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She slipped away in the fading light of evening, making her way through the stone passages of her temporary home, past armored Mandalorians who were yet strangers to her. It was strange to see so many gathered in one place; it made her feel a mixture of nostalgia and wariness. If any were curious about where she was going, they didn’t say, nor did any try to detain her. Once outside the mouth of the cave, she began climbing the craggy slope that rose up beside her. There were enough hand a footholds that she didn’t regret leaving her jetpack inside, and the exertion was a welcome distraction from the thoughts tumbling around inside her head.
When she reached the summit, she found a smooth place to sit that offered a spectacular view of the sun setting over the water. The stillness and serenity of the scene was a marked contrast to the roiling of her emotions, so she tried to let the peacefulness of her environment permeate her mind. It helped, but only just.
What have you gotten yourself into now, Bo? she asked herself.
If anyone had suggested yesterday that she’d find herself playing nice with Din Djarin’s cult buddies for the foreseeable future, she would have laughed in their face. But here she was, sitting outside her new home, contemplating the most recent upset that life had thrown at her. This morning, she had been alone, but in her family’s ancestral home, surrounded by the memories of a privileged, if not always happy, childhood. Then even that had been taken away from her by the Empire. There was nothing left that they could do to her now but claim her life. They had taken her planet, her people, her hopes, and now her home. Her dream of seeing Mandalore and their culture restored had been dashed into so many pieces, she couldn’t possibly pick them all up now.
Even as the terrible pain of her grief opened it maw, threatening to swallow her whole, she grasped at the glimmer of hope this place had provided her. She had told herself she was only here until she could get on her feet, and maybe that was so. The Covert welcomed her so long as she kept her helmet on at all times in their presence, and that was a manageable, if not annoying price to pay in the short term. What she had not been prepared for was the feeling that companionship provided her. When the people of this tribe had welcomed her and touched her shoulders, it had felt for a brief moment as if she belonged somewhere again. Even so, there was a niggling feeling at the back of her head that told her not to trust that sense of belonging. It was temporary. It came with strings. It was not anything to bank on. And one did not have to look hard to see the animosity radiating off the tall, blue armored clone than Din had later identified as a Vizsla.
The only thing she really trusted in all this was Din’s intentions, and for now that was enough. He wouldn’t bring her anyplace where she would be in danger, of that she was certain. She wasn’t quite ready to call him a friend, but she could feel herself leaning in that direction. She must be truly desperate.
Desperate. Abandoned. Directionless. Broken.
She couldn’t even trust the sanctuary of her own mind anymore. After what she had seen – or thought she had seen – in the murky waters beneath the mines, she wasn’t sure of anything. The mythosaur had been extinct for centuries. How could one have survived all this time in the ruins of Mandalore? Had she really seen it? Or had the countless tragedies that had been piling up on her, combined with visiting her ravaged planet and reliving painful memories of her past, finally broken her fragile grasp on reality? Had the idea been planted when she read the old plaque on the wall, leading her oxygen-deprived brain to hallucinate the beast in the water? And if it was real, what then? What did it mean that she had seen it and Din had not? Perhaps it didn’t mean anything beyond the extremely unlikely discovery that a very rare creature yet lived on Mandalore.
There were no answers to be had, so she tried to push those thoughts away. But the darkness of that cavern kept on coming back to her mind. She tried not to remember reciting the creed as a little girl, Adonai Kryze looking on with pride. She tried not to remember the last time she had spoken to her father, their conversation tainted by bitterness and anger at her sister’s revelation that she had turned her back on everything she had been taught, supporting the pacifist New Mandalorians instead. And then her father had been killed in a battle with Mereel’s faction. She tried not to remember when his pall bearers had carried his body down the long corridor of their great hall. She had stood before the throne as the funeral procession approached, the reality that he was gone threatening to choke her.
A tear streaked down her face and escaped the confines of her helmet, falling to her breastplate.
It wasn’t long before Satine assumed leadership of Mandalore, dragging the name of the once mighty House Kryze through the mud. At least, that’s what it had felt like at the time. Only years later did she finally understand her sister and what she was trying to do. Bo-Katan would never be a pacifist, but she could see how the endless conflicts, both external and internal, had weakened her people. Her sister had tried to force the pendulum to swing in the opposite direction of Death Watch’s ideals, but they had both been wrong. The way of the warrior would always be a part of Mandalorian culture, but there was a time and a place for peace as well. Ironically, she had found herself beginning to sympathize with some of Jastor Mereel’s ideology in recent years. Not that it mattered. He was dead. All her people were dead or scattered. Even if the planet wasn’t poisoned, who was left to rebuild?
Another tear fell, but she barely noticed it when someone’s approach caught her attention. Din had scrambled up the rocks beside her, walking toward her slowly as if he was afraid to spook her. She sniffed, trying to hold back the evidence of her tears. She didn’t think he was the type to ridicule her, but she felt pathetic enough already. And the last thing she wanted was his pity. He lowered beside her, keeping a respectful distance between them.
“You okay?” he asked, and the genuine concern in his voice threatened to undo all her efforts to conceal her emotions.
“Yeah,” she replied, wincing at how strained her voice sounded uttering even that one word.
He turned to look at her, cocking his head slightly to the side. Even with his helmet on, she could imagine one dark eyebrow cocked. She hadn’t fully seen his face back on Moff Gideon’s ship, but she had noticed the edge of his lightly bearded jaw and the curl of his brown hair. The ticks began to stretch out between them.
With an exasperated sigh, she bit out, “Fine. No, I am not okay. You happy?”
“Why would that make me happy? Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not particularly,” she said, turning back to the water. The edge of the sun was just now disappearing on the horizon, golds and pinks fading into the inky indigo of the night sky. The first stars were just appearing above them.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said quietly. “Even if the circumstances were…not great.”
“I’m just here until I can figure out where I’m going next, Din. I don’t have an issue with your people, and I’m grateful that they took me in. But The Way is not my way.”
“I understand,” he replied, and she was grateful he didn’t try to talk her out of it.
“Besides, I think your Vizsla buddy would happily murder me in my sleep if I’m not careful,” she added.
“He won’t,” Din replied, and she noted an edge to his voice.
“Won’t what? Try to kill me or succeed?”
“He might try to provoke you to a fight, but he wouldn’t attack you in a dishonorable way.”
“Oh, good to know.”
“Have you met him before?” he asked.
“Maybe. His voice is so much like Pre’s, he could be his son.”
“Who is Pre?”
“You don’t know who Pre Vizsla was?” she asked, incredulous. “He led Death Watch when I was a part of it. He helped raise me after my father died. The Darksaber had been passed down to him from Tor Vizsla and he used it to rally many to his cause. He briefly succeeded in taking control of Mandalore during the Clone Wars, but he was betrayed and killed by a Sith named Maul.”
“I thought that the Darksaber had to be earned in combat, not passed down.”
She let out a rueful laugh, “Yeah, the rules about that sword change depending on who’s wielding it.”
Din turned thoughtful for a moment, and she imagined him thinking about the weapon hanging heavy on his belt.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Of all the things he could have said, she was prepared for that the least.
“For what?” she asked, even though she could guess the answer.
“For the part I played in your circumstances. You were alone because of me; because I took this from Gideon,” he reached back to touch the hilt of the saber just visible from where it was clipped to his belt beneath his cape.
“Stop,” she said, shifting to face him. “I may have been frustrated and angry about what happened, but I know that was not your fault. You did what you had to do to protect your kid…I do not blame you for the saber coming into your possession. Besides, you’ve more than made up for it. If you hadn’t gotten your ass in a sling back there in the mines, I’d probably still be slouched on that damn throne wallowing in my own misery. You’re probably the only reason I didn’t get blown up along with my home. If it hadn’t been for you, I would have gotten myself killed trying to take out those TIEs.
And then you brought me here. Even if my way doesn’t match with the Children of the Watch, I’m grateful that you trusted me enough to bring me to a place where I have a roof over my head, food in my belly, a safe place to sleep, and people who have welcomed me into their community, and that’s…” she paused and swallowed a sudden lump in her throat. “And that’s something I haven’t had in a really long time.”
“What haven’t you had?”
“Community. People. A clan,” she replied, dipping her chin to hide another traitorous tear escaping the confines of her helmet.
He watched her for a moment, absorbing the emotions that she was so desperately trying to conceal.
“Even though I wasn’t an apostate for very long, it was hard to go through the galaxy feeling alone. I’m not saying it’s the same thing as what you went through, but I think I can understand a bit of what you must have been feeling.”
They were alike in so many ways, she was beginning to realize.
“It’s hard to be the one left behind,” she agreed. “But it’s probably worse to be pushed away. Why did they expel you, anyway?”
“For removing my helmet. You were there.”
“Yes, but none of them were. How did they even find out?”
“Because I told them the truth when I was asked.”
“Knowing that they’d shun you?”
“The creed compels me to be honest, even though I knew what the consequences would be.”
She bit back the sarcastic comment on the tip of her tongue and paused. He had been nothing but kind to her and she was tired of putting a wall of cynicism between them to protect herself. It wasn’t working anyway. Her heart was beginning to warm up to this walking disaster of a Mandalorian and his tiny green baby.
“Just…help me to understand, Din. You’d never taken off your helmet before you gave Grogu to the Jedi, right?”
“I had not.”
“And he’s part of your clan? He’s your family?”
“He hasn’t been formally adopted yet - but yes, he was part of my clan.”
“And you weren’t even permitted to let him see your face?”
“This is the way,” he replied, as if that was all the explanation needed.
“But why is it the way? What is the purpose of forbidding family from looking at each other’s faces?” she argued. “You must have felt that there is something wrong about that, or you wouldn’t have let your desire to let him see your face before he left outweigh your convictions.”
“I…I made a choice in the moment. I gave into an impulse.”
“Would you do it again if you were in the same situation?”
He paused, then took a deep breath, letting it out in a huff, “I would.”
“So there are some things that are more important than this Way you follow…like family. Or is it just because now you know you can go take a bath in some murky mine water and you’ll be forgiven?”
“Family is very important to our covert,” he countered.
“Family is important to all Mandalorians. Family comes first. I lost sight of that when I was young. When my sister joined the New Mandalorians and rejected our warrior heritage, I counted her as dead...and then I helped Pre Vizsla plot her actual demise. I put my ideology above my family. And when she was murdered with that weapon,” her voice cracking as she jutted her chin at the Darksaber, “I finally understood how wrong I was.
And that’s why I have an issue with a group who put tradition and ideology above family. You shouldn’t be shunned by your family because you have different ideas. The love and loyalty of your clan should not be conditional on you believing or doing everything exactly the same. That sort of thinking has not served our people well in the past, believe me. It’s only caused division and weakness. If we can’t learn to be more tolerant of each other and our differences, and learn to respect each other for them – we don’t deserve to rebuild Mandalore.”
“I agree with you. But don’t you think you might be guilty of the same intolerance toward my people?” he asked gently, cocking his head as he looked at her.
His reply had merit, but she could tell her words were shifting something in him. And they ought to have, for how much it cost her to speak so openly to him. She was saying things that she had only spoken out loud to one other person, and he was long gone. But Din needed to hear this. He needed someone to be honest with him to help him see what he was in the middle of. She had once been where he was now, and though reliving the memories of it was emotionally draining, she felt as though she needed to reach him. And the best way to do that was with vulnerability and candor, even if it caused her more pain. She sniffed again, wishing she could wipe her nose with something.
“Maybe I have been intolerant,” she admitted. “I haven’t exactly been respectful of your beliefs either, so you raise a fair point. I apologize for that. But I do think there is one very important difference between me and them. I may question or ridicule the extra rules that you have tacked on to the creed we both swore, but I would never question your legitimacy because of that. The first thing you said to me when I took my helmet off was that I wasn’t a Mandalorian. But your people don’t care if I believe in the Way or not; apparently all that matters to them is that I keep my helmet on.
Your religion has been reduced to checking the proverbial boxes – it’s not even about faith anymore. You had to go baptize yourself with some holy water and put your helmet back on, but has anyone even asked you if you repented of the “sin” of taking it off in the first place? Did they even ask you why you did it? What do you think your Armorer would say if she knew you’d do it all over again? Tradition without faith is pointless. I don’t believe that forcing children to cover their faces for the rest of their lives is a good tradition, nor particularly ethical, so I refuse to do that. If that means I’m not Mandalorian in your eyes, so be it. But since you felt it was important for your kid to see your face, I assume you agree on some level.”
Din reached across the space between them, putting his hand on her shoulder, “You are a Mandalorian in my eyes, Bo…I’m sorry I ever said otherwise. I don’t have the answers to all the questions you’ve put to me, but I do know that much. I owe you my life – several times over at this point. But even if I didn’t, no matter where you end up, if you ever need me, I’ll come. You’re not alone anymore.”
She wasn’t alone.
The sincerity of those simple words caused something inside her to break, and there was no chance of putting it back together. A sob tore from her throat and hot tears burned her eyes. For the moment, she was glad of the helmet that shielded her face from him, for it was certainly unsightly. Part of her was angry at herself for being reduced to this in front of him, but it was being overpowered by another part of her that simply didn’t give a damn. Din was one of the most honest, genuine people she had ever met – and right now it felt as though he was the only friend she had in the whole galaxy.
So she let the tears fall, as she tried to push out a “thank you” past her quivering chin.
He scooted closer to her, the hand that was on her sliding to her opposite shoulder, tugging her to him. When was the last time she let anyone hold her?
Fenn.
That memory causing another sob to bubble up, she let her head tip against his pauldron, the beskar plates meeting each other with a clank. She was tempted to reach back and rest her weight on her hand, but the Darksaber was back there somewhere, and she wanted to be as far away from it as possible right now. Instead, she hugged her arms around herself and let him support her. And he just let her cry.
But with each tear that streaked down her face, wetting the padding of her helmet and seeping into the cloth at her throat, she grew more uncomfortable. The helmet was hot and stuffy from her blubbering, and even the vents were failing to keep her visor from fogging up. Her lips were covered in snot and saltwater that she was desperate to wipe away. It felt good to release all the pent up grief and hurt that had been weighing her down for so long, but she felt as though she couldn’t benefit from it because of the irritation building up under her helmet.
“Dank ferrick!” she swore suddenly, lifting her head from his shoulder and leaning forward.
“You don’t have to feel guilty for letting yourself cry,” he assured her.
“It’s not that. It’s this kriffing helmet! I need to wipe my face and blow my nose. And thanks to these ridiculous rules, I have to now go try to find some private place in a cave with no actual rooms to do that!”
He chuckled, “No, you don’t. Come with me.”
He climbed to his feet and held out a hand to her. She accepted, letting him pull her up. Night had fallen, and there was little sign that there was anyone in this desolate place but them. He kept a hold on her hand and tugged her back the way he had come.
“Where are we going?”
“Someplace close,” he assured her.
She wasn’t sure if he was trying to be cryptic, but she trusted him. If it meant she could get out of this bucket on her head for a few moments, she didn’t care. He let go of her to shimmy down a rock into a small crevice, just wide enough to accommodate them single file. She slid down behind him and followed the trench for a few meters, before it took at abrupt turn to the right, dead ending in a small hollow that was completely hidden unless you were in the trench looking straight at it. Ducking into the shallow cave, Din placed his back against the wall and sat down, leaving just enough room for her to sit next to him, beckoning her to come over with a nod of his head.
She acquiesced, asking “Okay, but how is this any better than before?”
He replied by tugging his cape out and draping it over her head and shoulders, “You can take your helmet off now.”
“Seriously? But isn’t this breaking the rules?”
“I can’t see you, so as far as I’m concerned, it’s no different than you taking off your helmet in the caves behind some sort of screen. Here, you’re shielded from everyone, and I can make sure no one else takes advantage and tries to look at you while you’re uncovered.”
She snorted as she pulled her helmet off, “You make it sound like I’m getting naked under here, instead of just taking this off.”
“Ironically, it wouldn’t be an issue if you were naked, as long as your helmet was on,” he stated.
“Wait, really?” she asked, looking for some bit of cloth she could use to wipe her nose with and settled on her gloves.
“There’s nothing in the creed about being celibate,” he shrugged.
“So you can get as much action as you want, you just can’t look at or kiss your bedmate?”
“Pretty much.”
“But think of all the things you’re missing out on by taking your face out of play.”
She had meant to tease him, but her thoughts betrayed her by conjuring up an image of the two of them breaking the rules together. She quickly quashed such imaginings. Her and Din? Ridiculous.
“I try not to. Here,” he handed her a small square of thin cloth under the cape.
“A handkerchief?”
“Don’t worry, it’s clean,” he assured her.
“Of course it is,” she laughed, wiping the padding of her helmet off before drying her cheeks and finally clearing her nose.
When she was done, she leaned back against the wall, her shoulder resting against his arm. It wasn’t as intimate as before, but she liked the contact.
“Do you mind if I take a couple minutes to enjoy the air on my face, such as it is under here?”
“Take as long as you want.”
“Where’s the little guy anyway?” she asked.
“Sleeping in the cavern, near the forge. He’ll be safe there and he’ll sleep until morning. He was exhausted.”
She stifled a yawn, “I can relate.”
“Bo?”
“Hmm?”
“Tomorrow, would you tell me more about your history…and the history of Mandalore that you know of?”
“On one condition,” she replied.
“What’s that?”
“You tell me your story too.”
“Fair enough. I would have done that anyway. I’d also like to know more about your dream of restoring Mandalore, especially since we now know it isn’t poisoned.”
“Why, you want to become Mand’alor now that you have the Darksaber?”
“Not really. But I do want to help our people. Maybe if we put our heads together, we can figure out a way to make it work.”
She paused to chew on that. Was it even possible at this point? She had felt as though she had just cried out all her failures and let go of everything she had once strove for. But was that really the truth of it? She knew she could no longer bear the burden of restoring Mandalore alone – but what if there was someone else who could help shoulder that responsibility alongside her?
“I’m not sure I’m ready to start hoping for anything like that just yet. But we can talk about it,” she replied. “For right now, I just want to sleep away this day and pretend that most of it didn’t happen.”
“Do you want to go inside?”
“And have to sleep with my helmet on? Not a chance. I’ll stay out here, but I get it if you want to go back and sleep near the kid.”
“He’s fine.”
“Is it going to be a problem for you later if you stay out here with me? You’re not going to get excommunicated if they think there’s something going on between you and a non-believer, will you?”
He chuckled, “No. Are you okay with me staying with you, though?”
Always a gentleman, this one.
“Do I get to sleep helmetless under your cape all night?”
“Sure.”
“Then I’m okay with it. I’ve spent plenty of nights out under the stars alongside my companions. Would you do me one more favor though?”
“What’s that?”
“Take off your left pauldron.”
He reached up and detached the piece of armor, leaving his shoulder bare of anything but fabric. Bo scooted down close to him and rested her head on that spot.
“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked.
“No. Not at all. Sleep well, Bo.”
“Do you know what? I think I will,” she replied.
And she did.