Chapter Text
You got your armour back.
Good. You should never have lost it; it was out of your control, you did everything you could to retrieve it, but now you are safe again. Your soul is back, and this child of Mandalore returned it to you, and your gratitude is hard to express, nebulous as it is. Something deep within you has settled, stopped the clawing outraged reaching that has kept you alive so long.
But.
You failed.
It sticks like a barb against the skin, knowing that the Child is taken, after you swore to protect it. You wouldn’t have truly hurt it – probably – but you feel bad that you threatened them, then broke your deal. You would have stayed anyway, you can’t leave this exhausted man here on this empty planet after he watched his home explode, which you know the pain of, you remember that happening to yourself, but your sympathy is flavoured in the desperate relief of having your soul again.
“This is all that survived,” he says when he comes back up to Fennec and yourself, and he sounds hollowed out. Devastated, like when you lost your own home, like the scooped-out emptiness of waking up soft-shelled with your skin gone.
Buir. “I want you to take a look at something,” you rasp as you pull up the chain code, watch it flicker a moment before settling in knife-sharp gold slashes. Trace your fingers down, Boba, you hear his voice echo – your voice – and find me here, then find yourself, ad’ika. This is who we are: wards of Mandalore. Mando’ade. Jango Fett, foundling of Jaster Mereel, who fought in the civil wars and wore the title of Mand’alor until part of him died in chains. Now, old as you are, chained as you have been, you realise he never got that part back. It’s the same piece you left on Geonosis, the shards of you scattered, on Tattooine, on Coruscant, in the wake of every evil deed. Dar’beskar’gam, dar’manda. What level of dar’manda makes one, well, dar?
What is the point of no return?
It is whatever it must be, you know, watching as this man crumbles and pulls himself together with the sort of practice that makes the cold coal of your heart bleed for him.
You survived because you couldn’t bear the thought of not doing so.
“Your father was a foundling,” he says after enough of a pause that you understand he too must be a foundling.
This man, you think, has survived on the behalf of other people.
You will have to find a way to comfort him, later. He will survive this too, but you want all of him to do so, not just whatever shred of him is left when you find his child.
The Empire.
That is another obstacle you had not anticipated. Remnants are one thing but this, full scale raids and ships and Moff Gideon who you are sure you don’t know but hate anyway? Well. You are, after all, Boba Fett, and you know this man’s reputation too and about the child and its bounty – both their bounties – and, well. Fear is an emotion that has raced your veins all your life. What is a bit more of it?
You get everyone on the ship with the sort of precision your brothers (and they were your brothers, you have had many many years to reconcile what you did to them with the truth, and you know that there are things you don’t know and that the Jedi will know some of it at least) were known for and prided themselves on. You will take off and set course, and then drop down and check Fennec hasn’t been at his throat. The man needs some time, to process, and you’re going to ensure he has it. She will need a minute alone too, to calm herself before you come check on her mechanics. Fuel, course and heading, the jetpacks both stowed and the Mandalorian’s beskar spear strapped in tight with Fennec’s wooden staff and your own club and rifle.
A man is more than his armour and family name, ad’ika. All of us are made of our choices.
What are you, buir?
I think I was lost, but now I can see again. These jetii, they will pay for the hurts they did to my people, and then – well. Do not worry about it. Stay close, ad’ika.
You should have asked. Not that anything would have changed, really, buir was possibly even more stubborn than you were, but still. Even in your teenage fury and loss and loneliness, the Jedi didn’t deserve what they got.
Something grinds in your lower back as you stand, and your knee aches with the low tenderness that means you should probably sit or even lie still until you have to get up and land the Slave. The ladder is just a touch harder to scale than it was, yet still ingrained, still muscle memory of ten-twenty-thirty-forty years of habit. You’ve done more in worse condition than you are now.
“Fen.”
“I haven’t done anything,” she immediately responds without looking up from her blasters, as you knew she would, and you shake your head, helmet still on, just sort of enjoying the sensation of having it back, like regaining a lost limb. “Promise.”
“Go sit upstairs,” you say gruff but fond, and she does without argument. She’s a good kid, you think fondly, and wonder what your buir would have thought of her. “What do you need, Mandalorian?”
He shrugs a bit helplessly, still angry but also rapidly changing into grief, in the lines of his shoulders, the tension of his hands, the slight sway as he tries not to buckle into a heap of grief and self-recrimination.
Well, you suppose, you’re either going to muck this up or help him and the attempt is as important as the result when it comes to grief and loss and rescue. “Come. Help me scrub my armour.”
“Why.”
With a low grunt you settle yourself on the floor and begin to unstrap. “The paint stripper is in the locked cabinet under your beviin.” The mando’a tastes nice, on your tongue. The Mandalorian twitches in what you think could be excitement.
“Jorhaa’gar mando’a?”
Deconstructing that sentence takes you a moment. “I believe you are asking if I speak mando’a. the unfortunate answer is a no.”
He slumps.
“Should you care to teach me, as I work,” you offer without looking at him, arranging the paint stripper near where you plan to make him sit, “then that would be appreciated.”
The Mandalorian sits and you smile behind your bucket at his mild curiosity. “’lek.”
“I would like to remove my helmet. You are not going to be made to look at my face if you wish not to.”
He leans away almost in fear, turns his head rapidly away at the last possible moment before you settle the ancient beskar on the floor. “N'eparavu takisit,” he gasps, hands clenching so tight it must ache.
“It is alright, Mandalorian,” you assure him gently without moving beyond tilting the helmet to assess the damage to it. “My beliefs allow me to remove my helmet – I know I am more than my plates, just as you are. I did not ask you to look at me, and so your apology is unnecessary; you have done only what you believe is the most appropriate course, and I admire you for it. You are a man of great honour.”
Cautiously he turns back towards you, still curved and tense like a wounded beast, held back yet drawn in.
With a grunt you nudge the stripper and a rag to him. “Start on whatever piece you want. I will work on the helmet.”
He takes up a pauldron, a rag and the stripper, begins the small circles immediately. The action will soothe him as it does you, as it used to soothe buir. Simple, repetitive action. “Buy’ce.”
“Helmet?”
“Elek.”
You allow the smile to grow on your face. “Buy’ce. Vor’e,” you offer, and he relaxes just a little further. There will be time to talk about his creed, later, hopefully; in the time after finding his child, in the slow quiet of post-mission. For now, this silence of stripping paint and slow silent breath and occasional offered words is enough to take part of his mind off his pain.
Survive this and I will keep you all safe, you think.
Within an hour, you have learned that the Mandalorian has more mando’a than you do but not as much as the Armourer, the alor, of his tribe. Neither does he know how many of them are left after the attack on them at Navarro, or where they may be. He has taught you the words for armour, for weapons; words you are beginning to remember, if only a little, the meanings tainted by vague sounds of rain and the sensation of whitewhitewhite and loneliness. After all, buir died when you were ten and he was not what one would call popular with other Mandalorians, and it has been well over thirty years since then. It sounds like you are barely older than this shining Mando, perhaps around five years by your estimate, but you suppose that’s the difference between growing up with security as he did and growing up in war and prisons and under the hands of the worst people in the galaxy. Is it only thirty years, you wonder? Can that be so?
“Blue,” he asks, and you repeat the mando’a. Red, green, justice, revenge, joy, sorrow, loss and lost. I and you and they, how to indicate a possessive and how to indicate negatives. “Jate’shya.”
You allow your face expressiveness, allow him to watch the slight twitch of your eyes as you think it over. “Good – better?”
“’lek, better,” he confirms, seeming pleased, before he twists his head and notices the Child is not here. This is perhaps the fourth time he’s done it, searched for the slight form of his child and been broken by the reminder of the loss. His shoulders lower as if burdened by the weight of an entire planet.
“Are you done?”
He nods, both of you meaning more than just the aged beskar.
“Put the stripper away, then,” you encourage, setting your brushes down. “Let’s have something to drink. I have a few straws, somewhere.” Rising draws a few creaks and cracks out of your worn body – Tattooine really took it out of you, huh – and he leaps up in impressive silence to offer you a hand up, which you wave off. “Back under the beviin, please.”
He tucks the bottles and rags away, re-latching the cabinet. “Do you think,” he begins quietly, before trailing off as he hesitates. This is good, you think, his allowance of vulnerability, but it also concerns you a little. How harsh has his life been, that he is so willing to lower defenses just based on your willingness to allow him his Creed and promise to help him retrieve his child? “Do you think he’s okay?”
You give the matter due consideration as you tidy up your still-unpainted plates, stacking them neatly with your helmet the crowning glory, the wet ones lined up alongside. “I think he will be. I can’t begin to imagine what he’s going through, but the Force will be telling him you’re coming for him.”
The confidence in your voice gives him strength, straightening his shoulders as he turns back around to face you. “You’re sure?”
“I am.” It’s quite clear he knows even less about the Jedi than he does about Mandalore; you will have to remember to catch him up sometime. “Come drink.”