Parental Duties
By Rey
Chapter summary: Pushing oneself into a corner accidentally is quite a thing, in more ways than two.
Warnings for: mild swearing, allusions to Order-66 and life of the clones on Kamino
Chapter notes: This chapter fully overlaps with the previous one, just from a different POV, and the mismatch of events towards the end is intentional – Din and Boba focus on different things, after all.
Author's notes: To those who celebrate it, merry Christmas! And to everyone, happy holidays! Stay safe, stay well, and stay happy! - Rey
8. Boba: The Complications
Boba was prepared for many things in the pursuit of reclaiming his armour, one of the very few things left of his father. Fennec even contributed a few more scenarios, more acquainted with the Mandalorian in unpainted armour that is their target.
Boba was even prepared to use the green little thing that the silver Mando seems to care so much about as a bargaining chip. It's quite risky, and morally grey, but he was confident the father would choose the right thing, just as Jango Fett once did. He's done so many morally grey things before, anyway. What's the problem with just one more?
He wasn't at all prepared for eleven children and three ancient Mandalorian starfighters, however, and neither was Fennec.
Worse, for taking the armour before closing the deal, Boba is honour-bound to give the silver Mando recompense of equal value plus some more for jumping forward on the deal.
And the Mando, tightly Creed-bound as he seems, might value those children who have somehow suddenly appeared on the ruins up there alongside his own.
`Damn it! I got better things to do than guarding eleven little brats! Those fighter pilots look suspiciously short too, and not in a sullustan or a bothan way. Damn it damn it damn it!`
But Boba can come up with nothing better, especially since, right before his eyes, the silver Mando just welcomes the new kids, just so, if rather resignedly, so he just bears it silently when he feels Fennec's glare scorching up the back of his newly reclaimed helmet.
He expects an outburst rivalling a star gone supernova, the moment they're safe in his ship and rising up after the battered Razor Crest and the three fighters.
But it doesn't come.
Instead, Fennec says, "Dibs on the rifle kid."
Boba stares at her from the pilot's seat.
She stares back at him from the gunning station beside him. Defiantly, challengingly.
"I promised to help them, you know, not to harm them," he finally says.
She huffs and glares harder. "I know," she snaps. "You didn't consult me before, so I'll just have to improvise too."
`Payback,` it translates, and Boba slumps into his chair, very much against this complication, though he suspect she relishes it instead.
"So… what? You gonna keep the kid as a pet?" He is still very much flummoxed. "Never thought you're all right with slavery."
It'd be ironic and very much problematic, considering their plan for Tatooine.
Considering the fact that the silver Mando – a very good bounty hunter in his own right – has more or less claimed all the kids as his, too.
But Fennec snorts disparagingly to the guess.
"No patience for pets, or slaves, or idiots," she says, and the pointed stare she throws him is unmistakable. Then she continues, "Much for a good student, though."
And, within the safety of his helmet, Boba gapes.
`Kark. Not this too!` his mind wails. This option is just as bad as Fen trying to claim the kid as property! Because, who knows, the Mando dad mightn't allow his new midget to learn from her. Then there'll be a bloodbath, since Fennec doesn't like the answer no, and the two of them and Boba might or might not still be alive and well at the end of it.
And Fennec seems to take his prolonged silence as acquiescence, because she looks triumphant.
And she looks even more triumphant when they barely dodge an Imp cruiser in orbit.
Boba sighs. He knows very well what causes the intensified glee. After all, with this threat literally looming overhead and most likely following the group everywhere like the leech it is, and with his own earlier pledge to the silver Mando to protect the kids until it's safe and the situation is stable, it'll take him and Fennec some time on close and constant guard duty, which will expose the rifle kid to Fennec and her skillset and the need for that skillset. The bounty-student is practically baged for her already!
He just never thought he'd be a semi-permanent babysitter, let alone for so many kids.
Well, kids with weapons, though.
Many of whom tote blunt instruments.
And he was admittedly a kid, himself, when he began his apprenticeship under his father.
And his new favourite weapon happens to be a gaffi stick.
`Hmm. A student. Or a few students.`
He flinches from his own thought, the moment he realises it.
`Ah, kark – no! not gonna teach anybody! Not cut out for that!`
Well, neither Fennec, really, he thinks, however confident she is about the prospect of teaching. But it's her problem, not his, and he isn't about to point this out to her. Life debt or not, she can still kill him in various other, more agonising ways if she feels slighted by him, after all.
`No, thank you. The sarlacc was more than enough.`
But still….
`A student. Or more.`
Jango Fett wanted a child for his legacy as payment for an army of slaves. And Boba is that legacy. And Jango did teach him personally until karking Mace Windu ended it.
`No. These aren't slaves. And they won't be. The Mando will care for them. That little green thing adores its caretaker. And Mando dad won't die prematurely if I got any say in it, and I do. I promised them. they won't be my legacy, and it's all right. It's all right. I'll just teach whoever wants to learn, for a while, and that's that.`
Feeling more settled, Boba straightens up on his seat and brings up the Slave's starmap on the navcom to search for good, relatively safe planets to hunker down for a while. The Deep Core is generally as unsafe as Wild Space, let alone the Unknown Regions, and it's nearly equally unmapped, but it's not to say that there's no good hidy-hole round here.
Beside him, Fen humms contentedly as she watches for any deviation or obstruction in the not-so-stable hyperlane that's the norm in this region. She seems to be really, truly relishing the prospect of teaching a kid, and, even after his private realisation and acceptance, Boba can only shake his head to that as he discusses about their probable destinations with the other ships. In Mando'a. because whatever the kark.
She doesn't even seem phased, let alone daunted, when the silver Mando reports that one of the midgets is missing.
Granted, the kid herself proves she isn't missing, soon after, but still.
Worse, Boba can clearly remember her. Because she toted a makeshift spear-club taller than her midget-self was. Expertly.
`Mandokarla.`
Betrayed by his own sentiments, he settles more or less ungracefully into his new doom and doesn't even try to peel away, when the destination is at last agreed upon and the unlikely, impromptu convoy of ragtag ships come out of the latest hyperspace jump into the terrestrial, yellow-single-sunned planet's orbit.
And he finds himself unable to be truly angry at that particular kid when, once they've all landed in the biggest, safest-looking sun-drenched, grassy forest clearing they can find on the not-so-uneven, not-so-jungle-like part of the planet, he catches her having somehow snuck into his ship and pried off one of the main cables of his hyperdrive, and her only defence is, "I don't want you to go away!"
`Kark, I'm really doomed.`
It complicates things. Really complicates things. But Boba stays anyway. Even after he's gotten the cable back and impressed on the bold, clever, tricky little menace that it's never, never wise or safe or even worth the hassle to even try to touch the actively used ship of a bounty hunter. Let alone entering it. Forget messing with it. "It's all the traps that can kill you in various messy ways, kid. You don't want your friends to be sad, do you? And they'll be terribly sad if you die." `Not to mention, they'll skin me alive. Literally.`
And then the silver Mando complains about the comm fritzing even between their grounded ships, parked in a rough circle in the tiny field barely big enough for them all, which he finds out while trying to hail the three fighter pilots who haven't come out of their ships yet though their tiny passanger has long joined her friends, and Boba fights not to slump again.
`Comm fritzing equals solar flares.`
He forgot to check for any possible major solar flares that might happen in the near future in this particular system. As in very near future. As in starship-destroying solar flares. And this region is infamous for it, at that.
`KARK.`
Still, it's good intel, and he forces himself to tell the Mando that.
The Mando who's standing in the middle of the grassy clearing and somehow being… casually snuggled… by the kids. Even one teen that's mostly asleep and draped heavily at his side.
`Huh. Sharp change, to say the least! What even went on in that junk while we're travelling here?`
Boba shakes his head forcefully to that thought, also to the silver Mando's offer of, "Maybe we can beat the worst of it if we go now? With all power to the shields?"
"We're not equipped with capital-ship-grade shields," he points out. "Besides, even if we are, those little pilots aren't."
And, with that reminder, the mando dad frets afresh about his missing kids and his inability to coax the children to let go of him so he can go search. Even when the little menace of a scavanger girl repeatedly tells him that, "No, they're all right, Mister Mando. They're just looking here and there for us, and seeing if it's really safe here, and they can't bring me along cause they're tree-ad and they need to gather their minds together and I can't do that yet and they need to do it quick so they can't teach me."
Boba sighs and mutters, "So much for a good reputation." And Fennec, standing beside him, snickers in agreement.
"You should've seen him with the lil green thing," she says, and Boba tries not to remember that, or imagine that, or let himself think about that.
He made his peace with Jango's death long ago. He isn't going to dredge up any sappy parental memory now.
"I'm going to go up a bit and look for a more sheltered place," he calls out to the utter sap of a Mando, at length, made bored and awkward by the useless inaction.
Before he can turn round and climb up the ramp he's been standing in front of, though, Fen's future protégé calls back to him instead of the Mando, "Please don't, Mister Mando. It's…." His voice trails off, as if he forgot what he's about to say, and his overly familiar grey-blue-green eyes even blank out for a little while. But then he continues as if he hadn't cut himself off mid-speech, with eyes once more alert and looking right into Boba's own eyes even through the helmet's visor, "The wind's too strong. It'll reach the surface soon, but it's already in the upper atmosphere. I think the solar storm caused it. We're…. A big storm is heading up here from the sea."
`Jedi,` Boba curses within the relative privacy of his mind. `Former or not, he's still a Jedi.`
The grumble rather neatly masks the thought-feeling-sensation of being trapped that's creeping up fast on him.
He so hates being trapped.
Fortunately, though, the missing pilots soon present themselves, just so, suddenly and quietly and unintrusively and patiently standing in front of their fighters as if in formal inspection, now sans everything but their full armour and a few weapons.
Mandalorian armour. Of ancient design but looking fresh and new. And there's no sigil on each but for the differing colours.
The bladeless sword-hilts hanging from each of their belts are unmistakable, though, still.
`Jedi Mandos. Huh.`
And then Boba has to do a double take, then one more take, because Jedi Mandos.
His bigger younger brothers, before they ever met a real-life Jedi, were driven crazy when some of their trainers spoke about the purportedly only Jedi Mandalorian ever recorded in history. Boba had to take up researching for them so none of them were too distracted and ended up being decommissioned or reconditioned. And it made him dig into more Mandalorian history than he or his father wanted.
But now his meager research bears fruit, because, there, he sees, clearly, a solid, boxy hilt hanging from the middle pilot's belt. And the helmet is not as round as most of the modern ones, too. Though the visor is fully covered up instead of decorated with a pair of eyeholes.
`Huh.`
"Are you perhaps Tarre Vizsla?" he calls out to the pilot, who jerks upright and looks sharply up into his eyes, with one hand flying to that hilt and the other curling up in front of them, priming up a row of tiny portable missiles set on their gauntlet.
`Ha!`
If it weren't confirmation, Boba'd give up his ship and armour.
But, nonetheless, he can do nothing with this confirmation, nor will he do anything about it. All of his brothers are either dead or still brainwashed and left for dead or too old and jaded to hear about legends, after all.
Not when they killed Jedi for the Empire, at that.
So he just nods at the pilot and… their?… equally bristling friends, calmingly, and screams wordlessly to himself about this probable new complication.
`Where in the universe did that little green thing get these kids?`
And then he witnesses the scavanger girl and her cohorts ambushing the pilots and dragging them into the crowd surrounding the silver Mando.
Even Tarre Vizsla.
Who seems to rather willingly park… themself?… at Mando dad's other side.
He laughs. He can't help it. It's just too absurd. Everything is.
And he so foolishly signed himself up for a semi-permanent babysitting duty for this bunch.
`KARK.`