Disclaimer: Bow down to the great and all powerful Lucas, the owner of Star Wars! (kneels in front of an alter and chants a bit).
Well people this is it! Last chapter to Iile forever! Bwa ha ha ha ha (gasp), sorry, just kidding :) Actually you should be seeing Part Two up in the near future and that's when we get to find out how Fett does out there in the big ol' galaxy.
Iile
The dust settled as the last droid exited the arena. The Jedi and clone troopers had all vanished up into the sky in their transports, off to do battle elsewhere. Bodies littered the ground in poses frozen by death with the red smears of their blood slowly drying under the fading sunlight to return to a more earthen shade of brown. The air was cloudy with the smoke from the gunfire and spirals of fumes streaked overhead showing the escape route of the starships.
The wind ruffled the clothing of the fallen Jedi. Large cut up pieces of flesh were the only remains of the once ferocious beasts that had been used as amusement objects for the Geonosians, having been stolen from their lush home planets long ago. Their charred corpses gave of the stench of burning meat and hair adding to the metallic copper smell of blood and droid oil. Small fires still burned on the larger of the droid remains as their damaged fuel receptors caught fire from the shower of sparks discharging from their severed circuits. One could almost find a surreal beauty in the stillness of the air and the random displacement of the twisted mounds of metal and bodily tissue, a portrait of death and disorder overcast with the pink of dusk and eerie calm.
Beyond the yellow stone cliffs far off in the distance could be heard the faint booming of weapon fire. The war still raged on elsewhere, already were forgotten those who lay among the soft dust where they had so bravely fought. No one would come back to claim the bodies and give them proper burials; with flowers and loved ones to mourn over their craved gravestones. The natives would be the ones to return in time and dispose of the corpses in what matter they saw fit, not caring in the least about the outsiders that were placed alongside their own kind.
A scuffing of boots against the earth was the only sound that was heard. The form of a young boy emerged from the shadows of a stairway landing which had led him from the above balcony area to the pit of the execution ring. His eyes were unfocused and blurry from the particles of upset sand and his footsteps uneven as he slowly made his way around the bodies and broken parts of droids; searching for something among them. He had lost something of great value to him, someone that should not have joined the others on the ground in defeat.
Boba stumbled over a droideka blast plate and reached out to hold onto a stone archway to keep from falling over. His hands scraped along the roughness of the granite but he did not feel the bite in his palms. His father was somewhere in the arena and he had to find him. The sight of the Jedi standing over the body of his father had been a fist driven into Boba's gut. His own voice had screamed over and over in his head but only the small sound of his breath escaping past his lips did he manage to get out.
Now here he was walking mindlessly through the disarray.
Any moment now he expected his father to appear out from behind a stone pillar or from a dark tunnel and tell him to stop delaying and get back to the Slave 1 so they could be on their way home to Kamino.
That is what he wanted to believe…
The setting sun made Boba's shadow long and dark against the sand and he stared at it. Darkness… that's all he felt around him. What would he do? Where would he go? His father had been his entire world, protecting him, offering reassurance and always being there by his side. It had all been taken out from under him in one stoke of a lightsaber held in the hands of a man who shouldn't have been there in the first place. The man's face burned into Boba's mind. He would never forget what the Jedi had done…
A glint of sunlight caught his eye and he slowly turned his head to look down at the black visor of his father's Mandalorian helmet that lay a few feet away from him. It shouldn't be lying there like that… my father would never leave it abandoned on the ground. He walked over to it and knelt in the dust. The inside rim was stained with blood; Jango's blood…
His hands trembled as he took the helmet in his hands, the piece of armour that had been an extension of his father. It was as if he had been holding Jango's actual head in his shaking hands, the helmet was so familiar from it being worn around him his whole life.
He could feel the wall breaking inside him as he stared into the t-shaped visor.
Boba pressed his forehead against the cool surface of the helmet and for the first time in his life…he cried.