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The old man sneaks up on Din as he’s sitting in a field of tall grass, waiting for his ride off this planet and to the next one (and the next, and the next, until he’s somewhere, finally), the sound of muffled footsteps seemingly only registering when the guy comes up right behind him. Din's hand goes to his blaster first before he remembers with a jolt the unfamiliar hilt that’s hanging from his belt next to it, but the man remains strangely unfazed, merely offering a small smile and a nod before turning his attention to the horizon.
He’s bland, innocuous, and he might be waiting for the transport too. Still, there’s something about him that gives Din the shivers – a quietness and a stillness that just seem off in a way he couldn’t explain but definitely recognizes. This strange man feels familiar, in a word, though there's no reason he should. Din watches him out of the corner of his visor, trying to figure him out and not make it look like he’s staring. He’s Human, or near it, has weathered skin, light eyes, and a beard and hair that are faded almost white, mostly uncombed just shy of unruly. He’s definitely not one of the fancy Core-types, that's for sure. He’s wearing plain tunics, scuffed boots, and a big cloak. Catching glimpses of a shiny cylinder at his side whenever he shifts is what makes it click.
“You're a Jedi too?” Din asks, with a touch of weariness and annoyance his helmet doesn’t do much to conceal.
The old man gives him a look that’s only mildly surprised at best.
“I hadn’t thought you’d notice me,” he says, like they’re not right next to each other in a big open field. There’s a slight pause. Then, added almost as an afterthought: “There’s not many people in the Galaxy who can recognize a Jedi on sight these days.”
And probably fewer people who don’t regret that they can – in Din’s case at least, he’s feeling more and more like he’d have been happier to never hear about their lot at all. At any rate, he’d have been happier not crossing paths with this one today, and enjoying some quiet and relative peace instead. The Jedi’s eyebrow ticks upward, and Din can’t help but think it’s his thoughts that got this reaction, disturbing as that notion is.
“I met a couple,” he says somewhat defensively, reluctant to get into it.
“Ah. I think I might know just who you mean,” comes the cryptic reply.
Din frowns quizzically.
“Do you?” When nothing comes of it, he gestures to the tunics. “I got it from your clothes.”
They do look like what that last one was wearing, when he took… when he took the kid. Dank farrik- Grogu.
“Ah, yes,” the old man smiles, “we’re not known for being particularly original on that front. Rather like your own people I suppose.”
That’s pretty annoying as far as comparisons go, and he doubts it’s an accurate equivalence anyway. Din pulls on a blade of grass and examines it sullenly. But of course, the guy picks up that as well, and gestures to his lightsaber cylinder.
“It’s not a second skin like it is to you, but I do feel much of the intent behind the outfit is somewhat comparable. Of course, I imagine this gave me away too.”
Din shrugs.
“Seems to be the thing from your people,” he mutters, not bothering to parse through the meaning of that first part.
The old man looks away with that air of faint amusement, his wise-and-removed routine still going strong, like he’s actively trying to be a slab of duracrete. It’s becoming more and more irritating, but telling him off probably won’t get Din anywhere. Thinking about it, it might be how most people feel talking to a Mandalorian visor, and at this point he’s too tired and too lost to know what to do with that bit of introspection.
“I’m Din,” he offers for lack of a better thing to say, suspecting the Jedi might know already and feeling somewhat stupid about it.
“Ben,” the Jedi says back. “I’m a friend of Ahsoka’s.”
“Oh,” Din mutters. “Not that other guy?”
“Luke? Oh, him as well.”
“Is that his name?”
The pale eyes seem to twinkle with amusement, shining blue with something like inner light that can’t be from the dusty pink glow of the sunset. Ben also seems almost... blurry at the edges, like his hair and sleeves might blow into the wind like wisps of clouds, and his boots and the hem of his cloak are woven into the grass. It might just be fatigue, or the visor needing a good tune up, or the atmosphere playing tricks on him, but it’s somehow harder to focus on the rational possibilities rather than just accepting it and moving on. It's the same kind of aura Ahsoka seemed to give off. ‘Luke’ seemed a lot more grounded and more there, like… Well, like Grogu. It’s interesting, comparing the three – four – Jedi he’s met so far.
As far as he knows, most of his covert were human, and foundlings from different species – especially non-humanoid ones – were definitely a rarity. It doesn’t seem that way with the Jedi, but they still seem to have a sort of unifying quality he’d always thought all Mandalorians shared, up to the very confusing events of this year.
Ben gestures to the saber hanging from his belt, out of the blue.
“So, they tell me you’re the unlucky soul who got saddled with that thing.”
At this point, asking who ‘they’ are feels as pointless as shooting whistling birds at the clouds to make it rain, so Din decides to take it all in stride. It’s not like he’s got anybody left to talk about this with, and at this point this probably not so random old Jedi feels more capable of understanding the issue than any of the acquaintances he’s still on talking terms with. So…
“The Darksaber?” Din removes it from his belt and stares at the hilt and the long grooves etched into it. “You know about it?”
Looking up, he notices a far away look passing over Ben’s face, like the shadow of a distant and unpleasant past – or like he’s bitten into a sour meiloorun.
“More than I wish.”
Ben holds out his hand, and Din hands him the hilt without thinking – but Ben’s fingers never touch the weapon, instead gently holding it up suspended in the air. Din almost gives a start when he realizes what he’s just done – handing over a sacred Mandalorian weapon to one of Mandalore’s supposed enemies, one of the sorcerers he’s still so far from understanding – but good muscle control and a heavy feeling of apathy prevent the jolt. It’s not like anybody is around to care. It’s not like he ever wanted that thing in the first place. His own people don’t even want him anymore, and the Jedi seem perfectly capable of taking what they want from him in any case. So he watches the hilt spin, and Ben frown.
“I knew one of the people it killed,” the old Jedi says.
“You know a lot of people, don’t you?”
That… didn’t come out too well, but Ben seems to consider it. Then, that twinkle in his eyes is there again.
“You’ve met Bo-Katan too, I gather.”
“Yeah.”
“A daunting experience for most. You handled it rather well, I’d say.” And he floats the hilt back into Din’s palm without prompting. “Her sister was the last Duchess of Mandalore, before the end of the Clone Wars and the Empire, back when the system was still somewhat united. She’s the one I knew.”
That’s certainly unexpected, so Din listens, hoping for more. Ben locks eyes with him trough the visor, like he’s looking for something there.
“I think… you could have liked her,” he says at last. “Or she might have liked you. Or,” he says to himself with a look that borders on gleeful and is definitely worrying, “it’d have at least been very entertaining to see the two of you talk.”
Din is almost afraid to ask, so he doesn’t.
“So she was killed with the Darksaber?” he presses instead.
Ben sighs.
“I’m afraid the head of Clan Vizsla wasn’t very keen on her politics. How they went about overthrowing her is a rather long and complicated affair, I’m afraid, and they weren’t even the ones who killed her in the end. But ultimately – yes. I don’t have many fond feelings towards this blade, if you can excuse it.”
If anybody can, then it’s almost certainly Din. He feels a burning sense of embarrassment recalling how he hurt himself trying to use the saber, and not for the first time he wishes he was brave enough to just throw the damn thing away.
“They say this thing is cursed,” he points out. “That it caused Mandalore to fall because it wasn’t in the right hands.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s really the case,” Ben says seriously. “From what I’ve seen in my time, the fault rarely lies with anyone but the ones doing the killing.” He gives Din a long look, while he’s pondering that statement. “The issue with this old thing is more what people attach to it, rather than its nature itself.”
“So you’re saying I could just… not care about it?”
“Well…” Ben takes his time. “…What you might call fate certainly played a part in you ending up as its owner, but I’m quite sure you’re ultimately free to shape your own path, as well as its future.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes,” Ben nods.
It’s a comforting thought, at the very least. It’s been a while since Din has felt like he had a true say in anything that happened to him. It’s also been a while since anybody’s tried to comfort him. All there was lately were Grogu’s needs and his duty to him – and to the Jedi, apparently, that duty involved a lot more sacrifice than expected. That reminds him of what the Armorer said about the Jedi’s creed. How they rejected attachments, things like that. Unfathomable, foreign, and seemingly so cold and unappealing – but for all the loyalty always held as a Mandalorian value, he’s still exiled, and there’s not one Mandalorian he has met who’d call him brother now. Is it that Jedi detachment that allows them all to treat him – by all right their enemy – like they would anybody else? Why is it that Mandalorian kinship has felt more like rejection than Jedi aloofness has, so far?
“So…” he hesitates, because the notion is truly bizarre, “you really don’t think we brought it all on ourselves?”
“No,” Ben says gently. “It may feel that way to some, and feelings may be powerful things, but that doesn’t automatically makes them true. The ability to make our own choices in the face of what we can’t control is what I’d call ‘shaping one’s path,’ not the illusion that we alone decide of our lives.”
“That’s a nice sentiment,” Din mutters, unconvinced.
“Is it? I’d call it experience, mostly. Believe me when I say this: regardless of what your people may have done, they never deserved what the Empire did to them – the first time around, or the second.”
It’s pretty kind to say, coming from a Jedi enemy. Din still isn’t completely sure about what happened to them all, or when exactly those left of them became these lone wanderers the Galaxy barely remembers, but he thinks he’s guessed most of it. Ahsoka said all those things about an Order and a Temple - it catches in his throat, the idea of a people – Grogu’s people – entirely made of adopted children – like him - dying almost to the last one - like his own. He’s not sure he’s really faced it, in regards to himself. He’s not sure how anyone can face it, losing it all again and again, without locking it all up in a dark part of their soul and shooting the control panel to seal it all shut.
Ben studies his visor for a moment yet.
“It’s easy to see hardship as a punishment, and misguided guilt ensues from there. I think,” the old man says gently, “it might help you to learn why the Jedi train to let go.”
And he finally sits down next to Din.