Chapter Text
All Boba could do was sob. He felt hopeless as he clutched his father’s helmet to his chest. Though he’d tried, Boba couldn’t find his father’s head. He didn’t know if he preferred it that way.
Boba uncurled himself from his position on the floor — hugging the helmet to his chest as he leaned over bent knees pressed against the cold floor — to look at the silver helmet. The visor, unfeeling, stared back at him.
With shaking hands, Boba hugged the helmet again, the rangefinder pressing against his collarbone. It hurt, but it briefly took Boba’s attention away from the aching in his chest and the burning in his eyes.
Boba couldn’t remember when or how he fell asleep.
When he awoke, it was to someone calling his name. It wasn’t just ‘someone’; Boba knew the voice of his father, but he had to be hallucinating. He’d seen his father die. He’d held the helmet to his chest as he cried himself to sleep.
Boba sat up — in his bed, a stark contrast to the cold floor he’d fallen asleep against the night before.
He wiped his eyes, opening the door. His cheeks were still stained with tears, and his eyes were red.
Jango was standing in the kitchen, a pristine white apron tied around his chest. He never spilled, yet he had it anyway. When he heard Boba’s footsteps, he turned around to smile at him.
“Good morning, son,” he said, setting a plate down on the table. “I made your favorite, because….”
He trailed off, his smile turning to a small frown, but Boba was more preoccupied with the fact that Jango had said and done the exact same thing, sans the fading smile, yesterday.
But his dad was dead, right?
Jango kneeled down in front of Boba, gently brushing away some not-yet-dried tears from when Boba had woken in the night and started sobbing again.
“Boba, is everything alright?” Jango asked, still holding his son’s face in his hands. “You know that if anything bad happens during the night, you can always come to my room.”
Boba didn’t respond. He just stared into his father’s brown eyes.
“Yeah,” Boba said quietly, after a moment. “I know.”
Was it all a dream? It had to be one hell of a realistic dream for Boba to be shaken up so much.
“Did you have a bad dream?” Jango asked, still holding Boba’s face in his calloused hands.
Boba nodded silently.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Boba took a shaky breath. He looked down at his hands, fidgeting with the cuffs of his sleeves.
“I just… you…,” he began, blinking as he looked up at his father. He couldn’t find the words, and instead wrapped his arms around Jango’s neck.
“You left me.”
His words were muffled by the fabric of Jango’s shirt. Boba couldn’t possibly say that his father died. That would be acknowledging that somehow, the dream was real.
Jango didn’t speak for a few seconds. He stayed kneeling on the floor, with his arms around his son, before he cleared his throat and spoke.
“I would never leave you, Boba,” Jango said softly. “I promise you.”
The words, paired with Jango’s soothing tone of voice and warm embrace, almost made Boba forget about the much too realistic image of the beheaded body of his father that had been burned in his mind.
✦✧✦✧✦
“Dad, please,” Boba said, trying to drag his father away from the balcony with him. “Don’t leave me. Please, can we go home?”
Boba couldn’t see his father’s expression under the helmet.
“Boba, I can’t,” Jango sighed.
He turned his head to look at the Count.
“I have a job to do.”
“Please, dad—”
More super battle droids swarmed the balcony.
“It’s not safe for you here, son.”
Jango was now eye level with Boba, though the only thing the boy could see was the solid black visor.
“I’ll come get you once it’s safe, alright?”
A Jedi landed on the balcony, seemingly falling from above. Jango stood quickly, pushing Boba back but still keeping one arm in front of his son.
With his free hand, Jango unholstered a blaster pistol. The Jedi must not have been very talented, because they died quickly.
“Son, take the stairs to the left up into the other balcony,” Jango said, his voice firm but gentle. “I’ll be back soon, and we can go home.”
Boba watched as his father activated his jetpack and landed in the dusty arena. The heavy footsteps of more droids approaching came into earshot.
Droids had always made Boba uncomfortable.
Eyes still trained on his father, he ran up to the balcony like Jango told him to, standing up to get the best view. In the brief seconds when Boba’s vision was obscured by the walls, he’d lost sight of his father.
When he finally found the blue and silver armor again, the figure wearing it was being quickly approached by a Jedi.
Boba fell to his knees.
The dream was real.