#boarmorer

The pain is not weakness, she knows. She is not lesser for what she suffers. Fatigue, yes. Pain, often. Today, both, a pulsing throb behind her eye and a sluggishness in her bones that suggests she should have stayed abed rather than braved the usually comforting familiarity of her forge. But, as always, there is work to be done. Now more than ever, with so many new Foundlings to fend and provide for. Their armor must be made.

But it is telling, the toll it is taking on her, when she doesn’t even notice the visitor until a voice echoes in the chamber she has built her forge in.

“Are you alright?”

By instinct she stiffens, shoulders lifting from their hunch and head raising until she stands erect, proud, unshakable as always. Too late, she suspects, as she turns her head to find Bo-Katan standing in the entryway. Her face is pulled in a frown of concern, and the Armorer can see the way her eyes move, assessing, searching for an explanation.

“Kryze,” she greets. The formality causes a flicker of surprise, temporarily throwing Bo-Katan off of her hunt for an answer. The Armorer turns back to the forge, her eyes skimming over familiar pieces. “What brings you the forge?”

An impatient hiss of breath sounds behind her, followed by clipped steps. Blue and white enters the periphery of her vision and the Armorer turns her head to look, seeming languid in the movement. She tilts her head in silent inquiry. The action earns another huff of impatience.

“You’re avoiding my question,” Bo-Katan accuses. She juts out her chin, lifts it in a silent challenge as if daring the Armorer to ignore her again. “Are you alright?”

She sighs, knowing it must be audible with so little space left between them. She would have preferred to avoid this.

She sees the stubborn look in Bo-Katan’s eyes and knows that this will not be a fight easily won. Stubbornness runs in both of them, part of the iron will that she suspects has kept them each alive for so long. Most days it is an admirable trait in Bo-Katan. Today it is closer to an inconvenience. Even if she knows that the stubbornness now is less because Bo-Katan has been long accustomed to having her own way and more because she cares. Because they are—

Well. They have not put a name to it. This something between them. But it is because They Are. That is reason enough.

“I am well enough,” she answers. Against the tension in the back of her neck, a warning creeping at the edges of her mind that she steadfastly acknowledges and carries on in spite of, she takes hold of her hammer again. There is beskar to be forged, never enough, but the new Foundlings must have their buy’ce. She turns her focus from the warning ache in her skull and Bo-Katan’s hard gaze both, grips tighter on her hammer to still the slight tremble in her hands. “What can I do—”

The pain strikes her like a spear through her skull, searing through one temple and exploding into everywhere. It steals her breath away and leaves nausea curling from her stomach to her throat. For a moment she is merely off-balance, then it worsens still. She barely hears the clatter of her forge hammer as it falls from nerveless fingers to strike against the stone floor, does not have the ability to feel when her knees give way, or arms scoop around her waist to keep her from falling. She knows only the pain and that she must push through it, must breathe.

Breathe. Breathe. It will pass.

It does pass, slowly, from unbearable searing back to the dull throb of before. The nausea remains but the rest of her senses return, hearing, sight, touch the last, as she becomes aware of the cold steel of the forge at her back, the hard stone under her, and the pressure of hands cupped against the side of her neck, just barely to be felt through the thick fabric of her kute.

“Armorer? Armorer!” Bo-Katan’s voice is tight, and in it is an undercurrent of fear that she so rarely hears from her. “Dammit—stay with me,” Bo-Katan says, and it sounds so much like a command even as it is pleading. Bo-Katan raises her hand to her ear, activating her comm. “This is Bo-Katan Kryze, I need a medic in the forge—”

With a soft groan the Armorer raises a hand, laying fingers still stiff and nerveless over Bo-Katan’s. She gently draws her hand away from the ear piece, cutting off her message.

“Don’t,” she says. Her tongue feels heavy. “There is nothing a medic can do. It will pass.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bo-Katan snaps. “You need—”

“Bo-Katan,” she interrupts, and her voice must sound firm enough, or perhaps only weary enough, to reach her, because Bo-Katan pauses mid-reach for her comm again. She stares, frowning, frightened behind the steel of her eyes.

Her hand is warm as the Armorer squeezes it gently with her own. “It will pass,” she assures again.

Bo-Katan’s jaw moves, impatience warring with concern warring with that same admirable, infuriatingly stubborn will. She is unconvinced, but she waits, and when her comm comes to life with someone asking for clarification, she answers, “Give me a moment.”

Silence settles for half a minute. The Armorer shifts, movement ginger and tentative as she tries to avoid triggering that tension in her neck again. Pride already fled, she lets her head sink back against the forge, beskar meeting beskar with a soft ring. Bo-Katan watches her, both hands now on her knees, fingers twitching as she resists reaching out to help.

“What is it?” she finally demands.

The Armorer sighs, her eyes falling shut. “An old complaint,” she answers. “Few of us escaped the last days of Mandalore, fewer still unscathed. It is an old wound that strikes anew every now and then. There is nothing to be done for it but wait for it to pass.”

No response is immediately forthcoming. The Armorer allows the quiet the help settle the remaining ache, until it settles, dull but bearable, in a throb behind her eyes. When she opens them she finds Bo-Katan looking away, her jaw tight.

“Is it because you will not remove your helmet? Is that why nothing can be done?” Bo-Katan asks. The Armorer feels a spark of impatience that she strives to smother. Always it comes back to this.

“Bo-Katan—“

“We could find you a droid,” Bo-Katan interrupts, sharp again, impatient again. “It would not be breaking the Creed to allow a medical droid to see to you. I know the Creed does not allow you to show your face to a living thing, but a droid—”

“It will not make a difference,” The Armorer interrupts in turn. She speaks over Bo-Katan’s sound of frustrated anger. “It has been tended to before. There is nothing else to be done.”

She can see the war going on behind Bo-Katan’s eyes, her stubbornness battling hard against acceptance. She does not take defeat or helplessness well, no more than any Mandalorian. For a moment it seems she will push the issue further, call for the medic and have her way; but all at once she surrenders, her shoulders sinking. The Armorer smiles mirthlessly. It is a poor victory.

She welcomes it when Bo-Katan’s hand raises to her neck again, hovering near without touching this time. “Is it alright if I…?”

Another unseen smile. “It’s alright. I am not glass, Bo-Katan, however fragile this attack may make me seem.”

“I would never think of you as fragile,” Bo-Katan assures, amusement lacing into the words in spite of the heaviness still lingering between them. Her palm and fingers cup against the side of her neck again, thumb ghosting up towards the edge of her buy’ce. Were anyone else’s hands to stray so close she would have made them regret the impertinence. But here it is permitted. Bo-Katan won’t betray the fragile trust they have so steadily built.

“Is there anything I can do?” Bo-Katan asks. So uncertain. Tenderness has been a skill long lost to them both, emerging tentatively in moments like this. The Armorer treasures it, rare as it is.

“When I’m confident it won’t trigger another attack just to stand, you can help me back to my bed,” she says, pragmatic in her answer. Well-intentioned as her determination to see to the forge today had been, she was in no state to continue pushing her limits now. No one would fault her for leaving the work undone until tomorrow.

“Of course,” Bo-Katan agrees. “You should be resting.” There is an accusing edge to the words that are almost amusing. It’s a long time since she has been the one chastised for reckless behavior.

Once she feels able, Bo-Katan helps her to her feet with steadying hands. The journey to the small but private hollow where her bunk waits isn’t long, but long enough that she has no desire to repeat it again today. Her head aches again by the time Bo-Katan helps her lower to sit on the thin mattress pad, and neither of them speak a word as she undoes the snaps on her heavy cape and the latches on her cuirass. It is the most she is willing to remove before she lies down. The weight of her buy’ce finally eases as her head settles into the bundle of spare blankets she uses for a pillow.

Around her the room goes dark, the bare bulb strung above their heads dimming. It makes almost no difference through the HUD on the inside of her visor, but it was a kind thought.

Bo-Katan hovers, and were the circumstances different it would be charming to see how uncertain she is. Confident in so many things, but lost in a sickroom. The Armorer takes pity. “You do not have to stay. I’m in no danger.”

Bo-Katan doesn’t immediately move, momentarily frozen in a limbo of indecision. Her decision leads her not to the door but to the bedside, crouching down. Still lost, but unwilling to go. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Her instinct is to deny, to repeat that there is nothing to do but let the pain pass. But there is a vulnerability in her that finds its way to the front, creeping past the usual walls of iron that she has forged around herself. With a soft breath, almost a shiver as it leaves her lungs, she reaches out, offering her hand. Bo-Katan doesn’t hesitate before taking it in both of her own.

“Will you stay?” The Armorer asks. For once she nearly fumbles, her lips silently moving behind the safe shield of her visor as she tries to find the words. “I don’t… rest easy when this fit strikes. I think I may find it easier if you’re here.”

Bo-Katan’s eyes flicker with emotions too jumbled and quick for the Armorer to make sense of, settling briefly on a kind of beautiful devastation then shifting into what is almost gratitude. “Of course,” she answers. With a squeeze she brings the gloved hand between her two palms up to her face, pressing her forehead to the worn leather. It’s not quite a kiss, but it’s something close. A step nearer to a definition of this thing that They Are.

Bo-Katan rises from her crouched position to take a new place on the edge of the bunk. There is hardly any room but neither of them mind. To be close is the point. She doesn’t let go of the Armorer’s hand.

“Rest now,” she whispers. A tentative, beautiful smile pulls at her lips. “I’ll keep the watch.”

❤️❤️❤️❤️