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Catch me, heal me
lift me back up to the sun
I choose to live
A Perfect Circle, Gravity
Din splits the sleeve of cookies with the Anzellan.
He cannot fathom why the Kyuzo hunter hadn’t taken them, but he won’t waste the lucky break.
“Are you okay?” he asks the Anzellan… Minch… as he offers a blue Macaroon. The little guy accepts it with a pained mutter that evades Din’s ability to parse it in his own debilitated state. He thinks he hears the words “sore” and “slimy,” but he can’t be sure. He doesn’t see any blood, and the cookie goes down fast enough, so the situation isn’t too immediately terrible for his fellow captive.
Pretty good outcome for a little one who got gnawed up by an anooba.
He slides a cookie out of the sleeve for himself and manages to get it up under his helmet’s rim and past his teeth without crushing it to bits against his chin on the way.
Din Djarin has never had much of a sweet tooth, but dank farrik this cookie has got to be the most delicious thing he has ever put in his mouth. He’d been a little peeved at Rotta for swiping them (how had the Hutt managed to fit into his kitchen, anyway?), but then the storm had moved in early to complicate work on the ship, so they’d never gotten around to dinner, so there’d not been an after dinner, and, well… now he’s in a cell with nothing but a bunch of cookies and an Anzellan to share them with.
Din offers another cookie. Minch brings himself back up to his feet with a low, “Oh, why not,” and accepts. This one goes down a lot slower and ends with a tiny belch and a satisfied belly rub.
“Thanks, big guy,” Minch says.
Din tips his head in reply and, seeing as Minch is topped off, allows himself to eat the rest.
No sense in saving them and risk later confiscation.
Din’s chest is starting to feel tight.
He’s been wondering when the venom would really start to kick in, and now he has his answer.
But Grogu is safe with the Anzellans, on their ship. They probably already made the jump to hyperspace by now.
Grogu is safe.
That’s all that matters.
Because… whoo boy… Din Djarin is not safe.
The neurotoxin pumping through his blood is sapping his strength. His arms and legs don’t really work right. Picking up a rock to smash over the droid takes monumental effort, monumental concentration, consciously telling every muscle fiber, every tendon, every ligament, what to do.
He stumbles away, feet dragging in the brush.
His hands ache.
His legs turn to mush and he falls to his knees.
The vise around his chest tightens.
Nails drive out from behind his sternum.
He cranes his head down to check the wound and is met with a blackening, festering gash.
Great, the venom has cytotoxins, too.
Of all the ways to go, getting digested from the inside out had never made it to Din’s bingo card.
His breath wheezes through his helmet modulator.
Blood trickles down his neck from both ears, warmer and stickier than the warm and sticky pit water that still soaks his cowl.
His body refuses to heed his will any longer and he collapses on his back.
His skull squeezes around his brain, threatening to crush it like a melon.
His vertebrae compress against their disks as the muscles in his neck, shoulders, and back seize up, pinching the large nerves that run through them. The muscles in his thighs, calves, and arms seize in response, contracting to stone-hard bunches, burning cramps with no way to release.
His breaths strain against the band tightening around his chest, rattles muffled through his blood-filled ears.
His lymph nodes under his arms swell and stab him through his chest.
His tendons in his feet ignite, arching them against the stiff lasts of his boots.
Even his eyes scream from their sockets, ready to burst like grapes.
All he can do is pull breath through his ever-constricting throat. No longer of his own will, no longer of his own control, but on pure reflex, his spine refusing to acknowledge the radio silence of his brain, refusing to give up and die.
Please let it be fast, he thinks. Please hurry up and get it over with.
A high-pitched whine drowns out the wet, rattling wheezes as the jungle canopy above him is swallowed by a black tunnel, marching in from the outside, narrowing down to a tiny bright point, then winking out altogether.
Yet still, his ribs gouge razors through his lungs as they fill and empty.
Fill and empty.
Fill.
Empty.
His only consolation is that it will end soon.
It cannot end soon enough.
Pins and needles up his legs.
Pins and needles up his arms, up his sides.
He has seen what happens to creatures that fall unmoving to the jungle floor in places like Nal Hutta.
He has seen the creatures that swarm them. The creatures that devour them in millions of tiny bites. The insects. The crustaceans. The slugs.
And that’s before the big scavengers show up.
He has a pretty good idea of what’s crawling up his body.
His lungs fill.
His lungs empty.
Creep creep creep.
Get it over with. Get it over with.
Fill.
Empty.
Air drags through his throat each time.
Daggers through his diaphragm each time.
Get it over with. Get it over with.
A thump against his chest.
The creepers skitter away.
A scavenger with an endoskeleton it is, then.
Go for my neck. Sever my jugular. Get it over with.
Get it over with.
Fill.
Empty.
Pressure against his wound.
Pins and needles… a different kind of pins and needles… radiate from the pressure point.
The wound goes numb, then warm, then…
Shrinks?
One grav charge-sized spot on his left side feels just fine while the rest of his body screams in agony.
Oh…
Oh no…
No no no no no please no.
Tiny hands shoving against him confirm the horrifying realization that dawns in what’s left of his mind.
Grogu came back for him.
No no no no no! I told you to leave! I told you to go! Dank farrik you’re not safe here kid!
The wound has closed and things have stopped getting worse, but… they’re not getting better.
He will not have Greef Karga’s miraculous recovery.
The poison has had the benefit of too much exertion over too much time and has run itself all the way through Din’s body.
He will die anyway, one way or another, and Grogu will die with him.
Stubborn stubborn stubborn why are you so stubborn why didn’t you listen!
Upending the covert, years spent protecting him, searching for the training he needed, providing training, all the sacrifice, all the investment.
All for nothing.
His jaw drops as his mouth opens for a scream, but nothing comes out.
All he can do is breathe.
His lungs fill.
His lungs empty.
Hours pass. The sun glides overhead. Night falls. He can only tell because the parts of his body warmed by the sun and cooled by the shade change with the spin of the world.
In some ways, things get better.
In some ways, things get worse.
By morning, the darkness has receded to reveal the jungle canopy and blue sky above it. The piercing whine has dissipated against the breeze through the leaves and his own wheezing.
The wheezing is maybe a little better, but not much.
The nails his sternum and ribs punch through his lungs with every breath remain unchanged.
The rest of the agony in his body remains unchanged.
Even if the poison doesn’t get him, Hutt security or a predator or a scavenger or thirst will.
Grogu has only prolonged his suffering.
Maybe there had been some truth to Ahsoka’s concern about Grogu’s bond with him. Grogu’s misplaced efforts aren’t doing either of them any favors right now.
The helmet’s mics pick up rustling brush in the distance and the faint beeps and blurbs of digital coms.
Hutt security it is, then.
His eyeballs scream as he rolls them down to his left to see Grogu’s ears perk at the approaching noise.
Run kid! Get out of here!
Grogu scampers away.
Din closes his eyes, the one part of his body he seems to have control over, and small measures of relief and hope seep through the rage and despair. Maybe he’ll get away. Maybe he’ll find a way off this skughole and get to safety.
A pile of ferns drops over his face, blocking his view of the sky.
Oh for farrik’s sake.
More vegetation drops over him, pungent through the helmet’s filters.
Grogu stills in the space between Din’s chest and arm, silent as the droid security party approaches. Din does what he can to quiet the wheezes, which turns out to be absolutely nothing.
Rustling brush resolves into footsteps. Din rolls his eyes to the right, willing to pay the price of the sandy scrape of his eyeballs grinding against their sockets. He’d landed in a small depression between the jungle tree roots, and can just barely see the top of the tallest droid’s head through the ferns as they pass by.
Too close. Too close. This is way too close.
But the droids continue on, the fresh ferns apparently doing enough to dissipate his and Grogu’s thermal signatures as well as provide visual camouflage.
Huh. Good job, kid.
His eyeballs scrape back to a more neutral position.
The kid won’t leave him until he’s dead, but it should only take another two or three days for the dehydration to end him.
On top of everything else, his tongue has glued itself to his bottom teeth, his mouth little more than a tacky void in his head. Were it not for the fact they were in a jungle, his sinuses would already be dust. His clothes are still moist and clammy under the armor, and his back is still wet, none of it having dried in the swampy humidity.
Water all around him, dripping off the trees, saturating the air, pressing in on him from all sides, but none of it getting to where he actually needs it.
Time passes.
Din watches the sun and shadows bend through the day.
Grogu stays wedged between his side and his arm.
The kid has never been so still for so long. Not while awake, anyway.
The pain has only abated inasmuch as he’s maybe grown used to it, maybe his body has exhausted its supply of neurotransmitters, maybe his muscles have burned through too much energy to maintain their cramped contractions.
But he’s nowhere near close to being able to sleep. Trapped in a tortured body that can’t move, won’t pass out, and is taking far too long to die.
If he can only hurry up and get it over with, the kid will finally leave him and maybe get to safety.
It’s been a while since Din’s had a death wish.
Nevarro had been the first time.
When the e-web cannon blew up in his face and scrambled his brain.
He’d been ready, then. Ready to die. At the end of his rope after months on the run with the kid, starving, exhausted, all other options tapped out. Responsibility for the kid transferred to Cara along with the mythosaur pendant that had hung at his throat for close to four decades. The pendant that would serve as a passport to the covert below, and along with the sacred gift of his name, would transfer his protection of them to the living Mandalorians.
Except the covert had been destroyed.
Only one living Mandalorian had remained.
Din’s not entirely sure how Grogu would’ve faired without him after that point. Hadn’t let himself think about it too much.
Hadn’t let himself think about the cozy warmth of holding the kid in the crook of his arm.
Hadn’t let himself think about the kid’s contented burbling from his hammock as they both drifted off to sleep in the dark, safe and snug in the Razor Crest’s durasteel confines as hyperspace swirled around them.
Tatooine had been the second time.
When Boba Fett had called for his aid.
He’d been ready then, too. Grogu safe under the tutelage of the Jedi, his own continued presence in the kid’s life apparently an unwelcome obstacle in the training that would shape the kid’s talents and elevate him to his fullest potential.
Bereft of the Razor Crest. The only place he’d felt truly safe since escaping Aq Vetina, moving fast, slicing through hyperspace lanes.
Nothing left to lose.
Except Grogu had come back.
Apparently choosing him over the Jedi.
Is he ready to die now?
No.
He sure as hell is not.
Grogu is his, now. His son. Din has so much more to teach his son. The kid’s pretty good at staying out of harm’s way during melee combat, has an amazing talent for dealing with large and hostile animals, and is reliable at putting up anti-incendiary defenses. But his tech skills are completely absent. Din hasn’t figured out how to conduct pilot training for a being with such short little arms and legs. His aim is pretty good with paintball darts, but Din hasn’t had much time to do any further weapons work with him.
Grogu isn’t ready to be on his own yet.
And, inasmuch as Bo-Katan could probably do a decent job of taking over for him…
He wants to do it himself.
Has wanted to see Grogu through to independence himself.
Has enjoyed…
The wheeze of Din’s breath hitches just the slightest bit.
Just the slightest bit as he finally admits it to himself.
Din Djarin admits that he has enjoyed having Grogu at his side as his son.
Din Djarin admits that he has enjoyed being a father.
Din Djarin admits that Grogu has brought more meaning to his life over the last few years than he’s ever had before.
But it will all be for naught if his son perishes at his side on this skughole of a planet.
The only way Grogu will fend for his own interests is if Din dies.
Din listens to his own breath whistle through his throat, rattle through his lungs, hoping each breath he draws will be his last.
Disappointed every time when it is not.
Grogu presses against his side, scrabbles for some utility belt item under the small of Din’s back, and then scampers off again.
Please be safe please leave please don’t come back please get out of here.
Fill.
Empty.
Hours pass. A light rain falls. The ferns shed most of it.
He’d never imagined himself dying under a pile of vegetation, but so be it.
At least he has his boots on.
Grogu scampers back, his return heralded by the tiny little purring grunts that Din can recognize from a kilometer away.
Dammit.
The kid stands on his shoulder… gods that hurts so much, and tugs at the helmet’s lower lip.
Woah, hey, no… no no no no...
He has a pretty good idea of what he looks like right now. Bloody and wet and desiccated and terrified all at the same time. He does not want Grogu to see him like this.
Water.
Water over his lips.
He’s able to open his mouth, able to swallow.
Dank ferrik, it’s cold and clean and delicious.
The canteen. That’s what Grogu had taken from his belt.
The kid is careful to pour slowly, a little at a time, waits for Din to swallow and catch his breath for a few beats before pouring more under the helmet, somehow managing to get it into Din’s mouth without pouring it all over his face and waterboarding him instead.
Din has seen what Grogu puts in his mouth. Frogs and worms spiders and bugs and larva and all manner of disgusting raw creatures and eggs, all without a single hitch of gastric distress. He could no doubt stomach Nal Hutta’s plentiful stagnant swamp water with no issues.
But he’d taken the effort to find clean running water for Din.
Din can pull his tongue off the floor of his mouth.
The wheezing eases off a little.
But every breath still sends spikes through his lungs. His head is still squeezed by a steel belt. His body still throbs with agony.
Instead of dying of dehydration tomorrow, it’ll take him another week or two to die of starvation.
Another week or two of suffering.
He thinks of Rotta, doomed to suffer for hundreds of years at the hands of The Twins.
It doesn’t make him feel any better.
Time passes.
Grogu is no longer glued to his side. Din doesn’t know what he’s up to, but he hears the kid nearby, tiny panting breaths under sustained effort of some sort. Short, rapid, muddy-sounding slaps.
It goes on for hours.
As dusk approaches, Grogu’s steps squish through the mud as he walks around Din’s body and the ferns are pulled away.
What now?
Din rolls his eyes down, but Grogu is standing too far past his feet to see much more than the wispy white fuzz at the top of the kid’s head.
He does not see Grogu lift his arms.
He does, however, feel his backside leave the ground.
He knows exactly what’s happening.
It’s not like being picked up. No isolated pressure points under his knees or his hips or his shoulders.
The lift is uniform, following the curves of his neck, lower back, ankles, and all the points in between.
And then he glides.
Grogu is carrying him somewhere.
Only a few seconds tick by before he passes under a threshold of some sort and into darkness.
BONK
Ow!
BONK
BONK
Stop it, kid!
Grogu lowers him back to the ground.
Vegetation is thrown over his feet.
It takes him a moment to put the pieces together and realize that Grogu had built some kind of structure and hid him in it.
Even if the kid had underestimated his height.
Grogu tucks himself between Din’s arm and chest, curls up, and begins to snore a few minutes later, sound asleep.
Under cover of darkness, with a bit of water in his system, Din is tired enough that he almost joins him. Eyes closed, he slides to the edge of consciousness, but the ever-present squeeze of his skull, the stab of his ribs, and the burn of his tendons all conspire to keep him from going over, all deny him any kind of real escape.
All he has are his son’s snores and his own wheezes.
Fill.
Empty.
Grogu leaves again.
Din would like to think that the kid has finally wised up and left for good, but at this point, doesn’t think it’s likely.
Sure enough, a few hours later, a rustle of brush at his feet is followed by Grogu’s little purring grunts. The kid scrabbles under the small of Din’s back again, yanking at his utility belt until whatever he’s after pulls free and he hits the ground with a thump. A bit more rustling ensues, and then Din is blinded by a brilliant light.
He squints against the glare but is still unable to turn away from it.
Prepared, he opens his eyes bit by bit, letting himself adjust, and eventually looks up to see a mud ceiling in the light of his portable lamp.
Grogu scrambles up to sit on his chest.
Oh gods, he wishes he could scream.
But the initial rush of agony passes, and the kid seems content, if even a little wet, as he chows down on a fish.
So that’s where he’d gone off to.
Except…
Din can tell it’s not raw.
It smells cooked.
It smells smoked.
Din knows the kid hasn’t built a fire nearby. Hasn’t heard the crackle of flames, hasn’t smelled a whiff of smoke.
Grogu hadn’t just gotten the fish from somewhere.
He’d gotten it from someone.
Had he made contact with someone?
Or had he stolen it?
The latter seems more likely.
Maybe he won’t starve to death, after all.
Maybe he’ll get murdered by an angry Nal Hutta local seeking retribution over theft of food, instead.
He suddenly realizes that he is both starving and completely lacking any appetite whatsoever.
The ache of his empty stomach has, until the smoked fish hit his nostrils just now, been masked by all the other aches. Under any other circumstances, he’d be chomping at the bit for his own serving.
But the combination of pain and fragrance only makes his stomach turn.
His one stroke of good luck is that the kid is a fast eater and slides off his chest as soon as he’s devoured his meal. Din tracks him with his eyes and watches as he retrieves the canteen.
Again, Grogu lifts the helmet up just enough, administers the water slowly enough.
Din’s stomach settles a little.
Din has a lot of time to think as Grogu settles down for the night to sleep, once more tucked in between Din’s chest and left arm.
Even now, the kid follows Din’s habit of keeping him to the left.
Keeping his dominant hand free for fighting.
Din has nothing but time, suffering, and the ministrations of his son.
He allows himself the thoughts of a dying father.
Has he been a good father?
Does a warrior raised by the Mandalorian Fighting Corps even know what it means to be a good father?
He doesn’t remember a lot about his own father, but he does remember being happy when his father was around.
He remembers his father taking him to the market to select meiloorun, a favorite of his and his mother’s. He remembers his father reading to him. He remembers his father walking him to school every morning. He remembers his father taking him to the park to romp around on the playground. He remembers his father pecking his mother with a playful kiss on the side of her head. He remembers his father prepping, baking, and carving the Life Day nuna. He remembers his father…
He remembers his father carrying him through the streets of their village as it burned and mortars screamed overhead and…
Din closes his eyes and succumbs to the flashback that has plagued him for most of his life.
The flashback of his parents sacrificing their lives to keep him safe.
In this, Din has failed as a father.
He had tried. Tried to send Grogu away, pack him in a little box while drawing the enemy away.
Din had stayed in the box while his parents had been murdered.
Grogu hadn’t.
But…
… Grogu has the benefit of unusual talent and training.
Din can’t take credit for all of it, not even half of it, but the kid has come a long way in the few years since Din had found him hiding in a pod. He has to admit that the initiative the kid has taken over the last few days has been impressive, even if he’s really done nothing but put himself in danger and prolonged Din’s suffering.
He knows he has been unable to give Grogu a life of peace and abundance. He also knows he’s done his best to prepare Grogu for a violent galaxy, hopefully without hardening him too much in the process. He wishes he could’ve done more, wishes he could rest easy in the knowledge of leaving his son in a better world, wishes he could be sure his son is ready to carry on without him.
He supposes all fathers do.
He doesn’t know how many kids have risked their lives in vain to save their fathers. Of the many regrets he has, this is the one that weighs on him the most.
And yet.
A small part of him wonders if he’s underestimating his son.
He really should’ve died days ago. Grogu saved him. And really, that’s not a new thing. Grogu has been saving him from the start. Since the mudhorn. The signet they both wear. The event that has bound them together ever since.
Is it possible that Grogu might actually save him from this?
The kid rouses with a few grunts, shuffles his way past Din’s legs, wades through the brush, and scampers away again.
Stay safe, kid.
A few hours pass.
Grogu had left the lamp off, so Din lies in the dark and listens to the jungle. Nal Hutta’s jungle sounds much like all the others he’s found himself in. Small buzzing insects. Small-ish croaking amphibians. Medium-sized shrieking mammals and birds. Large roaring reptiles.
Not the kind of place he prefers to camp in while completely incapacitated, but he doesn’t have much of a choice.
He has to give Grogu credit for tromping around out there all by himself.
The kid eventually comes back, seemingly none the worse for wear.
No fish this time, though.
Instead, he holds a small, leafy ball in his hands. He pulls the leaves away to reveal a brown-red glob.
He goes for the helmet once more.
Uh oh…
Grogu takes part of the glob, shoves it up under the helmet, and squishes it into Din’s mouth.
Bitter!
Bitter usually means poisonous. But Din can’t spit it out. Instead, it dissolves within moments and triggers his swallow reflex as it slides down his throat.
Grogu gives him some more and the process repeats.
The vise releases his skull.
The daggers in his lungs melt away.
The fire in his tendons blows out.
His muscles relax.
The wheezing eases up.
Antidote… the kid found an antidote… good…
… job…
… kid…
After days of unrelenting agony, Din falls into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Dreamless until late the next morning, anyway.
Deep in the recesses of his mind, Din finds himself eating dinner with a handful of other people. Somehow, this doesn’t seem strange to him, just like how many out-of-place dream things don’t seem strange in the moment. They’re on a ship, complaining about how bad the food is, but he’s chowing down on it anyway.
His stomach lurches.
Conversation around the table stops as he coughs and drops his fork.
Oh wow, his stomach feels terrible. Like he’s about to puke. But worse than that.
Almost like something…
He stands up, unable to stop coughing. The guy next to him slaps him on the back.
It feels like…
He turns around to try to leave the table, but ends up falling backwards onto it instead.
Something is trying to tear itself out of his stomach.
He screams, writhing against the others who pin him down.
He swears he can feel himself getting clawed apart from the inside out, searing needles ripping their way through his gut, until finally breaking through his skin and…
Din wakes up.
He’s about to puke.
He turns his head and… he can turn his head! He can move!
He rolls over, slides a slumbering Grogu out of the way, and shimmies out of the hut. He stands up once he’s all the way out, takes a quick look to confirm no one is around, and takes the helmet off as he dashes over the small rise and down into the next hollow before unloading his stomach.
A puddle of black bile pools up. The antidote must have pulled all the toxins from his system into his stomach for removal.
Are those…?
Yes. They are.
Little blue bits from his last meal. Half a tube of blue macaroons.
He spits out the remains of the bile, somewhat unable to believe how much better he feels. He’s slimy and stinks to high hell from never having dried out from the pit water and hungry enough to eat an entire ronto by himself, but otherwise…
He was foolish to doubt Grogu.
The kid has saved him again.
He’ll clean up as much as he can now while the kid’s still asleep. Grogu has more than earned as much rack time as he needs. But once he’s up…
Din has a score to settle with the Hutts.
And he won’t leave Rotta to a fate of endless suffering.