Work Text:
Scalper finally reaches the boy she has been searching for, only to find Jango’s grief sharpened into a weapon.
Boba Fett is ten years old.
The security file uses larger words.
Terrorist. Assassin. Conspirator. Attempted murderer of a Jedi Master. Responsible for multiple clone and cadet deaths.
Weaponized child.
Scalper stands outside the reinforced holding cell and reads the phrase twice.
It tastes familiar.
Death Watch had used children too. They called it training, tradition, preparation. They gave frightened little hands weapons and praised them when they stopped shaking.
Fox stands beside her in red armor, helmet beneath one arm.
“He isn’t going to the Republic detention center,” he says.
Scalper types on her datapad.
HE’LL BE KILLED THERE.
“Or recruited.”
She looks at him.
Fox’s gold eyes remain fixed on the boy beyond the transparisteel.
Boba is pacing. His wrists are bound in front of him, though he has already bent one restraint bracket away from the wall. He moves with Jango’s balance and Jango’s anger, all sharp turns and coiled muscle.
He looks too much like his father after Korda Six.
Jaster dead. Jango bloodied, furious, and suddenly alone.
The memory hurts more than Scalper’s throat.
Fox continues, “Controlled confinement. Guard custody. No unsupervised access from the Jedi or Senate.”
Scalper types again.
AND HIS CUSTODIAN?
Fox finally looks at her.
“You.”
Something in her chest contracts.
Fox had known from the first day.
Not the details, perhaps. Not every grave she had crawled out of or every name buried beneath Alpha-01.
He had looked at her once on Kamino and understood that she was not what the longnecks claimed.
He had never asked.
Now he gives her Jango’s son.
“Special medical custody,” Fox says. “Restricted access. You can refuse visitors.”
Scalper’s fingers hover over the datapad.
“The Jedi are both in intensive care.”
Mace Windu and Anakin Skywalker had survived.
Countless clones and cadets had not.
Scalper looks through the cell window again.
Boba notices them.
He stops pacing.
His eyes lock onto Fox first, then move to Scalper.
No recognition.
Only calculation.
Fox opens the door controls.
“I’ll remain outside.”
Scalper shakes her head.
Fox understands.
He steps back.
She enters alone.
The door seals behind her.
Boba attacks immediately.
He catches the edge of the medical case in her hand and swings it toward her face. Scalper ducks, lets the case go, and catches his wrist before he can recover.
He twists, kicks for her knee, then drives his shoulder into her ribs.
Fast.
Well trained.
Terrified.
Scalper absorbs the impact and turns with him, preventing the restraints from wrenching his arms.
“Get off me!”
She doesn’t answer.
Talking hurts today. The emergency response, the surgeries, the hours spent forcing orders through ruined tissue have left her throat raw and swollen.
She saves what remains for him.
Boba jerks free and backs toward the wall.
“You’re one of them.”
Scalper picks up her datapad.
ONE OF WHO?
He reads the screen and bares his teeth.
“The copies.”
Her hand tightens around the stylus.
“They’re all copies. Every one of them.”
Scalper types.
THEY HAVE NAMES.
“I don’t care.”
Lie.
The pain behind his anger is too immediate.
Scalper has seen the casualty recordings. Boba knew exactly which cadets would be near the blast sites. He knew their faces looked like his father’s.
He did it anyway.
Someone had taught him to turn grief into permission.
“Did they send you to convince me I’m sorry?” Boba demands.
NO.
“To make me confess?”
NO.
“To tell me Windu survived?”
Scalper pauses.
Boba’s face changes.
The anger slips for one second, revealing the child beneath it.
“He did.”
YES.
“And Skywalker?”
ALIVE.
Boba looks away.
His shoulders shake once.
Scalper cannot tell whether it is relief or rage.
Probably both.
“He killed my father.”
The words are quiet.
Scalper’s throat closes around a sound she cannot afford.
She had watched it happen.
One violet blade.
Jango’s body falling separately from his head.
Boba running into the arena afterward.
She had been unable to move. Unable to call to him. She was frozen at the sight.
Maybe this time she can be the sister Jango trusted.
Scalper types carefully.
I KNOW.
Boba looks at her.
“No, you don’t.”
She does not answer.
He studies her face, the blonde hair, the scars at her throat, the inhaler hanging against her chest.
His confusion turns into agitation.
“Why do you look like that?”
Scalper’s pulse stumbles.
“Why do you sound like that?”
She hasn’t spoken.
Boba’s breathing quickens anyway.
He knows something is wrong.
Children remember more than adults expect, especially children raised by Mandalorians.
Scalper lowers the datapad.
Boba backs farther into the corner.
“Stay away.”
She stops.
“I mean it.”
Scalper nods.
He looks at the sealed door.
“There are guards outside.”
She nods again.
“They’ll shoot me if I try to leave.”
She shakes her head.
“Liar.”
Boba lunges for the medical case.
Scalper reaches it first.
He swings at her with the restraint chain. She catches it across one forearm, closes the distance, and hooks an arm around his shoulders.
Boba fights like a trapped animal.
Elbows. Boots. Teeth.
He catches her jaw hard enough to split her lip.
Scalper doesn’t let go.
“Get off!”
She pulls him against her chest, pins his arms without crushing them, and lowers them both to the floor.
Boba thrashes harder.
“I hate you!”
Scalper closes her eyes.
Her throat burns before she even speaks.
“Ni kar’tayli gar darasuum, ad’ika.”
Boba stops.
The words scrape out broken and low.
I will remember you always, little one.
Jango had used them when Boba woke from nightmares.
Scalper had used them before that, when Boba was small enough to sleep against her shoulder and grab fistfuls of blonde hair.
Boba goes rigid in her arms.
She feels the exact moment recognition finds him.
His breathing breaks.
“Ba’vodu?”
Scalper cannot answer without losing what remains of her voice.
She tightens her arms around him.
Boba turns within the hold, no longer trying to escape. His eyes search her face with desperate disbelief.
“You died.”
Scalper presses her forehead to his.
Boba’s mouth twists.
“They said you died.”
Her hand moves to the back of his head.
He looks so much like Jango that the resemblance becomes pain.
Not the bounty hunter in polished armor.
The boy after Korda Six, trying to become hard enough that nobody could take anyone from him again.
Boba’s resistance collapses.
He grabs the front of her fatigues and buries his face against her shoulder.
The first sob is silent.
The second tears through him.
Scalper holds on.
She cannot repair the dead. She cannot return Jango or erase the arena from Boba’s memory. She cannot undo the people who found a grieving child and aimed him at the Jedi like a blaster.
She can keep him from adult prison.
She can keep the Republic from finishing what Death Watch began.
Outside the cell, Fox remains beside the door.
He can see them through the transparisteel.
Scalper looks up once.
Something in his expression shifts when he sees Boba clinging to her.
Questions gather behind his eyes.
He asks none of them.
Fox turns away from the window and orders the guards to clear the corridor.
Boba’s fingers tighten in her shirt.
“You left me.”
The accusation is muffled against her shoulder.
Scalper accepts it.
“Lek,” she whispers.
The single word cuts like broken glass.
Boba pulls back enough to see her face.
“Why?”
Scalper reaches for the datapad, but he grabs her wrist.
“No. Say it.”
Her damaged throat refuses.
She tries anyway.
“Couldn’t... come back.”
It is not enough.
It is all she has.
Boba’s eyes fill again.
“Dad needed you.”
“I know.”
“I needed you.”
Scalper closes her eyes.
“I know.”
He strikes her once in the chest with the side of his fist.
Not hard.
She lets him.
“You don’t get to just show up.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to act like you’re my ba'vodu again.”
Scalper nods.
Boba’s face crumples.
Then he folds back into her arms.
She holds him until his breathing slows.
Until the panic drains into exhaustion.
Until the weapon becomes a ten-year-old boy again.
Fox waits outside with the new custody order already signed.
Boba Fett will remain in protected Guard confinement under the direct authority of the Chief Medical Officer.
Scalper rests her cheek against Boba’s hair.
Maybe this time she can stay.