Work Text:
In the fog of Cloud City:
“Skywalker,” the bounty hunter says, and he lowers his rifle.
Luke stands with his back to the wall, breathing hard. The hunter doesn’t move. Doesn’t shoot. Doesn’t fully disarm himself. He stands there, half-exposed and very still, like a bow drawn too taunt.
“Vader,” the hunter starts, and his voice cuts off abruptly, like he’s choking.
Luke lowers his own blaster, heart hammering. He peers around the corner, and he can feel in the Force pain. Not physical.
“When you face him,” the hunter says, and his vocoder can’t disguise the halting way he speaks, like each word is being torn out of his chest, “let him talk.”
He’s not lying. It’s a plea. The only emotion that Luke can feel is terror, not directed at Luke but at Vader. For Vader.
The hunter steps back. It’s like watching him drag his own body out of Luke’s sight. Away. Back down the hall. For a moment, Luke stands there, blaster still partially raised. His heart hammers in his ears.
Later, falling and falling, Luke thinks of the bounty hunter.
He should have listened.
It’s an offhand comment, overheard in a slum on Onderon. Boba is stalking his target, a deserter of the Imperial Army who was foolish enough to run off with documents of importance. He’s obscured in an alleyway next to a slumping tent of a cantina, watching his target trying to weasel her way into a room at the halfway house across the street. The conversation filters through his helmet’s audios, parsing out the wind and allowing the low voice to become audible.
“Y’know,” a rough, snarling voice says, “that Jedi. Skywalker. Remember him?”
Boba watches his target flirt with the guard. It’s not a very good show. She’s flat-chested and too tightly buttoned up, and her words are clearly not having the desired effect. Boba wonders if this Imp has ever flirted in her life.
“Oh, yeah,” a low, sonorous voice says, slightly slurred. “Tricky bugger. What happened to him?”
“Well,” the snarling one says, and something about the way he forms the word makes Boba swap some of his attention to the conversation because his target is getting nowhere fast. “I don’t think he’s dead.”
“Oh?” the other murmurs.
“I heard a rumour of a rumour,” the snarling one whispers, almost low enough to escape Boba’s audios; Boba will have to move soon because his target is finally starting to give up. “That’s he’s Darth Vader –”
“Shh!” his companion says, suddenly very sober, just as Boba’s target throws dirt at the guard and he’s forced to make a move.
By the time, he’s hauling the Imp back to Slave 1 with a gag and cuffs, the majority of the slums not even glancing their way, the pair are long gone, and Boba doesn’t have enough reasons to go after them. He sedates the Imp and chains them in the hold, notifying his employer, this time the general contact for the Imperial Interior Bureau of Investigations, that the target has been acquired. He jets out into space, head swimming.
It’s probably just baseless rumours.
Yet –
Luke tracks the bounty hunter—Boba Fett, hunter of scum for richer scum—to an outpost on the Sullust Trading Route where he’s docked for repairs. The moon is mostly ice with water and small floating islands near the equator. It makes for good smuggler and black market movement, and, if it had a bigger population, it would remind Luke of Tatooine. The same character of people are in charge of the main port, running the same charade of a government. Luke is glad he brought more credits than he usually travels with for bribes.
Fett himself is not hard to find. Truly dangerous beings are not because they have no reason to be. Fett’s jobs aren’t from the Bounty Hunter Guild; Luke had never seen him before on Tatooine, but he had heard of him. One of Jabba’s favourites and willing to take money from anywhere and anything so long as the money itself was good. Bounty hunters have no morals and no scruples.
Luke finds Fett in a nightclub that smells like spilled spotchka and has such a thick haze of spice that it’s palpable. He’s in a hookah lounge with several smugglers and a trio of naked dancers, idly flipping a knife up and down as Luke slips into view. He catches the blade as Luke squeezes onto the circular couch, hands carefully palms up.
“Step outside with me,” Luke says, trying to cut to the point through the spice haze.
The smugglers barely give him a glance, pawing at the dancers and smoking. Fett, who is in full gear, spins the blade. Luke feels the Force ripple with the movement.
“I’m working,” Fett says, which isn’t entirely a lie.
“You’re workaholic, Fett!” one of the smugglers calls, hands full of credits to earn one of the dancer’s attention. “Take the night off. I’m game to share tonight.”
Fett is not wholly disinterested in the idea of getting into bed with the dancer, the smugglers, and possibly others, which Luke will regret knowing forever. But he shakes his head and then looks at Luke for a short moment before motioning with the knife out onto the main club floor.
“Didn’t know you go for small skinny humans,” the smuggler closest to Fett comments, leering at Luke.
“I don’t,” Fett says, very dryly.
They end up deep down the back alleyway next to the club’s dumpsters and employee exit. A couple of dancers smoking on the steps wave at them. Fett waves back as they slip back inside. Luke grits his teeth. Fett shifts his full attention to him.
“I usually charge for this,” he says, more bland than anything else.
“For just talking?” Luke asks, feeling irritated.
“Time is money,” Fett says, extremely tired.
Luke blows his breath out. Fett clearly knows why he’s here. They aren’t trying to kill each other, and Fett’s not taking up on the bounty Luke knows he has on his head. They’re in territory that is more in Fett’s comfort zone, but the situation doesn’t favour either of them. Luke draws his breath in.
“You know for certain he’s my father.”
Fett’s quiet for a long moment. He’s not trying to avoid the question. His feelings in the Force are so jumbled. Love, frustration, disappointment, hate, adoration, yearning, aching, sadness, so much love—they and others tumble together. Fett seems to glow with it all. It’s beautiful. It hurts to look at it head on.
“Yes.”
It comes out soft, the puff of air that comes with being stabbed in the lung. Luke drags his hands through hair. His father, who he always admired, is Darth Vader. There is absolutely no reason why Fett would lie about this.
“Do you…” Luke starts but the words taper off because he doesn’t really know what he wants to ask; he feels distinctly like he’s hurting Fett somehow, like a child dropping bits of salt on a snail; he doesn’t like it. “I’m sorry.”
Fett doesn’t move or say anything. They stand there in the alleyway for a long time. Luke can sense Fett’s emotions, most prominently an aching sort of undirected anger. Luke’s mind feels like he took a blow to the head.
Eventually, Fett shifts. His head tilts slightly to the side, and his emotions slide along each other like a musician changing keys.
“Is that all?”
Luke nods. Fett doesn’t move immediately. When he straightens, Luke does as well.
“You have a hefty bounty on your head,” Fett says, and it is bland again, the opposite of the intense press of Light he radiates. “You should be more careful with whom you show your face.”
Luke looks at him, really looks at him. At the mask and the armour. The rifle and the blaster and the jetpack at the back. At the Light and how it glows at the centre of him, covered by layers of clothes and armour, a gigantic fucking beacon to anyone Force-sensitive, screaming –
“Fett,” Luke starts, but Fett holds up his hand.
“Don’t make this more difficult,” he says, and Luke gets it suddenly, and he thinks wildly that Vader can be saved; he’s found what makes his father good; “Cover your face. Leave.”
Luke yanks his hood up and runs.
The first time:
“You’re younger than I expected.”
Boba feels his lips twist into a scowl. He doesn’t fool himself: Vader is a sorcerer, and he will perceive his displeasure. Darth Vader looks down at him, surrounded by nervous Imperial officers, who can’t seem to decide if they want to sneer at the bounty hunter that blights their landing bay or gawk at Vader’s words.
“I do not believe my age has affected the quality of my work, Lord Vader,” Boba says because the two targets are in perfect condition in their carbonite casings next to them, and he is younger than his clients expect.
Vader’s breathing apparatus puffs out air. Draws it in.
“It has not,” Vader says, a statement rather than an agreement; he motions to the colonel a careful full three paces behind Vader’s right elbow. “Take these to the hold.”
He stares at Boba as the captain and several other officers scurry around them. Boba stares at the eye markings in his mask. There’s a lot of talk in the galaxy about Vader. How he came like a wild, dark storm out of nowhere as the Empire rose. Some call him a spectre and others a dark god. Boba doesn’t take stock in any of that. He knows what the Force is and the ills of those who wield it. He stares back at Vader and feels strangely angry and not at all afraid.
“Fett,” Vader says, quieter and with intent. “Your payment is being transferred as we speak.”
The notification of a deposit of fifty thousand credits pops up at the bottom of his helmet’s visuals. Fett does not break eye contact. He senses Vader can tell. Fett is young and hotheaded and will not be cowed.
“Pleasure doing business with you, Lord Vader,” Fett says.
He watches Vader’s retreating back for a long moment before returning to the safety of Slave 1. He sits in the hold after departing, helmet left in the cockpit, staring at his hands. Small. Not quite able to comfortably shoot larger weapons. He makes up for it with his anger and iron will, and he will be better than his father, carrying his legacy as no one else ever could.
All of the other clones would be middle aged by now. Fett is a clone, brimming with the youthful fire that once fought the Republic’s wars.
Vader recognised that. He knows exactly who Boba Fett is.
Head in his hands, Boba can’t help but laugh.
“Fucking idiots.”
Luke rubs his hands through his hair as Leia simply glares at Fett, who isn’t looking at either of them. He sits in the shitty Tatooine hovel that he dragged them off to from the bowels of Jabba’s Palace in the dead of the frigid desert night, his head in his hands. It would be comical under other circumstances, since he’s still wearing his helmet. Right now, it’s simply unnerving.
“Why did you break us out?” Leia asks, acidic and wary.
Fett doesn’t answer. Luke can’t read his mind—he has very good mental shields—but he gets the distinct impression that Fett isn’t thinking about anything in particular right now. His emotions, just as blindingly Light as always, mostly give off a distinct and pervasive feeling of depression and self-incrimination. Something happened between the last time Luke saw him around the back of the nightclub and now.
“Fett,” Leia starts, beginning to move forward with her hand clasping the tarp she’s huddled in closed, “what game are you playing –
“I don’t play games!” Fett barks, sitting up straight abruptly and staring Leia down in a way that would have Luke on his feet if Fett didn’t telegraph despair and grief so strongly. “Do you have any idea what the bounties on the pair of you are worth to the Empire?”
Leia grits her teeth, manic fire to her eyes. “Are you going to turn us in?”
Fett slumps and puts his head back in his hands. He clearly wishes he was anywhere but here.
“No.”
Leia blinks, thrown in a way she rarely ever is. She looks at Luke. Her eyes narrow.
“You know something,” she says, very dangerous.
“I swear by my father’s head,” Fett says, not looking at either of them, “if you don’t shut the hell up, I’ll leave the two of you here to rot.”
“We’re rescuing Han,” Leia says, more acidic.
Fett stands up. Locks up. He breathes audibly and then tilts his head up to stare at the ceiling. The hovel’s roof has multiple holes in it.
“Do whatever you want,” he says as he lowers his chin and stares at them; Luke has no idea how to interpret Fett’s emotions, which bind themselves together and move like a fire cyclone. “I’m leaving.”
And he does exactly that.
The last time:
“I feel like you have some level of awareness of how I feel –”
Vader is looking at him. Facing Boba as best he can. He can’t remove his mask because they aren’t in the safety of his sterile personal chamber. Boba stands in the hold of Slave 1 and he didn’t want to cry—he really wanted to be the stronger of them, just this one time –
“And I always knew this couldn't last forever,” he’s saying, wiping tears away with the palms of his hands because he wants to look at Vader; he wants to remember him like this forever, “and you have done so much for me, even though we can’t be more than this, and I just need you to know:
“It was always enough,” and Vader closes the gap, presses his forehead to Boba’s and holds his face in his hands, cycling air deep and hard between them; the medical box is making grinding noises, overtaxed; Boba makes an ugly noise and chokes a little bit, and he has to continue, or he’ll just give up and die right here –
“Thank you,” he sobs as Vader holds him, this last time, “for loving me how I want to be loved.”
They track Fett down to an uncharted planet that’s entirely oceans and storms. The world is in decay, the atmosphere unstable and buffeting the Millennium Falcon from all sides. Chewbacca volunteers to stay behind to make sure the ship doesn’t accidentally pitch into the swirling ocean, and Luke, Leia, and Han struggle down the ramp into the ruins of what was once a great floating city.
When they find Fett, he is helmetless and only partially armoured, dressed in a moss green sweater and very old Imperial grey exercise trousers. He holds them at the crumbling entrance to the city’s interior with a grenade launcher that looks older than he is. His expression and presence in the Force are as wild as the storm raging outside.
“How did you get here?” Fett asks, rough and uneven without the vocoder.
“You’re a hard person to find, Fett,” Han says, antagonistic.
“Han,” Leia says, very urgently as Fett’s finger twitches over the trigger.
“How did you get here?” Fett asks again, and Luke steps forward because he senses that Fett is not going to hold back on firing if he doesn’t get a truthful answer; it was good foresight that Chewbacca is back on the Millennium Falcon; Fett would have probably felt more cornered and just opened fire. “This planet has been deleted from record.”
It’s a Clone Wars era launcher. A lot of Fett’s signature equipment are Clone Wars or earlier. Luke senses they’re standing over a graveyard.
“We need to talk to you,” Luke says, and he holds out the pouch of credits Leia scrounged up. “I remember –”
Fett shakes his head. He’s angrier than Luke has ever felt him.
“I am not going to help you kill him,” Fett says, and he takes aim at Leia’s head.
“No!” Luke says, waving his hands and stepping forward again, the credits in the pouch clinking and the storm howling in the background. “I don’t want to kill –”
“I’m not that stupid,” Fett says, and he shifts the launcher to Luke’s head even though he fully expects him to be able to deflect the fire. “Your killing intent is obvious –”
“I’m not lying,” Luke says, and he regrets their first meeting so much in this moment because Fett is willing to die for Vader. “I want to talk to him. I want him to hear me out.”
Fett breathes hard. “You really are related,” he says, with a clear note of hysteria.
They end up in the deep interior of the ruined city. There’s lights on here and atmospheric controls, and it looks like Fett has been bedded down here off and on over the years. Equipment in various stages of repair and disrepair resides on the walls of the main sector that Fett has staked out as a strange combination of storage and living quarters. Several droids move around, all Old Republic models that are well-maintained and give them a startled once over before Fett waves them aside, signing to them with his left hand.
“Aren’t those Tuskan signs?” Luke can’t help but ask.
Fett doesn’t respond, signing for a longer, intense time to the R0-GR model that signs back, seemingly in protest. For a while, they’re stuck watching Fett and the droid argue before the droid makes a deep whirring noise and points at Luke’s belt. Lightsaber.
“No,” it says, and Fett is still holding his grenade launcher, but it’s pointed at the ground. “I made an exception once because you promised that one was different, but it was not.”
It sucks to be able to see Fett’s face. His helmet is on the long table in the middle of the room, repair supplies open next to it. From the half-finished layer of green, their arrival must have interrupted his painting.
“Wait,” Han says, and Fett and the droid shift only enough to bring him into their sights. “Are you and Darth Vader –”
“They’re related,” Fett says to R0-GR, low and like every word is swallowing poison. “The Jedi is his son.”
R0-GR whirs loudly. “This is completely illogical,” it says, but Luke knows that tone; the droid has been active for a long time, and it’s clearly loyal to Fett and understands what makes him tick. “Don’t forget: all beings like that hurt us in the end.”
Fett signs something angry and hot and with a great deal of hurt. The droid huffs and finally backs down. Fett’s Light shines strangely brighter for a moment before he turns back to them, looking like he’s resigned himself to the gallows. Maybe he has.
“I am not going to help you kill him,” Fett says, and then he points at a bowl on the table, which has a few strange fruits in it. “Put the credits in there.”
“Dank ferric,” Han breathes as Luke hastens to drop the pouch into the bowl. “You and Darth Vader really are a couple.”
For a split second, Fett looks like he wants to cry. But then the expression is gone and only ice-cold fury lies in place of it. He grips his launcher, clearly using all of his conscious will not to level it in Han’s direction. Luke opens the pouch and dumps the credits out. It’s in calamari flan. Leia is so obviously the smartest of them.
“Shut up, Han,” Leia says, and she steps forward and in between Fett and Han. “How much time does that buy us to talk to you?”
Fett’s eyes slide with excruciating slowness to the bowl and then back to Leia. “One hour,” he says as the R0-GR droid moves over and picks up the flan, counting it and then placing it within its chest compartment; Fett rounds the table and seats himself with his rifle next to his helmet. “Less if you’re going to be asking questions.”
Luke and Leia glance at each other. Han looks at them, frowning deeply. Fett picks up his paintbrush and begins to work on his helmet.
“I want to talk to him,” Luke says, and Fett keeps painting his helmet, even though the emotion screaming at the top of its lungs into the Force is one of complete and utter despair. “He… he tried to talk to me –”
“I know,” Fett grits out, and a craven part of Luke cannot wait for him to cover his face again with the helmet. “I even know what he planned to say, but you only heard the opening section of his melodramatic Force magic speech before he cut off your hand and you jumped down the shaft. I told him that he needed to put his proposal first, and I told him to reword it, or no sensible outsider to the Imperial interior would listen, let alone someone out for revenge for killing their father, but what the fuck do I know. Get on with it.”
“Did someone kill your father, and did you seek revenge?” Leia asks.
For a distinct moment, Fett sincerely looks like he might take one of the many weapons in reaching distance and brain himself. Instead, he keeps painting his helmet.
“Yes and yes,” he says, a ghost more than a person. “You have forty-eight minutes left.”
“That’s excessive!” Han barks.
“I want to explain,” Luke says, stepping forward until he’s directly at the table and across from Fett, who is so at his wit’s end that Luke is increasingly afraid they will end up watching him blow his own head off, “that if he will fight with me against the Emperor –”
“Not going to happen,” Fett says, dipping his paintbrush into the pot. “The Emperor holds things over Vader that only he can choose to forsake.”
“I’ll convince him –” Luke starts.
“Don’t insult him,” Fett says with such venom that Luke instinctively twitches; he doesn’t grab his lightsaber, but it’s a near thing. “I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what I am to your father, so I’ll say this once and never again: we are not a couple. We are not lovers. He gave me back my honour when I had lost it, and he keeps and defends it even now. So, I will keep and defend his honour until I die.”
“Is Vader’s honour what the Emperor holds over him?” Leia asks.
“No,” Fett says, setting his brush down and picking up the setting spray.
“What is it the Emperor holds over him, then?” Luke asks, extremely aware that they’re running out of time.
Fett sprays his helmet. He fans the aerosol away from his face. He looks between Luke and Leia and Han, and he looks again like he wants to cry. Luke gets the distinct impression suddenly that he would, but he’s forgotten how.
“You,” is the answer, and Luke gets it now; from the stricken look on both Leia and Han’s faces, they get it, too.
“I’ll save him,” Luke says, and Fett stares at him, burning with such Light. “If you help us –”
“Don’t make promises you can’t pay for,” Fett says, and it’s so consistent that Luke feels a surge of hope. “I’m expensive.”
“We’ll make it work,” Leia says, and Fett lifts his head and stares at the ceiling.
“Fine,” he says to the white-painted steel, to whatever he is looking at or listening to, and Luke can see how brightly he shines in the Force, despite and because of it all. “You can try.”
“The rumour you told me about the name ‘Skywalker’,” Vader says, standing at the window and looking out at the stars. “It’s true.”
Boba doesn’t know what to say. Talking also currently hurts because his filtration system was damaged and he inhaled too much smoke. He lies on the cot, left leg and arm in bacta sleeves to heal the burns. He doesn’t remember much after the operation on Aetan II went to shit aside from Vader Force-throwing him back onto the pirate transport and Boba firing his small blaster through a pirate’s face. It apparently hadn’t killed the pirate, who Vader has impounded for interrogation. Boba hasn’t asked what happened to the rest of the crew, but he assumes they’re dead.
Vader shifts. Crosses his arms. He does it less fluidly nowadays than when they first met. He moves slower in general and relies more on the Force than on his lightsaber. Boba is well aware he shouldn’t let himself feel like this, but knowing Vader is slowing down makes him feel protective.
That Vader is Anakin Skywalker –
“I told you that years ago,” Boba croaks, and Vader turns to him, arms still crossed. “I’ve known. For a long time.”
Vader cycles air. Boba starts to try to sit up, but Vader moves closer. He stays in Boba’s easy line of sight and on his right side. He won’t make Boba feel more vulnerable than he already is.
“You hate Jedi,” Vader says, in the softest register that his vocoder allows. “Anakin Skywalker took part in the events that led to your father’s death.”
Boba smiles. Vader stands over him. His presence, usually so hard and unmovable, is simply just solid. Boba lifts his left hand. Vader lifts his own hand and entwines his fingers with Boba. Cool and very, very gentle.
“Anakin Skywalker is dead,” Boba croaks.
Vader holds his hand. Steps closer to bring their hands to his chest over the medical controls so that Boba can feel how hard the mechanicals work. As vulnerable as Vader can be.
“He is,” Vader agrees.
Endor –
“It’s a trap,” Fett says over the comm as they come out of hyperspace under Slave 1’s extremely illegal cloaking shield.
“Probably,” Leia agrees, arms crossed as Fett stares at them in the faintly flickering holo; outside the Millennium Falcon’s viewport, the second Death Star looms in its partial completion. “But you agreed that this is probably the best way for Luke to reach Vader, and we aren’t going to let this opportunity to take down the Empire pass us by.”
“Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet,” Han jeers.
Fett doesn’t respond immediately. After a long moment, he reaches up and takes off his helmet.
“All things that hold power are evil, and power is the root of evil,” he says, and it is like hearing a corpse speak. “I don’t give a womprat’s ass about the Empire or the Rebel Alliance. I am upholding my end of the deal to enable Skywalker speak to Vader. If you do not uphold your end, and you dishonour me, then I have the right to hunt you.”
Leia sighs through her teeth. Next to her, Chewbacca grumbles to Han that this is the last person that they want hunting them. Han sighs, sinking back into the pilot’s chair.
“If we fail, Fett's not going to have much to hunt,” he murmurs.
They land on Endor, a good ways away from the main Rebel base and still under Fett’s cloaking shield. Luke hugs Han and Chewbacca and whispers the truth of themselves to Leia in the loamy grass, surrounded by strong trees. Fett stands on the ramp of Slave 1, helmet tucked under his right arm as he watches. He doesn’t tell them to hurry up. Without the distortion of the holo, it’s obvious as Luke climbs up the ramp that he’s been crying.
“Tell me where the Force tells you to go,” Fett says once the ramp is lifted and they’ve exited the atmosphere. “I’ll find a way to get you there.”
“For what it’s worth,” Luke says as Fett rotates Slave 1 towards the Death Star, “I really do think I can save him.”
“You’re trying to save a dead man,” Fett says, very hoarse; he puts his helmet back on and activates its seals; he shines so brightly it’s like standing next to a flash bomb. “He’s failing. He’s holding out for you. He…”
He’s wearing the helmet to hide his face, but Luke can feel the grief and love, precious flowers that Fett keeps so close to the core of his being that they’ve grown into a radiant bouquet. It’s a love so well nurtured and held so dear that the grief, which is acknowledged and inevitable, makes the love stronger. Even surrounded by so much darkness. Because of all the Dark.
“You can’t bring the dead back to life,” Fett whispers as they sneak into orbit around the Death Star, Slave 1 twisting to a bizarre angle to look like another hunk of space debris. “Even if you save Vader, his life is on a timer. That’s why he let me go.”
Luke swallows. He knows they don’t have much time. But he has to say this or he’ll regret it the rest of his life.
“I know I can save him,” he says, and he doesn’t dare touch Fett, even though he wants to; the Light is so warm and bright, “because he loves you enough to let you go.”
Fett doesn’t respond. He doesn’t move. For a long time, they orbit the Death Star, Fett seated at the controls and Luke just behind him. A part of Luke feels like he’ll return here often for the rest of his life.
“Thank you,” Fett says, almost inaudible.
Luke reaches out. Rests his hand on the back of the pilot chair.
Before them, the Death Star looms.
They were happy.
That’s the hardest part. When it was just Boba and Vader, out on a mission or considering star maps together on the bridge or sitting in the sterile chamber:
Boba was happy. Vader was, too, and he voiced it, in the safety of their encrypted channel that’s gone dark. They could trust each other, and Vader liked watching Boba fight, and Boba liked Vader’s horrible dry humour. Boba would talk sometimes while Vader had to wait for painkillers to kick in to be able to speak, and Vader always remembered what he’d said, even if it was completely inane. Vader sometimes got frustrated and lashed out, and Boba would snap back, but sometimes they would apologise, and everything, for a single, beautiful moment, would be alright because they knew they loved each other more than their anger.
No one, nothing, not even Vader’s master or Boba’s other employers, could take that from them.
They were so, so happy.
In the aftermath:
“Fett!” Luke calls, pushes through the celebrating crowd and after the helmeted figure slinking away towards the darkening forest. “Fett! I need to talk to you!”
He catches up. Fett extracts himself from the crowd and stops. He doesn’t turn to Luke, but he can guess that it’s probably taking all of Fett’s willpower to remain upright.
“Fett –”
“Did he die as himself?” Fett asks, and Luke wants him to take his helmet off; he wants to be able to see Fett’s expressions and hear his voice, not the flat, washed out tone of the vocoder; his Light has withdrawn so tightly into Fett’s chest that he seems to be nearly dead himself. “Did he –”
“He did,” Luke says, and he reaches out and closes his hands around Fett’s right vambrace; Fett tugs, weak, and Luke holds on. “He saved me, and he told me –”
“Don’t,” Fett whispers.
“He was glad it was you,” Luke says because he has to; he owes it to his father; he owes this to Fett. “He wanted me to tell you, ‘Thank you,’ and he apologised for not being able to tell you himself. He was at peace.”
Fett tilts his head away. His Light blooms and shines, and it hurts to look at it so directly, but Luke holds on. He’s learned to be brave.
Slowly, Fett reaches up. Unlatches his helmet. He lifts it off, and there’s tear tracks down his cheeks. He looks at Luke, and Luke sees him, and Fett draws in a shuddering, aching gasp.
“He shouldn’t have wasted his breath,” he says, but he doesn’t shake Luke off; he lets this happen, and he lets Luke see his face. “I knew he was dying,” and for a moment, Fett seems to battle with himself, but he ploughs forward: “The Emperor wanted to download his consciousness into a droid and keep his heart and his brain. It’s all you need, to continue to be able to use the Force. Because I knew, and I had tried to talk to you in Cloud City, Vader had to let me go before he became more dependent on the Emperor. He –”
He shifts and faces Luke, and he lets Luke hold his hand, and he sucks in air and lifts his head and stares at the starry sky.
“Thank you,” he says, barely audible and so very loud.
He bows his head. Luke stands, holding his hand, and lets him cry.
Immediately, Boba goes back to bounty hunting.
Leia Organa is a fucking thorn in his side, worse than Solo because at least the smuggler has the sensibility not to comm Boba directly. Organa comms him, at first leaving messages that are blunt recruitment efforts to join the New Republic and then with extremely enticing job offers that she always assures him, almost meanly, that he can refuse. It’s the meanness that makes Boba feel safe with accepting a job offer here and there.
Luke hires him occasionally, trading Boba rare items and medical supplies rather than pretending he has credits to spare. Boba scopes out a handful of planets for Luke to potentially set up a new Jedi Academy because Luke may be a Jedi, but he is the opposite of an enemy. The only reservation Luke has about the planets is:
“No deserts,” he says, sitting at the bar stool that he popped up like a poisonous plant on as Boba was sorting through a selection of non-Guild bounty pucks. “I’ll even take somewhere like your homeworld if we can engineer a way to live on it.”
“Don’t ever bring up my homeworld in public again,” Boba says, shoving the bounty pucks back towards the bartender.
“It’s called Kamino,” Boba says once they’re sitting in the hold of Slave 1 and he’s feeding the first of the chips Luke has brought into his starboard monitor, “and you don’t want to open a Force magic sanctuary somewhere uninhabitable. Imagine all the government paperwork.”
“Leia’s looking at streamlining processes,” Luke says because she’s his sister, and he feels like if anyone can make bureaucratic nonsense work, it’s her.
“Good fucking luck,” Fett says, extremely tired.
Fett’s advice, which costs Luke a shiny bundle of factory-fresh IG-11 memory cores, is to go to the planets with tamer weather and no sentient life. That whittles down the chips to only three planets, two of which are forest-heavy and one that had a mass extinction event a half a million years ago. Luke eats a painfully spicy sandwich that Fett offers him as he examines the memory cores.
“IG-11 models are illegal,” Luke says, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
“They have a habit of becoming bounty hunters,” Fett says, somewhat absentmindedly as he turns one of the chips over under his magnifying glass. “Just try to tell them they’re illegal.”
“Are you going to sell those to them?” Luke asks around the sandwich.
Fett smiles and doesn’t answer. His helmet watches them from its place on the table next to his elbow. Outside, night has fallen. The nights on this planet are long and very dangerous once the semi-toxic fog rolls in. Luke swallows the last of the sandwich, aware that he has only a handful of minutes to get back to his own ship.
“Before I go,” he says, and something about his tone makes Fett look at him, an unnerving fullness to his focus, “I need to pass along a message.”
The Light in Fett’s eyes flickers. The first time Luke did this, Fett reacted badly and only a great deal of self-control on both of their parts allowed the incident to not end in bloodshed. Since then, it’s a regular feature of their parting that they both dread and look forward to.
“My father told me,” and Luke has to be very careful because Fett is liable to fly off the handle on this singular point, “that he’s been trying to speak with you while you’re dreaming, but he’s having a hard time because you ignore him and claim he isn’t real.”
Fett scowls, the Light flaring. “I’m not –”
“You don’t have to be Force-sensitive for him to speak to you,” Luke says, even though he has personal doubts that Fett is as Force-null as he believes himself to be.
Fett scowls deeper. He sits back and crosses his arms, looking up at the ceiling. His anger and guilt and desire roll off of him, creeping vines with a thousand floral buds. In the unkind light of Slave 1, he reminds Luke of the few other surviving clones he’s now had the opportunity to meet, but his Light is entirely his own.
Vader knew that. It’s why he can find Fett, even in death.
“Get off my ship,” Fett says, very quiet.
Luke does. He hurries back to his X-Wing, hood up and respirator on. He doesn’t glance back.
He knows he’ll see Fett again soon.
Back on Slave 1, Boba curls his fingers together in his lap. He looks at them. At his knees and his boots. The smooth floor of the ship. He thinks of all the times that he lifted his head and found Vader in front of him as a holo over the comm and in person. He lifts his head and looks across the hold, yellow and harsh in the lighting. It would cast tall, hulking shadows if Vader was wearing his cape.
“Pleasure doing business with you, Lord Vader,” Boba says.
He can almost hear Vader laugh.