Bad Blood

Chapter 4 - Imprisonment is Mercy

"Why?"

The woman - no, she was Astéri, whether he believed it or not - stayed silent. Boba dropped his chin to his chest, running a hand over the back of his neck. "Just- why? You tried to kill me! What kind of thing would make you do something like that?"

"You should know."

"Astéri, we were friends. I've never done anything to you, so what drove you to do this?"

Boba hadn't been expecting laughter, but Astéri tipped her head and gave a harsh chuckle. "You've never done anything to me? How about when you abandoned me when I was ten and left me alone on Kamino. How about when you didn't even care that my father had been slaughtered by men he considered family." Astéri looked him straight in the eye. "Men that were your brothers."

"And you blame me for this? I wasn't even there, I didn't even know that Order 66 existed!"

"That's the thing. You didn't know, but I didn't know that, because you were never around to tell me. All those years I wondered if you knew that my father was going to be murdered along with the Jedi and if you had just left to save your own skin. At least I know one part is true." Astéri curled her lip. "You never do anything if it's not to save your own skin."

Boba stepped back. Who was this woman? Had she seriously thought that he had known the attack on the Jedi was coming? The Astéri Vorte he had known would never have even considered it. She had been kind, trusting. Almost too trusting at times, but a comforting presence. Now... he barely even recognised her. He could try reaching out to her, but would she even listen? This was his best friend. He had to try.

"You know, we're not so different, you and I. We both lost our fathers. I was even younger than you were. It's the Jedi who are to blame for this. A Jedi killed my father, and it was a Jedi's involvement that killed yours."

"Stop!"

Oh. It seemed that trying to empathise with the Mandalorian girl hadn't exactly been effective. Her eyes were chips of ice, boring into his visor as she glared at him with unbridled hatred.

"I'm nothing like you. Your father died in battle whilst openly attacking a Jedi. Of course Jango ended up getting his head taken off. The Jedi was trying to prevent himself getting shot at. My father - he was cut down where he stood, defenceless, by men he considered family. And what for? Because he tried to reason with them before they murdered an innocent Jedi."

Astéri had a fairly good point. He sighed in defeat as she continued to rail at him.

"So no, we're nothing alike. We're not friends, we're not even acquaintances. You're just one more loose end in the tangled mess that is my life. I wanted to be able to cut myself free of all that pain. You were the only thing left reminding me of the past." Her voice cracked on the last word, the raw pain almost tangible. Boba felt like his soul was being ripped apart. Where was his friend? This couldn't be her.

"I- I don't even know you anymore."

"Then get it over with."

"What?"

"I'm your prisoner. Either let me go, or kill me."

Oh god. He should have known he would have to deal with this at some point. There was no way he could let Astéri go, because that would be signing his own death warrant. She knew this, he realised, and she was fully expecting him to kill her. But that... no. Just no. Even if he could persuade himself to pull the trigger, he wouldn't be able to live with himself afterwards.

"You're not going anywhere."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm keeping you captive for the time being. Just until-" he ran a hand over the back of his neck, his voice weary. "Just until I figure out what the hell I'm going to do with you."

"What? No, you can't keep me here! That's-"

"Your own fault?"

"How is this my fault?"

"You're the one that came after me. It's your fault for being here. You can't put a bounty on a bounty hunter's head, that's ridiculous. It's just not how it works."

The fuming Mandalorian spread her hands as best she could with the handcuffs. "I beg to differ, or I wouldn't be here!"

"That's the point I'm making, you shouldn't be here. You should be- I don't even know any more. On Kamino? Where do you call home these days?"

"Home is where my family is. So, no home."

This was getting downright disturbing. The person in front of him didn't fit with his view of Astéri, yet it clearly was her, pink hair and all. Shaking his head in disbelief, Boba climbed the ladder to the cockpit. He needed something to take his mind off the girl tied up in the hold, and he figured taking down a bounty would be the best way to do it. Pausing halfway up the rungs, he spoke to his old friend, though he didn't turn to look at her. 

"I know you'll kill me if I let you go. I have to keep you here. There's no other option for now."

Silence. He tried again. "You used to be someone I could rely on."

A snarl accompanied the response. "I guess a lot has changed."

Astéri gave one last tug at her handcuffs before slumping back into the chair. Any more struggling and it would start to chafe her wrists, even through her gloves. The infuriating thing was that her pulse bands were sitting snugly above the handcuffs, it seemed that Fett hadn't even realised what they were, but she couldn't actually reach the switch to prime them. Maybe she could've sent an electric shock through the handcuffs to disable them, but that was out of the question now.

With a groan, Astéri swallowed yet another surge of bile that rose up through her throat. The last thing she remembered before she had blacked out was Fett pulling her glove partly off and sticking her bare skin with some kind of dart. Where had those come from? She didn't remember Jango using them, and it was his armour that Boba had inherited.

The next thing Astéri had known was waking up, tied to a chair, and feeling like a Bantha herd had stampeded over her head. She was still woozy now, even after Fett had left her, presumably to go to the cockpit.

God, she hated that Mandalorian. She didn't even really know the exact details of why she hated him anymore, they had been lost to a furious haze, but she definitely hated him. For a second, Astéri wondered if it was simply all the pent up anger she had accumulated over the years. Maybe it was all the tragedies in her life rolled into one knot of emotion. She had never had any time to grieve for her father, not properly. She had just bottled up her feelings and carried on.

No. She told herself. This isn't leftover grief. This is real anger, and you're going to use that anger to avenge your father and take down everyone complicit in his death. Even the infuriating Boba Fett.

If she had bottled up her feelings for eight years, she could bottle them up for a lot longer. She could definitely bottle them up long enough to escape Slave I, kill Fett, and drag the evidence back to Kanjiklub in exchange for a sizeable sum of money.

And that was a promise. 

_____

Slightly shorter chapter today, but I didn't want to draw it out just for the sake of making it longer lol. 

I was gonna wait a few days before publishing this, but there's another chapter that I really want to publish RIGHT NOW, you know what I mean? So you're getting a few chapters ahead of schedule, though to be honest I never really had much of a schedule anyway 😂  

Hope you guys enjoyed, and please point out any mistakes, because at this point most of my editing and quite a bit of my writing is done at like three in the morning, so I'm a bit fuzzy when I'm checking it through 🤣

See ya in the next one! 😜