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Despite Boba Fett’s best efforts, his brief stint in high security Republic prison changed him. He turned twelve there, scrounging scraps to fill his belly and contending with the great mix of criminals and sociopaths who would gladly fight a child over a toothpick. His mind, which had the plasticity and adaptability that had been successfully deleted from the vast majority of his clone brethren, shaped itself on the experiences and knowledge he gained, and it didn’t care about anything except survival and revenge.
He usually does not dwell on this overmuch except for the way he was robbed of his revenge. Mace Windu died somewhere by some hand, ignominiously falling many, many stories to splatter in the gutter on Coruscant. Boba, in the early days of the Empire, had moments of great frustration that the man who by all rights was his to kill died by another’s hand, and it drove him to consistently go against his instinct of survival by hunting renegade Jedi to the point he beat even that last part of his core into submission.
It made him dangerous because nothing held him back from turning his own body to his greatest weapon. It made him successful because he would hunt anything for anyone, and he could stomach even the worst of the galaxy for the right price. It made him unafraid of living or dying, and that was the greatest shield he could hold in a galaxy that would gladly see him dead.
Holding the bounty puck, staring at the holo image of his father, older and dressed in strange clothes, the readout stating Jango Fett, Human, presumed armed and dangerous, astronomical payout as Darth Vader, the one employer who absolutely never lies about anything and is therefore the most dangerous for it, stands next to him:
“It is him,” Vader is saying as the galaxy cracks into fragments around them. “The Emperor would not waste resources for a rogue clone.”
Boba turns the puck off. He holds it in his hand. He doesn’t point out that a clone would look much older. He feels like he has drowned.
The struggle of Vader’s respirator fills his ears.
“Dead or alive?” he asks from somewhere far, far away.
“Alive,” Vader says, flat and unadorned.
Boba breathes in. Doesn’t choke. Breathes out.
“Alive,” he repeats, and he was always going to agree because no one can run from the Empire; he can stand this because it’s Vader, who is the Empire’s monster; he has no need for deceptions. “I’ll take it.”
There’s two major problems with this job aside from the gigantic elephant in the room.
The first issue is that there is no concrete information as to where Jango Fett currently is. Boba is certain that if Jango had come into contact with any of the bounty hunters active now, he would have been recognised, and Boba would have known his father was alive. The fact a DNA sample could be sourced to confirm who he is and that he was spotted somewhere as close to the Core as Naboo doesn’t match up with anything Boba would expect from his father. He’s been tied to a transport off Naboo, traveling along the Enarc Run, which also makes little sense.
The second issue is that Darth Vader will be accompanying Boba on this job. This is not the first time that they’ve worked together on a job. It’s been happening more and more often in the past several years. The Jedi they’ve mutually hunted have become more sensitive to the Empire and growing Rebellion and, with each year on the run, increasingly dangerous. It is, however, the first time that Boba has been the one with a personal connection to the target rather than Vader.
Boba feels like a part of himself, fragile as glass and usually completely buried, has been hit with a hammer.
“To track a ghost,” he says as Vader and him pour over maps and intelligence in the Devastator, “you have to become the ghost. But he’s not a ghost.”
“He was dead,” Vader says as they sort through the various reports from the Clone War regarding the retrieval and disposal of Jango’s head and body.
“I held his head in my hands,” Boba says, and Vader looks at him; it would be sympathy from anyone else; he wouldn’t be able to stand it. “I saved some of his blood in a vial. I meant to mix it into paints for my armour, but it was stolen from Slave when I went to jail.”
As usual, Vader offers Boba the best of the Empire’s hospitality. Wine and Core world liquors, fresh meals with fragrant meat and side dishes, a full bath and lush bedding. Boba only takes advantage of the bath and bed, and he drinks the clean water that still has minerals of the spring it was drawn from greedily. The food is too much, and Vader thankfully knows him well enough to not be offended by how he eats, preferring to smother the rice and vegetables in copious amounts of the terrible one note hot sauce. Boba returns the hospitality by not acting on any of his overwhelming curiosity about Vader’s personal quarters, even though he catches himself looking at the closed door more than once.
Curled up in bed for a second night in a row of strategising, Boba shuts his eyes and forces himself to think about his father. He hasn’t really thought about Jango in years, at least not since the very early days of the Empire. It always hurt too much, banging against the jagged glass of all of his youthful memories and failed revenge. His father, as far as he could think about, was a strong, firm man, and he had loved Boba, which allowed his lesser qualities to be glossed over.
But his father had been bitter, vengeful in a way that had unhinged him, which is why he agreed to become a template for an army of six million plus disposable bodies. His bitterness towards the galaxy went beyond any reasonable norm. Boba had known this, even as a child, because deep down he had feared that one day he would disappoint Jango, and his love would be gone, and Boba would simply be decommissioned like all of the other defective products.
It doesn’t surprise him that Jango might be alive and well somehow, and he didn’t care to let Boba know.
When he tells Vader this as they prepare to go to Naboo, Vader’s characteristic delay in response is oddly subdued. If it was anyone else, it would be sympathetic. Boba stares at him. He doesn’t know what he will do if Darth Vader of all people starts to pity him.
“You loved your father,” Vader says, and Boba is suddenly struck with the notion that Vader might have had the love of actual parents once upon a time.
“I did,” Boba says, and he knows Vader can see how having to say these things aloud is taking more out of him than any of the combat they’ve ever engaged in together has; “I was also terrified of him.”
Vader is quiet for a long moment. Boba expects the conversation to end there.
“I understand,” he says at length.
Boba stares at him.
Vader lets him.
Never before in his life has Boba had to question and reexamine his decisions as much as he has in the last seventy-two hours. He does not appreciate the experience.
He spends the majority of the trip to Naboo on Slave 1, which is neatly docked in the landing bay of Devastator, ostensibly to make sure all of his weapons are ready and supplies are in good order. In reality, he needs to be contained within his own metal walls for a while, so he doesn’t abruptly and inconveniently dissolve. He spends several hours locked in his fresher, sitting on the covered toilet and staring at the wall, thinking about nothing deeper than his perennial, asinine curiosity if droids have souls.
When he meets Vader back on the Devastator bridge, he feels more functional but protractedly worse as a person. Wearing a helmet and armour for all social interactions usually allows him to mask his internal uncertainties and conniptions from others, but he doesn’t fool himself. Vader is a sorcerer, and, in their years of partnership, Boba has learned to read him, too. He seems unsettled.
“How familiar are you with Moenia?”
“Aside from holomaps and rumours of Hutt business in the Core, not at all,” Boba says, and he knows Vader knows this; he only asks unnecessary questions when he’s mulling over something he finds unpleasant. “I’ve heard the weather is regrettable by Naboo’s standards.”
Vader shifts enough to look at him. Amusement and a little bit of intrigue. Boba feels his lips pulling into a smile. He wonders if Vader can smile. His mask is designed for intimidation rather than Mandalorian impassiveness.
“Who told you that?”
The bridge crew are studiously pretending to ignore them. Boba knows that their seemingly inattentive audience is anything but. It amuses him. It also makes him feel better. Grounded in the predictability of how others react when it is him and Vader together.
“They claimed to be a former Republican senator,” he says, which he knows will stir Vader’s interest; he deliberately turns and looks out the viewport; Naboo is beautiful, calm blue seas below lightly swirling white clouds; “Handed them off on Hutt business.”
He senses Vader is rolling his eyes. “Dead, then,” he says, and Boba grins.
The moment he steps out of Vader’s modified TIE fighter in Moenia, Boba likes the city. It’s gorgeous, and the misty weather is wonderful. The population is hugely mixed, and the city is peaceful enough that children rush about in unaccompanied groups in its main spaceport while elderly folks get appropriate assistance from staff. It’s a city where people can live and flourish. Boba would never be comfortable in a place like this, but he appreciates its existence.
People recognise Vader and give them the usual wide berth, which suits them both. They don’t seem as horrified by Vader’s mere presence, though, which is new. Boba supposes, as this is the Emperor’s homeworld, they must be used to the sight of his right hand in a way that the vast majority of other planet’s citizens are not. Boba only comes into the Core these days if it’s on Vader’s dime.
“You come here often?”
“Theed, usually,” Vader says as they walk out of the port and into the city proper; Palpatine comes back to Naboo once a year and does a propaganda video from one of the universities. “This planet is strong in the Force.”
Boba grimaces. “You could have told me that sooner,” he says because he might be as Force-sensitive as a doorstop, but a statement like that from a sorcerer is as gigantic a red flag as they get.
“We have no evidence that the Force is involved,” Vader says, and Boba groans.
“Now is not the time to grow a sense of humour,” he grouches, and Vader is laughing at him; he recognises the more pronounced pah-pah-pah cadence of the respirator. “Come on. Don’t make my job harder.”
The small squad of Imperials who are accompanying them, mostly to maintain a thin veil of normalcy, are not doing a good job at hiding their gobsmacked terror at this interaction. Vader is still chuckling to himself, even though Boba highly suspects it’s painful for him. He does not have a great idea of how all the bits of Vader’s suit works, but he knows enough from the times he has had to help Vader jury-rig it when jobs have gone sideways.
How Vader is alive: Boba prefers not to think too deeply about that.
The fact of the matter, and why Boba is probably in this mess in the first place, is that he is curious by nature. He can’t help but be intrigued by Moenia as they walk through it to the Imperial administrative building complex. The architecture blends into the foggy, damp environment, and the decorations on shop fronts and business vehicles are colourful and attractive. Most people speak Standard Basic, but there’s snatches of languages from throughout the Core. Music filters out from restaurants and bars, the latter of which are open at just past planet-side noon.
If Boba was less curious, it would make his life easier. He wouldn’t be as successful, and he definitely would not be able to work with an employer like Vader, who operates on needle in a haystack objectives and esoteric hunches. Boba has only enough awareness of the Force to be considered alive, but he’s interested in what is hidden from him. New and unusual experiences make part of him light up, stirring up his soul and giving him a sense of adventure that needs to be fulfilled.
It’s with a sense of vague disappointment when they arrive at the main Imperial office. The familiar grey and predictable lines of the building’s foyer feels more daub than usual. Boba is once again the most colourful thing within the steel and linoleum walls.
“You seem disappointed,” Vade says once they are alone in the surveillance room with access to every security camera operating on this planet.
Boba shakes his head. The screens that aren’t operating are so clean he can see the recently painted lines of his greens and reds and golds.
“Don’t you get bored of everything looking the same?”
He usually wouldn’t ask Vader such a thing. His personal thoughts and opinions are too close to the surface. Vader seems to be understanding of that. Maybe he’s the only person who could be.
He didn’t hate the clones. Quite the opposite. Boba has a good guess of who he once was, another example of how one day his curiosity will either get him killed or questionably rewarded. This job all but confirms his suspicions.
“Sometimes,” Vader says, like it hurts him.
Boba nods. He moves to stand next to Vader at the command console. Large scale surveillance technology isn’t his strong point. Luckily, Vader has never met a machine he isn’t able to find his way around, and he prefers to handle tech when they work together. Early on in their working relationship, Boba had watched everything Vader did like a hawk, but that hyper-vigiliance wore off quickly because Vader was not boasting about his better abilities. It’s become natural, letting Vader do the heavy lifting in this area, and it allows Boba to use his better sight, hearing, and energy levels to watch their backs.
Vader scrubs through the past month’s footage of the main entrances of the Moenia spaceport on four different screens at a breakneck rate for almost half an hour when Boba spots something that makes him put his hand up. Vader stops the videos, and Boba leans forward, adjusting the tilt of the lower left screen.
“Run it back about six hours. Zoom in on the right side of the video.”
It takes less than thirty seconds and then Jango Fett is on the screen. He looks exactly like the puck, although he’s wearing less flashy clothes. Vader fiddles with the controls a bit, and then the other screens light up with videos on previous days, each about a week apart and all around six in the morning featuring Jango arriving at the spaceport through the same door. Not once does Jango attempt to obscure his identity.
“So he does live here,” Vader says, like he can’t believe how easy this was.
Boba stares. He fully expected to be digging through footage for at least a full day, and he hadn’t really thought the effort would bear fruit. He can feel, for the first time in a very long time, the scratching sensation in the back of his mind that warns he’s edging close to an emotionally critical cliff. Not quite hysteria because he suspects that being a perfect clone of Jango made him uniquely resilient against that, but he’s still Human, and it's one of the races known for particularly spectacular emotional meltdowns.
“Must do,” Boba says and he knows that Vader won’t be fooled by his vocal modulator; “My presence at the spaceport earlier will draw him out. We just have to wait for him.”
Vader cycles air. Doubtlessly thinking about how it’s always been the other way around on the hunts they’ve been on together. Vader always has been both the deterrent and the bait, especially when they’ve hunted high ranking Jedi of the old Order. Boba has been an additional deterrent but never bait.
Neither of them expect Jango to run away. If nothing else, Boba trusts that his father hasn’t changed that much.
Boba reaches out. Tilts the screen. His father’s features are smooth in the video, any small blemishes washed out by the resolution. He looks so familiar yet utterly unfamiliar, touched by age that Boba never gave thought to. His father is forever frozen in his mind, head in his hands at forty-four. Boba never thought about what he would look like when he was old, and he never paid much more than passing attention to the clones who aged so much faster.
“He looks good,” Boba says, rather uselessly.
Vader looks at him. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t seem to know what to say.
Boba, absurdly, appreciates that he isn’t doing this alone.
They go back to Moenia’s spaceport and find themselves at odds and ends.
Vader is not in a position to go out and about into the city or even around the spaceport without causing substantial confusion. Usually, Boba isn’t either, but he is, so, after updating their comm encryption, he does. He doesn’t go further than the direct area around the spaceport as Jango may show himself at any time, but that is enough to peruse a variety of shop stalls, mostly local food, drinks, and souvenirs geared towards the tourist industry and marked up accordingly. He doesn’t buy anything aside from a couple large bottles of water, but he looks at everything.
The shop dedicated entirely to Gungan goods keeps his attention for the longest. The proprietor, who is old enough that he likely remembers exactly what a Mandalorian is, and the young staff member watch him with open curiosity as he inspects the knots on the ornamental nets and turns the glass floaters over in his hands. He likes the floaters, although he has absolutely no use for glass on Slave 1, and the nets are extremely well-made. If he had been trained more extensively in trapping, he would buy them, but that is a skill set he’s not had much use for in his hunting niche. He buys the water from them and leaves a couple of loose credits as a tip because he knows that his presence in the shop chased away other customers.
Vader is doing pretty much nothing in the first class lounge they’ve commandeered when Boba returns with the water. Boba knows he’s doing nothing because Vader is standing at the bay window that oversees the entrance they’re waiting for Jango to come through, arms crossed and facing straight ahead. Vader does not need to see Jango. He’s a sorcerer.
He doesn’t turn as Boba opens one of the bottles and pours it into his flask. There’s a plethora of drink choices in the lounge, but Boba has learned well never to trust something he couldn’t scan and open himself. He unlatches his helmet and drinks a few gulps through his straw before moving to join Vader at the window.
“I met some Gungans,” he says, relatching his helmet and scanning the crowd below.
Vader’s respirator works. Boba watches a large family of Humans running to catch their shuttle.
“I’ve never met one of their species before,” he says as one of the children trips and falls.
“They do not leave Naboo often,” Vader says, and there’s something about the words that makes Boba look at him.
“Probably better off for that,” Boba says because it seems the more he travels, the more he realises there is no place for someone like him in the galaxy.
Vader cycles air. Boba turns his attention back to the crowd below. The Human family has gone on their way, and the semi-organized chaos of rush hour continues. If this was any other hunt, Vader and Boba would be sulking about, trying to flush out their target in their own unique ways. Boba would be beating someone up or pumping some scum for information, and Vader would be itching to enact his own violence.
But this time Boba doesn’t know what will happen when his father eventually walks through those doors. He and Vader will go down, and Jango will be expecting them, or at least one of them. Boba doesn’t know what his father will do, and he doesn’t know, for the first time in his life, if he’ll be able to respond. If he can raise his hand against his father, or if he’ll be so overcome with rage that he’ll attack Jango on sight. Boba has never been the loose cannon in their partnership. He’s never been the brave one.
But this time:
“Lord Vader.”
Vader shifts. Looks at him. A sign of respect. Looking up at that black mask with its downturned features:
“He’s my father,” and Boba finds that he can be brave, even if it’s just this once. “Please don’t let me kill him.”
Vader’s respirator works. Boba gazes at him. At this man, this shell of a being, the Emperor’s right hand. Boba deeply suspects was once the Jedi General Anakin Skywalker. He observes Vader, and finds:
“Understood.”
Boba trusts him.
Once upon a time, when Boba was very, very young, he had idolised his father.
There was nothing else for him to idolise. Jango made sure of that. He taught Boba from the moment he could understand language that there was no love for either of them in the galaxy and all they had was each other. He made sure that Boba never grew attached to any of the clones or Kaminoans who flitted in and out through his early years, and he set Boba up to run off on an unhinged, grief-fueled killing spree disguised as vengeance upon his violent, ignominious death.
Rushing down from the first class lounge as Jango enters the spaceport, Vader covering his back, Boba has to face the reality that there was no other way for this to turn out. He has always lived too much in his immediate reality to imagine that his father, whose head he held in his hands and whose armour has become Boba’s skin, could have survived, even though there are all manners of possibilities in the galaxy. And, even if Boba had found out earlier, it would have been by the same avenue, holding his own father’s puck in hand because Boba does nothing but work.
After all, he thinks wildly as the spaceport staff and travelers scatter and scream, he is his father’s son.
Jango turns. Spots them. His eyes hone in on Boba. On his armour. His eyes widen. Only enough to denote surprise before they narrow.
Boba knows that look.
“Boba?”
His father is angry.
Vader’s respirator cycles out air.
“Jango Fett,” Vader says, and Boba realises that he has leveled his rifle; he wonders, semi-hysterically, whether his instincts registered his father as a threat or as a target first; “You will come quietly.”
“Darth Vader,” Jango says, and it really is him; it’s his voice and his particular cadence, which was always just slightly more wry in manner than any of the clones or Boba ever had about them; like his bitterness made him always faintly amused at the rest of the galaxy in a cold, inhospitable way; “Did you or my son find me?”
Vader cycles air. Boba does not lower his rifle.
Jango watches them. Boba’s finger twitches against the trigger.
This is everything he never wanted.
“You aren’t in a position to ask questions,” Boba says, and he feels every inch of his twenty-eight years as the Mando’a he hasn’t spoken since he scraped flesh and coagulated blood from his father’s severed neck into a vial he never got to use rolls off his tongue like he never stopped speaking it. “Don’t make this any harder.”
“I taught you to never rely on anyone who can betray you,” Jango says, and Boba didn’t realise this could get any worse, but it is; hearing his father’s Mando’a is like eating glass.
“You misunderstand,” Vader says, and Boba looks at him despite himself; he understands Mando’a; he watches Jango with the steady, unerring focus of an apex predator; “We have a mutual interest.”
Jango does not respond immediately. The spaceport is in abject chaos. There is no good escape route on foot, and Jango does not have a jetpack nor the mobility to climb fast enough to escape both Boba and Vader. He is not nearly as muscular or fit as when Boba last saw him alive. If Boba forces himself to assess his father, he would say Jango looks very much like he is in his sixties. He is. He’s sixty-two.
Boba is two paces north of becoming hysterical.
“There’s a bounty on me,” Jango says, like he finally comprehends the situation.
Vader does not speak. Boba wonders if he should pull the trigger. He asked Vader to stop him. He feels, horrifically, tears forming and clouding his vision. If Vader raises his hand or unsheathes his lightsaber, Boba has no idea what he’ll do.
Jango shifts. A slumping.
Boba tries very hard not to sob as Jango raises his hands, palms upward.
“I surrender.”
Jango is placed in a high security cell back on the Devastator. His feet and hands are cuffed, and all of his personal belongings confiscated. Guards are posted, instructed not to talk to him, and the lights are left on, the same treatment of the most wanted political prisoners.
Boba spends the first hour and a half after he and Vader pretend to debrief in Vader’s personal quarters locked in the luxurious sanitation room attached to the bedroom he suspects only he has ever used. He takes the longest water-powered shower he’s taken in his adult life, which is a wild thing on a starship, and cries until he throws up. It makes him feel better, if rather lightheaded because all he had to vomit was water. He waits for his equilibrium to stabilise enough for him to clamber to his feet, turn off the water, and stumble out of the gigantic fresher.
He towels off with the soft Imperial grey towel and brushes his teeth and shaves with the generous supplies in the fully stocked cabinet next to the sink. He stares at his red-rimmed eyes in the mirror for a long moment. The part of himself still capable of his particular brand of perverse humour congratulates himself for only partially melting down and nudges him to get back to it.
When he returns to Vader’s reception room, someone has brought food along with a ridiculous selection of wine and liquor bottles. The door to the main hall is shut, and Vader is occupied at the long command console, so Boba opens the cloches over the food. It’s all fresh ingredients, brought up from Naboo. Boba seats himself, takes off his helmet, and selects a round, crusty bread roll still warm from the oven. He tears it into six portions and puts one in his mouth.
It’s so delicious and fresh and clean tasting he can’t be mad at it.
He eats another bread roll and is in the process of investigating the drink cart to find water or juice when Vader straightens at the console. Boba looks up, a long bottle of sealed Corellian brandy in one hand and a squat round bottle of something that looks partially lethal in the other. Vader looms.
“I don’t know what this is,” Boba says, raising the round bottle.
Do I look like I know, Vader’s body language clearly communicates.
“The red bottles are fruit juice,” Vader says.
“Thanks,” Boba says, suddenly forced to consider that maybe he and Vader have spent too much time together.
He replaces the bottles and reaches for one of the red bottles at random. He twists the sealed cap off and sniffs it. It smells exceedingly normal. He pours himself a glass and drinks. It tastes rather a lot like rehydrated ration fruits. Familiar but rather discomfiting. He swallows even so because he is a child born on an inhospitable world and never wastes resources. Vader watches him. He is in a very patient mood.
“What do you think?”
Boba sets the cup down. “The bread is delicious,” he says because it is; he wipes his mouth and hands with the stark white linen napkin. “I know that is not what you are asking.”
Vader’s respiration works at a sedate pace. Boba sits down again and lets himself take a moment to massage where pressure has collected at his right temple. He feels like absolute trash.
“So,” he says, looking at Vader and not bothering to hide whatever lives on his face, “my father will become Imperial property.”
It is to Vader’s credit he doesn’t attempt to deny it. Boba pours himself more of the weird juice. He doesn’t drink it yet. The light orange-yellow colour in the Imperial grey cup makes him think of something precious caught in a trap.
“I understand,” Vader says, and there’s something odd that makes Boba look to him, standing between the console and the table and Boba, sitting in the chair, “if you no longer wish to accept contracts from me.”
Boba is glad he was not holding the cup. He would have dropped it.
Vader offers him freedom.
If Vader stops contracting with him, or if he starts turning down Vader’s jobs without repercussions: Boba would be effectively able to go anywhere and do anything. Other bounty hunters would figure out that unlike them, Boba actually has a real choice when an Imperial contract rolls through his inbox. He could even choose to retire, walk off the whole board and live out his days somewhere comfortable and quiet on his substantial life savings. He could be nobody. He could be anybody.
He has only ever been Boba Fett.
“I would like to speak with my father,” he says, and Vader watches him, and it makes Boba, for the first time in his life, feel like he is someone worth looking at; he is himself:
“It won’t take long.”
Jango is awake when Boba visits. Boba watches how his father tracks his movements, and how his brow briefly furrows when no guard comes in before the door to the high security cells slides shut behind him. It smoothes out as Boba retrieves the folding visitor’s chair from the far wall, and he watches Boba unfold it and sit across the humming bars. Jango’s eyes widen as Boba unlatches his helmet. Pulls it off to set upon his lap. Boba watches how his father takes in his face.
“You’re pale.”
Despite himself, Boba smiles. “I do not spend much time in the sun.”
Jango frowns. The lines on his face pull with the motion.
“I’m not here to ask how or why you’re alive,” Boba says.
Jango’s frown deepens. He leans forward on the slab metal cot, resting his elbows on his knees. He’s been stripped of the colourful outerwear he had as well as his shoes and socks. The tan trousers have no belt, and his thin undershirt does not hide the prominent bunching of scar tissue that runs all around his neck. He looks to be in overall good health.
“Is someone listening?”
“No,” and Boba feels his lips twitching as his father narrows his eyes. “They know me well enough here.”
That displeases Jango. He sits up, crossing his arms. He does it fluidly but slower than Boba remembers. It makes sense.
“So this is sentimentality,” Jango surmises, and he clearly wants his words to be disapproving, but it doesn’t quite work; he grimaces. “You want to know where I’ve been all this time.”
“No,” Boba says, and his father blinks, thrown again. “All those questions will be asked by someone else. You won’t be able to lie then.”
“And someone will tell you,” Jango says with great distaste.
“Yes,” Boba agrees.
He’s reasonably sure that he’ll open his inbox one day and find a report from Vader regarding everything that his father reveals. He doesn’t know if he’ll read it. Maybe he’ll just delete it. He will tell Vader he appreciates the gesture.
“I want to know: have you been happy?”
Jango stares at him. His eyes are clear. In the years that passed between them, he’s been taking care of himself. He looks good for sixty-two, and he looks like he’s lived a life that hasn’t been too hard since his head was reattached to his neck. Boba wonders if there’s people down on Naboo or somewhere else in the galaxy who will miss his father now.
“I have,” Jango says, and he frowns but not entirely unpleasant. “Not at first, but lately, yes.”
Boba nods. He traces his fingers over the contours of his helmet. The Jango Fett that wore it and the armour is dead. It’s Boba’s now. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever find anything that fits him better. His helmet and armour are his true skin.
“Are you?” Jango asks; Boba feels his head tilting; his father does not have that mannerism anymore. “Happy?”
Boba thinks. He thinks about Vader, who is probably still waiting outside the high security door. He thinks about Slave 1 and how he feels safe within her walls, even if he really isn’t. He thinks about his life savings, about walking off the board, about staying and hunting. He thinks about how he suspects droids have souls. He thinks about being good or bad and how esoteric it all feels.
“No,” he says because he lived in anger and reaction for his whole life. “But I am not unhappy. I don’t usually concern myself with these things.”
“I remember what it was like to live like that,” Jango says, and he looks like he regrets these words already, but he knows just as well as Boba they will never have a chance to speak to each other again. “You did not know me then. I was a better hunter. A better person, too.”
It’s a compliment. It’s Boba’s turn to stare at his father. There was nothing he wanted more as a child than to make this man proud. He’d held onto the notion for a long time, but now, faced with the truth, he has to admit that his father stopped being his guiding light a long time ago.
“I am a better hunter,” Boba says, and he lets himself feel the words in his throat, on his tongue; “I think, no matter what either of us do, I will always be a better person. I have to be. You took that choice from me when you purchased me as your blood price.
“I am grateful,” he says, and he is, and that is why his father flinches, breaking eye contact for the first time in this exchange. “I like being alive. I also know that you didn’t intend to leave me when I was ten, and I don’t doubt there was very little you could do for a long time. I think if you had tried to re-enter my life, especially after I went to jail, I would have resented you.”
“Do you?” Jango asks.
He is no longer attempting to act like he knows Boba. They’re wholly different people.
“A part of me wants to,” Boba admits. “Another part wants to love you. I am not capable of either.”
Jango looks at him. Boba looks back. He wonders how he looks to his father, who has seen his face and body reproduced millions of times. Boba was meant to be the perfect copy. That product is dead. Boba grew in his place.
Slowly, Jango sits forward. He doesn’t try to stand and come to bars. Boba watches him with all his concentration. This is how he wants to remember his father. This will be the last time they see each other alive.
It is a better memory than a dismembered head.
“I don’t regret my choices,” Jango says, and he even smiles, teeth and thin lips. “You do your armour proud.”
Despite himself, Boba feels his throat grow tight. The lineage in his vambrace denotes that Jango Fett is dead. He has just confirmed that Jango is officially dead.
He stands up. His father follows the motion. Boba lifts his helmet. Puts it on and relatches it. They regard each other for a long moment before Boba turns. Picks up the folding chair. He folds it up and walks down the hall to replace it on the wall. He walks back up the hall and does not glance at his father again as he palms the speaker panel next to the door.
“I’m done.”
Boba spends the night on the Devastator, asleep in the perennially unused bedroom in Darth Vader’s quarters. He sleeps nearly ten hours straight, which is possibly unprecedented for him. He wakes up, helmet next to the pillow covering his hand blaster. He sits for a long time in bed, looking out at the stars that fill the viewport, and thinks:
This is the first day of the rest of his life.
He gets out of bed. Dresses himself in the fresh underclothes and socks in the drawers. He takes time to check and don his armour. He goes to the fresher and washes his face and runs the provided comb through his hair, even though it snags his curls slightly. For a moment, he considers cutting his hair, but he finds he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t have to.
Boba looks at his face for a long time before he slides his helmet on.
The reception room is empty when Boba enters, but the connecting door to Vader’s workspace is open. Boba approaches it until he is in the doorway. The interior is different from other Imperial spaces, brighter and full of machinery and droids in various states of repair and disrepair. Vader is seated in a great round pod of some sort that rotates to face him. Outside of the times where Vader has been the pilot of various ships and vehicles, Boba has never seen him seated. He suspects it is far from a comfortable position.
“Come in.”
It is not a command. Boba steps forward because he knew the open door itself was an invitation, and he is curious. He is, he understands now, allowed to be.
“I slept well,” Boba says as he comes to stand at a work bench covered in what looks like a dismembered training droid of some sort.
“Your payment has been transferred,” Vader says.
It makes Boba smile. He suspects that is why Vader makes a point of saying it. Vader’s respirator is quieter than usual. He seems almost peaceful.
“Thank you,” Boba says, his only warning.
He crosses the space between them. Vader watches his approach. How he stops just outside the boundaries of the pod. How he looks it all over. Looks Vader over. Vader has seen Boba at his most vulnerable. Like recognises like.
They are both predators at the end of the day.
“I think I understand you, too.”
Vader does not rise. Boba lowers himself. They look each other in the eye.
“If you call, I will answer.”
They will never be good people.
But they are not the worst.
Boba stands up. Vader’s pod begins to rotate, the domed top slowly descending. It is not a dismissal. Nor a goodbye.
Boba turns. Walks back across the room. He steps out the door, which slides shut behind him. He lets himself into the main hall and walks towards the bay where Slave 1 is ready for takeoff. To destinations beyond the stars out the window.
He is free.