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blackkatmagic · 4 years

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Jon and Jango meeting when Boba gets snatched (hostage? Just someone grabbing a free human toddler?) and Jango storms the place he is only to find the slavers fed to their own space tigers and his son asleep in some scruffy bloody hobo's arms.

The whole compound is terrifyingly quiet.

Jango tries to ignore the pace of his heart in his chest, the way his hands want to shake. Two weeks to find this kriffing place, two weeks with Boba in the hands of people who wanted to use him against Jango, and the only way to get his son back was to go along with what they wanted, grit his teeth and do the job that he’d refused while he shook down every last one of his contacts. Even now, there’s a horrible, creeping certainty rising that he got it wrong, that they’ll know and hurt Boba for this, but—

The compound is silent, still, and there are bodies on the ground.

Jango finds the first two by the door, guards with blasters still in their hands. It looks like they shot each other, and Jango gives them a glance as he jams his shoulder into the door and heaves it open. Friendly fire, maybe. Something spooked them, something passed between them, and they tried to hit it but it was too quick.

He leaves them where they are, and his only regret is that he couldn’t be the one to kill them himself.

The hallways and rooms inside aren’t any more populated. Jango slips past scorched walls and kicked-in doors and plenty of blood splatters on the ground, more bodies sprawled out or slumped in corners. Some of them have blaster wounds, and at least two were killed with a vibroblade, but most of the rest have cauterized burn marks that Jango knows intimately.

Anger rises at the sight of them. Anger and fury and grief, carried on the back of uncertainty, because if his son is lost because of a Jedi, he’ll burn the whole Order down around them and hunt them into extinction. Whoever broke in here likely didn’t know the bastards have Boba, probably didn’t care—

The bodies are still warm, Jango tells himself. There's still time. There's still a chance that Jango's son is alive, even if everyone else in here is dead.

The trail of bodies and searched rooms leads deeper into the compound, deeper into the mountainside. Jango finds the man who first attempted to hire him collapsed over a safe, but the contents haven’t been touched by anyone except him, and Jango shoves him over, lets his corpse collapse in a heap, and keeps moving, rage bubbling.

Most of the bodies are near the hangar. It looks like there was some sort of attempt at a last stand, members of the organization grouped in tight clusters around the doors, but whoever did this managed to get behind them somehow. It looks like a lot of them panicked, tried to run, but didn’t make it far, and for all that Jango hates Jedi with a passion, he can't say he’s anything but glad. He steps over the still forms, tests the doors, but the power is out. They don’t move until Jango throws his full weight against them, furious and not willing to be halted, and when they finally groan open he shoves through the gap and into the vast, silent space.

The heads of the operation are here, armed to the teeth and very, very dead. Blood is thick on the ground here, leading out in a scattered trail of droplets that speak of a major injury. Jango doesn’t have eyes for that, though; all of his attention is fixed on the rear wall, where a huddle of green-brown cloth is seated on the ground, a bundle clutched close.

Slowly, steadily, Jango holsters his blaster, takes a breath. He can't look away from the sight of Boba, all of three, limp and clutched in the Jedi's arms. There are bruises on him, infuriating and sickening, and Jango's breath tangles in his lungs as he approaches. But—

The Jedi isn't moving. There's blood on the ground around him, staining the duracrete, and Jango can hear the wet rasp of his breathing. His robes are tattered and scorched, and his head is bowed, hood covering his face. One of his arms is definitely broken, and Jango can see the strange, sickly-grey pallor of his skin that’s probably from severe exhaustion. But his grip on Boba is desperately gentle, and he’s holding Boba cradled to his chest with his good arm, lightsaber on the ground at his side.

“Jetii,” Jango says, and he wants his son with a fervor that’s almost madness but he’s still not going to assault a Jedi who just cut his way through the whole compound to get him. Not when Boba is very clearly not in danger right now.

There's a long, long moment of silence, so long that Jango almost reaches out to check if the Jedi's even conscious. Then, slowly, the hooded head lifts, and the Jedi looks at Jango. It seems to take a moment for his eyes to focus, but when they do he jerks, pressing back into the wall and clutching Boba to his chest like he’s going to stop Jango from so much as touching him.

“Easy,” Jango says, and reaches up slowly enough that it won't be taken as a threat, pulling his helmet off. “He’s my son.”

The Jedi stares at him blankly, then shudders. His head falls back against the wall, his whole body eases, and he lets out a breath that almost bubbles. It’s not a good sound.

“Fett,” he says, and Jango pauses, a little startled to be recognized. Apparently sensing that, the Jedi tips his head, and says, “Overheard them. In town. Bragging about having him.”

Jango closes his eyes, restraining the urge to turn around and fire a few shots into the corpses, just to make himself feel better. Instead, he reaches out, and the Jedi shifts his grip, helping Jango get a steady hold on Boba and lift him free. He’s still asleep, strangely, alarmingly still, and Jango can't help but clutch him close, burying his nose in matted curls and trying not to think what he could have lost.

“All dead?” he asks gruffly, and the Jedi looks at him with pale, unnerving eyes and inclines his head.

“Very,” he says, and Jango smiles. The Jedi's mouth curves, too, and he closes his eyes, says, “I made him sleep. For the fight. He’ll wake soon.”

Jango doesn’t like the idea of any Jedi playing with Boba's head, but—he’d rather Boba sleep than have to suffer through a situation like this at three. “Thanks,” he says gruffly, and it burns to owe a Jedi anything, but—

It would have been a hell of a fight to have to get all the way here alone, through all of those men. And they wouldn’t have hesitated to use Boba as leverage again, leaving Jango all but helpless. He’s…not ungrateful.

“No debt,” the Jedi says, like he knows the Mandalorian custom, like he understands what Jango almost lost. “Just…take him.”

Jango rises to his feet, ready to do just that. But, before he can even take a step back, he pauses. Looks at the Jedi, at the steady drip of blood, the broken arm, the exhaustion, and then at Boba, asleep and pale and rescued, all because this man heard that these bastards had Jango Fett’s son and wouldn’t let it stand.

“You're dying,” he says flatly, and the Jedi's mouth curves, rueful.

“I’ll be fine,” he says, but it’s ragged enough that Jango doesn’t believe it for a minute.

“Come on,” he says, and crouches down, shifting Boba to his left arm so he can slide his right around the Jedi's back. “I can't carry your useless carcass out of here, so you're going to have to walk.”

To his credit, the Jedi doesn’t even try to resist, though the sound of pain that wrenches from his throat is instinctive, impossible to hide. He clutches at Jango's armor with his good hand, almost falls, but Jango hauls him all the way upright and doesn’t let him go. He has enough bacta to at least start patching the man up, and then he can dump him at the Jedi Temple and call them even.

Assuming they can get back to Slave I without the Jedi kicking it, of course, Jango thinks, eyeing the way his skin seems to go even greyer as he staggers along with Jango's steps.

“Arm over my shoulders,” he says, because he’s still got Boba and that’s a hell of a lot more important than steadying a Jedi who nearly got himself killed. “Why’s a Jedi this deep in the Outer Rim, anyway?”

The man’s breath rasps, and he shakes his head, hood slipping. “My territory,” he says, and his eyes close for just a moment before he forces them open again. “’m not…Temple Jedi.”

Jango will admit he’s never heard of a Jedi who didn’t bolt back to their fancy Temple as soon as the opportunity presented itself. He snorts, hitching the Jedi up a bit higher, tighter against his side, and asks, “Name?”

“Master Jon Antilles,” the Jedi gets out, and Jango's not all that familiar with Jedi rankings, but he’s pretty sure Jon is pretty damned young to be a Master. Dangerous, that probably means, and for a moment Jango considers dropping him outside the base, leaving him for whatever planetary officials eventually wander this way, but—

Boba snuffles against his shoulder, turns his head into Jango's armor, and Jango resigns himself to a long, arduous trek back to his ship with a particularly suicidal Jedi in tow.

“For a Jetii, you're not a complete waste of space,” he says gruffly. “Lot of bodies in here.”

Pale eyes flicker open, then closed again, and Jon stays on his feet as his mouth curves, rueful. “I warned them,” he says. “They didn’t listen.”

Jango tightens his grip on Jon, just a little. Breathes in, breathes out, and feels the brush of Boba's curls against his cheek. Feels the way Jon stays stubbornly on his feet, even though most men in his state wouldn’t even be able to stay conscious, and—

He gets them to his ship. All of them, Jedi included, and doesn’t even regret it.

#my writing #jon antilles #jango fett #jangojon #star wars #aniseandspearmint #kat answers

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