Work Text:
Only One Creed
Ragnar found the Mandalorian clad from head to toe in blue and gold-yellow armor hunched over his blaster canon.
Paz Vizsla. That was the Mandalorian’s name. He had a position—their heavy infantry gunner. Many times, Ragnar had noted the many blaster bolt dents over Paz’s armor. He was their most powerful, most reliable source of firepower. The other kids told him so. In battle, they’d said, the enemy would try to take Paz down first. Without their ruthless heavy gunner, they had no cover. They’d be defenseless.
But Paz also had another title… but somehow it’s slipped Ragnar’s own world of thinking. The other kids told him that Paz was something like a prince, but those days had long gone. In that vein, Ragnar stopped pursuing that lone trail of breadcrumbs.
This Mandalorian had taken him in. Now Ragnar had come of age and he’d just sworn the Creed that very morning. His coming-of-age ceremony may have been a little too eventful, and he’d hoped it wasn’t an omen portending bleaker times… but no. In this moment, Ragnar had only one thing in his mind as he beheld this towering warrior, almost larger than life: he had a father.
“Dad,” called Ragnar. He respectfully stood a small distance away from the blue-clad warrior.
Paz’s visor gleamed in the warm light of the cave as it turned to him.
Ragnar could see the pieces of Paz’s blaster canon cast on a low table in painstakingly neat order. His father had been cleaning his weapons again. Paz would do that ever so faithfully, like clockwork. Sometimes Ragnar would wake up with Paz maintaining his amor; at night, it was cleaning every weapon strapped on his person. They were like prayers every morning and every night.
Weapons are part of our religion, Paz taught him. Ragnar’s heart was full of wonder.
Paz made no sound; only a motion of his helm for the boy to approach him.
Ragnar’s heart bloomed. This gesture had become so familiar to him. Paz would sometimes speak to him with expressive body language and Ragnar would catch Paz’s meaning right away.
Ragnar eagerly stepped closer.
Paz, however, continued with his reverent work. It would be Ragnar’s initiative to begin conversation.
“Who were they?” Ragnar abruptly asked. “The—Mandalorian in silver. And that green baby…”
“The baby is his son,” Paz replied to him quickly, his voice a low, gentle growl through the vocoder. “As for the other… we do not speak of him.”
Ragnar clenched a fist and bit his lip underneath his newly forged helm. He was still getting used to the novelty of it all. His first day as a sworn member of the Tribe… he should be content. But the questions just kept racing over and over in the boy’s head. Over and over until he had to fall silent and sit still just to wrangle all these jumbled, noisy thoughts.
“Dad,” Ragnar ventured, too boldly. “I would like to speak of him, with your permission.” As an afterthought, the boy immediately concluded with a, “Please.”
Paz halted his work. The hulking Mandalorian seemed pensive for a moment. Ragnar could see his father’s chest rising and falling with a bit of effort. Paz’s breaths through the modulator were measured; they sounded a little pained.
“Very well.”
Paz’s full attention was on Ragnar. The child couldn’t believe his luck. His father gestured to sit beside him on a low bench before his work table.
What happened next was surreal. It was a rapid fire back-and-forth, everything succinct and boxed in.
Ragnar began.
“Who is the silver Mandalorian?”
“He used to be our Covert’s Provider,” said Paz, voice gruff and contained.
“Why do you outcast him?”
“He’d broken the Creed.”
A small distressed gasp fell from Ragnar’s lips. His limbs suddenly felt cold.
So there were those who had indeed broken the Creed. Ragnar had witnessed how his father treated the silver-clad Mandalorian coldly, at an arm’s length, so noncommittally. The other Tribe members avoided him as well, never meeting his gaze or treading too close to where his footsteps marked the sand.
“Will you outcast him forever?” Ragnar heard the cold fear in his own voice.
“Yes, if he doesn’t atone,” replied Paz. “He would need to atone, and we will welcome him and his son back to our Covert.”
Ragnar couldn’t bear it. He wasn’t deaf or stupid.
(Perhaps he was reckless. Paz had given him a stern earful about freezing on his feet on harm’s way when the warrior had trained him to stay alert and work on his reflexes. The boy’s cheek still smarted from where Paz's elbow guard had knocked him clear off the range of the monster’s jaws.)
His father seemed hurting, deep inside. Ragnar knew. He just knew.
The child would dearly like to believe that Paz had his own special way of communicating with him. A parent and child usually formed a hidden language only known to both. No one else could ever decipher it. When Ragnar closed his eyes and he listened to Paz’s voice during the times his father would lecture him, teach him of the Way of the Mandalore, he noted the inflections, the curls, the dips and strains and peaks. Paz’s voice was full and rich and regal. Maybe the kids were right: he was a prince, after all.
This time, however, Paz’s voice sounded fractured, wounded.
Ragnar hadn’t seen his father’s face yet. He would, someday, when Ragnar had further completed training. He would earn the right to see Paz Vizsla’s face. This sacred uncovering was permissible between and restricted to close clan members.
Now, it was just his voice. Yet Ragnar had to press on despite the hurt. The questions would just keep cornering him until bottling up would certainly backfire on him.
“Dad,” Ragnar went on. “Do you still care for the silver Mandalorian? Does he have a name?”
Paz was silent; even as the cave echoed with ambient noises, Paz’s reticence added an oppressing weight to it all. Time stretched and wore thin.
Ragnar was pushing his luck. The child bowed his helmeted head.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” Ragnar choked the words out. “I—thank you for accommodating me. I’ll go now. I’ll help the others with the evening meal.”
The boy was about to get up from where he sat, from the place beside Paz under the comforting canopy of his father’s shadow.
“Ragnar,” Paz suddenly called.
The boy stopped in mid-motion. Facing the hulking warrior, Ragnar patiently waited for Paz to speak again.
Ragnar didn’t see his father’s huge, gloved hands move at first. It was so faint—gentle and reassuring and firm, as Paz reached out to grasp Ragnar’s much tinier gloved hand.
Paz gave it a squeeze.
“It’s not my place to tell you his name,” relayed the large Mandalorian at last. Ragnar then caught it—the dip of his father’s voice that meant that he was contrite, and even respectful. “But… do I still care for him?”
Paz’s beefy hand gave Ragnar’s little one another squeeze. This time, the pressure on Ragnar’s hand lingered. It was gentle yet held the weight of a million words, perhaps even a lifetime’s worth.
A childhood’s worth.
When Paz spoke no further, Ragnar thought that his curiosity just needed to stop. At least, for now.
Ragnar had taken his free hand—his young boy’s hand whose grip that would still infinitely improve, a grip which would hold many years’ worth of weaponry as he grew older—to cup Paz’s massive hand which had been over his other one.
Paz’s visor moved to look into Ragnar’s own.
“It’s okay, Dad,” Ragnar whispered at length, the modulator scarcely registering his voice. “I’m done with my questions. I’m grateful for your time.”
For Ragnar, they sounded a little perfunctory. His politeness and his detached manner of interaction which oftentimes felt ritualistic had grown into him. He saw how others spoke and moved. He’d need to do the same.
However, in this instant, the boy meant it. He fully meant it.
Paz let out a long sigh that carried the worries of long, arduous years.
“If you want,” interjected Paz, lending the air around them with the earnest warmth of his deep voice, “we can start reviewing your Mando’a tonight, ad’ika. Would you like that?”
Ragnar’s head shot up. Paz’s offer had caught him off-guard. Usually, his father would indeed send him off to help others of the Covert until it was time for bed, while Paz finished the work on oiling up his munitions.
“Yes, Dad,” said Ragnar, almost greedily. He was too elated over every minute he managed to spend with this Mandalorian who could be a prince, but now was simply his father. “I’d like that very much.”
Ragnar didn’t care if Paz’s voice wavered from time to time. He didn’t care for the lapses in discussion as his father paused in thought. There would still be the pained air around him. Ragnar thought of the Creed, and how breaking it would completely shatter his father’s heart.
Right now, Ragnar cared only for one Creed. It was in his father’s voice and unspoken words and the small gestures only Ragnar can understand. Ragnar had seen it on the silver-clad Mandalorian too, as he spoke with his small green son.
There was only one Creed for a child, when his father’s love was the entire universe to him.
***