Chapter Text
Din yanked the covers off the bed, shocking Luke out of a deep sleep and nearly causing the younger man to throw himself out of the bed and onto the hardwood floor.
“Din, what the hell?!” Luke yelled as he threw his arms around his bare chest and scooted up against the headrail of the bed. “It’s cold as shit and the sun’s barely up!”
“Today’s the day, Luke – we gotta get a move on if we’re going to blow this place to hell,” Din shrugged as he threw the quilt and blankets over his shoulder. “Thought you’d be the one rarin’ to go, honestly.”
Luke only responded with a snuffle as he grabbed a pillow and clutched it to his torso. “You’re so cruel – what happened to the gentle, loving man that curled up next to me and kept me warm through the night?”
“His heart turned about as cold as a desert autumn morning when his lover decided to sleep in while the entire town’s outside rushing to leave,” Din said as he grabbed his already packed saddlebags from the corner of the room. He paused at the doorway and leaned over to look Luke dead in the eyes. “And fluttering those big blues at me ain’t going to melt it, either. Now, come on – we gotta get the kid ready to go.” He turned to go into the main room of the house and set his bags at the door.
“You still didn’t have to be so mean ,” Luke groaned loudly as he finally crawled out of bed and snatched up the shirt he’d laid out the night prior over the foot rail.
Din heaved a large sigh as he dropped the bags and went straight back into their bedroom, finding Luke getting dressed. Luke truly would be the death of him.
“ I’m up! ” Luke said as he yanked his shirt down. “You don’t have to fuss over me! I’m a grown –”
Pointedly ignoring Luke’s grousing, Din brought his hands up to gently frame Luke’s face with his hands, pressing a soft kiss into the younger man’s lips. He smiled as he pulled away, earning a soft whimper of longing for his troubles. “If I didn’t fuss over you, who would?”
“I thought I couldn’t melt your heart,” Luke said, all traces of his scowl gone and replaced with a lopsided smile.
“Oh, you didn’t – I’m still not letting you sleep anymore, but I couldn’t have you upset with me before dawn. I only try to upset you after you’ve had some breakfast,” Din said before he placed another kiss on Luke’s forehead and pulled away, chuckling at Luke’s indignant, undignified squawk. “Come on, cariño . Get dressed and get your things – the sooner we can blow this place, the sooner we’re out on the road.”
Luke frowned as he yanked his socks back on. “Yeah, alright – but you owe me some serious coffee.”
“Sure thing, love,” Din said as he turned to leave. “I’m going to go grab the goblin and his things – the Sorgan family won’t leave without Grogu, but I know they want the children out of town well before noon.”
“I’ll be there in just a minute, darling – I’m not going to let that little nuisance leave without a proper goodbye. Even if he loves you more than he loves me,” Luke laughed as he pulled a boot on and ducked under the bed looking for its match.
Din finally left the room and made his way into Grogu’s room. When he reached the door and leaned against the door jamb, he looked at the small child still snoring lightly under the covers of the tiny bed Boba made for him and he felt something sickly and painful rise in his throat. He’d maybe spent just three weeks or so with Grogu, but in that time, he felt a strange sort of kinship with the child. Perhaps something akin to affection, something like love – something that swelled under his ribs and settled somewhere in his lungs as he tried to keep his breathing quiet. As much as he would loathe to admit it, the child got under his skin. He didn’t see how he ever thought he could live life alone again.
Din felt a soothing touch on his lower back and automatically lifted his arm to let Luke duck under it. He rested his hand on Luke's shoulder as Luke nestled against his side
“Isn’t that just the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen?” Luke whispered. “You had a hard enough time getting my ass out of bed, so I’ll go ahead and get him started, alright?”
Din could only sigh as Luke gave him a squeeze around his middle and broke away from his embrace. He watched as Luke carefully settled himself next to the small bed and placed a small hand on the child’s tummy.
“Hey, there,” Luke cooed as Grogu stirred. “Welcome back to the world, sunshine – are you ready to start the day?”
The child blinked up at him and gave him the widest smile Din thought he’d ever seen on the kid. Stubborn, stinging pricks lined his eyes as he held a hand up to cover his mouth, watching Luke lean down to place a kiss on the kid’s cheek and untuck him from under the covers.
“That’s what I’d thought you’d say. We’ve got to get dressed – you’re going home today!” Luke said as he lifted the kid up from the bed and onto the floor. “We’ll get you in your best traveling clothes and get you out on the road, alright? Are you up for that?”
The child giggled and clapped as Luke made a big show of pulling out pieces of clothing and laying them out for his inspection. A questioning look from Luke stirred Din out of his thoughts and back into the present. He moved to the small bureau and set himself to work, packing up the rest of Grogu’s things in a suitcase taken from the Browns’ house. Din paused for a moment as he remembered the day they’d found the boy – frightened, still curled up underneath the covers of a bed – and felt the vestiges of that same anger towards the Browns for abandoning him. He swallowed it down and continued working.
As Din packed away the little wooden horse Luke bought for Grogu on his trip out to El Paso, it struck him that they weren’t much better than the Browns – here they were, giving the boy away to yet another family and shuffling him off to be someone else’s burden. He felt the guilt claw its way up his throat, its tracks burning as he leaned over the top of the small bureau.
“Darling, is something the matter?” Luke asked. He slipped a shirt over Grogu’s head and tucked it into his pants.
“I just… I’ll be fine,” Din grit out as he snapped the top of the case shut.
“I take that to mean you’re not fine now,” Luke replied evenly as he lifted Grogu up on the big bed to put on the child’s shoes. “You want to talk about it?”
Din turned around to face Luke and leaned against the bureau. “You know, it’s hard to believe we’re here right now – it’s just so very final, you know?”
“It is. With the closing of this chapter, we’re opening another one,” said Luke as he held up a little matching jacket for Grogu to wear. “Unless, of course, that’s not what you mean.”
Din looked down at Luke and couldn’t help but give him a soft smirk in response. “Preternaturally perceptive, as always.”
“Well, don’t make me use my witchcraft on you, darling – out with it.”
“Do you not feel like we’re abandoning the baby?” Din finally said, feeling as though he had to tear the confession from his chest.
Luke’s brows furrowed as he stood. “Din, I can’t relate to what you went through growing up, but I know for a fact that you can’t let yourself feel bad for letting Grogu go live with a family that will give him everything he needs – you know Miss Omera would never, ever do to Grogu what the Browns did to him.”
Din’s eyes cast themselves down to the floor as his grip on the bureau tightened. “But I’m here. Am I not good enough for him?”
Luke crossed the distance between them and wrapped one arm around Din's middle, the other reaching up to run a hand through Din's thick curls. The older man collapsed into his hold and buried his face into the top of Luke’s shoulder. His arms pulled Luke in even closer.
“You gave this little boy a place to stay and cared for him as if he were your own. You found him a home and a chance for a good life. Darling, you did everything right,” Luke said.
“It doesn’t feel that way,” Din grumbled as his hold on Luke tightened.
“I know, I know – but maybe getting him out to the wagon will make you feel a little better. It won’t ease the sadness, but maybe it’ll reassure you that you made the right decision.” Luke carded his fingers through Din’s hair soothingly. “He’s ready, darling.”
Din tilted his head up and looked over at the child, who grinned over at him and patted the mattress next to him as if to call Din over. “But I’m not, Luke.”
“Over here, you three!”
Din looked up to see Omera, her mother, and her daughter Winta standing near a covered wagon already hitched up and ready to head out on the road. Omera’s mother busied herself with making sure Winta’s clothing looked straight as Omera tested the tie-downs and stays on the wagon’s hood. No one in the family looked particularly stressed, which Din took to mean that they packed up most of their possessions the night before. It made sense for Omera – Din always thought of her as a meticulous and capable woman who could move mountains if she so chose. A shaky resolve settled itself over Din as he hitched the kid up in his arms and made his way over to the wagon.
“What did I tell you?” Luke said as he ran a hand across Din’s lower back.
“Witch,” Din sniffed, much to Luke’s delight.
Omera met them part of the way, already holding her arms out for Grogu. “Hello, little dove! How are you doing this morning?”
Din carefully held him out to Omera’s waiting arms and didn’t let him go until the child was practically on her hip. “He’s been very well-behaved, Miss Omera – I think he’ll do well on the ride out there.”
“Oh, that’s a relief – Mama’s going to go ahead and take both Winta and little Grogu here on the trail with the first convoy out, so if he’s not fussy, it’ll make everything easier,” she said as she cuddled Grogu closer.
“You’re not leaving with them, ma’am?” Luke asked as he walked over to the wagon with Grogu’s bag.
“No, they’ll go on ahead with Miss Tano and Morgan Elsbeth leading the way out there. I’m riding out with Marshal Vanth, Mr. Fett, and Miss Shand – I wanted to see this thing through, and so did they,” she responded. “After all, I put my blood, sweat, and tears into this place. If anyone should get to watch this place go up in flames, it’s me.”
“They won’t be going alone, anyway!” a familiar voice spoke up over the clamor of a moving wagon and thudding hooves.
“Miss Dune!” Omera said with a wide smile. “I really appreciate you helping my family out here.”
Cara Dune reeled in her oxen and threw the brake on the wagon, hopping off the driver’s bench with practiced ease. “It’s no problem at all, Miss Omera – we all owe you something huge, so this is the least I could do for you and your family. Besides, I think we’re all headed in the same direction.”
“So, you won’t be staying?” Din asked, tipping the brim of his Stetson up and out of his face. “I figured of all the folks here, you’d get just about the biggest kick out of watching this place go up in smoke.”
“Any other time, you’d be right. This time, however, making sure this first convoy gets out to El Paso safely means more to me than watching the spectacle – no offense, Skywalker,” Cara said as she reached over to run a hand over Grogu’s head.
“None taken, Miss Dune,” Luke said. “So, is the first convoy taking off here soon?”
“Here in just a little bit,” Omera affirmed. “We, of course, were waiting for this little one to join us.” Grogu acknowledged Omera’s words with a grab at her bonnet ties.
“And we wanted to say goodbye to our little mister here,” Luke said, almost as if he knew Din wouldn’t be able to say it himself. “It was such a joy to have him, even if it wasn’t for long. We’re going to miss him like crazy.”
Grogu began to fuss and squirm in Omera’s arms. “I think he also wants to say goodbye.” She turned to hand him back over to Din, that uneasy feeling crawling back into his chest as he realized what this moment meant.
“Hey, kid,” Din finally said as Grogu looked up at him. He smiled as the child’s big brown eyes met his own. “We’re sending you to your new home today – these folks will absolutely adore you and take care of you as one of their own, so don’t worry about a thing. We packed up everything you need in that case, so you’ll have your favorite toys with you, too. I’m awful sorry we couldn’t bring you along, but the stretch of road we’re taking isn’t good for little guys like you.
“I want you to come see us some time in the future, though – whenever you want, we’ll be waiting for you,” Din said, choked-back tears ripping up his voice into something jagged and rough. “I promise.”
Luke touched his arm, causing Din to break away from Grogu’s stare. “Here, Din – I think this also belongs to Grogu.” In his outstretched hands lay Din’s rosary, the delicate silver crucifix glinting in the rosy-fingered dawn.
Din barked out a harsh laugh. “Yeah, I think it does,” he said as he took the rosary from Luke’s hand. He carefully draped it around the child’s neck and tucked it into his shirt to keep it away from his fingers. “This is for you, to keep you safe wherever you go – and to bring to me whenever you come back, alright?”
“Bah,” said Grogu as he reached out and patted Din on his cheek, his fingers running through his scruff. “Patu.”
“Yeah, I know,” Din replied. “I’m gonna miss you too, kid. But it’ll all work out, alright?
“Bah.”
“Be good, kid,” Din whispered as he placed a small kiss on Grogu’s head. “Take care.”
He handed Grogu back over to Omera’s waiting arms, watching as she turned to carry him back to the wagon. The child’s brown eyes never left Din’s as Omera walked away, and Din felt his heart fall to the ground and shatter.
“You did well, darling,” Luke said as he dragged a hand across Din’s shoulders in a comforting manner. “Thank you for doing so good by that little boy. He’ll never forget it.”
Din only nodded as he turned to go back into their house and throw himself back into work, hoping to push the sight of Grogu leaving out of his mind and focus on whatever would come next.
After the final convoy left town and Luke checked every single charge, the remaining citizens of Mos Pelgo – Boba Fett, Fennec Shand, Cobb Vanth, and Omera Sorgan – allowed Luke and Din to escort them to the cliff Luke designated as the proper viewing platform for his fireworks show. Din also found it poetic since it was the very cliff that the pair of them descended when they arrived in Mos Pelgo all that time ago. He knew better than to expect anything less from Luke Skywalker, a man who could derive meaning and significance from just about anything.
Din realized it was likely why Luke constantly asked him about constellations and stories. The thought made him laugh to himself.
Once the team reached the top of the cliff and set their wagons and horses at a far enough distance away, Luke explained that he set up the entire dynamite relay to go off with a gunshot trigger. As much as he wanted to use the typical plunger-style detonator, Luke didn’t have nearly enough detonation cord to stand a safe enough distance away from the level of utter destruction that would soon befall the skeleton of Mos Pelgo. All he needed was a volunteer.
“If anyone’s going to set this off, it should be Miss Omera,” Marshal Vanth said as he took his rifle from around his shoulders and offered it to her. “Ma’am, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Cobb, I really shouldn’t – what if I miss?” she asked as she tentatively reached out for the rifle.
“And then you miss,” he shrugged. “I’ve got plenty more ammo, just in case. You won’t need it, though – you shoot just fine.”
“You’ve earned it, Miss Omera – take the shot,” Boba nodded. Fennec just stood there and smiled.
Holding the rifle tightly in her hands, she looked around at the remaining citizens of Mos Pelgo with something Din thought might be a mix of resignation and gratitude.
“Give us a speech!” Fennec shouted.
Omera laughed as she scuffed her boots into the dirt and looked up at the sky, as if the words she needed hung right above her head. “It’s hard to believe that all that time spent trying to save the town just meant that we’d end up destroying it,” she said, “but I don’t know if I would trade the experience for anything – as strange as that sounds. It’s liberating, in a way. We get to start new chapters of our lives – some of us got new family members out of the deal, some of us made lifelong friends, while others among us just started their own journeys together.” She paused and gave Din the slightest of eyebrow raises. “But even though Mos Pelgo’s about to be dust, we’ll always have the memories we shared here. I, for one, met some of the best people I’ve ever known.
“Marshal Vanth, you’ve always been a great man and a dear friend – I could’ve asked for no one better to help guide my hand and keep this town afloat than you,” Omera said with a smile. “Whatever awaits us in El Paso, I hope you know I’ll always consider you a part of my family.
“Mr. Fett and Miss Shand – I can’t say enough about the two of you. I don’t know what I did to deserve having people like you on my side, but I’m grateful beyond words,” she said as she gestured towards the pair. “I’m so glad you’re also going out to El Paso; I don’t know what my life would be like if I couldn’t rely on neighbors like you.
“If Miss Dune hadn’t already taken off with my family, I’d thank her, too,” she added, the slightest trace of a tear welling up in the corner of her eye. “But lastly, I couldn’t have gotten through this last month without Mr. Skywalker and Mr. Djarin here. You weren’t here but a day before the Gideon Company dragged you into our problems and yet, you never once complained – you just jumped in and did far more than anyone could ever ask of a couple of strangers. It’s a bittersweet victory, but none of this wouldn’t have happened without you two. Thank you both for everything.”
Din and Luke smiled and nodded at the acknowledgement, with Din sneaking a surreptitious arm around Luke’s waist and giving him a light squeeze.
“That was lovely, Miss Omera,” Marshal Vanth said as he lifted a cigarette to his lips. “By my watch, it’s a few seconds to high noon. You wanna line up the shot?”
Omera simply cracked the rifle open and checked the cartridges before snapping the barrel closed and shouldering the rifle in one smooth, practiced motion. “Where am I aiming?”
“Top of the saloon, ma’am,” Luke said, pointing at the tallest building in town. “You’ll see an old wine casket right there on the edge of the roof.”
“I see it,” she murmured, her non-firing eye closed as she acquired the target in between the sight posts on the muzzle of the barrel. “I’m taking the shot.”
The small group began to cover their ears and remained silent as Omera cocked back the hammer of the rifle, paused for a moment, then squeezed the trigger with such a light pull that the muzzle hardly moved. The sound of the shot ricocheted across the empty desert plains.
Almost instantaneously, the casket on the roof exploded in a shock that spread out in all directions from the roof, collapsing the saloon and triggering the explosion of more sticks in the building proper. The resulting blast blew out the sidewalls and glass windows of the building, crumpling the building like a paper bag and setting the resulting mess into a giant fireball. Even from their great distance, Din felt the shockwave somewhere deep in his chest.
The fire soon caught up to the building adjacent to it and caught its outer wall on fire, the flames growing more and more intense. Din assumed the leftover alcohol stores furthered fuel the blaze, letting it grow hotter and higher. A gust of wind from the east helped the flames up and over the rooftop, the fire quickly engulfing the area. As they watched the fire build and the smoke rise, Luke pointed at a small bit of smoke that seemed to crawl along the ground towards one of the red circles he’d painted days earlier.
“Brace yourselves!” Luke yelled as he clamped his hands even tighter around his ears.
The resulting explosion from one of Luke’s underground charges sent dirt and debris flying everywhere, the flames catching onto another building and crawling across its façade. Din took a deep breath after that last one.
“How many of those did we set?” Din asked, remembering he’d personally dug maybe five holes.
“Oh, fifteen – Lando gave me a lot of explosives,” Luke said with a grin.
“You made me ride in a wagon with that shit?” Boba spat.
“It’s completely inert without a spark and a charging cap – you were fine the entire time,” Luke said with a shrug.
Another explosion went off in the building adjacent to the saloon, with the resulting blast setting off the charges in four of the surrounding buildings. The sound became almost deafening, even from such a great distance.
“ Holy shit!” Marshal Vanth yelled above the roar. “Y’all are fucking insane!”
Luke turned his attention to Din at that. “You don’t think it was overkill, do you, darling?”
“You’re the engineer here – but perhaps you could’ve taken it easy with the dynamite,” Din said as he gave him a small nudge. “That’s a lot of explosives for such a small town.”
“Well, I wasn’t just trying to get rid of the buildings, Din,” Luke said with a devious smile stretching his mouth wide. “You’ll see.”
The fire grew more intense by the second as the smoke grew blacker and heavier in the sky. He hoped the horses wouldn’t have too hard a time with the air becoming so heavy. Far, far off in the distance, he could spot what looked like a thunderhead cresting the horizon – whatever rain that would bring would hopefully damper the smoke after the whole thing was said and done.
Flames reached another underground charge and set it off, shaking the ground even more and sending earth flying far up into the air. With the flames spreading further out, the underground charge detonations became more frequent. Din looked over at Luke, thinking he’d have that same satisfied, cocky grin he’d seen on his face so many times before, but now, he seemed oddly frustrated.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Din said.
“Not quite – something that I thought would go off already hasn’t done so,” Luke answered. “But we’ll give it a few minutes.”
Almost as if it waited for that very cue, the circle sitting in the middle of the main road went off, the same fountain of dirt flying in all directions just like all the others. Luke started yelling something he couldn’t quite make out as the younger man tugged on his shirt sleeve in excitement. He followed the line of Luke’s pointed finger and looked back at the detonation site.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Din said.
A small trickle of a tar-like, black substance bubbled up from the split in the earth the explosion caused. It spat up in a spasm, at first, and then slowly trickled out and spread across the road’s surface in thin, spidery streams. Another explosion on the edge of the town proper seemed to push the crude along with the substance spewing out even faster.
Luke dug those charges to crack the crust enough to get at the oil reserve underneath the town, he realized as he shot a look over to his lover. There was the smile he’d waited for.
“Luke, you’re about the single pettiest person I’ve ever met in my entire life!” Din shouted.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Luke laughed.
“What the hell’s going on?!” Boba yelled out.
“Luke’s setting the entire pocket of oil underneath Mos Pelgo on fire!” Din responded.
Marshal Vanth nearly dropped the cigarette from his mouth. “Man, you’re fucking crazy.”
Omera’s jaw dropped while Boba clapped a large hand on Luke’s shoulder. “You’ve got some serious style!” Boba cackled. “Vanth’s got a point – you’re totally fucking crazy, but that’s some shit I’ve never seen before!”
“I can’t take all the credit,” Luke said with a perfunctory bow. “Din Djarin, destroyer of bars, inspired this particular stroke of genius.” Din turned away, a flush breaking out across his cheeks. “He once told me, ‘Luke, bombs don’t solve problems – they just make new ones.’ So, I took his advice and made a new problem for the Gideon Company. Well, two problems, I suppose.”
Din leaned his head back and looked up into the endless blue, doing anything he could to keep the stupid smile off his face. Only Luke Skywalker could take a solemn, emotional day and turn it into a memory he’d want to keep for the rest of his days.
“You two are something else,” Fennec said with a laugh. “Man, I wish I knew you guys when I ran in San Francisco – we would’ve made some beautiful music together.”
“Your kind of music was ahead of its time, lady,” Boba said with a raised eyebrow.
“Look, it’s about to catch on fire!” Omera said as she pointed over the cliff and back into town.
They all walked over towards the edge, watching the flames finally reach a stream of crude oil and immediately burst into flame. The flames traveled across the web of oil, igniting immediately on contact and sending fire scattering everywhere the oil touched. Another buried charge detonated, sending more shockwaves across the ground and causing the oil to escape the main crack even faster. With every wave, a small geyser of oil and flames shot up out of the ground until it became a steady fountain of fire amid the destruction.
“Is that going to continue burning?” Cobb asked.
“Theoretically, yes,” Luke replied. “It’s like a cut where the blood can’t clot and scab – you either bandage it, or you bleed out. This is me bleeding it out.”
After a few more minutes of waiting, nearly every charge and stick of dynamite Luke planted around town went off and the entire town became consumed in the resulting inferno. They stood a safe distance away from the town, but Din could feel the heat of the flames on his cheeks and smell the cloying smoke hanging in the air directly above them. He felt grateful that San Antonio sat in the complete opposite direction of where Mos Pelgo used to belong.
He huffed a small laugh – Mos Pelgo never appeared on a map, and now, it never would.
“We’re burning daylight, Miss Omera,” Boba said as he held out a crooked arm to escort her. “I think we’ve seen enough here. El Paso’s a good ride away, so we should get moving past all this before the sun sets on us. It’s autumn, after all.”
Omera nodded as she gratefully accepted the proffered arm and took off towards the horses. Marshal Vanth soon followed behind, playfully offering his arm to Fennec Shand and earning a smack for his trouble. Luke turned to Din and dramatically offered his own arm, which earned Luke a trip up and over Din’s shoulder.
“What on Earth are you two doing?” Omera said as she looked behind her.
“This one here thinks I’m old and I need his help getting places, so I’m showing him just how old and useless I am,” Din said as he hoisted the younger man even higher on his shoulder.
“I was a squadron commander in the United States Cavalry , and you –!”
“I’m hauling you around like a bale of hay,” Din said with a shrug. “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”
“Y’all give me a toothache just looking at you,” Fennec laughed.
“I’m gonna miss the two of you and your weird-ass shenanigans,” Cobb said as he lit up another cigarette. “Y’all sure as hell made this place interesting.”
Din relented and let Luke down, laughing at his bewildered expression as he adjusted his Stetson back on his head. “Yeah, we’re real fun – right, Luke?”
“If by ‘fun’ you mean ‘teasing me all the time’, then yes,” Luke pouted.
“Behave, you two,” Boba teased as he and Omera arrived at the place where they hitched the horses. “We need to make this moment count, you know.”
Cobb threw an arm around Boba’s shoulder and pulled him in close. “Come on, you old goat – this ain’t gonna be the last time we see each other. San Antonio’s a while out there, but they’re building train lines all the time and they’re talking about running stagecoach lines all the way across Texas.”
Boba picked up Cobb’s arm and let it drop behind him. “And when the hell will that be? Months? Years? Hell, I might get struck by lightning tomorrow and that’ll be the story of me – you don’t take moments like this for granted.”
“What they’re trying to say,” Fennec interrupted, “is that they’re going to miss you guys. I, on the other hand, will be waiting until the next poker game. I know your game now, Djarin.”
Din could only chuckle at the notion that he retained anything at all about Texas Hold ‘Em in the time they’d been in Mos Pelgo. “Sure thing, Miss Shand.”
“And you’re not to stay strangers, alright? Come visit us for holidays or whatever,” Boba said. “You’re always welcome at our place.”
“I’ll provide the booze and the smokes, as always,” said Cobb.
“No one said you were invited, Mr. Vanth.”
“Hey!”
Boba reached out a hand to Din, which he gladly took and allowed Boba to pull him into a warm embrace. “May St. Christopher guide you and keep you both. I’ll pray for you, brother.”
“Thank you – and I’ll do the same for you,” Din replied softly.
“You’d better write the second you get back to San Antonio!” Omera said as she threw her arms around Luke.
“Naturally, ma’am,” Luke laughed, wrapping his arms around her back and lifting her up in his embrace. “We won’t go a week without asking about our little goblin.”
“I don’t expect anything less – and Din, you take care of this man here,” Omera said with a halfhearted sneer. “Clearly he can’t be trusted not to get himself into trouble or cause explosions wherever he goes, so you need to keep an eye on him.”
“You expect me to contain a force of nature like Luke Skywalker?” Din said.
“I certainly expect you to try!”
Din held out a hand to pull Luke back towards him. “I think I’d have better luck moving the stars in the sky.”
“Let’s get out of here before they get any more disgustingly cute,” Fennec snorted. “Safe travels, you two.”
As the last residents of Mos Pelgo parted ways and took off on the road going towards El Paso, Din and Luke finally saddled up on their horses and left heading east, following the familiar path back to the place that started it all. Din kept looking out to the eastern horizon with the sun slowly sinking behind their backs, feeling the same familiar pull of the road ahead, and a strange sense of ease settled into his bones. The yucca plants and scrub brush stretched out into eternity as the pair cantered off, neither feeling the need to say much.
They had the rest of their lives to talk about whatever they pleased, after all.
San Antonio, Texas – February 1872, nearly seven years since the end of the American Civil War
“Darling, welcome home!” Luke shouted as Din walked into the house.
Even at that very moment, Din couldn’t believe they’d signed for this place just a month after they arrived back in San Antonio from Mos Pelgo over a year ago. Luke called it the grandest Christmas present he’d ever bought for someone, and Din called it “ostentatious” and “lurid, at best”. Luke dismissed his opinions out of hand completely and practically chose the place on his own. Din didn’t think that not having an actual home address for most of his adult life precluded him from having opinions about houses, but he did have to admit that having a kitchen instead of a fire pit had its advantages.
Din still had times when he couldn’t believe his life ended up so relatively ordinary – a home with four walls and a roof, a regular career as a schoolteacher that didn’t require living on the road for most of his days, a loving person to warm his bed – and quiet. He still found time to visit the abbey and Mother Adelita, doing what he could to support her orphanage while earning a much more modest income than in his previous life. He found it hard to complain about having an actual home, especially if it meant having Luke around to fill it with mindless songs and his interesting interpretations of Mexican food.
“ Cariño , please,” Din groaned as he toed off his shoes and left them at the door. “I’ve had to deal with yelling children all day – I don’t know how much more your poor husband can take.”
Perhaps they’d only be husbands in name only, but Din enjoyed the little quirk of a smile and the half-lidded, glazed look Luke took on whenever he called him that. He still wore Luke’s West Point ring around his neck, and Luke had a small silver ring on a chain. It satisfied them both – the people worth knowing understood, and that’s all that mattered.
“Well, that’s an awful shame,” Luke airily replied as he waltzed into the foyer, looking as though he’d just arrived home from the engineering firm, himself. “Because I have a feeling our house is about to get much louder.”
Din set his briefcase down near his shoes and leveled a glare at Luke that normally made his students swallow in shame. “Tell me you didn’t get a dog, Luke – I begged you not to get a dog, and – “
“Mister Djarin?”
Din felt his heart crawl right up into his throat and choke him half to death at the sound of a small, nervous voice coming from elsewhere in the house. “Grogu?” He moved past Luke, choosing to ignore his impish grin, and sped straight into the parlor.
“Kid, is that you?”
A small child stood in the middle of their parlor with his arms folded neatly in front of him. He wore a simple, yet elegant little suit that made him look nothing like the little boy he’d found hiding in a bed in an abandoned home over a year ago.
“Sir, it is good to see you again. I am… Gregory Sorgan,” the child answered, each word measured and as precise as possible. “I came with my mother to visit you.”
“Kid, I…,” Din said, trying his hardest not to let his voice betray his emotions. He kneeled to meet the child eye to eye. “It’s good to see you again, too.”
“It’s also good to see you, too, Din,” Omera said with a laugh in her voice. She lifted her teacup off her saucer in greeting.
“Ma’am,” he replied, giving her a stiff nod. “My apologies; I didn’t mean to ignore you.”
“It’s alright, Din – I know you two are crazy about each other and I’m certainly not offended,” she said as she put down her teacup on the nearby table. “Your husband dropped us a line and we wanted to come out and see the two of you. The young master here wouldn’t stop asking when we could go visit the two men that took care of him back in Mos Pelgo, and when the opportunity finally came, we hired a stagecoach.”
“Luke, when did you…?”
“It was shortly after Christmas, darling,” Luke answered as he swept into the parlor with a tray of tea and scones. “You looked absolutely miserable, moping around the house with a look on your face that would’ve scared off bears. I caught you glaring at a copy of A Christmas Carol you brought home from school and realized that you missed having a child in the house. That’s when I wrote to Miss Omera.”
“You weren’t going to tell me?” Din asked as he motioned for Grogu – Gregory – to come closer. He chuckled as the child closed the distance and immediately wrapped his arms around Din’s neck in a clumsy embrace. Din held him there as if letting him move would cause him to disappear into nothing.
“Surprises generally work best when you don’t know they’re coming,” Luke shrugged as he poured out a cup of tea, finding another chair and sitting down with his saucer in hand.
“It wasn’t a surprise to you, kid?”
“No, sir,” the child responded as he shifted in Din’s hold to look him in the eyes. “Mama said we would come see you sometime before spring.”
“Well, it’s a lovely surprise,” Din said, running a hand through Gregory’s still untamed curls. “I missed you tons, kid.”
“I missed both you and Mister Skywalker, sir,” Gregory said with a soft smile, reaching into his shirt to pull out the rosary Din gifted him the day Mos Pelgo went up in flames. “I brought back your necklace.”
“What did I tell you it was called, Gregory?” Omera interjected.
“Oh! A… rose?”
“A rosary , kid,” Din gently corrected. He reached over to tuck the silver and black rosary back into Gregory’s clothes. “But I think it belongs with you – you took such good care of it this whole time, so I think you can wear it for as long as you want.”
“Thank you, Mister!”
“Of course, kid,” Din said as he patted the place where the rosary hung. “So, when did you start talking? You were such a quiet guy when we last saw you.”
Omera cut in with a hum as she bit into a scone, pausing to finish her bite. “It’s so funny – we thought perhaps he wouldn’t talk at all for the longest time. My mother and I began to look into schools that taught deaf and mute children in the hopes of still giving him an education, no matter where we had to take him. Then one day, he started with a couple of words: ball, toy, cookie. There were a couple other ones that shouldn’t be repeated, and I place the blame for that entirely on Cobb Vanth.”
“We may also have had a hand in that,” Din admitted with a wince. He looked over to Luke, who looked as though he might’ve finished choking on his tea. “We weren’t saints, ourselves.”
“Well, no matter the case, Gregory here learned how to say his name properly and speak in full sentences,” Omera continued. “It wasn’t all that long before he became confident enough to carry out a conversation. He still sometimes just points and gestures, but he’s made quite a bit of progress in the year or so since we’ve last seen each other. We’re all immensely proud of him.”
“I’m proud of you too, kid,” Din said as he stood up and bent down to sweep Gregory up into his arms, letting the child settle onto his hip. “You’re almost old enough for school now, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” Gregory answered as he clutched onto Din’s suit jacket.
Luke cleared his throat, pulling Din’s attention away from the child in his arms. “You know, Omera and I spoke about Gregory’s education in our correspondence, and we both came to the conclusion that he’d do very well in a household where he’d have access to a schoolteacher all the time.”
Din shot him a look while a thousand thoughts ran through his mind at lightning speed. He settled on one thread and seized it. “Luke, are you trying to tell me that he’ll be staying here?”
“Well, I would’ve said it a little more eloquently, but yes,” Luke said. A very self-satisfied grin stretched across his face as he leaned back into the overstuffed chair. “We came to an agreement that he’d stay here for most of the school year, and he’d go and stay with Omera’s family during the summers. I agreed, as long as we could host them for Christmases.”
“Were you going to ask me about this before agreeing to it?” Din asked.
“Well, if you remember the entire thing I said about surprises…,” Luke laughed.
“You’re awful,” Din shot back, already tucking Gregory into his chest. “You’re the greatest person I’ve ever met, and yet, you’re also the absolute worst.”
Luke turned his attention to Omera. “You see how this horrible, ungrateful man treats me? I bring him his son from across the state, and this is how he sees fit to thank his husband.”
“…My son?”
“Din, you’re absolutely insane if you think that that child wasn’t your son from the second you laid eyes on him,” Omera said with a wistful tone lacing her voice. “If circumstances had been any different, I would’ve never offered to take him away from the two of you. I hated taking him away, but it was the only thing I could think to do.”
“It wasn’t the right time, Omera. We were so grateful that you took him when you did,” Luke said. “We didn’t have a way to transport him, we didn’t have a home – we weren’t ready for him yet.”
“And now we are,” Din said, more to the child in his arms than to anyone else.
“And now we are,” Luke agreed as he stood up from his chair and met his family in the middle of the parlor floor, wrapping an arm around Din’s middle and resting a hand on Gregory’s head. “By the way, I already put his things up in one of the spare rooms.”
Din said nothing as he turned his head and placed a kiss on Luke’s cheek. “Thank you, cariño ,” he whispered.
“You never have to thank me for this, darling,” Luke whispered back.
“Oh, just wait until you hear what I have to say next,” said Din with a sly smirk of his own.
“And what’s that?”
“You think we can fit another one in one of the rooms upstairs?”
San Antonio, Texas – October 1872, seven years since the end of the American Civil War, two years since the bombing of Mos Pelgo
The fire spat and crackled as Din Djarin threw yet another small log into the fireplace, the smell of burning cedarwood filling his nostrils and permeating throughout the house. On nights as cold as this, he suddenly felt grateful that he wasn’t sleeping out underneath a blanket of stars and exposed to the harsh winter winds of Hill Country. At this very moment, nothing compared to falling asleep in his own bed, next to the love of his life, with the outside world and all its fuss far away from the walls of their room.
“Darling, are you coming to bed anytime soon?” Luke shouted across the house. “It’s cold and I can’t sleep without you there.”
“Yeah, just a moment,” Din replied. “Just putting some more wood on the fire, cariño .”
Once he felt the fire could continue through the night without completely burning out, Din walked over to the living room window and leaned up against the windowsill. He stared up and out into the sky, finding Cassiopeia, Perseus, and Andromeda as if they were old friends. The crescent moon cut a slice of pure silver out of the black of the night, the glow too soft to light up the streets of San Antonio.
“See anything interesting out there, darling?”
Luke’s voice shook Din out of his reverie as he came around the corner in a loose nightshirt and robe, smile wide on his face as the day he met him in that dirty saloon a couple miles down the road from their house.
“Nothing at all – and you didn’t have to come check on me, you know,” Din sniffed as he turned towards his husband.
“I know what ‘just a moment’ means for you, Mr. Djarin. You’re going to stay out here reading until you fall asleep in that plush chair of yours and then I won’t see you until morning.”
“Then I suppose you’re here to drag me to bed, Mr. Skywalker,” Din said, a soft smile of his own on his lips. “And I don’t have much of a choice.”
“You’d suppose correctly,” Luke replied with a wrinkle of his nose. “You’re starting to get the hang of this.”
“I also suppose being with you for nearly two years now taught me a thing or two,” Din said, reaching out a hand to Luke. The younger man took it and easily followed Din’s gentle pull. They met in the middle, wrapping their arms around each other and basking in the warmth of the fireplace.
“I learned some things about you, too,” said Luke as he nuzzled his face into Din’s chest. “I know that you stare out of that window when you think I’m not looking, for instance.”
Din’s breath caught in his chest out of surprise. “I’m not trying to hide anything from you, Luke.”
“I don’t think you are, Din – but I do think you miss being out on the road,” Luke hummed as he pulled back from Din’s embrace. “I think you’re not used to domesticity of any kind, and sometimes you yearn for something like what we used to have before we met Rey and Grogu.”
“You’re not trying to turn me loose and let me wander out on the Texas prairies, are you?” Din said with a raised eyebrow. “Because right now, I feel fully domesticated – I enjoy living in a house with a fireplace and a bed. It’s very, incredibly nice.”
Luke laughed and gently swatted Din on the chest. “I told you a long time ago that I wasn’t going to take you back, and I fully intend to keep that promise. You’re not some dog to throw out of the house.”
“I certainly hope not,” Din agreed as he pulled Luke back into his arms and placed a teasing kiss on the side of his lover’s neck. “But I can show you just what kind of dog I can be, if you want.”
“Din, you’re awful! ” Luke chuckled as he squirmed out of his hold. “I’m trying to tell you something important!”
“Then out with it, darlin’ – the night’s young and the bed’s getting cold,” Din said, a wicked grin splashed across his features.
Luke groaned. “I got a letter in the mail today from Boston. My family wants us to come up to Massachusetts and visit them in May.”
Din froze in place as Luke’s words ran through his mind. “Luke, did you say they want us …?”
“Yes, I did – don’t worry, they know about you and me. After the war, they had no choice but to accept whoever I brought home to meet them; they’d never risk losing contact with their war hero son,” Luke said with a shrug. “They’re Boston aristocracy, so they’re going to be on their best behavior at all times. You have nothing to worry about when it comes to my parents, and I would love nothing more than for you to meet my sister. You’ll get to see the city where I grew up and see the ocean for the first time, all while eating the best seafood you’ll find anywhere in the world.
“What do you say, darling? Are you up for another adventure?”
Din couldn’t dream of hesitating. “I’ll go anywhere for you, cariño – anywhere.”