PROMPT: The request was for a Rogue One AU, which naturally I fulfilled in the least intuitive way possible.

It began like a soft thrum in his head, like the reverberating flutter of a thousand insect wings. It built gradually in volume and intensity, tearing through the inner chambers of his ears until every corner of his skull was throbbing.

Vomiting and helmets. Never a good mix.

The smell and taste of sick filled his nose and mouth, and as soon as the noise receded enough to allow conscious thought and he could muster some control of his hands, he yanked his helmet off. It made a metallic clang as it hit the floor of the cargo bay, and his body convulsed in reflexive pain.

He was facedown on the cold metal. Didn't remember how he got there.

Boba Fett slowly braced his forearms against the floor and looked up at the black figure looming over him. "What-" His throat was raw. Was that from throwing up, or had he been screaming? "What did you do to me?"

"I'll ask you one more time," Darth Vader said in his low, resonate voice. "Where are the plans?"

Fett spat, trying to expel the taste from his mouth. "What. Did. You. Do. To. Me." He started to rise, but the fluttering started again and nausea rose up in the back of his throat. He made it no further than his hands and knees. "Transmitter," he said, because it didn't matter now. "They're in the transmitter."

They must have injected him with something. He couldn't say for sure how long he was unconscious after Vader picked him up using the Force and threw him into the bulkhead. He vaguely heard the scuff of the stormtrooper's boots as he climbed up the ladder into the cockpit of Slave I. "They're here, my lord," he reported. "But...they've already been sent."

Fett could hear the rise in pitch in the trooper's voice.

"Who was the recipient?"

The trooper scuffed his way slowly back over and handed Vader a datareader. "The princess." The sith lord's voice ended in a hiss.

Her ship had to have made the jump by now. Vader could fume all he wanted, but Leia was safe. It was his only consolation in what were probably the final moments of his life.

"You disappoint me, bounty hunter. Your talents are wasted in the Rebellion."

Fett wiped his face and carefully eased back onto his knees. "My talents have always been for hire. You never minded when it benefited you."

"What were you paid to commit treason against the Empire?"

"I never discuss-" Pain surged through his head, turning his muscles into liquid. He hunched over, the smell of vomit still sharp in his nose. When the thrumming, throbbing pain suddenly left, a wretched, pitiful gasp escaped him.

This was not how he wanted to die. "Die fighting," his father always told him. "Die with honor."

"Nothing," he said, when he was sure he could control his voice. "I was paid nothing. I didn't do it for the Rebellion. I did it for her."

For a moment, the only sound was the rasp of Vader's respirator. There was a sort of grim humor in imagining his face, if he still had one under that mask. And since these were his last seconds, Fett thought they might as well be as full of such petty pleasures as possible.

He thought about Leia's face. Not the face she would make when she learned of his demise, but the last, hasty farewell. "If you can't get the plans out-"

"I'll get them out," he told her. "You have my word."

It was rushed and awkward. The bunk was too narrow. It didn't matter to him. Every step he'd taken toward her since the day she blasted his swoop bike to bits on Dantooine, he'd wanted this. It didn't matter how it happened. It happened.

It was something.

"Leave us." Stormtrooper boots retreated from the cargo bay, and Fett raised his head, watching the sith lord warily.

"What do you know of Order 66?"

"Not as much as you do."

"Have you ever heard that all clones were implanted with a biochip by your Kaminoan creators?" Vader moved slowly towards the bins beside his repair station, gazing down at the collection of spare armor and weapons. "It was said to have made them more obedient, and dependent on their Jedi commanders. But it was also said that this biochip is what led them to kill the Jedi when Order 66 was given."

He pulled a helmet out of the bin, a battered Phase I clonetrooper helmet with the receptors stripped out. "You were, after all, made from the same materials as they were. Did you ever question whether you were truly, as they told your father, unaltered?"

The helmet dropped from Vader's hand, crashing into the floor and scattering little bits of plastoid-alloy. Fett swallowed back a fresh wave of nausea.

"Tell me, bounty hunter. If you were implanted with the same chip, could I command you to hunt down the princess and destroy her?"

There was something not right here, it fizzed restlessly at the edges of his mind. He shook his head, ignoring the residual pain. "No."

"Why not?"

"Because there was no chip. The Jedi rose up against the Emperor and the clones were forced to execute them for treason." It was a matter of finding the right answer. The one the man who used to be Anakin Skywalker wanted to hear.

"Treason always has its cost," Vader rumbled, "which brings us back to the subject of what to do about yours."

Telling him to get it over with would accomplish nothing. Fett knew that. He waited in silence.

"The biochips of the clones was a myth. But we have had some success using a cruder, more immediate type of biochip implant on the Wookiee population. The effects of which, you have now experienced for yourself." Vader paused. "Stand up."

Apparently he didn't move fast enough for the sith lord. Or maybe it didn't matter. The throbbing filled his head, crushing every strung-out, fragile nerve. His retching did no good. His stomach was empty.

"Stand up," Vader said again, and gave him enough time to get his feet beneath him. The cargo hold swam around him, watery until he blinked and Vader's dark shape became clear. Fett swallowed the acid bile in his mouth.

"You work for me now, bounty hunter. Exclusively."