Chapter Text
The recording illuminates on a bluish screen in front of Boba, the face from which his own came, and so many others as well, lowered partially between hands calloused from years of effort. Tired, his buir seemed the definition of exhaustion, letting his face fall to massage the back of his neck while looking at the recording.
"Honestly. I don't know what to say here." His voice sounds hoarse, broken. If this is the moment Boba thinks it is, then these reactions make sense, "I'll have to come up with a better name for this later… But that's not the point, is it? Ha." Jango Fett sighs before adjusting himself before the camera, pushing back the weariness with an ancient determination, taking a deep breath and preparing himself. "I don't know what your name will be yet, it's something I'll decide in the future, but that's not the important thing. It's who you are: my son."
It's different hearing this after so much time. After so much.
"No matter what they say, no matter what… was done. You are my son." Boba smiled; perhaps he needed to hear that again more than he cared to admit. "But not just mine." Boba paused.
The Jango on the screen clicks his tongue, unfazed by the reaction he never could have predicted.
"That… old man." He almost growls the words, "He offered me DNA. DNA from someone who was already gone, who served him. Of course, I didn't want to accept at first, but he got into my head. That it would be good for you to have natural advantages, that would differentiate you from the other clones, but never too much. You would still be the same as me except for a few details. But you would be stronger, more protected."
"And I accepted because I was worried and—paranoid! Urgh!" His elbows slam on the table as he hides his face in his hands again, his knuckles white with pressure. "And I don't know what I want done to me when I die, but no—no, not to be used as a repository of traits—Or—" He stops. Certainly realizing the irony of the situation, he lets out a dry laugh. "Kriff… How did this end up in this shitty situation?…" He's silent for a moment, not looking directly at the camera. Boba bites his cheek, the stress almost making him fast-forward the video to find out what his buir was talking about. "The old man said he was killed by a Jedi, incredible how this keeps happening in our family…"
Too many times, the clone thinks. Or maybe not, maybe a son. Of whom he only knew one until now.
"I'm not going to cry over the things I did. It's not like my regrets would change anything, certainly not his fate…" He lowers his hands, straightening up in front of the video. "So, I guess this is for both of you, in a way. It's not like I've figured out how this Force stuff works, but still. Maybe this will stop him from haunting me at night."
Boba doubts it; he's been working with the infamous Darth Vader, and from what he's seen of the Sith, resentment is the norm. His father was greeted in the afterlife by a very angry man, to say the least.
"I'll make more of these at some point, until then… I love you, son."
Boba stares at the screen even as the video restarts, and again, and again, and again…
At some point he gets up, walking around the room with the video still playing, thinking.
Thinking about how he never knew until now, but he lost not just one father, but two to Jedi. And perhaps both died without vengeance or justice.
He sits alone on the floor with the video still playing.