BOUNTY HUNTER.

PINNED POST. — hi welcome 2 cuyanir tumblr dot com !! im coyote (they/them, 25) and ive been writing boba since 2017. what can i say, i love this green guy. here r some links:

CARRD . RULES . ABOUT .

he’s fourteen and his throat is full of sweet water. boba spits it out, indignantly. a river is nothing compared to a planet-wide ocean. but it has slippery stones and strong currents too. maybe every river was an ocean once, maybe that’s why it should carry him away.

his knees sting as he gets up, the skin on them rubbed raw and bleeding from the sharp rocks at the bottom. this gets ignored, just like the soaked strands of hair prickling his eyes. the chill sets in immediately but this body doesn’t remember how to tremble.

“i know how to swim.” he reminds jango, jango who is so eager to forget kamino. maybe boba will remember just to spite him. the water on his tongue still tastes wrong but it’s familiar enough. 

his father says one thing and means another. he once said ‘home’ and meant anything else but the rain. today, he calls the river on this nameless planet an ordeal but his voice sounds like the clank of jail doors sliding shut. when boba slipped on that river stone, he saw his own hand reaching towards jango. maybe, he can’t be sure. should he care about that? or should he care about the fact that his hand wasn’t caught in time?

in the end, he supposes what really matters is that he can swim.

“i know how to swim.” boba repeats that and means the prison too. sometimes swimming means keeping your head above the surface.

jango stares at him with the weight of this one missed hand and boba can’t do anything about that. he just walks past it and wishes his father would do the same.

***

he’s forty-one and there’s a welcome weight to his step. where his skin was rubbed raw and bleeding, the armor protects it once more. 

his father waits for him in front of the ramp to slave one. he looks at him like boba is about to turn around and disappear again. he can’t blame him. but when his boots touch the ground and the pale sun hits the repainted plates, it’s obvious he’s back, finally back.

they stand before each other and jango is the first to reach out. when his dirt-stained fingers touch the wheat blade and seven moons of concord dawn they complete the insignia like the final brushstroke. this is their clan, soil and blood, alive despite it all.

“you’ve been through quite an ordeal, little one.” his father sounds dazed. boba hears the awe, he hears the relief.

laughter grinds in his throat. “i have.” he confirms.

now that he’s older, he knows that whether he can keep his head above the water isn’t as important as having something to swim towards. his head bows and so does his father’s, quick to confirm that he’s been waiting on the other side of the river again. their foreheads touch, jango’s hands cradle the dented helmet.

though  he  can  hear  the  objection  before  it’s  voiced,  eyes  stay  fixed  on  the  armor.  boba’s  reasoning  can  only  set  in  like  a  chill.  this  time,  jango  decides,  it  shouldn’t  be  avoided.  ‘kamino  was  a  path  I  chose.’  fire  flickers  against  its  own  reflection.  ‘led  me  to  you,’  he  goes  on,  ‘led  us  both  to  geonosis.’  a  shrug  of  the  shoulder  concludes  for  him  —  there’s  enough  to  be  said  in  the  lull  that  follows.  

every  day,  he  wonders  where  the  first  mistake  had  been  made.  was  it  trusting  in  deals  and  loyalties,  or  wanting  more  than  the  dead  ends  he’d  been  given?  but  that  isn’t  for  anyone  to  answer.  ‘if  it’s  a  perfect  life  you’re  looking  for,  bob’ika,  you  won’t  find  it.’

the visor inches closer when kamino gets remember, moves away when geonosis is. if there’s a place to forget, he thinks. if there’s a topic to avoid, if there’s an apology to consider, if there’s a planet to kill. the anger bites as it usually does but its jaws are too old to lock. hard as he might press his fingertips into the scarred forearms, it just isn’t the same.

a  thoughtful  hum  answers  for  him  first.  he  isn’t  exactly  recounting  the  mission,  focused  more  intently  now  on  the  safety  of  painted  beskar.  and  having  moved  on  from  the  challenge,  ‘good  as  it  could  have  been,’  means  as  little  as  is  revealed.  he  earned  his  keep,  nothing  more.  

‘but  it  was  time  to  come  back,’  he  decides  aloud.  to  think  he’d  ever  miss  the  same  planet  that  wanted  him  dead.  even  now  they’re  treading  over  glass  and  bone,  only  it  isn’t  in  plain  sight.  that  mandalore  has  been  overtaken  by  something  even  older:  so  ancient  that  his  people  wouldn’t  have  recognized  it.  

his  own  steps  noticing  the  change  of  pace,  though,  djarin  catches  up  to  the  mand’alor.  when  his  visor  glances  sidelong,  so  does  the  bleary-eyed  child.  ‘seems  like  I’ve  been  missing  all  the  excitement  at  home.’

“you could say that.” the smile is private but the voice has a way of letting it be seen. 

he doesn’t speak again as they continue to walk. the jungle around them seems to slowly grind to a halt. the branches and meaty leaves start to thin out. old, tepid soot sneaks in and mixes with everything: the dirt and the scorch marks on tree trunks. sunlight reaches them again, slowly and then all at once. fett stops because there’s no way to continue. 

when he first saw this place, he thought of the sarlacc. it’s hard not to think of it again, standing at the edge of yet another gaping crater. but this one is dead, he reminds himself. but not really, he corrects himself too. the walls of the pit are uneven, violent. the sarlacc memory continues as black, teeth-like formations poke through the scorched earth. something unmistakably metallic gleams at the bottom.

it’s hard to keep his voice flat. “it’s too recent to be a bomb site from the purge. we think it’s kryze’s imperial cruiser’s doing.” he looks away from the cavity, back to din. “no idea how the empire missed it when they tried to strip the planet. probably because nobody would think to dig out here.”

all of the things he says now are so superfluous and unnecessary. just answers to questions that don’t really matter. he finds din’s hand with his own. nothing given, only shared. 

“it’s a big lode.” boba rasps out the last detail. his helmet cants to the child attempting to peer inside the pit. he must suspect a part of this will be his too. his and the mandalorians that will come after this clan is gone. and that’s a good thing. it’s a gift of future and fett has received it only once before. he looks at din. they stood like this too when they swore on it, back in a deserted palace on tatooine. 

// ONE THING i sort of arrived to when it comes to the way boba speaks... he kind of talks like he has a word limit every time he opens his mouth lol... because hes so unused to talking/having conversations in general. 

the dialogue style i worked out for him is very... economical. when boba talks he tends to eschews certain words. he will drop the ‘i’ pronoun very frequently, he’ll say ‘went to mos eisley.’ instead of ‘i went to mos eisley’. that and he doesnt use filler words at all, you’ll never hear him go ‘umm...’ because he speaks only when hes ready to speak. he also generally chooses the least amount of words necessary to communicate smth (’had a good hunt?’ vs ‘did you have a good hunt?’). all of these tendencies result in short, snappy sentences.

tho obviously, there are exceptions to these rules i made-up for myself lol. as a kid, he spoke more freely, almost impulsively. and as an adult, if he vibes with the topic or the conversation in general, he will use longer sentences. 

concern  eases  with  a  tilt  of  his  helmet.  as  the  ship’s  ramp  shudders  closed  and  fett  takes  the  lead,  he  turns  his  attention  back  to  the  bundle  in  his  arms.  

‘see?’  he  says,  just  loud  enough  for  it  to  be  pointed  ahead  of  him.  ‘it’s  good  news.  you  worry  too  much.’  ( it’s  only  when  grogu  mirrors  confusion,  head  cocked  and  eyes  narrowed,  that  djarin  drops  the  act  with  a  shrug. )  maybe  that’s  the  nature  of  this  planet,  he  thinks,  shifting  low-hanging  branches  aside  as  he  follows  a  sound.  even  now,  as  the  clearing  tapers  into  wild  overgrowth,  he  still  considers  mandalore  by  its  past  self — empty  and  noiseless.

then  again,  maybe  it’s  whose  footsteps  he  listens  for:  the  nature  of  knowing  a  sound  too  well.  ‘I’ll  admit,’  the  hunter  goes  on,   ‘you  had  me  worried,  too.’  

he doesn’t turn around to meet the gaze behind him but acknowledges the worry with a low hum. “not by choice.” the last word trails off in a quiet hiss. it takes him three more steps and two bent twigs to continue: “couldn’t risk this getting out too early.”

finally, his red visor glances over his shoulder. “besides. i wanted to show you personally.” 

it’s strange to imagine a future so imminent, right at the end of greenery. even stranger to await it but he thinks it will be a memory he’ll practice until it stays. these are the trophies he collects these days, quiet chirps and slotted fingers. out of this want, his pace quickens.