#lost.

"Thankfully my father raised me to be both," I replied, he helped me find balance when no one else could. "It seems I will need both know to face the war."

"I am sorry you have lost your father," he said, and I looked down at my plate. "I lost mine also to a lightsaber."

I looked back at him. "How do you know it was to a lightsaber?"

The only people who witnessed it were Luke, Leia, Han and myself.

"People like me hear things, princess," he said and told me "I remember your father well."

I blinked at him. "You do?"

"It was just before the start of the clone wars," he remembered. "I was only a boy, living with my father on Kamino when he came to investigate. My father was a bounty hunter too you see, clearly he took one job that led the Jedi to him. I remember your father well because he was the first Jedi I ever saw." He looked at me, as if analysing me. "Had the same hair colour as you, you definitely take after him. I remember his lightsaber. I remember him interrogating my father before he tried to kill him."

I exhaled sharply. "My father wasn't a killer."

"Maybe not, but he had a job to do just as my father did. I remember thinking that maybe they weren't so different after all, Jedi and Bounty hunters. They'd capture people and bring them in, or kill them if the situation calls for it. Except there was one difference." I find myself unable to do anything but listen to him. "For people like your father that job was called just, and for people like my father it was called criminal."

I found my eyes reluctantly opened and struggled to form a reply. "It-" I look away and stammer "Well..."

"See, you know I'm right," he said, taking a drink. "You have a lot to learn, princess."

"Except- except there is one difference," I realised and then he was the fascinated one.

"And what would that be?"

"The Jedi do their job for the sake of the greater good," I answered. "Bounty hunters do theirs for credits."

From the way he stiffened I knew I'd offended him, but even so, he knew it was the truth. 

"Is that what you think you're doing?" he asked me. "Fighting and killing for the greater good, while I kill for credits?"

It's only then it struck me I was looking into the eyes of a killer. "Yes."

He shook his head at me. "If that was true I would have brought you straight to Vader." He stood and reached for his helmet. "Think on that, princess."

He went to leave but I called out "What do you know of Vader?"

He turned back around and remarked, "You'll have to pay me for that information."

I stood up, my chin high as I approached him. "Because I remember when I was nine years old, kidnapped by bounty hunters and brought to him." He didn't move as I stepped closer. "You see, they'd kidnapped me from Mandalore to lure my father out of hiding. I was just a little girl, but the bounty hunters didn't care about that, and neither did Vader. Because when he realised the third sister had kidnapped Obi-Wan Kenobi's own daughter Vader came to see me personally." He listened, almost afraid by the calm anger in my eyes. "I remember him being so vengeance mad he was willing to torture a little girl to find out where my father was. I remember screaming for help as they put me into that contraption." He was unnerved as I laughed sadly. "No one blinked an eye, it wasn't anyone within the Empire that saved me from that fate, it was my father and a woman who gave her life fighting against them. That was my first experience with the Empire, with Vader. So tell me, are you the same as the bounty hunters who gave me over for some extra credits, as the men who stood by while a nine year old girl screamed for help?"

He was quiet, and put his helmet back on the table, taking a step forward toward me. "The Jedi took children screaming from their parents, killed my father in front of me. They were no different from the Empire. Evil exists everywhere-"

"Fuck that," I breathed, not taking that excuse. "You are blind if you don't see what the empire does."

"Oh I know what the empire does, better than you," he replied, looking me in the eye. "I never claimed to be a good man. If I'm given a job I finish it. Honour doesn't do anybody good unless they're looking to get killed."

And so I asked, "Then why didn't you give me to Vader?"

"A young woman who hides her face comes to me asking for passage to Mandalore who can pay me in beskar. I knew damn well there was only one woman in the galaxy who can pay that price," he told me, revealing he knew who I was. "I was curious to see how long you would keep up the act."

"And now?"

"Now," he said, bringing his hand up, his thumb running over my bottom lip. "Now I'm even more curious about this so-called Mand'alor."

I grabbed his wrist, raising a cautious eyebrow. "You're a bold man Boba Fett."

His eyes traced my silhouette, skimming over the skin bared by my dress. "Then what does that make you?"

The corner of my lip turned upwards "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"I would," he said, backing me up against the table which pressed into my tailbone. "Because I think you and I aren't that different."

That made me let out a dangerous laugh. "If you believe that you aren't just bold, but blind."

He chuckled, moving his hand down my arm. "You can claim you're better than me, doing what you do for the greater good, except you're lying. You don't care about the greater good, or honour, you do what you do because you want revenge. You kill because you like it. You have a cruel streak in you, princess. Deep down you are just as ruthless as I am."

He nudged my leg open with his knee enough that the slit of my dress opened, and revealed the small blaster tucked into my garter. 

"You can call yourself a Jedi all you want," he told me, hand coming to brush the skin of my thigh until it reached the cold metal of my blaster. "But you're a Mandalorian. You can't change that, so stop pretending you aren't." 

With that he stepped away from me, and I couldn't help the small gasp that left me at the absence of his touch. He didn't say another word as he reached for his helmet, pulling it back on before leaving the room, as if he was never here, all while his words tormented me the entire night.

The conflict between my two creeds, incompatible down to the most raw principles of each.

And having to choose.

Or else risk losing all of it.

Those thoughts haunted me as I entered the war council the next day in my blood red beskar.

The darksaber laid before me as I sat on the throne of Mandalore.

Knowing our war had already begun long before.

"My mother Satine spent her life fighting for peace, even as the Empire rose to power she attempted to maintain peace." I didn't want to imagine what she'd say if she could see me then. "Now is not a time for peace, now is a time for war."  I looked to Boba, heeding his words. "We will not negotiate. We will be ruthless in retaking Mandalore fully from the Empire." 

We may have had the palace, but the Empire still had much of Mandalore under its control, as well as our moon of Concordia. 

It's then Bo-Katan asked me "So, will we be taking prisoners?"

I put aside my father's teachings of mercy, knowing the Empire has shown us none.

"We will take no prisoners."

Even those order's felt like I was killing a part of me, the part my father created, to only do what I must. But times had changed. I only wish I knew I would never get that part of me back.

That it was the beginning of my own fall.

~

It was the third night of our campaign when I made Boba Fett my commander. We'd searched the capital, killing all storm troopers hiding away in bunkers and removing Imperial intelligence. Perhaps he stayed because he liked the fight, perhaps it was because he liked me.

Perhaps I liked having a professional bounty hunter as my right hand, perhaps I liked the fact he was older, wiser, harsher. Perhaps it was the fact he didn't reject my advances for the sake of being a good man, because he wasn't. I was only nineteen, he had a good decade on me, more than a decade. I knew it was wrong but he didn't care, perhaps that intoxicated me. 

Which is why it only took him those three days to get me into bed. 

I was a virgin, not that I ever told him that, but I know he knew, and I knew he liked it. I knew that he knew I liked it with the helmet on, with his rough hands on my body, hand wrapped around my throat as he bent me over. I knew it wasn't love, that it was the furthest thing from it, but I liked it. 

I had never been in a darker place. My parents dead and isolated from my friends. Alone on Mandalore, halfway between a ghost and a god. Because the only time I felt anything was when there was blood on my hands or him inside of me.

I liked how he made me forget everything. I liked how wrong it was. I liked that he was my secret. I liked that he would give me whatever I asked for without caring for morals. I liked that he never asked questions, unlike everyone back on the rebel base.

I kept promising Leia I'd be home soon, but soon kept creeping away, as did the weeks in the field which turned to months. Until finally we had fully retaken Mandalore, leaving it stronger than it had been since the rise of the Empire.

It was then I was once again faced with my dilemma as the rebel base was being bombed, as my friends lives were in danger. And there I was sitting on a throne.

"Mandalore won't stay safe from the Empire if we don't fight the bastards!" I fought with Bo-Katan in the throne room. "Are you that ignorant that you really think they won't come back!"

"Not if Mandalore is strong!" she argued and I laughed dangerously. "What? Do you know something I don't?"

"I know everything you don't!" I spat. "While you've sat here on Mandalore I've been out there fighting the Empire on every damn front and let me tell you we can be as strong as we've ever been but it won't matter if they decide to wipe us out like they've done to countless planets!"

"The Death Star is gone-"

"Thanks to me!" I screamed at her, the guards stationed outside the door no doubt hearing everything. "Thanks to the Rebellion! To the fucking suicide squad that died getting the plans in the first place!" Andor and the others died for this. "They were nothing to you but they were my friends. They were my leaders-"

"And you are Mandalore's leader!" she reminded me. "If you return to that base Mandalore will fall."

"And it will fall if I don't," I told her, my eyes burning. "All of our lives rest on the rebellion, so if you want to stop me from taking my soldiers there then you can come and take this." I wielded the darksaber bitterly. "But you won't, because you can't." I tossed it at her feet, knowing she could never win it in combat. "If you want to rule so badly then you take it. Mandalore is in a state of martial law, and it will remain that way until the Empire falls." I rose from my throne. "You made me a soldier, so this is what you get."

With that I turned my back on her, on all of it.

~

Boba found me in my room, securing my beskar armour as I prepared to bring my forces to the base.

"So, you've made your choice."

"I have," I answered stiffly, eyeing him standing behind me in the mirror. "We leave within the hour."

But when I turned around and looked at him I knew.

"Then this is the end of the line princess," he told me. "I fought for Mandalore for whatever this beskar I wear is worth, but nothing more."

"How much beskar will it take this time?" I asked him but he shook his head.

"There's no price you could offer that would ever make me fight for the losing side," he stepped closer, putting his knuckle beneath my chin. "Don't be a fool. You return to your rebellion and you'll get yourself killed."

"So what?" I ask him defensively. "Would you have me side with the empire?" In his silence I realised that is exactly what he wanted me to do. "The empire killed my parents in front of me, I would cut my own throat before ever surrendering to them, let alone join them."

His words were cold. "Then you can join your parents then."

He walked away from me, and I let him, instead surrendering to the numbness.

But it wouldn't be until several months after I returned to the base with my squadron of a hundred Mandalorian warriors that I'd discover just who I let into my bed when Han's talking about a run in Luke had with a certain bounty hunter on Tatooine.

"Boba Fett," he told us. "Wear's Mandalorian armour, Vader's right hand man."

Only Leia noticed my silence as the boys talked, but I would never explain why.

"And he- he tried to kill Luke," I asked numbly upon hearing the story.

"He left a trail before he ever found Luke. Killed a teenager on Mos Eisley after getting information on Luke out of him. A camp of Tuskan's and Jawa's disintegrated between there and where they fought. Looks like Luke only escaped because Vader gave orders to bring him alive."

Why Luke specifically? Unless...

I looked to Luke, harbouring the secret my father took to the grave. The secret that was the very reason why I had to train him.

But first I needed to find out what Boba knew.

And so months after he walked away from me on Mandalore I went looking for him.

Taglist (i'll be making a new one but until then here's my old one)