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He finds Organa strangling Jabba with the chain he had put around her neck, and while he has to admire her grit, strangling a Hutt is almost impossible.
Boba shoots the slug twice, once through each eye. He feels a vicious satisfaction as the Hutt’s slimy Force Signature sputters and dies.
“Why?”
Organa is staring at him, incredulity written all over her face. “You just...you just... why?”
Boba hesitates for only a moment.
“For my mother.”
For Ben’buir, with her copper hair and warm hugs, who had sat with him at night and sung songs from all over the galaxy for him. Who had managed to break the dar’Jetti’s hold on Jan’buir’s mind and so save his life. Who had loved fiercely and openly, cherishing each moment, but content to let them go. Jan’buir had never been able to be soft and gentle. He had lost too much, had been burned too many times, and his pain had made him harder, rather than kinder like his riduur. Ben’buir would listen to his tales and indulge his fancies, even admitting that she spoiled him.
She was too good for the Fetts, with their stained hands and their dark souls. But she had loved Jango, had married him by accident long ago and kept her word, had scolded him and kicked him around Kamino and made him claim the vode. And she had hugged Boba the first time she saw him, and had taught him to listen to the Manda and to use it, how to fight with a lightsaber and had loved him as much as if he were her own child. She didn’t care about the blood on their hands and the shadows in their souls. She loved them in spite of it, and with her there, a little light had shone into Jan’buir, and Boba loved her all the more for that.
“For my siblings.” The vode, dead and gone now for years, trapped inside their own heads. Fox and Wolffe, who fought like cats and dogs and bit people and who had torn out a longneck’s throat when they tried to decomission Rex. Kote, who shielded them with his own body and who had despaired of keeping Ben’buir alive.
And Jana-Ru, with Ben’buir’s copper hair and Jan’buir’s eyes, and lashings of Mandokarla. Jana-Ru, who had been brought up on Tattooine and who could barely remember the father killed in the Empire’s rise. Jana-Ru who had run away and joined the Rebellion only a few years before. Who was just like Ben’buir.
Boba sighed and grabbed a long coat from a fleeing passerby. “Here, put this on.” He shoved it over Organa’s shoulders and began tugging her to where Skywalker and Solo were staging their escape.
Unfortunately, Organa refused to move. “You’re Fett. Everyone knows you’re a clone.”
Boba shrugged. “Family is more than blood. My mother wasn’t my dam, but she was my mother. And she wouldn’t have wanted me to let you die.”
Honestly, he would have shot most people by this stage, but he had promised Ben’buir to keep the di’kutla Skywalkers safe, and he would make good on that promise.
After all, they were kind of like his cousins.
Grudgingly, she went, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He had kept his promise.
Something clinked against his wrist.
“Wait.”
She halted, one foot on the barge. Boba held out his hand, and placed a datachip in it.
“Give this to Arla Breen.” His sister had been smart enough to change her name and die her hair, smart enough to remain in the skies rather than on the ground where any Force-enhanced movements would be instantly noted. Boba mentally sighed. She and that boyfriend of hers got into far too much trouble for his liking.
“Who?”
“A pilot in Gold Squadron. Her callsign is Kaital-Manda.”
He didn’t say what he wanted to say, that she was always too thin because finding food on Tattooine was hard, even when Ben’buir would go without food for a week and he would give up most of his own as well, didn’t ask Organa to check that she had eaten that day. He didn’t say that she probably had one of the most disturbing medical records in the Rebellion because she was just that unlucky, didn’t ask if she had been hurt badly recently, or if he needed to punch anyone for his baby sister.
But something about his tone made Organa hesitate and close her hand around the datachip. “I’ll give it to her.”
Some bullshit instinct (one he bets Ben’buir ingrained into him) makes him salute her, hiding a smirk beneath his helmet. She looks like her father, and he cannot ignore the irony of it. Anakin would have been so proud of her. But he can’t be. So Boba will be proud for him.
“K'oyacyi Organa. I won’t be around to shoot Hutts all the time.”
That would be the end of it.
That should be the end of it.
“Wait!”
He turns, tilting his head. Really, he has places to be and people to see/kill because he will get money. He doesn’t really have time for Skywalkers and their drama.
“Come with us.”
“Sorry?” If he wasn’t in his armour, he’d try to clean out his ears to check he hadn’t heard wrong. Ben’buir had always been at him about that.
“Arla. She’s important to you. Come and say whatever you must to her yourself.”
He shouldn’t. He has bounties to collect, money to save so that, when Jana-Ru finally gets bored and leaves the Rebellion, he can pay her medical bills until she gets onto her own feet. He has life to get on with.
But he has a free invitation to see his little baby sister, the last of his aliit, of his vod’e.
This isn’t going to happen again, he is sure.
Why would he pass up a chance to see his sister again? Sure, he needs to earn enough money to pay for her to be patched up once the Rebellion doesn’t do it for them, but he can do that later.
Boba hasn’t seen his sister in three years, other than sporadic holocalls. He misses her desperately, the last he has of his buire and his vode. The last family he has.
So he accepts.
Jana-Ru is worth an uncomfortable ride to the Rebellion’s latest base.
Jana-Ru is worth almost anything, even if her boyfriend is much less so. Actually, he’d quite happily strangle the infuriating man.
Thankfully, Organa’s smuggler avoids him for most of the trip, but that grace doesn’t extend to when he is waiting impatiently in the hangar bay for Gold Squadron to finish their patrol.
“Fett.”
He rolls his eyes as the smuggler comes up to him.
“Solo.”
“You sold me to Jabba.”
“Business is business. And I didn’t fancy facing my mother if Vader killed me.”
Truth.
Ben’buir would never forgive herself if the man who she had raised killed her son.
“It was nothing personal, Solo.”
Lie.
His buir’s niece deserves better than a common smuggler.
Especially one who reacted to a declaration of love like that.
“I don’t trust you. You may have saved Leia, but that doesn’t make you and I friends.”
Boba shrugs. He doesn’t give a fuck about a jumped up smuggler, even if said smuggler thinks he does.
“I’m not here for you Solo. Nor Skywalker or Organa. I’m here for one thing, and then I’ll leave.”
At that moment, the X-wings come roaring in through the giant doors.
Boba stands quickly from his idle slump against Skywalker’s fighter (the Jedi hasn’t stopped watching him, and it’s actually hilarious).
Jana-Ru jumps down from her fighter, her eyes wide and sparkling with delight.
She always did like flying.
Her helmet’s removal leaves her long hair tumbling down, in a wild mess of curls. They aren’t the bright copper he knows so well, but dark brown, almost black.
It’s a little unsettling to see his bright sister so dark.
She looks like Fox, golden-brown eyes sparkling with wicked delight, hair a little lighter than regulation curling wildly around her face.
Boba swallows hard against the lump in his throat. Jana-Ru can’t know that she looks just like his chaotic, wild, sarcastic, by-the-books, letter-not-spirit-of-the-law brother. How can she? CC-1010 was killed when the Temple was stormed, when she was only a year old.
“Hey, Arla!”
She turns and grins up at Skywalker. “Hello there General!”
Her voice at least hasn’t changed. Boba stifles a chuckle. So much about his baby sister has changed, he had half expected her smooth voice to change as well. But it is as sweet and light as ever.
Skywalker, blunt as his predecessor, motions down to Boba, standing in the shadow.
“Do you know Fett? He insists he knows you.”
His baby sister’s eyes widen, and she shrieks. “Ori’vod!”
In short order, he finds himself with an armful of sister, who has to have bruised herself against the beskar plating of his armour. “I missed you Ori’vod. So much.” She sniffles a little, snuggling against him as though she were still the little tubie who invaded his bed on Tattooine during thunderstorms. Force, has he missed his baby sister. He holds her out at arms length and tsks. “You’re still too thin.”
Jana-Ru laughs a little tearfully. “That’s all you can say?”
He shrugs. “How are you going to get a decent boyfriend if you’re thin as a rake?”
She slaps his bucket off and then pokes his nose. “I have a perfectly lovely boyfriend thank you.” No she really doesn’t. Boba needs to find the di’kut and threaten him again.
“So you’ve stopped flirting with everything that moves then?”
His vod’ika colours a little, and he blinks the tears away. She’s so much like Ben’buir it hurts sometimes. Then the implications of her reactions reach his brain. A sinking feeling appears in the pit of his stomach, and he can almost feel his hair greying. She is really too much like Ben’buir.
“Jana-Ru Kenobi-Fett. What did you do?”
The younger woman mumbles something inaudible, but Boba catches the name ‘Thrawn’ in there. Fuck. Fuck fuckety fuck. No.
He can’t deal with this right now.
“Please tell me you didn’t flirt with Thrawn.”
How that hell did she even get anywhere near that sociopath? She’s a pilot for Force’s sake!
Ugh, Kenobi luck.
“I didn’t flirt with Thrawn?”
Ugh, Kenobis.
If Thrawn had touched her...
“He didn’t! I promise!”
Boba wags his finger in her face. “No snatching thoughts.” Then he thinks again. “Why the fuck were you anywhere near Thrawn?”
She shrugs. “Kenobi luck. I got shot down and trapped on a desert planet with him for four days.”
Ka’ra. He grabs his sister in a hug again.
“I should be angry, but I’m just glad you’re safe little one.”
They are in the middle of the hangar, and literally everyone is staring at a pilot and Boba Fett hugging, and his reputation is getting shredded, but he doesn’t care.
Boba is glad he accepted Organa’s invitation. Jana-Ru obviously needed a hug. He decides Organa is definitely worthy of being aliit. He also decides to enlist in the Rebellion.
Ben’buir will be proud of him for fighting against the Empire, and Jan’buir will be pissed it took him so long. And he can look after Jana-Ru. Obviously she needs it.
Why the fuck is his sister a Kenobi?