Work Text:
Din leans against the massive temple archway, tucked just underneath into the shade to hide from the late evening sun. The golden rays filter through the hanging moss that clings to the ancient stone, and even through his backplate and flight-suit, the column is cold against his back. The temple here on Yavin IV is full of cold, dark corners, and Din clings to their chilly familiarity in the midst of so much light.
Luke comes to stand beside him- he’s so quiet that it’s his HUD that lets him know something moved in his peripheral vision, a soft blur of black in the corner of his visor. He glances over but doesn’t move his head; Luke stares out onto the overgrown courtyard to where Grogu and the astromech are playing.
Luke sighs, long and loud enough to make Din turn his head to watch him fully. Luke looks tired. Din knows tired- knows weariness that runs down to his marrow. Nights when he’s sure he’s not meant to be breathing anymore after fights he’s sure he wasn’t meant to survive. The kind of tiredness where his fingers shook from hunger, but he passed off the food for the other foundlings to take their share first. But there’s something different about the way Luke is tired- like it’s not just him, but a thousand other fatigued souls pulling heavy on his shoulders and neck.
Luke doesn’t look at him, just watches where Grogu climbs the droid with shaky but determined hands. The droid compensates by spinning and twirling whenever Grogu becomes even a little unbalanced. Din tilts his head to watch Grogu for a moment more, and then folds his arm against himself, turning toward Luke.
“What’s wrong?” Din asks. He knows something’s wrong- after almost a year on Yavin IV, he knows when the Jedi’s silence is concerning, and not a mark of meditation.
Luke turns toward him, slightly, a quick glance before looking back to Grogu, now seated on the astromech’s dome and giggling as the droid spins in slow circles. “I’m worried about him.”
Din shifts at that, standing up from where he was leaning against the column. “What do you mean?”
Luke turns away from Grogu and Artoo with another sharp sigh. “Grogu has been struggling. It’s like he’s locked his own memories away.”
“He can’t remember?” Din says.
“No. It’s that he doesn’t want to.” Luke says, his brow wrinkled in concern. “I don’t blame him, really. But I can’t help him if I don’t know what he’s been through.”
Din looks back to the field. From where Grogu sits, high and mighty having conquered the mountain that is Artoo, smiling as the droid rolls across the grassy courtyard, it’s hard to believe that. But Din knows what it’s like to want to forget.
“I think there’s something I can do to help him. A technique I could try.” Luke says. “I could use your help.”
“What do you need?” Din says. Anything, he thinks. Anything.
“I think he would be more open to the process if you do it as well.” Luke’s eyes, keen and ever-blue, that have the impossible ability to find Din’s own behind his mask every time, meet his own. He looks unsure. It’s not something Din ever thought he’d ascribe to Luke Skywalker. “But the process can be...intense. I understand if you don’t want to do it.”
Din flips it over in his mind for a moment, considering. He’s not exactly sure what Luke is asking of him. But what kind of an example would he be if he asked Grogu to do something he refused to? And, looking at Luke, how could Din refuse him anything?
Not that he could ever say that.
Din nods. “‘Course. Show him there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Luke smiles, and tingling warmth spreads from the tips of Din’s toes into his cheeks. “Thank you.” Luke says.
They settle into the meditation room. Din always liked this room: the windows of thick, ancient glass sit from the floor to the ceiling, showing off the endless view of the upper canopies of the rainforests that lie in the distance. It’s high enough that you can see the shore of Yavin IV’s ocean, foamy and orange-blue as the sun sets. Grogu is content in his arms, if a little curious at the fact that Din’s not wearing his full armor.
Don’t worry, kid, he thinks, I’m weirded out by it too..
It’s only his helmet, now, and the deep grey flight-suit that’s practically a second skin. Just wearing it alone feels as sensitive as if it were his skin. It lights a happy fire in Grogu, who is determined to grab at his flight-suit and giggle every time he grips something softer than beskar. Din pushes his finger in between Grogu’s, and then he’s happy to cling tightly to that instead.
Luke faces away from them, his black cloak shed. The dying sun paints Luke in light, turning his hair to a fiery-gold and brilliant. Even his black clothes look brown in the orange light. He’s clearing a space on the floor for all three of them, moving the green food pillows to the edges of the room so they can sit on the wooden dais in the center.
Luke gestures to the floor, and Din sits. Grogu hums lightly as Din maneuvers him into his lap, eyes wide and intent on Luke as he moves about the room. Luke sits across from them, then, folding perfectly against the floor like he’s fallen into the position a thousand times. He probably has.
Then, Luke unwraps a piece of black fabric from around his wrist. He spins it once, twice, three times before the snake unfurls. Luke doesn’t hesitate before wrapping it around his eyes, pulling the knot against his head with a sharp pull.
Din’s belly clenches.
He touches the edge of his helmet first, just letting the blunt edge dip into the pads of his fingers for a second. Then, the slightest pressure, and the helmet seal hisses as it unlocks. That hiss alone makes him tense, a crack in his ice warning of freezing death below. But he keeps going, keeps pushing, until the helmet is off, and the warm air hits his skin and a gasp leaks from his lungs. Grogu lets out a happy shriek at seeing Din’s face, reaching up on his toes to just reach the edges of his jaw and beard. Din indulges him, wincing as Grogu pulls a few hairs from his chin.
He blinks a few times to get used to his own eyes, seeing even in plain color is foreign to him, so bright and shrieking in color it makes him dizzy. Luke has a smile on his face and a warm buzz runs from Din’s stomach to his fingers. If Din thought he was brilliant before, now he explodes in color, the top of his hair shines yellow-silver in the direct sun.
Luke moves closer, until their knees are touching against one another. Grogu settles- seems he senses the tension in the room, not like fear, but an energy, like the air before a lightning storm. Luke’s hands rise to either side of Din’s face, and now, of all times, Luke hesitates, stops, and, if Din watches enough, shakes. Luke’s mouth just opens, like he means to say something.
“It’s alright.” Din says, beating him to it, his voice scratching out unfamiliar between his dry tongue and teeth. Din pushes down the rolling lurch his stomach makes at the sound; his voice, both too quiet and too loud, is out of place in this temple of peace.
But Luke smiles again, and Din doesn’t mind it so much then.
Luke presses his middle and pointer fingers into the deepest points of Din’s temples, and it sends a shock through him that he tries not to react too, just flexes his toes to do something with the feeling. Din wonders if he should close his own eyes, but he keeps them open, just to watch Luke’s eyes move from underneath the blindfold. Din wonders if he should be feeling something, whether he would even be aware of whatever Luke was doing- Luke said it would be intense, but the feeling in Din’s chest only feels like his own nerves, fat and ready to burst. He almost asks, but then Luke’s brow furrows, and the blindfold folds sharply as he concentrates, and Din stays quiet. Luke’s fingers are cold, jarring pinpricks on his skin, but one is colder than the other.
Din only gets a second to wonder if he could tell which one is his prosthetic before being pulled under.
He’s only just able to get a half-breath before his head is dragged under an icy water. It’s electrifying, his muscles jump, and then an all-encompassing numbness slicks over his skin. He’s surrounded on all sides by murky blackness- he thinks he can see shapes in the distant water, like eels sliding past one another in an inky mass. He can feel nothing except phantom spasms of cold and sharp scratches on the inside of his lungs as they beg for breath.
He holds on, his teeth biting into the soft flesh inside his mouth beneath his lip. He wants to kick, to try and swim to a surface, but there’s a bony grip on his ankle pulling him further down. He needs to breathe. He can’t breathe.
“It’s okay,” someone says. “I’m here.”
He gasps, sitting up against, impossibly, a surface, soft underneath his hands. Air fills him- sweet and powdery, like fruit trees when they pollen in the spring. He’s no longer in that hellish ocean- instead, he’s in a small room, somewhere he can’t recognize. It’s summer-warm here, and his skin tingles as it heats.
His vision is just climbing out of blurry into fuzzy when can start to make out the details of where he is now. It’s a cubic room, with tan walls made of some kind of rough stone. There’s a tiny window, no bigger than a data-pad screen, set into the wall. Din stands, spinning for a second before he stumbles to it; the glass is a little bubbled, but he can make out a small village and ice-capped mountains in the far distance. The other buildings around him are small and square, with rounded tops- probably sunroofs to catch the warmth when the cool winds come down from the mountains.
Dread pools hot and sticky in his gut. He was wrong, this place is familiar-
“Din!” A honey-voice calls. It cements him, frozen, to the dirt floor.
“Din!” It repeats, as much as it stings to hear it again.
He steps, and then again, and again. He keeps going, even though each step feels like a mile, a thousand tons to move.
The voice laughs. “Hurry up, tesoro .”
So, he does.
He drags himself to the door, the quick snap-slide-shut just missing his nose when it opens. There she is, dressed in scarlet, bright and red and real.
His mother stands in the middle of their home. She’s faced away from him, a dark silhouette against the cream-colored room. He’s afraid to breathe now, that even that might be too loud, and she might disappear.
Instead, she turns around, a sewing needle bit between her teeth. ““Din ! There you are.” She says, her words tight and muffled from her clenched teeth. She pulls out the needle, putting a last stitch into the fabric she’s holding. “Come, come. I just finished.” She waves him closer, turning the shirt she’s holding inside out, or rather, the right way out again.
Din walks slowly so as not to shatter the vision. His mother is here, a happy flush on her cheek, her bangs hanging stubbornly in her eye: little details Din thought he had forgotten. It’s so strange to look down at her- he was never taller than her, before. Yet, them both being here doesn’t break the world apart around them- like it was something natural, for both Din and his mother to have lived to see this. He feels more like the ghost here than her.
“Now, come, try it on.” She holds the fabric out to him, and he takes it, the crimson linen rough- and yet the softest thing he’s ever felt. He feels limbless as he pulls it over his head, his vision stained in sun-filtered red for a moment. “There, there we go.” She says, speaking under her breath. His mother’s hands help him, pulling the long-sleeved tunic down over his stomach. “There, it fits perfectly, even if you have lost a little weight. Not eating enough, tesoro ?”
The tunic hangs in the asymmetrical way that all Aq Vetininan clothes did, from what little he remembered, and there’s a hood sewed into it that catches on his ears. “Ah, ah.” She tuts, pulling the hood down. “There, so we can see your eyes.” She smooths out his hair from where it was ruffled from the fabric down across his forehead. “Oh, Din, you’re freezing cold-” She looks in his eyes, her eyes, and he needs to breathe. He can’t breathe,” Mi amor, what’s wrong?”
“Mama.” He gasps, with a shuddering, wet breath. The vision of his mother blurs with tears, and he has to close his eyes tight to even let them fall. He feels, feels, his mother’s hands on either side of his face, wiping the tears from his cheeks. He almost wants to pull her hands away, so she doesn’t have to feel the scratchy and scarred skin- but instead he folds into it.
He pushes his face into her palm and then crumples, as weak as flimsi against his mother’s love. He falls to his knees, a scratchy sob clawing out of his throat. He buries his face into his mother’s stomach, into the soft fabric of her dress. It feels so real, so soft it stings.
“Oh, Din.” His mother says, petting his hair with one hand, the other tucking his head closer to her. He wraps his arms around the backs of her legs to pull her closer, to hold onto her while she’s still here. He cries, cries like he hasn’t since before he put on his helmet. She pets his hair, again and again, brushing it between her fingers to pull out the knots. It’s such a deep memory that he closes his eyes tighter against it, to block out all the light- to touch and not see.
Then, he hears.
The mechanical drone of a droid battalion marching clanks on the edge of his hearing. Then, the blasters, vibrating with a shriek as they fire again and again.
“Mama!” He yells, “Mama, you have to run!”
He tries to pull out his mother’s grasp, but he can’t. He’s locked into kneeling, a heavy pressure around his whole head. He opens his eyes, and he cannot see- only a darkness that brightens and fades like watching a star from behind closed eyelids. The pulls against the force, but it’s unyielding.
“Mama! Papa!” He screams, “Run! You have to run!”
The droids are closer, and smoke stings his throat. A cannon takes out a building, somewhere, a mile away and also right beside his ear. He cowers but can’t move to cover his ears against the destruction. He feels dirt hit his face, tastes blood on his teeth, and the droid stands over him with small, fake, red eyes.
“Mama!” He screams, and he hears a child.
A gloved hand moves against his jaw, and then stops under his chin. It lifts his face up, out of the shadow of his mother’s body.
He blinks and the Armorer is now standing before him, he on his knees before her.
“I-” he says, if only to say something, to prove he can do something-
“Din Djarin.” She says, sharply, and it pierces his heart. “Are you ready to swear the Creed, to follow the Resol’nare as it is written, to walk the Way of the Mandalore?”
He breathes unsteadily. Then, he says what he’s always said to her. “Yes.”
She hesitates. Her visor meets his eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” He speaks. “Anything.”
It’s always been anything with her, the woman he called buir to no one but himself in nowhere but his dreams.
Clang!
He hears her hammer hit the metal, though she remains standing in front of him. A shower of sparks lights up the dark around them for the smallest second. They land across his face and shoulders, but the pain is nothing.
Clang!
He keeps his eyes on her visor, each hit causing a flash of light that blinds him as it reflects against her forehead. But he keeps his eyes on hers, if only to prove to her that he is one of them. He is a Mandalorian.
Clang!
The next flash lights the room up in brilliant cold light. There are thousands surrounding them, watching them, one of them. A thousand suits of armor that shine with each spark. A song, ancient and unchanging, rumbles in their lungs.
Clang!
In the next flash, the Armorer is turned away from him, further away than she was before. “Wait!” He shouts, standing on shaking legs. But she cannot hear, or just doesn’t turn back.
Din’s feet follow her before he knows what he’s doing. He tries to keep an eye on her among the thousand other Mandalorians and helmets, but there’s so many of them- he can only just catch her helmet for a moment in the spaces between the others. The song grows louder.
“Wait!” He shouts, again, begging her to hear. He grunts, frustrated at the too-many bodies in his way. He tries going faster, pushing past them, only to stumble. A Mandalorian’s hands have wrapped around his ankle, pulling him back and down. He kicks against the hold, but then another pulls at his wrist. He can’t see the people they’re attached to, but it’s weighing him down, their grips talon-like against his skin. He tries to take another step, but instead there’s an armored arm around his neck, pulling him back into the sea of Mandalorians surrounding him. It tightens and he needs to breathe, he can’t breathe. He can only see the silvery flash of beskar as the armored bodies swallow him into their fold. The song grows into a deep, angry pitch.
He finds the grip around his neck and pulls, digging his nails into them and ripping until they let go. They do, easily, and it stumbles him that the suffocating limb gave up so easily. He grips the hand that strangled him and looks. It’s then he realizes the hand isn’t a hand at all, but an armored skeleton. It’s then he realizes the song isn’t a song at all, but screaming.
The corpses of Mandalore surround Din on all sides.
He panics against the bodies around him. They’ve become lifeless now, or perhaps they always were, and he just couldn’t see, but they’re everywhere. The march of troops has replaced the beating of the Armorer’s hammer and is ringing unyieldingly in his ears. He climbs over his people like he would a mountain, trying to find footholds among the skeletons of both people and armor.
He slips on a piece of shin armor and falls into the mass of beskar’gam with a heavy slam. More armor falls onto his back, hitting his spine and shoulders, crushing him like an ocean of metal. He spins around so he’s facing the sky, or the ceiling, or whatever endless black is above him. He’s not sure whether the armor is going to crush him or drown him- maybe both, with the weight cracking his ribs and then molten iron filling his lungs.
No, no, he can’t die like this, can’t let himself become another body in this mass of death. Was that all he had left? Memories of ghosts?
He clenches his fist, rage boiling in his belly, and his fingers wrap around a hilt. On instinct, something jolts through his bones and lights his eyes in blinding white, and he ignites the Darksaber. He swings it, out and up, and the grief-song goes quiet.
He’s somewhere else now. His eyes focus to find himself on a coast- there’s mist in the air from the spray of the ocean hitting the rocks. The sun, cool and clear, shines across the cliffs that tower beside him, dotted with hundreds of caves that drip from the high-tide spray. He sucks in the misty air- he feels more grounded here, somehow.
He realizes that the Darksaber is still ignited in his hand, it’s faint humming pulling in and out like the crash of the waves against the cliff. His thumb hovers over the button to turn it off, but he stops, and instead turns it, admiring the beskar hilt. Despite being thousands of years old, it shines brand new, only faint scratches on its edges. Beskar in all its ever-lasting beauty. He holds it out further from his body, and then spins it, like he’d seen Luke do with his own lightsaber many times before. It’s far clumsier than Luke does it, but it still sings in the air as it spins, sharp and sweet like a shot of spotchka.
Stay alive, and Mandalore stays alive, he remembers being told.
His life is not all ghosts- no, far from it. Anticipation bubbles in his chest as he thinks of Grogu and can, impossibly, feel him, somewhere nearby. It’s not something he’d ever felt before, a presence this clear, but he would recognize that feeling anywhere, even in death. Something like joy, like standing up after falling down.
He hears Grogu’s voice, a cross between him crying and him curious, and follows it.
The sound leads him into the caves, and the echo with every step he takes on the wet rock. The stink of sea-salt and seaweed fades as he walks deeper and deeper into the caves. He follows, steadfast, knowing that he’s getting closer. The caves dry as they tilt upward, but they never darken, no, Din can now see sunlight at the end.
He comes into an open clearing on the other side of the mountainous cliffs. There’s a town here, a small, seaside village, sitting peacefully on the bluffs ahead. Din follows the lilting hillside to one of the homes, a round building molded with clay. The sandy-brown building looks empty, the whole village does, in fact, but then he hears the unmistakable sound of footsteps.
A girl rounds the corner, Grogu’s pram following her faithfully. Despite this, Din doesn’t sense any danger. The girl looks ragged and thin, her tan robes barely hanging onto her frame. Dark black and stringy hair falls into her face. She looks around quickly, but her eyes pass right through Din; she doesn’t seem to be able to see him. She crouches down, a hand steady on Grogu’s pram, and waits for a few, silent seconds, then continues to walk to the other side of the home. Din follows.
The girl looks around panicked, then seems to find something that will work for her- a tattered, salt-soaked blanket, sitting in the side-yard on a dingy table. She throws it over Grogu’s pram, despite the top being closed, and then pushes it into the furthest corner of the building, hidden in a cold, dark corner. It’s a good hiding place; if Din weren’t looking, he probably wouldn’t have spotted it. Hell, he didn’t spot it until he had a track fob in his hand when he found Grogu’s crib himself. The girl starts to turn, then stops and looks back at Grogu.
“I’m sorry.” She says, and then runs.
Din comes to the pram’s side, taking off the blanket carefully. In a heartbeat, the top of the pram opens, and Grogu looks up at him. He looks afraid and desperate. Din doesn’t hesitate to pick Grogu up in his arms, and the child clings into his neck, curling his face against the tender skin there. Din presses his nose into Grogu’s cheek.
“It’s okay,” He says, “I’m here.”
Grogu buries himself further into Din’s embrace, and Din lets the feeling overwhelm every part of him. The home, the village, and the oceanside fade around them in a crash of mist and smoke. But there’s something else left behind- another impossible feeling, like seeing every star in the galaxy at once.
He looks up to see Luke.
His first instinct is to reach out, to bring Luke into their fold and live in it forever. Luke lights upon seeing them, his blue eyes as bright as hyperspace.
“Din,” He breathes.
Grogu turns on hearing Luke’s voice, and then insists on being in his arms. Luke obliges, coming to stand beside him in this endless void, and, despite nothing around them being so, nothing has ever felt so right.
“Grogu.” Luke says. Luke presses his forehead to Grogu’s, and it shakes something in Din’s blood. He acts on that first instinct, starts to raise his hand and reach out, almost touching-
A lightsaber ignites.
Din jumps, instinct pulling Luke and Grogu behind him. Another world has formed around him- a hall with giant ceilings of mottled stone, the walls warm colors of orange and yellow. It should be lighter in here, Din thinks, but he’s not sure why he knows that. Instead, the room is cloaked in darkness, the flickering lamps barely making a dent in the unyielding dark. The only true light in the lightsaber, harsh and blue. He cannot see who wields it- only the billowing form of a cloak in the darkness.
The girl kneels before the figure. She’s begging and writhing against a pain Din can’t see. The lightsaber pulls back, shifting the harsh light, and she screams- and then she’s cut down.
The figure then turns to hunt them. Grogu cries out. Everything inside of Din, every instinct that has ever saved him, tells him to run, that this is not a being in which you can fight and win. He breathes to say as much, but then the figure is before him, the distance between them before seemingly now nothing. His lightsaber raises to cut him down with a terrifying arc. The next breath, and a green saber blocks the others, the light flashing with a screech. Luke is fury where he stands, his teeth bared to the figure, and with a burst of Force the figure is flung back, far away from them. Luke doesn’t hesitate to leap after him, arcing in the air like a bolt of veridian lightning. He swings his saber over his head and crashes it down on the strangers with all the force of a meteor.
Din tucks Grogu closer to his side, trying to shield him from the fight, but Grogu watches, afraid but unflinching.
Luke and the stranger match each other blow for blow. There’s an upheaval of energy in the room with every strike- like if they were storms fighting and not people. The blue and green sabers spark yellow when they meet in a furious embrace. Neither side is yielding anything, no one showing restraint or willing to lose their footing- they seem locked in a terrible, tumultuous stand-still.
Then, the stranger reaches out with a gloved fist and clenches. Luke stiffens, one hand going to his neck, clawing desperately for air. The stranger lifts Luke up by this invisible strangulation and then throws him against a wide column.
“Luke!” He screams, because he doesn’t know what else to do. Then, the figure turns to Din and Grogu, yellow eyes flashing like a predator's in the low light. Unfiltered fear singes the insides of Din’s veins.
“No!” Luke shouts and throws himself once again at the figure. He’s relentless, one blow after another, hitting the blue lightsaber again and again until the figure crumples underneath the pressure. Every clash is like a thunderclap, and Din’s eyes narrow like he’s blinded with light. Luke disarms the stranger, literally, their hand now a smoking and sparking stump. Luke doesn’t stop, though, and with both hands wrapped around the hilt of his saber, he raises the green blade straight into the air and then down, right through their chest.
What was once deafening is now silent. Luke heaves shaking breaths over the corpse of the stranger.
Luke stumbles back, never looking away from the figure’s body. Then, with a terrible tremble, the world shakes just as Luke’s shoulders do, like the axis of the world is built upon them.
Din pulls Grogu as close as he can against his body to protect him from the seizing world. Luke spins to face him, seeming to pull further and further away. He’s afraid, Din thinks. His eyes are wide and bloodshot, and he flings out a hand toward Grogu. With a sigh, Grogu is gone- not in danger, no, Luke wouldn’t put him in danger, but somewhere very far from here, something real and warm.
Then, Luke moves his gloved hand toward Din.
“No,” Din says through gritted teeth, but everything pulls at his being to break the surface of this place, but he won’t. He grounds himself, pushing everything that is him into the fibers of the ground he stands on. Luke will not be rid of him here, too, and will not get rid of him like he did Grogu. Because if Grogu isn’t safe here then neither is Luke, and, dammit, Din won’t be separated from either of them.
Luke flinches when he realizes Din is still there. Din reaches out towards him, tries to speak, but then an alarm, unending and blaring, starts. The flashing, pale lights of a space station flicker on around them. Luke looks around in fear, cowering in on himself as if to hide from this new visage around them.
Din manages a step toward him, but it’s like walking toward a hurricane. The space station falls away to a burning desert, and Din shields his eyes from the unexpected and vivid sunlight. He smells smoke, acrid and nauseating that burns the hair in his nostrils.
Luke has collapsed now, pulling the stranger’s body to his chest and hiding his face in the black cloak. Din screams Luke’s name, over and over, but even he can’t hear his own voice. He manages another step. The desert strips into empty space, a thousand stars pricking the black around them. An explosion unlike anything he’s seen makes even unfeeling space turn and look. Another step. He's surrounded by orange and blue smoke, and a red saber cuts across his vision, and his hand burns with every small movement of his fingers. Another step. His entire body convulses around a blind, cold whiteness that arcs between every one of his cells. Din wants to collapse against the pain, wants to fall, wants to die -
One more step and then there is nothing at all. Nothing but him and Luke.
Luke is crumpled before him, curled in on himself and holding a corpse that is no longer there. He’s trembling. Despite there being nothing, there is something- an edge of a precipice Din can barely understand.
You saved me, Din thinks, let me save you.
Din sinks to his knees, meeting Luke where he lies. Din leans over him- so human now, afraid and hurting, and gently cups Luke’s face in his hands, pulling his head up to look at him.
Eyes, as blue as water and sky and life, meet his own.
He feels it again, that instinct he’s felt for a long time with Luke. Here, now, he decides to act on it. He kisses Luke, a gentle press of their lips- in his chest, Din feels the waves of the ocean crash against the cliffside. He kisses Luke through a wave of terrible heat and terrible chill, keeps their lips together so that Luke might know some part of this enormous feeling Din has for him. He kisses Luke as his body becomes his own again, as awareness sparks across his skin and nerves. He kisses Luke and kisses Luke and kisses Luke, and at this moment, there is nothing else.
Luke responds in kind, something that settles Din’s stomach against a rolling fear. Luke’s hands cling into the dark grey front of Din’s flight-suit, pulling him impossibly closer into his welcoming mouth. Din curls his mouth tighter around Luke’s own, and that spurs a noise out of Luke that vibrates Din’s own teeth. It’s real and alive, which is more than he can say about anything else that has happened.
When they pull apart, Din knows that they’re back. They’re sitting on the wooden dais of the meditation room, the sun long since set and a chill in the room that doesn’t pierce every part of him. But Din can look nowhere else but Luke’s face, small and tear-stained beneath his hands. The blindfold is gone, but Din doesn’t mind, in fact, is mended upon seeing Luke’s eyes look into his. Luke’s eyes grow wider, and his lip, swollen from kissing, trembles.
Din smiles, brushing his fingers along Luke’s cheekbones. “It’s alright.” He says. “I’m here.”
Luke pulls him into an embrace, his arms pulling Din down by his neck. Din laughs and melts into it, his nose finding a warm place to bury itself in the warm part of Luke’s neck. Luke shudders, and Din turns his face up to press a kiss into Luke’s jaw.
Grogu demands attention, then, with a sharp, happy cry. Din and Luke manage to break apart long enough to pick him up into their embrace, pressing him between them.
His life is not one of ghosts. It’s here, in the arms of a Jedi and a child- haunted by ghosts, maybe, but defyingly, extraordinarily alive.