#let mandalorians be interesting characters on their own without turning them into jedi or cardboard challenge 2023

[autumnwoodsdreamer]

Just a piece of the exchange between Din and Sabine in Head Above Water that’s been going through my mind recently for ReasonsTM…

. . . . .

Silence ebbed in as the door slid closed behind them, kept at bay by the well practiced hum of the Slave’s systems and engines.

Sabine let her breath rush out without censorship as the day caught up to her, settling in her muscles and her joints in ways it didn’t just five years ago.

Without deliberation, she took her helmet off and set it down on the spare bunk above hers. Cooled air brushed her skin, chilling the sweat on her brow. Her cheek stung; a cursory dab of her fingers found a cut and dry, crusted blood.

“When did that happen?” Din inquired, voice quiet, just barely carrying through the vocoder.

Sabine nudged a shoulder up in a shrug. “In the speeder crash.”

“I thought you said you weren’t injured.”

“I never said that. I just implied you came off worse than me.”

“Can you heal yourself?”

She blinked, her brow furrowing. “Uh, yeah.” She inspected her cheek further, prodding and poking. It wasn’t a major wound, just a cut on the point of her cheekbone. The site was a little swollen and bruised but it wasn’t unbearably painful. “Nothing’s broken, so a smear of bacta and a plaster and it’ll clear in no time.”

“No, I mean—” he blew out a gruff sigh and drew a wonky circle in the air with his hand as he grappled for the words, “—with the Force.”

She jerked back. “What?”

“If you can heal others, why can’t you heal yourself?”

Chopper glanced between Sabine and the Mandalorian before shaking his head and mimicking an exasperated sigh. “Terrific. He’s concussed,” he groused.

“That’s not... I don’t have the Force,” she told him, puzzlement rendering her tone blank.

“But you’re a Jedi.”

“I’m really not.”

“It’s alright; it won’t make us enemies.”

“Din, I’m not...” she trailed off, stopped, took a breath, silently wondered how exactly she was supposed to check if this guy really was concussed, and let the breath fall out unused. “Why do you think I’m a Jedi?” she asked, slowly, evenly.

“Your lazer sword,” he answered, far too simply, the certainty—which wasn’t absolute to begin with—fracturing further.

Without thought, she glanced down to the black, cylindrical hilt clipped to her belt in the same spot it had laid at the ready for the past ten years. “You mean this?”

“I... thought only a Jedi could use it.”

“Uh... no.”

“But don’t you need the Force to turn it on?”

Unclipping the hilt, she held it up and turned it over in her hands. “You just need to press this,” she said, brushing her thumb over the button but going no further with the demonstration. “No Force required.”