Archive of Our Own ^beta

BURN AND GROW

Mayfeld wakes to the alarming sound of blaster fire impacting against their hull. As far as awakenings go, it’s not a great one. 

“Kriff, what’s going on?”

He’s out of his bunk and pounding his bare feet against the cold durasteel before he even has his flight suit all zipped up. There’s no reply from the cockpit, but there is the lurch and drop of evasive maneuvers that has Migs grabbing onto bits of the ship in a desperate handhold to keep from losing his feet. So at least the bastard isn’t dead. 

“I’m coming up!” he calls out as he flings himself towards the hatch ladder. 

Djarin’s current ship is fairly modern, and as such has two pilot seats in the cockpit. Mostly Djarin pilots on his own, which is fine by Migs-- he’s a decent hand at it, but he’s not a control freak like the Mando is. If Mando wants to run the show, that’s fine with Mayfeld. But there’s no way Djarin can pilot well enough to keep them alive and also shoot return fire in this ship; unlike his old one, the weapons system and the piloting system are split. They’ve been working on splicing it all together, integrating it so whoever the pilot was could at least do basic weapons in a tight spot, but they hadn’t finished. 

He slams himself into the co-pilot seat and gets his bearings while he straps himself in. In the viewport there are two ships dancing around them, both Empire-era gun ships he doesn’t quite recognize with lasers flying, but no ions or anything big and heavy. They’d just exited hyperspace and a big brown ball of a planet looms below them. It would seem that several someones have not taken well to their arrival.

“I thought you knew people here!”

Djarin has the grace to tip his helmet towards him and then downwards in what Mayfeld has come to translate as a shrug. “Try to hail them, don’t return fire.” He dives the ship down again and Migs is glad he’s strapped in tight. 

“Are you serious? We already took a hit!” And from the blaring lights Migs is seeing over on Mando’s side of the cockpit, it did some damage. Obviously not enough to depressurize them, or Migs wouldn’t have woken up at all, but he doesn’t like that one yellow flashing light above the readout for the landing gear.

“Just do it!”

“Fine, don’t get in a tizzy under there.” Mayfeld jams a hand over the transceiver and hails all local frequencies. “Attention hostile ships, this is Mudhorn 1, we are an independent commerce ship, hold your fire!”

The shooting doesn’t stop, but the aggression seems to slack a bit, and Djarin is able to pull them out of a spin into something more resembling normal space flight. 

The speakers crackle and a tinny voice fills the cockpit. “Mudhorn 1, what is your business in Nal Hutta space?”

Migs hits the transceiver again, with a bit more gusto than is needed, but kriff these flyboys who shoot first and then ask questions. “Unless you’re New Republic I don’t got to tell you shit, asshole!”

A shot lances off the top of the cockpit, thankfully well deflected by their front shields. 

“Take over,” Din says, and flips control over to Mayfeld’s piloting array. 

Djarin takes over on the radio, “This is Mudhorn 1, we’re just here for a re-fuel and a stop over. Requesting permission to land.” They were also hitting up Nal Hutta to turn in a bounty currently sitting in their hold as a block of carbonite, but that wasn’t something that needed to be advertised across all local frequencies. 

A long pause. Migs’s hands are sweating and he’s got the ship braced and ready to fly, readying for the gun ships to attempt to blast them out of the sky. They’d make it. He’s pretty sure they would make it, or at least be able to get to hyperspace and abort their plans. But that doesn’t stop his hands from sweating. 

The radio clicks on again. “Nal Hutta is not accepting new flight plans or landing plans. You need to leave. Final warning.”

Migs stares at Mando’s helmet. “Seriously? Who shuts down an entire planet?”

“You have one minute to comply, Mudhorn.”

“Kriff.” Mayfeld pulls up a star map, his hands still sweating. “We have enough fuel to get us to Tatooine, Rodia, or Siskeen if we cut it close.”

“Tatooine,” Djarin declares with finality, and while the two gunships start to light up their weapons again the Mudhorn 1 blasts into hyperspace, leaving the brown planet and whatever troubles exist on it behind in a blur of stars.

----

They land in hanger three-five in Mos Eisley-- miraculously the yellow warning light flashing above their landing gear status array doesn’t kill them-- and rent bikes from a woman with personality almost as big as her hair. 

“Now you’re gonna bring both those bikes back this time, right, Mando?”

“Of course, Peli. We need a refuel, too.”

She makes a show of looking over their ship for them, all bluster and outer rim piss and vinegar. “Just a refuel? Looks like you saw a battle, too, don’t think you can hide that carbon scoring from me,” she says, pointing to the laser burn that scars the bottom of the ship.

“Just the fuel. I’ll have the credits on the way back.”

“Of course, he says.. I’ll have the credits, he says....” She levels a look at Migs, who watches all this go down with odd bemusement. “You make sure he brings these bikes back, got it baldy?”

He doesn’t even get in a good comeback before the Mando is pulling him and their solidified bounty towards the bikes. 

The carbon freezing system Djarin installed on Herdessa is top line stuff. The grav repulsers on each block are good, and the bounty-- some asshole named Pielus Rylar II who the Hutts wanted for selling out from under them or some other internal business-- bounces gracefully three feet above the surface of the sand, effortlessly. They string it up behind one of the bikes and strap their supplies atop it, treating the poor bastard’s face like a shelf. It’s undignified, but anyone who goes into business (and cheats) the Hutts already knows that about their life. He doesn’t spare much effort for pity. 

“I thought we were just gonna refuel here.”

Mando shakes his head and it glints something fierce in the dual Tatooine sunlight. “We need to get rid of this guy and I know someone else who might pay out for him.”

“I don’t like this.”

“You don’t need to like it, Meyfeld.”

The speeder bikes are decent, and although Migs hasn’t ridden a sand bike before, it’s not that much different from some other small craft he’s been on, both in Imperial service and out. He flips the ignition over and enjoys the whoosh of the turbines flaring to life. 

“Yeah, well, what I really don’t like is you not telling me shit. I didn’t sign on to be your lost little bantha pup and I’m not gonna stick around if that means you treating me like just a hired gun. I’m through with that life.”

There’s a small huff that transmits loud enough to hear through the helmet, even over the dual turbines. “I don’t need a hired gun, Mayfeld, I am the hired gun.”

Further conversation is lost to the almost painfully loud sound of the bikes as they push off into the desert. 

Mos Eisley is a weird town; the hanger where the ship is holed up is on the outskirts, but the whole place is flat and wind-worn as they slowly putter through it. From orbit it looked decently sized, but from within it, the city doesn’t look bigger than a town, even though he knows a half million souls eke out an existence here. Mayfeld’s never been to Tatooine before, because frankly no one should go to Tatooine: it’s a dust hole with very few redeeming qualities. But Djarin seems to know his way around it with ease, and he turns his speeder bike to follow the Mando’s as they skim quickly over the dunes.

They stop for a water break on a rocky outcropping, which Migs is eminently grateful for. He slaps some of it on his head, only to have it evaporate almost instantaneously. Kriff it’s hot. He doesn’t know how Djarin isn’t boiling in that tin oven of his. 

“We gonna talk about this?”

“Hm.” The helmet lifts up but not all the way off as he sips at his water slowly. Not a great sign for this conversation. He’s been somewhat liberal about removing the helmet ever since they sat down and got drunk that one time. 

“‘Cause I get it. You’re used to working alone and not trusting people. But you either treat me like one of the team or I find my own ride off Tatooine after I get a cut of this guy’s payout.” 

He shuts his own disappointment down and refuses to let it color his voice. He really thought he and the Mando-- Din-- had something going. Sure, they’d been a little drunk on the floor of his ship when they’d shaken hands over it, but it had felt nice. And it was nice to feel needed by someone who actually knew him. The bad parts and the good, too. Djarin had a mission and Mayfeld was going to help him, and maybe they could both put some demons to rest in the process. It was a good thing, after a slew of endless bad things, in Mayfeld’s life. 

But now he’s out here following this silent tin man to gods knows where, not clued in on the plan, and thinking, not for the first time, he might have been better off still in a New Republic prison detail. At least there he was clear on what the kriff was going on. 

Then the helmet comes off and gets set, gently, on the top of the speeder he’s leaning against. Djarin sucks in a breath and looks vaguely over his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“Look, I don’t need pretty words. I just need to know what the hell we’re doing.”

Din doesn’t quite make eye contact, which Migs is fine with because it means he can stare without getting caught. Djarin looks about par for the course since he’s come aboard with him: exhausted but not totally run down, pinked from the heat, his hair mussed from his helmet and stuck down in places with sweat. 

Din nods back at their carbon frozen bounty, gloriously holding up their water canteens like a moving picnic table. “We’re going to what used to be Jabba the Hutt’s palace, he was one of the Hutt cartel lords who ran this planet until a few years back. It’s now being run by Boba Fett, who you met during Morak. Boba has dealings with the Hutts that might... intersect, and I think he’ll buy this guy’s bounty puck off us. And...” he trails off and finally shifts his eyes to meet Migs’s. “I’m hoping he has information for me regarding other Mandalorians. He said he would try.”

“See. There. Was that so hard? I told you I’d help you find your other Mandos, you don’t have to hide shit like this.”

Djarin shakes his head and Migs tries not to get too distracted by the way the light glints off his cheekbones. “I’ve been operating on my own for a long time.”

“I have, too. But sometimes we’ve got to adapt to survive.”

Din licks his lips and Migs looks away. At the bounty, at their water canteens, at anything else.

He hears the hiss as the helmet seals back on. “Come on, let’s keep going. We’re not far off now.”

They get on their bikes and ride. 

---

The palace is the biggest structure Migs has seen on Tatooine so far, including the multi-level hanger they landed their ship in. He sees a few ships parked around, including the ancient Firespray class ship they’d used on Morak, but no refilling stations which explains their landing in Mos Eisley instead of out here. 

There’s a flurry of people as they approach, and it takes everything Migs has to not draw his own weapon when he feels rather than sees the aim of a half dozen blasters focused on him and Djarin. 

“This gonna be like earlier when you knew someone and we still got shot at? ‘Cause your idea of friends might be a bit off, judging from what I’m seeing.”

Djarin doesn’t give him the grace of a reply.

“I’m here to see Boba Fett,” Djarin calls out over the whipping sand. The bigger sun is close to setting, but it’s still blazing hot, and Mayfeld just hopes it doesn’t make the thugs with blasters trained on them get itchy fingers. “Tell him it’s the Mandalorian.”

Two of the thugs disappear from their places and duck into the palace leaving them all just standing out in the open, sweltering, while they wait. “He gonna know which one you are? I mean, ‘the Mandalorian’ isn’t exactly specific.”

The helmet turns towards him and quirks to the side. “He’ll know. Besides, they’ll report on my armor.”

Migs hasn’t given much thought to Djarin’s armor. Fett’s armor had been painted, hadn’t it, with green and rust red and bits of yellow or maybe orange in places, his memory is a little spotty. Other than Djarin, and of course Fett, he hasn’t met any other Mandos. Maybe they all wear different colors or something. 

Which begs the question as to why this Mando hasn’t a splash of color on him. He files that one away for later. 

It doesn’t take long for the two thugs to return and wave them in. 

“Don’t touch your blaster,” Djarin warns, as they bring the speeders up from idle and slowly amble their way into the palace that Mayfeld is slowly realizing is really more of a fortress. 

Fett receives them in a kriffing throne room. It’s tacky, too, with big bone wind chimes hanging from the doorways. The place smells like spice and spotchka, but it’s blessedly cool compared to the outside temperature, and Mayfeld takes a moment to enjoy the shade after their long ride, even if he’s less than comfortable with this whole situation. Bounty hunting to get enough credits to do whatever it is Djarin needs to do? Sure. But this is outside that set of parameters. It’s possible he’s still bitter from being left out of the planning. 

“I hear you have a gift for me,” Fett says to them through the vocoder of his painted version of Mando’s helmet as soon as they get themselves and the floating carbonite through the door. 

Then he takes his helmet off and grins at the two of them, a wild toothy grin that has the hairs on the back of Migs’s neck standing straight up. “Good to see you, brother.”

Mando nods. “Fett. I thought you might be interested in purchasing this puck and bounty. We tried to sell it on Nal Hutta but the planet is closed down to all outside travel. Which I thought might interest you, too.”

There’s something odd in Djarin’s voice that Mayfeld can’t quite put a pin in. What had he said, that Fett had dealings with the Hutts? Sitting on a dead Hutt’s throne was definitely one interpretation of ‘dealings.’ 

The suspicion that he’s once again missing something is solidified when Fett laughs a deep belly laugh that shakes his whole frame. “You thought right, on both counts. Who is this bounty? Someone who crossed the Hutts?”

Djarin nods and pulls the puck out of his pocket and throws it towards Fett, who catches it easily. “Double crosser. Worth the price?”

That razor sharp grin is back. “More than. Obril here will get you your credits.” Obril, a humanoid with a big scar down his neck that looks, if not as nasty as Fett’s scaring, pretty damned close, nods and approaches them to complete the transaction. 

Migs is more than happy to trade this guy’s frozen ass for credits, but he’s got his teeth on the edge of something that might be an inkling of what’s going on, and it’s making him itch. 

Fett, it seems, is done with them once the credits hit Mando’s leather pouch. “I have more business today, but Fennec wants to see you before you go.” 

They’re shepherded into a side room, much more dimly lit and ominous, but there’s only one occupant. The shadowed figure steps into the light and Migs is left looking at the leather clad figure of Fennec Shand. He remembers her from Morak, of course; her shooting is half of what saved their asses, and from one sharp shooter to another she has nothing but his respect. But he also remembers her from merc work. She’s a force alright. 

“Shand,” he says, to break the ice. “Didn’t realize you were still with Fett.” 

“And I definitely didn’t realize you found Mando again, Mayfeld.” 

What is shaping up to be a face off between them is summarily interrupted by Djarin who interjects himself bodily. Mayfeld lets himself be shunted off, and so does Fennec, although in Migs’s case it means he’s stuck looking at the tattered remains of Djarin’s cloak and his back for this conversation, but it’s probably better than sticking his foot in his mouth and getting them into a firefight they can’t win. Probably. 

“Boba pinged me when our guys spotted you on the dunes,” she says without preamble. And “our guys” doesn’t get missed by Mayfeld. Seems this fortress they’ve reclaimed here is a partnered operation. He wonders idly how deep their plans for this place go. “We’ve been keeping our eyes open and our ears to the ground.”

Mando hums deep in his throat and the sound comes through the vocoder almost delicately, a thing not quite ready to be born. “I appreciate it.”

She places something into Mando’s hands but Migs can’t get a glimpse of it from his angle, and he doesn’t want to give up his view of the only door in this room. 

Fennec continues. “We picked this up on Utapau. We took out a few ex-Imperials where we could, but we were on a schedule. You understand.”

And there’s that hum again, even more fragile this time. 

She reaches out and claps a hand to his pauldron, the one with the little mudhorn affixed to it. “Let us know if you need us, otherwise we’ll stay out of your way,” she says, and then she leaves them alone in the room and the durasteel door slides closed behind her with a clang. 

Finally Migs rounds Djarin to see what’s in his hand and sees a single rectangle of metal, stamped with the Imperial crest, held in his hands like a newborn. 

“Beskar,” he says. “They’re melting beskar on Utapau.”

---

Peli, the lady who runs their Mos Eisley rented hanger, happily takes three quarters of the bounty payment in return for berth, fuel, and the bike rentals when they return. Which is highway robbery, and he argues with her until Mando steers him up the ramp of the Mudhorn and waves goodbye, their credits and Tatooine slowly disappearing below. 

“So.”

He’s up in the co-pilot’s seat, once again watching the stars stream past the viewport. Mando’s still got his helmet on and he’s trying to look busy but Migs knows better. For all that he’s an inscrutable giant in his armor, he’s still a shit liar. 

“Utapau.”

“Yes.” 

Migs thinks he’s going to have to threaten to walk again, but Djarin sucks in a breath that vibrates through his helmet and continues to speak. 

“I asked Fett and Shand to keep a look out for other Mandalorians, after I recovered after the battle with Moff Gideon. This is the first real lead I’ve had.” 

Mayfeld picks up the beskar ingot that is set innocently on the console between them. It’s heavy and dense, maybe more with meaning than mass. The Imperial stamp is so familiar and so wretched, but he can’t help run his bare finger over it, catching the circle. 

“They’ve been hunting us since the Purge of Mandalore.”

“And Fett? What’s his deal with the Hutts?” Migs sets the ingot back. It feels wrong to handle it, somehow, like he’s being disrespectful even though the act of desecration has long since occurred. 

“Hutts are slavers.”

“I mean, yeah, but so are lots of people. I used to work for the Empire, remember?”

An unexpected short laugh comes out from under Mando’s helmet. “Yes, but Hutts and Tatooine have a history, and Boba Fett has decided to free Tatooine.”

Migs turns his head back to the stars. 

“Huh.”

---

He doesn’t see Djarin’s face for three days. It’s a hike out to Utapau and they both have enough thinking to do and thankfully the ship is large enough that they can piss and eat without stepping on one another. 

When Din does finally remove his helmet it’s to eat a ration bar that Migs chucks at his head. 

They sit on the little benches that are welded to the floor of the hold and chew on their mediocre rations. It’s certainly not the worst Migs has eaten, but it reminds him a little too much of soldier’s fare. 

“We’re an hour from planetfall,” Migs says. He’s been up in the cockpit today; they’ve been trading off to give each other space and shifts for rest, which is a blessed part of traveling with someone who, even if you are not bosom friends, you at least trust not to murder you in your sleep. It’s a thing he’s not taking for granted. “Touching down a few clicks out from where Shand mentioned. If things are as hot as you think they might be I don’t want us putting the ship down in the middle of kriff soup.”

Din nods at him, his mouth busy making quick work of the dry bar. It’s worryingly nice to see his face again, after several days of nothing but that reflective beskar. Migs is getting soft. 

He knows he’s getting soft when Din says, “Thank you,” and briefly flicks his brown eyes to Migs’s blue ones. “You’re not obligated to come with me when we land. I don’t know what the situation will be. It could be dangerous.”

Mayfeld laughs a little. “Last time we touched down on a planet with Imperials on it we risked our asses and almost died on Morak. What’s one more.”

There’s something firm and unyielding in Djarin’s voice when he says, “That time you didn’t have a choice. This time you do.”

“That ain’t true and we both know it.” he says back, harsh and a little angry. And Mando winces a little before Migs can barrel on. “I’ve spent most of my adult life making bad decisions and hurting people, whether intentionally or not. So do me the courtesy of respecting that I always have a choice. Always. Those bad decisions? My choice. I own that. You don’t have that kind of power over me, Djarin, not even when I was in a prisoner jumpsuit.”

Din is staring at him, wide eyed and with two spots of color on his cheeks. 

“So are we clear?” 

“Yes,” Djarin says. His voice cracks a little and Migs finds himself busy studying his own hands rather than looking the man in the face. Which is funny, isn’t it, after three days of shiny beskar and wishing they could hash it out face to face like adults, now that they’re doing it he wishes one of them could just hide away again. “We’re clear. And I’m... I’m sorry.”

“You apologize too much.” And then, because even Mayfeld knows when he’s been too harsh, “And it’s alright. But you and me, we’re equals. I’m not that green kid of yours, and I’m not a prisoner anymore, either. I’m here because I want to be.”

Migs crumples the remains of the seal pack of the rations in his fist. “I’m going to go make sure we land okay and then we’ll go rescue your clan.”

“Tribe.”

“Whatever.”

Migs leaves the hold, leaves Din behind with his face bare and his emotions still ringing out of those brown eyes. It’s too much for Migs, not right now when all he can think about is Burnin Kohn. He gets into the cockpit and closes the door behind. The hiss of it closing and sealing off is a balm even as the image of a thousand dead comrades plays across his mind on loop. 

They arrive above the planet with, thankfully, none of the dramatics that awaited them above the atmosphere of Nal Hutta. The planet is similarly brown and mottled looking from above, though, and Migs punches in the coordinates he selected for them: an hour’s walk from the city Shand mentioned, hopefully far enough out to avoid detection and allow them to get into the city on their own terms. 

The descent into the atmosphere is uneventful, almost pretty, even. The landscape that greets him through the viewport is brutal, but alluring in its sharp edges and vibrant oranges and reds. He finds a comfortable looking landing location where the jagged rocks level out in a valley and starts to set them down towards it. 

Suddenly one of the alarms starts to blare above him. 

“Kriff.”

The blinking yellow light from their brief dogfight over Nal Hutta has changed to a strobing red. Something’s wrong and Migs’s heart rate is too high to slow himself down and think logically. They’re not decelerating as quickly as they should, even as he bears up on the throttle and tries to level them off to buy more time to figure out what is going wrong. 

“Mando, strap yourself in!” He shouts and hopes he’s heard. Maker, he hopes that stupid asshole put his helmet back on. 

There’s a boom from behind him somewhere, a rending of metal that scrapes past his ears, and then the ship drops from the sky. The last thing Migs thinks is, “I can’t believe I’m going to die and I wasn’t even murdered.”

---

Migs wakes to the sound of water dripping slowly somewhere to his left. He shoots upright and regrets it, his head pounding from whatever punched him. He doesn’t remember getting into a fight, but that’s how most of his fights go, really, it’s not that surprising. He pries his eyes open, blinks at the harsh sunlight, and then remembers where he is. 

Djarin’s ship. The Mudhorn. 

He fumbles his way out of the pilot seat straps. They’d kept him from bodily harm, but he can tell from the aching in his head he’d hit something during their freefall of a landing. His forehead smarts and he’s probably not escaped a minor concussion. But he can see straight, he doesn’t think he’s bleeding anywhere, and he’s coordinated enough to get his sore ass out of the seat, so he thinks he’s probably alright.

The ship isn’t, though. 

Something has cracked the viewport and there’s no way they’re getting space bound without that fixed: Migs has no interest in tasting hard vacuum, thank you very much. The landing did other damage, too. A quick look at the read-outs indicates that the landing gear had blown out when attempting to deploy off the belly of the ship. The fucking landing gear. They’d been cheap, not getting it fixed after it worked alright the first time. Cheap and stupid. 

It’s at that moment that Migs remembers he’s not working alone. 

“Kriff, stinking sith spit. Djarin!”

He’s down the ladder and into the belly of the ship in an instant, even though his body is aching and he’s a little nauseated, either from the shock of the crash or his head injury. 

“Djarin! Din, where are you?”

The hold is kriffed. A big rend in the durasteel opens like a gash in the belly of the ship exposing rock and dirt below it and the welded in benches they’d eaten shitty ration bars on just a few hours earlier are caved in and mangled. The landing gear had not been kind when it’d blown. 

Migs’s heart is pounding again and he can hear his pulse in his ears. “Mando, where the kriff are you!” 

Anger has always been quick to the surface for Migs. He’s leaned into that impulse all his life, and it’s gotten him through when so many things would have otherwise destroyed him, anger leaping over other things and pushing him through. Mostly, though, it staves off the fear. He leans into the anger now.  

There’s a shape near where they store the crates of supplies. 

It’s amazing how much stuff one needs to cart around: medical supplies, food, ammo, repair tools and spare parts, extra fuel cells for life support, all kept in crates lashed to the floor of the hold. Only this time there’s something wedged in behind one of them. 

The landing hadn’t been kind to Migs, what with his aching head and his bruised body from where the safety harness had bitten into his shoulders and chest. But he’d been strapped in and more or less insulated from the drop. Mando had not been strapped in. 

“Kriff.”

Migs closes the distance between them and skids on his knees the last foot. 

Djarin is on his side, his torso wedged between the bulkhead and the largest of the crates. Perhaps it had been intentional, an attempt to secure himself to the storage webbing during the plummet. Or perhaps he’d been thrown there. It didn’t matter. Mayfeld throws his weight against the crate and gets it to budge a centimeter and then another until, finally, Djarin is free. Migs grabs him by the ankle and drags his heavy armored body away from the crate and into dim and ominous emergency lighting that fills the belly of the ship. 

He’s panting by the time they’re both out of there, haunted by imaginings of the crates tumbling down on them both, destabilized from the crash. But the crates are stable, even if his heart rate isn’t. 

“Come on, brown eyes, talk to me.” 

The command falls on deaf ears. Despite his hope, Din had not donned his Mando helmet again after their conversation. Migs sucks in a breath and forces himself back into soldier mode. Assess the situation. Then react. 

Din is laid out on his back, limp and unmoving. He’s breathing, though it’s hard to see under his breastplate, and Migs forces himself to flutter a hand under the man’s nose to confirm it. He’s breathing and he’s alive. 

His face, uncovered and vulnerable, is slack and tipped to the side a little from Migs’s jostling of him and his eyes are opened to slits with only the whites showing. A trickle of blood weeps from his left ear. 

“Kriff, kriff. Kriff!” 

But all Migs’s swearing won’t wake Din. He stands up on shaking legs and forces himself back to the crates, wrenching the lid off one and shoving spare bolts and ammo packets aside, hunting for bacta. He knows they have bacta, they have to have it. It’s expensive, but Mando had been rolling in credits after his payout from the whole Moff Gideon thing, before he’d spent it on the ship and on the carbonite system. 

Finally he finds a field medical kit and he shouts some soundless noise in relief.

He rips open the packet and dumps the contents out onto the floor. “I hope you know that the replacement cost of this is coming straight from you and not our operating budget,” he says as he sorts it into two piles: useful and not useful. He can’t help talking while he works, it’s the only thing keeping him sane. The idea of Din dying here leaves Mayfeld’s chest tight. He doesn’t want to be alone in the galaxy again. He’s too old for it. 

The thought sends a sharp zing of fear down his spine and he finds his hands once again hovering over Din’s mouth, waiting for the weak puff of breath to hit his palm. It does. He’s still breathing. 

He finds what he was looking for: a bottle of bacta, Imperial made and probably sold in lots after the Empire was officially disbanded. He squints at the date printed on the side. It’s a few years past expiry but it’ll probably still work. He hopes. 

Migs forces himself to gently lift Din’s head up off the floor, searching for an obvious contusion. He finds one behind his ear, a bloody matt of hair hiding what he hopes to the makers is not a skull fracture, but he can’t quite see beyond the clotty hair and his hands are shaking anyhow. 

He’s a sharpshooter, a killer. He’s not a kriffing medic, he doesn’t know how to deal with this. He can patch up a scraped hand from a bar fight, but this is out of his scope. 

“Okay, gonna put some bacta on this, no big deal. I guess this is why you wear the tin can, huh.” 

He sets Din’s head back down on the durasteel as gently as he can and grabs at the bottle of bacta. His hands are slimy with Djarin’s blood and it smears all over the white bottle and makes him feel a little sick. 

Bacta is dead simple, the miracle microbe of the galaxy. He sends up a prayer to whoever’s listening and then dumps a healthy sloshing of the liquid onto the wound. Blood and bacta run freely from Din’s scalp and pink the floor. 

He rocks back on his heels and forces several deep breaths, pretending he’s lining up a shot and needs to quiet his heartbeat to squeeze the trigger. 

“Any time you feel like waking up, feel free,” he says to Djarin’s still form. “‘Cause I can’t haul your heavy ass to the nearest city.”

Djarin just lays there. 

Mayfeld must pass out sitting up for a minute, because when he blinks the light filtering in from the cockpit has changed from a shocking sky blue to the wine pink of a sunset. It almost matches the blood that has dried on Din’s face. 

Migs blinks again and swears, shoving himself upright to make sure Djarin is still breathing. Only to find Din’s brown eyes blinking back at him. 

“Mando?” A pause and the eyes flutter. “You in there?” He doesn’t want to shake him again, lest he suddenly end up with a hole in his belly from a blaster. ‘Don’t surprise the Mando’ was an early lesson he learned. 

“Yeah,” he grates out, and Migs feels like he can finally breathe again. 

“Maker you scared the kark out of me. You think you can get up? We probably should secure this ship before some asshole who saw us go down comes for scrap.”

“Give me a minute,” Djarin says. He still hasn’t moved, his body splayed in the position that Migs dragged him out in, looking like a limp half dead thing under all that shiny beskar. Then, to Mayfeld’s relief, he begins to shift his body. Migs gets a hand under his elbow to help lever him upright and get him nestled against one of the crates that was almost his demise. 

“So,” Migs says, when they’re both panting from the effort of it and Djarin’s forehead is shiny with exertion. “Turns out that hit we took over Nal Hutta wasn’t great.”

Djarin laughs and something tight and uncomfortable unspools from Migs’s belly. He’s too old for this, but he’s got nothing else to be. Being heartless hadn’t worked out for him, but this new possibility of caring about things and people leaves him a little breathless and he’s not sure he likes it. 

A year ago he wouldn’t have cared if Djarin died on the floor. Ten years ago he probably would have whooped about it. But here he is, emotional that a man who landed him in prison, deservedly or not, is alive enough to laugh.

He’s become soft.

“Reminds me of the Razor Crest,” Djarin says. 

Now Migs lets out a huff of aborted laughter. “Of course it does. It’s falling apart and a death trap.”

Din rolls his head to the side to give him a disappointed look. Then he scans the room with a frown. Migs mirrors it, trying to see what he’s looking at, but comes up blank. 

“Where’s my helmet?”

---

The helmet is gone. Likely bounced out along with a few other miscellanea through the gaping tear in the bottom of the ship during their freefall. It could be anywhere within a fifty mile radius from what Migs can tell about their crash descent. 

They look for a while anyway, because it’s the kind thing to do and suddenly Migs is a person who does kind things. It’s weird. They don’t find it, though, not in the ship, not in the metal wreckage, and not in the immediate area around the ship either.

“I’m sorry, Mando,” he says. The man looks defeated and stares at his hands. “I think we’ve got a pilot’s helmet somewhere--”

“No.” It’s a final sounding word when it comes out of his mouth. 

And yeah. No. It would be too much like those stinking stormtrooper uniforms, too much like playing pretend. 

They secure the ship as best they can and catch a little shut eye while the planet rotates through its night cycle. Then in the morning they load up a pack with some more bacta, because Migs doesn’t trust luck as far as he can throw it anymore, and food and essentials. Essentials being three blasters for Migs and two for Mando, along with an assortment of small arms and knives, a pair of binder cuffs, and several bombs. 

What constitutes essentials is something he and Mando have always seen eye to eye on. 

The hike to the city of Uluptu takes them two hours, not the one he’d planned on when he picked their rough landing site, because they stop to rest every fifteen minutes on one of the plentiful rocky outcroppings. The bacta treatment regrew Din’s skull and probably stopped him from bleeding out into his brain, but Mayfeld can see from how he walks that he’s dizzy and hurting. Kriffing Imperial surplus probably was watered down before it even expired. 

But they keep walking and they get there. 

“When we find someone, let me do the talking,” Din says to Mayfeld. His head is high on his shoulders but the tension in his neck is visible, ruining the casual appearance of confidence. 

Uluptu is set in the craggy crater between two of the multitude of mountains that make up the landscape on this shit hole. For once it isn’t set into a crater from a bomb from the war, though, so that’s a nice change of pace. They walk in through the outer bits of town, mostly full of noodle bars and the acrid smells of roasting insects that are huge and, hopefully, non sapient. 

The place is mostly populated by non humanoids, but there are a few humans mixed in, along with a few other species, too. They don’t stand out too much and no one really pays them much mind. 

“Different reception without the helmet, huh,” he says through the side of his mouth as he smiles at someone trying to sell him some questionable meat on a stick. He knows he’s being an ass about it, but it’s true. With the helmet on he wouldn’t have to smile and nod his way out of a transaction, people would be clearing the way around the Mando and Migs would just be trying to keep up. 

He does feel a little bad when he looks back and sees Din’s face, which is a rictus of discomfort and entirely open. No wonder everyone is trying to sell them shit. For all that he’s a human in his forties he looks like a lost kid. 

“Kriff, nevermind, let’s just keep moving,” he says, and tries to hurry them along. 

Migs doesn’t see what sets Mando off, but something clearly does. He taps Migs’s forearm and then up and disappears, which should not be possible for a big broad man in fifty pounds of armor that catches the sun. It takes everything Migs has to catch a glimpse of him again, walking briskly in the shade of one of the buildings and heading down a small set of stone stairs into the deeper parts of the city.

They follow the trail silently for a while, and the path leads away, towards a warren of little caves mostly filled with poor and unhoused, calling out that they’ll work for food. After the bright life of the restaurant district it’s jarring and has Migs’s teeth on edge, waiting for someone to slip out and try to gut them. 

“This way,” Mando says, and Mayfeld would really like to know where the kriff they’re going, because this path definitely does not lead to the city and probably in fact leads them to an ambush where they’re going to get their throats slit. But saying that is as good a way to guarantee it as anything, so he keeps his lips pressed together and his hand on the grip of his still holstered blaster. 

Finally they stop. There’s a little kid standing in the path. At least Mayfled is pretty sure it’s a kid. It’s about waist height, with a knife in its hand, and a bucket on its head. 

Oh, thinks Mayfeld with a sudden pulsing epiphany. The little kids wear the helmets, too. 

“Come closer and I’ll kill you,” the kid says to them. 

Djarin steps forward and raises his hands. “My name is Din Djarin,” he says, and his voice is soft and gentle and it breaks Mayfeld’s heart a little. “I won’t hurt you.”

The kid raises the knife higher. The stance is good, shoulders square and feet firm. That little kid could probably kill him, Migs decides. Not that he has any intention of finding out. 

“You’re wearing beskar. Hand it over.”

Din steps another foot forward, hands still raised. “I earned this beskar. And what I didn’t earn was my buir’s. This signet?” He very slowly reaches over and points to the little mudhorn figure welded onto his pauldron, the one Migs quickly learned not to tease about. “This is my clan signet. I’m Clan Mudhorn.”

“You’re dar’manda!” The kid is shouting. The bucket she’s in isn’t as fancy as Mando’s is. Was. But the vocoder is decent and he’s pretty sure the kid is some variety of girl. She’s shaking, but he’s pretty sure it’s anger not fear. Migs is familiar with the nuances there.

“Yes,” Din says, and kriff, he sounds broken when that word slips out. It takes everything in Migs not to jump in and ask what the hell they’re all talking about. But this is Mando shit and Djarin had asked to let him handle it. “I am. But I used to be of this Tribe before I was dar’manda, and I have something to return to you. Can you give this to your alor and request that she come speak to me?”

Just as slowly as when he reached to show the mudhorn signet he reaches into his hip pouch and pulls out the beskar ingot. He sets it down on the ground in front of the girl and backs away. 

She looks at it, then up at him, and then surges forward to grab the ingot and disappear into one of the dozens of cave entrances that dot the landscape.

Migs breathes a sigh when it’s apparent they’ve not been stabbed to death by a feral Mando kid. 

“Dar’manda, huh.”

“It’s complicated.” Migs sits himself down on one of the rocks but Din stands there still like he’s stuck in place. “It means sinner. No longer Mandalorian, through cowardice.” 

And oof, that’s an ugly wound right there. He’s not surprised that Djarin keeps his face staring towards the hole the kid slipped into and doesn’t turn back towards him. 

“This ‘cause of the helmet?” 

He bows his head. The sun is low in the sky already; the planet has a short day cycle. The light rakes against the exposed back of his neck and shows off the tension there. “Yes.”

“Kriff, Mando, I told you I didn’t see anything back on Morak,” he says, his own voice low and desperate in his throat. “You could have just put it back on for good.”

“It’s Din, now.”

Everything of the last two weeks since seeing Mando on Herdessa and bullying his way into his good graces is re-colored in his mind in a single instant, a moment of the universe slotting all the puzzle pieces back into place and the picture becoming clear between blinks. 

“You were never looking for your tribe so you could rejoin them, were you.” It’s not really a question, not from the welcome the kid just gave them with the knife. 

But the thing is Mayfeld feels like his whole galaxy has been turned on its axis. Mando is the most Mandalorian figure he can imagine. The idea of him being unwelcome among his kind is like a bird he can’t quite catch, fluttering around in his brain. 

Djarin shakes his head. “No. I made my choices.” He finally looks back at Migs now. His eyes are shining with emotion but he’s not a broken man. He stands tall. Djarin stares at him for a beat before quirking a small smile. “You don’t have that kind of power over me, Mayfeld,” he says, parroting Migs’s own words back at him. “I took it off. And then I took it off again. And then...” he trails off. “I made my own choices.”

“That’s the thing about lines in the sand. It’s just sand.”

---

They aren’t left for too long in the open. A few more minutes pass with the sun setting deeper and deeper and throwing the chaotic mass of jagged cliffs into a sharp and dangerous looking collection of shadows. 

Migs is glad they packed up before they left, and happily swallows down most of a water and hydration pack alongside his dry as dirt meal ration. Unsurprisingly Din does not. He’s probably too on edge. Migs would be. 

Four Mandos float up from the caves, almost silent in a way that shouldn’t be possible for all the armor they’ve got strapped to their bodies. 

“Din Djarin,” one says through a helmet vocoder. He’s pretty sure this one is female, too, but you never know with the variety of species in the galaxy, not to mention vocoder output options. 

Din bows his head and his face is completely in shadow now. 

“You have come to us without your helmet, and bringing with you an outsider. By right we could kill you and take your armor for our foundlings.”

Migs can feel his heart thumping wildly in his chest. The situation clearly escalated from not ideal to actively dangerous and his palms are sweating. Unlike Djarin he’s not decked out in neck to toe body armor. If one of the Mandos goes for him he’s not going to survive. He’s a decent fighter and an excellent shot, but he’s not as fast or young as he used to be. He’s not going to fool himself into thinking he’ll be able to duck and cover before one of them gets lucky. Plus, if it were him, he’d have a sharpshooter or two up in the mountains and he’s pretty sure they do. 

“I am not here for that,” Din says. He’s calm. How is he so calm? “And Mayfeld is no danger.”

“No, no danger here!” He’s quick to pipe in. That gets him a glare from Djarin that clearly means shut up. 

“You’re being hunted here, on this planet,” Din continues, voice steady as can be. Mayfeld used to think that voice was a product of the helmet, and sure some of the tonal quality was, but the steadiness? That’s all Djarin. “That ingot isn’t from the purge.”

The leader spreads her hands wide. “This is the way.” 

And there’s that kriffing sentence he was so eager to shove up Mando’s ass for him. 

“Let me help you.”

“You are dar’manda, Din Djarin.” Her helmet tips down to look at his shoulder. “Your foundling?”

“He’s safe. He is with his people. Please let me help, let me repay the debt our tribe paid on his behalf. On my behalf.”

“Spilled blood cannot be repaid.” She turns and waves the three other Mandalorians back into the caves and Migs can almost breathe again. They might get out of this alive after all. Whatever he’d been imagining when it came to reuniting Mando with his tribe, this hadn’t been it. “The Imperials have a base to the east. They monitor the shipyards: we have not been able to leave since coming here and discovering the danger.”

Then she, too, vanishes into the shadows of the cave system, and Migs and Din are once again alone.

“Leave the food,” Djarin says, low under his voice. 

“What?”

“Leave the food and water we brought at the mouth of the cave. We’ll go sleep on the ship. We brought enough.”

Two more hours and they’re back at the Mudhorn, exhausted and bleeding from walking into trees in the dark-- on Migs’s part, anyhow.

Mando makes it almost to his bunk before starting to flag, but something about reaching the ship, or the change in air quality as they cross the threshold into the loading bay, has him starting to list to the side and lean on the bulkhead for support. 

“Alright, enough is enough tough guy. Let’s go.” Migs gets a hand braced under Din’s arm and steers him towards his bunk. 

The Mudhorn is well designed, and unlike previous ships he’s berthed in, it boasts the luxurious quality of having two separate sleeping quarters, each with its own door. True, each one is only about the size of a large human and is essentially like sleeping in a coffin, but it’s a level of privacy that’s to be relished. 

He gets Djarin to his bunk, slaps the door open with a hiss, and sets him down bodily on the edge of the bed shelf. Djarin, as an indication of how exhausted and possibly still concussed he is, allows himself to be handled this way without so much as a complaint or even a glare. In fact...

Migs ducks down and gets a look at Din’s eyes. They’re unfocussed and drooping. 

“Stay there, I’m going to grab the bacta. Don’t die in the next minute.” 

The bacta he’d used before is still in the pack he’d brought along with them to the city, and he fishes it with some relief that they hadn’t left it with the Mandalorians, too. 

He tips Din’s head to the side and carefully brushes as much of his hair away as he can, not missing the wince and sucking breath as one of his fingers catches the outside of the contusion. 

“Sorry,” he says. And then without hesitation smears a heavy portion of the bacta on the wound. That should take care of it. Eventually. “You good?”

Djarin nods and goes to lay down just as he is, still mostly covered in blood and fully armored, with the exception of his depressing lack of helmet. 

Migs starts to argue with him, but catches himself. If the man wants to sleep in his shell, let him. 

His own sleep is fitful, full of moments when he wakes up certain they are again dropping out of the sky, only to realize he’s simply panting and sweat soaked on his bunk. 

When the sun rises, neither of them appear to have slept well or soundly. He forces his tiredness away by loading up another day pack with supplies and then cleaning their blasters and checking their ammo. And when Djarin stumbles out of his bunk, bleary eyed and still pale, he’s sorted everything and meets his eyes with a firm glance.

“So we’re gonna go take out some Imperials, or what?”

Din smiles. “Yes.”

---

They get a pin point on a non-city heat mass east of where the Mandalorian cave system is and hike out. Migs wishes they could fly closer, but not only is the ship out of commission for the moment but from what the terrifying Mandalorian said, the Imperial faction that’s taken root has a good handle on the main ports as well as the light craft that come in and out near them. 

So by foot it is. And Mayfeld is already tired of it. But he sucks it up and they walk until the rocky landscape shifts a little and bottoms out into something a little more hospitable. Which is not the best, honestly, as it leaves them less cover for an approach. 

“How do you want to play this?” he asks as they crest a ridge and start the descent towards what looks like a three-tiered building with a hanger. It’s definitely Imperial, or whatever the post-Empire Imperials are calling themselves. The design is sleek and black and imposing against the light brown hills. It makes Migs’s stomach clench. “Like before? Sneak in as stormtroopers?” He doesn’t want to, but kriff if he has a better idea. 

They rest half way down the slope, still out of sight of whatever scopes the Imperials have trained on the horizon and Migs uses Mando’s silence to get the best lay of the land he can. Definitely a hanger with at least the capacity for three or four mid sized ships, definitely a barracks for a garrison of stormtroopers. Beyond that, though, the top two levels of the building could be for anything. There are two anti aircraft guns on the roof and a handful of sharpshooters with weapons trained out on the hills. No wonder the Mandalorians hadn’t dealt with this themselves. A frontal assault was doomed to fail. 

“No, not like last time,” Djarin says finally. “You’ll go in as yourself.”

And Din hands Migs the pair of binder cuffs with steady eyes. 

“You know,” Mayfeld says, feeling off balance yet again. It seems to keep happening with Djarin. “A few months ago I would have given anything to have you in these.” He slips the cuffs over Din’s wrists and tightens them until they sit snug, holding his hands in front of his body.  “If they’re going to buy this I need your blasters, too. At least the obvious ones.”

Djarin nods and, keeping his eyes locked with Din, Mayfeld reaches down and plucks the blaster from his hip holster and the one from his shoulder. It always feels odd, holding another man’s gun. He takes the vibro knife from his boot, too, leaving the darksaber thing well alone and hoping the grunts won’t know what it is.

He swallows. 

“You trust me, brown eyes?”

“Yes.” 

Such a simple word. A clear and straightforward affirmation. Yes. It burns into Migs like fire. 

“Alright then. I’ll get us in.”

---

“Hey, you up there, don’t shoot!” Migs shouts out.

Djarin is in front of him, bound, and with Mayfeld’s gun jammed against the back of his neck as they walk slowly down towards the entrance doors to the base. 

“I want to trade!”

At least one sharpshooter has a scope on him, probably two, and Migs plays it as cool as he can. He’s been in and out of dangerous situations since he could hold a gun, this is no different, he tells himself. 

“Migs Mayfeld, TK-111,” he shouts up, “Used to be a sharpshooter with you all, just broke out of prison. I hear the Empire is after beskar now, and I want back in! Plus I thought you might want this one for information.”

There’s a few hand motions from up above, the crackle of a radio he can’t quite hear, and then, blessedly, the opening of a triple layer durasteel blast door.

“Step out of line and we shoot,” a trooper says as they’re waved in. “We’ll take the Mandalorian.”

“I kept his helmet,” Migs waggles his fingers, pretending to be someone he would rather not be again. “A little finders fee,” he says as they’re moved into the atrium of a troop command site. A dozen storm troopers float around in pairs, working on ship repair and base management, but it’s not as fully staffed as he feared. Not like bases were in the heyday of the Empire when Migs was serving. 

The helmet thing gets him a chortle from a trooper who slaps him on the shoulder. “I would have too, I won’t tell on you,” the man says. “Come on, I’ll take you to Command, see if we can’t get you re-enlisted. Shouldn’t be hard seeing as you just gave us a full set of beskar. Kark that bastard is shiny.”

Djarin is roughly handled and he fights the troopers enough to make Migs sweat. One of them raises a blaster and Migs shouts out, “He’s got information, don’t kill him.”

“You sweet on this monster, TK-111?”

Migs manages to turn the ball of fear in his throat into something akin to a chuckle. “Not on your life, I’m not even sure he’s human. But he knows where more Mandalorians are. If you want more beskar, you have to get that out of him first.”

The trooper who slapped him on the shoulder so jovially earlier puts his blaster down and instead whips a brutal punch at Djarin’s exposed face. He ducks out of it but another trooper slips in and shoves him against the wall and kicks at him until he goes down, boots finding the soft spots between his armor plating. 

“I heard they lived in packs like animals,” one of them says. “We’ll get it out of him, don’t worry.”

Mayfeld forces himself not to watch as Djarin is half dragged through the door in the south. He thinks the moan of pain is for show. If they’re going to do this, he can’t care. 

“Come on, soldier,” he’s told, and he lets himself be led into the turbo lift and up to the top floor. 

The man waiting for them, Commander Atela, is younger than Migs. It takes him by surprise, enough that it jolts him out of the buzzing nervousness that’s taken root in his body. He’s old, he realizes. The kids the Empire ate up are being spit back out again, in a churning cycle that never stops. 

Commander Atela introduces himself and shakes Migs’s hand. 

“You gave us a real treat. We’ve been hunting a group of Mandalorians on this rock for the past few months but it’s been slow work. But, it keeps the troops entertained.” He waves a hand casually. “Nothing like a good long hunt to keep men happy, am I right?” 

He’s maybe ten years younger than Mayfeld and has just a handful of lines on his face. He’s almost boyish, and the bright green eyes don’t help shake the image of a kid playing bloodless soldiers. It’s not the viper-like cruelty of Valin Hess, it’s something almost worse. Ignorance. 

“Yeah,” he says. He can do this. It’s not Valin Hess. He’s never met this Atela bastard before. But the thought of Valin Hess has memories of Burnin Kohn rushing back and he can taste the smoke from Operation Cinder coating the back of his throat. “Yeah, I hear beskar keeps going up, too,” he forces out.

“That’s right,” Atela says eagerly, like they’re sharing insider knowledge about their favorite drinks. “Now that the Empire turned Mandalore to glass, the mines are all gone. The only way to get it now is off the backs of those dogs.”

Mayfeld swallows. “How many have you gotten?”

“Here at this base?” Atela grins and waves Migs in. His office is a substantial section of the third floor of the base, with big plasteel windows that look out over the hills, tinted against the sun. Atela he takes them to a back corner and presses open what Migs assumed was some sort of utility closet or storage.

It’s a trophy room filled with helmets. Each one is mounted on a pike, stood off the ground at head-height like macabre body-less mannequins. They’ve been polished, he realizes surreally. No blood, no scoring. Each one has been polished and mounted like a prized trophy.

“I was sad to hear the one you brought in was already missing his,” he says. “I was hoping to add to my collection. His would have been a prize, to be sure.”

Migs is going to be sick. He’s going to throw up right on this asshole’s polished black leather boots. He takes a deep breath. Pretends, once again, that he’s nestled up in a outcropping and is sighting up a target. Assess the situation, he commands himself. Then act. 

There are nine helmets. “Kriff, that would have brought you up to a nice even ten, that’s too bad,” he says instead of what he would like to do, which is put the heel of his boot through Atela’s throat until it met the floor. 

Atela laughs and places his hand on the back of Mayfeld’s neck like they’re friends and gives him a little shake. “I thought you might understand. Happy to put you on the rolls, by the way. You were a sharpshooter?”

He clears his throat and tears his eyes away from the helmets. He wonders if Atela can feel how clammy his neck is. 

“I was. My compliment was killed and I was picked up and put in prison. Got out and,” he shrugs, “You know how it is. Sometimes you like the old ways.”

“I do indeed. Scan in downstairs and I’ll make sure you get re-enlisted. Happy to have you with us, TK-111,” he says, and gives the back of Mayfeld’s neck a little shake. “Long live the Empire.”

Migs makes it down to the barracks and manages not to lose what little of the rations remain in his stomach. This whole horrible farce has been for one reason: get a mental map of this place and figure out how to destroy it. Then grab Mando and get the hell out. So far he’s coming up empty, but he’s got a good feeling about the second level. 

He brings it up to the same trooper who’d met him on the way in, apparently assigned to get him reoriented. “Say, what’s on level two?”

The trooper shrugs a little shake that rattles his plasteel armor. “Never really paid it too much attention. Some sort of weapons research I think. He laughs again, a chuckle that Migs has already decided is deeply annoying. “Above our paygrade. We’re just the guns.”

Twenty minutes later he makes it into the turbolift and up to level two. 

And boy, that trooper wasn’t wrong, but he had a vast capacity for understatement. Weapons research, indeed. 

Level two was a huge kriffing bomb. 

---

“Hey,” he says when the compliment he’s been assigned to-- and isn’t that a thought full of deja vu-- breaks for lunch, “Can I go see that Mando I brought in? I owe him another punch.”

“Nah, prisoners are off limits,” he’s told, sympathetic-like. “Sorry TK-111. But don’t worry, he’s probably half done with interrogation already, he’ll be getting plenty of attention.” This is followed up by a half dozen chuckles as they sit, helmets off, and chow down. 

Migs forces himself to eat mechanically, at least enough to avoid suspicion. It tastes like ash. Not just because Din is trussed up in the basement chock full of drugs most likely, but because he’s here. Again. He swore he’d die before he signed on for any army again, New Republic or Empire, or whatever the hell this Post Empire thing is. He swore it. And here he is, of his own volition. 

He raises a fork to his mouth and swallows. 

“Ah, fair enough. Too bad, though. Hey, I’m gonna hit the refresher, save me one of those Nabooian cream puffs.”

He does go to the refresher. He loses the admittedly good lunch despite himself. And then he goes and finds a set of stairs down to the prisoner holding area. 

He hadn’t counted on interrogation going down so quickly, though to be fair they hadn’t really planned this operation, it was mostly supposed to be recon, with Djarin their ticket in and also still capable of getting himself out. Din hadn’t signed up for actual Imperial interrogation, he was meant to bust himself out before things got bad. Mayfeld hadn’t signed up for this, either. His heart is pounding and his whole body feels clammy. 

The place isn’t locked down as much as it should be. Sloppy work, but he’s not complaining. He manages to get into the prisoner detention area through the poorly secured door off the medbay wing.

He knocks on the wall by the security desk with a wide smile. “Hey, sorry to bother you, do you have a light?”

The guard perks up. “You have smokers? They haven’t sent us any in months!”

“Sure do, hang on, here,” he says, approaching with a loose gait, and then knocks the guard’s hands away from the console and chokes him out. He tucks the body under the chair before switching all the cameras on. 

“Come on, Mando, where are you...”

Most of the detention cells are empty, which narrows the search down. Finally he spots him and he takes off down the hall headed for detention cell A3. He only needs to take out one other guard to get there, a testament to how poorly staffed this boneheaded operation is. Kriffing Empire. 

He swipes the control stick off the guard and jams it into the A3 door.

“Intruder alert,” sounds the spherical interrogation droid hovering above a prone form, and it’s with great relish that Mayfeld blasts it out of the air. It bounces off the wall and comes to rest ignominiously in the shadowed corner. 

He looks down. Djarin is laid out on the floor of the cell, his armor stripped off and taken Maker knows where. He looks so much smaller without its bulk that Migs has to do a double take to confirm it’s really him. DIn’s not a small man-- he’s got solid muscle and a build to match his dangerous and self-reliant lifestyle-- but he looks so much more human in just a flight suit, stripped down to his socks. He can’t remember if he’s ever seen him with the whole set off before, pauldrons and all. Except for on Morak, of course. He shakes himself back to the present.

“You with me, brown eyes?” He snaps his fingers a little and watches Din’s eyes, pupils blown wide, float around the room before finally resting on Migs’s face. Even then they’re clearly out of focus and drifting.

“I’m here,” he says. His voice is rough and Migs tries not to imagine him growling and shouting in pain. “Two rounds of drugs. Don’t know what,” he says. He’s panting to get the words out, but he’s conscious and aware of himself which is frankly better than Migs feared. Though the effort between words is concerning. But they can’t deal with that now. 

“Alright let’s get you up, I figured out how to get us the kriff out of here and take this place out at the same time. They’ve been using the beskar from your tribe to make bombs.”

Djarin, who is half way upright in Mayfeld’s arms now, swings his head to stare at him wide eyed and with as much abject horror as Mayfled feels regarding this entire day. 

“What?”

“Yeah, the second floor is a research lab. They’re using beskar in the detonators. I’m no weapons scientist, don’t ask me for the details. But they’ve got a half a dozen big bombs up there. Won’t be hard to blow ‘em on our way out.”

But Din is shaking his head violently, stuttering as he tries to verbalize something too complicated for his drug addled body. “No. No. We need to get--” He stops to gulp in another breath. “Get the beskar. To take it back.”

Mayfeld has a timer running in his mind counting down how long they’ve got before someone finds one of the two bodies he’s tried to hide away, before someone notices the droid is no longer operational and the door to detention cell A3 has been opened. They don’t have much time left. 

“Yeah. Yeah, alright.” It’s stupid. They should just blow this place and get the hell out. But kriff, Mayfeld’s life is nothing but one stupid decision after another at this point, why not add to the running tally. “The Commander of this base has a collection,” he says, chewing his lip a little because he’s not sure of a tactful way to bring this up. “Helmets.”

Djarin wheezes like someone’s just put a knife between his ribs and it’s the worst thing Mayfeld’s ever heard. “How many?”

Migs grasps Din’s forearms and gets him vertical. The man sways for a bit and pales out as his blood pressure drops and Migs is forced to take some of his weight as he gets his bearings, but he stays mostly up as Mayfeld gets him moving. 

“Nine,” he says eventually, as they pass through the threshold of the cell and into the hallway. “He’s got nine of them.” And, because he would want to know if he were in Djarin’s shoes and it was his family turned into sick trophies, he tells the worst part, too. “Two of them are real small.”

They don’t talk for a while after that. Migs because he’s busy piloting the clumsy man towards the turbolift, shooting out cameras as he goes, and Djarin because he’s busy not passing out, which Migs is deeply grateful for. 

Their luck runs out when they make it to the turbolift and punch in for the third floor. Commander Atela is waiting for them when the lift doors open into his office, blaster drawn and four stormtroopers at his back equally armed. 

“You’re a traitor,” Atela says, all confidence and self righteous indignation pouring out of his mouth like he isn’t responsible for the deaths of Maker knows how many souls. “Shoot,” he commands, and the stormtroopers flanking him open fire.

Mayfeld shoves Djarin down and dives the other direction, his own blaster-- Din’s actually-- firing back. He gets two of them pretty quick before the lot of them also take cover and there are still three men firing at them, deadly force engaged. 

“Give me a blaster,” Djarin shouts at him, and Mayfeld happily obliges, throwing him his own weapon before scooping up a fallen trooper’s blaster himself to keep firing. 

Atela might be good, Migs has no idea. But cornered in his own office without the heavy fire of the base behind him he doesn’t stand a chance. Migs squeezes off a shot and Djarin catches the remaining trooper under the lip of his helmet with a shot of his own and suddenly it’s just them and Atela standing. 

“Our work here is important, not just for the Empire,” the man says. He stands to face them, and Migs will at least give it to the man that he’s brave. He’s gonna die, sure, but he’ll die brave. Good for him. Mayfeld doesn’t care. 

“Oh yeah? Those beskar bombs? You think we give a kriff about that?”

Atela pales. Ah, Mayfeld thinks. He’s finally realized he’s going to die. 

But you know what? This isn’t Migs’s kill, not like Valin Hess was. He turns to look at Din, still armorless and breathing heavy, sweating and pale, leaned up against the wall, and says, “This one’s yours,” and walks over to clasp a hand to his shoulder to lend a little strength. 

Djarin bends and for a second Migs thinks he’s going down and braces under him harder, but he’s reaching into his boot to fish out a weapon he’s apparently kept hidden this whole time. And, oh, Migs realizes. Of course it’s the darksaber. 

It flashes and Mayfeld’s never seen it lit before, just its imposing and stark hilt kept on Djarin’s person but never used. Until now. 

It hums and bursts free into a viscous looking lazer blade, somehow black and crackling white all at once. 

No wonder people kill for this weapon. It’s horrifying.

“Do you know what this is?” Din asks Atela, advancing forward of his own power and leaving Mayfeld to do nothing but watch, half mesmerized. 

Atela is shaking his head violently and backing away, but there’s nowhere to go. He stumbles backwards until his shoulder smack into the pretty duraplast viewing windows Migs had admired earlier. “No, no, please.”

“This is a weapon of the Mandalorians,” he says, and twists it so it flashes this way and that in a graceful arc. “A weapon that, when won in combat, signifies leadership and a being who can unify Mandalorians and call for war.” Djarin is looming in front of Atela now, the blade hovering near the man’s face casting what Migs had originally pinged as a boyish look into something more like a ghoul. 

“You’ve been hunting us,” Djarin continues. “And now you’re going to die by the weapon of the Mand’alor.” 

There’s no more dramatics after that. Migs watches as Din pulls back and then, almost gently, pushes the saber into the man’s chest. 

Atela dies almost instantly, those green eyes frozen in terror as he slides down the wall when Djarin flicks the saber off. There’s even a hole in the duraplast where it burned through. There’s not even that much blood, the wound cauterized like some blaster wounds are. Bloodless soldiers, indeed.

Migs is content to enjoy the moment, except that Djarin is wilting and he’s reaching out clumsily for something to steady himself on. Mayfeld steps over the body and wraps a hand around his bicep.

“He deserved it,” he says, just in case the sentiment is needed. It probably isn’t. Djarin is like him, in the end: they’ve both killed plenty of times before, and frankly for much smaller offenses than genocide. 

They don’t have time to feel much, though. The alarm has been triggered, probably from the saber punching a hole through the duraplast window, and they need to get out of here before it becomes their grave.

“The helmets,” he says. The pained inflection is back into his voice, he must have been masking it for Atela. “Get the helmets.”

Migs leaves Djarin braced against Atela’s ostentatious black desk and jogs over to the trophy room. He’d love to spare Din from seeing it, but there’s no hiding from it once the door’s open. 

“Sorry,” he says, even though he’s nothing to do with this. He still feels the taint of the Empire on him, all these years later. He hadn’t hunted Mandos for sport like these bastards, but he’d done plenty else in the name of the Empire before he realized what a grist mill it was. He’d been a young idiot, but that doesn’t make it better. 

He has to root around before coming up with a duffle bag, haphazardly spilling its contents left and right. Then it’s the macabre job of pulling each helmet off its pike. Nine in all, and together they’re a heavy burden, and not just in weight. He hefts it over his shoulder and gets back to Djarin. 

“Into the turbolift, let’s go,” he directs, uncomfortably aware of his status as the only non-drugged member of their party. Din’s not quite with it still and he requires a little pushing to get going. He keeps on hand on Djarin’s shoulder as he punches in for the second floor. “Just keep it together a little longer,” he says under his breath. The tension radiating through Djarin’s body is palpable, little quivers of maybe pain, maybe emotion, maybe simply a physiological reaction to whatever they pumped him full of. 

The turbolift doors open and Migs shoots a scientist in the face and doesn’t feel the least bit guilty about it. 

“Here,” he says, and pushes them both towards the center of the room where a starburst shaped device blooms from the floor, a bomb half pulled apart and half functional. “Are you any good at bombs?”

They both have a controlled crash to the floor and stare at the wiring in front of them. It’s clearly in a half completed state, meant to be safe for the scientists to work on. Only that’s the opposite of what they want. They want a big boom. 

Din rolls his head to look at him. “Usually. But...” he holds his shaking hands out in front of him. “I might pass out.”

“No, no don’t pass out! I can’t get you and this armor out of here if you do, so you stay the kriff awake, got it? You got that, Mando?”

“Dar’manda, remember?”

“Shut up and make this thing a bomb. I’m going to find your armor.”

He leaves Din there, half collapsed on top of the incendiary device but already pulling at wires with at least a semblance of confidence, and Migs presses himself towards the back of the room, his blaster drawn and at the ready. 

There’s an Imperial in a lab coat cowering behind a desk against the wall. He shoots near his foot. “The beskar. Where is it?”

The man points a shaking hand towards a back room where Migs can feel the heat wafting out. “If you pull anything I’ll shoot you, got it?” But the man doesn’t have any weapons and Migs leaves him alive. 

The back room is a smelter, and the smell of it makes him gag. Burning, boiling metal bubbles in a pot the size of a speeder surrounded by blue-hot flame jets and all around are pieces of armor, strewn about like children’s toys.

He can’t pay attention to it all. It’s too much and they don’t have time. They’ve been able to pick off single attackers, or in the case of Atela’s office a total of four troopers, but their time is clicking down and any second now the entire base will form itself against them. 

They simply can’t take all the beskar. 

But Djarin’s armor stands out, its shining pieces of unpainted silver a bright and solitary difference from the rest, gleaming in a pile and clearly dumped without regard for its beauty. He grabs at it, shoving some of the smaller pieces into the duffle bag alongside the helmets, and hoisting the breastplate and jetpack into his arms. 

He turns and leaves the rest of it behind and doesn’t look back. 

When he makes it back into the main room he crouches down next to the scientist he’d left alive. “We’re going to blow this place up,” he says to the man. “You should go take a smoke break if you want to live.”

He doesn’t wait to see if the man listens or not. He strides straight over to Djarin and starts shoving him bodily into his armor. “Come on, get this on.”

Din looks at him, at the silver beskar held between them, and his face collapses a little. He lets Mayfeld wrestle it onto his body and closes his eyes, exhausted and drugged and pained.  

“Did you figure this thing out?” Migs says to distract him from whatever’s going on in his mind and also because kriff they’re running out of time, it’s a miracle the turbolift hasn’t dinged open with a grenade in it already.

Djarin nods. “Yes.” He sucks in a deep breath as Mayfeld inelegantly slaps his pauldron on. “The beskar acts as additional capacity for the power cell--”

“That’s nice, I don’t care, can you make it blow up this kriffing place?” He can’t figure out how to get the jetpack on so it goes into the bag; Djarin will just have to manage without it. He’s not coordinated enough to manage it himself yet, but Migs already feels a little better that he’s armored, which should compensate at least a little for his drug-addled reflexes.  

Djarin nods and then pales out a little at the motion and lists before Mayfeld catches him under the arm. “Yes. Yes. It’s.” He wheezes in a breath. “It will explode in five minutes. It’s already done.”

Migs’s mind empties. A haze of blankness settles over his entire being, drowning out fear and thought and leaving only his own heartbeat. 

“Let’s go,” he orders, and shoves them towards the lift.

They manage to get half way out before the alarm that started up in Atela’s office blares through the main hallways, triggered by his lack of response most likely. Then they start to run and wind up shooting their way through half a squadron. 

“Stop right there!”

Migs shoots without hesitation and he kills the trooper who had laughed with him about stealing Din’s helmet. But there’s no time. The buzzing emptiness is still inside him and he lets it take over. 

“This way,” he says, and pushes Djarin towards the hanger. “Come on.” 

There are two speeder bikes and Djarin shoots them each in the motivator as they pass by. It’s a good move, Migs wishes he’d thought of it. They select instead a troop transport and haul themselves into the cab of it. 

“Come on, come on,” Migs says to himself, only peripherally aware he’s even speaking out loud. It’s been a little bit since he’s had to hot wire something and the emptiness is starting to fade, leaving pulsing fear in its place. He can’t afford to flub this. Two wires under his hands connect and the transport rumbles to life. “Yes!”

He floors it and they get through the hanger doors just as some bright young thing thinks to start shouting for command to close blast doors. 

The anti-aircraft guns on the roof have wised up, though, and their departure is punctuated by the screams of high powered ion blasts cutting through rock and threatening to take them out. But Djarin swings his body out the window of the trooper carrier and takes aim and fires back. He’s not as good a marksman as Mayfeld, at least Mayfeld would like to hold onto that, but it distracts the shooters enough that they manage to get out of the open and into the rocky cover of the mountains without losing their lives.

And then, behind them, the base explodes in a shower of bright light and sound.

---

They make it back to the ship some time after nightfall. Neither of them have the capacity to care about anything other than getting to safety. 

They ditch the trooper carrier a click south of the city and hike themselves back in. It takes a long time, fumbling through the dark and hauling the metal, and his lungs burn solidly for the last hour. By the time they stumble into the loading bay Migs’s shoulders are screaming from the weight of the beskar he’s been hauling, and Djarin has been silent for hours, not responding to direct questions or even looking at Mayfeld, only putting one foot in front of the other like an automaton. 

“I’m sleeping,” Mayfeld announces. “Don’t die while I’m out.” 

And then he collapses into his bunk.

When morning comes Mayfeld isn’t sure if it’s the next morning or if he’s slept through an entire day. But when he climbs out his entire body is one massive sore muscle and he feels ancient and decrepit. 

“Mayfeld,” he hears as soon as he’s fully extricated himself. A bare hand passes him a flask of water. By the smell, it’s laced with hydration salts. 

“So,” he says, after he’s drained the thing and feels a little more human. “We’re alive.”

Djarin, who looks a lot more alert than the last time he saw him, nods. “Yes. Thank you.” 

Migs waves a hand at him. “It was a kriffing mess, don’t thank me. It went bad.”

They sit and eat and come back to themselves for the next hour. Djarin spends it taking his armor off and reinspecting it for tampering, Migs spends it staring at nothing and trying not to remember Burnin Kohn and Morak and tally how many dead men’s blood he has on his hands. 

“I didn’t think I would see this again,” Din says suddenly, cracking the quiet wide open. His armor is in pieces around him but his paldron is in his hands, the one with the little mudhorn emblazoned on it. “I thought I would die without any armor at all. I knew I was dar’manda, but that--” his voice cracks. “I didn’t think I would ever die that way.”

“You didn’t. You’re fine.” Maybe Mayfled is a little forceful when he says it, but Din isn’t the one who has been pouring bacta on his broken head and hauling his drugged body around. 

Djarin’s head turns to look at the bag sitting like a third crewmate against the bay door. He’s clearly been in it, since all his armor, even the parts that Mayfeld gave up on, are spread out on the floor getting his attention. 

“I never asked why yours was plain. The others...” He thinks of how the helmets looked in Atela’s trophy room, spotlights shining down on them and their range of painted colors and designs. “Even Fett’s, all had patterns on them.”

Din drops his chin down and places the pauldron next to its match on the floor. Laid out like this it looks like a skeleton, the man long since rotted away. Mayfeld shudders a little. He’s going maudlin despite himself. Must be the adrenaline crash; he always used to get a little blue after battles, and in some ways it’s reassuring that there’s something about himself that hasn’t changed after all these years. 

“Partly it was safety,” Djarin says. “Colors and paint tell family lineages, tribe affiliations, battles... I was the hunter for the tribe for many years and it would have implicated them had someone understood the meaning. Being anonymous was safer. I was just a Mando, with no tribe or clan.” 

It’s one of the loneliest things Migs has heard him say. 

“And partly, I was waiting.” He runs a finger over the little mudhorn figure. “To have something worth saying.” 

“We’ll get some paint,” Mayfeld finds himself saying, the words erupting from his mouth of their own volition. “Next port. You can ugly that shit up as colorful as you want. Got it?” 

Djarin shakes his head. “No. Now its lack of paint has its own meaning.” 

“Yeah? What does it mean, huh? That you’re a self sabotaging masochist? The New Republic sent us inmates to therapy, and I got all sorts of fancy new words out of it. ‘Cause the way I see it, you can do whatever the kriff you want. You’re the freaking Mand’alor, you’ve got the stupid lazer sword and everything.”

Migs feels his neck heating up. He’s not angry, per say, but emotion is getting the better of him and he forces his sore and aching body upright so he can pace. He kicks at the crate that’s still ajar from where it tried to kill Djarin during the crash. It stubbornly doesn’t budge. 

“You done, Mayfeld?”

“No I am not done!” The shouting he’s doing might mean he’s angry after all. “You’re not the only one who has had to figure out his place in this Maker forsaken galaxy. And take it from me, a guy a few years older and several bad decisions ahead: drinking yourself to death, or letting yourself die in an Imperial holding cell because you feel kriffing guilty, it doesn’t do anything.” 

He huffs. He’s starting to feel a little light headed. Migs sucks in a mouthful of air and blows it out of his nose. 

“It doesn’t do anything,” he says again, because it feels important. 

Din stares at him, looking painfully sorry and soft and kind. 

“This galaxy is not kind. You know that and I know that. So stop making it even unkinder.” The ship is kriffing claustrophobic, all jagged broken pieces from where the landing gear blew out from under them and smaller still for Djarin’s too-gentle face staring at him silently. “Find me when you get your head out of your ass and want to return those helmets,” he says, and stalks off into the over bright world outside. 

There’s not much to see and less to do, and he’s not about to blow everything by hiking back to the city if any of the ex Imperials, that scientist for example, high tailed it out of there before it blew and are telling wild stories. So he just ambles around the ship, kicking at rocks and poking at crevices with a stick until a snake jumps out and almost gets him and he abandons that entertainment. 

He doesn’t know how much time passes before Djarin comes out, this time dressed again collar to toe in his shining silver beskar. His hair is mussed and Migs has the unasked for thought that he probably never had to comb his hair when he was used to just shoving it in a helmet day in and day out. And then he follows that thought up with a longing for the days when he had hair. 

He’s an old man now, at least by the metrics of their profession. Beings like them, hunters and killers, don’t usually make it this long, regardless of their species capacity for age. He feels it. Not just in his body, sore from being thrown about and hauling things and walking clicks in the dark. He feels it in his soul. 

He should have died during Burnin Kohn and everything since has been borrowed time. 

But now Djarin is standing in front of him, the sun behind him lighting his armor up like something out of a holovid, and his dirty and messy hair is aglow with light. He stands tall and straight, even with the weight of those nine helmets, none his own, pressing down on him from the bag on his shoulder.

“Alright,” Migs says, and they start walking.

---

They take a different route, one that has them circumventing the city and approaching the cave system from the south. Unsurprisingly, this does not take the feral Mandalorians by surprise, and they are met at the mouth of the cave by the same Mando kid as before.

“Dar’manda,” she says to Djarin. She ignores Migs completely. 

Din bows his head to her. “I have news for your alor,” he says. “And then I will leave.”

She swivels her helmet to Migs, assessing him. “Fine,” she says, and they’re once again left alone. This time the sun is still high and it feels backwards somehow. That they should have come here the first time near sundown and now, the last time, it’s hardly noon. It’s like the galaxy has messed this up, too, on top of everything else. 

“If they let you stay, you should,” he says quietly. “I can get a ride off this rock just fine.”

Djarin stares at the mouth of the cave for a minute, and Migs wishes he couldn’t see the longing in his face. “No,” he finally says. There’s a finality there, and Migs understands it all the way to his bones. “Even if they allowed a dar’manda to stay with the tribe, which they will not, this is no longer my home.”

The Mando with the fur cape and the gold armor comes out of the shadows like a wraith, a club in her hands. “Indeed, Din Djarin.” It’s full kriffing daylight, no being should be able to do that, and Mayfeld is startled despite himself. 

“Armorer,” Djarin says, and bows his head deeply. “The ex-Imperial faction is destroyed. More may return, but for now you are safer.” He very gently swings the canvas bag off of his shoulders and sets it down between him and the other Mando, unclasping the flap to reveal its grisly contents. “This was all we could bring back to you.” 

For all that Djarin’s voice is choked up, Mayfeld feels a bit overwhelmed himself. But the Mando shows nothing behind that helmet of hers. 

“This is the way,” she says, and makes a motion. Another kid, this one a bit taller and thicker than the one they’d run into before, darts forward and drags the bag back into the dark. No fanfare. No wails of pain and grief.

“This is the way,” Djarin says back. The grief they aren’t expressing is thick in his voice. 

“And the way,” the armorer says, “Tells no lies. You carry the sword of the Mand’alor.”

Din nods stiffly. He’s reaching for where it lays visible on his belt and extends it, open fisted, towards her. “Will you take it?”

She does reach out, and for a second Mayfeld thinks that’s that, but she just traces a gloved hand over the hilt and doesn’t pluck it away from him. 

“I last saw this in the hands of Pre Vizla,” she says, “And it was used during dark times for dark deeds. I thought it best forgotten. It came to you through combat?”

Djarin nods. 

“Then it is yours.” She closes his hand back over the hilt. “And you are Mand’alor.”

And kriff, Din looks broken. “No,” he whispers, and his voice cracks. “I am dar’manda.”

“Yes. You are both.” She nods at him with finality. There’s an air about her, a quality of surefootedness and leadership Mayfeld hasn’t seen in years despite serving under many a person who thought they had it. 

“Din Djarin, you came to us a foundling child, you swore the creed, and you broke it. You cannot return to the tribe as you were. But what you are is a thing you must yet determine. By creed,” she says, and it rings like something sacred, something Mayfeld has never been committed or righteous enough to believe in, “You are our Mand’alor. Now go.”

They go.

They walk back in silence, and for all that Djarin is no longer carrying the weight of his dead ex-family on his shoulders, he’s hunched the whole walk. 

They spend the entire day and night fixing the ship up as best they can. Mayfeld is no engineer, but he’s done enough odd jobs and survived long enough in the galaxy to know how to at least get a hull back to integrity. They won’t be able to replace the landing gear, but they’ll hopefully be able to find a port with a water landing to get fixed up properly. Though with what credits, Mayfeld doesn’t know. Maybe Djarin can get a loan off Fett. 

Mayfeld is so wrapped up in all this, a welding helmet shoved over his sweaty bald head as he fuses together the rending wound on the floor, that he doesn’t notice something’s wrong until he sees Djarin straighten and raise his blaster out of the corner of his eye. Migs cuts off the flame and shoves himself against the bulkhead, ancient survival instincts kicking in before his brain even registers anything.

“Come out,” Djarin says, all business and his blaster arm straight and confident. “Now.”

A gentle rustle outside the ship’s open hanger door reveals a shadowy figure. Short. Helmeted. 

It’s the kriffing Mando kid. Did she come here to spy on them? Sabotage the ship? Pretty words from that other Mando doesn’t mean anything as far as Mayfeld is concerned, and he’s got his own blaster out, too. It’s a kid, but it’s also a Mando and he’s learned not to let his guard down about that. 

The kid stands strong and fearless, the dark of the night cycle of the planet behind her and the light of the ship shining bright above. 

“Dar’manda,” she says through her helmet’s vocoder. For a second all Mayfeld can do is compare the size of her helmet to the ones in the bag. A little bigger, he thinks. Kriff, the kids the Imperials killed had been even younger than this one, and this one doesn’t hardly come up to his chest.

They have a standoff for a bit, Din’s blaster still raised and the kid weaponless but a threat in and of herself. Migs is content to be out of the line of fire of whatever the kriff is going down, until she nods her helmet at him. 

“You travel with an outsider.”

“I do,” Din answers back, unhesitating. 

“And you forsook your creed.”

He dips his head. “It wasn’t so simple, but yes.”

The kid squares up. “I will come with you.”

And Migs can no longer just sit on the sidelines of whatever the hell this is. “Excuse me?”

“You are our Mand’alor,” she says, and the stones on that kid are something legendary. “You’ll need a bodyguard.”

“Oh yeah? I don’t think so, little girl,” Mayfeld says, and shoves himself up, chucking the welding visor onto the floor with a clatter. 

Din puts a hand on his shoulder. The contact is so surprising that Migs actually shuts up. 

“What is your clan?”

Her helmet looks to the side. “I don’t have a clan. But I have come of age.” 

Kriff that, Migs thinks. “You’re still in a kiddie helmet and you’re telling me you’re of age? Go home, kid--”

But Din is driving the situation, and quite adeptly, too. “Then you will be Clan Mudhorn,” he says, resolutely. “This is the way.”

“This is the way,” she says, and comes into the ship. She picks up the fallen welding helmet and looks down at Migs’s work. “It’s sloppy,” she says. 

Kriffing kids. He shoves the welder at her. “You do it then.” To her credit, she does.

He finds Din a few minutes later, after he’s fairly certain she’s not going to reverse the flow on the oxygen for the welder and blow them all up, unintentionally or otherwise. But she’s done this before, or something similar enough. 

“Are you seriously doing this? Are we seriously doing this? How do you know those other Mandos aren’t going to kill us in our sleep for taking off with one of their own?”

The cockpit hadn’t fared too badly in their crash landing. There’s a spot of flaking brown where Migs’s head bounced off the control panel, but it’s otherwise intact. It feels surreal to be back up here, sitting haphazardly in the copilot’s seat. He could pretend, almost, the past several days didn’t happen. 

Except the sound of the welder below them takes him back into their current reality.

“Yes. I can drop you off, Migs,” he says, and for a stuttering moment Migs can’t remember the last time Din said his first name. It sounds nice. He hasn’t thought of his name as nice for a long long time. He’s Mayfeld. He’s Magshole. He’s ‘that guy with a gun.’ And now, in Din’s mouth, he’s Migs again.

Din is still talking. “I can leave you anywhere you want. Whatever credits we have left, you can take them. You aren’t beholden to--”

“Shut up. You talk too much, anyone tell you that?”

“Literally no one.”

He huffs out a laugh. “I’ll stick around. Gotta make sure that kid doesn’t stick a shiv in your lungs as soon as we take off, after all.”

“She won’t.”

“Still.”

They stare out the viewscreen, and if Mayfeld never has to see the maker forsaken rocks on this planet ever again, he’ll die happy. 

“Thank you,” Din says softly. 

“Hm.” Mayfeld still reeks a little, smells like sweat and fear and the remnants of whatever was in that bomb. He smells like fire and death, and so does Din. It’s a different smell from Burnin Kohn. He’s gotten used to feeling out the nuances of death and destruction, and this is different. 

“You’re welcome,” he finally says, and means it. “Now I’m going to go make sure that kid doesn’t blow herself up. Start pre-launch checks, will you? I really don’t want to crash again.”

He hears Din huff out a little laugh, quiet and gentle, behind him as he climbs down the ladder, and Migs thinks maybe he’s okay with that sound being in his life.

END.