#where it's 5 times din walks in on luke seemingly talking to himself and 1 time he does something about it

[tennessoui]

kit’s foray into another star wars ship (dinluke)

is kit a) expanding her horizons, b) running from her responsibilities, or c) inspired by that fan art of force ghost anakin hugging r2d2 (linked when found) and me thinking ok what if luke is trying to do run-of-the-mill maintenance on artoo but force ghost anakin won’t stop trying to suggest what needs fixing so they’re just bickering back and forth over droid engineering and din walks in to visit his kid and just sees luke arguing with thin air and starts thinking maybe he left grogu in the care of a madman

(so far just 1k, but here’s the first 800)

Din lives his life by one very important creed.

Alright, two very important creeds.

The first is the one that he grew up with, mantra stamped across the back of his eyelids, words imprinted in his brain. The Way of the Mandalore is a way of honor, and it serves as pillar, foundation, and guiding stone of his life.

The second creed Din obeys is not ingrained into his mind by anyone but himself, and he’s fucking shit at following it.

It’s the Do Not Get Involved Unless You’re Dragged Into The Fight Kicking and Screaming creed, and it goes hand in hand with the principles of Do Not Start Fights You Cannot End Within Twenty Seconds and For the Love of the Stars, Djarin, Don’t Go Around Poking Sleeping Krayt Dragons.

Alright. If he’s being honest, this is less of a creed and more of an aspiration, but he tries to abide by its tenets, and, it has to be said, for a good portion of his life, he does. 

And then he finds the kid.

And then the kid becomes his kid, which is an adjustment he’s dragged into kicking and screaming, and it definitely involves a lot of fights that last a whole lot longer than twenty seconds.

And trying to find a Jedi in a galaxy as big and strange as this one? Apparently it involves a lot more sleeping Krayt Dragons than Din’s second creed accounted for.

But finding one—or, one finding them as it may be—well. No creed Din knows prepared him for how it felt to watch his kid be taken away from him. It’d been the optimal future, the end result he’d been gunning for for months: return the kid to his people.

There. Done. Returned. Package received.

Din’s been around long enough that successful bounties and completed contracts don’t tend to fill him with a warm rush of satisfaction anymore.

But this is the first that’s ever left him feeling hollow.

—-------------

“What’s been eating at you, Mando?” Karga asks. 

Din scowls and resists the urge to shift his weight. “Nothing.”

Karga raises an eyebrow and takes a sip from the cooling purple drink in front of him.

“You wanted the Imp,” Din says when the silence stretches from pointed into weighted. “Here’s the Imp.”

He nudges the head further across the table.

“I wanted the Imp for questioning,” Karga says very slowly. “Ideally with his vocal cords attached.”

Oh. Din glances down at the bloody bag. “Oh.”

He doesn’t try to sound very apologetic, which only seems to make Karga’s exasperation grow.

“So I ask again. What’s eating you, Mando?”

“Right now, bounties with unclear parameters.”

“Right now, you’ve only earned half the bounty, and that’s because I’m a generous man who considers you a friend. Now I can see ourselves coming to agreement on what you’re owed—if you tell me what’s on your mind.”

Behind the safety of his helmet, Din scowls harder. “Friend.”

Greef kicks the chair across from him out and tilts his cup towards it. “Friend.”

—-----------

Two hours later, Din is thoroughly convinced he used his glowing new Darksaber to sever the wrong person’s head.

Greef hasn’t stopped laughing in the last ten minutes. The man’s red in the face, alternating between pounding his fist on the table and leaning against his new marshal. Dune, for her part, is expressing the highest amount of mirth Din’s ever seen as she hiccups with glee into her third drink. 

He’s really starting to calculate the probability of successfully taking Karga’s coin purse off him now that he’s distracted, when the man finally chokes out whole words.

“Worried the Jedi’s too violent to raise the little green guy!”

Din crosses his arms over his chest.

Dune roars with laughter. 

Din doesn’t think it’s very funny. The Jedi sliced through the ranks of Dark troopers within mere seconds, as if they were no threat at all. It’d been impressive. The man—the Jedi—had been impressive. Din was impressed by his skill when he had the space to feel anything outside the devastation of losing the kid.

But a man that versed in violence doesn’t learn those sorts of skills without being surrounded by death and destruction for years.

And Din just gave his kid over to be raised in that kind of environment? 

Was Grogu even safe? Was he alive? Was the Jedi even lookin—

“The bounty hunter thinks the kid’s new home is too violent,” Karga cackles. “The guy—the guy who just brought me a man’s head in a pouch is worried about the little green guy’s new—-”

Dune snorts out her drink, she’s laughing so hard, and Din stands to leave.

If he knicks Karga’s coin purse on his way out the cantina, then hey. 

What are friends for?