Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s been a long time since Boba’s been in the worm’s old palace, but it hasn’t changed much. Some of the rooms have been left to gather sand and dust; the halls and lower levels seem, impossibly, even darker and grimier than they ever were under Jabba. He doesn’t know what the kark Fortuna’s been playing at all these years, but clearly spending a few credits here and there on cleaning the place hadn’t been high on his list of priorities.

From the lingering smell in the throne room and the state of the nearest few rooms, Boba’s actually pretty sure that all of the credits he’d managed to scrounge as Jabba’s outfit crumbled were spent on spice and slaves. 

“When d’you reckon this place was last aired out?” Boba asks, lip curling as he pokes at a dubious stain with his gaderffii . Fennec shrugs without looking up from the datapad she’s tapping at.

“How old was Jabba?” She replies, and when Boba can’t offer anything more conclusive than a grunt, continues, “because it was probably around then.”

She’s not wrong , Boba thinks distastefully. Even when he’d first started entertaining the idea of carving out this part of the galaxy for himself, he’d known that it wouldn’t be easy. Somehow, he hadn’t anticipated that his first real challenge would be making the palace habitable. At this point, he isn’t even worried about making it pleasant. He’ll be satisfied if they can manage to clear out the ventilation shafts. Fennec hadn’t said anything when she’d returned from poking around the place, but he’s pretty sure he’d heard something scuttling in there.

Maybe the beroya had the right idea after all, holing up in Mos Eisley with the mechanic that had scruffed him like a misbehaving tooka almost as soon as he’d stepped planetside. She’d offered Fennec a room as well, before looking Boba up and down and very deliberately not extending the invitation to him. He has no idea if she recognises him from his days working for Jabba - she sounds and acts like she’s Tatooine born-and-bred, so maybe. 

Or could be it’s just the armour that she’d recognised. If she knows the beroya as well as she seems to, it stands that she’d have seen him carrying the armour back from Mos Pelgo.

Not that it makes much difference to Boba which it is. He’d been planning to sleep on the Slave I for a while anyway - at least until they’ve secured the palace enough that he can manage to do more than doze without full beskar’gam.

Fennec hasn’t told him where she’s planning to sleep, but he won’t be surprised if he wakes up to find her curled tight on the bunk across from him. It had taken an alarmingly short period of time for them to grow used to sharing their space; for a notorious mercenary and a cranky old bounty hunter, at least. Now, Boba finds it difficult to rest if he can’t hear the light puffs of her breath, and he suspects it’s the same for her.

For so many years, the Slave had been silent except for the muted rumble of the engines. His bounties had almost always been frozen or dead, and the few that he did have to bring in warm were typically stunned to within an inch of their lives.

But that had been before the Solo job. Before the sarlacc.

Boba doesn’t know if it was the acid in his ears, or something about the sarlacc itself, but it had been completely silent in the pit. Enough that he’d started hearing things before long, that his own thoughts pounded like drums against his skull. He still isn’t sure if he’d screamed himself hoarse, or if his throat had been damaged by the acid in the air that he breathed. He never heard himself scream, but he knows that he did. 

It had been a few weeks after he’d dragged himself inch by miserable inch back onto the sand that he had finally managed to push a few words out of his wrecked throat. A few weeks after that before he’d managed anything coherent. Not that it had mattered much to the Tuskens that had taken him in; even when he could speak, they’d seemed content to sign everything.

He’s actually a little surprised that Kryze managed to recognise him from his voice alone. None of the other clones he’s met had the same rasp in their throat.

At least the layout of the place hasn’t changed much. It’s easy enough to navigate the spiralling halls, even in the dim light let in by the narrow shuttered windows - he finds his way to the storerooms, to the old guest quarters, then the staff and slave bunks. He doesn’t linger there long - most of them will be repurposed eventually, but he doesn’t need to figure it out just yet. There’s plenty of work to be done first.

The kitchens are a little better - most of the food is preserved and though there’s a thick layer of dust over the worktops, as far as he can tell everything is still functional. He opens a few cupboards and scowls at the signs of infestation, before slamming them shut and moving on.

There are rooms that were used for meetings and conducting the business that even Jabba’s workers considered unsavoury; they’ve been unused for so long that the doors seize and grind when he punches in his old codes. Fortuna clearly hasn’t bothered to update his security, and just as clearly hasn’t bothered to use any of his resources to their potential. 

Boba has no idea how he managed to survive as long as he did on Jabba’s throne.

He retraces his steps slowly, lingering in the corridors not through any sense of nostalgia for the kriffing place, but rather a reluctance to stop moving. The temperature has started to drop rapidly as the suns sink below the horizon, and every part of him aches in protest. He’s never felt as old as he does in a place like this.

When he finally makes his way back to the throne room, the beroya is sat beside Fennec at the bar, his back facing the wall so that he can watch the empty room. His helmet tilts as Boba walks in; Fennec salutes him with her empty glass.

“Mos Eisley too rowdy for you?” Boba asks at length. He hadn’t expected to see the beroya for a while; if at all. Their obligations to one another are finished. The contracts are done. According to the code of a hunter, the events should be left behind them in favour of the next job. Whatever that may be.

“Too quiet,” the beroya corrects, dry as the desert wind. It doesn’t, Boba notes with some interest, sound like a lie. A misdirection, maybe, or just the truth cloaked in the wry humour he’s beginning to recognise.

Boba wonders when he last slept planetside. He wonders when he last slept without the child close enough to hear.

Fennec snorts.

"Well you've come to the right place," she says flatly, gesturing at the empty room. Their voices echo a little bit on the carved stone.

The beroya shifts his shoulders minutely in what could be a stifled laugh, or sob, or just the beginnings of an abandoned shrug. Boba's out of practice in reading the body language of a fully armoured Mandalorian, though he suspects that this one would be particularly hard to read anyway. Unless it's about the kid, he seems to keep himself to himself.

“There is work to do here,” he says; Boba grimaces at the reminder. “I don’t have a ship of my own anymore, and I know Peli would never let me near any of her work, but I need… something. To keep me busy.”

It’s a desire that Boba’s familiar with - to work, and keep working until he passes out, facedown on the nearest flat surface, too exhausted to dream. He can understand that. The beroya has earnt whatever will bring him peace, and if cleaning out the old palace does that for him, then Boba at least respects the man enough to leave him to his own devices.

Fennec, apparently, does not.

"What does your mechanic friend think of that? She seemed set on making you sleep at least a full day." And eat half his weight in bantha meat, and drink enough spotchka to knock out a rancor.

The beroya huffs. 

"We'll find out come morning," he says. Boba thinks he might be smiling a little, under that bucket of his; small and soft. He doesn't know what the beroya looks like - even Fennec hadn't seen more than the back of his head - but for a second, Boba can picture that smile so clearly.

His head tilts a little and Boba thinks his smile must stretch a bit wider, a bit more lively.

"You might want to lock your doors and stay out of her way," he advises, as though Boba’s the sort of person that would sleep anywhere unsecured and unarmoured. Fennec throws her head back and laughs, startlingly loud. Boba shakes his head and adjusts his weight, grimacing at the cooling sweat that has stuck his kute to his skin. It’s late enough that he can hear the distant calls of Tatooine’s nightlife over the dunes, even with his audial turned down low.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Boba says; he jerks his head at the door he’s just come through. “Stay here tonight, or don’t. Not like we don’t have the space.”

The Mandalorian doesn’t take up much room. On the Slave, he’d tucked himself masterfully into every corner and alcove, curled up smaller than his armour should allow. Boba could’ve almost forgot he was there. It’s strange to think of, even now - he isn’t a small man, nor is he unassuming in that pure beskar’gam of his, but he’s unobtrusive. He shifts himself to fit around the people that already exist in a space, and what’s more, he does it with such practiced fluidity that Boba wonders if he’s still aware he’s doing it.

He’s a man that will accept help but not ask for it. Now, coming to the palace, seeking work, he is not asking for help - but he will accept it. 

If Boba offers.

“Some of the doors won’t open anymore,” he says, and pauses, waiting for a reaction - any reaction. Disappointment, he expects, that he isn’t asking for anything more. Maybe the beroya thinks Boba pities him, or is being patronising. In some ways, he'd be right. Boba lost his father years ago, a lifetime ago; and yes he'd been too young, and yes he'd been angry, but that's the way of things. Children lose their parents - parents shouldn't lose their children.

The galaxy doesn't work that way though, and Boba keeps his thoughts to himself. They'd be unwelcome, he's sure. 

Besides, the Mandalorian's child isn't dead - just lost to him . Boba doesn't know if the man realises yet what it means for a Jedi to take a child; doesn't know if he understands that the moments they shared on the cruiser were their last.

It's good, he thinks, that the Mandalorian was able to see his child, at least once. He doesn't know what he'd do for a chance to say goodbye to his father, to get one last look at the face that's stared back at him from a mirror all his life and finally be able to see all the ways Jango wore his expressions differently. To catalogue the lines at the corners of his eyes and the creases in his cheeks, and see all the ways age and time has left them so changed.

Boba didn't have a chance to say goodbye to his father - he had kept his eyes squeezed shut when he had to remove the helmet from his then-cold head.

Yes, Boba pities the Mandalorian; almost as much as he envies him.

If the beroya has any opinion at all about the work he’s being given, he keeps it to himself. He stands, rolling his shoulders slowly until he’s settled into his usual easy stance - never truly relaxed, never truly at rest, but always balanced and ready to move. It’s a warrior’s stance more than a soldier’s; Boba’s lived enough and seen enough of the galaxy’s underbellies to recognise the difference.

Or it could be the stance of a feral massiff, he corrects himself as the Mandalorian stalks forward. Boba doesn’t falter - just lets him come as close as he likes, scuffing the sand beneath his boots.

It would be a shame to spook him now.

“I can get you set up with access codes,” Boba says, beckoning the Mandalorian to follow him. After a moment of... not hesitation, exactly, but something, he does. “You’ll be able to go anywhere Fennec and me can go. Once the palace is up and running again, I mean.”

It isn't an invitation to stay - not in so many words. Boba's pretty sure the beroya isn't the sort of person to feel obligated to accept a direct offer, any more than he's the sort of person to feel obligated to refuse. It's just… a statement. A truth. Boba will give him the codes, and Mando will be able to go wherever he pleases. What he does with that privilege is his own business.

The beroya is silent for a moment as he considers that.

"Thank you," he says at last, falling into step just close enough behind Boba that he can see him without having to turn to look. Strangely considerate, for a bounty hunter - or not so strange, from what little Boba’s seen of him. Though Boba doesn’t doubt his efficiency, or ruthlessness on the field, the beroya doesn’t strike him as the sort to carry that cruelty with him off of a job.

He’s a better man than Boba, that’s for karking sure; the thought doesn’t bite at him like it might have when he was very young, but it doesn’t sit comfortably on his shoulders either. Shrugging it off as he walks, Boba fiddles with the vambrace he’s hooked up to the palace’s systems. It’ll take a bit of time to get everything functioning the way he likes it instead of how the old slug had things set up, but he at least still knows his way around the security programs. Not as well as Fennec, who has an uncanny talent for sniffing out the weakness in any given code or physical security protocols, but he can get by.

The beroya only has to be given the codes once to memorise them - Boba isn’t sure if it’s a natural talent, or something he’s trained himself to do over the long years hunting, but he can admire it either way. It doesn’t take long to show him around the areas of the palace that are still usable, and Boba trusts that he won’t get lost on his way back to the doors he’d pointed out on the way through. 

Trusting him not to go poking around the rest of the place is… a work in progress. Boba hasn’t survived this long by believing the best of people; but then again, the Mandalorian has shown himself to be honourable. 

Besides - Fennec likes him. That, as much as anything, eases some of the tension in Boba’s shoulders when he leaves the Mandalorian tinkering and heads back to the Slave for the night.

Fennec is already there, curled up on the other bunk, eyes shut but still alert.

“We could do worse,” she says, without bothering to look at him. Boba hums, low and thoughtful. It doesn’t matter if they could do worse than keeping the beroya around - the question is, can they do any better?

The next morning, when he finds Mando asleep, still half-in the ventilation shaft in the kitchen, covered buy’ce to boots in grit and dust but with the system rumbling quietly behind him, he can’t help but wonder if the answer’s no.

Boba doesn’t know what wakes him - nightmares, or a swarm of sand bats, or just the sudden shooting pains through the stump of his leg - but he comes to bathed in sweat and panting. He drops his head back against the pillow and groans. The bed is the softest he’s used in a long time; as much a necessity as an indulgence, given how easily irritated his scars are. His heart thuds hard enough that he can feel himself shake with each beat - in a way, it’s almost reassuring. A reminder that he made it out, that he’s still alive. The blood roars in his ears, and that’s good too. Every one of his nightmares has been silent since the sarlacc.

The chrono by his side blinks in the dim room, and he squints at it as though that will somehow make the numbers clearer. The suns aren’t far off rising, he thinks, but it’s still too early for the day to start in earnest. The palace itself will be almost empty - in Jabba’s day, the thrum of activity had only intensified during the cold nights, but now the visitors disappear back into the sands as soon as the suns drop over the horizon.

Pushing himself slowly to his feet is an ordeal that Boba is long used to. He’s getting old - older than his father was when he died, older than clones were ever intended to be. He doesn’t know how many of the aches that run down to his bones are from a life of hard use, and how many are simply a design flaw.

At least he knows exactly what caused the tightness of his skin, he thinks bitterly - the patches that are so sensitive that some days even the ventilated air is painful, and the others that have no feeling at all. 

Today isn’t the worst, but it sure as shit isn’t the best either.

Boba tugs his robes slowly over his shoulder, hissing between his teeth as they brush against his lower back. Between the misfiring jetpack burning a hole in his old kute and the acid that ate its way down through layers of muscle, the scars there run far deeper than the rest. He can still move this morning, still bend far enough to tug on his boots, but he pays for it with a vicious twinge that almost makes him shout. 

Catching his breath doesn’t take as long as it had when the wounds were fresh, but the room is still a little brighter by the time he lifts his head from his hands.

A little brighter, but still too early for the day’s court to start filtering in. Boba can slip through the silent corridors like a ghost, armed with only a single blaster, two blades and his gaderffii - he may have guards at the outer doors, but despite what people may say about him, he’s not arrogant enough to wander around completely vulnerable. Even at the very beginning, before word got around that the palace was under new management - when it was just Fennec, the beroya, and Boba haunting the passages, when he still couldn't bring himself to sleep in any of the rooms in the palace - he hadn’t gone anywhere unarmed.

It’s a long way from his rooms to the kitchen. The elevator takes him most of the way down, and it’s easy to dismiss the prickling of his skin at being in such a tight space. His skin prickles more often than not these days, for one reason or another. It’s worth it, to spare his leg the endless, gently sloping corridors.

As soon as the doors open, Boba strides out as best he can manage, robe sweeping behind him. It isn’t often he gets a chance to sit and enjoy his breakfast uninterrupted by some business or other. No matter how hard he tries, somehow his problems always seem to be awake before him - at least the restless night and rough morning have given him the chance to drink an entire cup of caf before troubles and bodies start to pile up.

The halls are quiet, but something still has Boba’s shoulders drawing tight, hand drifting towards his hip. He doesn’t need to lay a hand on his blaster - he’s a quicker draw than just about any being that might try to get the drop on him, and he knows it - but the feel of it against the pads of his fingers is familiar and reassuring. Moving slowly, he lets the rough stone swallow the sound of his footsteps, head tilted to one side as he scans the hall for any sign that something’s out of place. There’s nothing obvious - but then, anyone good enough to get past his guards wouldn’t leave something obvious.

So, he looks a little harder. Looks for things that wouldn’t strike him as strange. Strains his ears until he catches a faint rumbling . When he pauses to listen, the sound doesn’t stop and doesn’t seem to get any closer - like whatever it is isn’t aware of his presence. Like it isn’t coming for him. It isn't as reassuring as it should be.

He follows the sound to the kitchen, and it isn’t until he’s stood stock-still just out of sight of the room that he finally settles enough to recognise the sound of the extractor fans over the ovens and Tusken-style fire pits.

Hand still brushing against his blaster - a precaution, nothing more - he steps forward to face the poor soul stupid enough to intrude on his breakfast.

Boba doesn’t know what he’s expecting to see when he rounds the corner - none of his morning staff really cook, and there’s no way Fennec’s awake this early when she’s not on a job - but it isn’t the beroya, staring down into a pot that Boba’s fairly certain he’s never seen before. Last he’d heard, the Mandalorian had been tracking a lead on a bounty for Boba somewhere out past Kashyyyk.

He’ll need to have a word with his guards, and Fennec later - he hadn’t even realised the beroya was back in the system, but there’s no way it had escaped Fennec’s notice. Which can only mean she had deliberately kept it from him, for reasons known only to her. It’s something he’ll have to deal with soon, he knows; for now he leans against the arched entrance and watches.

“Malnova better not be in there. She still owes me,” he says eventually, a little disappointed when the Mandalorian doesn't even tense at the sound of his voice. Then again, with his helmet on he has the advantage of an audial turned up high, and thermal imaging. 

Sneaking up on a Mando is hard, Boba knows. Sneaking up on a beroya is a good way to get killed.

This one doesn't pull a blaster on him. He doesn't even bother to turn when he acknowledges Boba's presence with the slightest tilt of his head.

"She isn't," he says, and then blows out a hard breath that Boba thinks may be a laugh, garbled through the vocoder. "Not enough fat. She'd be too tough for tiingilar."

Boba’s breath leaves him in a surprised rush of air - quiet, but not too quiet to escape the beroya’s notice, he’s sure - and he considers the pot in a new light. It’s a little small for a traditional tiingilar, but still probably too big for the number of people it’ll be feeding - the contents'll go bad long before the broth needs replenishing. There aren’t many beings that genuinely enjoy Mandalorian cooking.

He doesn’t point it out. The beroya has to know.

Instead, he crosses his arms over his chest and steps closer to the counter, surveying the scene. Everything is neatly contained in a space barely wider than the Mandalorian himself; spices stacked in pots labelled in spiky Mando’a, rehydrated vegetables and cubed meats that the Mandalorian is slotting into the conservator for later. Some of the ingredients Boba recognises - some he doesn’t. Some he thinks must have been picked up on the hunter’s recent jobs, and some look like they were bought in the smoky marketplace in Mos Eisley. He’s pretty sure he can see a couple of hubba gourds, and he wonders idly if they’ll be any easier to eat once they’ve been in the pot for a day. At least he won’t be able to taste them through the heat, if the beroya knows what he’s doing. Even after so long with the Tuskens out in the Dune Sea, he'd never managed to get over their woody bitterness.

The Mandalorian starts picking through the spices, throwing some into a cracked bowl, grinding seeds down to a powder before throwing more in whole. Boba can feel his nose start to itch already, and he isn’t even close enough to smell it. He grins to himself.

“If she’s not in the pot, then where?” He asks idly. The question is a formality at best - a beroya doesn’t return empty-handed. It’s as true for the nameless Mandalorian as it was for Boba, as it was for his father. The answering hum is flattened by the vocoder, but Boba can read the stiffness in the way he lifts one shoulder.

"Still on the ship - had to get her in carbonite. Kept trying to shoot me in my sleep." Boba snorts - he's sure the beroya is as likely to sleep with a live bounty on his ship as Boba himself used to be.

"She get in a good hit, then?" He asks, reaching out to rap his knuckles against the pauldron that's sitting just a bit too high to be natural.

"A lucky one."

"A lucky hit is a good hit."

The beskar of the Mandalorian's armour sings as he taps his knife against the opposite pauldron.

"She was aiming for the other one," he says, and Boba is startled into a bark of laughter. There aren't many beings that are brave enough to mock him to his face - even fewer brave enough to do so as blandly as the beroya.

"I'll have Fennec arrange something for her when she wakes up," Boba says. A few more hours in carbonite won't make any difference one way or the other - to him or to Malnova. 

"She might do for haast'agol," Mando suggests; Boba is mostly sure he isn't serious.

"Or bilerat, " he says lightly. "She's about foul enough."

It's sometimes hard to know what the Mandalorian is thinking - body language can only say so much without an expression to read - but there's no mistaking the disgusted scoff, even through the vocoder. Boba sets his elbows against the counter and leans back, head tipped to watch the stew's progress from the corner of his eye. It exposes more of his neck than he is usually comfortable with, but Mando has that sort of effect on people.

When he's not hunting them, anyway.

"Not a fan, I take it," Boba says, humour seeping into the edges of his words. It's nice to be able to relax with someone he knows won't just laugh at his jokes because they're scared of what he'll do if they don't.

Well, there's always Fennec, but she's invariably quicker with a punchline than him. 

"Have you ever tried bilerat?" The Mandalorian asks, and even through the visor, Boba can feel his scathing look. He shrugs lightly.

"Smelt it a couple times - that was enough for me." 

Jango had kept a small amount of it in a thermochurn at the back of the Slave. The few times they'd been out in the black long enough to turn to their food stores, Boba'd always been given dry and crumbling packs of ration bars, while his father grimaced his way through a bowl of bilerat. Boba doesn't know if it was cheaper than the rations, or if even something as disgusting as it smelt was still welcome when it was one of the few things Jango still had that reminded him of the time before. He didn't understand enough about his father then to ask. Even if he had, he doesn't know if he'd have been brave enough to.

"We used to eat it a lot when I was first found," the beroya says distantly. "We were always moving. Started to settle in a few times, on different places, but it wasn't until Nevarro that we stayed anywhere long enough to - that we felt secure enough to start a tiingilar pot."

Kamino hadn’t been like that. Kamino had been what Boba knew, but it hadn’t ever given him the sense of relief that he can feel in the Mandalorian’s words. There’d been a pot kept simmering by the Cuy’val Dar, he remembers, but Boba’d spent little time with them. He tries to remember it now; how it had made his nose burn until he couldn’t smell the too-clean halls of the training facilities anymore, tries to remember his father’s warm laughter as the heat-tears gathered at the corners of his eyes, and can only hear his own laugh, left hoarse by time and acid.

He swallows, and takes a deep breath.

Tatooine isn’t anything like Kamino, and it isn’t anything like a covert - at least, not from the little the beroya has spoken of them. There’s no hiding, out in the Dune Sea, and if they’re scraping out as much of a living as they can from the sands, well - so is everyone else. There’s no order here, beyond the law of the desert, and the only ones that truly understand that are the Tuskens.

Tiingilar is a sign of peacetime, Jango had said once.  It's not, Boba thinks, a dish well-suited to Tatooine.

He watches as the Mandalorian skims the top of the stew away, watches the short steps he takes between the fire-pit and counter, the way he keeps his arms in tight and moves like he's always braced for the floor to begin shaking beneath him. It takes a few seconds for it to click.

"Not much room for a galley on the Razor Crest?" 

"Not much room for anything on the Crest after I had the carbonite unit put in," the beroya points out. "And the new ship isn't much better."

The 'new' ship would have a lot more room if he would just let someone take a good look at it and strip out all the unnecessary furnishings, Boba doesn't say. For some reason, he's determined to do it alone, in the little free time he allows himself. Boba hasn't asked why - Fennec has, but so far hasn't received an answer that's satisfied her. It's a favourite complaint of hers, on the nights she crawls into his bed with stiff shoulders and a bottle of spotchka to share.

"I would've given you something better, if you'd waited another week," he says instead; an old and pointless argument.

“I -”

“Didn’t want anything better, didn’t want to wait, and didn’t want to be in my debt,” Boba finishes, a breath faster than the Mandalorian. He smiles, small and wry, when the blank visor turns to face him for a long moment. Mando continues to stare as Boba shakes his head. “It wouldn't be a debt, Mando. Call it an investment, if you like. A good ship’ll get you where I need you safer and faster than the junker you’ve got. Let you outrun Kryze, too, when she comes sniffing around.”

“I don’t need - I don’t want to outrun her,” the beroya says, suddenly tense again, biting off the end of his words until the Basic sounds almost as sharp as Mando’a. “She can come, she can challenge me for the kriffing thing, she can have it. It’s hers more than it’s mine, anyway.”

Boba holds his hands up peaceably, before daring to say, “that isn’t true, and you know it. So does she.”

Even before he’s finished, Mando is shaking his head, shoulders curved in like he’s braced for a blow he knows will shatter his beskar.

“It can’t - I’m not the right person for this,” he says - Boba can hear the desperation even through his vocoder. “I don’t know what she thinks I... I don’t know how to -” He trails off, fists clenched at his side. He doesn’t lash out; his frustration, though thick enough that Boba reckons it could choke him beneath his helmet, is quiet. Contained. 

“I’ve never been to Mandalore,” he confesses quietly, after he’s forced his hands open and started stacking his used bowls in the kitchen’s sonic. “Never met any Mandalorians outside of the network of coverts, before Kryze. I’m a beroya, that’s - all.”

Mostly, Boba wears his helmet for the protection it offers him. Sometimes, it’s nice to know that the stares he gathers are because of the familiar silhouette of his armour, and not the scars he’s collected. It’s intimidation, and security, and comfort all at once. 

Now, he just feels cracked open by the expressionless stare of the Mandalorian’s visor . He isn’t used to being the only one with his face exposed, isn’t used to being on the back foot of any conversation. He doesn’t wish he could see Mando’s face, but he does wish there was something to even the playing field, at least a little. 

Turning away, he stares down into the tiingilar pot like it’ll be able to tell him what he needs to say. It looks like it’s been simmering for hours already, and a part of him wonders when the beroya got back; why he didn’t come to find Boba or Fennec right away. Why this was the first place he thought to come, why this was more important to him than collecting his payment, or finally catching a few hours sleep uninterrupted by the ship’s alerts.

The steam coming off the pot catches him at the back of the throat, and he wants to cough with it. The smell is wrong. Or - no, it isn’t that it’s wrong, but there are differences. Less acidic than Boba remembers, and spicier too - strange enough to his senses that when he closes his eyes, he doesn’t see millions of faces identical to his own through a viewing port. It’ll take a few days for the flavours to settle, and probably still won’t taste right for a few weeks after that. Tiingilar was always best seasoned by the pot’s memory of the broth.

“From one beroya to another,” Boba says, dragging himself away and nudging the Mandalorian towards the table, where he hovers before taking a slow and cautious seat. “You’ve started in the right place.”

Mando looks around the room in an exaggerated sweep.

“Tatooine? Or a kitchen?” He asks flatly. Boba allows himself a little smile as he rummages through the cupboards for a couple of clean bowls. In a more formal setting, they would serve themselves, but like this Mando is a guest at his table.

“An alliance,” he corrects, and sets Mando’s bowl down in front of him. He doesn’t turn to look when he hears the hiss of the helmet’s seal - keeps his eyes focused on his own bowl, and on the table as he sits down beside the beroya. In his periphery, he can see Mando lift the bowl to his mouth, sees the edge of a stubbled jaw, and he takes a quick gulp of his own so that he doesn’t look any harder and ruin their fragile truce before it’s begun.

Sweat starts to bead on his upper lip and at his temples.

“Is that what we’re doing? Making an alliance?” Without his vocoder, the Mandalorian’s voice is soft enough that it could be mistaken for sweet. Boba shrugs and takes another mouthful. His nose is burning.

"There are worse people I could ally myself with," he says, like they're not serious. "And I'd like to think I already have some of your trust."

"You do," Mando says, disarmingly genuine.

Boba accepts that easily enough. If the beroya didn't trust him, he wouldn't have stayed as long as he has - not without a contract to keep him there. 

He probably would have put a vibroblade in Boba's gut already, too. Mandalorian problem-solving may not be the most original in the galaxy, but it is efficient.

"Tatooine's useful for most of the trade routes around the Outer Rim, and the New Republic have had about as much luck taming it as their many predecessors," Boba says. "Until you can do something about Mandalore, or at least one of the other planets in the sector, this is as good a place as any to start a rallying call."

The beroya hums shortly, and shakes his head once with a rueful chuckle.

"Kryze'll hate it."

"Even better."

"And what would you get from it? Besides getting on her last nerve."

Boba bares his teeth as he leans forward on the table. Even he isn't sure how much is posturing, and how much is the need to take deep, cooling breaths of the morning air. Mando makes his food much hotter than Jango ever had.

It's good. Doesn't let him get caught up in his thoughts.

"Can't a man just help his friend, and piss off a princess while he's at it?"

"A man? Sure. But you already said you're here as a beroya, and I'm not a fool. There's always something else."

There's no point in trying to defend himself, not when the Mandalorian is right. It isn't too much of a blow to Boba's pride to admit it.

The truth is, as it stands, Mando's getting the much better end of the deal. He doesn't have much to offer Boba that he wasn't already giving freely; a claim to the throne of a dead planet, a laser sword he doesn't want and Boba has no interest in, a ship that was Boba's in the first place.

“Call it an investment, if you like,” Boba says again. It’s not that he’s hopeful, whatever Fennec says. An alliance with the Mand'alor would be useful, would lend him a certain legitimacy that he'd struggle to keep without it - but he doesn't need it. This is just one of the balls he’s trying to keep in the air, and if it happens to be the one he’s pinning the most on, the one that would suit him best if it all turns out the way he’d like, well that’s his business and no-one else's. 

Mando is - he’s good. Down to his bones, ingrained in a way that Boba hadn’t really thought was real since he was ten years old, Mando is good. And that may not mean anything on a wider scale, on a galactic scale - a good man is no guarantee of a good ruler, he knows - but it means something to Boba. Even if it's just that he knows the beroya will stab him in the front instead of the back, he’ll take it.

But he doesn’t think it’ll come to that. Mando doesn’t seem the type to share a meal with someone he’s actively planning to shiv.

The Mandalorian thinks this over for a moment. 

With Boba’s eyes still fixed on the side of his face, he lifts his helmet, this time as high as his nose, to tip his head back and finish off the rest of his bowl. Boba chooses not to focus on the wispy curls around his neck, or the patchy stubble, and instead concentrates on how he isn’t even flushed or sweating after polishing off the tiingilar. Infuriating bastard.

“An investment, then,” he agrees finally, holding out a hand that Boba takes and shakes once. The leather of his gloves is supple with age - Boba wonders if his hands are the same, worn and soft. “An alliance.”

“Over sha’kajir, no less,” Boba says, and furiously stifles his wince as he drains the last dregs of his bowl. 

“How traditional,” Mando says, and now Boba can see the smile, just as small and soft as he’d thought it would be. He turns away slightly, taps his fingers restlessly against his helmet like he’s thinking. Boba doesn’t interrupt for a while - lets him gather his thoughts together, and doesn’t draw attention to the fact that he can still see more of Mando’s face than he’s ever been shown before. His mouth presses thin, carving out lines into cheeks that have been weathered by time and expressions no-one saw. His jaw works silently.

It isn’t traditional, not really. None of Mando’s traditions are Boba’s, and the few traditions that Boba still clings to seem small in comparison. But -

“Din. Djarin,” Mando says; Boba raises his brows, mouth parted around a question, before Mando spits out the words he’s been chewing over. “My name, it’s - Din.”

But sha’kajir is traditionally a meal between equals; enemies, or allies, or friends. Boba knows more about the beroya - about Din - than he’s ever known about anyone that isn’t a mark, or Fennec. Din knows both more and less about Boba than he’s ever said aloud. 

“Jat’urci, Din,” he says at last, and reaches out to clasp a hand around Din’s neck. Even among clan it would be a familiar gesture, but Din doesn’t push him away. His shoulders slump, and he folds easily when Boba nudges him sideways, until his forehead is pressed against the cool beskar over Din’s temple. 

This time, when Din huffs a laugh, Boba hears it clearly. It’s rusty - unpracticed.

“Su’cuy, Boba,” he replies; and neither of them move until both suns are high in the sky.