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The imperial cruiser allows him entry without much questioning. He’s been dropping by plenty often lately that they barely even ask for codes anymore, a fact which pleases and unnerves Boba in equal measure. It is miles better than the dry, putrid palace of Jabba the Hutt back on Tatooine, and better than the measly, cheap headquarters of the Krayt’s Claw before he was finally independent enough to break off on his own, but having this place recognize his status and ability and name the way he intends, it leaves him off-balance.
Boba tries not to let it get to his head. Working with the Empire is a double-edged sword, mostly in the way that it leaves him wondering, at the end of the day, how much he is here by choice, and how much it is in his early conditioning to follow the despicable man at the top of the chain.
(He knows something happened to the rest of them. Something unclear, uncertain, and leading to the one thing he truly fears in the galaxy: loss of agency.)
All that aside, however, the most addicting part of this situation is the opportunity to converse with Darth Vader. Who wouldn’t want to see how much they can toe the line that separates them? Considering the outrageous and downright unbelievable things they’ve already been through together—hey, Boba even used his freakin’ lightsaber and no, it wasn’t in a dream—it’s only normal that he’d be driven with morbid curiosity to find where the limit is.
‘Does Boba Fett value his life?’ you may wonder, and you may be surprised to hear that he does, despite what his decision-making indicates.
But what is gaining this fearsome reputation worth if it doesn’t let him have fun?
With the desire to see Vader again in mind and little substance to his plan beside counting on his repeated drop-ins to be let on the ship, he makes his way through the cruiser with (almost) ease. The steel walls will never be familiar—only known, expected. ‘Familiar,’ to Boba, at least, implies a degree of comfort, of relief at seeing it. There is only cold indifference here.
One of the officers announces his arrival and directs him to Vader’s quarters. On the way there, however, Boba Fett is intercepted by an unexpected, unknown third party.
"Bounty hunter, the Empire seems to be requesting your presence rather often lately. Is the job not done yet?" asks a sly, irksome voice.
Slightly readjusting his posture and his hold on his EE-3 blaster rifle, Boba stops walking and turns around.
Out of the shadows steps the Sith Emperor, cloaked in the night, surrounded by such a dark aura that it presses heavily onto Boba's shoulders.
He has not met this presence often.
The shape of a man, but closer to a malevolent spirit than anything else. Unlike Vader, who seems grounded in the world heavily, tied to life by metal, whose will itself could pass for a material part of the universe, the Emperor is spectral, larger than life, larger than death. He unsettles Boba tremendously.
"Lord Vader has requested my assistance," Boba says.
"Has he?" The Emperor steeples his fingers in front of him—little else is visible from the cover of his cloak except his old, wrinkly hands. "Whatever for?"
"I cannot say."
"You forget in whose presence you stand, bounty hunter."
"I do not, Your Imperial Majesty," says Boba, stressing the title rather dramatically, "but I do not divulge the secrets of my employ."
The Emperor laughs idly, the very picture of condescension.
"You do forget your place. Everyone employed by the Empire answers to me," the Emperor says icily.
He has no need of getting closer—something in the air gathers around Boba, pressing around him in a show of power rather than to restrict his movements entirely. It ignores his helmet and reaches into his mind like immaterial tendrils that intersperse themselves between his thoughts, clinging to each word and slowing it down. This is a power similar to Vader's, only much more insidious and oppressing. The impressions it leaves behind will take months to fade from his memory.
"You did not hire me," grits Boba through his teeth. As an afterthought, he adds lowly— "Sir."
"Yet here you are, getting paid with imperial credits."
"Are not all credits imperial these days?" Boba returns begrudgingly. "Does Your Imperial Majesty desire full reports from my guild? I can pass on the word to avoid further conflict."
"That is not necessary," says the Emperor haughtily.
"My time costs, sir. Anything else? I am working."
The darkness around the Emperor flares strongly; discomfort seeps into his bones, replacing the marrow within with dread as cold as the tail of a comet. Perhaps this is the one step that has finally brought Boba to his doom. With his mind's eye, he already sees the dot of light across the sky, faint trail of light behind it, as the frozen star breaks up at last.
Pressure builds around his throat.
Here we go again, Boba thinks, weary, but not surprised. Intimidating does not work on him, not like this. Not from scoundrels of this sort, who see themselves as the pinnacle of the galaxy, and evade the brand of criminality only because they are the Judges, Jury, and Executioners.
Though his body tenses up, he makes no sound. The pressure around his throat is close to unbearable, but he knows he will live. There is no replacement for him that would bring back the money’s worth the way Boba does.
"You think yourself to be irreplaceable, don’t you?" the Emperor asks, as if reading his mind. "You forget I made you. You forget I can make as many more as I need, who are better and stronger than you, Boba Fett."
Suddenly, the clenched, phantasmagorical fist around his neck vanishes, leaving him gasping for breath and off-kilter. He knocks back into the wall of the ship, metal clanking loudly, the noise echoing down the corridor.
"Leave," the Emperor commands. "My apprentice is busy."
As much as he is loath to admit it, he is rattled by the Emperor’s icy tone, and obeys his order without any more protest.
On Slave-I, the discomfort persists. After getting outside the range of the imperial cruiser, Boba takes off his helmet and part of his armour, and turns up the climate control unit to the max until his fingers start shaking from the cold. If he could not meet that spectre for the rest of his career, it would still not be enough to cleanse this encounter from his mind.
An hour of drifting in dead space later, his commlink beeps intermittently, alerting him of an incoming call.
He replaces the helmet over his head lazily, not in any rush to talk to other clients anymore. Maybe it'll stop by the time he makes it to the console board.
The beeping does not stop.
"Fine, fine," he grumbles to himself.
He accepts the call.
Ah.
The upper half of Darth Vader's body pops up on the hologram, static artefacts distorting the otherwise steely, sharp angles of his mask.
"Next time, tell me when you plan on checking in," says Vader. No time wasted on frivolities, as usual.
"I would prefer to avoid taking up any more precious time from our beloved Emperor."
"As would I," the Dark Lord agrees coldly. "You have updates?"
Boba shrugs. "Nothing urgent. I was in the area, thought you’d be interested in something else."
"Back to presuming things, bounty hunter?"
Boba barks out a laugh, the safety of lightyears between them letting his amusement pour out unrestricted. "I apologize, Lord Vader. I cannot help but wonder if you would prefer a less intellectually-fit employee, I could find you a handful even on such a short notice. There are plenty—"
"Enough."
"If there’s anything urgent, I will let you know beforehand," Boba says, serious once more.
"Make sure you do," comes Vader’s reply, before the connection frizzles out.
The truth is, Boba’s merely heard a rumour, but the name stuck, and he wonders if it would be of any help to Lord Vader. As much as the Dark Lord may use a cosmic force as mysterious as the powers of the Jedi, neither of them care for the fallen order. A whisper among rebels mentioned a certain foresight of the Princess of Alderaan, not something that should warrant the attention of the Dark Lord—not at first glance, in any case—but lately, Boba’s been trying to find a reason to stop by.
He’s been working remotely for the better part of a year now. Each individual contract he has with the Empire has not needed any more than this or that life taken, almost without proof of it. Such trust is placed on him to finish the job that it’s tempting Boba to lower the price for once and offer a discount. As a show of good faith, is all.
After meeting the Emperor, however, whatever goodwill there was in his heart whisked out of existence. These are his credits, ultimately, and Boba will take as many as he can, even if it is Darth Vader caught in the middle.
Thank the distilleries of planet Bakura for making such strong alcohol, Boba thinks dazedly as he fixes the gauze in place over his wounds. The one on his arm, courtesy of a blaster shot, was easy to deal with, but the one at his side, below his ribs, hurts even through the painkillers (pharmaceutical and otherwise) he has consumed. The downside of his experiments is the mild fog settled inside his skull, but he’s safe enough here to sleep it off.
Eventually.
After the rest of the work is done.
His flak suit is in shambles—better it than his body, though, so he can’t complain too much about that. A sewing kit lies forgotten on the table. He started fixing one of the tears, but gave up halfway through, as the fabric required more energy than he had at that moment. Next to the kit are a few packets of instant bread and soup, open, but not prepared yet.
Getting to safety tired him out well.
He doesn’t remember most of the way back to the safehouse, actually, but he reached it in one piece. The details matter less than the result.
The commlink on his gauntlet starts beeping. He activates the channel without much thought about it, expecting to see the face of his latest employer—a scrawny, but wealthy togruta seeking revenge against a double-crossing mercenary.
There is no hologram, but it is not the togruta’s grave, melodious voice that speaks.
"The elevator isn’t working."
Boba jumps right out of the chair, sending it backward to the floor. His flak suit drops down too. He brings the gauntlet closer to his face and stares at it in semi-horror.
"What?" he barks.
"Are there stairs in this place?" asks Darth Vader, in between two noisy breaths.
"...yes, there are." He’s lost it. That might have been too many glasses of Bakuran bitters after all. "Down the corridor, there's an intercom behind one of the wall fixtures. Second one, with the crooked handlebar."
"..."
"Third floor."
A few moments later, the intercom pings.
Absolutely flabbergasted, Boba walks over the interface and lets Darth Vader in. It takes a good handful of minutes for the man to climb up the six sets of stairs, time which Boba spends hovering by the door anxiously, gradually regaining his wakefulness.
How did he find him here? What?
Heavy steps announce Vader is approaching. Boba opens the door wordlessly, stepping to the side.
Darth Vader cuts an imposing figure as he ducks through the door frame and walks in. (It isn’t simply due to the tiny entrance.)
"Strange," Boba begins sincerely, "I used the elevator earlier and it wor—"
"Do not mention that again," says Vader in his steely voice, perhaps a tad breathless.
One glance is all he needs to sweep the area and gauge his surroundings: a tiny foyer, empty, connected to two chambers, a tiny lavatory to the left and a more spacious chamber dead ahead, separated from the foyer by a half-wall and an open entrance. There is a table to the right, pushed against the wall, and several shelves and counters are strewn about the rest of the place without any aesthetic taste to them. A very utilitarian hideout. Impersonal.
The Dark Lord walks to the table unprompted, reverses the chair Boba knocked down with a flick of his wrist, and sits down.
Silent and observing him from the safety of his back, Boba approaches at a more calculated pace. Part of his armour is lumped on top of the other chair, so he moves it down on the floor, gathers the flak suit in his arms, and sits.
He finds the tear in the suit and follows the thread until he finds the needle as well, and hesitates between continuing his work and speaking. Whatever Vader is here for, he’ll talk. He doesn’t like being questioned and Boba doesn’t like wasting his energy on empty words, thus—the perfect arrangement.
The silence goes on longer than anticipated. The material of the suit is durable and hard to wrestle back in shape; he will have to either buy a replacement or find a specialist to mend it, as his sewing skills are better suited to fixing simple shirts and socks. Mediocre patchwork won’t save his life, only temporarily appease his worries, and he can’t rely on that.
Boba realizes he’s lost track of time for a minute there, and he looks up in question at the Dark Lord.
(Yes, he is still there, and no, Boba didn’t imagine the whole thing while under heavy anesthetics.)
"Why are you here?" Boba asks.
Darth Vader must be looking at him; his black helmet is turned his way, at least, even if there is little else to go on to guess what the Dark Lord may be thinking. Slowly, Boba realizes his face is bare this time around, and the conversation they had many months ago resurfaces in his mind—it seems like he has given in first to reveal himself to Darth Vader, and after putting so much importance on his face, too! As if it were a sacred bit of knowledge.
For whatever reason, Vader doesn’t answer him right away. Why, he leans forward slightly, a sure sign he hasn’t fallen asleep inside that chunk of metal he’s trapped in, and stares back more intently.
"Uhh… Do you have another job for me?"
Boba has been through many awkward situations in his life. This is nothing. Why, he’s already in his tank top, sewing his suit inside a bunker on a stormy cliffside in the middle of nowhere, sector —. There’s little that could go worse, now that he has company in this desolate place. (And what company!)
The needle gets firmly stuck in the air. His fingers glide over it as he moves his hand to pierce the fabric again, only for them to slide past the metal.
Vader’s doing, of course.
"If you won’t talk, let me fix this in peace, Lord Vader. You’re intruding on my free time, and you know every second is expensive to me," Boba drones on. There is some flippancy to his voice, seeing as Vader has barely spoken since he entered, and he hasn’t left either, fed up with his antics. Whatever keeps him here will keep him here going forward, for as long as he pleases. That, Boba is certain of.
"You’re doing a poor job of… fixing it," Vader sneers, the phrase repeated with such disgust that Boba has half a mind to charge him for this visit.
Consultation fees and all that.
"You sew?" he counters back, miffed.
Instead of a reply, Vader simply breathes out noisily. A few moments later, the needle and thread are pulled away from the suit and all of Boba’s patchwork is undone in the blink of an eye. Irritation and a rebuttal rises to his lips at once, but he keeps his temper in check just this once, because, if anything, Vader doesn’t do things without purpose.
(Sometimes, the purpose is simply to show-off, as Boba is starting to understand from their meetings.)
Sure enough, Vader moves his hand, fingers splayed and curled inward in varying degrees as if pulling on an invisible net, and the entire area around the tear in the flak suit loses its weave, each minuscule thread split apart from the rest.
In an impressive display of focus and minutiae work, Vader ties them into the patch on a level Boba can not quite see clearly, yet know to be thread by thread. The material is almost molded into the original suit; the colour is different, as is the border clear where the tiny knots have formed, but it is infinitely more resistant than anything Boba could have done by (mortal) hand.
Job done, Vader levitates the suit back toward him and lets it drop in his lap.
"That will hold," the Dark Lord says, after a moment of both of them staring at the suit, one in awe, the other smug (no doubt, with that suddenly proper posture).
"Thanks."
It is far from the first time Boba has seen Vader use his powers, but a degree of caution still rises within him when he is shown this spectacle. Such force and such focus could be put to many evil means. Boba knows countless ways to take a life with the help of a blaster or a blade, yet the possibilities opened by this cosmic darkness are on another level altogether.
Without a proper task to keep him busy, Boba sits there for a minute, waiting for Vader to bring up the purpose of his visit. Also, perhaps, how he’d found Boba here, of all places.
"You will stay without…" Vader trails off.
What might have been a question lingers instead in the air almost like an unfinished order, or a request, or, perhaps a barely voiced plea.
Incredulous and suddenly enjoying the moment so much more than before, Boba smiles rather self-assuredly. "Must I remind Your Lordship that you are intruding on my personal time and space? I have to breathe and eat, sometimes, too. Why, do you mind my face?"
Even though he has to know what Boba is, even though it isn’t the sort of reminder Boba would flaunt around like this, Boba knows he is different than all the rest Vader may have seen. There is history behind them that never touched upon his origins—why should it matter now?
No, they don’t matter, and if he doesn’t think about them, they don’t exist.
"You have intel for me," Vader says, back to business. Sharp. Clear. No trace of whatever plagued him moments before.
"Ah, merely a rumour. I did not intend to bring the Dark Lord all the way here for such a simple matter," Boba says. It takes him a few seconds to remember the exact details of it, too, so little the matter is.
"I had business close by," Vader explains off-handedly. ‘No, of course I didn’t come here for your intel, why would you presume such a thing?’ is unspoken behind his tone.
Boba almost scoffs. He doesn’t have his helmet on, so the little spasm across his face that pulls his lips into a tiny smile is, tragically, visible for the world to see.
"Report," Vader prompts coldly. Annoyed, all of a sudden.
Well, not that surprising. To spare him any further amusement, Boba stands and heads toward the tiny electric kettle he set up on the other side of the room. He turns it on; while the water boils, he opens a package of instant noodles and leaves it on the cupboard next to the kettle, ready to be prepared.
"I overheard a group talking about the Princess of Alderaan," he says. There is a small strange fork glued to the side of the package, some sort of multipurpose cutlery. Boba unwraps it carefully, busying himself with the food.
"..."
"The topic of the… Jedi was brought up as well. Of their powers. I thought that might be of interest to you."
"The Princess of Alderaan," Vader repeats blankly.
"Do you know of her?"
"..."
The whistling noise of the kettle dials up to annoying levels, signaling the water should be close to boiling by now.
"Wait."
Boba pours the required amount in the two boxes and covers them with the lid. He hasn’t eaten cooked food in a long time—in fact, even this mediocre, absolute joke of a meal marks the first warm meal he’s had since before he took on his last assignment. There’s a charm to instant bread, a peculiar sort of taste underneath the fake fluffy interior that cannot be replaced by traditionally baked goods. Proper bread is delicious, of course, but the hint of artificial flavour is what really makes this mix come together.
He doesn’t make more and gives no sign he is interested in sharing, but he does ask Vader rather full of mirth, "Would the Dark Lord want to eat?"
"..."
"Thought so," he replies easily. He crosses the chamber toward the pile of armour, retrieves the vambrace and finds the holo he saved of the girl weeks ago, setting it to full display. He places the item on the table right in front of Vader, then returns to his food.
Leaning with his hip back on the edge of the cupboard, he swirls the contents of the box with his hand a few times, staring down at the spirally noodles, willing it to cool down with his glare alone.
The portrait of the girl shows her on her thirteenth anniversary, dressed in ceremonial garb, all smiles and joy, befitting of the occasion. Her expression is very warm; despite the stillness of the picture, she seems full of life and genuinely happy.
Boba has seen a lot of smiles in his life. Few politicians are as skilled as her in faking their sincerity, unless Princess Leia Organa has not yet lost that part of her childhood.
Not all kids have had it as rough as Boba, after all.
"Don’t stand there," says Vader rather awkwardly. Once again, he tilts his head in a vague sense of discomfort and annoyance at himself. Staring back at the hologram seems to annoy him further, or somehow get under his skin (suit?), because that only makes Vader bristle further.
Boba relocates to the table silently. While he is busy eating (and fretting over asking or not asking more questions), Vader stares at the holo wordlessly, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. Dare he say it, Vader almost seems to be lost in thought.
A part of him wonders if this is a mistake—initially, he’d heard ‘Jedi’ and barely held back from tracking the person in question down himself, even if he was going on the blandest of rumours alone, but he’s putting a child’s life in Vader’s hands now. What else could happen next, except…
Yet, there is no malice from the Dark Lord. There is a void sitting at the table next to Boba. A black hole.
When Boba is done eating, he disposes of the wrappers. Walking back to the table paints an unfamiliar picture, as if part of an alternate universe: Darth Vader, hunched over a table, sitting on a stool that may be a tad too tiny for his terribly heavy and bulky suit, head bent forward like that of a toy carelessly forgotten.
The pressure of his presence trickles back into the periphery of Boba’s awareness; the reality of the situation didn’t quite register before, when the anaesthetics he took were still at their peak. The sudden, stark realization that Darth Vader is in his safehouse sends a shiver down his spine, movement which jolts the injury on his arm, which finally brings him back to solid ground with both his feet and his head.
As loathe as he is to speak and disturb the statuesque Sith Lord, Boba can’t wait around for him to satisfy whatever fancy he’s come here with. There’s clients to meet and bounties to fulfill.
"Do you have a job for me?" A faint cough masks the hoarseness of his voice.
From unnervingly still to the slow turn of his head, Vader strikes a sad picture. The darkness is not as terrifying as it once seemed, when Boba was first alone with this figure.
"Not yet," says Vader. "Do you have any more details about the Princess?"
"Not particularly. Should I keep an eye out?" Boba doesn’t particularly like jobs related to targets of such stature, mostly because the logistics involved in keeping him out of harm’s way use up a lot more resources than usual.
"Observation only, if your locations overlap," the Dark Lord warns. "Do not seek her out yet. Do not interfere."
"Fine by me, but Lord Vader, I—how did you find this place? Are you tracking me?"
Darth Vader stands to his full height. "You told me to come here."
"What?!"
"About twelve hours ago. You said you had important news. You sounded like you were about to faint," says Vader. "Fortunately I was only a sector away."
Boba stares at him in horror. Of all the things he could have done earlier today that he forgot about...
"You should work on your skills more." Vader nods pointedly toward the bloodstains on Boba’s tank top. "Shoot them before they shoot you."
With that final scathing comment, Vader finally takes his leave.
The safehouse falls eerily quiet. Boba grabs his suit and starts cleaning the durasteel with slow, precise movements while his thoughts run away from him. He doesn’t feel like the safehouse has been compromised, despite his previous thoughtless idea to broadcast its location.
Perhaps it is high time Boba gave this professional relationship more thought.
Weeks ago, in a voice that left no doubt as to what the answer actually was, Emperor Palpatine asked him, "Keeping secrets?"
When he couldn’t sleep inside his tiny, glorified prison cell, and all he could do was stand there and dwell on every little thing, it made Vader analyze more things than he was willing to admit.
He’s not keeping secret an apprentice, nor any plans of sabotage. (Not yet.)
But,
if he dares think about it,
it may be something worse than that.
It seems that no matter what he does, no matter how hard he tries, there are certain memories he cannot rid himself of.
Some faces are destined to haunt him forever.