Chapter Text
There’s a Mandalorian on his ship.
Probably the first ever since Boba himself, since his father. It’s an odd thing to think about.
But, strange as it is, he feels no apprehension about it. To trust this Mandalorian that had instantly and willingly accepted his own claim to the title, to his armor, upon seeing the chaincode. Had seen Boba’s honorbound intentions and accepted them. And yes, his intentions may have been built on his word, on his duty to the situation he found himself in, but-
He’d never expected things to go the way they did.
For all the energy Boba had brought into this hunt, all the planning that had gone into retrieving his armor, in meeting the Mandalorian that had given him such a run for it — he really hadn't thought this would be the result.
That'd he'd now be left with a man in mourning, having lost both his foundling and his ship within mere moments of each other. Only one of those losses is temporary, should everything go as planned, but Boba knows how devastating the loss of a ship can be. A home.
Echoylir.
The Mando'a word comes to mind unprompted, but relevant all the same, for lack of a better word in basic. A simple little term, covering the complex miasma of searching and mourning just the same. To mourn what was lost, to grieve, but to hunt for what had been taken as well.
He'd always found it to be such a contradiction of itself, in that. What reason was there to search for something that had already been irreparably lost? What use was there in mourning something that could still be found? One tended to cancel the other out. Mando'a, fickle language that it was, had no reason to fly these two experiences under the same banner. He’d never understood it before.
And yet—
He understands now.
The pact to help the Mandalorian, to pledge to assist in finding his child — despite finally having what he’d come here for — was easy to make.
Fennec had nodded morosely, agreeing, seemingly struck by the situation in a similar way. They’d arrived at the same conclusion without even needing to discuss it first. Whatever qualms she held about the Mandalorian from their previous encounter had apparently dissolved once they’d fought the troopers off together. Battling side by side had a funny way of doing that. Still, he’d like to check with her later on it. Or at the very least get her input — it's not exactly an every day Boba finds himself forging a battle pact to save a child. He hadn’t expected to finish his sentiment-driven retrieval mission only to immediately fill it with another.
So he punches in the coordinates to their first potential lead in finding the kid, leaving the smoldering crater of the Mandalorian's ship behind, and he understands.
When Boba descends into the passenger hold, the Mandalorian is silently standing by the transparisteel viewing window, gazing outwards. He’d likely been watching their departure from Tython.
He knows Fennec is probably somewhere further in the cargo hold, tending to her wounds in relative privacy. It’s the best they can do on such a small ship. He also knows she still has an aversion to anything that might be considered coddling, so it’s best to just leave her to it.
The Mandalorian hasn’t turned around yet. Boba takes the chance given to observe him — there haven’t really been any true moments of calm, not since this entire ordeal began, and Boba still has almost no information about the man before him yet.
So Boba stares.
He looks like a ghost.
He looks like the sort of warrior other Mandalorians’ like to tell their children about, in scattered folktales and songs. The unpainted armor catches the image of the transparisteel around him, throwing it back in a way that makes him look almost translucent, reflections stacked in reflections.
He’s never seen unpainted beskar up this close before.
Scuffed beskar, sure. Hell, some of his own is stripped down to the base right now from years-old acid damage, but its a dull sort of shine. The Mandalorian’s seems to sing with light. Boba wonders how practical it really is.
The Mandalorian turns, and now Boba finds himself the one stared at. He wonders if the Mandalorian is thinking the same thing, wondering at the same questions about their sudden ally-ship. The shimmering beskar does give him a good reminder of the reason he came down here, though.
“I’m going to go work on my armor.” Boba says simply, and turns away to rummage through the nearby work station. He expects no response, and gets none. But as he starts pulling out the necessities for his task, the paint stripper and primer and paint-
“Do you need any help?”
Boba blinks. His first instinct is a flat no, I’ve got it, but… It’s not as if the Mandalorian hadn’t already been hanging onto Boba’s armor for months. What’s a little more maintenance on top of that?
“If you’d like.”
Boba sits, and he barely hears the Mandalorian as he settles into the chair to his right. After unclipping both pauldrons he sets one in front of himself and one a little closer to the Mandalorian, and it’s as simple as that. The Mandalorian’s hands just as familiar with the task as his own, just as practiced. The work goes quickly.
“What should I call you?” Boba asks as he nears the end of the paint stripping process on his own piece. There’s hardly any need to deglaze the protective top layer first, as the acid had utterly destroyed it all already, and Boba shakes off a shudder at the thought. He sets down the detailing brush, soaked with stripping agent, and reaches for a rag to clean the armor with next.
Out of his peripheral, he sees the Mandalorian’s hands still for just a moment before resuming.
“Mando is fine.”
“You don’t think that’ll get a bit confusing with two Mandalorians around?” Boba chuckles. There’s no ill-intent, no actual judgment, but he poses the question as almost a test of sorts.
The Mandalorian again pauses. Boba finds himself almost a little guilty as the seconds drag on.
“Never been much of a problem before?” Boba offers.
“Not really,” the Mandalorian replies. “It’s part of my Creed.”
The way he glances at Boba makes him almost feel like he’s the subject of a test in return. Is it the refusal to give a name? The mention of a creed? He’d already mentioned his creed before, back on Tython. Boba can almost infer a story from the interaction, one where the Mandalorian has had to explain this same concept before, to very different results, and holds himself wary of the particularly nasty ones.
It’s a bit strange, sure, but not anything worth distrust. Everyone in the galaxy has secrets. He himself has plenty. A single name is almost nothing among that.
“Mando it is then.”
A glance, a nod, and that’s it. Some sort of understanding reached, he feels a little more settled with this stranger turned ally.
“And you?” the Mandalorian eventually asks.
“Fett’s fine.”
And there’s no outward recognition to the name, no indication that the Mandalorian feels any sort of way about it. He’s not sure if it means that the Mandalorian has no knowledge or just doesn’t care. And it doesn’t particularly matter either way, really. It’s almost a little refreshing.
The rest of the process goes in relative silence, and certainly a lot faster than he expected with the help, and soon he’s left with a table full of paint-less beskar. It’s an odd mimicry of the Mandalorian’s polished armor besides him, and he almost expects a joke of some sort about it, but-
In the absence of any more pieces to strip, and the Mandalorian’s clear apprehension to intrude on the much more personal task of painting, he’d shed a couple of his own pieces for maintenance. Currently, his own pauldron sat in his hands, unmoving. Boba can see the small signet that adorns it, the way the Mandalorian’s thumb rests on it.
It’s not hard to imagine what he’s thinking about.
“Mhi ven tegaanalir gar ad'ika, yeah? Ni haat'mitir.” Boba offers. He also offers a pat to the Mandalorian’s unarmored shoulder, perhaps a bit awkwardly. He’s never been particularly good at this, but the Mando’a feels like a good place to start, a connection to build off of. “We’ll find him,” he repeats.
And maybe it’s a good call, because by the end of the statement he can see the Mandalorian nodding, feel some of the tension leave his body. And at least Boba knows he could offer this, can offer some reassurance, can offer his pledge to help.
He’d made many pledges throughout his life, many pacts and contracts that bore an almost tangible weight to them. Death, separation, and heartbreak tended to follow in the wake of these deals, as credits exchanged hands. He had his own morals about the types of jobs he took, the kinds of clients he trusted to uphold an honorable deal, but rarely had he been seen as a source of help. At least not before his time with the Tuskens, his time before A’rrfik and Wayside, so many cycles ago now. Before his time with Fennec.
He’d like to think he at least learned a few things while helping Fennec.
Boba plucks one of the armor pieces from the pile, inspects it, and then holds it out toward the Mandalorian.
“Would you still like to help?”
The first order of business, it seems, is to pick up a few new allies.
The veteran-dropper-turned-marshal they find on Nevarro is as hard-headed and stubborn as they come, but Mando seems to trust her. Boba decides that’s good enough for him.
She points them in the direction of a prisoner they’ll need to take on, which Boba is significantly less trustful of. But it's necessary. At least he knows he’ll be outnumbered if he tries anything.
Karthon is a few days worth of travel away. His ship is a little more populated than he’s particularly used to, and he retreats to the cockpit for the majority of the trip. Fennec comes and goes, giving her own insight on the plan and providing the information she’s dredged up. The prisoner, Migs Mayfeld, turns out to be one the Mandalorian had a hand in putting away himself. There’s surely an interesting story there.
Roughly halfway to the planet, he hears a knock against the cockpit doors. Which Fennec never does. So it’s either the Mandalorian or the dropper.
“Come in.”
The heavier footballs and faint sound of beskar shifting tell him it’s the Mandalorian.
“Looking for some quiet?” he asks.
“More or less.”
Boba chuckles a little at that, and sets down the flak vest he’d been holding. The one the Marshal had previously attached his armor to hadn’t fit Boba the best, them being such wildly different builds, and his old one likely buried among the dunes of Tatooine somewhere, acid damaged and unusable.
He feels like the black ripstop fabric this time around is a better choice anyways. It suits his newly painted armor, suits the Tusken robes that lay underneath. Hopefully he’ll have it completed before their next stop.
Upon turning his chair he finds the Mandalorian still standing in the middle of the cockpit, glancing around. Probably trying to figure out where to sit that isn’t the co-pilot chair right next to him. Boba waves a hand towards one of the further alcoves, “There’s a few emergency pullout bunks. Make yourself comfortable.”
Mando finds the release lever on the wall — thank the suns, I don’t really feel like getting up right now — and lowers the bunk carefully. Boba turns back to the task at hand.
Except he doesn’t really… hear anything, afterwards. He heard him sit down, heard him adjust himself on the bunk, but not the sound of armor unclipping or anything else. Not even weapons being set down.
Maybe he’s just a bit overly cautious. I can understand that. Hell, the first time Fennec had been on the ship, in this very cockpit, she’d nearly killed him. The galaxy was a distrustful place, and for good reason. Not that he feels particularly threatening right now with a flak vest in one hand and a sewing needle in the other.
Still, they’ll all need to rest by the time they arrive. It’s worth checking.
“Karthon’s at least a day away,” and, after a brief hesitation, “do you need privacy?”
There’s enough control of the ship locked into his vambrace that he doesn’t feel as concerned about leaving a stranger in the cockpit as he normally would have been, but it’s still a risk of sorts. A skilled enough pilot could still find a way around it.
But-
The Mandalorian still hasn’t removed his helmet. In the three day cycles since they all initially boarded the ship, Boba hasn’t seen him remove it even once. Not in the passenger hold, not in the cockpit. He has a feeling he knows why.
“No. I’m fine,” comes the quiet reply, “but thank you.”
Boba shrugs. “Suit yourself.”
It’s another few minutes spent in relative silence, as Boba sews and the Mandalorian rests on the cot before he speaks again. Again it’s quiet, pitched and articulated carefully enough to be understood clearly through the vocoder, but softer than he’d expect. Maybe it’s just how he always speaks.
“You said you don’t follow any creed.”
“None but my own,” Boba responds.
“Your own?” The way he says it sounds lost, almost. Just a little.
Boba studies Mando for a moment, deciding how much to share. “My father’s, more accurately.” It’s hard not to glance at the compartment in the far wall, containing the carefully bound little guide to life his father had left him. Safely stored and hidden away. “He gave me a set of rules to live by. A code of honor. Followed it my entire life.”
“I see.” He sounds almost ready to drop the topic, hands settled in his lap as he twiddles with some imperfection on one of his gloves, but continues. “My creed- my covert’s tribe, forbids us from allowing another living being to see our face.”
Ah.
Boba’s heard of this group before. Never encountered one, especially not with his shunned status with the larger Mandalorian culture, but he’s heard of them. And from all he’s known, they’re a rare sight. Rare enough to find one sharing a cockpit with him now. It… hasn’t been all good, the things he’s heard. They’re typically regarded a cult. Extremists, even.
He’s finding it hard to believe why.
They seem, or at least Mando seems, something more like the honorable Mandalorians of old. The ones his father told him about, in scattered tales and poems. Maybe a little like the Protectors. Before they’d turned, at least, nothing like the majority of the proud bastards on Mandalore who served the empire’s reign only to get themselves killed in the end. At least Boba had been smart about it. But on that note-
Something seems to click for Boba.
“You mentioned coverts.” Boba asks. Mando makes a sound of affirmation, so he continues. “You lived in hiding?”
“Our secrecy is our survival. This is the Way.”
The lack of information on the group made more sense now. It was never a prideful thing, a first-rate selection of closed ranks only for the most ideal of Mandalorians. It was simply a survival trait.
He’d always lived life out in the open, daring the universe to throw its worst at him. And it had. Repeatedly. But it wasn’t anything he hadn’t asked for, really. He personally ensured his name had been heard around the galaxy twice over. And all it had earned him was a legacy that had failed to serve him for much of anything in the end.
To think what Mando had been through during that same time — staying in the shadows, evading the prying eyes of the Empire, keeping their culture alive…
What if Boba had run into one of them in his younger years? Would they have reacted as harshly to Boba’s lineage? Would they have allowed him in? Mando surely seems fine enough with it. Boba wonders again, is it just because he doesn’t know, or because he doesn’t care?
It was probably a question for another time. Mando’s still staring at him.
“Seems tricky,” Boba simply responds. I’m… a little out of my depth on this topic, I think. His father had done his best to educate him on Mandalorian culture, but, well. It was a little hard to do from the outside.
Surprisingly, the Mandalorian laughs a little. Just a quiet huff, but it’s there. “It can be.”
It emboldens Boba a bit. He’s never been this close to his own culture before, never had the opportunity to pick a Mandalorian’s brain like this. “So, no-one? Ever? Not even clan?” he asks.
“Clan is permitted to.”
“So has anyone-?”
“No.”
The clipped tone leaves him with the realization that he’s perhaps pushed this particular topic a bit too far. I’m not very good at this.
But it also leaves him with another realization. Two realizations, really. And before he can really consider his own lack of a helmet for a moment, he gives one of them away as he glances at Mando's pauldron and back up to his visor. The Mandalorian tenses, almost imperceptibly.
His first realization: That this Mandalorian must be either extremely competent or extremely cautious — or both — to have never lost his helmet in battle thus far. Even Boba’s had a few more close calls than he’d like. And he knows the Mandalorian can’t be much younger than himself, if at all, from his stature, the sound of his voice, the way he carries himself.
But secondly…
There’s a signet on the Mandalorian’s pauldron. His father’s words, with some inkling of a past cultural lesson, come to the forefront of Boba’s mind.
Mandalorians don’t make empty clans.
So has the kid never seen his face? Does he not count for some reason? Is the kid not formally part of his clan? Does he even have anyone aside from the kid? He has a million burning questions, but none of them seem appropriate in the face of the Mandalorian’s clear discomfort with the topic. So Boba drops it.
“N'eparavu takisit. That was rude of me.” Boba offers, a bit bashful. He sets his handcraft back down, turns his chair to face the Mandalorian directly. “I’ve-“ he hesitates, but no, the Mandalorian deserves some explanation at least- “never found myself around other Mandalorians, much. Bit of a culture shock, really.”
“You said your father was a foundling?” Mando asks. It’s a carefully extended hand that he accepts gratefully.
“Yeah. He was.”
“So was I.”
And Boba can’t help but break out into a small grin. And it’s even more worth it to see the way the Mandalorian’s posture relaxes, even laughing a little at Boba’s admittedly goofy reaction.
Alright, maybe I haven’t completely screwed that up.
I can work with that.
Morak’s up next.
The route to get to it is a bit dodgy, littered with dead zones in the hyperspace route that he just knows are crawling with pirates, imperials, and gods know what else, but it’s do-able.
More importantly, it’s quick. Which he’s grateful for, given how Mayfeld seems to never shut his mouth. He’s had aggravating bounties before, that’s nothing new, but this one definitely would have been in a carbonite block at the first chance given.
They arrive within only a day and a half.
Storming an imperial compound sounds like asking for a whole lot of trouble. But really, is it anything compared to taking on a Moff? So they plan, and they wait.
The clone joke goes directly over Mando’s head, which is a little sad, honestly. At least Fennec laughs at it later on, but she might’ve just been laughing at Mando’s lack of understanding more than anything. Close enough.
After that just comes a whole lot of waiting, on his part.
Been a while since I’ve been a getaway pilot.
He tries to recall the mission. Bossk was involved, and not trying to kill him for once, so he knows it must’ve been a pretty long while ago. Probably stealing something? Who knows anymore.
Fennec’s voice crackles to life in his comm. “We’re on. Start your run.”
He’s guiding Slave I off the ground before she’s even done talking.
Mando’s… a bit different, after Morak.
Maybe it’s the looming raid on the horizon that they now have a time and place for. Maybe something happened down in the refining facility. He doesn’t feel particularly within his rights to ask, but it’s concerning to say the least.
He seems more on edge. A little jumpier.
Boba would have thought maybe Mayfeld was to blame for something, but the decision to leave him to find his own freedom instead of returning him to Karthon seemed to dispute that.
He says nothing as Mando sends off a threatening comm to the Moff. Any element of surprise they’d gained had likely been lost as soon as the refinery exploded, but Boba still finds himself a little surprised by it. Not that he’d have done anything differently if he were in the same situation. It just seems… at odds with what he’s learned of the Mandalorian so far.
First things first, they use the information gathered to track down a small Lambda shuttle, used by one Doctor Pershing. He’s thankfully much quieter than Mayfeld, but Boba still keeps a careful eye on him.
Next up is the recruitment of a few more allies. Frankly, for someone as quiet and reserved as Mando is, he’s surprised by just how many allies the man seems to have.
Though maybe the last one doesn’t entirely count as an ally.
He’s heard of Bo-Katan before. Most Mandalorians have, and he’s not an exception. She’s just as biting and vindictive as the stories paint her to be, and her clanmate isn’t much better. Definitely not any better, as their brief spar shows.
To nobody’s surprise, Bo-Katan’s terms for their brief allyship seem purely self serving. She goes on a brief tirade about the Darksaber, which he’s astounded she even wants given that it’d led to the death of just about every last previous owner that held it. She can figure that out on her own, as far as I’m concerned.
With the plan set, they settle in for one more cycle of rest before the raid.
He does his rounds on the ship, still a little unsettled by the sheer amount of people on it. Bo-Katan and Reeves thankfully grace them with the decision to stay on their own ship. Pershing’s strewn across a couple of the chairs in the passenger hold, trying and failing to rest comfortably while cuffed to it. Tough luck. The doctor says nothing, but stares at Boba with wary yet curious eyes.
Dune is sat opposite, arms crossed as she sleeps in a position that can’t possibly be comfortable but she probably imagines looks intimidating.
He finds Fennec in the cockpit, tucked into one of the bunks. She’s always preferred the hammock strung up in the cargo bay, so her being up here can only imply one thing.
And sure enough, he finds Mando tucked in between a couple boxes of the cargo bay, sitting up against the wall. He’s… probably not sleeping. Or at least Boba hopes. There’s a small nod of acknowledgment as Boba steps further into the bay, though, so he gets his answer.
“I promise you the hammock is more comfortable.” Boba says as he settles into sitting across him on the opposite wall.
Mando offers a small chuckle in response. It’s clear he’s having a hard time sleeping. Can’t blame him, really. I probably won’t be able to sleep for a while either. He’s about to ask about it, but-
"I'm surprised you let Reeves drop you like that, earlier."
The words immediately throw Boba off guard. The Mandalorian is just as difficult to read with his armor as ever, but there’s a light tone to Mando’s voice. A little bit of mischief that he hasn’t seen yet.
Actually, it’s the first hint of humor he's heard so far from the quiet Mandalorian at all, and it speaks of a dry wit that Boba wasn't expecting. There's still some tension to his frame, a guardedness that Boba can't blame him for, with whatever went down on Morak and the looming threat of their raid, but it's nice to see him relax at least a little.
Boba crosses his arms, leaning fully back into the wall now. "I thought it was a fairly even fight," he deadpans.
"She dropkicked you into a table, Fett."
Boba laughs. Honestly, Mando has a point. That fight definitely could have gone a bit better, brief as it was. The stormtroopers from earlier on Tython had been easy, practically canon fodder, as they so typically were. But going against a younger, stronger, feistier Mandalorian had certainly taxed him, and although he'd chalked it up to readjusting to the armor, he knew it ran a bit deeper than that. I’m getting old.
"You know, the Sarlacc affected more than a few things. Aside from the scarring, my vision is worse, my muscles, my joints. My reflexes. Also took my leg, took my hair." He can't help a small grimace at the mention of the Sarlacc, but it's relevant for the point he's about to make. It doesn't escape him the way Mando is now looking anywhere but him, clearly aware of a sensitive topic.
"However," Boba continues, and the Mandalorian’s helmet snaps back up at him again. He grins, his tone holding no bite as he speaks. "Just because the universe might've seen fit to knock me down a few pegs doesn't mean I can't still kick your ass."
The discomfort in Mando's posture drops instantly as he huffs a short laugh, hopefully understanding that he hasn't overstepped any boundaries with the banter. In truth, Boba welcomes it warmly. His unexpected partnership with Fennec had opened him back up to a level of comfort that he hadn’t shared with anyone in years, and truthfully never before had without expecting a hidden threat of some kind, since Boba hadn't exactly surrounded himself with the most upstanding people, over the years. It's a welcome reprieve from the worries of the universe, to simply share these moments with another.
Boba realizes his thoughts have trailed a little as the Mandalorian finally replies.
"What does your hair loss have to do with kicking my ass?"
Out of all the things, he chose that to focus on?
"Would've looked better while doing it," Boba quips in response.
Mando seems to take a moment to process the statement before he's earnestly, genuinely laughing. It’s the first time that he's heard any outward joy from this strange, closed-off Mandalorian since this nightmarish mission began, anything beyond a quiet chuckle -- and it's an endearing sound.
He'd like to hear it more often, hopefully.
Maybe he’ll stick around after this.