Chapter Text
The Jedi temple lies buried deep in the jungle. It’s well off the roads, down a sixty-foot vertical drop into a canyon, under a waterfall, and nestled at the base of a tree so large Din’s shocked its root system doesn’t sprawl across an entire a sixty-foot radius.
And somehow, when he makes it through all of that — rough going, even on the modified dirtbike he’s ridden since imperials turned the Razor Crest to ash — the Slave I has already beat him there.
Trouble. Din tries not to sigh.
Din has no clue how Boba Fett does it. The chunky, four-wheeled van barely has the ground clearance to climb a steep parking lot, much less this terrain. Hell, he had to build a pulley system to get the light-weight bike down the cliff and almost ended up ditching it regardless.
He engine brakes through the rest of the basin, downshifting and coming to a neat stop at the base of the tree. No reason to rush if Fett’s already there.
As he dismounts, Din tries to ignore the frisson of nerves creeping up on him. It doesn’t make sense; it’s not like Fett’s likely to turn a blaster on him. They parted on good enough terms — minus some strange awkwardness that Din still doesn’t quite know how to place.
He’s been running crappy, underpaid jobs for old clients ever since. Much like his old life, if it weren’t for the still-missing covert. Nothing new.
Except this one. For the Jedi.
Din really, really hopes that Boba and the Jedi aren’t after the same thing, in these old ruins.
The architecture is unlike anything he’s seen before. The strange, vaulting roofline is angled with no obvious practical advantage, as if it’s more a work of art tracing invisible lines in the sky.
He steps through the doorway at the tree’s base into a lift that gives a hideous shudder and starts moving up into the tree without any prompting. At the next level, everything is more confusing. The tree grasps the temple on all sides, like a stone egg it’s grown around. Furrowed paths cut through natural footpaths with some logic all their own, and odd stone balls and boxes sit in places that look meaningful but shouldn’t be.
Din proceeds with caution, half-expecting spikes to shoot from the floor if he puts too much pressure on the wrong flagstone. There’s no evidence that Fett’s been here at all. Maybe he took the lift elsewhere.
If Din could ever count himself so lucky.
Look for the central chamber, the Jedi had said.
At least everything’s a giant circle, which means the central chamber should be easy to locate. In the middle. Somewhere.
Except he turns the corner, and it’s between him and a blaster.
He has the time to shoot. A split-second instinct tells him not to.
“Hands up,” Fett rasps. Din’s heart catches in his throat at the sound of it. “Blaster with them.”
For a moment, Din wants to retaliate before Fett has a chance to hurt him. It’d be the smartest thing to do. The green t-visor is blank; Fett’s stance is balanced, prepared for anything, predatory. This thrill of fear running through Din — it must be how his quarries feel, face-to-face with him.
Except. Fett won’t shoot him in cold blood. Not after all the trouble Fett’s gone through to keep him alive.
Din’s finger twitches on the trigger, but he raises his hands. Slowly, telegraphing every movement. The barrel of his gun points at the ceiling, and he moves his finger away from the trigger. It’s cooperative. More than Fett asked for, even.
“Didn’t know you were in the holocron business,” Fett says.
“Don’t know what that is.” It might sound placating, but it’s true. Din can put things together, assumes that his bike and Slave I are parked outside for the same purposes: Jedi sorcery. But part of the bounty hunter’s code is that you don’t ask too many questions, so he doesn’t. The Jedi will get what he paid for, and that’s just how it goes.
“Hm,” Fett says. “Well. I won’t shoot you if you don’t shoot me. But you’re in front. Don’t want you disappearing on me again.” He gestures with his blaster, then holsters it.
Ah. There we go. Fett wants him to trip the traps.
Din sidles by with his hands still up, pressing himself against the wall to avoid clinking his beskar up against Fett’s. Then he turns around and drops them. After he takes a few more steps, Din can hear the click of spurs start to follow him.
It almost feels like old times, those weeks they wandered the Dune Sea together, with Din as Fett’s hired gun. They’d worked well together, Din had thought. They probably still do, even all these months later.
Neither of them say anything as they forge deeper into the temple’s heart. It’s easy going — suspiciously so, for an object the Jedi had so many concerns about retrieving.
“I don’t suppose you’ll let me just… have whatever this is,” Din says, eventually, as he takes another swirling turn in the illogical circles of the temple’s passages.
“Not on your life. This’ll run my operation for years.”
Din blinks.
At Din’s continued silence, Boba adds, “Skywalker not paying you that much, eh?”
“It’s mostly for the kid,” Din says. And then, maybe to test where they stand now, maybe because he just misses their old easy banter, he offhandedly says, “You could just kill me.”
This time, it’s Boba who’s silent for too long. “Could do,” he says, maybe after realizing the pause has stretched on long enough that Din has started to wonder whether Boba might seriously consider killing him.
At the end of the bend sits a door carved out of stone. There’s some sort of pattern cut into it, and what look like moving metal parts stand out from the grooves.
“Any chance the Jedi gave you the key?” Boba asks, voice bland.
Din just shakes his head. Behind him, Boba sighs and puts a hand on Din’s shoulder to push past him. Din jumps at the contact, hurrying aside to let him through.
A few charges and an ear-ringing explosion later, the stone door lists away from its frame just enough that both of them can slide into the next room.
Boba gestures.
Din gets it: after you, meatshield. Some things have to change, he supposes, when you’re no longer working together. That’s only business. He just wishes it didn’t hurt a bit. He slips into the next room, watching for any fresh signs of trouble.
And there it is. Struck by a glowing beam of light, as if designed to be noticed, the holocron sits on a dais in the middle of the room.
The room seems safe, for all that anything in this entire temple seems safe — or at least, strange but unthreatening. For now. Din could make a grab for the holocron and try to fight his way out. But he doesn’t relish crossing blasters with Fett. He’s not sure he’d win, especially boxed in like this, and he’d rather keep the man as an ally.
Does a little Jedi knowledge box really matter that much? The Jedi had described the device as if it were a book, or a hologram. But from where he’s standing, it looks more like some sort of puzzle, maybe even mechanical.
He could let Fett take it and promise to locate another for the Jedi. Din doesn’t need the payday.
He’s taken too long to decide, anyway. Boba scrapes through the doorway, and Din can’t stop himself from cringing at the grind of stone on beskar. He’ll need some new paint, there.
Boba tilts his head at the holocron. “Don’t suppose the Jedi was just planning to sell this to fund his little school?”
Din shakes his head. He doesn’t see why it’s relevant, anyway. Unless Boba’s implying they split the payout?
Odd.
“If you aren’t in a hurry…” Din wracks his brain. You can copy holograms. Can you copy a holocron? He has no idea. “The Jedi might be able to get everything he needs from this if you take it to him, then you could sell it. Or he might be able to pay you.”
Boba, circling the plinth, snorts. “I don’t treat with Jedi. Things rarely end well for those who do.”
Din’s been fine so far, but he’s sure Boba has his reasons.
And, speaking of. “Any idea why the last six people the Jedi hired never came back?”
“None,” Boba says, visor tilting toward the ceiling.
Not a good sign for either of them. Din steps closer to the holocron, hands on his hips. He doesn’t know much about Jedi nonsense, sure, but he’s seen just enough these last months to tread with caution.
Throughout the entire winding path through the temple, Din didn’t spot signs of blasterfire or even a disturbed patch of moss. There’s no indentations that might warn of hidden projectiles, no variations that could indicate pressure plates. So, yes, the last bounty hunters might have met bad ends on their way to the temple, in which case the jungle would never spill its secrets.
But the other hunters might also have made it here without incident. And then disappeared without a trace.
“I’m not moving it first,” Boba says. “If something happens to me, that leaves you here to take it. And my corpse just rots.”
Din wouldn’t leave his body here, but that’s probably an inappropriate thing to mention right now.
“So,” Din says, “we touch it at the same time?”
“Then we’re both in trouble.” But Boba sounds resigned. He looks at his gloves, as if considering whether to take them off. He sighs. “Fucking Jedi nonsense. Count of three, then.”
Din steps closer, also leaving his gloves on.
They nod at each other, visor-to-visor. Boba counts down.
Their hands touch the holocron at the same time, and everything turns impossibly bright.
Din hasn’t woken up. Whatever this is, it isn’t consciousness. It feels more like the time before he’d properly learned Huttese, when he’d snuck out of the covert with Paz and they’d accidentally ordered collafa spice-infused cocktails in a shady bar. They’d both spent the entire evening hallucinating, tripping into each other, going loose and slack and fond in ways he hasn’t ever really captured since.
This feels like that, but it also doesn’t.
And he can’t see anything.
But he can hear — the sounds of an argument, quiet grouching.
“They’re sensitive as bricks, Master,” says one voice, inflected with strange clicks and snaps that Din can best place as the linguistic leftovers of some sort of aquatic species speaking in Basic. “Like a wall in the universe.”
“Hm, yes,” returns another voice, low and rumbling and considering, “but very lucky. The Force likes these two.”
“I’m not sure likes is the right word. Those scars —”
“Would have killed any other man. Did kill an old friend of mine, I think, if I recognize their maker.”
The first speaker clacks disagreeably. “Well. They’re here for better reason than the others, but…”
“I think I should like to bind them.”
“Bind them?”
“And see what happens.”
“I know you love your… experiments, but these are human beings and —”
“Scavengers who’ve decided to bring yet more bad energies into my temple.”
“Our temple, Master. The Order’s temple. You can’t just —”
“Your tactics certainly haven’t worked. ‘Just send them around the other side of the planet,’ you say. Well, look! More intruders!”
“Master —”
But the second speaker seems like he’s lit on something exciting. His voice brightens. “Maybe they’ll bring word to the others… Discourage whoever’s sending them here. I dislike being disturbed.”
An avalanche of pops and snaps — laughter?
“Well,” the first speaker says, at last, “I see you’ve made up your mind. I can’t stop you.”
And Din senses nothing, once again.
Pain. Blinding, all-encompassing pain.
Din misses feeling high and non-existent. His tongue lies stiff and cottony in his mouth; he can’t even move his throat enough to groan.
Someone else is moaning, though, a stifled hiss of pain. Din almost can’t hear it over the pain, which doesn’t actually sound like anything but is just so endless and so much that his brain seems to be interpreting the nerve sensations as if they’re deafening.
Everything is dark. No, his eyes are closed. It feels like he’s relearning how his entire body works, but he manages to lift his lids. Everything is too bright, so he drops the sensitivity on his HUD proportionally. He’s on the ground, flat on his back. Fett’s just out of arm’s reach, splayed out. They’ve both been thrown back from the plinth, as if it exploded.
The holocron is gone.
Hell.
“Bet you wish you’d just shot me,” Din says out loud, hoping that getting words out might distract him from the pain.
I’d hoped you know me better than that by now.
Din blanches. It’s an oddly open thing for Fett to say. Has he hurt Fett’s feelings? The thought’s so absurd that Din doesn’t know what to do about it, for a moment. Fett’s entire energy is “could kill you at any time for any reason, and will, no matter who you are.” Exceptions made for Shand, maybe.
But Fett’s still talking, saying, “Don’t tempt me,” and that’s more like what Din expects, so he lets it go.
Din seems slightly better off than Fett, who’s still out flat on his back. But Din’s pushing himself to his feet, slowly, involving the inexplicable screech of every single cell in his body. His bad knee tweaks, and the familiar pain grounds him.
This new sensation doesn’t feel like pain, now that he has more time to think about it. He’s felt the harsh burn of a blade, the throb of bruises and broken bones, the tingling sting of burns, the itch of flesh knitting back together — every type of pain there is to feel, really.
This is… something else. It’s just so unfamiliar that his body doesn’t seem to know how else to interpret it.
“Can you get up?” Din asks.
Fett doesn’t respond, for a moment. Don’t make me ask for a hand. The words sound overwhelmed, frustrated, despairing.
Din just rolls his eyes. Fett must be injured. He’s not normally this self-pitying.
“Holocron?” Fett rasps.
“No sign of it.” Anywhere. It’s not just gone — it’s suspiciously gone. Jedi sorcery. Ugh.
Din steps across Fett, grabs both arms, and pulls him up, then crouches to meet Boba’s gaze. If his eyes are open, under there. He seems out of it. How would Fett react if Din tried to take off his helmet?
Din’s hands almost lift, but he stops himself. Not for the first time, Din regrets the space he’s created between them. This would be easier if he knew where they stand.
You just left. How was I supposed to take it?
Concussed, maybe, with an abrupt change in subject like that, out of nowhere. Maybe Din shouldn’t have moved him. Not the sort of thing Fett would bring up out of the blue, most days.
“Don’t think we should be talking about that right now,” Din says, shoving aside a flash of guilt.
Fett just tilts the helmet at him.
Besides. Din couldn’t have stayed. That’s not how things work.
Fett had promised to help him ensure Grogu’s safety, and that had been done. Without that pledge between them, Fett and Shand hadn’t turned frosty toward him; if anything, they’d grown fonder. Their welcome stopped feeling like a business deal.
And in Din’s life, that means debt. Everyone wants something eventually. Just look at Bo-Katan and her futile crusade. Good riddance to the darksaber, is all Din has to say.
So, yes, he left. Karga pulled some strings to get him back in the guild; Cara did something probably even less legal to get his New Republic warrants wiped. He stays in touch with the Jedi, visits the kid, looks for the covert.
He’s putting his life back how it used to be, as much as he can. After Grogu, after losing the covert and breaking the Creed, it’s hard — but the routine pointlessness of it all soothes him. Surviving is all he knows how to do, really.
I understand, Fett says, echoing those same quiet words he’d spoken when Din had told him of his plans to take the dirtbike and gun it out of Tattooine. He understands what? Din doesn’t even understand, totally.
He wanted to stay.
He’s planning on going back, even.
Eventually. For work.
But right now, they both need to get out of here.
“Up you go,” Din says, hoisting Boba to his feet. He feels lighter than usual, enough to be worrisome. Din will have to comm Shand, make sure she makes sure that Fett’s eating properly. He’ll need to sit still and take time to recover after this disaster, if he feels even half as bad as Din.
“Alright, alright, stop hovering,” Fett gripes. “And stop calling me Fett. ’S Boba.”
Din hasn’t called him anything. Definitely concussed. But he’s not going to argue the point. He’s going to get them both out of here.
They can figure everything else out after.