Work Text:
The refresher on Fett’s ship was exactly as big as one would expect of a ship that size – just enough to turn around, not enough to swing a loth-cat.
When they jumped to hyperspace on their way to find Bo-Katan, Din spent the first hour sitting in his seat with no movement, glad that Cara and Fennec seemed to pay him no mind, debating the merits of various rifles—Cara kept complaining about a model that kept jamming on her, but Din was only half listening. Who knew that the two of them would be getting along so well? Din was actually kind of impressed that this recruitment business of his had, so far, not blown up in his face.
Even though... well.
It kind of had.
Din actively tried not to think about what happened on Morak while they were busy escaping and then dropping off Mayfeld, even joking with Cara before they left the planet behind. But after an hour of staring at the hull and cataloguing every wire and bolt, he couldn’t stay seated anymore. He got up and left, not looking at his companions.
Now he was standing in the fresher, hands on the edge of the sink, looking at his helmeted reflection. The barrier between him and the world, the face that everyone else saw. Had seen. Now there was a living person out there who saw his face. And several other non-living people, not that they would be telling anyone anytime soon. Neither would Mayfeld, Din believed as much, but that didn’t change the fact that it happened.
He removed his helmet in front of other people and by creed he shouldn’t even have it on right now.
Din looked closer at the helmet, noted all the smooth planes and edges, the tiny scratches on the visor of the face that was as much, or maybe more, a part of his identity as the one hidden underneath it.
After a few more moments of silent deliberation, he took the helmet off and studied his own face—the hair that’s been showing strands of gray for the last couple of years. Every wrinkle on his face, every imperfection, the crow’s feet around his eyes.
Brown eyes.
That’s what Mayfeld called him. Din always liked the color of his eyes, but thought they were nothing remarkable – right until someone remarked on them.
He began shaving, making do with one of his knives, as he had many times in the past. The movements were practiced and sure, slow and methodical. First trim the mustache, same as his father’s, as much as he remembered it. Then trim the hair at the top of his head, then the left sigh, the right, and the back last. Just as he always did. Almost a ritual, at this point, always observed in solitude. Sometimes with a knife, but usually a razor, when he was on his ship-
And that was another thing that he was avoiding thinking about. It should be at the bottom of his worries—and it was. Just another place, another home that was taken from him. One in a long string of homes that were inhabited and then abandoned—his homeworld, many places that the cohort had been hiding in over the years, leaving them behind when their secrecy was threatened. No matter how much a Mandalorian’s life was about the things that they carried with themselves everywhere—their armor, their weapons and their creed—every time a home was abanodoned, something was left behind. A toy, a piece of machinery that was being tinkered with. A keepsake from one of the adults who sometimes visited the foundlings.
The pieces lost along the road that he took when he was saved by a man hiding his face behind a helmet. A piece of red fabric, long faded and torn around the edges.
Din carefully cleaned his face and neck of any remaining hair and looked at his reflection again, now tidied up.
This face that was his, only his, now scanned by an imperial machine, seen by an imperial officer. The creed, the guiding principle of his life, the thing giving him purpose and holding the seams of his life together through the years—now broken, with a single action, in a single moment.
And he did not regret it.
Or perhaps more accurately—he regretted that it had to happen, but when it came down to it, he would do it again. For his– for Grogu.
Mayfeld said that rules seem to bend when people get desperate enough and it was true, perhaps. Or perhaps not. A foundling was placed in Din’s care, so what were the rules?
Din always liked visiting the foundlings in the covert when he came back from a job. He liked providing for their future with the credits he got doing whatever had to be done. He liked bringing them trinkets, little keepsakes like the ones he was given when he was that small.
The foundlings were the future. They were as important to the Mandalorians as their weapons. As important as their armor.
A foundling was placed in his care, and by creed, until it was of age, or reunited with its own kind, he was as its... father.
Din stared at his eyes in the reflection. His brown eyes. He always liked the color – it was the same as his father’s, the only thing he remembered with complete clarity now, decades later. Memories of his parents faded over the years, but he treasured what little keepsakes he had nonetheless.
Brown eyes, just like his father.
A foundling was placed in his care. A foundling was taken from him. And he would do anything in his power to get him back.