Summary: The Resistance acquires a Crèche-Master. Leia acquires a headache.
That the Resistance had acquired a Crèche-Master only came to General Organa's attention after the boarding incident. It wasn't that it never occurred to her that the newly reborn and growing Resistance would need someone to look after its members' children it just never occurred to her that that person would be capable of ripping a stormtrooper's arm off and beating them to death with it and taking the trooper's rifle and basically doing a one shot, one kill with it to any remainder of the stormtrooper squad that had been foolish enough to come anywhere near the crèche. When she looked further into the man all she found out was that he was an old man called Lucky, had joined the Resistance with a gaggle of children, mostly non-human, in tow (and kept taking in more as they were found by the Resistance if no living relations could be found) and flat-out refused to give any more reason for joining the Resistance than "Frack the First Order. They kill kids, or leave'em to die." Or give any more personal history than "drifter."
Rey and Finn had cleared him. She was going to have talk to them about it.
According to all the reports the younglings universally adored him.
Especially after the boarding incident.
He'd turned it into an impromptu self-defense lesson.
Disarming your attacker 101.
Apparently the giggling of the children had unnerved more than one parent when they came to see if their children were all right.
The door to her office chimed, and Leia sighed.
"Come in."
She did a double-take. She was almost certain she knew him. He looked like one of the old Clone troopers that had joined the original Rebellion but they were all dead. Given the amount of scars this man had she was surprised he wasn't. He was missing two fingers from his left hand and looked from the scarring as if they had been melted away, and she heard the tell-tale hum of an older, but well-maintained mechanical leg, even if she couldn't determine which leg it was.
He certainly didn't look like the sort of man who children would naturally gravitate towards. His glower left very little doubt he had come to see her under duress.
"Well?" his voice was rough, but it ended any doubt she had that he must have some connection to the Clone Troopers of old.
"Lucky, is it?"
"Yep."
"I'm told you're our Crèche-Master. I was unaware we had one," she admitted, trying put him at ease.
"Not surprised, ma'am," he shrugged, "you're busy running this shit-show."
And Leia had to pause.
"No offense, ma'am."
Leia snorted in disbelief.
"And since I am running this 'shit-show' I need to know more about pertinent personnel. A Crèche-Master holds the lives of our younglings in their hands," she tilted her head, and drily added, "We know next to nothing about you."
He met her eyes, his own eyes dark and defiant.
"Nothing interesting enough to warrant discussion. Worked here and there. Good at some things, bad at others. Seen more of the galaxy than most. Just a simple man making his way in the universe."
"A simple man who came to us with," Leia checked the data-slate, "fifteen orphaned younglings of various species calling him 'Dad', and I told you've adopted six more orphans since arriving."
"Need someone to look after them. No one else was doing it," he shrugged, and scowled darkly, "scary to be a child alone during a war."
"You have experience with that?" it wasn't really a question.
Still he raised one eyebrow and answered flatly:
"Yeah, my Dad was killed when I was ten. Beginning of the Clone Wars. Messy. Nobody gave a damn about me. Not the Separatists. Not the Republic."
Now that was interesting, she was certain he had ties to the Clone Troopers, but she remembered them always talking about brothers, not fathers.
"And yet now you're part of a Resistance movement for the New Republic."
"I don't care about your movement, ma'am," Lucky snorted disdainfully, "I'm here because the Resistance, Rebellion, whatever you want to call it is the safest place for the kids, my kids."
"Many of them still have parents," Leia calmly pointed out, not pointing out they were in basically the center of a warzone – he'd have just correctly parried that the entire galaxy was a warzone at the moment.
"When they're with me, they're mine," Lucky grinned, daring her to contradict that.
"Hmm, all things considered, their parents should consider themselves fortunate for that."
That got Leia a surprisingly sweet and genuine smile, and she abruptly understood why the children would adore Lucky. For a split second he had radiated warmth, kindness and delight. She had for a moment recalled a long lost tooka plushie which when she had seen it for the last time in her bedroom on Alderaan had lost most of its fur and an eye, but still was the truest, most faithful guard of her slumber and dreams. She hurt for that moment.
It must have been apparent, because Lucky asked kindly:
"Are you all right ma'am?"
"Mourning things lost," Leia said absently, "but we carry on."
"Yes, we do, ma'am."
She straightened up.
"Whether you care about the Rebellion or not, you do keep the younglings safe. Continue to do that and I will continue to run this," she grinned, "shit-show."
Another genuine smile as he nodded.
"Ma'am."
And she didn't spare another thought about Lucky, except to have a short talk with Finn and Rey about clearing random strangers without consulting her or Poe first. At very least they needed to consult Rose for procedure. Other than that she mostly saw him in the mess with any number of younglings hanging off of him, and they nodded at one another from time to time.
Then Finn acquired eight shiny Clone Troopers who followed him around like ducklings. Which was fine, until he worked his bi-monthly volunteer time in the Crèche and they followed him there too. Apparently they recognized Lucky as one of their own, and while Lucky had been polite in front of the younglings, he refused to answer any of their questions with anything other than a pleasant, but terse:
"Later."
Later which kept being put off as "Later, one of the baby trandoshans is teething and I need to go sweet-talk Supply out of a chunk of frozen meat." "Later, two of the younglings have developed worrying spots and I need to get them to healers." "Later, the huttlett just took a dump, do you want to clean it up?"
Leia almost felt she should intervene and gently explain to them that "later" probably meant "never" but the Force had its own card to play.
It came to a head when another clone trooper named Kix turned up. And hadn't that been a scene, Kix had gone from thinking he was the last Clone Trooper to having eight younger brothers again; there had been much hugging and Kix had adopted Finn (and by extension Poe and Rey and Rose) on the spot. Kix was 'older' than Finn's troopers and his reaction Lucky was...different.
Leia happened to be in the mess when Kix finally cornered Lucky without any younglings hanging off him. The gist of the questions went like this:
"Who did you serve under?"
Glare.
"Your unit?"
Glare and a faint growl.
"Your brothers?"
That got an outright snarl.
"Birth number?"
That surprisingly got answer.
"A-0050. Long before you were decanted," Lucky tossed out as he twisted around Kix and stalked away, "now frak off, I got kids to look after."
Kix grumbled something about alpha batches and went back to the med bay.
But something about that number stuck with Leia.
She didn't know if she was furious at Rey and Finn, or the man himself, or at herself for not digging deeper in the first place. She had entered the overheard birth number into the computer under a search function, and forgot about until an urgent ping keeping on pinging on a datapad a few days later.
It brought up a long out of date imperial handbook entry. Detailing how one Jango Fett had been given one unaltered clone as part of his payment for being the basis of the Clone Troopers. A clone that had been number A-0050. A clone he named Boba.
Leia ordered him brought to her office.
"You are Boba Fett."
She all but shoved the datapad into his hands.
Lucky looked at the datapad, thumbed through the information.
"Boba Fett is dead, Ma'am. He died in the Sarlacc after Han Solo knocked him into it," he replied, and shakily handed it back to her, and then to her surprise added, "I'm what's left."
"So you are Boba Fett."
"No. I'm Lucky. I'm lucky that I managed to claw my way out of that nightmare. I'm lucky that all I lost was my armor, my leg and part of my hand. I wasn't so lucky that I didn't lose my mind, but I'm lucky I was able to put enough of its pieces back together to function again. I'm lucky that out of all the memories it stole from it didn't get my memory of my Dad. I'm lucky that even if I lost the ability to carry on any of his other legacies, I can keep his legacy of being a good father alive," his voice was surprisingly level for a man with tears streaming down his face, "and if that's going to be a problem, Ma'am, I'll take my kids and leave."
Leia sat down hard and stared at him for a long time. He stared back and she was unnerved by the silent pleading he was doing with just his eyes.
"What am I going to do with you?" she sighed, then she shook her head, "I've lost too much of my own 'legacy' to begrudge you yours. Go back to the younglings," Leia smiled faintly, "They're lucky to have you."
