found. | Din Djarin

Twenty One

Din and I sit side by side in the cockpit of my ship as we leave for Coruscant. With my finger tapping on my thigh my mind is anywhere but there with him.

Coruscant.

The Jedi Temple.

"Kyra?" Din asks, noticing my distance. "What is it?"

 "I've never been there before," I admit to him.

"Coruscant?"

I shake my head. "The temple. I was part of the force that liberated the planet, but I could never bring myself to step inside the Jedi temple."

"Why?" he asks, genuinely confused, and wanting to understand.

Why. That is the question I have never answered. A question he has rarely asked. And yet as we approach the temple I feel myself placed into a confessional.

I look down at my hands. "When you met me Din, I didn't claim to be a Jedi anymore. The moment the war ended I put down my saber for good and swore that it was for the best. Have I told you why?"

"Parts," he answers, remembering when the child choked me. "Things about the dark side of the force."

"My father, I adored him completely but his entire life he lived with guilt," I remember sadly. "You can't breathe a word of what I'm about to tell you to anyone."

"I swear it," he says and I trust him completely.

"His padawan was Anakin Skywalker, Luke and Leia's father," I tell him. "He killed everyone in that temple as he turned to the darkside and became Darth Vader." He knows what he did to me, so I don't elaborate on that part. "You see, the things he did, before he knew Luke was his son he wanted an apprentice. He wanted to get his revenge on my father by converting me to the empire and making me his apprentice. Little did he know I was training his own son, it wouldn't be until the end of the war we learned Leia was his sister." I clear my throat, not needing to get into that. "The point is, Vader tried until the end to bring Luke and I to his side, and by the end of the war I think I was closer to losing it than I could ever admit to anyone."

"But you didn't," he says, reminding me of my strength. "You fought against him and you won."

"There was a very brief moment I considered abandoning all of it because of that darkness," I confide in him, remembering that very last night with Boba before he was supposedly killed. "A moment where I nearly betrayed my own family to run away from everything and it disgusted me enough I swore I would never let myself feel that darkness again, even if it meant shutting myself off from the force like my father did after the Empire rose."

"But you changed your mind when the the kid and I found you," he says and squeezes my hand. "You trained Skywalker and now you're training the child."

"I am," I say, glad for his reassurance. "But there was a time I felt like I wasn't worthy of calling myself a Jedi, and that's why despite all this time I've never been to the temple because I know the darkness that waits for me there. An order that I'm one of the last survivors of and yet I go against the code they swore their lives to."

His voice is deep. "I am still learning what it means to be a Jedi, what your creed means, and it seems as though it's black and white, good and evil, light and dark. A lot of things, a creed of ancient wizards with lazer swords." That comment makes me laugh. "But I think it might be the only creed in the galaxy where love is frowned upon. In the Mandalorian creed - it is everything."

"I know," I say, knowing the ironies well. "Which is why this was so hard for so long, trying to seperate the Jedi order from the force, trying to remember that they aren't one and the same. I was so good at it until Vader got into my head and scrambled everything up." I bite down hard on my lip but say the words anyway. "Vader killed billions, men, women, children, without regret or hesitation. He choked his pregnant wife to near death, he killed Luke's family, Leia's family, my family, destroyed her planet, destroyed mine, tortured me until I was a shell of who I was. Yet Luke forgave him." He's quiet as he sees the pain that crosses me face. "I think that was the moment I decided that I'd failed as a master. The moment I realised I'd forged Luke to be exactly what the Jedi Order would have dreamed of. The Jedi Master to fulfil their prophecy. I love him I do, but even now I know he questions my decision to train our child as a Jedi and raise him as a Mandalorian. Even though it is how I was raised. He is a brilliant Jedi, trained to perfection I cannot deny that, yet in that moment I decided that I'd failed because he chose forgiveness over hate, something I could not do."