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Boba stops short on his way through the Imperial cruiser and stares at the trail of ruined Dark Troopers like he can see their ghosts. It’s not exactly true, but it’s not far off. The Dark Troopers don’t have ghosts to see, but they’re not the things he’s haunted by. It’s what did this to them.
“Fett?”
The name startles Boba out of the visions dancing behind his eyes and his helmet jerks up sharply to match the one staring at him.
“Skywalker was here?” Boba asks Mando before he can stop himself, flinching at how he can hear the dream-haze clinging to his voice even through the helmet.
Mando’s helmet tilts. “Who?”
Boba swallows thickly around a tongue he hadn’t noticed had gone dry. “The Jedi.”
Boba watches Mando’s visor flick between the Dark Troopers and himself as the Mandalorian works things out before cautiously asking, “Do you know him?”
Boba looks away from the question, turning his gaze back the dark troopers which are an answer, in a way. “I used to.”
1BBY
Slave 1 wasn’t going to make it to Mos Espa. Boba had thought it was going to be a close thing, but he was going to fall short by a bit too much for comfort. He didn’t even bother opening a com channel before dropping in the first open dock in Mos Eisley like a rock.
The hanger’s manager was cussing him out in Huttese before the landing ramp hit the ground. “Find another landing pad,” the curly-haired woman shouted as she charged towards him like an angry mudhorn. “This one’s fully booked.”
Boba didn’t bother asking if she knew who he was because that was a given, which meant she didn’t care. “I don’t see anyone else on it.”
“You,” the woman stormed right up to him and jabbed her finger into his chest plate, “have got about five minutes to get out of here before my next client comes in and I tell him to go ahead and land on top of your sorry excuse for a ship.”
“It only needs to make it to Mos Espa.”
“And I only need about four more hours in the day and a cellar’s worth of Corellian brandy, but some dreams are out of reach, bounty hunter.”
Boba sighed internally and cut to the chase, reaching for a pouch of credits. “What’s it worth to you?”
The woman looked stricken, like Boba had just insinuated something rude about her family tree instead of offering to pay her. “Only my reputation as a businesswoman you-”
A third voice interjected the argument, “It’s alright Peli, I’ll be done in twenty seconds.”
Boba’s head snapped around, and he nearly drew his blaster on the person that was elbow deep in his ship because no one snuck up on him and he hadn’t heard them make a damn sound even though Slave 1’s condensers were clearly already half-disassembled. Then Boba almost asked them to test the ship for a gas leak because he was so sure he was hallucinating. There was no way someone that bright could exist on Tatooine.
“Wormie, what the hell did I tell you about doing that?” the woman snapped.
The kid - Wormie - looking like sunshine poured into what passed for local fashion when one was as rural as rural gets, just shrugged and kept doing whatever he was doing. “If his credits spend.”
Boba sidestepped the woman as he suddenly found himself a bystander of the whirlwind assault he had started as the target of. “If you weren’t the only half-decent assistant in this hole I swear-”
“You’d tie me up and leave me in the Dune Sea for the womp rats,” the kid finished cheerfully. “I know.”
The woman grumbled some more and headed inside the building, a trio of pit droids scrambling out like overexcited massiffs as soon as she opened the doors to join Wormie in taking apart Boba’s ship.
Boba watched the kid work and politely thank the droids for fetching tools and parts as they were requested, for a few seconds before asking, “You sure you know what you’re doing?”
Wormie didn’t even spare Boba a glance, thoroughly engaged in pulling his ship apart with barely contained glee that should probably have been concerning. “You going to pick a different landing pad if I say no, Fett?”
“I might shoot you first.”
The kid had the audacity to actually roll his eyes. “Excuse me if I don’t faint in terror. Yes I can handle a Firespray, even one modded to an inch of its life.”
“You and your boss have backbone. That’s going to get you killed.”
“Probably.” Wormie grinned while Boba tried to figure out how the kid got grease smeared across his face without his hands ever leaving the ship’s internals as far as he’d seen. “Not by you, though.”
“We’ll see.” Boba decided he could wait to see if the ship would start once Wormie and the tittering droid assistants were done with it before blasting them into carbon dust. He turned to follow the hanger’s owner.
“You’re welcome!” Wormie called after him.
Boba didn’t bother looking back to acknowledge that. The amused tilt of his mouth under the helmet was all the answer he wanted to give anyway, and that didn’t make a sound.
The kid did a good job, and only slightly exaggerated how fast he’d get it done. Slave 1 was ready to fly - though he was strongly advised to get it properly serviced before taking it out of atmosphere - by the time Boba had finished wrestling hellfire to settle a price with Motto.
It didn’t matter how good a job it was though, because he wasn’t going to be coming back. Definitely.
Motto gave her assistant’s work a quick once over before sending him off with a dismissive, “Yeah that’s good enough,” though Boba could tell from the way the kid lit up that it was code for “damn near perfect.”
Slave 1 made it to Mos Espa without a hitch. Actually, Boba thought it might have been running better than before it took the hit that necessitated the emergency stopover.
The second time he found himself in the direction of Mos Eisley, Boba started by stating, bluntly, “You’re better than anyone on Jabba’s payroll.”
“I know,” Motto had agreed with a frown that belied her pridefulness. “Don’t go spreading it around.”
Boba could appreciate not wanting the Hutts’ attention, but the resigned set of Motto’s shoulders and the watchful side glances from her assistant Boba caught between the quips, told Boba that, as far as they were concerned, that bridge was well crossed already just by Boba coming back. It wasn’t Boba’s business though, and he wasn’t interested in making it his business either. Not even for uncannily smooth landing thrusters, or for mouthy and competent company. And to make sure it stayed none of his business Boba was going to stay well clear of hanger 3-5 from then on. Most likely.
The discretion was clearly appreciated the next time Boba dropped his ship into the hanger unannounced only a few rotations later. He only got cussed out two thirds as much as the first time. There wasn’t going to be a fourth time though. Probably.
By the time he was on a first name basis with Peli, Boba was still telling himself that he just liked having a reliable mechanic under his thumb but he wasn’t going to make a habit of using their services. Maybe.
The first time Boba overhears Djarin on a call with Skywalker he just about passes out before he realizes he’s stopped breathing.
“I thought you were a Jedi,” he hears Djarin say.
There’s an amused breath of laughter that the com barely picks up and Skywalker answers, “Most days.”
“And… you’re saying I can… visit Grogu again?”
“I am.”
Djarin visibly crumples against the console in relief. “Thank you.”
“Of course. Although, not to be blunt about it, Grogu is my first student, so I can’t promise we’ll be able to get the scheduling figured out right away.”
“That’s fine,” Djarin assures quickly. Too quickly in Boba’s opinion. “I’m just… glad I’ll be able to see him.”
Boba can hear the smile in Luke’s voice and it makes him ache in places he thinks shouldn’t anymore. “We hope to see you again soon.”
The channel closes and the silence it leaves behind sticks in Boba’s ears long after.
Boba wonders if that open and affable voice he remembers so well is who Luke Skywalker really is, or if the Dark Troopers tell the truer story.
1BBY
Boba was having a bad day. He’d had the misfortune of getting caught between his bounty and a tribe of Tuskens who didn’t much care that Boba was there to remove a trespasser since he hadn’t exactly asked permission to pass through their territory either. Now the bounty was feeding a pack of massifs and Boba had a hole in his chest and a sprained knee, but was stubbornly alive and more stubbornly dragging himself towards Anchorhead.
Or he was, until the sand slipped out from under his boots and he found he couldn’t rise from the fall.
Boba was well aware of the hole a well-placed gaffi stick had punched into the space between his ribs and through his diaphragm. He was also aware of the increasingly poor job of keeping pressure on it he’d been doing as blood soaked through his kute and the suns baked him in his armour. He’d thought he’d get farther than this. What a shit place to bleed out, choking on a punctured lung.
Boba managed to roll himself up onto his back and glare at the suns that had done him a particularly egregious disservice that day by remaining in the sky, Boba was sure, just to spite him.
Boba closed his eyes and tried to muster enough strength to try getting up again because this was a shit place to die and Boba Fett was better than that.
“Uh, hello? Are you alive in there?”
When Boba opened his eyes he was quite sure that his dying mind had conjured up the vision of the blond kid from Peli’s hanger because there was no logical reason for him to actually be hovering over Boba with an open, worried expression, let alone out in piss-fuck nowhere where he lay dying.
Boba tried to tell the vision to fuck off but all that came out was a wet, strangled groan.
The kid’s worried expression turned frantic. “Oh. Oh no. Oh fuck . Okay just stay awake, I’ll be right back.”
Boba didn’t think he’d ever heard Wormie curse before so he supposed that was a bad sign, either for Wormie’s prognosis of his condition or for his own mental capacity to give his hallucinations proper characterization.
Wormie reappeared quickly enough, framed from behind by the late afternoon suns that cast his face in shadow but turned the kid’s hair to curls of fired glass. Boba closed his eyes again so it wouldn’t blind him.
“That’s not as bad as I thought,” Wormie muttered as he pulled back the fastenings of Boba’s armour and assessed the damage underneath. He let out a steadying breath. "I can do this. It's not that bad."
If Boba was capable of giving a look of unimpressed disbelief at that moment it would have been the most scathing he’d ever given because Boba knew the difference between not that bad and bad enough.
“Good news; you’re not going to die this time. It’s just going to feel that way for a little bit.”
The only sound Boba was capable of making was a groan, which was fine because that was all he wanted to communicate for the moment. Fantastic.
Wormie expended precious water to flush the sand from Boba’s wound and even more valuable bacta to start it closing while his fingers worked over Boba’s chest with a clumsy kind of unyielding gentleness that almost had Boba drifting off despite the aching.
Wormie smacked the side of his helmet twice to jostle Boba back to awareness and announced, “Hey. I’m going to stab you now. Don’t pass out.”
Boba couldn’t get enough breath past his vocal chords to protest the proclamation and suspected Wormie would have ignored him anyway.
Wormie moved to quickly for Boba to even tense in anticipation. There was a shock of blinding white pain and the next thing he knew Boba had a tube in his chest and the kid was jerry rigging it to part of his speeder. Feeling air mechanically vacuumed out of his chest cavity was about the most unsettling thing Boba had ever experienced, which was saying something, but it was the near immediate relief of pressure from chest as his lung was not-so-gently coaxed back open that had tears gathering at the corners of his eyes.
Wormie’s hand that wasn’t holding the tube inside of him traced nervously soothing shapes on Boba’s skin, and Boba had the extremely disturbing thought that nothing had ever felt so intimate.
After a few minutes that stretched into a hot, thick eternity, quickly and without warning Wormie pulled the tube out in a single burning and wrong-feeling slide, with a thick pad of bacta-soaked gauze and bandage tape following close behind the end of it.
Boba fought the urge to violently cough and ruin all that effort, despite the way the inside of his ribcage and throat felt vaguely like they had a swarm of ant-flies crawling in them. “Where’d you learn that ?” Boba asked, wincing at the way the question tore at his chest.
Wormie gave him a sheepish grin as he started cleaning up. “Uncle Owen is better at fixing people than I am at fixing machines. Don’t tell him I said that though; he likes to pretend Beru does it all.”
“Does ‘all’ what?”
Wormie shrugged. “Caring.”
“Dangerous thing, that.”
Wormie’s eyes darted up from where his hands were smoothing an extra layer of tape over still red and raw skin at the edges of the bandages, to lock his eyes with Boba’s with uncanny accuracy that felt more piercing than the hole in Boba’s chest. A soft smile played with the edges of Wormie’s lips. “Maybe I like a little danger.”
“You’re going to get more than a little, wasting all that on a stranger, kid.”
Wormie seemed to consider the statement as he started packing up the haphazard collection of supplies. “It’s not mine to withhold.”
“I don’t think that’s how the phrase goes.”
Wormie’s lips twisted into a wry grin. “I think you’ve lost too much blood to be passing that kind of judgement.”
“Don’t patronise me.”
“Don’t call me kid and I'll consider it.”
Boba was glad he hadn’t needed to remove his helmet because whatever expression he was wearing was probably far too close to amused - perhaps even pleased, damn the thought - even as he rolled his eyes behind the visor.
Boba figured he might as well fill the uncomfortable silence with at least a little bit of gratitude. “Thanks Wormie.”
The kid pulled a face. “Luke.”
“Huh?”
“My name’s not Wormie, it’s Luke. Luke Skywalker.”
A freeborn then. Too shiny to be a runaway and clearly not owned. Still, someone on Tatooine with a name like that shouldn’t have been in the habit of helping people like Boba Fett - especially not for free.
“You know this isn’t going to buy any good will from Jabba, right?” Simply not letting Boba die wasn’t a gift because it was something Jabba already had. Boba might be among the Hutt’s favourite pets but that didn’t make him indisposable. No one on Tatooine had that luxury.
Luke’s scowl turned even more sour. “I don’t want it, thanks. And I don’t think you want to tell people some hick moisture boy pulled you out of a sand dune anyway.”
“What do you want then?”
Luke shrugs. “Nothing.” The suspicion must have radiated off Boba because Luke continued to insist, “Really. You needed help and I was there. Besides, Peli would kill me if I let you die. She likes the repeat business.”
“She has a funny way of showing it.”
“And you’ve got a funny way of showing your appreciation for her work, but you keep coming back.”
Boba’s mouth went dry as the air was pulled from his aching lungs like an airlock opening at altitude. Peli's work. Right. That was the only thing he'd been appreciating.
“If you’re interested in her you should probably know I don’t think she’s in the market,” Luke added with a teasing lilt to his voice.
Peli was not the one Boba was interested in. “Not my type.”
Something in Luke’s eyes turned sharp but was gone before Boba could pin it down, turning back down to replacing the catches of Boba’s chestplate and kute with only a hum of acknowledgment.
“That should do it,” Luke announced, then added with that self-satisfied smile of his while he supported Boba as they got to their feet, “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you take about as good care of yourself as your ship.”
Boba should probably have been offended by that. He probably should have felt something closer to impotent frustration at being half-carried instead of what he was actually feeling. He also should have minded his own business. His life had just been saved; he should have been able to extend at least the simple courtesy of not asking questions, especially while still leaning heavily on his rescuer, arm slung around Luke’s slim shoulders and with a surprisingly strong grip on Boba’s wrist and around his waist to hold him up. Boba did not, on this occasion, mind his own business. “What were you doing out here?”
Luke gave Boba a considering glance out of the corner of his eye, chewing on his chapped lips along with whatever he was deciding if he wanted to reveal or not. The answer must have been not, because he averted his gaze and muttered, “Just shooting womp rats.”
The crates full of packaged water and mismatched mediums of bacta Boba found himself propped against in the back of Luke’s speeder told a different story, and one Luke stubbornly refused to meet Boba’s gaze about even clearly knowing he’d been caught. Boba could end the kid’s life in the slowest and most painful fashion and all Boba would have to do is let slip to Jabba that the Lars homestead was filling supply caches for the Runners. Stealing slaves on Tatooine was never to be taken lightly. But Luke just looked ahead, wordless and unflinching, and drove Boba to Tosche Station, fully aware of the noose around his neck. No more words were exchanged beyond a muttered a apology for not being able to take Boba all the way to Anchorhead, and an order to actually see a med droid because that was the first time Luke had actually done that on his own (as if Boba couldn’t tell from the way his skin itched and his chest still burned) in the shape of goodbye. A final bow at the curtain closing on the final act of a Tatooine native’s life.
What an overdramatic brat.
Boba became aware with a stuttering lurch that he’d already fallen carelessly far into the beginning of something more than passing appreciation.
The next few times Boba showed up in Peli’s shop - because of course Boba didn’t stay away, who was he kidding - Luke looked like he was trying to decide whether the leery tension coiling along his spine was going to spring into flight or going for Boba’s throat with bare hands and teeth and Boba couldn’t decide which one he wanted to see more; which would grant relief and which would only make things worse. Luke didn’t seem to understand at first the trust he’d placed in letting Boba live - in actively encouraging it - being met with any kind of loyalty or appreciation, or even just the indifference Boba was trying his best to project. He was waiting for threats, or demands, or violence and the longer it took to show itself the more wound up Luke seemed to get.
Or so Boba had thought. He might even have been right at first.
Din spends quite a lot of time on Tatooine, though he won’t admit to doing it on purpose. Maybe he really isn't but with the number of times he finds himself in Boba’s palace you wouldn’t know he isn't begging for Boba to offer steady employment instead of already having turned it down. And it’s Din now, not just Mando, which Boba takes no small amount of pride in. He’s grown rather attached to the fellow bounty hunter and Mandalorian who isn’t quite a Mandalorian. Boba thinks the way they overlap could even grow to be a comfort.
Then, over lunch, Din has to go and spoil it by saying, apropos of absolutely nothing, “He thinks you’re dead.”
Boba pauses with a spoon full of stew raised halfway to his mouth. “A lot of people think I’m dead, you’ll have to be more specific.”
Boba really hopes Din isn’t talking about who Boba thinks he is.
“Luke.”
Bile rises to the back of Boba’s throat at the sound of that name on the man’s lips so quickly after meeting. Not the Jedi anymore. Not even Skywalker. Just Luke . “So?”
Din shrugs. “You said you knew him.”
“I’m sure a lot of people knew him, and I’m sure a lot of them are dead. Don’t see how that makes me special.”
Something in Boba’s carefully constructed dismissal must give away how personal it feels underneath. Or maybe it’s just Din taking Boba's tone as personally as he took the name of his ad’s guardian.
It isn’t personal, Boba tries to remind himself. There’s nothing left between Boba and Luke. As far as either of them are concerned the other doesn’t even exist. They’re content to live in their own corners of the galaxy and stay there. Or at least Boba is. If Boba repeats it in his mind enough he might eventually start to believe it.
The way Din looks at him, even behind his visor, tells him he’s doing a piss poor job of it, but Boba ignores that. “What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I didn’t think it mattered.” The way Din says it tells Boba that his opinion has since changed, but there’s nothing Boba can say in response to change that; at least nothing that wouldn’t bare far too much of himself.
Boba supposes he shouldn’t be surprised he’s the one to give it away to the man traveling between them. Boba doubts Luke's spared a thought for him in years.
1BBY
Boba had stayed away a little longer than normal when he touched down on Peli’s hanger the next time. It still wasn’t actual repairs that drove him there, but he’d waited as long as he had the patience for, which was, Boba wasn’t admitting, not as long as he thought he could hold out.
Boba might have been imagining the extra bounce in Luke’s step as he dropped whatever small job he was working on with the pit droids and came rushing over to the landing ramp of Slave 1, bouncing on the heels of his feet with directionless energy. He was all restless enthusiasm that Boba might have mistaken for missing him, but still there was that tension in his frame, and that something sharp flashing in his eyes that Boba still couldn’t put a pin in that was driving him mad.
“What needs fixing this time?” Luke asked with the same eager, bordering on greedy, smile he always has for his work and Boba tried not to imagine directed at him.
There was nothing different about it that day, but something felt different. Something kept Boba from letting the prepared exaggeration about ticks in the hyperdrive from tipping off where it sat balanced at the ready on the edge of his tongue. Something had the answer, “Nothing,” muscling it’s way past all the artifice and out into the open.
Luke didn’t bat an eye. “If you just need the landing space you know the standard rates. Peli’s got speeders for loan if you need.”
Boba shook his head slowly. “I don’t need a speeder.”
Luke nodded like that still wasn’t anything unusual and Boba hadn’t been making up the majority of his reasons for stopping there since the first time he saw the suns catch that choppy mop of hair as it disappeared into Slave 1’s internals with more genuine shereshoy than Boba had seen for anything on Tatooine. Then Luke asked, “Not going far then?” with shallow curiosity, like the curtain draped carefully over Boba’s desire to find out what else Luke would commit the whole of himself to with reckless enthusiasm hadn’t finally just dropped.
“No,” Boba answered, taking a step forward to the edge of Luke’s personal space and watching carefully for his reaction. “Not far at all.”
Boba caught the moment Luke finally understood, lips parted slightly in a silent “oh,” then widened into a self-satisfied grin like this was exactly what he’d been waiting for, the little shabuir. “Peli’s still going to charge you the docking fees.”
Boba scoffed. “I’d better get my money’s worth then.”
Luke laughed bright and loud and unashamed, and the covetous pride Boba felt at being the cause of that was going to become an addiction worse than spice if he wasn’t careful. But Boba was so rarely careful.
Then, with all the tension that had been boiling over for weeks breaking like waves on the cliffs of Boba’s senses, Luke pulled him into the shadowed recesses of the hanger without any more preamble. Clever fingers were already working at Boba’s belt and the fastenings of the armour covering his pelvis. Luke sank to his knees as he freed Boba from his kute and quickly worked him to full hardness while Boba’s mind raced to keep up. Then all Boba could think was that the speed with which Luke’s mouth could turn from razor sharp to soft as sin should come with a warning.
Luke did, in fact, do everything with reckless enthusiasm, and Boba was going to get lost in it.
Boba is fixing himself a drink after a session in the bacta chamber when Din decides to broach the subject of Luke Skywalker again.
“Exactly how well did you know Luke?” he asks.
Boba resists the urge to tell Din to fuck off. “Why don’t you ask him if you’re so damn curious about it?”
“He doesn’t like talking about it.”
Boba scoffs despite himself. “I bet he doesn’t.”
Din stares at Boba for a moment, turning Boba over in his mind, Boba is sure. Looking for all the soft places between the armour he can poke at. Then he follows through. “He carries a mythosaur pendant. Like one given to sponsored foundlings. Any idea where he would have gotten that?”
The tumbler slips from Boba’s hand and the shattering sounds like a thermal detonator in the otherwise silent room, the shards singing to Boba’s damnation as they skate across the floor.
“He still…” Boba starts, but the question falls and shatters as well, before it fully forms.
Din’s answer sounds for all the world like the condemnation it’s meant as. “He’s never without it.”
Boba doesn’t say anything. Not a damn thing. He’s too busy staring at the kaleidoscope reflections of himself made in the broken pieces at his feet.
“I think he deserves to know you’re alive,” Din finishes, and moves on like they were only talking about the weather (which is only ever either sandstorm or hot).
Maybe he does. Maybe it’s not Luke who Boba is trying to decide deserves it or not.
0BBY
The end of the season saw Luke leave his temporary position at Peli’s shop to return to his family’s farm, and somehow Slave 1 needed less repairs.
To anyone looking in from outside it could have been brushed off as coincidence. It wouldn’t be a noted habit until another long dry season came and went and the moisture farmers returned to their work all over again. By then whatever the thing with Skywalker was would have burned itself out and there wouldn’t be any reason for Boba to start watching his back and minding the rumour mill. At least that’s what Boba told himself before he found his feet had taken him all the way to the Lars homestead.
He wasn’t wearing his armour and his face was covered in no less than three thin scarves because even out there on Tatooine there were always people who remembered his father’s face and the millions that inherited it.
Luke still knew him right away.
“How?” Boba had asked when Luke had dragged him into one of the outbuildings and stole the breath from Boba’s lungs. Luke’s answer came in the limited language of sand and suns but Boba understood it all the same from the way Luke struggled to describe the smell of saltwater spray, sharp biting wind that cuts through to make his bones feel cold and damp in a way he didn’t have the experience to make sense of, the taste of starlight on the back of his tongue, and all the other ways that Luke would know him deaf and blind and unmoored. All Boba could do was bear witness as Luke cracked open his ribs to hold his still beating heart in the gentle cradle of his hands.
The steady hold of Luke’s gaze as he spoke told Boba that Luke had some idea what he had discovered but he didn’t push the edges of it any further than that. Didn’t grab it by the throat to drag it into the light. He just quietly made space in his life for Boba to settle, for edges to fit together by feel and patterns to form where they may.
They didn’t speak about what they were to each other, not in words. For Tatooine, the soft stolen moments were more than enough to make it obvious.
When the season came to an end and Luke was back at Peli’s hanger, somehow Boba still found his way stealing in through the side door of the droid garage, or the supply shed, to see how much distraction Luke could take before chores and hobbies went forgotten.
Peli had caught on quickly. It was only a matter of time, but the woman’s talent for sniffing that sort of thing out didn’t help. She hadn’t given Boba a shovel talk, exactly, but her landing fees did mysteriously double.
Boba really wished that whatever this was had fizzled like he wanted it to. Except he didn’t wish or want that at all. It wouldn’t be long before other, less savoury people, started to notice too.
But for the time being Luke was lounging draped over Boba’s lap, watching Boba’s very serious face as he adjusted the flamethrower in his vambrace. Luke traced idle patterns over the pieces of armour on Boba’s upper body. It was the beginnings of him being fidgety and Boba knew from experience he’d need to finish up his adjustments soon before Luke crossed the line into restlessness and he wouldn’t be able to get anything done.
Luke’s hand came to rest on the side of Boba’s shoulder and asked, “What’s this mean?”
Boba lamented that restlessness seemed to have arrived already, but easily indulged the question. “That’s a mythosaur skull. It’s a symbol of Mandalore.”
Luke hummed a pleased acknowledgment as his hand trailed across the breath of Boba’s chest plate. “And this one?”
“That’s for ba’buir Jaster. It’s the symbol of the Journeyman Protectors from Concord Dawn.”
Luke hummed again and lazily dragged his hand back over to Boba’s shoulder. “You’ve got another one of these,” he said, tapping on the Mythosaur. The tattoo that snaked around Boba’s upper arm and shoulder was hardly a novelty to Luke anymore. “Must be very important.”
“More than one more.”
Luke sat up, eyes suddenly sharp with intent and Boba was glad he’d already set his tools aside and nothing was about to catch fire. “Where are you hiding the second one? I’m pretty sure I’ve looked very thoroughly, but if you’re saying I’ve missed somewhere...”
“Menace,” Boba growled without heat as he pushed Luke back down, listening to the other man laugh.
Jango Fett was already a Mandalorian when Jaster Mereel adopted him, but certain traditions were still observed. Boba rolled Luke off his hip so he could reach the pouches on his belt and pulled out a pendant on a leather chord, lifting it up to dangle above Luke’s face.
Luke’s expression betrayed uncharacteristically little of what he was thinking. “Can I?”
Boba shrugged and lowered the cord slightly in acquiescence.
Luke didn’t snatch it in enthusiasm, but it was a near thing.
Luke sat back up and turned the little metal shape over in his hands to study the way every angle of its surface caught the light until his eyes had their fill. Something in Boba’s chest caught and caught hard.
“How about you hold onto it for me.” Boba was careful to keep the suggestion casual, to not let on what it would mean if Luke accepted the gesture. But, intuitive as always, Luke’s eyes widened and lips parted in surprise as he froze in the motion of offering the token back.
Luke didn’t have much to give in return, and Boba didn’t expect anything, but when Luke pulled the symbol into himself to hold fast against his chest, fingers curled tight around it, and said, “I love you too,” it felt like Boba had been given a gift more precious than water in the desert.
It was such a dangerous thing to admit, and Boba knew Luke understood that. He knew Luke didn’t say it lightly. He also knew that Luke was right about what the symbol meant, and that was probably just as bad as saying it out loud but Boba still couldn’t bring himself to form the words, and Luke didn’t ask him to. Luke never asked for anything to the point that Boba would have wondered if he was only being tolerated if it weren’t for the easy way Luke yielded against him with soft sighs and teasing smiles that told him that what was offered was enough.
Next time, Boba promised silently. Or maybe not next time, but eventually he'd be able to say something back.
Next time didn’t come. Next time saw the Lars homestead burned to cinders and Boba burned from the inside out with it.
He didn’t find the mythosaur pendant in the wreckage and the flames inside him rose until he’d bloodied his hands on the walls thinking of where it might have lost itself.
He was alone again, and even having practised it before next time never seemed to feel any easier than the first time.
Din doesn’t bother with “hello,” or “how are you,” or wait until Boba is done cleaning the disassembled pieces of his blaster.
“I’m going to see the kid,” he says, “and you’re coming with me.”
Boba doesn’t argue other than a resigned sigh and to say, “We’re not taking my ship.”
Boba lets Din take the lead when they land an a borrowed little freighter, and pretends it’s just to give Din time to say hello to his kid.
Boba watches from inside the landing ramp as Luke approaches Din, with the child in his arms. As they clasp forearms in fond greeting, oh so natural, and Luke’s eyes crinkle at the corners in a practised fold of sun kissed skin - laugh lines well-worn in Boba’s absence.
Luke’s life had moved on while Boba had been static. Worse than static. Luke had grown larger than Tatooine’s suns while Boba had eroded away beneath the sands.
Boba retreats back into the ship. He doesn’t come out again.
Din doesn’t say anything about it when they leave. Not even a disappointed shake of his helmet. No mention of the wasted supplies or unnecessary overuse of the recyclers. No careless recounting of his visit with the ad and his teacher that would only remind Boba that Din can hear and see and touch a celestial body that Boba can only watch through an optical telescope, the light it casts already a distant memory by the time it reaches him. The silence is almost worse than the badgering Boba was expecting.
Later, in the quiet wash of hyperspace, Din tells Boba that Luke looked haunted the whole time. When Din asked about it, all Luke would say was that sometimes the dead are less quiet than they ought to be and Din wonders aloud if he was being poetic about remembering the Rebellion days even though he knows damn well that’s not it.
Boba can’t tell if the casual musing is intentionally baiting or not. Can’t make sense of what Din wants from all this. What kind or reaction, reward or condemnation he expects Boba to give.
Boba doesn’t say anything. And the waves and lines of blue passing over the ship hold the silence but still Boba feels like they’re taunting him in cruel ebbing whispers.
Even here, even now, he would know you beyond seeing. There’s no piece of you that can be pried off that he won’t still know you from what’s left.
Boba mutters a quiet curse at the transparisteel and refuses to look at it for the rest of the trip.
3ABY
Boba tried. He really did. He tried to move on after watching the only good thing Tatooine had to offer go up in billowing smoke. He tried to go back to his life, the way he had done it before but the steps felt forced and unnatural.
Boba knew from experience it would pass in time and settle into a new, equally dysfunctional sort of normal. He didn’t want it to. He wanted the pain to always be sitting just beneath his skin, just as sharp as it was then. He wanted to hurt. That want was a feeling he had experience with too.
Boba spent less time on Tatooine and told himself it was just time to move on from Jabba’s slice of the galaxy. The Empire wouldn’t hire him, not directly. But Vader was always willing to bend the rules if it got results. And Boba got results, just like his father.
Han Solo, for example.
The Empire had been trying to catch the Millenium Falcon and it’s often accompanying x-wing, Red Five, in it’s nets for closing on three standard years. Yet all Boba had to do was follow the smuggler’s decrepit ship to Bespin and Vader handled it from there. Boba got paid a finder’s fee, then turned in the bounty from Jabba on top of that. Easy credits.
It was supposed to be easy credits.
A few months later it got less easy.
Boba wasn’t a stranger to clients for unlisted bounties wanting to meet in private. He was a bit on edge about being contacted directly about it, and even more when he sees the Millennium Falcon, of all ships, touch down in the private docking bay on Nar Shaddaa. It was almost enough to make him bolt. But Boba Fett was a name with a reputation. Boba Fett didn’t stand up clients, and Boba Fett didn’t get spooked. Whoever was flying the good-as-dead man’s ship had poor taste but that didn’t stop a job from being a job.
The anxiety was quickly swept away the moment the Falcon’s landing ramp fell.
For a moment Boba didn’t believe what he was seeing was real. It had been years and some of the shine had come off but it definitely looked like the man whose skin Boba had spent a year biting rough endearments into. It most certainly looked like the unruly bastard Boba had never admitted to falling in love with.
Still, Boba had to make sure.
The space between them closed so quickly it could only be described as an impact when Boba got his hands on Luke’s shoulders, his neck, jaw, lips, feeling the solidity of all of him under his gloves.
Then Luke pushed Boba away and Boba smelled smoke and charred bones.
Boba took a stumbling step back and finally noticed the blaster pointed at his neck that Luke was waving away with a placating hand. The woman holding it was familiar to Boba only from the Imperial bounty pucks and wanted lists. Luke, it seemed, had made dangerous sorts of friends.
“It’s alright Leia,” Luke assured the princess and he sounded so calm and unmoved, Boba felt his awe and shock start to dissolve into something less kind. “I think it’s best if I speak with him in private.” Luke caught Boba’s eye with the suggestion and yes, Boba very much wanted to speak to Luke alone.
The princess wasn’t happy about it, but apparently trusted Luke enough to wait outside while Luke gestured for Boba to join him in the former smuggler’s ship.
Luke doesn’t mince words as soon as they’re behind closed doors. “We need your help.”
Boba couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “What?”
“We need your help getting into Jabba’s Palace,” Luke reiterated.
“Why in all the Sith hells would you want to do that?”
“To rescue Han.”
“Han Solo ?” Boba supposed he shouldn’t be surprised all it took was a cocky grin, a fast ship, and an offer to show Luke the stars to forget all about him.
“Yes.”
Boba just stares at Luke through his visor for a while. “I suppose I should be glad you’re alive and only want fuck all to do with me.”
Luke’s face twitched in an imitation of a frown. “Why wouldn’t I-”
“The farm… I thought…”
Luke’s facade dragged his features into a picture of shock as it fell away. There was a flicker of sympathy in it that was quickly snuffed out by fury. “And you’re working for the Empire anyway?”
“What the fuck do you care? You were gone .” He was gone and Boba couldn’t bear to stay on Tatooine without him there.
Boba heard Luke’s breath catch and he was glad at least there was something left of Luke to at least be hurt.
“I didn’t know you thought I was dead,” Luke said, a bit too protesting for Boba’s liking.
Boba growled, “There was an easy way to find out.”
“You still took Han.”
“I’m not apologizing for doing my job.”
Luke’s voice took on a desperate edge, the cracks in him slowly growing but Boba wasn't of a mind to be looking for them anymore. “Boba, please , we-”
That was about all that Boba could take. “ Fuck off, Skywalker. Find someone else to help rescue your boyfriend.”
“I’m not with Han, you asshole ,” Luke shouted like the last cry of wounded prey, loud enough to shock Boba still at the suddenness of it. Then Luke became very quiet. “I’m a Jedi now, like my father before me.”
No. It would have been easier for there to be someone else, or for Luke to just hate him so Boba could learn to hate him right back. Give him a straight, and well trodden path; easy to follow to it's end and move on. Anything but becoming the thing that Boba owed his creation and unmaking. Anything but Luke letting him go just for the sake of it and being able to.
Luke continued, “I didn’t think you would… be able to forgive that.”
It felt like a slap in the face, how backwards that sounded. Like the confession was an admission that Luke had been running from the end of them. More than that, Luke was afraid that it would somehow have been Boba’s choice to end things even after Luke took that choice by becoming a Jedi. As if that were a choice Boba could even make, even now.
“I thought your father was a spice freighter,” Boba managed to say.
Luke’s mouth tried and failed to curve into a smile. “So did I. Surprised you remember that.”
“Did you think I could forget?”
That was all it took for Luke to finally break. And seeing it was enough to break Boba in turn.
“How fucking dare you,” Boba growled and yanked his helmet off so he could kiss the tears gathering at the corners of Luke’s eyes. He’s not exactly gentle but Luke leans hard into him like a vine searching for the sun.
How dare Luke make a home for himself in Boba’s heart like it was his. How dare he leave it empty. How dare he make Boba feel this way about a damn Jedi.
Boba moved his lips down to catch Luke’s and tried to make him feel it. All the bitterness and yearning tangled together.
Luke’s breath was hitching sobs against Boba’s mouth but he wasn’t pushing Boba away now, he was clinging to Boba’s body like it was the only solid ground in the galaxy. It pissed Boba off that it was exactly what he wanted, and it pissed him off that he was being allowed to have it.
Boba shoved Luke roughly backwards until he was pressed hard between Boba and the ship’s hull. Boba tore his mouth from Luke’s with a gasp when Luke slotted their hips together and wrapped his legs around Boba’s waist, and made it seem graceful. When did Luke become graceful? When had he traded fraying unbleached ponchos for clean lines in black? How much more had Boba lost through him?
“I’m sorry,” Luke whispered in broken moans as Boba pressed him hungrily against the wall, over and over, “I’m sorry.”
Boba pressed tighter, trying to wrap himself around Luke more, trying to pull Luke into himself and keep him there. As if, if he could just get near enough, the chasm that had opened between them in each others’ absences would close.
Luke never used to apologise for anything. He never used to look at anyone like he was waiting for either thankless demands or wholesale rejection. He never used to pretend to be fine and he never used to look so tired behind it all. Boba wanted to strip him bare until he found that spark of solar fire again. So he did.
Clothes and armour fell to the ship floor with very little ceremony and soon Luke was moaning brokenly on Boba’s fingers as he opened him up with slick that had seemed to appear from nowhere, and Boba forced his mind to skate right over the implication of Luke's new Jedi bullshit.
Boba's hand slid down from pinning Luke to holding him up only so he could slide back down, as slow as Boba could tolerate without driving himself mad with the need to thrust fast and hard into the tight heat of Luke that's slowly devouring him. Luke shuddered in Boba’s arms as he bottomed out and Boba momentarily wrestled with wanting to draw the moment out and wanting to make Luke feel him for days after he inevitably leaves again. The desperate little sounds and movements Luke was making as he tried to encourage Boba to move or otherwise to take some measure of pleasure for himself despite the way he was being crushed soon made Boba's decision for him.
The fingers digging into Boba’s scalp as Boba fucked Luke into the wall didn’t have the right shape in their pressure; too unyielding in some places, too much give in others, and Boba made a note to ask later if whoever did that was still alive. Then he crumpled that note up and tossed it in the trash compactor with the burning reminder that it wasn’t his business anymore. Boba tightened his grip and moved faster, trying to fool himself into thinking he was making some kind of claim.
“How dare you,” Boba said again, face buried in Luke’s neck, and this time it came out in a groan. “How dare you make me live without you for three years .”
“I’m-”
Boba growled, “If you say you’re sorry one more time I’ll stop.”
Luke let out a broken whine. “Don’t you dare.”
Boba lifted Luke up and off of him then pinned him back against the wall, and Luke nearly immediately started squirming for friction. “Fucking bastard.”
The insult made Boba melt, just a little, just enough, in the familiar heat of it. He kissed Luke again, trying to catch a taste of it, and let out a sigh when Luke took his lip between his and bit down. “Found you."
Boba lined them up again and slammed back into Luke, reveling in the cry that ripped itself from Luke’s throat as his back arched off the wall. Boba didn’t stop until Luke was spent and lax, then followed him over the edge.
Boba was still catching his breath when Luke tightened his arms around Boba’s neck and kissed him, long and desperate for softness. Soft wasn’t something Boba was ever good at but for Luke he tried. Stars, did he try to be soft. Maybe it was just that they were both still floating in the afterglow but it seemed like there wasn’t any fight left in either of them.
Luke’s confession was hushed and delicate when they broke apart. “I never stopped thinking about you. I mean, I still…”
Boba let Luke trail off and figured then was a good a time as any to through discretion to the wind and make a confession of his own. “There’s something I need to tell you. I should have said it before.”
“You too. I mean, I have so many things to tell you too. I-”
The door opened with a mechanical hiss and Leia’s wide, shocked eyes quickly jerked away from the scene she’d walked in on, taking a few ginger steps back out of the threshold. “Oh. Um… Chewie and Lando are here.” The door quickly hid her increasingly red face as it slid back closed behind her.
There was a moment of silence in which both of them knew they should be moving or talking, but did neither.
“Later.” Boba’s mouth felt dry and his tongue stuck against his teeth but he forced himself to say and mean it, “Tell me what you need me to do. We’ll have time to talk later.”
Luke finally graced him with a real smile then; small and tired but genuine, and Boba thought maybe he’d held on tightly enough to keep the chasm closed long enough to build a bridge.
“Later,” Luke agreed, and he’d said it like a promise. Like “later” could have meant forever. Like he wanted it to mean forever, and Boba had believed it.
He should have known by then that “later” was just another way of saying “next time.”
Pretext has gone largely out the window for Din when it comes to Luke, so it’s no great surprise for Din to search Boba out, needle him with words shaped like whistling birds; minimalist in efficiency and sharp in precision. A weapon growing honed as well as any other Din collects. Very rarely does Din lose his temper but when he does it can be extraordinary.
Din is running so uncharacteristically short on patience that nearly the first words out of his helmet, bursting into Boba’s workspace, after his most recent visit to the Jedi school are, “He missed his sister’s wedding because of something that happened with Solo.”
“Who?” Boba asks, not even looking up from his work. He hasn’t yet thrown the pretext out like Din has, but it is tipping carelessly over the edge of the windowsill.
“You know who.”
Boba considers fighting the conversation a bit more, but Din is slowly chipping away at his resolve in this regard, and many others. “He doesn’t have a sister.”
Din doesn’t bother pursuing the obvious question of how Boba would know that, but he does silently stare for long enough to make it clear the comment hasn’t been let go. “Apparently he has a long-lost twin.”
Boba’s hand tightens around the tool until it hurts. He’s not jealous. He is not. There are things people know about Luke now that Boba doesn’t, of course there are. There’s no need for Boba to feel any kind of way about that. “Is there a reason I need to know any of this?”
“I don’t know. Is there ? Because he seems to think his brother-in-law accidentally killed someone very important to him.”
“If his sister married Solo, bad taste in men runs in the family.” Mentioning Han is another slip, and an even more explicit one, but still the pretext of ignorance goes unchallenged.
Din fixes his visor on Boba for a good long while before cooly saying, “Seems that way.”
If the blow came from someone Boba respects even a few degrees less it probably wouldn’t eat away at him so much, but already feels the jab gnawing on him.
Boba keeps his voice careful and controlled as he holds his work steady. “Did he say anything else?”
Some of the fight’s already gone out of Din, and Boba expects he’ll get an apology later, not that he deserves one. Din’s polite like that. Din answers, “Only that Solo makes forgiving him really difficult.”
Boba nearly snorts at that with a distant sort of amusement because, yeah, that seems right.
A selfish part of Boba is glad to hear it. He wants it to be hard to let go of. Boba wants to be hard to let go of. But he’s used to not getting everything he wants how he wants it. Sometimes things like that cost more blood, sweat, and sand than they’re worth, and this sort of thing collects interest. Luke is certainly no stranger to any of that, and there’s something horribly enticing about the idea that Luke might have broke himself paying for it, but it’s far beyond too much to expect Luke to carry a torch so long for Boba Fett.
3ABY
It was an accident, really. One of those unfortunate things no one had thought to account for. It wasn’t even Han’s fault; after all he was blind, sick, confused, his last meeting with Boba hadn’t been on the friendliest of terms. It was completely reasonable for Han to make some assumptions about hearing the name Boba Fett and deciding to do something about it.
That wasn’t much consolation when he was being digested. Boba was pushed into the Sarlacc pit by the man he was trying to help save, after being the one to capture him in the first place and Boba wasn’t sure if those two ironies cancelled each other out.
The last thing he thought he heard before the gaping maw closed over him was someone screaming his name, but after a while of nothing but sucking wet darkness, he wasn’t sure if he imagined it. He didn’t want to think about how unrecognisable the voice sounded, wrecked by terror and grief and regret, and the only solace he found in the belly of that monster was that he’d never hear that voice sound like that again.
News travels slow and unreliable in the Outer Rim, and even slower on it’s way to the Core. Verifiable news travels even slower. News that anyone cares about taking action on is actively hindered more often than not. So the way Din is on edge when he comes back from taking a sudden call, Boba doesn’t immediately think about the news of the new managment Jabba’s Palace is under making it’s way very far out of the system.
Before Boba can ask what’s got sand under his kute Din says, “He’s coming to Tatooine.”
Boba doesn’t bother pretending not to know who they’re talking about anymore. There’s not much point to it. It’s more efficient to launch straight into interrogation. “What the fuck did you say to him?”
“Nothing,” Din grinds out, “that’s the problem. He’s coming to tear his dead lover’s name and armour off the person he thinks stole them.”
Oh.
“Are you going to deal with this?” Din demands, and Boba knows Din well enough by now to understand the question as a lifeline.
Boba only nods instead of grabbing on to it. He’s never been one for running away or to look for someone to save him and he rather doesn’t want to be. If he’s going to drown, he supposes now is as good a time as any. It’s a good sea to do it in.
Din returns the nod, but the tension doesn’t leave. He might respect, above everything else, Boba’s right to captain his own shipwreck, but he doesn’t trust him not to go down with it. Which is fair, because Boba doesn’t much trust himself either.
Before Din leaves, he tells Boba, “He wouldn’t come here when I asked him to before. He said there’s nothing for him but the graves of people he couldn’t save. I don’t know what kind of history you two have, exactly, but you better settle it before he cuts you to pieces and has to live with it after… Don’t make me live with it, Boba.”
It’s probably about the most selfish thing Din has ever asked for. If Boba survives this, he should probably arrange for him to take a holiday.
Boba doesn’t ask why Din would have asked Luke to come to Tatooine. He knows now it’s because the man collects loyalty like a bantha collects sand-fleas, and is terrible at minding his own business.
Boba also doesn’t argue the implication that talking is his only hope for survival, because if Luke wanted to he could pull the seams of him apart in the most viscerally literal sense. Nevermind what he does to him in more figurative ways.
The rest of the throne room follows Din out and leave Boba alone to wait.
Luke looks much like he did the last time he came to Jabba’s palace. All cold control and a distant sort of intentionality, more event than person. A catastrophic event, in this case, akin to driving through a mass shadow in hyperspace, approaching with all the mercy of a universe that will continue on long after Boba’s manufactured cells have returned to stardust.
Boba thinks he might love to be a casualty of that just to also be it’s witness.
It takes a moment. Boba imagines Luke doesn’t recognise him at first, well-aged and well-scarred as he’s become inside and out. Or maybe he’s just waiting for the ghosts he sometimes sees to banish themselves, not yet realising that this time it’s flesh and blood, not apparition, that’s tormenting him with visions of people who should be dead.
Of course Boba doesn’t fade, but the lightsaber and that careful facade of Jedi do, and in the blink of an eye Luke is standing in front of him, eyes wide and disbelieving and hands pressed firm against Boba’s chest plate and helmet as if to make sure they’re real and solid.
Boba remembers the feeling.
Luke reins himself back in quickly, Boba can see the smallest shift in his eyes as it happens from as close as they are, and Luke moves to step back and away from where he’s crowding Boba.
Boba doesn’t let him this time. He grabs Luke’s hand firmly to hold it back against the side of his helmet and imagines he can feel warmth through the beskar and durasteel alloy, through the glove, through the prosthetic that Boba can feel the mechanisms of moving under his grip. Jetti osik maybe. Or maybe a memory, still too stubbornly strong not to feel.
Luke still looks unsure, but he doesn’t pull away, and when Boba is sure he isn’t going to he raises his other hand to release the seal of his helmet, his hand covering Luke’s still pressed to the other side as it comes up and down between them.
There’s a lot that goes unspoken in the space before what happens next. A silent understanding that neither one of them is going to flinch first, so it’s fine to just let things settle in a way it couldn’t before.
Luke’s hand that isn’t trapped between Boba and his helmet rises to replace the first. The touch of skin against Boba’s face is feather light enough to doubt it’s there at all, hovering, like touching the surface of him will break the vision like a reflection in still water.
“Look how you remember?” Boba asks, just a touch of tentative, dry humour in his voice.
“You look like a dream,” Luke answers. The honesty of it feels brutal and has Boba pitching forward until he can rest his head on the solid land of Luke’s crown.
Boba’s not a dream, though, or a ghost or a memory and he won’t be beholden to that. “I’m not the same man I was.”
“No, you have less hair,” Luke quips with a soft, tentative quirk of lips.
Boba snorts a surprised and amused breath, and presses his forehead against Luke’s just a little harder, tension falling from his shoulders in time with the spring-tight coil in Luke’s arms turning lax and finally letting Boba press into the cage of them.
“I’m not the same either,” Luke adds, so very quietly, with a frightened tremor in his voice and Boba’s helmet drops to the floor while one hand intertwines with the one covering Luke’s and the other moves to steady him with a soft touch at his waist.
“Do you think we could learn?” Boba asks, surprising himself with how much more solid his voice sounds than he feels.
“Yes.” Luke nods frantically. “Yes.”
Boba can’t help himself any longer from leaning forward for a soft, searching press of lips that Luke lets out a quiet, relieved and wanting sound into as he reciprocates.
It’s not at all what it used to be.
But it feels like finding home again.