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When the battle was over, Din's thigh hurt like hell.
Nobody wanted to wake up the rancor, not even Fett. And the child looked comfortable, nestled up to the creature's massive toothy jaws.
So Din found a spot at the side of the street where he could sit, which made the bone-deep ache where the Scorpenek droid had landed on his leg almost ignorable, and leaned back against the wall to wait.
He felt—he didn't know what to call it. He didn't know whether there was a word for it at all. He was grateful beyond measure that the child had returned to him, and on any other day, that would have been all that mattered to him. But today—
Today, he had stood in the street and that Duros had told him that Cobb Vanth was dead.
Dead; and not because old enemies had caught up to him, not because a krayt dragon had swallowed Freetown whole. Because of Din. Because Din had gone to him to ask for his help, and because he might have said yes.
It was wonderful, to have had the child leap into his arms, to have felt that soft familiar weight in his hands again. It was agonizing, to know that Cobb was dead because of him.
It had been so much easier, he thought distantly, before the child. Before he had had anything to care about except the covert, except Mandalorians like him. Before there had been anything in his universe that was so thoroughly outside of his control. He had been offered jobs, and he had taken them, and he had done them, and he had been paid. How simple that had been, how straightforward.
How much less happy, perhaps; how much less painful, undeniably. And yet he couldn't convince himself, even inside his own head, that he would give up the child, that he would rather not have met—any of them, those he had come to know and befriend, those he had done his best to keep safe, to be returned to that time.
He shut his eyes. And he sat there in the doubled afternoon light of Tatooine, in the warmth and the dust and the unmistakable odor of a rancor that had exerted itself a great deal, and told himself that in that case, he had better learn how to live with the ache.
It was some time later, the suns dropping low in the sky, before Fett came back.
The first Din knew of it was the way the rancor shifted and groaned, the growling sound it made in its throat as it blinked its eyes open—and then he understood that something had woken it, had called its attention, and turned his head.
"Had a nice nap, eh," Fett said to the rancor, which huffed a massive breath through its nose, and began the long and complex process of lurching its way to its feet.
The child made a disappointed noise. He hadn't even opened his eyes yet, Din saw; but then he did, squinting up at Fett attentively.
"Grogu," Din said, and the child turned and cooed, sitting halfway up, reaching out and wiggling his little fingers.
It was hard to rise. He should probably have moved around a little more, shouldn't have let the stiffness settle into his muscles. But he managed to get up, even if he had to do it slowly, and he'd only taken two strides, halfway across the street at best, before the child had done it again—flung himself up with the Force, straight into Din's arms.
"All right, all right, easy there," he said quietly, and settled the kid against his side.
And then he looked up, and found Fett watching him.
It shouldn't have been strange. He was there, and Fett was looking at him; there needn't have been anything remarkable about it at all. But there was something in Fett's face, a grave sober cast to his expression, that made Din feel abruptly wary.
"Something you need to say?"
Fett stayed quiet, for a moment. "I sent some of my people to Freetown," he said at last, low and even. "Many of their citizens who came to help us were injured, and a few were killed. Those who remained there will need help, until their sons and daughters, their friends, their neighbors, are well again."
A good thought. If only Din had had equal foresight, equal consideration for the potential needs of others, before he'd asked Cobb to—
"You are generous," was all Din could think to say.
Fett's mouth twitched, his expression briefly wry. "I do not tell you this to earn your compliments," he said, "though I appreciate them. I tell you because they—found the marshal there. Cobb Vanth. Cad Bane did shoot him; but he is not dead."
Din stared at him. There were no words in his head, for what felt like a long time. Not dead, Cobb was—Cobb wasn't dead? Cobb was alive.
"How?" he croaked.
"Apparently Bane's aim is not as good as he believed it was," Fett said mildly.
But then his face flickered, and Din understood, from somewhere outside himself, that that was not all Fett had meant to tell him.
"But it was good enough, Mando. There may not be much time. He is—it is bad."
Din swallowed. It helped very little; his mouth was dry, his throat tight. "If there's not much time, then I won't waste it," he said, hoarse. "I want to see him."
"Yes," Fett murmured. "I thought you might say that," and then he slapped the rancor's massive foreleg with an open hand. "Come on, then."
The rancor wasn't as fast as Din's jets would have been.
But it was close; and this way, there was no risk that Din would drive himself straight into the corner of a building.
The palace was a blur. Din grasped only that there was too much of it—that its hallways were too long, that it contained too many rooms; that it was taking up a great deal of the space that remained between him and Cobb, and he resented it for that.
But at last, Fett led him through one more door, and Cobb was there.
He was lying flat. He was—pale, uncomfortably so, and his eyes were closed, his face and hands slack; he was unconscious, Din understood.
Unconscious, and blood had soaked darkly through his clothing, was spattered up the side of his throat and jaw, dripped gently from the table on which he lay.
There were other people in the room, too. A human stood off to one side, leaning over several open cargo containers filled with—tools of some kind, nothing Din had ever seen before, and cleaning them. And beside Cobb, leaning over him with her hackles half-raised in worry and her gaze intent on the monitoring device she was holding to his head, was a Selonian.
"Any better?" Fett said.
"No," the Selonian bit out, and then she drew a sharp breath in through her nose and deliberately laid her fur flat again. "Apologies, Daimyo. The Modifier has done excellent work, and the bacta will help. But I do not know whether it will help enough."
Fett looked at the human, and inclined his head. "In that case, I thank you," he said. "Find Fennec Shand; she will pay your fee."
And Din, crossing the room, realized abruptly what that meant. He had thought it was all clothing. But Cobb's shirt, his jacket, covered only half his chest, had been cut away from the other half—his shoulder, too, and his arm. Din hadn't recognized the bare parts of him for what they were because they didn't look like skin, and that was because they weren't anymore: because they had been replaced, pristine gleaming tubes and pistons, shining neatly-molded machinery.
Where Cobb had been shot, wounded—that was what it was. He had been rebuilt, somehow.
"He simply will not stabilize," the Selonian medic was saying. "He can recover. His physical condition is now adequate to allow it. But there is only so much that bacta applications will do, and I cannot risk moving him into the tank if he is not stable. It is as if his body does not know it is no longer wounded." She stopped, and shook her head. "If he had a bond, then at least I would not have to worry about his brain activity—there would no longer be any risk of coma, then. But as it is—"
"A bond," Din repeated.
The Selonian made an impatient gesture, and click-whistled something in Mandaba that Din couldn't understand. "The tying of the hearts' tails," she said, flicking her own up and down as if to illustrate the idea. "The bond. I do not know what your kind chooses to call it."
Oh.
"He—he doesn't?"
He could have. It wouldn't have surprised Din, to learn that Cobb had already touched the one who was his own soul and simply hadn't brought it up, hadn't wanted to show the other half of himself to the dangerous stranger that Din had once been to him.
But apparently he didn't. Apparently he had no—bond, if that was what outsiders called it—at all.
"No," the Selonian said. "If he did, he would not keep trying to die for no good reason, like the furless kit he is," and then something changed, on the monitor she was still holding to Cobb's head, and she hiss-spat a new phrase in Mandaba that Din could guess wasn't a compliment.
"I'll do it," Din said.
It was nonsensical. It was desperation. It couldn't be done, it was impossible; but if there was nothing else that could be tried, then he'd ask for the chance anyway.
Except the Selonian didn't tell him that. Her head came up sharply, her pale angled eyes fixed immediately on him. "I could not in good conscience ask anyone—"
"You didn't ask," Din said, with something almost too agonizing to be called hope gripping his heart: it was possible, then. Somehow, it was possible, and this Selonian could do it, if only Din could convince her to. "I'll do it anyway."
But the Selonian's fur rose again, around her neck and along the backs of her shoulders. "If you do, you will not be able to break it again. Not ever."
Din blinked. You couldn't take it back, when you'd touched the one who was your own soul. You couldn't do it at all, couldn't reach through the barriers of skin and flesh that separated you from each other in the first place, if you were not each other's own soul; and if you were each other's own soul, you never wanted to be separate again. That was the Way. Even if this Selonian could somehow force it, could trick Cobb's soul into believing Din into the one who was Cobb's even though Cobb was an outsider, that surely remained true. Or—
Or at least that was what Din had always been taught.
But if he'd known he could do this, hold Cobb's soul in his heart's hands and then give it back to Cobb again when Cobb was well, when Cobb was safe, he would have wanted to. To allow Cobb the option to have it back, because surely if there were a choice, he wouldn't choose to let Din—keep it.
"Why not?"
"Psi-flayer," the Selonian said. "The slavers of this world love to use them. His brain, his mind, has been burned so many times it can no longer heal itself. If you manage to form a stable bond with him, and then you break it—there is every chance he will not survive the breaking."
Din bit down on the inside of his cheek. "But if I don't, he won't survive this, either."
The Selonian's tail thrashed. "No," she conceded.
Then nothing had changed. "I'll do it," Din said.
The Selonian looked at him, and sighed. "All right. All right, if you—I can induce you both. Just a moment."
It was supposed to be difficult. It was supposed to require—fasting, meditation, effort; reaching the limits of yourself, the better to meet each other there at the fraying edge of all that held you apart. And even then, you needed the Creed, the Way, to lead you to what had always been yours, though you had not known it.
He'd thought, if the Selonian knew some way to force the process, and between one who followed the Way and one who didn't, at that, it would be worse, if anything—harder, more demanding still. She'd have to do the same thing to him that had been done to Cobb, shoot him and then carve half his chest away, and then feed him to the rancor and make it spit him up again besides.
But instead it was—she reached across Cobb for a case of some kind, the medical devices that were inside of it. She picked out one vial, another, and snapped them both into some kind of injector. "Do not touch him," she said, and she was careful not to do it, either; she had to jab the tip of the needle into Cobb's neck, apparently, and the angle wasn't good for it, but she didn't touch Cobb's face, his jaw, didn't push his chin around and out of her way.
She crouched down awkwardly, got it in and pressed down on the injector's trigger, and then pulled it out the same way and turned to Din.
"Come on," she said. "Quickly!"
He jerked, fumbled at his cloak and then over it, and managed to work two fingers into the neck of the armorweave. It didn't have much give, and he had to tilt his head back so far he couldn't see the Selonian, couldn't see anything he was doing, to make sure the lower edge of the helmet wasn't in her way.
But then he felt it, a sharp painful prick, the ache of sudden cool pressure as she injected him, too.
"All right," she said, and stepped away. "Now."
Din swallowed, grimaced at the way it felt to do it when she'd just shoved a needle into his throat, and then looked at her, helpless. "Now—what?"
"What? You don't know how to—touch him!" she snapped. "Dermal contact. Skin," and he'd been reaching toward Cobb already, twitched back and blinked down at his hand. His gloved hand.
He shut his eyes for a moment. He'd taken the helmet off entirely, for the child. He could do this much, such an insignificant thing in comparison, for Cobb.
But the truth of that fact couldn't stop it from feeling strange, to take the glove off. It was hard to do it without taking off the beskar, the gauntlet and the outer cuff of armorweave that went over the actual glove, but he could guess from the Selonian's reaction that there wasn't time for any of that. He pulled the cuff apart, managed to work the bottom of the glove out from underneath it, and it was—it felt like he was peeling his skin off, not exposing it, but he got it off of his hand.
The air in the room felt cool; his palm, the bare backs of his knuckles, felt excruciatingly vulnerable. It should have been uncomfortable, even obscene, to touch Cobb's hand with them, but instead it was a kind of shelter, a way to hide them somewhere safe—and Cobb was utterly limp, eyes closed, all that blood, but he was still alive: his hand was warm. Din hadn't known what a relief it would be to feel it, to be sure of it, but it overwhelmed him, and he made a wordless sound in his throat and clutched at Cobb's hand, grasped at it, pressed his clumsy fingers between the lengths of Cobb's and wrapped his thumb hard around the back of it.
He didn't know what else was supposed to happen. He didn't know what to wait for. So much of the process had been explained to him, but everything in the Creed about what it actually felt like was unhelpfully abstract: that the Way would open itself up before him, that he would walk it with a new understanding. And even that much surely didn't apply anymore, not when Cobb was—when this wasn't the Way at all, to take a half-dead outsider who couldn't even say yes or no and just do it to him—
A flicker. Din's breath stopped in his throat. He'd thought maybe it would hurt, when he touched Cobb's soul, when Cobb touched his; even if Cobb was unconscious right now, his body must be in some kind of pain, and once their souls had touched, Cobb's body would be Din's body, and Din's body Cobb's.
But he understood, in the space of an instant, that the Selonian had been right. It was worse than that, impossibly worse. Cobb was—Cobb was so far down, so close to the endless darkness that was calling to him, that he was hardly feeling anything at all, hardly any of his mind left in him to feel it.
And in that place, Din could not run after him. Din could not run after him, or shout for him, or grab onto him and simply refuse to let go. If Cobb had only been lost in the desert, had only been pushed off a cliff—it would have been so simple, so easy to know exactly what to do and to do it, with nothing more complicated than his body.
But this, this was different. He had to be there, be there as vividly and as thoroughly as he could. He tried to make himself into a light, an open doorway; something Cobb could find, somewhere for Cobb to go, that wasn't deeper into the dark. It was hard, and he didn't know what he was doing, he wasn't good at it. A single flickering candle, at best.
And yet, like this, he could—he could tell, he could feel it, when Cobb became aware of him. Cobb could tell that he was there, understood dimly and without words that it was Din who was with him; and it was instant, immediate, so breathtakingly gratifying that Din felt himself become a hundred times brighter, a thousand, because Cobb was so glad, unhesitatingly and unthinkingly, in the most fundamental unconscious part of himself.
Cobb saw him, saw that brightness, in this place that was without seeing and without light. Cobb came to him, in this place where neither of them were really moving, and reached for him without a body, touched him without hands—
And it was working. Because there it was, the pain: the reality of Cobb's body, where it had been cut apart and put back together, because the Modifier could medicate, could dull the pain, but had had to be careful not to give Cobb enough to kill him anyway, and enough to make this stop would have been enough to kill him anyway.
It was like a storm, like a sea, like a great and terrible wave; and Din hung onto Cobb as tightly as he could, before it crashed over them and there was nothing.
When Din woke up, the bond was stable.
The bond was stable, and the Selonian was gone, Fett was gone; someone had taken the child, too, which would have sent Din into a furious panic except that the suns were up, light filtering into the room—except that that meant it had been so long that it was no wonder the child had needed to be tended to.
Cobb was asleep: lying across the same table, breathing deeply and evenly. His blood-soaked clothes were dry, dark and stiff, crusted over. His face was stubbled, soft and relaxed; there was color in it.
Din left.
The child was fine—playing happily with the smallest knife Fennec Shand owned. Din took him, and gave Shand the knife back, and thanked Fett for his courtesy, his hospitality, his generosity toward the people of Freetown. Fett told him there was no need, that they could not have defeated the Pykes without his help.
Peli's wasn't far. That was good; Din managed to get the N-1 up and off-world, into hyperspace, before—
Before Cobb woke up.
He could still feel it happen. But it was a dim uncertain feeling, stretched thin by distance. He couldn't tell what Cobb was thinking, didn't know where he was or what he was doing. There was only—the place in his mind that was Cobb, duller and blurrier with every lightyear, a soft persistent ache.
He kept flying.
He did as he was asked to do, and as he was expected to do. He helped his people, saved their way of life, recovered their world; he defeated Moff Gideon, for once and for all. He learned that there were many different kinds of Mandalorians, and that he could be one, still, even if he took Grogu—Din Grogu, his son—and left, even if he worked for the New Republic, even if he chose Nevarro as his home instead of Mandalore.
He accomplished everything he had ever intended to accomplish, and more, above that, beyond that, things he had not even known to want to accomplish; things he would once have assumed he was not allowed to want to accomplish.
He sat outside his cabin, comfortably alone on the outskirts of the city, and watched Grogu play. It would be good. It would be a good life, and he would be happy.
And then something in the distance caught his eye, and he lifted his head.
A speeder. There was someone on a speeder, crossing the wide rocky flats. Coming from the city; and there was nothing outside the city, in this direction, except the cabin.
Din sat there, frozen, and felt his heart begin to pound.
He couldn't—he couldn't feel anything. It had been too long; Cobb had been too far away. The touch of Cobb's soul was so attenuated, now, that it might as well be a strand of vine-silk, and Din had grown too used to ignoring it, to not touching the place in his mind where it was. For the best, that was what he'd told himself. But by the same token, it had given him no warning, his sense of Cobb's self too weak, too starved, to tell him that Cobb was coming to him.
Cobb drew up beside the house—executed a neat, clean turn, to bring the speeder in line with the N-1, and then brought it to a stop, and shut it off. He dismounted from it, and lifted that red kerchief of his to wipe the worst of the dust from his face and his eyes; let it fall, and turned.
"Mando," he said evenly. "I—hope I ain't overstepping, here."
He had hardly moved, hadn't crossed the width of the house and come to stand in front of Din. Din wished, dimly, idiotically, that he would.
"No," he managed, and then realized distantly that he was still sitting in his chair—pushed himself up, and almost regretted it, knees weak under him. "No, I—no. You will always be welcome here."
He didn't know what could possibly be surprising about the words. To him, it felt so obvious it hardly bore saying; as if he would ever turn Cobb away. As if he could.
But something in the line of Cobb's shoulders eased, immediate and visible, and Cobb let out a breath and rubbed a hand across his face, his mouth. "All right," he said softly, as if to himself. "All right," and then he looked at Din again and tilted his head, his eyes narrowing the barest degree. "Fellow could be excused for gettin' the wrong impression, I think, if a man seems so disinclined to see him or speak to him that he leaves the planet at the first opportunity."
Din felt his face go hot, grateful that the helmet meant Cobb couldn't see it happen. "I," he said. "I—didn't know what else to do."
"Well, I do hate to be rude when I can avoid it," Cobb said, mild, "but at the risk of pointin' out the obvious, I'd say there was at least one other option available to you, that one being to stay put."
"I couldn't," Din said.
"Couldn't you have," Cobb said.
It could've been hard, harsh—a deliberate jab. But it wasn't. Cobb said it almost gently, instead, and his brows had begun to draw together, as if he were trying to solve a puzzle he wanted very badly to understand.
But Din didn't know what he needed to solve it, what he could possibly be looking for. He swallowed, and said nothing.
"I realize," Cobb said after a moment, precise and deliberate, as if he were choosing his words with care, "that you may have felt some degree of—responsibility for me. Seein' as I woke up swallowing bacta in that palace in Mos Eisley and all, I assume at some point it was explained to you that that Duros fellow had paid me a visit in the hope of keepin' me and mine from helping you out as you'd asked. Which I imagine you may have decided was somehow your fault."
Din shut his eyes. "It was."
"See, I thought you might say that," Cobb said gently. "All sorts of odd ideas in that head of yours, Mando."
Din shook his head. "If I hadn't gone to you, he wouldn't have shot you—"
"If he hadn't shot me, he wouldn't've shot me," Cobb said—inane, utterly nonsensical. Din had to look at him again, and did, and Cobb was only standing there, watching him, with that same close attentive expression, gaze searching the surface of Din's helmet as if it were truly a face, as if it might give him something more. "We each make our own choices in this life. All right, you came to me, and he was sent to make sure I couldn't give what you'd asked me for, but if he'd decided not to shoot me, then I wouldn't have been shot; he decided t'other way instead, and so I was. Choice was his, not yours, and to my mind, that means the blame is, too." He fell silent, wet his mouth slowly, and then added, "But I understand if it troubled you anyhow. You're a good man, and we're—and we're friends, or at least I confess I like to think so. You were told what needed to be done to save me, and you did it, and that was a kindness I can't be anything but grateful for."
It was the truth. Wasn't it? There was no reason not to acknowledge it as such, not to agree and bring this conversation to its end.
But Din could not make his head, his heart, cooperate. A kindness; as if it had been altruism, generosity, and not the desperate awareness that he would do whatever it took to make sure he lived in a universe where Cobb Vanth lived also, not the creeping understanding that he could guarantee himself everything he could never have found a way to ask for—
"No," he croaked.
"No," Cobb repeated, and he looked at Din and then his mouth quirked, soft and rueful, the barest degree. "That's all you can give me to work with, huh? Never let anybody tell you you make things too easy for a man, Mando." He blew out a breath. "All right, well, if you aim to argue the notion that you are a good man, I won't indulge you in it; and I might have believed you meant to disagree with the idea that we're friends, except not two minutes ago you told me I'd always be welcome here, in a place you appear to have settled on as a home. You did save me, you did do what needed doing, even if I confess I'm hard-pressed to understand why you'd have done it and left, without even takin' a little time to enjoy the fruits of your labors—"
"We are," Din said, and then caught himself, by the skin of his teeth, before he could put it the way Mandalorians would: each other's souls. Or even the way the Selonian had, tied by our hearts' tails. Too telling, too much; he was almost grateful, distantly, to have learned how outsiders talked about it, the bland little word they used. "We are bonded. You can't break it. The damage would be too great."
"So I've been told," Cobb agreed.
And if he knew that much, then the whole matter had been laid bare to him, Din thought; but Cobb seemed to be waiting for something else, something more.
"That means—leaving was all I could give you," Din said.
To be another's own soul, to have them be yours—Din had been taught it could never be undone, though the Selonian had implied it could have if only Cobb's mind had not been burned so badly. But he had also been taught this much: even a soul's reach was not infinite. Parted long enough, with no bridge between two bodies, and the souls that had been joined could no longer be shared; the touch between them would grow thin, strained, until it was barely there at all.
And it had worked. Even now, with Cobb standing here less than a dozen strides away, closer than Din had ever expected to have him again, Din could barely feel him. It had been too long, too far, and they had fed their souls next to nothing, that single desperate clasp of their hands in the palace on Tatooine and Din collapsed all night at Cobb's side, and no more.
"You could stay. You could ignore it, forget it had happened. I couldn't undo it. I couldn't break it and give you back to whoever you should have had, whoever was truly yours. But I could go, and you could pretend it wasn't there, as long as—"
He faltered. In the haze of it, right afterward, waking up there and finding Cobb laid out in front of him like that, everything he had stolen from the universe even though he had no right to it at all, it had seemed only reasonable, the most sensible decision he could make, the kindest thing to do. For his own sake, as much as for Cobb's, admittedly; that way, he wouldn't have to explain the true extent of his sins to Cobb, wouldn't have to see the look on Cobb's face when he understood what Din had done and that for the rest of his life he must touch the soul of the man who had so nearly gotten him killed, who had not protected him.
But the way Cobb was looking at him now was making him think maybe Cobb didn't quite see it that way.
"As long as I didn't follow you," Cobb said softly, and raised an eyebrow. "Why, almost as if perhaps I don't care to pretend it ain't there, huh?"
Din swallowed. His throat felt tight; his head felt empty, but for the faint echo of Cobb in him, barely there at all.
And Cobb looked at him, mouth pressed into a line, and then said, "Listen, Mando, I don't mean to push you. If you want me to go, then I will. I'll leave you be and I won't come back, I'll give you the same thing you tried to give me, and it'll be fine. I'll miss you, and I'll be sorry not to see you again, but it'll be all right—so don't go thinkin' you've got to hand yourself over or else you're ruining my life. But if you want—"
He stopped, fell silent. And then he did it, just the way Din had wanted him to the moment he'd come off his speeder: he closed the last of the distance, strode the length of the cabin wall toward Din.
He was—his soul was closer, too, like that, the soft dull sense of him in Din's head growing steadily more pressing, no longer stretched out as thin as it could get to reach Din across lightyears. It was like an ache, in a place that had been numb; a warmth, finally beginning to soak into a place that had been cold. And even that little was so much, it felt almost overwhelming. Din drew a sharp breath, swayed the barest inch where he stood, blinked hard and dug the tips of his fingers into his gloved palms.
No, he couldn't—he couldn't do this, he told himself distantly. He couldn't do this, couldn't take this, couldn't allow himself to have it and to keep it—
"If you want something else," Cobb said, very low, and then swallowed, throat working. "If you want me to stay, then I'd like to."
And he lifted his hand, held it out palm-up: bare, wavering a little, unsteady, offering it to Din.
This part, then, was the same. Outsiders knew how it worked, too. Din could still remember it, how it had felt, to strip the glove from his hand and wrap it around Cobb's, all that warm open skin, the awkward knobs of Cobb's knuckles and the soft slack expanse of his palm, the solid pressure of the heel of his hand, the instinctive half-response of his fingers bending against Din's. And if they did that again, if they closed all the distance at once and touched—it would be as if Din had never left.
"Cobb," Din said, hoarse and warning, his voice breaking.
"I get the impression these things are done different, with your people," Cobb said. "You think I'm supposed to be somebody else, or you are. You think you weren't supposed to save my life, or you were supposed to leave me. But the way I see it, what's done is done, and the only thing that matters anymore is—if you want me to stay, I'd like to. Rest'll work itself out from there, one way or t'other."
Din shut his eyes, beneath the helmet.
Cobb was right. Wasn't he? Cobb was the one who was Din's own soul, and he was Cobb's; that was true now, whether it should have been or not, whether—whether the Way would have taken Din somewhere else, to someone else, if only Din had let it. And Din had been prepared to bear it, to live all the rest of his life alone with nothing more than the barest shadow of Cobb in him, but now Cobb was telling him he didn't have to. He could ask, he could ask for what he wanted, and Cobb was waiting to hear it, waiting to hand it to him, for no higher price than that.
It was staggering. It was a miracle. "Please," Din choked out.
And Cobb said, "Mando," strange and rough, breathless, and he wasn't waiting anymore: he lifted that outstretched hand and the other, at the same time, and took the last step left between them, caught Din's helmet between his palms and leaned in to press his forehead to the curve of it.
Except it wasn't enough, not quite, and Din was—he lifted his hands, struggled almost in a panic to yank the gloves off them, one and then the other. And when at last he had them bare, he wrapped them unsteadily around Cobb's wrists: bare just like his hands were, above the cuffs of Cobb's shirtsleeves.
It was like water in the desert, like shelter in a storm—like a spark catching on a cold night; a star being born, in the middle of the deepest void. Din hadn't let himself touch the part of him where Cobb was, and it had grown so faint, so dim, it had barely been there at all. But now, like this, it flared to brilliance across the skies of him like a rising sun, vivid color spilling everywhere, sweeping away the empty dark as if the lack of light, the lack of Cobb, had been nothing but a dream.
In the palace on Tatooine, Cobb had been asleep, exhausted, hardly really present, and the whole thing had been so new, so difficult to truly grasp or make sense of. Din had barely let himself feel it at all, before he'd run from it.
But here, it was—he could feel Cobb. He could feel all of it, everything: how much it meant to Cobb, when Din had begun to strip his gloves from his hands, understanding what he must be about to do; how glad Cobb was, how grateful, as if he had anything at all to thank Din for—the cold heavy thing he'd felt, waking up alone and disoriented, a bond where he hadn't been sure he'd ever be able to have one but already stretching thin, the awful full-body awareness that Din was gone; that he had, must have, felt he owed this to Cobb, but hadn't wanted to stay—
"No," Din said sharply, unable to stop it, even though of course he hadn't needed to. Because Cobb could feel him, now, too: what it had meant to him to think Cobb was dead, and then to learn Cobb was alive but might not be for long—what it had meant to him to understand that he might be able to do something about it, and how little he had cared, even then, how wrong it was to do it; that Mandalorians could not find the one who was their own soul except among those who walked the Way alongside them, that outsiders were for other outsiders—that Din had stolen Cobb from whoever out there was meant to touch Cobb's soul, had stolen him and was not giving him up, and could not even muster the integrity or honor to regret it—
"Right back at you," Cobb croaked. "Stop that, you didn't—you didn't steal me from anyone, you idiot. I'm yours. All right? Would've been already, if I'd had my say in the matter." He shook Din a little bit, by the helmet, and breathed out half a laugh. "I meant it, you know. I'd have been grateful enough just to be alive at all, to be alive and to have even the smallest part of you all to myself, knowing you couldn't ever try to take it back from me when you knew it'd kill me if you did. How's that for selfish? Should've come here to offer to break it, to tell you you didn't owe me that and you ought to get to bond to whoever you liked instead of chaining yourself to somebody with a fried pile of spare parts for a brain. But I didn't want to, if there was—if there was a chance, at all, that you'd done it because it meant you could keep me."
"Yes," Din admitted. "I wanted to be able to save you, I would have done anything I could. But I was grateful, that the thing I had to do was make myself your own, and that you could never ask me to undo it."
Cobb huffed. "Well, ain't we a pair," he murmured, stroking his thumbs across the curve of the helmet's face. "Mando—"
"Din," Din said. "Din Djarin," and he slid his hands up Cobb's wrists, over the backs of Cobb's, until he could twist the helmet the fraction it required.
Cobb went stiff. "Wait, you—uh, Din—?"
"You are my own soul. This body is yours, too, now," Din said.
Cobb's throat worked. "You people take this real seriously, huh," he said, a little faintly.
But of course he could see it now, in Din—Din showed him every lesson in an instant, Mandalorian children learning how to cover themselves, every inch; no touch was real but the touch of souls, and with the one who was your own soul, armor would be as nothing, because then your skin was theirs. And it was only truth, only facts, but color was rising high into Cobb's cheeks—and then he wet his mouth, and his hands turned firm and steady under Din's palms, so that in the end he was the one who lifted the helmet away.
Din had only an instant to feel a stab of apprehension, as the edge of it passed his face; he didn't know how this worked, how to guess whether Cobb would be pleased or displeased. He'd seen his own face only a handful of times since he was a child, and of course it wasn't supposed to matter at all, according to the rules Din knew, but Din had followed none of those rules with Cobb. Was he handsome? He didn't know. Cobb's face was so interesting, so expressive, so thoroughly lived-in; was his face like that?
But then it was—Cobb's presence filled his head with warmth, the sharp intent fascination Cobb felt, how hungrily Cobb was absorbing every single thing about him; how dark and uncertain his eyes looked, to Cobb, and the broadness of his face where Cobb's was narrow, and Cobb took the helmet in one hand and lifted the thumb of the other to rub it through the stubble across Din's jaw, and Cobb—liked that, liked doing it, and could feel the uncertain lurching fizz of heat that rose up through Din's guts when he did it, too.
"Well," Cobb said, very quietly. "Hello there, Din Djarin. Guessin' at this point you won't mind too much if I take a few liberties."
"No," Din managed, because he knew what Cobb meant, could feel the shape of the intention in Cobb's head, and it was so crisp and so clear, so fully-formed, that he honestly wasn't sure which one of them actually moved to bring their mouths together.
Cobb had done this before, knew how it worked and how to do it, how to—kiss. But he wasn't very much help, too intrigued by the novelty of the sensation for Din to be bothered sharing any helpful memories, spilling over with hot pleased gratification over everything from the way Din perceived the touch of that thumb he was still rubbing across Din's jaw to the shape of his mouth against Din's, the wordless spark of startlement Din felt at the first touch of his tongue, was that—did people really—
—oh, folks'll put their tongues just about anywhere, trust me, and you'll love it, just let me—
And then Cobb went still, inside and out; brought his thumb up to the corner of Din's mouth, a gentle soothing touch to make up for breaking the kiss, because, Din understood, he wanted to say it, felt it ought to be said, made real outside his own head.
"Let me," he murmured, against Din's cheek.
"Yes," Din said, "yes," and Cobb grew bright around him, through him, in him, his; and Din shut his eyes and didn't move, let it fill him, let himself hold on.