Chapter Text
Just when you think you're in control
Just when you think you've got a hold
Just when you get on a roll
Oh, here it goes
Here it goes again
The mining installation on Morak doesn’t look all that different from the base on Nevarro, at least to him. Set partly underground, a few defensible points of access, full of a bunch of stormtroopers, etc etc etc. Mayfeld warns them that there should be a decent contingent of officers present in the facility, but otherwise Din can’t see a reason why they shouldn’t hit it like they hit the installation on Nevarro. Sure, things got a little hairy toward the end of that one, but their team is bigger now. Cara agrees with him, and most of the others seem content to go along with the direct approach, save perhaps Mayfeld. The ex-Imperial sharpshooter is certainly more reticent about the plan, but that could be because he’s the one who has to be most out in the open to access the terminal.
In the end, he shrugs and says, “well, between this and cutting up scrap for the rest of my life, I guess it’s not such a bad option.”
“We’re not losing anyone,” Cara states confidently as she checks over her rifle again. “Don’t worry, you’ll be back to cutting scrap before tomorrow.”
“Gee, thanks,” Mayfeld grumbles.
Din tunes them out and goes over the plan in his head again. Drop in from above (Cara’s idea, naturally), blow the wall of the room next to the officer’s mess (or else they could accidentally destroy the terminal, Mayfeld says), Fennec and Cara clear as much of the place as they can while he gets Mayfeld to the terminal (both women sneer at the insinuation that it will be any trouble at all), and Fett swings by on Slave 1 to pick them up once they have the coordinates (they won’t even have time to get TIE fighters in the air, Fett insists).
Seems simple enough. Which is why he should have known it would all go to hell.
The first parts of the plan work ok, but there are a lot more Imps on the installation than they planned for. There’s also the fact that the officer’s mess seems to be located very near a major access point for rhydonium deliveries, and he’s not sure how they didn’t notice that on the scans, but it’s only sheer dumb luck that the blast they use to infiltrate the facility doesn’t set off a chain reaction of explosions through the whole place. Blaster bolts clang loudly off Din’s armor as he and Mayfeld scramble across the open ground to the mess hall, but it’s only once they’re inside—once they can see the terminal, and it seems like they might actually pull this off—that things take a turn for the worse.
It’s the false sense of security that brings them down, he thinks. There’s only one door to the officer’s mess, so once they clear the small room it seems almost trivial to pick off anyone who tries to come through the door. He can hear the sounds of increasingly desperate fighting from outside, but he can’t think about that right now. Cara and Fennec are more than capable of holding their own. If something were to happen to change that… well, he can’t think about that right now. And he certainly can’t think about it when the Imps apparently decide to breach the wall in their own compound, blowing a new hole in the side of the mess hall.
Din had been watching the door when the wall exploded, so he loses track of Mayfeld when the force of the blast throws him into the far corner of the room along with a large amount of rubble. He hits the wall hard enough that his vision momentarily blacks out, leaving a lingering ringing in his ears that lasts long past the resonance of his helmet. Thankfully he’s only stunned for a second, and he shakes it off as well as he’s able when he hears a groan from under the rubble beside him. Pushing off the largest blocks of concrete and plaster, he finds Mayfeld with a long piece of steel rebar projecting from his side.
Dank farrik. Storm troopers are pouring in through the new hole in the wall, and also through the main doorway thanks to the fact that Din isn’t defending it anymore. He shakes Mayfeld’s shoulder as gently as he can manage after confirming that he’s not, in fact, dead, and the other man’s eyelids flutter open.
“S’the terminal intact?” Mayfeld slurs, which is honestly a pretty incredible question from someone who can’t sit up.
Din glances back, and sure enough, the terminal is still standing with Mayfeld’s data key in place. “Yeah,” he confirms. “C’mon, we gotta get out of here.” He moves to try to help Mayfeld up, sliding a hand under one of his shoulders, but is firmly rebuffed.
“I’m toast, man,” Mayfeld groans, struggling weakly in Din’s grasp. “Data should be on the drive. Take it and go. Get your kid.”
“We can make it,” Din insists. “Both of us.”
Mayfeld opens his mouth to protest, but whatever he’d about to say is lost in a truly massive explosion from the next room. Some of the rhydonium must have gotten triggered, which at this point was hardly surprising, but that doesn’t mean Din’s heart doesn’t seem to stutter to a stop. Cara.
The last he’d seen them, Cara and Fennec were busy taking out squadrons of troopers in the main cargo area, but maybe they’d moved on. Maybe they weren’t in that room when it blew. Maybe. He looks down at Mayfeld, who appears to be rapidly losing conciousness, and hesitates.
“Get out of here, you bastard,” Mayfeld coughs, coming back to himself for a moment.
Din takes the permission, scrambling over to the terminal and cursing the whole time. He grabs the stick drive out of the machine, not even bothering to check if the data actually downloaded, and runs toward the door in under a hail of blaster bolts. What he finds on the other side nearly sends him reeling into a massive, smoldering pit of rubble.
There had been a large, open space here when they’d come in, full of juggernauts and other transports and crates… and people. It’s almost all gone now, turned into lumps of stone and twisted bits of metal. Along the edges there’s some movement, but anyone caught in the center must have been nearly vaporized.
“Cara!” he yells as he stumbles out along the perimeter of the pit, looking for any sign of either woman. “Fennec! Cara!”
It’s useless. He knows it’s useless. The odds that either of them survived the blast are incredibly low, but something inside him just refuses to accept that outcome. He did not go pull her from a happy life on Nevarro just to lose her now. Besides, Cara is too tough. Surely a little rhydonium explosion isn’t enough to take her out. Not to mention Fennec is pretty much half mechanical by now, and anyway he’s pretty sure Fett will have his head if she’s lost. He’ll find them. He will.
The problem is, there are still plenty of Imps that weren’t caught in the rhydonium explosion. Din is still scrambling around the edges of the pit, looking for a telltale scrap of teal amongst the brown and black, when the grenade comes clattering into his field of view. For a moment he just stares at it, like he doesn’t understand what’s happening, and dimly he wonders just how hard he hit his head when he’d been blown across the mess hall. Hard enough to make him hesitate too long triggering his jetpack, at the very least.
Theoretically, the grenade blast shouldn’t kill him. But that’s contingent on no large pieces of shrapnel finding their way between the beskar plates, and it’s also contingent on the blast being only a grenade. Not a grenade that’s rolling around amongst still-smoldering splatters of rhydonium. The heat of the resulting blast overwhelms him, whiting out his vision from the all-encompassing pain.
He knows right away, with a deep and utter certainty, that he’s not going to make it. Din’s always been good at getting out of situations that seem impossible. He’d almost say he has a special knack for it. But this time? This time he has failed. He has failed his team, he has failed his creed, and most importantly, he has failed the kid.
Grogu. He’d still been getting used to the name, to be honest. He turns it over in his mind now, as he lies there among the rubble, dying. Grogu. Grogu. I have failed you. Forgive me.
Not yet, comes an answer he certainly doesn’t expect.
He forces his eyes open, but he doesn’t seem to be in the compound anymore. The world around him is fuzzy, or at least as fuzzy as a featureless environment can be. He pushes himself up to standing and realizes he can’t feel the pain anymore. Everything is just kind of dull. Is this what death feels like?
Not exactly.
Din whips around, looking for the source of the voice, but he can’t see anything around him. If it can even properly be called a voice; he doesn’t seem to be hearing it, really, can’t assign a pitch or a tone to it. It’s more like he’s feeling it. Which makes no sense whatsoever.
It is the Force, the voice tells him.
Oh great, the Force. That clears everything up.
Father, the voice says, and all at once Din is filled with a blistering warmth, like someone just lit a small star inside him. It’s nothing like the heat of the explosion; no, this bring with it nothing but happiness and contentment. It’s love, he realizes, in its purest form.
Father.
Din blinks rapidly, spinning around again, but nothing about his surroundings has changed. It can’t be, can it? He has to be parsecs away.
I am. I am also here, with you.
But how?
The voice—Grogu?—hesitates for a moment, as if weighing an attempt to explain. It is the Force, he repeats.
Are you free? Are you safe? Din doesn’t dare to hope, but—
No. I’m waiting for you.
But I’ve failed you, Din thinks brokenly. I’ll be dead soon, if I’m not already. Please forgive me.
Not yet, the kid repeats. Try again.
Din wakes with a splitting headache.
It’s dark wherever he is, but unlike the odd plane he’d just found himself on, he can sense his surroundings. The thin pad of foam beneath him. The quiet hiss of a ship during a night cycle. The smell of gun oil and fuel and four adult humans packed into an enclosed space.
He lets out a long, relieved breath. It was all a dream. The disastrous mission, losing his whole team, dying on Morak… all just a terrible dream. The most vivid dream he’s ever had, but a dream nonetheless. They’re still en route to pick up Mayfeld. For a moment he lies there, listening to the soft sound of Cara’s breathing in the small compartment and trying not to think about the feeling of gut-wrenching loss that had filled him when he thought she was dead. In the dream. It was only a dream.
Unfortunately, it becomes harder and harder to convince himself of that fact as the day goes on. He is struck by an uncanny sense of deja vu as they approach the Karthon Chop Fields, but it’s more than that. He doesn’t just feel like he has done this before, he knows he has. Every comment, every small choice: everything is identical. He can picture the look on Mayfeld’s face before he steps off the ship, can hear his snide comments as he questions what he’s doing here. The sense of disquiet grows stronger and stronger with every hour, until he feels like he’s slowly going insane. This is impossible. Impossible.
He doesn’t tell anyone about it. They’re just going to think he’s losing it, and frankly he’s not sure that he isn’t. Still, he can’t help but propose a different plan of attack as they’re plotting out the operation. There’s nothing crazy about suggesting that there are more Imps on the installation than they expect, and if they think it’s odd that he knows where there are major caches of rhydonium are, no one says anything. They make a plans for a stealth infiltration overland, going for several spots that seem weakest at the perimeter of the compound. It should work.
It doesn’t. There are far too many traps around around the installation. He’s not even surprised, really. Something about it seems almost inevitable, like he knows it’s going to fail even before they begin. Which is pretty kriffing bleak, if he thinks about it too hard. Maybe this is also a dream. Maybe he still hasn’t woken up. It seems more likely than the alternative.
“I think I’m reliving the day,” he tells them two iterations later.
They’ve already picked up Mayfeld and are in the process of going over the plan to get the coordinates from the terminal on Morak. Din just drops it on them, because he doesn’t really know how to soften the blow. Fine, they’re going to think he’s crazy. Whatever. As long as they listen to him. The problem is, sometimes they don’t want to—one of them gets hung up on a particular strategy that never goes right—so he’s trying something different this time.
“I think you’ve been hit one too many times in the can, there, Mando,” Mayfeld tells him predictably, looking more than a little apprehensive.
“Maybe it was just a vivid dream,” Fennec suggests.
“How could that even be possible?” Fett asks skeptically.
“I don’t know,” Din sighs. He doesn’t tell them about the odd fuzzy space he’d found himself in after the first iteration, or the odd disembodied voice, because he’s pretty sure that will just make him sound crazier. “I can’t explain it, but I know things about the installation that I shouldn’t, because I’ve been there. I’ve seen the outcome of the day when we try to drop in with force, and I’ve seen the outcome when we try to sneak in over ground. It always fails.”
Everyone stares at him for just long enough for things to get uncomfortable, like they’re expecting him to tell them he’s just joking, but they also can’t quite believe he’s capable of making a joke. He’s not sure whether to feel more offended that they don’t want to take him seriously, or that they think he’s that humorless.
“So what’s the approach, then?” Cara asks eventually.
Din turns to look back at where she stands behind the rest of them, leaning on the back of a folded up seat. Unlike the others, there’s no incredulity or skepticism or concern for his mental stability in her gaze; she looks concerned, sure, but only in as much as she has since she told him that Gideon had take the kid. She’s regarding him like it’s just another mission, and she is ready to throw down with whatever he says. Not for the first time, his heart aches with gratitude. And, well, maybe something else, but now is not the time for… that.
“There are still a few possible points of entry we haven’t tried. Potential weak spots in the defenses, here and here,” he says, shoving all throughts besides those relevant to the mission to the side and pointing to the flickering projection of the mining installation floating over the ship’s controls.
“What about this passage, here?” Fennec asks, indicating a seemingly useful underground tunnel.
Din shakes his head. “Rigged to blow. We die in the collapse.”
“And this bank of windows?” Fett proposes.
“Too far away from the terminal. We can’t make it across the compound in time.”
They continue to quiz him for a while longer, but if they’re trying to stump him it’s not going to work. Unfortunately they seem to only get more agitated and uncertain the more he tells them, as if confronting the truth of the situation is too much. He can’t blame them, really; if someone he was supposed to be pulling off a potentially deadly operation with just told him something that called into question their grip on reality, he’d be really kriffing worried too. Maybe it was a mistake to tell them.
Eventually they agree on trying out one of Din’s proposed approaches, although something about the looks that Fennec and Fett exchange don’t sit right with him. It’s not that he doesn’t trust them, but he’s starting to think that they might not trust him. Which is going to be a problem. Everyone disperses as much as they can around the small cabin of the ship, grabbing guns to check over before the operation; everyone except Cara, who slips a hand around his arm and tugs him off into a separate compartment.
“We need to talk,” she mutters under her breath, glancing back to make sure no one else is listening.
“Is this some kind of intervention?” he asks dryly.
Cara rears back slightly, blinking at him in surprise, but she doesn’t drop his arm. Instead she squeezes it tighter, which is kind of nice, if he’s honest. Grounding. He doesn’t get touched a lot, except during fights. Or by the kid. Best not to start thinking about that.
“What? No,” she says, her brow furrowing. “Look, I believe you, but there’s something you’re not saying. I don’t know why, but I can tell. So, spill it.”
Why is he not surprised he can’t keep anything from her? Sometimes it seems like she has some kind of x-ray vision that can see right through beskar. “I think I know what caused the loop.”
“That’s good, though, right?” she replies, looking unmistakably hopeful. “Then we know how to fix it?”
Din sighs. “We fix it by succeeding.” He pauses, but Cara is clearly waiting for him to elaborate. “It’s the kid. He’s doing this somehow. The first time, when I was dying, I… went somewhere. I don’t know where. But I heard him, or felt him, really. He told me to try again, and, well.” He spreads out his hands, palms up.
It sounds insane, even to his own ears, but to his considerable surprise, Cara just looks at him, her eyes unerringly finding his past his helmet, and nods. “Do you think this time will work?”
“Not really, but it’s worth a shot.”
Cara takes this news with remarkable equanimity. “And if it doesn’t?”
“Then we all wake up again at the beginning of this day cycle, and none of you remember anything that happened before,” he tells her.
“It will,” she says confidently. Her lips curl into a smile that seems to briefly light him up from the inside. “I feel good about this one.”
It does not work.
Mostly the plan fails because clearly Fennec and Fett don’t believe him. He’s pretty sure that Mayfeld doesn’t either, but at least he’s more willing to just do as Din bids. Possibly out of fear that Cara will break him if he doesn’t. The other two are wild cards; they have their own ideas of how this should work, and instead of convincing them otherwise, the fact that he told them about the time loop just seems to have made them double down. They do not follow his directions, and this time he ends up pinned down with Cara behind a large shipping crate too far from the terminal to have any hope of reaching it before getting overwhelmed or blown to bits. He doesn’t even know where the others are, and it doesn’t really matter anymore.
“What’ll you do next loop?” Cara asks him, even as she reloads her gun with confident movements.
“Might not bother telling them,” he grunts out, raising from his crouch just enough to check their situation again. Yup. Still utterly surrounded.
Cara pauses in her reload and stares at him, something heavy in her gaze. “You tell me. I’ll believe you, every time, and I’ll help you. Promise?”
“Yeah,” Din agrees, “I promise.”
“Good. Ready to take out as many of these mudscuffers as we can before we go down in a blaze of glory together?”
She grins at him with sparkling eyes, like the idea of fighting to her certain death is exciting instead of terrifying, and Din is briefly overwhelmed by the sight of it. Who is this woman, who is so ready to give everything for him? For his kid? Besides one of Din’s few true friends in this kriffing galaxy, of course, but that doesn’t quite seem enough. There’s a reason he always returns to her when things get particularly tough, and it’s not just because she’s practically an unstoppable force of nature. No, there’s something else that brings him back, and it’s not something he has particularly wanted to try to put a name to, though it strikes him that now might not be a bad time to try.
Well, maybe not now now. Cara is staring at him expectantly, so Din gives a single, short nod. “On three,” he says. “Together.”