man in black outside projects his voice to be heard through the latticed window.

“A chain-code is a curious thing,” the Imperial says. “Individualized for each citizen, archived upon their demise, and until recently thought to be irreplicable. Falsified perhaps, but never revived.”

Mando goes very still. Karga and Paz looked between each other. “What’s he talking about, Mando? Who is this guy?”

The Moff continued. “When I saw this one crop up for the first time in almost thirty years, I thought our intelligence had found a glitch in the system, or perhaps someone was able to slip by unnoticed for decades before making some crucial error in revealing themselves.”

The familiar flashback of a mother and father racing through city streets begins to flicker in and out as the camera focuses on the Mandalorian, explosions and laser fire raining down around them as the man carries his young son in his arms. Neighbors, disciples, friends… Bodies fall as ships fly overhead and battle droids stalk the streets of Aq Vetina.

The Mandalorian strides for the door, halted in his tracks by the crew grabbing his shoulders, standing between him and the exit. “Mando,” one of them hisses, “Mando, what are you doing?”

The music builds, and though we can’t hear it we see the woman scream as another explosion rocks the ground beside them, a nearby wall crumbling and collapsing. The boy’s father course-corrects and races down a different street, his eyes darting between the chaos for somewhere to protect his family. The boy clings to his neck and squeezes his eyes shut, feeling his father’s coarse beard against his cheek as strong arms tremble around him. Plasma and smoke fills the air.

“It’s Moff Gideon,” the Mandalorian snarls. “He was an ISB officer during the Purge. He knew my name— He knew how to draw us out—”

The man stumbles to a knee but the boy’s mother helps him up, dragging him away from the wreckage of yet another building. Their hearts thud wildly in their chests as they race for the cellar beyond the pavilion, adrenaline fueling their feet and clearing their heads of all other thoughts but to run, and survive.

“Gideon gave the order for the Night of a Thousand Tears,” Mando said venomously, jerking in their grip. “He ordered the attack on my home.”

The scene in the ravaged cantina melts away, and Aq Vetina takes center stage.

—

The reinforced cellar doors come into view. The man skids to a halt, looking around them as his wife takes the boy from his arms so he can open the doors. He turns his son to look at him, cradling his round face in his hands as he does.

“Look at me,” he says as steadily as he can manage. “I will come back for you. It’s going to be okay.”

The boy nods, wide brown eyes mirroring his father’s. His father kisses his brow and his mother helps lower him below ground. There isn’t time for him to tell his wife goodbye as he helps her clamber down to meet their son, and as he takes one last look at the faces of his family he tries to smile in reassurance, praying they don’t see his tears as he closes the doors, sunlight dissipating to darkness around them.

The man turns to run, to lead their attackers away from the shelter. Four battle droids march down the streets. He waves to draw their fire, dodges another volley of shots and darts away from the cellar—

But the man in red only makes it twenty feet before a deafening clap of thunder knocks him back, the blast from the battle droid’s missile sending a concussive ripple through his body.

There’s a long, deafening silence accompanied only by a high-pitched ringing in his ears. The man tries to move, rolls over, thinking No, no, please… Please, not them… and his head falls at a painful angle to see the cellar doors beyond him, caved in and hanging from the hinges in a smoldering black crater.

His heart seizes. He chokes, the painful realization of what he’s just lost washing over him. An agonizing cry of fury, despair, and heartbroken anguish tears from his chest as he screams.

The man shoves off the ground in a rage-induced burst of defiance, grabbing a broken spade and wielding it like a quarterstaff as a battle droid comes into view. He darts beneath its uplifted arm as turmoil rages on, uncaring and unseeing beyond the singular purpose of dismantling the creature piece by piece by any means necessary. He jabs the broken-off metal tip into the droid’s unarmored shoulder joint high above him and shoves it up into the carapace, sparks flying. He pulls back and strikes again as the droid twists to grab him. Unfeeling metal locks around his upper arm and yanks him into the air, his feet kicking above the ground. The uncaring optical sensors turn his way as the arm locks in another shot.

He doesn’t care. He’s already died once that day.

But before he can pass into the next life with a mouth full of blood and a demand for answers, a different shot rings out, hitting the battle droid in the opposite shoulder. The man blinks, and the droid pivots, only to be shot in rapid fire succession by blaster-fire of a different kind, collapsing it to the earth and releasing the man as it does.

Several long seconds pass and the man tries to gather his strength. He turns over and looks up to see the visor of a warrior clad in armor, more like them descending upon the city and swiftly taking out every battle droid in the streets, shielding survivors with their own armored bodies, deflecting blaster-fire, pushing the advancing assailants back.

When the warrior extends their hand to him, the man takes it without hesitation and stands to his feet.

“The Imperial Security Bureau has records dating back decades.” Gideon looked to the common house from the side. “It’s curious to see a child’s chain-code come back from the dead.”

Mando’s allies struggle to hold him back, the whole group straining and clamoring for him to wait, to stick to the plan. Outside, more soldiers file in behind the Deathtroopers.

“Tell me, Tomás Djarin, for how long did you think you could use your son’s code as a cover for this substitute?”

A growl rips from Mando’s throat and he breaks free, lunging for the exit and slamming against the door, narrowly seized only by Karga and Vizsla hauling him back by the shoulders. Mando seethes, straining against their hold, his boots losing traction and sliding over gravel as he fights.

“What do you propose?” Karga barked to the Moff outside, gritting his teeth in the struggle.

Gideon smiled.

“Reasonable negotiation. I have in my possession an E-WEB cannon, with which I know many of your Mandalorian’s brethren are already intimately familiar. Come outside, lay down your arms, and we’ll consider sparing the city.”

Thick tension bore down around them in the silence. Mando sagged defeatedly, the reminder of the city held hostage shuttering his ire. It was time.

“Kuiil,” he murmurs into his comm. “Kuiil if you can hear me, take the kid and get out of here.”

He keeps his hand on the cradle as they leave the common house.

Moff Gideon towers above them, encased in black, his face inscrutable. The Client stands off to the side, seeing them march out in front of the squadrons of Deathtroopers and Stormtroopers alike, five against fifty. Gideon regards them almost with disinterest, and Mando seethes beneath the mask.

Karga acts as spokesman, but Mando is barely listening, his hatred of the Moff boiling under the surface until Gideon gestures for his troopers to bring out the Armorer. As Deathtroopers exit one of the crumbling buildings to their right, Mando's blood runs cold.

The covert leader is bound by the wrists, bloodied and devoid of all armor save for her helmet. The once-gleaming brass is clouded with ash and blood, smeared to a dull finish, and she’s hiding a limp as she walks. The Deathtroopers on either side of her hold onto her upper arms, escorting her to the center as Moff Gideon comes to stand directly behind her, his blaster drawn.

“The child,” Gideon says coolly, nodding to the cradle. “As soon as you hand him to me alive, your leader and the city are yours.”

The scene cuts to Kuiil and the assassin droid approaching the Crest on foot, still a good way’s away. The child sleeps against Kuiil’s shoulder. A high-pitched whine fills the air, quiet before steadily increasing in volume, and as Kuiil and IG-11 register the noise they turn, only for a bolt of red blasterfire to hit Kuiil in the shoulder. Kuiil falls to the ground, the child tumbling from his grip. Another laserbolt hits IG-11 at the same time, ricocheting off his head plate and sending him down. Four speederbikes begin to converge on the trio, the child sitting up from his blanket on unsteady feet. The Scout troopers split to flank the group, slowing to a stop. One hops off and goes to retrieve the child, who looks between the four of them, his ears turning down in fear. The Ugnaught’s body doesn’t move, but strangely enough the droid’s does; his servos spin as his motor functions return to life, the reinforced head plate Kuiil installed with care successfully protecting IG from the same fate that had befallen him on Arvala-7.

We see a split-screen HUD from IG’s point of view as his optical sensors spin to assess each target in millisecond timing. The scout trooper that had dismounted his bike stumbles back as the assassin droid comes to life, lifting off of the black earth. The troopers collectively fire at the droid, who in turn takes Kuiil’s blaster from the ground as he stands and returns fire, effortlessly spinning, evading, or deflecting the troopers’ bolts as he advances towards the child, firing at each of the troopers in turn. One of the speederbikes explodes, taking its trooper out with it. IG scoops up the child, spinning his torso to shield the boy as two more troopers are shot and fall, one after the other; none of them stood a chance against the cold and calculating processor of an assassin droid with both his manufactured skillset and a reprogrammed duty to protect, and as IG turns, the last trooper standing stumbles back in terror, firing wide as he falls onto his back. IG-11’s long strides close the distance between them and he kneels down to grab the man’s neck and slam his head back into the ground.

IG stands, spinning his torso back to the front. The child is unharmed, his ears perking up as he surveys their surroundings.

“It seems our position was compromised,” IG says mechanically, holding the boy out to peer down at him. “I surmise by the attack on our party that the Mandalorian’s plans have gone awry and that our allies are in need of assistance.”

There’s a groan somewhere off to the right, and IG turns with the boy to see Kuiil struggling to roll over, grunting in pain. The droid goes to the Ugnaught and kneels, assessing him with a clinician’s eye.

“You have been badly injured,” IG says as Kuiil sits up, extending his arm as a nozzle flips to take the place of his pincers. It sprays a mist into the opening where the laserfire burned through Kuiil’s coat, and Kuiil sighs in some relief. “But it appears our adversary’s shot missed anything vital. The bacta spray will heal you within a matter of hours.”

“IG,” Kuiil grunts, gingerly getting to his feet. “Mando is going to need your help.” He gathers his few belongings as the droid follows, the Razor Crest visible in the distance. “Take one of the bikes and get to town as quickly as possible. I will take the child with me. Do what you can to protect the others.”

“Affirmative.” IG hands off the boy to Kuiil and rests a hand on his creator’s good shoulder. “I hope to see you again soon.”

The Ugnaught nodded and the two turned and parted ways. The child watched as the bounty droid picked up two rifles and mounted a speederbike, kicking dust up behind him as he sped away.

Back in the city the negotiating party faces the Imperials. Moff Gideon’s serene expression reveals nothing.

Mando hears Vizsla yell from his position on the other side of the street, jerking his head to the Armorer. “How do we know she isn’t a decoy?” His voice is unsteady. At this distance Mando can hear her breathing raggedly through the helmet’s modulator. They needed more time.

Gideon almost smiles, then digs his free hand under the edge of her helmet. The Mandalorians jolt on reflex, but stop as the Moff holds her in place in front of himself.

“Would you like a guarantee?” he asks. “Or would you even know, regardless?”

“Do not give him the child,” the Armorer grits out, and they freeze at the confirmation. She stands as straight as she can, her voice hoarse but unmistakable. The Moff remains impassive.

“What assurance do you give that you’ll leave these people in peace?” Mando says, gesturing to the town. His joints have locked up. He’s barely breathing.

“Only this,” Gideon says plainly, and then he gestures to the side with his blaster. “Give me the child, or I promise to return to you tenfold what you had planned for us.”

At that, Deathtroopers from the shadows of the surrounding streets march out with the rest of the Mandalorians at gunpoint in front of them. Mando’s shock turns to outrage and despair as he sees each of the ambushing party lined up around the bazaar, and it’s then that Karga smoothly steps past Mando, pulling Mando’s blaster from his holster in one move and crossing the line of troopers, a grim look on his face when he turns back.

“I’m sorry Mando,” Karga says, and he almost looks as though he means it. “I have people to take care of too.”

The broker steps beyond the ranks of troopers, receiving a nod from Gideon before passing the Client. The Client slips something into Karga’s hand and Karga tucks it into his breast pocket, the two of them retreating from view as Mando trembles with helpless rage. The Deathtrooper at the E-WEB primes it to charge. Moff Gideon steps forward with the Armorer still directly in front of him. “The child, Djarin,” he says. “My generosity and patience have run their course.”

Mando hesitates as he steps forward, his hand still on the cradle, desperately trying to think of anything that might give them a chance to escape. A shadow passes over Gideon’s face, and he brings his pistol up under the Armorer’s jaw. Every Mandalorian jerks against their captors and Gideon digs the muzzle of his gun against the Armorer’s neck, a sliver of skin now visible above her collar. They go still. Mando’s fist clenches so tight he can feel his bones shift.

“Now.”

Defeated and without recourse, Mando presses the button on the cradle to open the shield, revealing the empty space within.

This time Moff Gideon does smile.

“It appears only one of us is a man of his word.”

And then Moff Gideon rips the Armorer’s helmet off her head.

Absolute, unfettered rage bursts from every Mandalorian in a vitriolic war cry as all hell breaks loose in an instant, every Mandalorian rearing back against their captors with unparalleled ferocity, breaking free and firing at the Imperials without mercy. Mando tears the Armorer away from Gideon and unleashes the full power of his flamethrower in Gideon’s and the Deathtroopers’ faces, hauling her back from the blaze as both sides fire shot-for-shot at one another.

The Mandalorian closest to Mando dives forward to grab the Deathtrooper’s rifle and cover their retreat. Vizsla shoots a white-hot spray of molten plasma from his gauntlet across the four troopers that had restrained him, their screams following them to the ground as their armor melts and they convulse. The firefight descends into chaos, Mando’s allies working together to cover one another and retrieve arms and munitions all across the square, ducking for cover behind the debris. The Imperials are caught off guard, having thought disarming them would be enough to keep them from retaliating, but they quickly find that even an unarmed Mandalorian is a weapon.

Mando shields the Armorer as they run, feeling blaster fire streak across his bicep, glance off the beskar pauldron and helmet, sear his vision white. The Armorer stumbles, trying to keep up but buckling under the weight of exhaustion and her injuries. He pulls her behind a large chunk of a fallen archway, breaking the binders holding her wrists together and looking wildly around for somewhere to get her to safety. He sees a clear path from their position back to the common house and the two of them begin to run.

A grenade lands in their path and Mando has seconds to react. He tackles the Armorer to the side, shielding her as best he can as the explosion blows them a dozen feet away, their ears ringing. Mando felt the lance of shrapnel embed itself in his leg, and his head slams against a piece of the barricade, stopping his trajectory and sending him to the ground. As he tries to make sense of which way is up he can see the Armorer struggling to pull herself up next to him, pulling a scavenged rifle from the wreckage of the street. He can’t breathe, and as his vision swims he catches sight of the covert’s leader, resilient even now, forcing her hands to cooperate as she fires back at their assailants from behind a broken wall. Her face is streaked with blood and dirt and the tracks of tears streaming down through both. Her helmet lay distantly in the dirt in the middle of the street surrounded by rubble and the bodies of dead Imperials.

Of everybody there, she was the most justified in leaving him for dead, and still she fought.

The Imperials start to gain ground as Mandalorians are killed or incapacitated. Their forces start to bottleneck, forced backward in the onslaught, but just as the Imperials start to catch them on the backfoot a high-pitched whine fills the air. Seconds later a speederbike slides into the fray, an assassin droid leaping off and firing with deadly accuracy against the troopers. A rallying cry goes up from Mando’s allies, even Vizsla crowing in triumph as IG advances, his body twisting and limbs spinning to fire in every direction.

“Paz!” Mando yells, struggling upright. “Cover her!”

The heavy infantryman picks up one Deathtrooper and slams him bodily into another, toppling both. He dashes over to their place amongst the craters and plants himself in front of the Armorer; she grabs hold of his shoulder for support, firing around him and shouting orders as they clear a path to the E-WEB. Mando drags himself to his feet and ends up back-to-back with IG-11, feeling an odd sense of gratitude towards the droid he’d left for dead all those weeks ago. The two of them twist and turn around each other, IG deflecting shots as readily as he fires.

“IG unit! Where’s the kid?!”

“The child is safe aboard the Razor Crest,” IG says, taking out three more troopers. Vizsla takes hold of the cannon and rattles the Imperial forces, decimating a fresh wave of Stormtroopers. “Kuiil is en route to our location.”

“No! Tell him to take the child and get out of here!”

“There is no time,” IG says. “My duty is to nurse and protect: you and our allies are in need of protection.”

Mando growls at the droid’s obstinate refusal to listen. He’s about to drag one of the Mandalorians with a jetpack closer and order them to fly out to Kuiil, but then he sees an arc of flickering white through the smoke of battle.

Time almost seems to slow. A swipe of black void edged in white light cuts through the haze beyond Vizsla and the Armorer. They haven’t seen him yet, but the figure in black carrying the blade materializes through the smoke, and in the breadth of a second, Moff Gideon raises his arms and brings an otherworldly saber clean down through the barrel of the E-WEB. Paz jerks back from the recoil of the cannon falling apart in a series of smaller, sizzling explosions, and as his attention turns to the Moff he blocks the still-vulnerable Armorer, shoving her back. Gideon brings the phantasmal sword up again and carves a downward slash at the infantryman— Paz blocks it with his vambrace in a skitter of sparks.

Mando moves without realizing it. He darts through the tumult of battle, honing in on the angry, half-burned face of Moff Gideon, not knowing if or for how long Paz’s armor can withstand the heat of the spectral blade. Laserfire streaks around him, each of their allies and adversaries fighting for their lives.

Gideon cuts through the chain gun’s connecting line, rendering Vizsla’s heavy repeating rifle useless. The next slash is caught by his other vambrace, Gideon pressing the sword in long enough Paz’s gauntlet starts to blaze orange, melting the circuits of his plasma thrower and leaving hot beskar intact to burn through his armor cladding. Though he easily towers above the Moff he’s forced to fight defensively as Gideon darts and weaves, aiming for the Armorer behind him, throwing off his blocks and parries. Vizsla’s vision burns with hatred as he sees this aruteii— this outsider— wielding what he knows is his ancestor’s sword against them. Imperials advance from the side, forcing the Armorer to shoot them and protect Vizsla, leaving him to fight Gideon. It’s only when they’re backed into the fallen debris of the city that the saber’s trajectory is halted mid-swing.

Mando stands resolute between his enemy and his tribesmen, the beskar tines of his pulse rifle catching the sword in the air. Gideon’s shock morphs to immediate outrage and he rips the saber back, twirling his wrist to cut upward, blocked again by Mando’s gun. The Mandalorian advances, using his rifle like a spear in a flurry of movement, energy crackling off the blade’s contact with every strike. Vizsla and the Armorer work together against the Imperials, and Mando advances on the Moff.

Back against the Imperials, the Armorer sees an opening, the door of a building near the Imperials’ base of operations buckled inward. She turns back to see the Moff fighting the bounty hunter forty feet away. They’re too close together to get a clear shot and smoke continues to billow from the explosions surrounding them. If the Moff finds an opening she knows the bounty hunter’s armor won’t hold against the Darksaber.

And then she looks down to the opposite end of the decimated street, seeing a distinct silhouette over the horizon growing closer every second.

The Armorer breaks the latch on the door with the butt of her rifle. “Get everybody towards the dockyards,” she orders Paz over the din of battle.

“What are you doing?!” Paz barks over his shoulder. He fires again, killing two more soldiers.

The Armorer kicks the door in, determination written across her face. “Reclaiming what I can.”

—

Moff Gideon spits insults between his strikes, and Mando fights just as viciously in return. Thrust, block, parry, jab— Every close-quarters maneuver is accompanied by the unsettling hum of a blade dipped in the void of space, light bending and refracting around its edge. Gideon swings at his head and when he ducks, the sword carves through a support column, bringing part of the decimated building down with it. Mando rolls to the side, hearing the hum of the blade miss him by inches.

Mando swings the rifle upward again, aiming it at the Moff. Gideon deflects the bolt of energy, his face twisted in a snarl. The Amban rifle crackles with electricity, but as Mando jabs the end of it towards the Moff, the barrel and its current are redirected by Gideon into one of his own troopers. Before Mando can twist free and put enough space between them to fire, Moff Gideon pulls back and twirls the blade directly up towards the Mandalorian’s chest.

There’s a gnarled crackle of energy as the saber cleaves the pulse rifle in two at the wooden stock, a piece of the gun in each of the Mandalorian’s hands. That split second shock is enough of an opening for Moff Gideon to thrust again, stabbing through the Mandalorian’s lower breastplate.

Mando feels the searing edge of white-hot fire dig into his body; he cries out in agony, doubled over at the shock. Time slows yet again, and all he can see is the helpless face of the boy he saved in his mind’s eye, knowing that if he cannot defeat the Moff, it won’t matter if his allies escape with the child. Gideon will keep sending hunters after the boy until he’s killed everybody standing between him and his prize.

With the greatest effort he’s ever exerted in his life, Tomás Djarin brings the barrel of his rifle up and jabs it against the hilt of Gideon’s blade once more, trapping it between the tines. Moff Gideon’s eyes widen, and the Mandalorian shoves him off with an agonized yell.

There’s no time to recover— Mando messily blocks the black blade with the barrel of the gun. He stumbles, shoves himself up and forces himself to fight through his injuries, but it’s clear he’s barely clinging to consciousness.

He’s bent at the waist and clutching his midsection, leaning against a stone column. He manages to duck and the move forces Gideon’s blade to become lodged into the stone, and Mando stumbles around the column, ducking when he hears the telltale hum behind him. Another spray of stone flies over his head— He twists, evades a second thrust from the sword, and punches Moff Gideon in the face.

Gideon howls in infuriated pain, messily swinging the sword as the Mandalorian parries it with what remains of the rifle. Hit after hit strikes stone until another slash glances off Mando’s beskar pauldron, singeing his flak vest. This time when he stumbles Moff Gideon brings his foot up and kicks him square in the chest, sending him sprawling a dozen feet down through the rubble. Mando yells in agony, the rifle skittering from reach. The Moff stands triumphant beneath the crumbling building, breathing hard, the saber in hand. Mando drags himself to one knee, refusing to die without standing up.

“You and your kind should have been eradicated long ago,” Gideon snarls. “The Empire will not make the same mistake twice.”

Before Gideon can advance, however, the Mandalorian aims his gauntlet and fires.

Gideon easily evades what he assumed to be a projectile, the Mandalorian firing wide. It isn’t until he sees Mando wrap both hands around the whipcord and pull it taut that Gideon’s glare hardens in confusion, and as he looks behind him there’s a grating, crumbling sound of stone on stone, the whipcord wrapped around what remained of the support column.

With wild eyes, Moff Gideon looks up as the structure groans, and with one final heave Mando wrenches the cable through the broken, weakened support, and the overarching section of the building finally gives way.

A tremendous rumbling crash brings the building down in a massive cloud of dust, shaking the ground. Mando runs as well as he can to a barricade, barely evading several large pieces of rock cascading behind him. When Mando looks back, Moff Gideon is gone. All that remains is the towering pile of rubble, carved out of the connecting buildings in the bazaar.

He wishes he felt relief. All he feels is pain.

A sudden ripple of force shudders through the square and extinguishes several flames, and all eyes turn to see a heavy artillery gunship descending to hover at the other end of the street near the dockyards. There’s a whoop of defiant hope from Mando’s friends and allies and they start trying to make their way down the long market street.

His head pounds. His leg is shredded. Exhaustion hangs on his limbs and his abdomen burns where the blade seared through his flesh, every movement sending lancing pain radiating through his torso. He looks beyond to the tumult of battle and surveys the scene.

Kuill has the ramp of the Razor Crest lowered, hovering in place for everyone to get onboard while there’s still time. More and more Imperials start to march on the bazaar. Mando can barely hold his head up to see Kuiil frantically gesturing from the cockpit, and with great effort he stumbles further to the second concentric barricade while his allies fight their way down the street. Very few covert members remain, and the battered few have to dodge through enemy fire between the razed buildings, trying to get out of range as Mando’s friends fight with them, shoulder to shoulder. Two of the remaining Mandalorians with jetpacks help draw the fire of the Imperials, but even they are forced to the ground, too much laser fire flying from too many directions. IG-11 sees the Mandalorian struggling to even stand as he holds one hand to his middle before he finally falls to his knees.

—

The Armorer twists, shattering another Deathtrooper’s chest-plate, caving their chest in. Two Stormtroopers emerge from an alley, targeting the droid and the hunter, and she brings the hammer up in a strike beneath one’s jaw before bringing it down on the helmet of the trooper behind him. She doesn’t wait to see them fall as she jerks her attention back to Mando.

Soldiers quickly file indoors and shoot outward from broken windows into the street now, the bazaar becoming a shooting gallery on both sides. The droid is far more accurate than any of them could hope to be, but even he can’t move without a barrage of laser fire forcing him down.

The bounty hunter is blocked from the assault by the debris shielding him and the assassin droid. She’d seen the Imperial stab him in the chest and knows he can hardly move. She doesn’t know how he even got to his feet.

The Mandalorian is dying, and his only chance of survival is extraction.

She quickly assesses their surroundings, but the moment she goes to step out of the mouth of the alley and slink down behind the lower-level stonework, a heavy hand clamps down on her shoulder, jerking her back.

“Don’t,” Vizsla says grimly. “We can’t save him. We have to go.”

“Let go,” the Armorer warns him, rolling her shoulder in an attempt to dislodge him. “If we don’t try, his death is guaranteed.”

“Alor,” Vizsla says, the pain in his voice evident. He nods to the shots raining down into the street from above, troopers filing onto the roofs of several buildings now. “Please. I cannot block them all.”

The Armorer shakes, wavering for the first time since she was unhelmed, but her eyes are filled with fire and flint as she twists out of the infantryman’s grip. “He wouldn’t leave us,” she says. “He’s the reason we’ve made it this far.”

“He knew what the cost of saving you could be,” Vizsla grits out, pulling her again. “And it would be a waste of his sacrifice to die now.”

A shot sails past them, missing them by inches as another strafing run of fire jutters against the earth. Vizsla wraps an arm around her from behind and pulls her forcibly back. The ship beyond falters in stasis, shots from larger artillery scorching off the hull.

“We need to go,” Vizsla says, dragging her with him despite her shouts of protest. “We can still save the others.”

With a heavy heart the Armorer is hauled away from enemy fire, praying the droid can find a way to secure their freedom. He’s the only hope the Mandalorian has.

Kuiil can’t fire from the angle he’s at and is busy trying to maintain a steady position for the survivors who climb onboard, who in turn are all so busy helping one another and crowding into the hold none of them see the small child in their midst, his stature and familiarity with the gunship allowing him to slip between them unnoticed the same way he avoided Zero weeks before.

Stormtroopers fire from rooftops down at the escaping heroes below. Mando and IG-11 are pinned down, unable to fight their way out as they cover the rest of the escaping party. A streak of silver catches the light and Mando realizes the Armorer is there, hammer and calipers in hand as she dispatches Deathtroopers with vicious precision and ferocity, vengeance exacted against those who held her captive. Vizsla follows behind her and the remaining covert, dodging through the wreckage as he covers their backs. He makes it to the Armorer’s helmet lying in the street, picking it up as they move. Mando can feel the adrenaline bleeding from his body, the stab wound beneath his breastplate buckling him with every step.

Of all the ways the Mandalorian expected to die, fighting side-by-side with a droid was never one of them. IG-11 was a crack shot, but there were simply too many Stormtroopers coveyed behind buildings for them to advance without being shot in the back. Mando’s gut throbs and black spots swim in front of his vision. He knew he was dying.

“You are in need of medical assistance,” IG says, peering at the Mandalorian between the laserfire. He shoots another Stormtrooper, and two more take their place.

“It’s too late for me,” the Mandalorian says miserably. Strength seeps from his body as the blackness presses in around his eyes. He can taste blood on his tongue. “Go. Get to the Crest. Tell the rest of them I’m— I’m sorry. I hadn’t meant for th-them to be hurt.”

Another explosion goes off nearby, closer than the ones before it. Mando leans his head back against the stony debris.

“I am programmed to protect you,” IG-11 says.

“There’s no way out,” Mando replies, coughing wetly. “Please, just— Keep the rest of them safe. Tell the kid I’m sorry. For everything.”

Mando had always known it would only be a matter of time before his sins caught up with him. You didn’t get to where he was in life without making mistakes, but now as he thought of the little boy in the floating cradle, he couldn’t help but wish he’d had the chance to tell him goodbye.

Another ripple sweeps through the street, shuddering the architecture, and in an instant the laser-fire sounds far away and muffled. Mando tries to turn his head to the side, and what he sees perplexes him.

The Crest was a blur behind the near transparent, blue-green bubble that had formed in a hemispherical dome over Mando and IG, the blaster-fire outside being repelled by whatever invisible force sustained it.

“What- What is that?” he chokes out.

“Ah,” says IG-11, sitting up from behind the rubble. “It appears the child is no longer safe aboard the Razor Crest.”

Paz heard the sound of the battle change first. He looks around them, then hangs out of the docking ramp to see the boy a dozen meters away with his back to them, one hand raised as he summons a force field around himself, the last Mandalorian, and the droid. Paz hollers for the others’ attention, but as soon as he tries to step off the ramp the boy’s other hand comes up, throwing him backwards and rocking the ship with a violent shake.

In the cockpit Kuiil tries to pull up on the yoke, seeing Imperial ships on the distant horizon, but the Crest remains seized in stasis. “What’s going on down there?!” he barks over his shoulder.

Vizsla rams the invisible barrier covering the open doorway with his shoulder again, all of those in the hold trying to break through. “The foundling’s blocking us in!”

Mando sees the boy concentrating fifty feet away, retaining some invisible hold on the ship and on his position next to IG-11. His allies yell somewhere distantly behind the child, and Mando realizes he’s buying them time.

“Go,” IG-11 says. “The child needs you. I can protect you until you both get to the ship.”

“Come with us,” Mando says, half using the droid for support, half pulling him along.

The droid gently pulls his arm away. A barrage of lasers and small explosions continue to hit the outside of the bubble. He hoists his gun up.

“If you assure me the child will be safe, I can revert to my original function. You must go.”

“But you’ll die,” Mando protests.

A larger explosion hits the outside of the bubble and it wavers, the child’s brow digging deeper over eyes closed in concentration. The repurposed assassin droid pushes Mando towards the boy.

“And you and the child will live, and I will have fulfilled my purpose.”

“Please,” the Mandalorian pleads. “We need you.”

“The child needs you.” The droid gently pulls his arm away, and Mando doesn’t have the energy to reach for it as the droid steps back, turning to walk in the opposite direction of the ship.

“Goodbye, Mandalorian,” IG said. “Tell Kuiil I give him my thanks.”

Another explosion hits the force field and it dissipates in shimmering ripples of blue and green. Mando’s heart rate spikes as he sees the child stumble, exhausted and exposed, and with one last burst of energy he dives through the smoke, scooping the boy up into his arms and running for the ship. Behind him the assassin droid’s voice can be heard from down the street.

“Manufacturer’s protocol dictates that I cannot be captured…”

—

A Mandalorian races with a pounding heart to his ship, leaping towards the ramp with a child curled protectively against his chest. He grabs the brace and lurches to the side as the pilot pulls up, and allies old and new reach with arms outstretched to pull them to safety inside the cargo hold.

The explosion on the streets of Nevarro sends a concussive blast rippling up through the surrounding buildings as the Razor Crest pulls away. The pitch and roll of the ship forces the survivors to brace themselves; Kuiil pulls up, firing with deadly accuracy against the Imperial ships bearing down on them. Several successive shots blast the ships apart and with a burst of acceleration Kuiil flies through the wreckage and smoke and soars skyward, leaving the destruction behind them.

Mando hears his friends cheer. Laughter and relief suffuse the hold with a warmth he hasn’t felt in years. His tribesmen and his newfound friends look over each other’s injuries, helping each other stand. The ache of his own injuries throbs with his slowing pulse, and he finally exhales a grateful sigh of relief.

The child squirms under his arm, and as Mando sits back against the bulkhead, the darkness pressing around his vision overtakes him and everything begins to fade. The last thing he feels is a small, three-fingered hand reaching up to him, slipping beneath the chin of his helmet.

Dim light filters through the helmet and someone shakes his shoulder. He couldn’t have been out long and as his blurry vision clears he can see the distressed face of the Armorer through his visor in front of him. He thinks she’s saying his name, but it still takes several long seconds for him to register her voice. The fire in his abdomen is unlike anything he’s ever felt. He’s barely clinging to life.

“Can you hear me?”

He tries for a nod, but even that sends pain through his neck and shoulders. His visor tilts down to see the child, large eyes watery and full of fear, his distressed coos tugging at the Mandalorian’s heart.

“He- He shouldn’t-t be here,” Mando croaks.

The kid crawls over his leg to perch next to his midsection. Mando’s arm feels leaden, too heavy to raise, and as he tries to sit up again he bites off a choked out yell of pain, the Armorer pushing him flat as she works to rid him of his belt and bandolier. Sweat pours from his brow and chills course through his body.

The child climbs up onto him. Mando watches as the boy moves, frantically gesturing for the Armorer to remove the fabric staunching the flow of blood beneath Mando’s breastplate. She does, swiftly following it with both breastplate and plackart to reveal the extent of the damage caused by the saber. Mando chokes in pain despite her care, his leg kicking out weakly on reflex as he writhes, vulnerability clawing at every nerve.

And then, for some unknown reason, a sense of gentle assurance washes over him like a tide. He gasps, relaxing immediately as tension releases from his chest; lost and confused, helpless to stop what comes next, he looks down at the boy.

Awake this time, Mando watches the child close his eyes in concentration; he hovers his hand over the charred, bloody wound with blackened skin lining the edges and depth of the laceration.

And over a long, tense moment we see the vicious injury begin to close up before their eyes.

Mando’s eyes prick with tears, seeing the depth of care on the child’s face. For so long he had worked to keep the boy safe, fighting off any and every assailant that dared try to take the child from him or put the boy in danger. He’d held him as he slept, picked him up when he stumbled, kept him close and loved him the only way he knew how, and now he watched as the child selflessly returned that care a hundred times over. No matter what he did in this life, Tomás knew he’d never truly be able to repay the boy for what he did.

Mando heaves a sigh of relief, the strain of survival being lifted in an instant. The boy turns, carefully coming up to his shoulders and tapping his small hand against the metal of the helmet. Before he can register what’s happening, the Armorer has joined him and has carefully cradled the sides of his helmet in her hands.

Alarm cuts through his senses and he immediately clasps her wrist, shaking his head and looking around wildly. “No- I shouldn’t- I’m fine—”

“You are in the captain’s berth,” she says, her face calm. “The child and I are the only ones here. Let us help.”

He’s shaking his head, trying to sit up, pull away, dislodge her hands without tipping the boy over, but he’s still so weak he can’t muster the strength. “I can’t— I’m not s-supposed—”

“Tomás,” the Armorer said, catching his protesting hands, and the sound of her weary voice makes him stop fighting. “I was the one who bestowed your armor. Of all the people on this vessel, I am the one best suited to help. Be still.”

The injustice of her own oath being broken by Moff Gideon weighs on his conscience to an unbearable degree. Though she remains stoic and reserved, the lines on her face are shadowed and deep, and there are still streaks of blood and tears on her skin. He can only imagine the toll it’s taken on her.

“Alor,” the Mandalorian said roughly, tears filling his own voice. “I— I’m so sorry. Please— Please forgive me.”

The Armorer sighs, her jaw working to maintain her composure, but she remains where she is with her hands on either side of his face. “You are not the cause of my pain,” she said. “Cuyir su. Be still.”

Somewhere beside him he heard a plaintive sound, accompanied by a tug on his cowl. The boy appeared in his periphery, his little face filled with concern.

Slowly, the Mandalorian lets go, and the Armorer lifts his helmet free.

The man we see is a sight older than Din Djarin, deep set wrinkles lining his face and silver hair prominent at his temples. He has the features of the father in the flashbacks, and though his brown eyes are the same, they are much more tired, and much more sad.

He starts to choke up as he looks at the Armorer. The child moves and places his small hand on the Mandalorian’s face. The Armorer watches intently, and suddenly the pain at his temple and the base of his skull abates, the wounds he’s sustained closing up.

The child sits back, exhausted, and immediately curls up to the side of the Mandalorian’s chest beneath his arm, falling asleep. Tomás looks at him in awe, gently stroking the boy’s hand with his thumb.

“So this is the one whose safety deemed such destruction,” the Armorer murmured. “I see why you thought it judicious not to return.”

Tomás cleared his throat, sitting up and cradling the child gently. “If I’d known what would happen, I- I never would have put the tribe at risk.”

“We knew what could happen if we were discovered,” she said. She stowed medical supplies in a footlocker, and Mando could see that his leg was bandaged as well, a metal washbasin with bloodied shrapnel also set to the side. “Moff Gideon is the only one to blame for all that happened on Nevarro, the danger he posed to the child included.”

There’s a beat of silence as he looks at his leader, her at the child.

“What will you do?” he asks.

She knows what he means. “I will return to Mandalore in search of the Living Waters,” she says, taking a seat nearby. “There I will seek out redemption.”

“… The Empire turned the planet to glass,” he says thickly. “How do you know they still exist?”

“I don’t,” she says simply. Her expression never changes. “But I have faith. This is the Way.”

For the first time under her leadership, he doesn’t feel like he’s permitted to echo their mantra. He still feels responsible for the desecration she experienced at the hands of the Moff, and the injustice only compounds his anger now.

“Let me help,” he says. “Let me come with you.”

“No,” she replied, taking his helmet in hand and beginning to clean it. “You have a charge to care for, and a new mission.”

“Mission?”

“Yes.” The Armorer nodded to the boy. “You must know that this is a Jedi child, yes?”

“Yes…?”

“Then you know that he must be reunited with his own kind.”

Mando’s jaw works as his eyes fill with tears once more, and he clutches the child closer to himself on reflex. He knows she sees it, but he can do nothing to curb the impulse to hold him tighter.

“… You wish for me to search the galaxy for some long-forgotten enemies— people we have never met, who may not exist— and relinquish him to them?” he asks carefully. “Enemies of the Mandalorians?”

The Armorer smiles sadly, resting a hand on his pauldron. “The child of our enemies found safety in you.”

Tomás has to look away from her as his emotions war on his face, his breathing stilted and harsh as he tries to keep them under control.

“Their kind were enemies at one time,” she says. “But the both of us have a common enemy in the Empire. The truth of the matter is that the boy is capable of more than either of us understand, and there are those who would stop at nothing to use him for what he can do. He needs training we cannot provide. Without it, he will not survive.”

The Mandalorian sagged, hearing her say what he knew out loud. He looked at the little boy in his arms, still stroking his fingers with his thumb as the boy slept.

“He may already have a family, Tomás,” she says gently. “It would be an injustice to keep him from them, should they be looking.”

“And if he doesn’t?” he demands. He’s trying to temper his reflexive impulse to protest but the weight and warmth of the child in his arms is making it difficult not to object.

The Armorer watches him silently, though not unkindly. He can’t muster the will to face her.

“… This child is a foundling,” she says with finality, standing. She sets his helmet beside him and goes to the door. “Until it is of age or is reunited with its own kind, you are as its father.”

Mando jerks his head back to her, watching her with a look of confusion and, perhaps, hope.

“We will be landing soon,” she says. “Where you go after this will be up to you.”

He knows because he’s getting less and less with every breath he draws.

He knows because his heart is falling out of rhythm, going frantic then sluggish then stumbling.

He knows because even that perpetually, indomitably stubborn thing inside him has gone quiet, aware that no amount of defiance now will win anything, that the last of his energy will be wasted if spent fighting for his own life. There aren’t enough threads left to grasp nor dregs to scrape so he doesn’t even bother reaching.

When the last pull comes, he’ll let go.

It’s a warrior’s death—really, the epitome of one. He took his fatal blow in the heat of battle. He was on his feet until he couldn’t stand any longer. He had allies beside him, worthy warriors in their own right, and he was protecting something precious, something innocent, something worth dying for.

The Mandalorian is at peace with this death.

Din Djarin is not.

The name is in his ears, blaring, ringing, echoing. It’s in his mouth, too, stuck in the blood that shouldn’t be there. The name belongs to a boy who died in a hole in the ground, his parents’ kisses still drying on his crown and his cheek; now it’s back, resurrected only to fall to a dying man.

A man who has only just now realized the one he has killed for and the one he will die for is the same one he wants to live for.

He wants to live.

Only alive can he take care of the child. Only alive can he protect him. Only alive can he ensure he’s fed and warm and safe. Only alive can he enjoy his company, his strange manner of conversation, his humour, his endearing stubbornness, his bottomless compassion… his love.

Selfish, yes.

He deserves none of it.

What kind of broken was he that it took so long to recognize the child as a person? Why did he struggle so to comprehend the child’s affection for and, dare he say, attachment to him? Why did he have to take every hard road there ever was? Why did he have to make a hopeless tangle of everything to come to his senses? Why does it take impending death to make him realize just how much he has to live for?

He thinks all of this distantly and instantly.

There’s so much happening.

Outside, smoke clouds and chokes everything. It was a bright, sunny day on Nevarro before all the shooting began. All that haze hangs in the still, trapped air of the cantina, subduing the light, overriding the senses.

He doesn’t know if it’s the marching, running, scrambling of dozens of soldiers or the building warning of its impending collapse he feels through the ground. Could be both. Could be just what a body goes through as its life ebbs. He’s not sure but it’s acutely discomforting.

Cara’s talking. She’s frantic. He’s never seen her frantic before. Her hand keeps coming and going, doing something then snapping back to hold his arm, just beneath the pauldron. Her other hand slides under his head, her fingers slip up under the lip of the helmet and he should feel that but he doesn’t, not properly.

Through everything that’s happening, the one thing he feels above all else is the child’s gaze on him.

He’s on the ground, somewhere by his boots. He’s just barely there in a sliver of his peripheral vision, but it’s enough to see his enormous, worried eyes.

It crushes Din’s heart.

He wants to sit up (properly, fully, not like he is now, lying like he’s been splattered against this duracrete slab that once was a table… likely the very table across which he took the course that led him to the child). He wants to reach over and gather the child to him, to reassure him and soothe away those little furrows of concern like he would the shadows of a bad nightmare.

But he can’t.

The child’s mouth opens but Din doesn’t hear him.

The battle’s still going and Cara won’t stop telling him he’s gonna be fine. On top of all that, the helmet’s taken some of the worst damage it’s ever seen. He can’t hear anything at all in one ear and he doesn’t know whether to blame that on the equipment or himself.

Cara’s still talking. And trying to help. She cares about him. She doesn’t want him to die. The way her arms wrapped around him, the way she carried him off the battlefield, the way her hand grabs his arm… she’s hoping if she holds on hard enough, he’ll stay, he won’t slip away. He wants to tell her that’s not how this works but that’s not really necessary.

She’s from Alderaan.

She’s a rebel.

She knows.

He spares what strength he can to tell her he won’t make it, that she needs to go. It’s just a fact. If he had more to work with, he’d tell her he’s sorry for dying on her because he is, truly.

She pauses her avid denial to look at her hand. He can’t see it but the horror eclipsing her attempts to smile and convince him all’s well tells him it must be bad.

“I’m gonna need to take this thing off.”

“No!” Panic lances through his heart and it likely shoots him a few yards closer to death but he cannot allow this.

He’s on the cusp.

There’s nothing she can do, no aid she can administer that will reverse, pause or stop this. He knows. The last of their medical supplies was spent on Karga. And there isn’t time.

He can’t survive this.

But he’s kept his vow this far and he wants to die with it unbroken.

“You leave me.”

Din Djarin is already long dead.

The Mandalorian gets to choose how his song ends.

But before then…

“You make sure the child is safe,” he instructs, forcing it to come out clear and loud enough, just in case his modulator is as busted as the sound amplification and clarification tech.

She’s been here before.

He sees something subtle shift in her face. Her jaw sets with the duty and fortitude of the soldier already carrying the dying wishes of others, their last words inked in the black of her eyes.

She’ll take his, too. She’ll see them through.

He knows.

But before then…

“Here.”

It will make her mission easier to accomplish but that’s not his foremost thought when he reaches up and closes rigid, barely responsive fingers around the piece of beskar he’s carried with him the longest. A sharp tug snaps the cord, untethering him from one of his oldest anchors.

His kyr’bes.

A Mythosaur skull, a symbol bestowed on all Mandalorian children—born or found.

His buir received it when he was born.

He carried it his whole life until he found him.

He slipped it over his head, settled it over his heart, and called him his.

“When you get to the Mandalorian covert, you show them that.”

Outsiders, scavengers, vultures, whatever unsavoury sort should stumble across the husk of a Mandalorian would think the helmet, the armour, and the weapons the most valuable. They would strip and pilfer the shell, for collections or currency. The little skull—of which you would need multiple to create just one ingot—is so often ignored, discarded, taken for a trinket or a curiosity.

Mandalorians the galaxy over know it is more valuable than the sum of their parts.

To carry it is to be claimed and to claim in return.

Once forged, it is never reshaped. Once donned, it must always be worn. Once given, it cannot be retracted.

Any Mandalorians left in the enclave will know at just a glance what it means—for him and for the child.

“You tell them it’s from Din Djarin.”

He forces the instruction out, focussing more on speaking than what he is saying, to the point it surprises him when he realizes what he’s just said.

The name—his name—tastes foreign.

He hasn’t uttered it in so long. He was afraid he had forgotten how to even pronounce it, the tongue it was born from long lost to him. No Mandalorian has ever pronounced it correctly upon seeing it written: they always elongate the vowels and harden the consonants, saying them like the pounds of a hammer on beskar when they’re supposed to be said like notes played calmly on a wind instrument.

The Moff got it right.

The first person to say it in years, the last time he will ever hear it from another, it’s said correctly but by an enemy.

He is incensed by that but he can’t hold the anger.

Din Djarin is dead, after all.

The Mandalorian is just using his name to get something.

Not for himself.

No.

“You tell them the foundling was in my protection, and they’ll help you.”

Above the pain, beside the regret, through the flooded tunnel of noise and silence, there is the child.

He wants to live.

He has never wanted to live more than he does right now, if for no other reason than to quell the little one’s worry.

But he can’t.

He can’t survive this.

He has fought with everything he is and everything he has. His will is strong but it can’t quench the inevitable. So he digs up the name of a dead man and bends it into a key—even though he doesn’t use it or share it, the tribe knows it. Even if they’re all gone, they will have left a marker to indicate where in the chain they’ve fled to, and the droid should be able to detect it. Once Cara finds them, once they see the foundling…

Foundling.

He…

He never called him that before.

But…

But that’s what he is.

Cara’s back to frantic and fighting. She’s still insisting he can beat this, he can live, he can escape, he can stay with them. She tries to grab him to carry him out and just that slight shift inflames the pain, making his back arch and his heart and lungs seize so he can’t even make a sound though inside he screams.

There’s a sickening shift of broken bones and a nauseating rush of blood in his head and chest. His stomach doesn’t know if it wants to heave or collapse. He’s lost feeling and command in his legs and his hands are growing distant.

Vaguely he’s aware of a Flame Trooper entering. Heat and light erupt in the shrinking world of the cantina. Time is slow then time is fast. It’s all around him, then it’s in him, then it’s nowhere.

He insists.

He all but demands she leave now and take the child—the foundling—with her to safety.

Flames race toward them. A beam disintegrates from the heat alone and falls, sending sparks and embers bursting up like fireworks. The trooper readies his thrower for another blast.

And she still doesn’t leave.

It’s too late.

The trooper takes aim. The thrower’s charge builds to an absurd level.

Fire roars—so loud, he feels its anger in his bones.

And that’s it.

He knows.

Greef, Cara, the droid, the child are all about to be as dead as him, their fates all bound up and cut off here together.

It’s not poetic; it’s just brutal.

A complete, unequivocal end.

The flames race towards them, billowing out into a cloud… and then change their mind and rush to the ceiling.

He sees the child.

Cara’s desperate attempt to move him distracted him; he didn’t notice the child move away and take a protective stance.

He stands sure and proud—not even a foot tall but his shoulders square and his chin lifts with courage greater than that of a giant. He faces the flames. His hands hold the air, his head bows.

Not even the heat touches them.

The power he used to halt and lift the mudhorn before it could kill Din, the power he used to cut off Cara’s breath, the power he used to heal Karga—that strange, inexplicable, reality-defying power he now uses to save them all.

Like the mudhorn, like the breath, like the poison, the fire obeys him and halts. With a controlled flick of his tiny wrist, the child banishes it, sending it back with all the force with which it came at them. The entire wall explodes outward and the trooper… Din doesn’t see but he knows he won’t be a problem for them any longer.

Entranced by the display, he had lifted his head. Now that it’s done, whatever drop of strength he had scraped up evaporates and he sags. He blacks out but then Cara’s hand fists around his arm again and the pain wakes him just long enough that he sees the child collapse.

He wants to rise and gather him, hold him close, make sure he’s unharmed.

He can’t move. He can’t stand. He can barely breathe.

He tells her once more to go.

This time, she listens.

What follows, his memory doesn’t quite record.

Not clearly, not sequentially.

He’s only barely conscious as the droid tends to him.

It applies bacta to only the wound it determined would kill him if left untreated. It may have nurse-droid programming and protocols now but the battlefield-style medicine and the military-grade bacta suggest the hunter programs lurk somewhere closer to the surface than Kuiil estimated.

He can’t keep a grasp on everything that happened in that moment.

Did the droid remove his helmet? He thinks it did but it could have applied the bacta without doing so… probably. Well. He could have, if he had any control on his coordination and strength right then. Anyway. If it did see his face, does it count? It’s not really alive; what would be the difference between that and bearing his face in front of a caf machine?

He doesn’t want to think about it.

He doesn’t think he needs to.

When the droid decides he’s out of the danger-zone and can move without incurring death or irreparable damage, it helps him up and gets him through the narrow entrance to the sewer system.

He still can’t hear on one side. He also can’t tell if it’s his left or his right—even up and down aren’t staying in their designated spots. But the sound of the droid’s gears and metallic stomps makes it through. It tells him it’s picked up the others’ trail and is following them.

(It’s tracking.)

(Nurse-droids don’t track.)

(That hunter programming must be embedded deep.)

They go a stretch.

Every step is simultaneously numb and excruciating. The droid only treated the head-wound; it must have scanned and found other things but it’s choosing not to tell him. Which is immaterial: just because the droid hasn’t told him about the cracked ribs and bruised spine doesn’t mean they don’t exist—he feels it, he knows it, but he is also ignoring it.

They have to get to the others.

He has to get to the child.

He’s not going to die.

He’s going to live.

He knows.

But the child doesn’t.

He collapsed after halting and redirecting the fire. The last he saw of him, the last he heard was him telling them, begging them to go, leave him, he’s not gonna make it, so here, take this, go to his people, they’ll help.

They saved me.

They’ll save my foundling.

He’s still grappling with what uttering that single word spells for him and the child when a new sound slips like a fine blade through the haze.

Crying.

A baby crying.

Even with a damaged helmet and a damaged brain, even through the distortion of tunnel twists and turns, even across such a distance, he recognizes that particular pitch and rhythm.

It’s his kid crying.

He jolts up. He launches. He means to run to him, to get to him. What’s wrong? Is he hurt? Are there troopers down here already?

He wrenches himself out of the droid’s grasp and suddenly reunites with the ground. He doesn’t register or feel it as it happens, he’s just… down.

(He’s not feeling much sensory input at this stage, he realizes, belatedly, absently, and with more than a little self-reprimand. His nervous system’s so clogged up with pain signals, it’s giving up listening to new entries.)

“I do not recommend you attempt such rigorous activity at this stage in your healing,” the droid tells him (for once more nurse than hunter). It bends down, hooks its claws under his armpits and scoops him back up to standing. “I will take your weight; you will focus on walking straight.”

The rhyme comes off condescending and patronizing and he tries to growl at the droid for it but all he makes is a pitiful, choked off whine.

“We will rejoin the others shortly,” the droid assures him, both stern and earnest.

No sooner does it say that then they come around a corner and there they are.

Cara’s smiling. She all but races up to him, tilting her head as if to find his gaze. His helmet’s torch-light highlights the tears both in her eyes and still wet on her cheeks. He smiles to her, forgetting for a moment that she won’t see it.

In her arms, she holds the child, bundled up in the satchel. He also smiles but it’s a difficult thing: he looks pale and exhausted.

(But happy.)

(He looks happy now.)

Din wants to hold him. More than anything. But he can’t. He can’t even stand on his own. He sways dangerously in just the split second he hangs in space as Cara hands the child to IG-11 and takes over as his crutch, his arm such a dead thing, she has to hoist it up and latch it around her shoulders.

He’s never been one for physical contact but some hazy, cobwebbed part of his brain goes quiet and calm as she threads an arm around him and shoulders his weight.

The tunnels are a labyrinth.

Cara calls them a maze. Greef is confused that Din doesn’t know the way and he confesses he’s never been this way before. He only knew one could access the underground from all over town but he, personally, had only ever entered through the bazaar—it was the entrance reserved for the beroya.

They push on.

It feels like hours.

It might very well be.

The droid’s hydraulics, gears and pistons pound away the silence. Greef and Cara’s steps barely make a sound but they sprout little pieces of commentary now and then to make up for it, to remind him they’re still here, still going. He can’t hear much beyond his own stilted, strained breathing.

(Definitely cracked ribs.)

(At least three.)

(Or seven.)

The child emits the tiniest of chirps. Two chirps, the second elevating in tone. It’s how he asks questions, Din knows.

“Not long now,” he tells him, automatically, and then pants a bit to recoup the air just those three words cost.

The child snuffs, sharply. When he turns his head, he catches a flutter of his ears as he shakes his head.

Not what I asked.

His little body shimmies in the bag and he extracts one of his arms. His face is scrunched in seriousness as he points to Din and repeats his question-chirps, slowing them down for emphasis.

“Me?”

“Eh.” (Yes. A sharp “eh” usually means “yes”… with a distinct undercurrent of “if I have to repeat myself one more time, I will bite you.”)

Din exhales, his spine bowing as his tired lungs empty too much, too fast.

He knew the child was worried but to see it so directly, so closely… it shouldn’t make him feel like the world is falling away beneath him. But it does.

This little, strange creature that seeks him for comfort, that chooses and wants to be as close to him as possible, worries and cares about him. It’s not contingent on his own well-being; Greef, Cara and IG-11 have all proven themselves capable and even willing to look after him, ensure his safety. He doesn’t need Din now; not like he did before today.

But he wants to know.

“I’m okay,” he tells him.

The child stares at him a long moment. The droid has twisted its torso so the child in the satchel can face him. His little head tips down, his eyes never leaving the visor, and his brow twists upward.

He doesn’t believe him.

“Hey. I’ll live,” Din tells him, a bit like a joke because he wants to lighten the little one’s mood.

There isn’t time to expound on it but as they continue on, those words ring in his ears (even the one that’s not picking anything else up).

I’ll live.

I want to live.

I have something to live for.

The sun sets on Nevarro as they leave, rising into the descending night.

So much has changed.

They came with three passengers and all three remain on Nevarro—one by choice, two without a say, without alternative. A once ally turned enemy became a friend. An enemy believed dead rose up only to return violently to the grave. Things have been revealed and a new path lays ahead, unknown and untrodden.

It’s just the two of them again.

The Mandalorian and the child.

Except… they’re both a little changed, too.

It can be traced in the beskar. Two skulls tell the story: a mudhorn and a mythosaur.

The Mandalorian has a signet; the thing he has run from and refused for more years than he wanted it was at last bestowed on him without conference, no room for argument allotted. It’s more than a symbol memorializing a victory, it’s more than a distinctive clan crest; it’s a permanent, physical seal on his bond with the child.

Likewise, the mythosaur pendent is a seal on the child’s bond with him. He gave it as a means to secure his tribe’s good grace, to tell a story which has miraculously changed its ending and opened a sequel rather, but none of that has changed what it is. Once given, it cannot be taken back.

They are forevermore a part of one another.

In the silence washing in like the tide, the profoundness of it all sinks heavy and low, like an anchor or a lead chest.

They reach the stars and set off for a world not so far away but it takes a jump through hyperspace. The Moff went down but the whole ordeal has set Din’s teeth on edge; maybe it’s that old, ingrained paranoia flaring up, but it doesn’t hurt to move fast and put a buffer of distance between them.

Well, metaphorically.

It does, in fact, hurt very much to move.

The bacta pulled him back from death’s slippery edge and sealed up what was fatally broken in his head but the rest of him still feels like that mudhorn came back, tracked him down, and trampled him a second time.

It’s gruelling work, getting on his feet again.

His spine doesn’t want to straighten, nor do his ribs agree with his intent to uncurl. One leg is still more numb than the other, dragging and threatening to trip him. His head pounds, his blood pressure a confusing, capricious mess. His stomach, his heart, and his lungs feel like they’ve been taken out, tied up together, shaken vigorously, and shoved back in without a thought to their correct placement.

The armour has never felt so heavy.

Even his helmet is too much now.

But he gets himself standing.

After they land, he sets the ship to rest and locks it down. It’s the dead of night, there’s nothing to see, nothing to excite; it’s like this world knows they need a pause.

Once the ship is still and winding down to its own rest, he stands and scoops up the kid (who is also pale and shaky, big eyes droopy and blinks long and slow). He gets them down the ladder, taking every movement tenderly, tentatively. When he makes it down to the cabin without blacking out, he shuffles to the sleeping nook and sets the child down.

He’s still clutching the mythosaur skull.

Din’s heart stutters again at the sight.

It’s the quiet, it’s the stillness.

It invites grief to land like a heavy, sharp-taloned vulture on his shoulders. It provokes uncertainty, causes it to churn in his gut and lure his mind into the vortex it creates. Emotion rises and he can’t name half of it. So much has happened today, so much has been lost, and what lies ahead is uncharted and unseen, massive and looming.

Kuiil is dead. IG-11 is gone.

His brothers and sisters from the tribe are either dead or unaccounted for.

He hoped perhaps a little too hard that Cara might come with them but she chose to stay behind and finally rebuild her life on Nevarro.

Things with the Guild have been set straight, he can take straight work again, yet, when Greef offered him his pick of the pucks, he declined like a reflex.

He’s hasn’t been so untethered in years.

And yet…

Just the sight of one tiny green claw on the little carved skull he’s worn over his heart for the better part of his life hushes the storm within and without.

For everything he’s lost, he’s gained more than he ever imagined he deserved.

He clears his throat.

The kid lifts his head, gaze sluggishly rising to meet his.

“I’m just gonna go…” losing the words, he gestures to the refresher. He huffs, airily. “I gotta clean up.”

As if to check why he would choose such a course of action, the child looks him up and down. He’s tired and he himself is hurting but he manages still to raise his brows and pull a face.

“Yeah,” Din agrees with a chuckle. “I’m a mess.”

Understanding the routine, the child shuffles backwards and waits for him to close up the nook.

His hand rises but hesitates on the button. It’s just a moment, though; he presses it, shutting the nook off from the rest of the cabin.

He disassembles himself, taking special care with the pauldron now bearing his signet, and takes stock.

“A mess” he finds is an understatement.

The med-scanner, if it could be so crass, would call him karked up, and even that would barely paint the first layer of this picture.

An E-Web cannon exploded right next to him. He walked a few kilometres in the underground tunnels with torn muscles and bruised or fractured bones. He lost a pint or so of blood, some of which he left on Nevarro, the rest he’ll have to wash out his flightsuit. He went for a jetpack flight when he could hardly stand and fought a TIE Fighter with his bare hands.

Nothing the med-scanner lists surprises him.

Begrudgingly, it admits he won’t die from any of it… if he takes care.

He reads and rereads its recommendations before packing it away with none of his usual lightly restrained disdain. He cleans himself, so much blood and dirt swirling down the drain, it’s sure to clog the recyc. He then applies bacta with more generosity than he typically would endorse. He bandages and binds his broken flesh like it’s something precious. He dresses and takes the meds the scanner suggested—things that will stave off infection, help his pressure stabilize, help the nausea settle, and he even goes so far as to take a pain-reliever. He takes in water and food. It’s not easy, he has no appetite to speak of, but the meds he took require food and his body needs something to work with if it’s going to restore all that blood he lost.

When he’s done, he automatically grabs his helmet to put back on.

But he hesitates.

In part, it’s because the inside of his helmet is filthy with his blood—most of it has caked and dried but some trails are so thick, they still glisten under the oily light of the refresher closet.

But cleaning it would be a quick thing and it’s not really why he stalls.

His eyes flick up to the mirror above the sink. Dark eyes with noticeably uneven pupils waver and dart across his face before the thoughts behind them clarify.

The child is his foundling. He is as his father. They together are a clan.

It’s set in beskar.

The mudhorn and the mythosaur.

They are family now and families know each other’s faces—he knew his buir’s face; he saw it for the first time the night he gave him the kyr’bes and said the vow.

He doesn’t have to put the helmet back on. He can go, open the door, just walk out and greet the child with an unveiled, unhindered smile, see him without the filter of a visor.

How will he react? Will he recognize him? Surely he will; he’s so clever, that kid. How will it feel to be seen—truly seen—by another for the first time in decades? How will it feel to be on this side of the vow?

Just as the excitement swells, reality clouds over.

This is not a fairytale.

This is not even a regular story, the likes of which he has spent years hearing other Mandalorians in the tribe recount, of families begun, bonds created, clans grown.

The child is a foundling, yes.

But only temporarily.

He shouldn’t be surprised. Nothing about them is conventional; how could he expect this to go the way it does with others? The child is too small, too young, too frail for the physical training the Mandalorian way requires. His powers, though Din believed they more than made up for what he seemed to lack, didn’t impress or sway the Armorer. What is more, though she noted he himself is not to be viewed as such, he is still born from an enemy, and while her instructions might not have harboured prejudice, they concealed an urge for distinction and separation.

Her words, artful in their form and delivery, sounded like counsel, like guidance, but they were really repudiation.

You cannot train him.

You cannot keep him.

He does not belong—with us or with you.

He is a foundling. He holds the mythosaur. But he is not his.

The only thing stronger than beskar is a Mandalorian’s word.

The mythosaur could be lost but the vow would hold them together.

Except… he cannot make that vow.

As high and as deep as his regard for his adopted people is, Din knows—better than anyone—it is not an easy path. He embraced this life, this way, but he cannot commit the child to it. Ultimately, it would be his choice, but he has already, in just this short time, grown attached. He will feel obligated to continue and then what?

If he becomes too Mandalorian, his people, the Jedi, will reject him.

He has already been ripped from them once; Din cannot, in all good conscience, claim him and sever him from where he rightly belongs.

So he cleans the helmet, never before finding it such a chore.

When he’s done, he puts it on.

He procrastinates returning to the child, taking time to dig in their stores until he finds a meal pack the kid will enjoy the most. He heats it up—a mushroom soup that he actually can’t stand the smell of—and dishes it into a tin bowl rather than leaving it in the plastoid dish it came packaged in.

This is still an occasion for celebration.

He steals a moment to shore up something in him (courage, resolve, he can’t name it), then opens the sleeping nook.

The kid is still awake, still holding the mythosaur skull, still studying it intensely. His little fingers trace the eye sockets and the tusks, and his little mouth moves as he coos in a quiet, low, self-soothing manner.

Then his nose twitches and his ears perk up like flags. He whips around, his sweet little face brightens and Din forgets why his heart sits so heavy in his chest.

He holds up the tin bowl. “Made your favourite.”

The kid tries to rise and come to him but he holds up a finger and it’s enough to stay him. With great care, he climbs onto the bed and scoops the child up into his lap. Moving isn’t so excruciating anymore (score one for the med-scanner. He hates to admit it but the blasted device was right: that pain-reliever was a good call).

The little one wiggles with delight as he is handed the soup. He tips his head back, resting against his guardian’s stomach as he fills his own. Din keeps a hand around his belly, softly holding him in place, keeping him warm.

He’s finally stopped long enough for the exhaustion to catch him and sink its teeth in. He micro-naps as the kid slurps his soup. Mercifully, he doesn’t take long to down the whole bowl. Too tired to take it to the sink, Din shoves it to a corner of the sleeping nook and promptly forgets about it.

He checks the child’s injuries.

While navigating the tunnels, IG-11 recounted how he found the child. He rescued him from two scout-troopers but not before they beat him. The same bacta he used later to save Din he used first on the child: it’s still there, a sticky residue smeared across his little chest and back.

It’s strong stuff.

The bruises have lost their dark purple and blue hues and progressed to yellow and a strange shade of teal he can only attribute to the fact the child’s blood isn’t red like his.

The important thing is he’s healing well and he doesn’t seem to be in pain anymore.

In his heart, Din thanks the droid once more.

The soup is already working its wonders, too, restoring the little one’s strength and colour. But it can’t replace his need for a good sleep.

As has become routine, Din tucks him in his blanket nest. It’s arranged up by his pillow where it’s proven a convenient spot to combat nightmares. When the little one’s settled, he begins the arduous task of laying his own battered body down, struggling for quite some time to find a position that presses on the fewest hurts. Every grunt or gasp that slips between gritted teeth carves another furrow in the child’s brow as he watches him.

“I’m okay,” he reminds him, offhandedly.

The kid snorts, rocking his head in a suspiciously mocking manner.

“Fine. But I’ll live. Happy?”

The way the kid looks at him makes him feel rotten.

No.

I’m not happy.

I can’t be happy if you’re hurt.

Din sighs, hangs his head.

He takes his time, lowering himself down on his side. Once down, he takes another moment to let the world stop seesawing. When his heart goes from thudding sickly to just a bit too fast, he breathes out.

“We’re gonna be alright, you and me,” he says, rescinding his gruff, flat tone and embroidering his voice with things he heard from another deep voice, a lifetime ago. He chuffs—it still costs too much air but he makes it sound light. “We’re hardy. You know what that means?”

The kid tilts his head, waiting.

“Means we can take a hit and the other guy goes down.”

The kid wrinkles his nose. That’s not what it means.

“We’re still here, aren’t we?”

He can’t argue with that.

He doesn’t seem inclined to concede the point either.

“Sweet dreams, kid,” he bids and switches off the light.

He wonders, a moment, how much the child can see in the dark. If he’s as blind now as he is, then the helmet is a moot point. His eyes are enormous, though; they likely let in more light than his can; he probably could see still, like a feline.

In the dark—of the nook and his helmet—he frowns to himself.

He’s never before sought a loophole or a grey area.

Besides, he thinks (and ignores how much it feels like a desperate grapple for consolation), he wouldn’t want the first time the kid sees or feels his face to be now when it’s all broken and bruised. He doesn’t think much of his looks or the general concept of what ratio of features are more pleasing than others, but if ever the child were to see his face, he’d like to look… healthy.

He tries to sleep.

It’s not easy.

Now in the dark, in the silence, lying still without distraction, the day replays behind his eyes, vivid and violent.

It’s difficult, crowning the worst moment.

He saw the Butcher of Mandalore in the flesh. He heard his name on that demagolka’s tongue and nearly lost his life to him.

He found what was left of his tribe, their hollow helmets piled like a mass grave.

He could only watch as IG-11 sacrificed himself.

He buried Kuiil.

Voice cracking, he whispers their names.

He can only remember them now; he must remember them.

For the first time in years, he whispers the two oldest names on his list.

Mama and Baba.

Not their given names—try as he might, he can’t recall those. He holds only the faintest images of their faces. But he still feels his father’s hands cupping his face and his mother’s arms wrapping around his body when it was small and fragile and unscarred.

He alone holds their memory.

He alone carries their name.

It was said three times today.

First by an enemy, used as a tool to disconcert.

Second by him, given as a token, a key.

Third by the Armorer, as a restoration.

It takes a while to coalesce, but, fragment by fragment, he realizes he has been referring to himself by that name all day.

Din Djarin, as it turns out, is not so dead anymore.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

“Meh-whap?” the child chirps, quizzically.

With a shaking, stiff arm, he reaches up and gathers the child, drawing him to his chest. Naturally, his body curls in around him, like some primal instinct to warm and protect something precious.

The little one thinks it’s a fantastic arrangement.

Eagerly, he burrows into his unshielded chest. Little claws fist up in handfuls of his worn, grey thermal shirt. He presses into his sternum, fitting in over his heart like a missing piece restored at last. And he manages to poke his head into the small space under his chin, his little crown nuzzling into his uncovered neck.

He feels him sigh and relax, the epitome of content.

Thank you, he says in his heart where he can always find and form the right words.

You saved me.

You brought me back to life.

You make me want to keep living.

Author’s Notes

Just before IG and Din join the others in the tunnels, there’s like a crashing, clattering sound. I could never figure out what it was exactly (they’re too far from the entrance at that point) but in writing this I thought, you know, Din experiencing another slip and fall would explain it.

In other news, while scrolling through movies to watch for movie night, my dad came across The Mandalorian and Grogu. I reminded him we saw it at the theatre some months ago and he goes “oh yes. The one with the blobs” (he meant the Hutts 😆 but now that’s my new favourite term for them. “Jabba the Blob” has a nice ring to it…)

. . . . .