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Vexx slips away into the shadows, and Boba’s legs give out, knees crashing to the floor of the alley. Her body bows, and she barely turns her head in time, vomit spattering against the stone at her feet. Her body is unable to expel what truly pains her, but it’s trying its best regardless. She spits a few times, breathing so harsh and haggard it hurts her chest, before she vomits again. She spits the taste from her mouth, then sits down, sagging against the alley wall, heedless of how filthy it is, not helped any by herself.
She tries to swallow down the cries, but there’s a high pitched keening noise in her throat that refuses to be muted and Boba buries her face in her arms as her self-control breaks, deep, heaving, sobs wracking her body so harshly it feels like her lungs are trying to crush her heart into oblivion. Like since her brain rejecting the memories didn’t last, now her self is trying to end the agony once and for all.
Because they’re gone, every single last one of them. Their names run through her mind along with flashes of memory, conspiratorial winks during tedious court functions, expressive hand gestures hidden behind full skirts, trying to break each others composure with funny faces when the adults weren’t looking- all the subtle, hidden, things that they eventually grew out of to become the uncrackable royal, either expressionless, or eternally amused.
Except her. Boba who’s heart wasn’t on her sleeve, because it was tattooed on her face, and she could never, ever, figure out how to hide it like everyone else did. It set her apart, made her the brunt of jokes, made her father’s demands for her to be sequestered seem reasonable. She couldn’t be trusted with secrets, she couldn’t be trusted not to embarrass the family- she was the weak link who was inevitably going to be taken advantage of.
And her father had been right.
But being isolated in a castle hadn’t saved her. It hadn’t protected her. It hadn’t done anything but make her more stupid. Useless. Gullible. The one who deserves to be here, who was brave enough to take on the universe and all it’s horrors, is gone. All that’s left is Boba- the pitiful child who couldn’t handle growing up, much less being a princess.
Her sobs start to quiet as her energy ebbs, leaving her feeling numb and suspended in time and space- as if she was born here in this alley, in filth and anguish, and will die here too. Boba doesn’t bother lifting her head as hurried, heavy footsteps echo around her. It doesn’t matter who finds her, it doesn’t matter what they do to her, because the worst has already been done.
Vaguely, she hears voices she recognizes- Calderon’s snapping with irritation, then Bash’s, his usual jovial tone softened with concern. After a moment, there’s a touch on her elbow, but there isn’t enough of her left for her to respond. More talking, then she’s lifted into someone’s arms, enough words filtering through the fog of grief in her head for her to understand she’s being taken to the ship.
Her next memory is being sat down on the bottom stair in the cargo hold, Ryona wrapping a shock blanket over her shoulders. The medic crouches in front of her, holding up a syringe, and talking. Boba just holds out her arm. Ryona frowns, but prepares the injection site, injecting the medication in a swift, practiced, move.
Almost immediately the world comes back into focus, and Boba sucks in a breath so deep it feels like a knife blade in her chest. Her chest aches even after she exhales and she can’t stop shaking, but she’s here, back in the world. Whether she likes it or not.
Aya’s concerned face is peering up at her on her other side, and Boba instinctively reaches out for her, wrapping her arms around the pilot.
“Aw, there we go, she’s back. You had us worried, kid,” Bash says gently.
“Did someone hurt you, Boba?” Calderon asks, “Give you something that made you sick?”
She shakes her head, but can’t force any words past her pressed tight lips, her hand coming up to press against her chest.
Calderon has his mouth open when Ryona interrupts, standing up from Boba’s side, and heading toward the door where Damon stands, covered in blood.
“Damon!”
“It ain’t mine,” the assassin says absently, his gaze and snarl fixed on Calderon.
Boba clutches the loudly crinkling blanket so tightly it tears in her grip, gaze locked on the blood staining Damon’s hands. She only has a moment to lurch to her feet, nearly throwing herself behind a crate, before she throws up again.
“For fucks sake,” Damon mutters, before returning his attention to Cal.
“We were followed. By a fucking Guard ship. You wanna tell me how that happened?”
“Goddamit,” Calderon swears, running a hand over his face, as he starts pacing the hold, “They must have put a tracker on us.”
“You didn’t think to check?”
“I was a little preoccupied by the great bloody hole in my ship and the stray June brought aboard.”
Boba is still crouched beside the crate she’d thrown up behind, a thin sheen of sweat along her skin making her feel like she’s starting to go cold; like a corpse. But she barely notices, eyes still fixed on blood stains covering Damon and he scoffs, stepping toward her, and leaning down to peer in her face.
“I told you I’m fi-”
“Who did you kill?” she asks, swallowing nervously before she manages to look him in the eye.
Damon straightens up, expression going cold, “What did you think assassins do? Ask nicely for people in dark alleys not to shiv them?”
She shakes her head, lips pressed together tightly, “No, I know what you do. I saw-” she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, “I saw someone I-”
The word, ‘knew,’ won’t come out of her mouth, and she grimaces, only barely swallowing down another spate of tears.
“Someone I recognized.”
The tension leaves Damon’s shoulders, although his scowl remains and he pauses like he’s considering not telling her.
“Who did you-” he begins, but Calderon interrupts his questioning.
“Just fucking tell her so we can move on,” he growls.
Damon gives him a poisonous glare, but then rolls the tension out of his shoulders, casually shoving his hands in his pockets.
“Just some blonde chick in a guard uniform who didn’t give me a friendly greeting.”
Boba doesn’t know why she has to examine Damon as he says this, her gaze roving over his face for any hint of a lie for the first time since she’s met him. But she does, she has to, only looking away when she’s satisfied he’s told her the truth.
Vexx is still alive. The crew keeps talking, but she doesn’t hear any of it, because Vexx is still alive, and she’s terrified, and furious, and heart broken, and so, so, worried about him, and hating herself for it. Her last link to her past, the one who undid her and destroyed everything she left behind… for him. Before him, she’d been a shadow, feeling like she should apologize for every breath she took. He inspired her to be brave. Everything she’d ever done, the risks she took, the choices she made, they’d all been for him.
Weakly, her stomach tries to heave again, but there’s nothing left, and Boba just clenches her jaw, closing her hands into fists.
There’s a lull in the conversation around her, then Damon addresses her and she has to drag herself from the tempest inside her mind.
“Who is it you saw?” Damon asks again, the sharpness in his voice telling her he isn’t going to let it go this time.
Boba doesn’t even have the strength to look up at him, leaning heavily against the crate as she sits in an awkward sprawl on the floor.
“A member of the Royal Guard,” she says reluctantly.
“You know a member of the Royal Guard?” Aya asks, “Did you remember anything else?”
Boba pauses, looking away as she blinks back a new influx of tears, “Yes. I remembered everything.”
Her voice shakes, despite barely being above a whisper.
Aya goes still, then swoops down and wraps Boba up in a fierce hug, just as the Tilaarin had her earlier.
“Shit, Boba, I’m sorry, that had to be overwhelming. You’re so upset and here we are melting down over a stupid ship part.”
Ryona urges Boba back to the stair she’d been sitting on, wrapping the shock blanket around her again and rubbing her arms briskly as Aya sits close on her other side.
“You know an R.G.?” Cal asks.
Boba glances up at him, roused into responding by the suspicion he’s trying to temper in his voice. Keeping his gaze, she nods, a minute movement as a wave of fear nearly paralyzes her. Telling them is going to change everything. Telling them will make it real.
No amount of blinking will keep the tears at bay anymore, spilling over her lash line as she digs deep for strength she never knew she had and opens her mouth.
“My full name is Zenobia Ta’lais Peg’Asi. I’m the youngest child of King Fenris and the Stellar Queen Ta’jean.”
There’s utter silence in the wake of her confession, and Boba keeps her gaze locked on the floor, watching as a tear splashes onto the metal grate, the salt in it making it sparkle obscenely in the bright lights of the cargo bay.
“Shit,” Bash blurts into the silence and Boba can’t stop the watery, surprised, burst of laughter that escapes her.
She wipes her face with her sleeve, and finally manages a smile that Bash returns, although it’s twisted with concern.
“Well, this changes things,” Damon says.
Something in his voice keeps her from looking at him, a icy cold sliver of fear, pressing directly against her beating heart.
“This changes everything,” Aya breathes.
Damon steps toward her and Boba tenses, the look in his eyes viscerally reminding of their first meeting when she’d been unsure if she’d leave the encounter in one piece.
“This solves all our problems. All we gotta do is turn the little princess over to Zovack and he’ll clear the bounty on us from the record.”
There’s a lot of noise and movement around her. Boba knows this, even though she’s barely cognizant of it, because the only thing she’s truly aware of is the grin on Damon’s face.
The edges of Boba’s vision go black for a moment before she finally manages to suck in a quiet, shivering breath and the world comes back into focus with agonizing clarity.
She slips her music box out of her pocket, remembering the story Nerissa loved to tell of the night Boba had been born. Her eldest sister had hung her music box on the mobile above her cradle so she would have a lodestar, a guiding star all her own, that would sing her lullabies throughout the night and lead her away from any nightmares she might find herself in. Perhaps even back then Nerissa had known Boba would need extra love, because once the need for lullabies and talismans against nightmares waned, she’d chosen for Boba to keep it.
Boba runs her thumb over it’s cool, luminescent, surface. Her tears dry up.
When she stands to her feet the silence is instant and penetrating, all eyes immediately snapping to her.
Boba tosses the last piece of her heart to the floor at Damon’s feet, the clang of metal striking metal echoing in the silence. She keeps her gaze fixed on it as she speaks.
“Pay off the bounty, and whatever else you need with that,” she says.
All traces of grief are gone from her, she doesn’t even tremble, although she can’t look away, can’t stop picturing Nerissa’s smile when she’d closed her small fingers around the only symbol of love she’d ever received. Boba finally tears her gaze away, turning to go up the stairs when Calderon speaks.
“Boba- we can’t take that from you. We’ll find another way.”
“You aren’t taking it, I’m giving it to you. Besides, it won’t do me any good if we all wind up dead anyway.”
Just like the rest.
Her breath catches as the thought snatches the very air from her lungs. Unable to bear one more moment under scrutiny, Boba flees to her room, leaving behind the music box that had, until today, kept her from nightmares.