Chapter Text
Luke watched the Mandalorian say his farewells to the child, promising that they would see each other again. Luke watched as the child clung to the Mandalorian’s leg.
He watched this and then asked, “…Are you the child’s father?”
The Mandalorian looked at Luke with an oddly naked expression on his un-helmeted face, and he said, “What? No. The child is a Mandalorian foundling, under my protection until I could deliver him to his own kind.” The was a slight tremor in the Mandalorian’s voice. The man looked like he was easily ten years older than Luke, and something had trembled in his unshaven face when the child had touched his hand to the man’s cheek.
Luke sighed, deeply, and then he allowed actual human emotion to enter his face, rather than the visage of patience, because that was what the moment demanded. He had been set on making an entrance because commanding respect as a Jedi was going to make this entire transition feel more proper. But that was only appropriate if he really was taking the child from merely temporary, more emotionally-detached guardians.
“My friend, whether or not you have taken the title, if you are, for all practical purposes, the child’s father figure, then I am going to highly encourage, if not insist, that you indeed come see the child. Maybe even periodically.”
The man’s frown deepened. “I don’t understand. As a Jedi, haven’t you come to—”
“This child is practically a toddler,” Luke said, with the infinite patience of someone who had saved the galaxy, under duress, and had his hand cut off, and it’d been his father who’d done it, even if his father had come round to the side of Light again in the end. They were still having conversations about this. That was the thing about materializing after death as a Force Ghost. Death wasn’t the end, you weren’t going to escape the work of healing from family violence and intergenerational trauma that easily, darn you. “I can train an individual to master the Force, but that’s only a fraction of what makes for a healthy, well-developed person. What am I going to tell everyone if this child grows up to have an unsound mind due to multiple personal losses, social isolation, and on top of that, forced to train in a highly specialized area of skills, and only that area of skills? He’d turn to the Dark Side for sure. My sister would kill me.”
It might have been the Force after all, but in that moment Luke had a sudden, strong feeling from the Mandalorian. Put into words, Luke might had described it as like hearing the thought: well I turned out fine. Or maybe that’s why he should stay with me. But the Mandalorian had put his helmet back on, and his voice was metallic as he said, “I promised the child that I will see him again. A Mandalorian keeps his word. This is the way.”
During this entire exchange, the child had finally toddled over, greeted R2-D2, and was now holding his arms for “up.”
Luke picked the child up, and then replied to the Mandalorian, almost in an offhand: “Right.” He allowed the child to scoot into a comfortable position and then said to the party of onlookers, plus one Mandalorian father, “May the Force be with you.” And proceeded to march himself, one small, green child, and a droid, out of that miserable place.
He didn’t know anything about raising children. Forget about training a new generation of Force users. He’d listened to his esteemed Force Ghost elders, that is to say, Yoda, Obi-Wan, and his father, nodded patiently, and then said, “So what I’m hearing is that none of you know anything about raising children without traumatizing them. That’s great to hear. Absolutely wizard.”
Luke, in the heart of him, had been a farm boy. A whining, reluctant farm boy, perhaps, but when he looked back on his childhood, he always felt strongly that he had been raised by his uncle and aunt with love. They had taught him what it looked like to love others, and then Luke had found that love in his estranged father, and his long-lost sister, and he saw that love in the face of lonely Mandalorian, looking down at a Force-sensitive child. Who was it that taught a child to love, and to love others enough to have the compassion to fight for them? Whoever it was, that was the last person you cut out of their lives, when they were still developing their capacity for love.
“Your father will be visiting you on regularly scheduled dates, if I have anything to say about it,” Luke told the child with grim cheer.
Grogu, for that was the name the child told him, said that of course his papa loved him and protected him, there were so many people that papa had killed or threatened to kill on his behalf, his papa was a great warrior, on papa’s behalf Grogu would—
—And at that point Grogu illustrated with his hands what Luke dearly hoped was not a pantomime of Force choking.
“And that’s why you’re coming with me, instead of spending every day and all day with your mercenary father,” Luke said at last, before safely strapping Grogu into the X-Wing. Grogu was not going to become a Force-choking little gremlin, not on Luke’s watch.