Djarin adjusted the repaired pauldron. It was still deeply gouged but would hold together a little longer. "When will you return to the Outside?" asked the Armorer. She moved to her stool, facing Djarin, gauntlets on her knees. Patient, perceptive, unhurried.
"I must leave soon. I have new bounty pucks. I can provide for the Tribe. But if it is felt that another must leave in my place…"
"No. The Tribe is content. This burden remains yours."
"I carry this burden with pride," Djarin said, perhaps too quickly.
A moment of thoughtful silence. "You do," she said, "Still, we must acknowledge that it is a burden to live alone for the good of the Tribe when our creed teaches us solidarity." Her head tilted. "It is…I suppose what is called irony."
Djarin remained silent.
"It is another irony that love of family and children is at the heart of our Creed. Yet we have had few new Foundlings and our clans dwindle," the Armorer continued. "When we can grow in safety and numbers, we can return to our old customs of marriage and family. Until then, the Foundlings are our future."
"What I brought will help our Foundlings."
"This is the way."
"This is the way," replied Djarin. This was the end of the conversation and so he left the Forge. His bones ached from sheer weariness.
He walked through the familiar corridors, his emotions muted. A few small figures ran beside him, stopping their games of Rebel Tag and Catch the Quarry to gawk up at Djarin. A few adults did too, then they looked away. Bound to these people, yet without a clan. Always ultimately alone.
Around a corner and now he was at the Closets. Here the people of the Tribe could find needed privacy. It was part of the Creed to care for weapons—including the warrior's most precious weapon of all, a healthy body. He could just go back to Razor Crest, the tiny bunk and sonic shower. But today he needed more.
When the door was closed, the slow, careful process took some time. He began with this helmet.
Every piece of armor had its own hook of the wall, with a rack that positioned the helmet so he could look inside to make any small repairs or adjustments. One of the leather cheek pieces was getting worn and rubbing his jaw uncomfortably. The sonic launderer in the corner next to the waste tube was old but functional, and would remove the grime and blood from his ragged garments.
Then he turned to the polished metal mirror behind the main Closet door.
The old scars on his right shoulder and his chest just below the collar bone were quite red in the dim light. Another jagged scar ran across his abdomen. His left side was still mottled with deep bruises from that last run-in with one of Fortuna's more moronic crews—it was a hard fall from that balcony. His hair needed a trim to fit more comfortably under the helmet.
And the face—moustache, gray hairs, sad eyes—was now his father's.
He leaned in closer to study his face, especially the moustache. A vanity, but that wasn't why he grew it. Old memories of his father keep popping up at the wrong times and in his dreams. Why now after so long, and why were they so clear?
He stood in the sonic shower a fraction longer than necessary, letting his eyes close under its comforting warmth. He could have slept on his feet. The cot in the corner called to him. The bowl of stew on the warmer next to a water jug was also tempting.
"You're back."
The voice was so close that it felt as if she shared the Closet with him. But it was just the vent near the ceiling, designed to help voices carry. "Yes," he answered. "I will be leaving after I get some sleep."
She yawned and he heard her shuffling on her own cot. "Please, tell me what you have seen."
So, while he tended his hurts and ate, he told her a little about the planets he had visited. He was not a good talker but she listened hungrily. She asked questions about the quarry he found, the enemies he beat, and the places he saw.
It felt strange and thrilling to speak to a woman—to anyone, really—without his helmet on. But it also felt necessary, freeing. This was why everyone turned a blind eye to these convenient vents—no one outside the Tribe could possibly understand. It promoted an intimacy and helped the Tribe keep strong bonds. The woman in the Closet next to him had been a Foundling a few years older than he had been and so she understood.
Djarin heard the prurient whispers any time he walked into a bar—and he had walked into a lot of bars—about when, exactly, a Mandalorian would remove the helmet. It happened so much it rolled down his back like water, but it grew more and more wearisome over the years.
Without wanting to, he remembered Xi'an from a few years ago. That psychopath simply would not stop taunting him about the helmet—whether he would leave it on the whole time, or take it off, and what was under the armor, and on and on. She had taken a perverse pleasure in needling Djarin to the point of discomfort. Most people shut up when confronted with stoic silence, but she could detect his unease and kept going. Her mocking and lies had felt surprisingly cruel, like little arrows working their way between armored plates to long-forgotten soft spots.
Leaving a helmet on the whole time…honestly. Ridiculous and disgusting. It really said more about the vulgar minds of the people whispering than about Mandalorians.
"Your nature is ardent," she said, and he stopped thinking about Xi'an.
"I don't know what that means."
"Passionate. More than most others here."
He had nothing to say to that. It was a little rude to speak that way about others in the Tribe and especially rude to talk about others whose voices you heard in the Closet.
Besides, that was nonsense.
"Oh, I can tell," she said, as if she heard his thoughts. "The way you describe Mos Eisley so clearly that I can see it in my mind's eye. The beggars in the shadows. The great desert. The cruelties the Tusken raiders endure. You are observant and you feel deeply."
"If you say so," he said, finishing the last mouthful.
"You should not be living alone," she continued.
"There's no choice," he answered. "I don't have a clan but I have a job and a duty to provide."
Now she was silent. Then, in a lighter tone, "Maybe you need to retire to a farm on some green planet with a little soft wife."
She was joking. But didn't that vision, or something like it, pop up more and more at the back of his mind, especially as he passed through little villages and farms on his way to find his targets? These visions seemed to crop up at the same time he began to dream about his father.
"I'm sorry. A bad joke," she said, as if sensing his thoughts again. That's what happened when you grew up together.
"I would be bored to death in three days on a farm," Djarin answered, trying and failing to match her light tone. "Literally."
"I know. I would too. I'm not cut out for the wife thing, I can promise you that, much less a farm. So don't even think it."
He snorted at the idea. "Don't worry."
Her voice lowered to a whisper. "Still, you're not like me. You need…something else. Someone to live for."
"I live for our Tribe," he said. His voice didn't sound convincing.
"As do we all. But that's not what I mean. You know the Tribe can't keep going this way. No marriages. No children. No new clans."
"I see clans here. I see Foundlings here, just like I was, just like you were. And the universe is violent and there will always be more Foundlings. We'll keep growing."
"That's true, but few Foundlings make their way to us. And you know what I mean by families."
"It's not safe. Not yet. Some day."
"That's what the Armorer keeps saying."
Djarin stirred uncomfortably. By tradition everything said in the Closet was kept in absolute secrecy, but he was not liking the way this conversation was going. "I need to get some sleep." As always, they both knew this time could be the last time they spoke, but Mandalorians were legendary for brusque goodbyes.
"I know. Good hunting. This is the way."
"This is the way."
After a deep and pleasantly dreamless sleep, Djarin began the careful re-armoring process. As he adjusted the repaired pauldron, he thought of her. It was good to talk, but then it ended quickly, and as always it left him feeling empty and more alone than before. It was a way to be close, but not too close. And their conversation troubled him like an itch under the helmet.
Maybe she was right. Maybe he needed something more.
But what? What was the point of wanting something when he didn't know what it was and there was no other life possible for a warrior? A killer?
Time to think ahead, time to focus and move beyond this tedious midlife crisis or whatever it was. He turned his thoughts to the next jobs. One of them was on Pagodon. Oh great, another ice planet. He felt tired already.
He faced the mirror while he put the helmet on last, and his father's face disappeared.
