Chapter Text
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Boba Fett was standing in line by a street food vendor in some Southern French city. It was composed of cramped spidery cobblestone streets and tall buildings with thick walls. The kind of place that had built on top of itself over and over and over again, but its bones and old layers still stuck out, hollowed out and adapted to the modern age. His current client was a paranoid rich man who believed that he was cursed.
Boba had his doubts about that. Boba would do his job if he was, but if he wasn’t Boba didn’t mind turning up and waving his hands around, declaring him cured and turning a tidy profit.
The man had offered to buy his plane ticket out to France, which meant Boba sure as hell wasn’t going to turn his nose up. He was however bracing himself for an afternoon of dealing with an eccentric old money type who was convinced he had murderously bad luck.
So Boba was grabbing a savoury crepe on the street corner before he ventured uptown. He’d tucked his hands into his back pockets, staring absentmindedly at the stencilled graffiti peeking out of the alleyway to the vendor's left. The slightly blurry figure of the monopoly man winked at him. Boba tilted his head to the side and after a moment of searching located the sigils woven into the design. He knew practically every single one was illegal to put on a building without consent in Europe. He wondered how long it would stay up before it would be removed or painted over.
Once again, Boba wondered if his father would approve of this kind of gig. Jango Fett was not one to take house calls. You went to him, and he had been expensive and well-known enough that most people didn’t challenge him on it. Didn’t mean he never left though, as much as Jango seemed to want to stay by the sea with his son. At least that was why adult Boba thought his father had dragged his feet.
Boba was jolted from his idle musings when he felt someone shift and heard the sound of fabric shifting by his elbow. He assumed someone had slipped into line behind him until a small rolled-up bundle was held aloft in front of his chest. Boba glanced down and to the right, to see a brown-haired man hovering by his elbow, arm outstretched. Boba’s eyes caught on the man’s jacket.
It was a dark rich brown at the sleeves and shoulders that slid into a lighter downy brown down the front, with cream pockets. It looked much too heavy for the early summer weather and held a sheen and stiffness to it like it was treated against water. Boba’s mind was momentarily thrown back to the sea birds that he’d watched coasting low over the surf of the Tasman sea. He glanced back at what the man was offering him, to see it was a small compact umbrella. Boba felt his eyebrow rise.
“Sky’s clear mate.” Boba didn’t bother trying to string it together in French or Spanish.
The man next to Boba was a couple of inches taller than him and had rather warm eyes, a sloped nose and a square jaw, a nicely trimmed moustache and the build of a swimmer. Boba didn’t recognise him as a contact or colleague.
“You’re going to need it, trust me,” the man said. He spoke in no discernible accent.
“Are you a weatherman or something?” Boba asked neutrally. He attempted to surreptitiously look the man over for any sigils or symbols. He found none and swept his eyes back to the man’s face, playing it off as a once-over. The man smiled slightly.
“Or something,” he parroted back, deadpan.
As Boba continued to make no move to take the umbrella, the man sighed and wedged it between Boba’s forearm and his side. Boba tensed, surely whoever this man had been sent by wouldn’t pull anything in broad daylight. But after a very tense moment, nothing happened. The man quirked his eyebrow at Boba’s reaction, who was standing stock-still, every muscle braced for some magic effect, then without another word turned and slipped into the street’s foot traffic. Boba tried to track him by his jacket but after a couple of seconds, he’d completely blended into the stream of commuters. Boba blinked, then eyed the few people huddled around the vendor. None seemed to have noticed the interaction, or at least hadn’t thought it weird.
Gingerly, Boba grabbed the matte black handle and drew the umbrella out. It was made of plastic and metal with what looked like a folding rod. It was very inexpensive. If it was a message, calling card, or threat then whoever had sent it had an odd taste in dramatics. Boba held the umbrella up against the end of the duffle bag slung at his hip where he’d sewn a small runestone between the outside and inside fabric layers. He then ran a thumb over the spot. He felt nothing. The umbrella either wasn’t magic or was very high-end.
Boba let the umbrella shift in his hand, feeling its weight as he weighed his options. If he disposed of it, threw it away or shoved it at someone else, he risked offending or missing out on something that had an interest in him personally. If he kept it, he risked any kind of magic effect or even death, and he already had an appointment for the day. He didn’t have time to toy with something potentially dangerous, especially around a nervy client. His father’s gift could only go so far. It sure as hell hadn’t saved the man himself.
Boba ordered and watched the vendor crack an egg over his crepe, continuing to toy with the possibilities. He had just decided to see if any nearby post offices had anti-magic vaults when something tapped on his cheek. He looked up. In those few minutes, dark clouds had blown in. There hadn’t even been a change in the air to predicate it. Boba blinked in surprise as fat droplets started to fall. The others around the vendor seemed not to have noticed anything until now as well. There were a few verbal complaints and some peeled away into the now much quicker-moving crowd.
Boba looked down again at the prompting of the vendor and took his crepe. He flicked the man a handful of bills and tucked himself against the wall, looking up at the sky again. Boba, while also trying to manage the steaming crepe on a shitty cardboard plate, extended the stem and carefully opened the umbrella. Nothing tried to kill him, so he spent a moment studying the thing. Again, he found no symbols, sigils or messages.
Perhaps, he thought, I’m being a paranoid bastard. Could have just been a nice gesture. Boba snorted and used the wall to compact the stem again. He knew damn well that wasn’t how things worked, especially for someone like him. With his face and his name and his contacts and social circle and his father’s shadow, no slightly odd coincidence could be dismissed. It was starting to truly rain now. Boba managed, after a couple of seconds of fishing, to drag out a ziplock bag. He stuffed the damp umbrella into it and sealed it. The bags were good for things of small to moderate power. If the rune couldn’t sense it, then it had to be a lot more powerful than that. It wasn’t a good long-term solution. Boba fantasised about slipping it into the vendor’s little booth, making it his problem. But the possibility of an overly cryptic recruitment attempt kept him from doing it. He’d drop it off at a post office and deal with it later.
Boba tucked the bag back into his duffle and stepped out into the street proper. The crowd already seemed a little bit thinner. He took a bite of his somewhat soggy crepe and set out towards uptown. He smiled to himself as he tipped his head back and let the rain run through his hair and down his face. It tapped against his forehead, as familiar and comforting as it had been, standing side by side with his father, squinting at the raging ocean in front of them. The man had been wrong, Boba didn’t need an umbrella.
-
Once he turned 18, he was kindly shown the door of the foster care system and handed a box. The box was full of all of his father’s papers that had been confiscated by the police and then carefully forgotten about. Through bribery or the police force’s desire not to look too closely at what Jango Fett had been up to before he died. The case was waved away and forgotten about by everyone but Boba and the most die-hard true crime fans.
There was a hand-scrawled unsigned message at the top explaining to him that the writer had been instructed to give it to him once he was an adult. Boba had hoped then and hoped now that it was a safety measure designed by his father just in case. It had to have been.
The box contained documentation of jobs, all written in code, notes on curses and ledgers. And under all of that stack of paper Boba would spend hours and hours trying to commune with, in the hope it revealed a scrap more of information about a dead man, was a single very old very well-preserved black and white photograph. It was of five men in Edwardian dress, standing in a field or meadow, smiling at the camera.
They all had his face.
It took Boba much, much longer than it should have to identify his father as one of them. This grainy, faded afterimage of his father held none of the weight on his shoulders or the years on his face or the grief in his eyes that Boba had seen every day every year. He looked happy, in that quiet way of his. Despite being roughly just short of a hundred years old, the photo was in pristine condition. Boba had never seen it among the rest of Jango’s things. Had he hidden it from him? Looked at it only when he was alone? Remembering the life he’d abandoned?
Under that was a list of contacts and addresses.
Boba’s first act as an adult was to find a pay phone.
-
“Works like a dream, all of it, I tested this one this morning and it only almost blew my nose off. Of course, you need to make sure this wire and the really squiggly sigil don’t touch or else it’ll short and -” Peli Motto made an exaggerated face and noise that Boba thought was meant to convey mass death and destruction.
She waved the object around energetically as she talked. This unfortunately meant Boba only saw flashes of her newest project. The gleaming metal was one of the brightest things on her dying front lawn. If something that was practically just dirt, sand and a couple of shrubs could be called a lawn. The smell of petrol, grease and hot metal mixed oddly with the herbs and other rather fragrant bundles strung up on washing lines around the two of them. Even for others who utilised their innate magic in interesting ways, Peli’s set-up was something to stare at.
She lived in a cupboard attached to a workshop out in the middle of New Mexico. Boba wasn’t sure why this plot of land had been levelled and sectioned out originally, but now it was Peli’s playground. The thing was almost entirely dust and dirt, spotted with cars and motorbikes ranging from broken down to modern absurdist art pieces dotting the field. The skid marks from someone doing doughnuts were clear in the earth, as well as a scorch mark. Boba supposed that was the remnants of Peli testing out whatever she was trying to sell him.
Peli continued to babble about her newest fire hazard while Boba examined her slapdash merchandise table. The usual blend of car parts and magic conductors greeted him but the messiness of their integration betrayed their nature as prototypes. Peli knew her small clientele well enough to know Boba wouldn’t put anything this experimental in the Firespray if he was held at gunpoint. But she also knew that Boba liked to keep an eye on what she was creating.
The mechanic was crazy enough to scare away anyone with sense, concerned with legality, or in support of the heavy government monitoring of inherent magic, but competent enough that she produced incredibly useful new tech. She cheerfully ripped him off but the money was almost always worth it, even if he did have to supervise her the whole time she worked on his truck.
While Boba preferred to tend to the mechanical side of things himself he couldn’t touch up the spider web of wards and charms hidden behind the seats and along the frame. He’d gotten a couple of weird looks from other drivers lately, which might mean a few spells meant to turn away the eye could be fading. Plus, he had something to show her.
“Peli,” Boba jutted into her rambling sales pitch, earning him a glare, “I have something for you to look at.”
That got her attention. She dropped the object back on the table with less care than Boba would expect for something that almost blew her nose off.
“Now I’m not in the cursebreaking business Fett and I don’t want to be,” She said, pointing a finger at him. “So don’t go roping me into it, unless you pay me enough to get my Aston Martin roadworthy, or fix my stove. You know how much of a pain it is to get delivery out here? I swear -”
“It’s not for work.” Boba had heard Peli’s rant about food delivery before. He was pretty sure the local restaurants had her on a delivering blacklist. Something to do with the magical residue on her property interfering with delivery probably.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?”
Peli turned and yelled out into the yard, “Hey!”
Several piles of scrap around the yard moved at once, metal pieces rising and whirling together to form tiny vaguely human-like forms.
“One of you get me my glasses!”
All of them dashed off to get her glasses. Boba took that as an agreement to help, so he turned and headed back towards the ‘Spray waiting in the driveway. Boba wrinkled his nose against the dust. He would have to clean it after this, as always.
He popped the rear window and brought down the tailgate as Peli berated her animations for getting the wrong glasses. Inside, tucked beside a small gun rack and behind the folded-down back seat, was a normal looking beat up safe. If observed closely, however, the scratches in the metal held patterns and it hummed a faint frequency that sometimes buzzed in Boba’s molars. His father had not cut corners with storage. Boba climbed into the bed and opened the safe while Peli was still busy and wouldn’t be able to see him put in the code and stared at the item inside. The umbrella.
Boba glared at it. He had not figured out what to do with it yet, in the months since he’d been given it. He’d tested it in all the ways he could, then passed it on to those who could test it in others. Nothing. No patterns, no magic, no messages, nothing. After a handful of definite nos, lighter pockets and several favours in debt, Boba had been willing to just toss it in a bin and be done with it.
Except, he swore he had seen the man who’d given it to him again. Not often, and possibly no more than once. But he’d seen flashes of that jacket on train stations, in shops, fields. And once for sure had seen the man petting a dog in Central Park. Boba had watched him, debating whether to approach him or if that was what the man wanted, until the man pulled the same trick and melted into the crowd. Like a raindrop into the ocean.
Boba had to be being watched, being followed. And that meant the umbrella meant something. His latest theory was that it was a test. An organisation, or perhaps just this man specifically, wanted to see if he could crack it. His job was cracking things. Walking through the terms of curses, finding the way they could be broken, building curses so they couldn’t be broken easily. He was very good at it, and this man seemed to want to see how good. Why was this umbrella refusing to be cracked?
“Right!” Peli yelled practically into the Firespray, clapping her hands together. Boba, who’d heard her approach but had foolishly not been expecting the volume, cringed away from her slightly. She had what looked like a jeweller's magnifying glasses on steroids propped up on her head, complete with multiple lenses.
“What have you brought me?” She said, placing her hands on her hips. The decision to pick Peli’s brain was a rather desperate one, but Boba was running out of contacts.
Boba inched himself out of the truck bed and stood in front of her. He held up the umbrella. Peli looked at it like a child who’d just gotten the most disappointing Christmas present.
“That it?”
“Yes.” Boba held it out for her to take. “No one I’ve shown it to has been able to find any magic on it, not even traces.”
Peli reached out and took the umbrella, still looking dubious.
“Are you sure it even is magic? Had a spoon I swore was enchanted for a while but it was just really good at scooping ice cream.”
“It has to be. Maybe something more experimental. No one more traditional could figure it out.” Which was why he’d brought it to her.
“Hmmm,” Peli said, staring at the umbrella, then glancing at the sky. “How about we touch up the Firespray — Susan, right you wouldn’t know Susan — says it might rain today and I’ll take a look at this” She shook the umbrella for emphasis, “later. You are paying me for it as well. Aston or stove, your choice.”
Boba nodded and took the umbrella back, putting it back in the safe. They set to work, Peli looking over all of the wards and Boba watching her look over all of the wards. She put up with this with only mild complaining, which showed how used to him she was.
The wind was starting to pick up, rustling through the few scraggly bushes clinging to life around the driveway, the singular tree’s leaves, sending the strung-up jars and drying plants bobbing and dancing. Peli’s animations ran back and forth like incompetent worker bees, fetching tools and poking at each other. Boba breathed in the air and tilted his head up to the sky.
“I’d get these all back into the garage if I were you.”
Both Peli and Boba whipped around. A man was sitting on the top of the hovering wheelless ford mustang, watching them with his hands tucked into his jacket. A very familiar man. Boba was reaching for a gun from the bed before he even fully registered what was going on.
Peli groaned in exasperation. “I wanted Susan to be wrong,” she grumbled.
Boba paused.
“A hello would be nice. It's fire season, you should be relieved,” The man said.
“Yes, yes hello now how long do we have and how bad?”
The man cocked his head to the side, considering for a moment. “16 minutes, big storm. It’d be a pain to dig the cars out of the mud.”
Peli harrumphed. “Couldn’t have shown up earlier could you.”
“That’s not how it works. You know that,” the man said with a long-suffering kind of patience.
His eyes flicked to Boba, arm still reaching into the Firespray.
“Weatherman,” Boba greeted him.
The man blinked, his brow scrunched in confusion for a long moment before comprehension and recognition dawned.
“Pau, right?”
“What?” asked Boba. He thought that was a good summary of the last minute.
The man was back to looking confused.
“Pau, the city we met.”
“So you two have met!” Peli cut in, who seemed to be watching the interaction with interest.
“Not formally,” Boba said, not taking his eyes off of the man for a second. Jacket man slid down off of the car and hit the ground with a thud, dust billowing out from around the soles of his boots and started to approach Peli and Boba. Boba distantly thought the man must be sweltering in those thick clothes, even with the humid breeze.
“Well,” Peli started. “Djarin this is Fett, Fett this is Djarin.”
There was a flicker of dull surprise on the man — Djarin’s — face.
“Jango Fett?” He asked hesitantly.
“His son,” Boba replied, a current of challenge buried in his tone. He’d never truly been able to get rid of it whenever he was asked this question. Djarin seemed to accept his answer easily enough.
Boba felt a bit like had when he’d tripped and gone tumbling down the spiral staircase of his father’s lighthouse. Any sense of understanding ripped neatly from him as up, down, left and right blurred into pain and cold stone. If this man had been tailing him surely he would remember it and know Boba’s last name at the very least. Perhaps Boba had misjudged things.
Djarin held out a hand for a shake once he was in range. Boba took it after a minute of hesitation, pulling away from the truck. His hand was oddly cold.
“Where the fuck did you come from?” Peli’s neighbours were too far away to walk and neither of them had heard a vehicle pull in.
“Brazil,” Djarin said, which cleared up absolutely nothing.
“You going to help me get all these cars in?” Peli asked one of them, though it was unclear which.
“Sure,” Djarin replied and started to move away.
“Wait,” Boba jutted in. “What is going on? Who are you?”
His obvious pure confusion seemed to get through to Djarin who turned back to face him, though Peli looked unmoved.
“I’m…” Djarin started.
“He’s some spirit-y forecast who shows up before it rains, now come on what do I pay you for!” Peli broke in, before starting to yell at her animations.
“You don’t,” Djarin threw after her, though she was long gone.
Boba felt his eyebrows rise and turned almost instinctively to Djarin for confirmation. Surely not.
Djarin shrugged, “Pretty much.”
A spirit. Boba hadn’t met a spirit in a very long time.
Then he turned, brown jacket buffeted by the wind, and trudged after Peli. Boba stood for a moment, processing. He started running through every encounter and possible encounter, and yes, the obvious pattern he had missed. It had always rained within the hour. Boba allowed himself to feel incredibly stupid for one long moment before he reasoned himself back down to earth.
Yes, he had missed the rain link, yes, his father wouldn’t have. But assuming the man he kept seeing everywhere was some kind of rain spirit instead of just stalking him was far stupider than missing it. And while assuming a cheap umbrella had to be some kind of sign felt overly paranoid in review, his father would have as well. They both knew it was much better to think everything was out to get you and to occasionally be pleasantly surprised rather than regretting it. Boba had learned that the hard way, despite his own father’s warnings. He didn’t know how his father had learned it, but he’d never made that mistake again. Until he’d been dead on the landing of his own lighthouse.
Boba took a deep breath, and forged out into the yard after Peli and Djarin, letting his view of the situation settle and stabilise. Because now that he’d cracked the umbrella, he had something new to look into. If Djarin was a spirit, then there was a good chance he might have known about Jango from his time before the seaside, before the son he had chosen. And Boba had questions.
-
Boba couldn’t pinpoint when he realized his father wasn’t human. It was a gradual change in worldview, born from childlike complacency giving way to sharp-eyed awareness. The sky was blue, ships passed by day and night, the sea waxed and waned, and his father always left a room smelling like green and growing and the harvest. Like spring showers.
Boba had been homeschooled and his father only went into town when he had to. He would bring Boba, and let him play on the jungle gym with the other local kids while he bought food at the general store. But Boba spent most of his time alone at home, with his books and his father’s lessons and the rain over the ocean for company. How would he have known that most fathers didn’t have to pull up the vines that sprouted at the base of their house, creeping in through the windows, peeking up from the nooks of the stairs every few days? That most fathers did not sometimes stare inland, hatred and love and longing on their tired faces.
But Jango Fett was a cursebreaker, and he had made sure to pass on his skill set. He had taught Boba to question, to learn the logic behind the sky and the sea and the ships. To ask questions rather than just accepting it. And Boba had taken that and turned it against Jango and realised his father was not human. And he had started asking questions, and then Boba stopped because his father had not liked it.
But his father had been in a good mood on this day. They sat on the gallery, looking out at the sea surrounding them and the not-so-distant beach, the late afternoon light kissing their skin. His father rarely let him higher than the bedroom but today Boba had watched him — cursing and swearing the whole time — wrestle two chairs from the dining room up, up, up to the top of his father’s lighthouse. They sat with their backs to the lantern with two boxes of fish and chips from the town on their laps, though Boba kept sneaking glances back at the lantern. He didn’t see it often, and never when it was lit because his father had told him in no uncertain terms that it would hurt to look at directly. The glass panes surrounding it were shaped oddly to magnify the light and made the unlit lantern hard to see, like some kind of funhouse mirror.
His father had sat, legs spread, forearms resting on his thighs, a beer bottle hanging from his fingers, face relaxed. They’d lapsed into silence as Boba came to the end of his blow-by-blow recount of the last chapter of the book his father had given him, interspersed with his father jumping in to tell him to recite his times tables as quickly as he could, trying to catch him off guard. Boba chewed on the battered fish, feeling the crunch give way to soft flesh and hesitated. His father was looking at the shore and he was happy. If he asked something now he might get an answer. His father was looking at the shore and he was happy. If he asked something now he might make his father sad and ruin everything.
But his father kept telling him to ‘keep going’ with his observations, so he had. The kids in his books had grandparents, and the kids he sometimes played with in town talked about their grandparents sometimes. So, his father must have had his own parents. A father, maybe even a mother. Boba wanted to know about them.
“Dad,” Boba started. His father hummed questioningly, still looking out to the shore. “Do you have a father?”
Boba watched his father’s face anxiously, waiting for it to close in on itself. His father frowned slightly, but it was almost thoughtful. His eyes were somewhere else.
“I had two.”
“Two?” Boba almost flipped his fish and chip box in surprise. Two whole fathers?
Jango chuckled softly.
“Not at the same time,” he clarified.
“I grew up with my first father, my mother and my sister not far from here.”
Boba almost couldn’t imagine it. His father took a long sip from his bottle, brows doing something complicated. His eyes were still distant.
“But we were attacked. I ran and hid in my family's hue. The plants took me. Then my second father pulled me out.”
Boba grasped onto the part he understood best. His father had taught him his plants.
“Gourds took you?”
His father shook his head.
“You are the gourd, Boba. I was taken by the vine.”
Boba opened his mouth, he didn’t understand. But his father was starting to look bad distant instead of away distant and Boba didn’t want to ruin everything.
“I wish I had a sister,” Boba said instead. I wish I had a friend, he meant. All the books he’d read had told him you couldn’t be friends with your parents, they were your parents. But maybe you could be friends with a sister.
“No, you don’t,” his father said with such sudden force and emotion Boba leant away from him. His father turned to look at him, eyes swimming with things Boba did not have names for.
“You don’t, Boba. You’re different, better, human. I made sure. I made sure when I kept you.”
His father reached out a scarred hand and cupped Boba’s face. Boba looked up at him, wide-eyed.
“You do not want them, you do not need them,” his father told him. Looking into his eyes. His thumb stroked Boba’s cheek. He smiled, a tiny little thing that felt at odds with his father’s sudden shift in mood.
“My little man, my legacy. You are enough.”
Boba nodded mutely. Many, many years later, Boba would wonder if Jango had looked into his face then, and seen Boba or himself. Which he was truly addressing.
Boba’s nod seemed to calm his father, who cradled his face for a few more seconds as the shadows and storm clouds in his eyes and the creases of his face drained away. With one last caress, he withdrew, signing heavily.
They both looked back at the beach, the land stretched out before them. The sun was starting to set, turning the world gold. A seabird caught a draft and shot up, hovering at level with Boba for a long moment, before peeling off and away again.
“Trade you my chips for your lemon slices?” His father asked after a very long moment.
“Sure.”
-
Boba, Djarin and Peli spent the next 10 minutes pushing some of Peli’s more delicate vehicles into her warehouse as blue clouds gathered thicker and thicker above them and the animations reeled in the clotheslines. Peli had been smart enough to keep something resembling neutral on all of her toys. Boba took the time to stay quiet and observe Peli and Djarin.
Apparently, Susan was a local meteorologist whom Peli seemed to keep trying to bate Djarin into a rivalry with. Peli had once gotten Djarin to very grudgingly deliver a letter then complained about his unreliability, then blamed his snappish reply on the fact that he wasn’t allowed to drive. Boba had almost asked why but decided it wasn’t worth getting Peli’s attention back on him. Djarin could brunt her full force for him while Boba figured out an angle.
Boba had met many people who’d known who his father was, he’d thrown himself into looking for as much information about the man as he could. Coworkers, rivals, acquaintances, employees, clients, the works. Some only knew of his gruesome and mysterious death, the rest knew of his career as a cursebreaker. Very rarely did Boba encounter someone who had a chance of knowing about Jango’s life before all of that. His life as a spirit.
After pulling in the last and most difficult car — something that shimmered like a mirage and took a lot of conscious effort to look at except for a single side-view mirror that left disgusting residue on their hands — Peli clapped her greasy hands together and disappeared deeper into her warehouse, yelling about something to drink. All that remained outside were a few completely normal-looking cars and Boba’s truck on the driveway.
Boba scrounged up a rag to wipe the viscous awful smelling gunk off of his hands. He threw the rag into an oil waste can with ‘MAGIC & TECH BYPRODUCTS: NASTY SHIT/MYSTERY LIQUID/GUNK’ written in a large scrawl above the yellow label with more force than strictly necessary. The shit he put up with for the magical equivalent of an oil change. Taking a deep breath in, Boba turned to focus on the giant rolling door looking out onto Peli’s property. Leaning against the frame with his ankles crossed, looking out over the flat sea of dull red, dry green and brewing trouble was Djarin.
His boots were covered in dust, the black of his canvas carpenter pants marred by clinging whorls of rust. Boba could see the back of his jacket better now. The rich brown-black of the back panel darkened towards the bottom, except for an almost white U-shaped stripe curving up from the very bottom and around his sides and matching arcs of lighter brown curving down from his upper bicep to somewhere past his armpits. If the man’s jacket hadn’t caught Boba’s attention on their first meeting, he never would have noticed the slight colour change. But he was sure the brown was more muted and grey in Pau. And he’d never noticed the white stripe at Central Park.
Despite the jacket change, Djarin looked virtually normal. No one passing him on the street would have noticed anything strange or other about him. He was lucky then, Boba’s father had been a bit more conspicuous.
The stark colours outside, the artificial blue dark the clouds cast the world in framed him well.
The last time Boba had met a spirit was 5 years ago. Most kept to themselves, quietly doing whatever it was they were supposed to do, ignoring the hostility towards them. To most world governments, spirits were either a nuisance or a threat to national security, if not something to snuff out. To most average people the idea of a human infused with natural magic rather than human magic was disconcerting. For most the only interactions they ever had with spirits was the occasional news story involving one.
The last spirit Boba had met had not been interested in answering his questions. But this one might. Boba felt hope swell in his chest. He hadn’t found a new lead in ages.
Boba approached. He dug the pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and stood right in the mouth of the doorway, a comfortable distance from Djarin. The man in question turned his head slightly to acknowledge him, flicked his eyes in cursory greeting and returned to staring outside, arms crossed.
Boba pulled out a cigarette and offered Djarin the box.
“Thanks,” Djarin declined. Boba shrugged and pocketed the box. He flicked his shitty lighter’s wheel twice and lit the cigarette, taking a drag. Smoking was not his vice of choice, he hated the way it smelled. But it was as good as alcohol at loosening tongues, and smoke breaks had the added benefit of often being private and secluded. He always brought a box when visiting Peli since a cigarette or six seemed to relax her pricing.
As he let the smoke fill his lungs he observed how Djarin was observing him. Peli had practically forgotten about Boba during the car hauling unless he wasn’t pulling her battle plan right out of her brain. But Djarin hadn’t. He’d never talked to Boba directly, but he’d been aware of him in a way Peli hadn’t. Boba hadn’t been able to figure out if it was a habit born from watchfulness — keeping track of every person in a room, as Boba did — or perhaps just politeness. Djarin trying to tell Boba that he wasn’t being ignored.
As Boba subtly eyed the way Djarin was slightly turned towards him, rather than just ignoring his presence, Boba wondered if it was a bit of both. Boba breathed out, watching the smoke curl away into the suddenly temperate air. Either way, it was a good thing for him now.
“You thought I was my father.” Boba had decided Djarin would appreciate directness.
“I did.” Djarin turned more towards him now that Boba had initiated a conversation. He did not show surprise at Boba’s line of questioning. And there it was. Boba felt the need to look back, to lean in. Djarin exuded a slight magnetism when Boba got close enough, just like his father had. Spirit magic.
“You never met him though.” If Djarin hadn’t taken him for his father until he’d heard ‘Fett’, then Djarin had probably never met him in any significant way.
“No, he’s before my time,” Djarin agreed, “I’ve heard of him though. Not a lot, but some things.”
Boba briefly thought to ask what ‘before my time’ meant for people like Djarin, but he could guess. Djarin looked around his age, younger even, and his father had been older than Boba was now. Becoming a spirit didn’t stop aging, just slowed it. Boba felt a buzz of excitement hum in his fingers, he took another drag to hide it, keeping his face as neutral and casually interested as possible.
Djarin shrugged. “Heard he operated out of the Southern Hemisphere mostly, something to do with spring and plants, flowers?”
“Vines,” Boba supplied.
“Vines,” Djarin repeated. “People say he’s fierce, powerful, smart.” He squinted thoughtfully, “Something about many children.”
Boba bit back the reflexive instinct to insist that Jango had many offspring, many grapes and gourds and tomatoes and berries, that he’d only had one true child, one true son. No matter if he had cared about the others, or had missed them.
“He was well respected, I think,” Djarin continued, oblivious.
Well respected. That was new.
Din eyed Boba for a long moment like he was weighing something. “Until he turned his back on us and ran off to do whatever he’s doing now.”
Also new, but not exactly surprising.
“My father didn’t run,” Boba spat, bristling.
Djarin spread his hands, palms out. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.”
Boba let himself be disarmed.
“You must get a lot of use out of that one.” Boba huffed, turning to look outside again, slightly amused despite himself. Rain was already falling far away, blurring the edges of the darker clouds on the horizon. Djarin was right though. Getting angry at him for relaying hearsay was unproductive on multiple fronts.
“And Jango has been dead for over a decade,” Boba kept his voice steady with effort. He pushed on before he created a long enough gap where Djarin might insert any apologies or contrition.
“Do you know why he left?”
“No,” Djarin said quietly.
“I can ask,” he said after a beat. Boba turned back to stare at him. Djarin blinked, face open and earnest.
“What will it cost me?” Boba asked. He’d pay up, of course. This was more than he’d been offered in years. More than the occasional whisper or the slow drip of information Jabba had him on.
Djarin gave him a flat look. “How about you stop smoking that next to me.”
Boba barked a laugh, startled. Genially, he snuffed out the cigarette that had been burning unattended between his fingers on his shoe sole. After looking around for a moment, he located Peli’s overflowing ashtray perched on a metal barrel not far from where they were standing. Taking a step, he chucked the half-smoked cigarette lazily. It landed on the barrel and rolled in a half circle before coming to a stop.
“She can have the other half, something to look forward to once I’m gone.” And when she was significantly richer.
Boba turned back to Djarin, because it was hard to look away. He had seemed to grow serious again. His dark eyes were sombre.
“I might not find anything, and I can’t guarantee any of it’ll be true,” He said. “You heard Peli, I’m not exactly reliable. I’m not sure when I’ll see anyone who might know again. And I don’t think Jango Fett’s people are mine.”
“I understand. Are you sure you don’t want anything? Money, favours, a good word somewhere?”
Surely this was too good an offer. Surely there was a snare, a trap somewhere. But Boba was not in a position to refuse. No matter the cost.
Djarin waved him off.
“I don’t need anything.”
Boba frowned but didn’t push it.
“You’ll need a way to contact me right?” he asked.
Djarin shook his head, smiling slightly. The first taps of rain started to hit the packed earth in front of them, darkening the dull red. “I’ll find you.”
“How mysterious,” Boba said dryly. “Guess I’ll write my mobile on a ribbon and tie it to a wish tree, leave a breadcrumb trail for you, yeah?”
Djarin smiled wider, his eyes crinkling. He had a nice smile. The rain had started to pour in earnest, lashing against both of them and splattering across the concrete, flattening Djarin’s hair on one side. With a nod, he pushed himself off of the frame of the roll-up garage door and strode out into the storm. Boba watched in surprise as Djarin walked further into the yard.
He tore his eyes away when he heard Peli swear.
“Christ, for pieces of scraps that can’t drink -” Peli trailed off as she emerged out of the sea of clutter and car lifts, hands full of bottles, to see Boba standing alone in front of the yawning open rolling door, drenched, with the storm raging behind him, and no Djarin.
“Gone already huh?” Peli asked, surprisingly sombre. “Sometimes he stays the whole storm.”
Boba turned back to squint out into the field. He didn’t see a figure or a brown and white striped jacket anywhere. There was no time for Djarin to hide completely like that, not out here. He was gone.
“Well,” Peli sighed, “You get used to it. Shut that door and come help me with these.”
Boba let himself enjoy the rain beating down on him for a moment. He decided that he liked Djarin, despite his oddness, liked his humour and his smile, and how easily he offered up his help, trap though it may be. The excitement and trepidation of more information about his father still sat restlessly in his stomach, and Boba let himself feel it. Then he turned and walked inside to do what Peli asked.
-
He didn’t remember why they had been outside, pressed against the stone wall of the lighthouse one morning. But he did remember that he had been miserably cold and made colder by the waves lapping at the platform they stood on.
He leant against the lighthouse, holding some toolbox or other aid for his father, staring down the pier their lighthouse sat on to the dry shore longingly. The sea had churched in discontent that day, as slate grey as the sky. His father matched it. He had not said a word outside of gruffly telling Boba where to stand, so Boba was standing still and silent and good. Boba didn’t like seeing his father like this, but it was so hard to look away.
His father worked away at whatever he had been doing to the stone exterior, Boba didn’t remember what he’d been doing, only that his father had to stop once to lean down, rip the start of a tiny bright green vine off of the unforgiving stone and toss it over his shoulder into the sea. Sometime later, his father had made some soft noise of surprise, and Boba had turned to see him peering out over the water.
“Look,” his father had said as he pointed, and Boba had. There, out towards the open ocean, was a tiny dark shape on the water. It was a bird.
“How well do you know your seabirds Boba?” His father asked mildly, his stormy mood seeming to abate a bit. Very well, Boba had thought then. His father had given him a beautiful book for a previous birthday titled ‘Flora and Fauna of New Zealand’, though his father had shaken his head at the name when he had given it to Boba. So Boba had not mentioned that book, since it might just make his father go back to being as slate grey as the ocean around them. But Boba did know his birds and had told his dad as much.
“You wouldn’t know this one,” His father said, he was smiling very faintly but it was a genuine one. There was even a tinge of awe in his features. The bird was hovering just over the water, shifting and travelling along strangely.
“Everyone thinks it’s gone,” He said, “But there’s one right here. See how it walks on the water.”
Boba looked harder, and the bird got closer, and sure enough, its tiny black feet were pattering against the very top of the water. It was a pretty bird, Boba had remembered being quite taken by it. It was a dappled brown-grey from above, but its breast was a mix of white with random spots of brown feathers. It had a white arrow on its rump pointing towards the blunt square fan of its tail feathers. It didn’t look like it was walking, it looked like it was dancing, skipping across the waves.
“It’s a petrel!” Boba had exclaimed.
“Yes, but there are many different petrels,” His father said in his teaching voice, still smiling. “Most travel far, and breed a long way from here, but these ones only nest here, around Aotearoa. The other petrels we see live around the world.”
Boba and his father watched the petrel as it hunted for a long moment, and even then Boba understood that he was seeing something rare and important.
“Petrels travel far, but they always return to the same place to nest. Every year.” His father’s tone had shifted then, and Boba had glanced back at him to see the all too familiar presence of a swirling ocean of emotion behind his eyes and caught in the wrinkles between his brow, the shifting grooves of his moko. It dripped into the shadows of his face, calm and still and angry and raging all at once.
“They return home.”