Chapter Text
Everything was so bright.
He was breathing heavily, far heavier than a simple gun fight should be having him feel. His ears were ringing. Had a blaster always been that loud? He could feel the breeze blowing in from the window behind him, the cool air was making the sweat on the back of his neck chill, the curls of hair there sticking uncomfortably to his skin.
He wasn’t really looking, but his mind was cataloging the bodies in the room. Everything was far brighter than they usually were. The trooper lying a few yards ahead of him was lying in a pool of his own blood, the wound he’d sustained already having weeped through his armor.
The blood was a very bright red.
He screwed his eyes shut.
Just for a second.
He opened them again. He was facing a table, his borrowed helmet sitting on its shining surface.
He was frozen.
He couldn’t put the helmet back on.
He’d broken his Creed.
He couldn’t breath.
And then Mayfeld was moving in front of him. Din took a breath, then tensed. Mayfeld, former enemy, tentative ally, had seen him without his helmet. The first person to see his face in over thirty years, and it had been Mayfeld. The knowledge loomed over Din, nearly tangible, dark, and heavy. It tasted metallic on his tongue, or maybe he had just been clenching his jaw so hard that he drew blood.
Either way, Mayfeld knew now and Din wasn’t sure if or how he was going to deal with that.
But then Mayfeld was standing in front of him, Din’s borrowed helmet in his hands and he shoved it towards Din, urging him to take it.
“You did what you had to do.”
Din looked down at the helmet in Mayfeld’s hands, then back up towards Mayfeld's face. He couldn’t look the man in the eye, not that he had ever been good at that with the helmet on let alone off, so he chose to focus just above the man’s sparse eyebrows instead, asking the man a question he wasn’t sure he even knew he was asking, waiting for an answer he wasn’t sure he wanted.
Mayfeld was looking down, eyes fixed to the cafeteria’s floor. He nudged the helmet towards Din again.
“I never saw your face.”
Dumbly, Din took the helmet. His hands acted on impulse, years of reaching for a helmet ingrained into his very being.
He turned away from Mayfeld and placed the helmet on his head.
It felt like a sin.
When he turned back, Mayfeld was facing the mess hall entrance. Gun in hand and ready for a fight.
Din stood there, in dead man’s armor, feeling like the old Din Djarin was dead too, his beskar and Creed stripped from him.
But he couldn’t stop for a funeral.
Where one Creed was broken, another must be saved.
Grogu needed him.
By Creed, he was as Grogu’s father.
Therefore, Grogu was as his son.
They were a clan of two.
He needed Grogu as much as Grogu needed him.
This was the way.