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Din was sitting down in the hold of the ship holding the sword in front of him. He didn’t really know how to feel about it. He didn’t want to be Mandal’or, it felt wrong somehow. The sword buzzed gently in his hands.
He needed the Armorer’s advice on this.
He knew Kryize was avoiding him. It didn’t bother him, he didn’t like confrontation outside of bounties all that much. The rest of the Nite Owls slunk around unsure of how to act around him. He wished he had gone with Boba, at least Fennec was still here. He missed his child.
The rest of the trip went like this with Din feeling vaguely sick and nauseous between the grief of separating from his child and the weight of responsibilities he had never wanted. He dropped off with Fennec on Tatooine not wanting to spend more time on the ship crushed beneath the pressure of Kryze’s expectations. He could feel her gaze on him when he walked out of the ship with the Darksaber on his hip. She still refused to challenge him for it.
Boba and Fennec offered to let him stay at the palace after they took it over. They were kind. Din refused. He needed to track down his covert. They accepted this and they said their goodbyes. They were good friends. Din let them know he would come if they called in need of aid. Boba snorted and Fennec told him to get off their planet before they impound his ship. Din was pretty sure she was only half-serious but hurried off nonetheless.
He was a good tracker, it was what made him a good bounty hunter and a good provider for the covert. It still took him weeks to track down his covert to their new base, the Darksaber humming at his hip the whole time. He still didn’t like the weight of it; it felt too heavy. He couldn’t say why but he got the distinct impression that it was meant to go somewhere and he was only its carrier.
He found his covert hidden away on the space station Glavis Ringworld. He announced to the Armorer that he had completed his Quest and she congratulated him. He couldn’t tell if she meant it or not. He presented the Darksaber to her. It had a heavy history.
The only thing Din retained from it was that it was stolen. That was why it felt out of place and restless. Din asked the Armorer if she knew where the Jedi weapons were put to rest. She paused and watched him, considering. Paz was quiet still after having lost their spar.
She told him a Jedi would probably know of these things.
Din asked her to make a beskar chain-mail out of the spear, made to fit a body of a tiny size. The Armourer didn’t comment on this and simply lit the forge. Din watched, the Darksaber and the weight of its responsibility momentarily forgotten, fascinated as always by the flames and the beskar taking form in the hands of the Armourer.
He got up and clipped the sword back to his hip. A cold passed over him but he ignored it. He had a Jedi to hunt down and a new Quest to restore his status as a Mandalorian to accomplish.
(This hunt took him closer to months and he could feel the Darksaber burning hotter and hotter and colder and colder at the same time, urging him on.)
He finally tracked down the Jedi to an uninhabited planet covered in forests. He landed near a clearing where droids were cutting wood and stone and carrying it to some structure they were building. He tried to not flinch at the sight of the droids. There was no one around that he could see and his HUD wasn’t picking up on anything. He sat down on a bench and prepared to wait.
He fell asleep to the sound of the Darksaber’s hum.
He woke when he sensed a presence near him. He saw first a blue and white astromech before looking up and seeing the Togruta Jedi he had met on Corvus looming over him with her head tilted to the side and a curious look in her eyes.
“Have you come to see Grogu, Mandalorian?”
“Yes.” He wondered if it was inappropriate to visit one’s child while they were in Jedi training, if he even had the right to call him that according to others’ standards. He knew that Mandalorian rites of adoption were not universally recognized in the Galaxy and he wondered if the Jedi did acknowledge them. “I was wondering if I could offer him this.” He offered up the tiny bundle containing the beskar chainmail.
She squinted at him. Din felt like squirming but he held still. The Darksaber pulsed at his side. Ahsoka Tano’s gaze was drawn to it and she stared at it for a long moment before speaking.
“It has been a long time since I have seen this weapon;, how have you come into its possession, if I may ask?”
“You know of it?” He completely ignored her question: he didn’t want to talk about Moff Gideon or Kryze right now. She stared at him meaningfully.
“Yes. What do you intend to do with it ?”
“Return it to its rightful place,” he said bluntly, honest. He sensed the Darksaber hum at his side. Tano’s eyebrow, or the Togruta’s equivalent, raised.
“Which would be?” she said, skeptical.
“I do not know, I came to ask.”
She stared at him in silence, surprised, before her eyes crinkled and she smiled with her teeth. He felt the winds shift in the trees; it felt strangely like a laugh.
“Is that so?”
He stared at her with no answers.
“I suppose Ilum would be the most appropriate, yes.” She was talking to the void next to her but Din’s HUD didn’t pick up anything. He assumed it was a Jedi thing and moved on.
She turned back to him and considered him for a moment, her lips pinched and her eyes watching him like prey. He bore it with his usual demeanor.
“I don’t like this but…. “ Her eyes shifted to the side again but there was still nothing there. “I will give you the coordinates to Ilum.” Her posture shifted and she became cold. “Know this Mando, Ilum is a sacred place to the Jedis, even after the Imps desecrated it.” She burned with cold fury before softening. “I like you so don’t get possessed by some ghost or something out there.”
She left him with this and a data-chip in his hand, no doubt containing the coordinates to his next destination. His gift for Grogu was no longer in that same hand. He hadn’t even noticed the shift.
…Were ghosts something he should be concerned with?
The only thing that answered him was the quiet hum of the Darksaber.
The void of space and it’s numerous stars had always been a recomforting sight to Din. The Armorer often said he should have been from Corellia filled with wanderlust as he was. It had been part of why he had become a hunter for his people aside from his skill.
The Darksaber’s blade reminded him of it.
The planet of Ilum was now in sight. It was a small planet with a cold climate. Thankfully his flightsuit and armor were isolated against such temperatures. He wondered briefly if the Jedi had used the Force to keep themselves warm.
Tano had given him the Jedi Temple coordinates and he landed his ship not too far from it. He could see the remnants of an Imperial settlement digging into the sides of the Temple almost as if trying to eat it. He paused before the sight and tried to imagine the mines of Mandalore similarly desecrated and tried not to weep. The Imperials had contented themselves with glassing the surface and killing everyone they could get their hands on before leaving Mandalore behind, in ruins.
The Darksaber was humming and buzzing more loudly as he got closer to the Temple;, Din could feel it heating up at his side. A pressure in his mind kept him moving onward to his objective.
The Imperials had dug into the entrance and the Temple stood open; it felt like a wound had been inflicted and left gaping. A grief that was not his own settled over him but he kept on moving and entered the Temple.
Despite his armour he could feel the temperature drop severely and the cold settling in his bones. He had a feeling he should not linger here for long. He let himself be carried by the currents that were moving him and led deeper and deeper into the Temple.
He had to shoot down an Imperial probe droid that had been left behind but aside from that he arrived into one of the caves without incident. He gripped on a stalactite to keep himself from tumbling down before he raised his head up and took in the room. There was a formation of ice in the far-right corner that looked almost like a pedestal. Din deemed it an appropriate place to drop the Darksaber off and made his way to it. As he progressed he noticed glistening stones trapped in the ice that were shining through in all colours. It was beautiful.
Din reached the pedestal and only noticed then that its centre was made of black ice. He reached down for the Darksaber and felt it pulse in his hand. He put it gently on the pedestal and let it rest there without saying anything. No words were needed here.
It was only then that he noticed that the whispers had died off and he was once more alone in his head. Also that he had made his way here in a haze and had no idea how to make it back before he froze an extremity or two.
Dank Farrik
He had somehow managed to retrace his steps using the tracking feature of his helmet. He was now sitting in his ship on autopilot and thinking about the Darksaber while watching the stars.
… Kryze would never leave him in peace for this, would she?
He veered off course and input new coordinates.
It was time to test Boba’s hospitality. He could visit his friend before heading for Mandalore. And stay there until Kryze stopped fantasizing about putting his helmet on her new mantle. He was sure it wouldn’t take too long … probably.