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Din takes the helmet off.
He has already taken his off, left it in Cara’s trust the way he has left the child with those he trusts. The Stormtrooper gear is a pale imitation of anything useful, ill-fitting and poorly made and fragile. But it is enough to keep the terminal from scanning his face. He doesn’t know what he had hoped. That Mayfeld was wrong, maybe, or that it would somehow accept the armor. Or that he needs those coordinates, more than anything. The coordinates will lead him to Gideon, who will give him his child back.
Error error, the terminal chants. It is counting down. He presses buttons, feeling numb.
He doesn’t know if the others can hear it, if the polite droid voice is carrying across to their table. He doesn’t know what will happen if the terminal shuts down as threatened.
He knows that if he does not get the coordinates, he will not get the kid back. He needs the kid back.
The air prickles on his face. He can feel the weight of the officers watching him. The air current in the room. The scanner light from the terminal is too bright. He felt naked in the flimsy Imperial armor, now it feels as if he has peeled his skin off. As if his very soul is on display.
When Valin Hess addresses him, standing just inches away from him, he thinks I am going to die with my face showing in stormtrooper armor.
He doesn’t die.
They sit down and Valin Hess pours out a sickly-sweet smelling liquor and proposes a toast. Din feels like he is going to vomit. He feels like he is outside his body, watching the surreal scene unfold. He cannot think of where he is from and for a few seconds he is not sure the question even makes sense. Maybe he’s not from anywhere. Maybe this moment is all there is.
Hess and Mayfeld are talking. Operation Cinder. Burnnin Kann. A small sacrifice for the greater good. An entire division. Freedom versus order.
Din turns and he looks at Mayfeld, and Mayfeld looks at him.
Their eyes meet.
He understands eye contact as an abstraction. He knows most human cultures view it as a sign of honesty and openness. It’s a sign of respect. In his culture it is something others do in the realm of outsiders. It is not something he does -- has not done, not since he was small. He has the memory of his parents’ faces disappearing behind the bunker door, and the grief that followed.
He looks into Mayfeld’s eyes, and is confused to see his own grief looking back at him. His own rage at the Empire’s unfathomable destruction.
It lasts a second, if that. Nothing more.
Mayfeld makes a noise that could have been a scoff or a chuckle.
Hess raises his cup. To the Empire. And then he is dead.
Din has to look to be sure it is in fact Mayfeld who shot Hess, not someone behind him. He doesn’t need to see the pistol because again, he sees Mayfeld’s eyes. They are lighter than Din’s, almost green. They hold no triumph or victory. They are surprised and uneasy.
For the briefest second it is a year ago and Din can feel the waves of heat rolling up from the lava flow and he hears IG-11 telling him not to be sad, and he thinks that, if the droid were here, he might tell Mayfeld the same thing. IG-11 was a nurse droid. A nurse droid would not like Valin Hess.
Then reality snaps back, and they have just murdered an Imperial officer in the middle of an Imperial base. They take out those unfortunate enough to be in the room.
“You did what you had to do,” Mayfeld says, the first words directed at him since Din took the data stick. “I never saw your face.” He shoves the helmet towards him and looks away.
There’s no reason for Mayfeld to do that. There’s no reason for Mayfeld to not turn on him right now, kill him and say Din was the one to fire the first shot. There’s no reason for him to stand, looking at the wall, instead of gloating. He could call Din brown eyes again. He could mock him. He knows enough about the Creed to know that Din has done the unforgivable. But he does none of that. He just stands there, holding the helmet, not looking at Din.
Din puts the flimsy helmet back on.
His tactical brain has already been rebooted. Their location is good: there’s a bottleneck to get into the mess hall and an exit behind them. A narrow ledge over a 200 foot drop isn’t ideal, but it’s better than no exit. Fennec and Cara efficiently pick off the troopers, and the roof is clear when they climb over the ledge.
When Mayfeld asks for the rifle, Din thinks he’s going to finish the remaining troopers who followed them to the roof, those who have most clearly seen him and the ship.
The shockwave hits just an instant after the entire plant blows.
He looks at Mayfeld, makes eye contact from behind the ill-fitting helmet. Mayfeld says we all need to sleep at night and Din can think of nothing to say in response. They strap themselves in in silence.
Cara has left the sack containing his armor on the ship and Mayfeld makes a poorly sold excuse of wanting to check out the cockpit. The stormtrooper armor seems as ill-fitting on Mayfeld as it is on Din himself and he appreciates the things unsaid: put yourself right first, I can wait.
There are no words to describe the relief of his own armor, custom made to fit him, as familiar as his own body. He doesn’t rush, nor does he drag out the process, just strips off the Imperial junk and reassembles himself, piece by piece, working from memory. He could, and has, done this in the dark, with his eyes closed.
He removes the stormtrooper helmet last, and pauses with his own helmet in his hands. Looks down at it.
In a rush he sees a blur of childhood memories. Receiving his first ever durasteel helmet. Sitting by the forge watching the Armorer work, stressing the beskar until it could be hammered and stamped into shape. The camtono of beskar ingots marred by the Imperial crest, and Paz Vizsla’s fingers gripping for his helmet, calling him a coward. Omera’s hands, soft despite earning her survival every day, pressing gently against the beskar. Cobb Vanth, unable to understand the significance of what he wore. Bo-Katan, unburdened by any true creed, calmly removing her helmet. Fett, looking like a different person entirely reunited with his armor, bound to it not by creed but by blood.
Din puts his helmet back on.