Chapter Text
“I’m sorry,” the strange Armorer says. The durasteel thunks onto the table in front of Din, crusted with blood and heavy with the weight of death.
“He died protecting the Tribe. This is the Way,” Din says. The words feel stiff, formulaic, in his mouth — in a way that they never have before. His tongue feels thick and heavy.
For the first time, he is not sure that he means them.
The Armorer’s hand settles on his shoulder. It feels like more of a burden, right now, than it should, like there’s something denser there than just flesh and leather.
“He would have wanted you to have them,” the Armorer continues.
Din doesn’t ask: Then why didn’t he adopt me? Why do I have no clan?
In a better world, a parent would have made him his first armor, or given a spare of their own to him, forged with history.
It doesn’t matter now, anyway. The beroya who found him — who showed him how to build traps to catch small animals that would feed the foundlings, who took him out to the desert flats and drilled him until sweat burned his eyes and he stopped losing fights in the Corps, who held him closed and hid his face as Separatist droids murdered his family — that man is dead.
“You may also assume his mantle, if you wish it,” the Armorer says. “His ship, his weapons — we were able to take them back.”
They are a twinned gift, the armor and the title: if Din wears the armor, he must also become beroya. The rest comes with it.
It is all he has ever wanted, since the Tribe took him in — to be like the man who saved him.
But it tastes like ash and blood and Imperial gunsmoke in his mouth.
“He recommended you before his death,” the Armorer says. “And all the others we considered are now dead.”
Dead. Durasteel in the dirt. Beskar ripped from corpses and heated down to ingots. Children, cowering in the desert caves, like Din himself all those years ago.
The more she speaks, the more Din feels like he cannot answer. The words rush through his mind like wind in a canyon. She is not Din’s Armorer; Din’s Armorer is lost at best, dead with the rest of them at worst. His body hasn’t been recovered.
This is all he can ever remember wanting. Someone needs to feed the children, support the coverts, pull crucial information from the guild. It is a position of respect. A cause for celebration. His chest feels tight.
The dead beroya’s armor lies on the table, spread as if to form the shape of a man. But it is incomplete, half ripped away by the Imperials that circle the coverts like so many vultures hungry for meat. A broken set. Do they realize — that they’ve melted a man’s soul down to currency? Do they count beskar like livestock, uncaring, thinking of it as nothing different from any other form of credits stacked up in their vast storehouses? Or do they know, and revel in it?
“Thank you,” Din says, at last. He reaches for the one remaining pauldron, runs a finger over the ding. It’s been there for years. He will keep it, when he paints this armor red. This armor is not his birthright — but he shall treat it as if it were. “It would be a great honor.”
Din will serve the Tribe. He will wear the armor. Durasteel or not, orphan or not.
He will not let it feel heavy.