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“The ship is mine,” Kryze says once the turbolift door shuts and Grogu is taken from him by his own choice this time. Din can hear her over the blood rushing in his ears but it’s a near thing.
“Fine,” he says back.
He doesn’t care. His helmet is in his hands instead of his child and the weight is overpowering alongside the weight that is missing.
It was the right thing to do, he tells himself over and over again. He dispelled his duties to the foundling and the Jedi clearly possesses the skills and powers to keep Grogu safe where Din has proven incapable. Grogu will be safe. That’s what matters. His own parents made that choice, too.
He should have made sure Grogu had something to eat for his journey. It’s an odd thing to fixate on, but the kid gets so hungry sometimes and he would not put stock in Gideon feeding him enough.
Kryze is still speaking, but Din can’t stomach facing her or the other Mandalorians so exposed. He has no right to put the helmet back on. He made his choice and he doesn’t regret any of it, not showing his face to get the coordinates for the light cruiser, and not letting Grogu see him without beskar between them. It was his choice.
He shifts the beskar in his shaking hands and places the helmet back on his head. Another choice. The world muffles under the familiar weight. The bright lights of the command deck snuff out into dim approximations supported by unfeeling data displays on his heads-up display and he finally turns to face their motley group.
“That was our agreement,” he agrees, his voice once again processed through the helmet. “You get the ship.”
There’s more arguing and shouting, Koska is gesturing violently towards Din but he ignores her completely. He can’t quite catch his breath. He’d thought the pain in his chest was worry for Grogu but now he’s fairly sure he’s got a rib displaced at the very least. He’s bone weary and the fight with Gideon had been after he’d already been pushed to his limits by the deadly droid trooper.
He lets the other Mandalorians squabble with Dune, who is refusing to let Gideon into their hands without herself or some other New Republic representative present. Din tunes it all out and lets the world become unfocused.
Suddenly there’s a hand not quite touching his arm and he has to restrain himself from lashing out.
It’s Shand.
“Come on,” she says, and blessedly does not touch him. “Boba’s landing for a pick up.”
He needs to check in with Dune and make sure she’s got the situation in hand. And Grogu-- he stops that thought. Grogu is fine. Grogu is with the jedi sorcerer.
He forces his body to move towards Kryze even though it’s the last thing he wants to do. Kryze and Koska are opposite Cara, Gideon’s unconscious body between them a dark rift. “Dune?”
“Oh, Bo-Katan and I are moving towards mutual understanding, don’t you worry, Mando. I’m gonna come along and make sure we get Gideon to trial.” Her toothy grin lights up on his HUD. Kryze looks a lot less pleased, but also not about to murder anyone and frankly Din doesn’t have the energy to care about anything more nuanced than that.
Cara turns to him fully and has some sort of communication with Fennec Shand who is still behind him. “You gonna be okay, Mando?”
“Yeah,” he lies.
He doesn’t remember most of the walk down through the cruiser towards the ship landing bay past the droids the Jedi utterly destroyed. Nor does he remember much of getting strapped into one of Slave I’s passenger seats. The next thing Din remembers fully is the quiet of hyperspace, the dark of dimmed lights indicating a synthetic night cycle, and footsteps that stop in front of him.
“Alive in there?”
Din creaks himself upright from where his body had slumped against the crash harness. “I’m fine,” he says, his voice muzzy with sleep. He can’t quite shake the cottony feeling that’s filled his brain. In the space between when he’d fallen asleep and now his whole body has stiffened and small aches turned into large ones.
“Fennec is piloting,” Fett says, and suddenly Din can see him fully without craning his neck as the other man kneels down in front of him to eye level. “She filled me in on some things. What I said back on Tython is true: I swear allegiance to no one. But...”
Fett trails off and takes his own helmet off setting it on the floor with a clink. “You are the Mand’alor and I will come to fight alongside you if called.”
The moment is long and heady and Din can hardly breathe. The weight of the darksaber is lost on his hip among his armor and other weapons, but he can imagine it pulling at him, a black hole sucking his whole being into it.
“Why?”
Boba Fett is an ugly man in the sort of ways that hard living and age and brutality makes one ugly, but underneath the violent acid scarring is something alluring. Din blames likely hypoxia but he keeps staring into the bare face of the man before him.
“My father was a mando,” Fett says. “And I loved him.”
“Thank you,” Din manages to wheeze out.
“More than that will wait, I think,” Fett is saying, and presses the flats of his gloveless hands atop Din’s knees as if close contact between them were common place, as if the mere pressure of him against Din’s thighs wasn’t enough to short circuit his already shaken brain. “You’ve battled and your armor needs caring for.”
Fett’s fingers start finding the clips and catches of his beskar, and how long has it been since Din let another warrior strip him of his armor? Perhaps a year, if not longer. It was before the covert was discovered, in the dark tunnels of Nevarro, and Paz had been caring for him after a fever. Paz had taken off his vambraces to bathe his wrists in cool water. Until Grogu had touched his face just hours past it had been the last skin on skin contact he’d had.
Din presses his head back into the headrest in grief. Grief for his child, now safe but gone, and grief for his murdered family in the tunnels of Nevarro.
“Calm, Mand’alor,” Fett is saying, and that’s all wrong, no one should call him that, but Din’s throat is choked up and he’s incapable of forcing words of protest from his mouth.
He lets Fett continue. His greaves split from his worn boots followed by his cuisses, carefully lifted from his thighs. All the armor is treated with respect and carefully set aside. Din’s breath stutters as the faulds come off his hips, and lifts his weary arms for the cuirass and chest plate to be carefully removed next. His pauldrons and then his vambraces, and he holds his breath as Fett carefully unpins his cape from around his neck and folds it atop the armor.
Beyond battle, beyond holding Grogu to his chest and feeling his breaths on his face, this is the closest any man has been to him since Paz held his fevered body in the time before. And even then, it was obligation and duty and perhaps some love, but not this reverence and respect.
“May I?” Boba’s hands are at the catch of the helmet and Din feels like the world is spinning. He can hear the armorer’s words echo through his skull. Have you ever removed your helmet? Has it ever been removed by another?
He remembers Mayfield’s words too, back when they were both tense with a load of rydonium under their seats. Which is it? You can’t take off the Mando helmet, or you can’t show your face? ‘Cause there’s a difference. The difference now is moot: he’s done both.
And he can remember Grogu’s perfect face, seen with his own two eyes as father and child, not Mandalorian and Jedi. What is he without the helmet but simply a man?
“Yes,” he whispers.
---
The affirmative is soft, but it’s certain all the same, and Boba slips his fingers under the lip of Djarin’s helmet and lifts. Boba is no stranger to careful movements, despite his bulk and strength. He replaced half of Fennec’s digestive tract with scrap bought off the Jawas, and he takes to the task of lifting the helmet free with the same dedication.
The helmet slips off without fanfare, and Boba lays it to rest gently atop the folded cloak at their feet.
There’s dried blood flaking in Djarin’s eyebrows and his nose is split at the bridge and weeping fresh blood into his facial hair and mouth. But underneath the helmet and the blood and sweat he’s a soft looking man with dark wavy hair like Boba used to have. The dark brown of his cloth mail suits him.
His eyes catch with Boba’s in a fleeting, hesitant way, and then flicker away.
He’s not as young as Boba thought, either. Between Fennec’s age and his own, most likely. He’d known he wasn’t a green buck, anyhow. It’s better this way, if he’s to survive being Mand’alor.
He shudders a little. He’d sworn to never swear fealty to anyone and yet here Boba was, toeing the line towards loyalty despite himself. Himself and Fennec he understands: they’re both creatures the desert tried to kill and both rebuilt in their own ways. Somehow, without explanation, Djarin has wormed his way into Boba’s thoughts of who belongs on his ship.
“Hm,” Boba says, and clasps a hand firmly to Djarin’s shoulder, to ground them both.
Djarin makes a noise, soft and like a wounded animal, and suddenly his eyes are rolling and fluttering back and he’s going limp in his seat, folding forward and to the side like dead weight.
“Kriff,” Boba swears, and jams a forearm crossways across his chest to keep him from slipping out of the seat, because of course he’d unbuckled the crash harness when he’d started the ritual of removing the armor.
He leans to the side and shouts up the hatch. “Fennec, grab a med kit and get down here!”
Had they checked him for wounds? He’d been walking and not very bloodied, but it was an error on their part.
There’s a scuffle above them and Fennec drops down the ladder with a bag in hand. They’re in sub light between hyperspace jumps and he’s positive she’s been listening to the conversation anyway. Boba doesn’t begrudge the spying. It’s what he would do, too.
Together they lift and slide him out of the chair and arrange him on the floor with as much grace as possible. It’s handy that Boba has already stripped him of his armor, and he’s got a knife out in case they need quick access to some vital wound through the fabric mail and flight suit underneath it.
“What’s the read-out say?”
Boba, who learned many things from his father about surviving in the unloving and unloved parts of the galaxy, keeps a stocked med kit including a scanner that functions without a 21B medical droid like most require. It took some serious bargaining to get it off the Jawas and he’s glad for it now.
Fennec squints at it. “He’s kriffed up but nothing fatal. Concussion that will need to be monitored but no skull fractures and no brain bleeding, a couple of broken ribs that are throwing his oxygen numbers off, several pulled muscles and a few torn ones, and he’s bruised up. He’s just generally run down: his electrolytes are off and he’s running on fumes and malnutrition.”
She levels a look at him as she puts the scanner back down in the kit. “If you want to keep your king you’re gonna need to take better care of him.”
“Not my king.”
“Sure,” she says, and walks off. “I’ll make caff.”
----
Boba’s father raised him right before he died. He grew up with stories of Mandalore in Mando’a and Basic connecting him to a past Jengo left behind. Stories about legends and warriors long dead and folklore.
He knows about the darksaber. Boba Fett, son of Jango Fett, foundling of Jaster Mareel knows all too well about the darksaber.
He leaves it on Djarin’s hip as he works and doesn’t touch it.
Djarin wakes after they prop his legs up on his rolled cape to get his blood flowing better. He’s not a small man, but he’s not thick and built the way Boba became on Tatooine. He’s ropey and underfed under all that armor and he’s easy to lift and maneuver even when he’s limp dead weight.
Boba watches him blink up at the ceiling of the ship.
“Only a few minutes,” he says, anticipating the question he would ask himself if their positions were reversed. “Sit up and drink your soup.”
Slave I doesn’t have a kitchen galley, it’s too small of a ship, but back when it was his father’s ship and he’d had a kid with him for stints he’d put a few essentials in, including a hot water dispenser. Soup is a generous term for it, but the hot water makes the fermented electrolyte paste into something vaguely savory.
He helps Djarin sit slowly upright and watches for a second faint at the elevation change. When it doesn’t come he shuffles and props him against the bulkhead nearest the cockpit ladder before handing him a mug of soup. He’s shaking but manages to keep it steady enough to drink a sip.
“Good man.” They sit in, if not amiable silence, then not uncomfortable silence when Boba joins him on the floor to look over his armor for him. Djarin sips slowly at his pot of electrolyte broth and the color slowly returns to his skin underneath the blood and bruises.
It’s an intimate thing, to look over someone’s armor for them. He runs a hand across the breastplate. Whoever made it had true skill. He looks over every piece, hunting for damage or wear; the act of caring for one’s armor is as important as caring for one’s self, that’s what Jengo taught him before he was killed. So Boba sits and looks for weakened spots.
There are a few, but the armor held well, as beskar ought to.
“You’ll need repair on the helmet: the electrical is shorting on the left hemisphere where it took the most damage for you and it looks like the audio output and air filtration monitoring are both about to go.”
Djarin sets down the soup. He’s managed about half of it.
“I’m not surprised. It took a beating.” Djarin is mostly not looking at anything in particular. Boba hands him the helmet and he takes it and holds it in front of him, staring down at the visor like he doesn’t know what it is.
It’s remarkable, actually, how intact the man is. From the damage that made its way inside the helmet, he’s lucky he’s only going to be nursing a concussion for a few weeks and not a skull fracture. He thinks he’s got some bacta in the kit, but unless Djarin requests it he won’t use it. Fennec said none of it was life threatening, and bacta is hard to come by.
“So did you, clearly.” And then, after a moment of less amiable silence, “You’re malnourished. Got a fancy read-out. Malnourished, beat up, and you’ve got a concussion. So finish that soup.”
“I know electrolyte paste when I taste it.”
Boba glares at him. “Don’t critique my cooking, Mand’alor.”
This time Djarin’s eyes flash up to him in panic. “Don’t call me that.” His expression is raw and so easy to read it’s almost painful.
“Don’t see why not. You’ve got the saber. And you’re not Kryze, which I like.”
Fennec spares them further discussion by climbing up from the lowest deck holding a pot of caff. “Oh good, he’s alive. I’d hate to have competition in the cybernetics arena.”
Boba slides her an eye roll. He likes that woman and is glad, despite himself, that she’s sticking with him. Their interests align, but more than that their personalities do too.
She joins them on the ground and drinks the caf f straight from the pot, not offering it to either of them.
“So. Is he coming with us to Tatooine?”
Djarin, still a bit pale under the gills and covered in his own blood, looks at his feet like a lost child.
Kriff everything.
“Might need the help.” Boba says, because the thing he’s learned about lost children-- well into adulthood or not-- being one himself, is that you can’t just pick them up and haul them around, they have to think it’s their idea. “If you feel like being useful, that is, Mand’alor.”
“I said don’t call me that.”
“Gonna join us?”
Fennec slurps at her caff and watches them both. She probably doesn’t care one way or the other, but Boba does. He wants Djarin around. He wants the Mand’alor at his side. They fight well together, and a lone Mandalorian grieving and without a purpose is not a thing he would wish on anyone. Better to keep him close.
Djarin cracks a small smile at him, like he knows exactly what is going on. The man has a child, after all, he likely does.
“Suppose I can lend a hand. I have some experience with Tatooine.”
Fennec laughs at him. “Don’t I know it.” When Djarin looks like he’s going to defend himself for hunting her she waves him off with the caff sloshing, “No, no, that’s how the world works. I knew what I was getting myself into. Boba, though, is a fool and I wouldn’t mind the back up keeping him alive.”
Now it’s Boba’s turn to be offended. “Now hang on--”
“Keeping Fett alive?”
Fennec’s smile is wide and lethal. “People like to kill new kings. You can consider it job shadowing.” She gets up, tips the rest of the caff into her mouth and lets the caraf drop onto the durasteel floor with a resounding clang. “Am I putting in the coordinates? Or do you have somewhere better to be?” She doesn’t wait to listen to the reply and climbs the ladder back to the flight deck with her usual brand of graceful power.
Djarin looks at him. Fear, determination, grief, longing, unease all show on his face like a read-out from his medical scanner. “Your call, Mand’alor. But for what it’s worth, I’d like you to come. I think you’ll like the changes I have planned.” He lifts a hand to say ‘safety’ and 'freedom' in the Tuskan hand language.
The smile is worth it. Boba isn't sure he likes what that says about him but he valiantly chooses to ignore it.
“Alright. Yes. For a little while at least.”
Boba calls up the ladder to the cockpit. “Punch it in, Fennec. We're going to take Tatooine.”