Archive of Our Own

Jango gasped as he woke up. It wasn’t something he usually did. He’d long since trained to not wake noticeably, and never let himself lose the skill.

But a dream, almost nightmare, that realistic was apparently enough to get a gasp out of him.

Jango reached up with one hand to feel that his kute was still intact, that his neck hadn’t been severed by a purple lightsaber. That he hadn’t left an older Boba alone to fend for himself in a galaxy too callous for someone not even taking verd’goten lessons yet.

He took a few controlled breaths to calm himself down. His heart was still beating with adrenaline.

He started to uncurl his other hand to push himself up off of his makeshift bed, only to feel something start to slide out of it. He closed his hand quicker than he could remember that he shouldn’t be holding anything.

It was small and hard and vaguely warm, whatever was in his hand.

Jango used his definitely empty hand to sit up instead, bringing the other one in front of him and carefully uncurling it.

It was hard to tell, with his helmet’s night vision and the half-moon shedding dim light through the trees, to tell what it was. It seemed to be a rock, maybe a crystal of some form. It didn’t look like any of the rocks that were around him when he set up camp.

It wasn’t necessarily a good thing to keep mysterious objects, especially if he didn’t know how they got around him. But there didn’t seem to be anything dangerous about it, and it was also a good idea to not discard resources and potential info.

Jango slid the rock into a pouch on the belts laid beside him and leaned back. He had about two hours left until he started hunting again and he wasn’t going to miss out on sleep because of a weird pebble.

The next night, his dream covered about a month of time before he got to Geonosis again. He woke up as soon as the dream began to overlap with the one where he was killed.

Jango didn’t gasp this time, but his heart rate was still slightly elevated.

He let his hand move and fall onto the pouch containing the weird rock. He hadn’t looked at it since he stored it and he certainly wasn’t going to turn on a flashlight and reveal his location.

As he fell asleep, he could almost swear that the pouch under his hand was warming up.

He spared a moment, during the day as he packed up lunch, to take the rock out and note its blue color.

When night fell again, he found himself dreaming a year’s worth of events.

The night after that was filled with two years.

Three years followed that night.

Jango finished up his hunt and didn’t have time to sleep between finishing and delivering the bounty and then processing all of his payment and paperwork until he was back on Slave I. He didn’t let himself relax until the ship was in hyperspace, on autopilot.

He leaned his chair back and let his eyes fall shut.

He got four years of events stuffed into his head as a consequence.

He woke up from the dream with a now familiar racing in his heart.

The dreams hadn’t interfered with his hunt, so he had largely ignored them for the sake of the hunt. But now that he had time to focus on them, he couldn’t ignore how abnormal they were. They felt too real, too well defined, and he remembered too much from them.

Jango pulled the rock out of his belt and looked at it properly.

It was still blue. It looked like an uncut crystal of some type, the different facets irregular and natural, a conchoidal gem. Flicking the crystal didn’t get any sort of reaction or reveal any other unusual qualities. That probably left only a few dozen thousand types of crystal it could be, then.

Jango sighed as he felt it warm his hand through his glove again. All right, it had one unusual quality, one Jango had never heard of. An electric crystal that could be used for heating would have reacted to being flicked.

He took off his glove and settled the crystal into his bare palm. It really was warm, that hadn’t been his imagination, or a reaction to the material of his flight suit.

Jango was relaxing to sleep before he could realize what was happening.

He didn’t dream any differently than usual, that time.

It was almost odd to see Boba so small, when he walked into the apartment. Boba didn’t run up to meet him like in most of the dreams. Instead Jango had to walk into his bedroom and look over into the crib.

His beautiful ik’aad, still not quite an ad.

He shuddered as an image from the first odd dream pushed its way to the front of his mind. The moment when his head went flying, when he was dead but still conscious and could see a much older Boba watching him die.

Jango massaged his neck as he pushed the image down.

He went about getting ready for bed, stopping for a moment as he took off his belt. He took the crystal out of its pouch, a now familiar warmth spreading along his hand near instantly.

Jango slipped the crystal into the pocket of his sleep pants, next to a small knife.

He leaned down into the crib to give Boba a kiss goodnight before pausing halfway down. Boba, his ik’aad, was sleeping so peacefully. It was… it was a sight Jango loved more than anything else he could, at this point. And he still didn’t feel like he deserved it, most days.

But he was already away most days.

Jango gently lifted Boba out of the crib and settled them into the bed, hand lightly resting over Boba’s small but strong heart.

The dreamless sleep he fell into was one of the warmest he could remember.

It wasn’t that the dreams had unsettled him but well… they were a good reminder that time with his ad was precious. Jango figured that he can afford to stay a bit longer than usual on Kamino, spend more time with Boba.

He still used his limited access to the larger holonet to download bounty postings and other things relevant to his job. Falling behind on news was a stupid thing to do when you had the choice to do otherwise.

It was only a week and a half after his return when he saw a bounty he already knew the details of. It was exactly the same as in the too-detailed dreams.

But he took the bounty in the dream. It had been more trouble than it was worth, an earthquake and landslide towards the end had made him use a bunch of his more expensive tools. And the slicer he’d partnered with had tried to betray him – including by hacking the bounty’s base to fill with monoxide gas and kill both the bounty and Jango – and then the client had tried to haggle down the price of the job after it’d been completed.

But dreams were dreams. And he’d already been at the Baraxtai station when the bounty was posted, letting him take the job easily, not Kamino.

Two weeks later, after he’d put Boba to sleep after lunch for a nap, he checked the newest updates in the bounty world. The bounty he’d only taken in his dreams was still up, and news was that the two who had attempted it were dead – the same slicer from the dream and Aurra Sing, a shabuir of a rising star in the hunting world.

There’s a small amount of visceral satisfaction in his gut at the traitor-who-never-actually-betrayed-him and the hunter who Jango was loathe to work with due to presumed betrayal dying from each other.

The emotion was quickly quashed by the more unsettling feeling that came with accepting the fact that he somehow knew about this bounty and the slicer before he could have.

Things didn’t make any more sense by the time Jango settled in for bed that night.

He couldn’t help but take the crystal that had been living in his pocket for the last few weeks out, observing it again. He still had no idea what it was or where it came from or how it was connected to those dreams.

He put it on the bedside table and went to sleep without its warmth for the first time since he got it.

That night, he dreamt of the clones he was helping to make. Dreamt that he was one. CT-20359, who got called Blur in his fifth year by one of his training squad. The nickname stuck until his seventh year, when he was crushed by falling “debris” in a live-fire training exercise.

Jango woke up, gasping for the first time since the first weird dream. He had to hold his chest a little as he breathed carefully, grounding and reminding himself that he wasn’t in pain, his chest wasn’t crushed, he was whole and hale still.

He looked over at the bedside table to see the crystal sitting innocently. Jango grabbed it, letting its familiar warmth into his palm.

The warmth lulled him into a dreamless sleep.

In the morning, Jango realized that the dream of Blur took him past his own death in the strange dreams. About half a year, during which the war that presumably started right after his dream death got into full swing, plenty of the older clones were being deployed towards the end of the Blur dream.

Too detailed.

The dreams were too detailed, too real, made too much sense. He could still remember most of them, as if they were his own memories.

He’d acted differently than the dreams, only to see a bounty he would have taken otherwise get taken by another. A bounty and a hunt whose details he knew before they happened.

Jango wished he could just be insane, instead of having to conclude that he’d dreamed memories of the future.

A future where he died and left his ad alone, far too young and far too unprepared.

A future that already wasn’t working out the exact same way.

Jango left Kamino the next day, feeling his separation from Boba more poignantly than even the first time he’d done so. Boba needed him to be there to teach him. So Jango decided he would spend the next few years hunting frequently, building a stockpile of funds, ones not connected to Tyrannus – kriffing Dooku – and all the nastiness that comes with Sith and galactic conquest. After he did that, he would spend the rest of Boba’s childhood primarily with him. Jango would only leave enough to keep up to date and start moving to get out from under the Siths’ power.

Jango didn’t relax until he was back in hyperspace, leaning back in his chair.

This was going to take so much work.

It would be worth it though, he’d raise his ad properly, and live long enough to outlive the Jedi.

Jango found his hand moving towards the pouch with the crystal, unbidden.

He’d gone back to sleeping while holding it after the night with the clone dream, and that had seemed to work to keep his sleep dreamless.

He took the crystal out of its pouch and observed it again. He’d stopped caring about what type of rock it was exactly a while ago, but a little bit of curiosity remained, if only because it sometimes sounded juvenile to think of it constantly as “my crystal.”

Jango took off his glove and closed his bare hand around the crystal, letting himself settle back for a nap, the familiar warm sensation calming him.

His dreams showed him six years of a clone nicknamed “Staunch.” Two of those years are spent deployed as a medic, until a Dathomirian woman with twin red lightsabers beheaded him again.

In the next two months, Jango completed three bounty hunts and figured out that it didn’t matter how close or far he was from the crystal. The dreams would come every few days either way, never on a regular schedule and the amount of memories never consistent either.

He might as well keep the crystal on him, its warmth enough to help soothe him after dying in near-inevitably traumatic ways. Bounty hunting meant taking every advantage you could get, and if he had the opportunity to be more functional and less distracted while hunting he would take it.

When he got back to Kamino again, he took a detour before going to see Boba, just to stare at the fetuses in tubes for a few seconds before going back to his quarters. He’d dreamed of over a dozen of their lives, watched them die again and again trying to be the perfect dogs for the Republic and their precious Jetiise.

In the tubes, though, they hadn’t been like that. They didn’t have enough personality or cognizance to worship the Jedi. That beat back enough of his angry offense for him to smile freely when he took his ik’aad into his arms again.

That night, he dreamt of the last eight years of Cut Lawquane’s life.

In the morning, he noticed his hand trembling a bit as he reached to stroke Boba’s hair, already full and long enough to start getting unruly.

The crystal in his other hand seemed like it pulsed, and Jango felt a whisp of a sensation that felt almost like sympathy from it. The feeling was gone before Jango could really register it as actually there.

He tucked the almost-feeling back into the corner of his head, half-forgotten, when Boba realized his buir was up and nearby and started fussing, waking up in the middle of the night for the first time in a while.

The night before he left Kamino again, Jango dreamed of being Cody, CC-2224, for the first time. He only spent three years as the man, from the last few exams for the command track – the material was okay, not technically wrong, but far from Jango’s actual standards – through the first few deployments, until Cody finally got transferred to being the commander for the Kamino-finding Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The man looked much more tired than in Jango’s own dream-memories, and his smirk had grown only more annoying. But the man was open with Cody, and reacted well to Cody as they shipped off for their first mission and tried to start planning together.

He had to spend a week and a half in hyperspace to get from Kamino to his bounty, and during that time he became certain that the crystal did more than just feel warm.

It actually reacted to him, most of the time. It left… impressions – phantoms of an exhaust trail of emotions, like a small tap to the arm, a guide or a tap or a caress as needed.

Jango wasn’t in the business of dealing with emotions, not even his own. He wasn’t at all thrilled with the idea of an emotive rock, but the idea of throwing it out didn’t sit right with him.

He still didn’t know why he had gotten knowledge of the future, but the crystal was technically his only clue. Even if he wasn’t actively investigating his dream time traveling, he’d have to be a real di’kut to get rid of his only piece of physical evidence.

The next time he left Kamino, he went to Filkarn station between the outer and mid rims. As soon as he walked into the bounty hunters’ guild office and saw a broken window splaying red light from a broken bottle in front of it, he realized which point in time he was at.

Jango didn’t bother asking who’d kriffed up like last time. He already knew the Klaniche siblings finally had enough of each other and had the fight to the death everyone knew was coming. He didn’t need to ask, let alone pay, to find out that the older one was dead and the younger one had a ten-month probation for fighting in the guild’s neutral area.

Instead, he went over to the bar and made the overtures of keeping up a business relationship with the hunters who had a skill or two for a bit.

Less than half an hour later, Jango left and got to the bounty listing board just as a certain duros walked in.

There were two bounties worth taking at that moment. Which meant there were two bounties Bane would want to take as well. Last time, he and Bane had postured until they each decided to take one each – competing with each other on one bounty would be more difficult and resource-heavy than the bounty itself, let alone two competitions at once.

And the last time Jango had just so happened to take the bounty with a bad client.

“Fett,” Bane greeted him as he stepped up to the board as well. The man didn’t even bother looking at him.

“Bane.”

Jango didn’t bother waiting before grabbing the chip for the good bounty.

“Now hol’ on there,” Bane graveled out, “it ain’t very polite to take a dish someone else mighta been eyein’.”

“Well, you’re eyeing the other one I want. I figured you’d want to be fair about this,” Jango retorted, knowing full well that Bane ascribed to the idea of fairness only existing to make less work for him.

Jango kept his body language neutral as Bane stared him down, even when the man rolled the toothpick to the other side of his mouth and casually showed off his fangs to bite it a bit.

When Jango still didn’t give, Bane shifted a bit, both broadening his shoulders to show confidence and turning them slightly to threaten getting into a fighting stance.

Jango just tilted his head to the side slightly, enough to catch the edge of his helmet on the red light still scattered throughout the room.

Bane shifted the toothpick back over before giving in at the reminder. He’d already been at the ammo depot and heard the news there, Jango knew.

“Suppose it’s fair enough,” Bane declared, reaching back and grabbing the other bounty’s chip without looking.

Jango let himself smile politely and then morph the grin into something with more obvious malice from under his helmet. “Always glad to agree with a colleague.”

Bane snorted as he stalked past Jango, already familiar with Jango’s polite-sounding hidden sarcasm.

Jango went to sleep peacefully under some oversized leaves on the jungle planet he was on, content in hearing that Bane had had to kill the clients and missed out on his payday.

And then he spent the night living the last four years of a Ponds’s life, up until his own ad showed up, apparently driven by filial loyalty and manipulated by more experienced bounty hunters, and looked like the galaxy’s most miserable child as he killed Ponds, the beginnings of tears in his eyes.

Jango woke up breathing harshly, his chest heaving in rage.

He couldn’t leave Boba alone. Not before he was ready. Not like any of Jango’s parents had done.

He wanted to kill Sing. Bossk. Castas. Kill and then some.

But Castas wasn’t even a bounty hunter yet, as far as Jango knew. Bossk was still tagging along with his father. And Sing had already died.

This bounty was going to take another week or so too.

His breath was still ragged with anger.

Jango sat up and ran his hands through his hair in frustration. The last image of the dream, Boba with shaking hands and wet eyes, was burned into his brain and he couldn’t calm down when his ad looked like that. When he couldn’t think of anything but that.

He glanced around himself to try to find something to distract himself with. He wasn’t going to die for Dooku’s plans on Geonosis. He wasn’t going to leave Boba alone. That future wouldn’t happen.

His eye caught on the belt laid beside him. The one with the crystal.

It had calmed him down before, even if he hadn’t been desperate and angry those times.

Jango dragged the belt into his lap, fumbling in the dark to get to the right pouch and open it up.

The crystal was faintly glowing when he managed to pull it out, a flash of what Jango registered as worry rippling through him when he first touched it. The feeling was quickly replaced by what was purely soothing warmth, even more careful and potent than Jango had gotten used to. Jango just stared at the crystal for a minute, focusing on the glow and warmth between his fingers as his breath finally started to calm.

It would all be fine. Boba would be fine. Jango had the crystal and memories of the future. Aurra Sing was already dead and Jango would kill the others before they could get their hands on Boba too.

There was another small spike of worry that seemed to respond his bloodlust. Jango ignored it.

He’d get out from under Dooku’s thumb before Geonosis, before Dooku could manipulate the Jedi to chase him to Kamino even. He’d take Boba away from all of that nonsense well before then, keep him safe and give him a proper childhood.

The crystal felt… lighter at that, not pressing out its calming affects as aggressively.

Jango closed his fist around the crystal properly and laid back down, breath finally close to normal again. He drew the fist over his kar’ta beskar, keeping the crystal close as he drifted off to sleep.

The next time he had a Dream, he was heading back from the bounty, the payout from taking the target back alive large enough that he felt comfortable heading back after just the one bounty.

Jango got to experience someone who managed to last almost three years in the war. The young man, Clover, had some of the most rotten luck for a clone that Jango had seen. He wasn’t a medic, but he saw an outrageous amount of death. Jango didn’t get to see a single battle where at least one clone directly next to Clover didn’t die.

It had started as good luck, in Clover and his brothers’ view, but it didn’t take long for the whole thing to turn into the rotten luck of being marked by death and unable to escape. Trauma and survivor’s guilt making Clover desperate and reckless within a year. It still wasn’t enough to get him killed.

Clover didn’t die until, after holding dozens of his brothers as they died while lamenting not being able to serve “well enough” for the Republic and their Jedi, some stupid ship malfunction blew up his shuttle and left him to the mercy of space and a torn suit.

Jango near instantly grabbed the crystal from where he’d left it on top of the controls when he woke up. He’d experienced a lot of pain, plenty of bad situations, in his life. But the visceral pain of the vacuum of space was not something he could train for or learn to tolerate, any experience would mean death. Should have meant death.

The crystal was warm, was warming him up. Jango could feel the memory of the burning freeze of death fading into the soft warmth.

Kriffing hells, why couldn’t he have just gotten memories of his own future? He didn’t need to know what happened to the clones.

He got back to Kamino to see that the Alpha class was almost six, developmentally. It meant that it would be time to start training them soon. Jango would be giving them a personalized, intensive training, treating them like guinea pigs for the Kaminoans and Dooku to see what a clone army actually needed for training.

He got two nights of peace, Boba having long since learned to sleep through the night, before he Dreamed again.

This time he dreamt he was a man called Rex. He saw the Jedi from Kamino again, Obi-Wan Kenobi. But he spent most of the time working under the man’s bratty protégé, as well as Skywalker’s own charge.

The young togruta was… as arrogant as all Jedi, but surprisingly endearing with her youth and enthusiasm. Rex took a particular shine to her, which was probably for the best. Skywalker was strong and skilled, but not necessarily the best teacher. He and Ahsoka got along well enough, but it was clear even from Rex’s limited viewpoint that it was because they got along on a personal level, rather than actual effort to meet and adjust to Ahoska on Skywalker’s part.

He dreamt of Rex’s future until an ARC he’d also taken a shine to, Fives, died with some ominous phrasing that Jango was pretty sure referred to whatever promised plan to wipe out the Jedi.

Jango woke from that Dream with a bad taste in his mouth. He put up a good face for the rest of the morning, playing with Boba, before leaving for another round of hunting. He wasn’t in a state to watch over Boba with his head off and his gut roiling.

Jango was extra glad to have left when he came out of hyperspace the next day. Castas had apparently just registered with the guild.

There was a medium paying bounty in the same system as the beginner bounty Castas had taken. It was lower tier than Jango usually took, but not suspiciously so. It was easy enough to finish the bounty quicker than the client expected. The gang who stole the files was half dead and their base burned down within two days. The client had expected a week or two, and only wanted check ins when something big happened. Jango finished up in the beginning of the night and figured he had about ten hours to hop over a planet, take care of Castas, and get back into this planet’s space so his message looked like he’d never left the planet.

He found Castas easily, escorting his quarry between meetings, apparently. Jango vaguely wondered why the man bothered quitting his bodyguard job if he was just going to continue that work. All though Jango supposed he wouldn’t be continuing for long.

The crystal in his pouch was faintly buzzing, a muffled frenzy of worry. Was it trying to tell him to have some storybook idea of a conscious? He wasn’t willing to bother with that anymore, especially when it came to protecting and parenting Boba.

He realized it might have been a warning for him a few moments later, as he was lining up his shot.

Castas came out of the building to transport his client to her speeder, along with another guest. A guest Jango recognized near instantly.

There weren’t many three-armed besaliks wandering around in the organized smuggling crowd, after all. Stars knew there were even fewer that would hang around a woman known for slave trafficking with the same penchant for gaudy orange as when he’d managed the spice mine Jango had been enslaved in.

Jango didn’t hesitate to switch to a flashier, more explosive weapon. His hands were steady as he aimed for the speeder still in park as its occupants settled. His expression under the helmet was completely blank as he fired off the rocket and watched the three of them get incinerated, the special engine in the limited-edition speeder being particularly flammable if hit right.

Jango was steady and calm as he retreated, job done, and then finished his official job. It wasn’t until he’d sent off the rudimentary datawork to the guild and reentered hyperspace that he shook at all, his hands trembling slightly as he pulled the crystal out its pouch, letting it warm and soothe him.

He Dreamt about Cody’s future, again. It was the first time he’d repeated a clone.

He got to see a few months, when Cody and Kenobi had settled into a comfortable rapport. Jango felt almost nauseous at the amount of caf they drank. Especially on the occasions they were desperate enough to use it as a mixer.

Kenobi was apparently not only smart mouthed when he was flirting, but also when he was hurt, otherwise emotional, or just comfortable and therefore snarky. Cody at least matched the man, more or less, perfectly willing to insult the man back when he was a di’kut, tone often chirpy in a manner that vaguely resembled Jango’s own sarcasm.

That just made it even more gag worthy when Jango had to sit through the experience of Cody praising and gushing about “his” general to his vode, figuratively kissing the ground the man walked on.

It was pathetic.

Jango tried to get the bitter taste of those feelings out of his mouth once he got back. But then the Kaminoans had sent another round of edited curriculum to him to approve of and Jango had had to read through the actual beginnings of Jedi worship.

He split his free time on Kamino after that between Boba and fine-tuning the curriculum, subtly adding more encouragement for independent thought and self-sufficiency (using the excuse that they were raising organics instead of droids that needed programming for a reason) and replacing some of the loyalty indoctrination for the Jedi and the Republic as organizations with their flimsy ideals (using the excuse that relying on ideals instead of fallible organizations would increase the clones’ resilience as soldiers).

He changed the curriculum for the Alphas a bit too. The Alpha curriculum was more efficient, of course – all of the curriculums were – with the knowledge Jango had of his former future. He didn’t have to make the same missteps, even though he had solved most of them in the end, saving time.

But for the Alphas he added in a bit more than was strictly necessary.

Jango taught them a bit more stealth and tact than he had in his other attempt. It hadn’t really been necessary when they were supposed to be elite soldiers among elite soldiers. But Jango had seen enough from Cody and a few others to know that the Alphas were well respected and influential among the vode. If Jango could keep their outward aggression low enough to avoid them getting sidelined within months of the war, they could continue to curb the extremity of the blindness in their brothers’ blind worship.

The crystal in his pocket was warm more often than not when he taught the changed curriculum. Jango didn’t need the validation, but the feeling of outside approval – a solid acknowledgment outside of his own head – certainly gave him just a little more certainty about what he was doing, let him feel a little better after waking up from yet another dream to be able to tell himself there weren’t going to be millions running around with his face, begging for scraps of attention from their jettiise.

Boba was talking now – not just words but little sentences – and Jango couldn’t help but startle when Boba asked Jango to give him food at dinner in Basic vocabulary, but with Mando’a grammar.

In Jango’s last life… Boba had understood basic Mando’a, sure, but he’d barely spoken it, using only the simplest of sentence structures and the ones closer to Basic, clearly more comfortable with Basic than Mando’a. Jango was pretty damn sure that Boba hadn’t been using more than a few nouns at this point last time.

Had Jango showing up and dragging Boba along when he taught the Alphas in more Mando’a than Basic really made such a difference? He supposed he’d been using a bit more Mando’a in the apartments too, probably.

Jango pushed aside the caf table in the living room portion of the apartment after dinner and sat Boba down with him. He spent almost two hours with Boba, teaching him what he could remember of the word games and nursery rhymes he still knew.

Whenever Boba started squirming, he found that a few rounds of ukoryc uj’alayi would settle him down, Boba enthralled by the idea of shoving at Jango and imaginary cakes, especially ones baked with their names.

Jango also noted that Boba seemed to like Nasaad Beskad and Oya Dinui. He had to swallow down a tightness in his chest multiple times when he realized that this wasn’t a difference in favorite nursery rhymes from last time, because Boba hadn’t learned any Mandalorian nursery rhymes last time.

He put Boba to bed that night with three different Mandalorian lullabies.

Jango held the crystal tightly, right up against his chest, as he curled up to sleep. It felt warm and supportive, comforting. Emotions he really hadn’t been on the receiving end of for decades.

He had normal dreams that night, mainly pushed together vignettes of his time with his first family, his buire building a blanket fort with him and Arla and cuddling in it, a night sleeping in front of the house and being told about the kara. More vignettes from his time with Jaster, being held by the man as they fell asleep together when there were too few bunks, of Jaster holding him and guiding his hands as the man taught him how to properly use a blade.

He woke up the next morning with the barest hints of tear tracks on his face, the crystal still slightly warm in his hand.

When he left Kamino a few weeks later, he left Boba with a few lessons in Mando’a. He also left with a goal.

The crystal… wouldn’t give him any reaction as he planned in hyperspace. There were no warnings or comfort for Jango as he tacked and planned.

Bossk was with Cradossk in the Ottega sector. For fun of some sort, not a job. It made them harder to track, but it also meant that there was going to be less surveillance on the two.

The crystal remained inert as he tracked them to a jungle moon.

Jango tried to pretend that the curl of bitterness lacing through him didn’t exist. But the silence, the utter lack of response from the crystal was loud and clear to him after months of it constantly reacting to him.

He was doing this to protect Boba.

Jango landed Slave I and hid it before trekking into the jungle. It didn’t take long to find the two trandoshans’ trail.

Jango hung back, not going after his quarry yet. It became clear after a day that Bossk and Cradossk were hunting themselves, tracking and following something else. Something apparently much weaker than them, given that they weren’t taking any precautions to cover up their own trails.

Something… not used to this place, probably, given that the way the professional hunters’ trail hadn’t turned towards the better places to camp or live or fight or lose a tail. Which meant whatever was being hunted would probably be heading towards the sharp karstic mountains without realizing it, penning themselves in.

Jango backtracked, going at double speed and leaving the slightest trail, getting back to Slave I within a day. He took a quick nap to get his functionality back up before circuiting around the areas his prey had gone through, landing ahead of them and whatever they were chasing.

The crystal was still unresponsive.

Jango still left it in a pocket as he stalked carefully through the jungle for two days, carefully sweeping the area without leaving a trace.

He finally started to pick up a bit of a trail, one that zigzagged and doubled back a bit. Whatever Bossk and his father were chasing was small and alone. It had clearly noticed the untraversable mountains a few times, but not yet noticed how big the range was, or was too panicked to find a better strategy.

Jango found a small outcropping that was flat enough to not be too uncomfortable in his armor, but high enough to give him a good range. He settled in to watch and wait.

He stayed half-awake through the night. When the dawn’s light began to filter into the jungle below him, he finally got to see some unusual movement.

Jango zoomed in with his HUD, watching the foliage move from something clearly panicked and not used to running through the underbrush.

The crystal on his hip grew noticeably cold. The new sensation shocked Jango enough to almost distract him, so much that he almost missed the Trandoshan’s quarry breaking into a small clearing of moss.

Jango got another jolt of shock, enough to change the emotion into nothing but gut-sinking horror, as a visibly human child stumbled into the clearing and fell down, their legs clearly injured.

Jango rushed to assemble his blaster rifle. It was a process that would take four seconds, two seconds to set it up properly, and then another few seconds to aim.

A whipcord wrapped around the child’s throat three seconds into assembly. Jango barely got his scope up, was only just starting to try and aim for the whipcord, when a rapid-fire barrage of bolts hit the child’s back.

Jango watched their lifeless body drop down onto the moss through his sight.

His blood went cold before rushing back through his body in a torrent of burning fury.

Bossk and Cradossk stepped into the clearing, both clearly pleased with themselves.

It took a demagolka to raise a demagolka, Jango supposed as he shifted the rifle into a scatter shot.

He waited for Cradossk to step towards his son, the older man tapping one shoulder with his blaster, before taking the shot.

Neither noticed anything until the blasts hit, making them both stumble. Jango watched them hiss and look his way, starting to panic.

Jango didn’t let them get out anything to help see him at that distance before moving, stealthily zigzagging through the jungle floor so they wouldn’t be able to tell exactly where he was coming from.

They were out of the clearing by the time Jango could see it again. Jango ran around it, not surprised to find them crouched a few meters away from the clearing, looking for him to burst into there.

Jango got first shot as he came at their sides, clipping Cradossk in the shoulder.

Bossk got second shot with a mini grenade launcher. But he had been a bit too obvious and bit too unprepared, so Jango dodged it with ease.

Jango didn’t stop running until he launched his armored knee into Bossk’s face, sending them both tumbling to the ground and rolling out of the way of Cardossk’s shot.

Jango had pulled out a blaster on his way down and put a shot through Bossk’s eye.

He leapt up and to the side as he pulled out his other blaster. Cradossk didn’t immediately shoot at him, looking at Bossk’s corpse for half a second instead. Jango took the opportunity to shoot at the man.

Cradossk dodged, still together enough to that at least, before firing off his own shot with his Relby.

Jango weaved and pressed forward, firing off again.

Cradossk jumped back and behind a rock before shooting off a mini grenade.

Jango rolled to the side and let his armor handle the little bit of explosion that reached him as he started firing again.

Cradossk returned volley with a few potshots as Jango advanced.

“Damn you, Fett! What the kriff is this for?!” the man shouted. He sounded offended and annoyed in his anger, rather than outraged or torn at his son’s death. Jango couldn’t say it was unexpected.

Jango rounded the rock, only to find that Cradossk hadn’t prepared to retreat, like a smart person would have done, but that the man was crouched and rising to tackle him.

Jango didn’t let the man, dropping an elbow into Cradossk’s shoulder that was way too far forward to do anything but drop the man to the ground at the impact.

Cradossk managed to half-turn before Jango pinned him down and slammed his kom’rk into the reptile’s face.

The man struggled, of course, Jango could feel the man’s legs try to lift up and kick at him, weak from both the position and the previous injuries.

Jango hit him with his kom’rk again.

“At least say something, you bastard!” Cradossk hissed out with another kick.

That kick managed to actually tear at the two pouches on his side.

Jango felt his eyes widen at the sudden increase in distance he could feel between himself and the crystal.

Another hit discombobulated Cradossk enough for Jango to lift a hand, blaster still in his grasp, and fire two shots into Cradossk’s eyes and then a third into the softer scales under a trandoshan’s chin.

Demagolkase weren’t worth any words.

Jango stared at the corpse, letting the adrenaline course through him for a moment before he moved. He carefully and slowly moved so that he wouldn’t disturb anything, keeping his eyes on the ground to search for the crystal.

It took nearly a minute for him to find it among the ferns.

Jango scooped it up hurriedly but carefully, holding it tight and safe in his hands.

The crystal pulsed warmly at him.

Jango let out a sigh of relief and stood. The clearing took up most of his immediate view, and with it the child’s corpse.

A morose, grieving sort of warmth wormed its way through him from the crystal.

Jango walked over to the body. The kid couldn’t have been more than twelve.

The child’s feet and legs were dirty and bloody. Their hands were in a similar state. Their hair and clothes were dirty and soiled. The whipcord was still wrapped around their neck. Their expression one of clear fear and pain, eyes wide even as they couldn’t see anymore.

Jango looked between the cord and the crystal a few times before something like instinct had him putting the crystal on the child’s chest. It glowed blue, a warm, welcoming color.

Jango carefully unwrapped the cord from the neck, massaging the affected parts in the hope that the neck wouldn’t get anymore discolored.

He closed the child’s eyes and gaping mouth, doing what he could to soothe the rest of the expression. He used his fingers to comb the child’s hair into something with at least a little care.

Jango grabbed a knife and stalked over to Bossk’s corpse. He cut a piece of fabric from the jumpsuit, glad to see the soft insulation on the inside.

It couldn’t clean all of the blood and grime off of the child, even when Jango doused it with water, but it did remove a fair amount. By the time Jango was done, the crystal’s glow had faded and the child looked far less traumatized than the death that had actually been inflicted on them.

Jango buried the child and left the demagolkase to the moon’s scavengers.

Jango cradled the crystal carefully in his bare hands as he sat in his ship. He’d felt it the instant it left his possession. He remembered the flash of the panic that had caused.

It hadn’t gotten in the way of his fight, hadn’t distracted him enough to make a difference. It wasn’t in his way. It wasn’t so bad that it was an unneeded weakness. But the crystal had clearly become precious at some point, its familiar warmth, the pseudo-companionship it gave him.

In some ways, it really was the closest he got to a kriffing friend at this point. He certainly wasn’t going to be making friends with the cuy'val dar or the Kaminoans, and certainly not his clones. His ad was precious of course, but his two-year-old definitely wasn’t going to count as a friend.

And maybe the crystal, being a crystal, wasn’t actually a friend or even a companion, but it kept him company and it was precious and it was his.

And that meant Jango was going to take care of it.

It was definitely precious later, after Jango had set his ship into hyperspace and fallen asleep, only to dream the first and last six years of another clone’s life. They hadn’t even gotten a name before they had too many low grades and got decommissioned.

Jango woke up, not quite dry heaving as his stomach twisted, the last moments of the kid’s brain shutting down running through his head, body full of phantom aches from the experiments the Kaminoans had run on them.

Jango could tell, distantly, that he was trembling slightly as he grabbed the crystal from beside him and brought it up to his forehead, letting its warm comfort wash over his head and all the way through him. He wasn’t sure how long he stayed like that, but he knew the crystal was trying to comfort him with a few types of warmth. Unfortunately, that comfort eventually seemed to turn to cajoling him back to sleep, which Jango refused to do.

Jango spent the next two days putting out feelers before turning back to Kamino. He found some spare wire and made a makeshift setting for the crystal that he hung on a leatheris cord. The necklace kept the crystal in constant, comforting proximity, but it was too bulky and irregular under his kute and armor to be a permanent solution.

He spent two weeks with Boba, hardly leaving his apartment, before his search bore fruit. He only needed Boba to attempt to toddle after him twice as he walked around collecting his stuff to give in and start packing a baby bag as well.

It was just going to be a short trip with no planned danger or fights. He’d take every security precaution he could while bringing Boba with him.

He still felt a small tug of worry. Grabbing the crystal under his shirt, however, got him an encouraging sense of approval that made Jango more determined to bring Boba with him.

Last time, Boba hadn’t left Tipoca city at all until he was eight.

Boba spent quite a bit of time climbing on top of the controls and trying to touch the streaking stars outside the viewport.

Jango let him explore until he almost slipped off, grabbing Boba and tugging him down into his lap. Boba only needed a few seconds to reorient himself and start reaching for the star field again.

“Ka’ra,” Jango pronounced with a gesture.

“Ga-wah,” Boba repeated, eyes still glued to the outside.

“The stars, where your ancestors are marching far away,” Jango explained in Mando’a, “the old rulers are stars too, watching over you.”

“Ga-wah!” Boba repeated with more enthusiasm, hands flapping around a bit, one of them grabbing onto Jango’s shirt.

Jango ruffled his ad’s hair before planting a kiss on the adorable curls.

The armorer Jango had managed to track down had set up shop half a day’s speeder ride from the nearby trading hub. Jango still paid the hangar fee and rented a speeder instead of dropping right in front of their door. It was basic courtesy for Mandos if you were coming by unannounced to not show up so intimidatingly that the person you were visiting would pull their blaster.

The locals seemed wary but not surprised by him, which meant that the armorer definitely got Mandalorian clients at a decently common rate. Jango resettled his poncho over the birikad and Boba before setting off on the rented speeder.

The armorer’s dwelling was simple baked mud, like most of the buildings Jango had seen. Although the color was a bit greener than the rest of the buildings Jango had seen, which had been pure blue to blue-purple.

The door of the smaller building opened as Jango stopped and parked the speeder just outside of the garden.

The figure in the doorway didn’t make a move, so Jango calmly walked up to the dwelling. He noted the broken torguta lekku as he drew close, and the simple, geometric green and orange designs on their armor.

The helmet tilted slightly as Jango finally got within conversational distance and stopped.

“I don’t specialize in paint, all though I can make do, just to warn you,” they said in lieu of greeting.

It had been a while since Jango had actually done business in Mando’a.

“I’m Unpainted. I’m looking for a custom reforging,” Jango replied.

The armorer looked him up and down. “How much?”

“Just the heart,” Jango said. It took a moment to bring himself to actually reach up and pull the crystal out. “I want this in a setting on its backside.”

The armorer stiffened in shock for a moment before reaching out. Jango untied the cord and dropped the crystal into their outstretched palm, unable to take his gaze off of it.

The armorer observed the crystal for a moment, holding it up and turning it around, before popping it out of the temporary setting and repeating the process.

“That can be done. Shall we discuss price?” They turned a little in the door and gestured into the building.

The forge was clearly well kept, if not quite bustling with enough orders to show off a flourishing trade. But it was doable and looked perfectly proper to Jango’s eyes.

Jango followed the armorer to a table and took off his poncho before unclipping the birikad and dragging it in front of him. The armorer raised a hand without reaching forward in question. Jango tilted his head in permission and let the armorer pat his sleeping toddler’s head a few times before they got down to business.

Or at least that’s what he had hoped they would be doing.

“The child is yours?”

“Yes.”

“Then I suppose you’ll be needing paint sooner rather than later.”

“If there’s ever paint on this armor again, I’ll look for it directly,” Jango responded firmly.

“You don’t seem like someone doomed to be Unpainted,” the armorer said, voice deliberate. Jango narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

“Circumstances are what they are. But I came here with the understanding that I would find an armorer, not a painter,” Jango answered after a moment.

“I, like many of our kin, have ended up in more than one trade to make ends meet.” Technically, it was a joke, but Jango had the sense to know the armorer was informing him.

“Many, is it?” Jango hadn’t kept up with any news of this sort on purpose, but the armorer was clearly angling to tell him now.

“Yes. Unless you go for a job that lets you do many things. Many have also followed into bounty hunting.” Jango wondered when they had realized who he was. It wasn’t like Boba’s baby fat had disappeared yet for anyone to recognize the resemblance.

Jango scoffed before speaking again.

“Following ghosts tends to lead to graves more often than not,” Jango cautioned them, voice hard.

“Fortunately, children are found with the living, not the dead. It is fortuitous to see you with your child,” the armorer pressed again.

“I have no saber, and no followers. I’m no ruler,” Jango pointed out, voice raising just a bit with authority.

I’m just a simple man, trying to make my way in the universe.

“You have heart. And those who would answer your call. That has always mattered more.” Blind, desperate, hard-won faith. That was what was filling the armorer’s voice.

Jango sighed at the stubbornness.

“I came here for a forge, not a philosophical discussion,” Jango said, stopping his contradictions to move away from the topic. Jango could feel a gentle, soothing comfort from the crystal on the table, despite the fact that he wasn’t touching it.

“My hearth and hammer are at your service,” the armorer said with a small bow of their head.

Finally, they could get to pricing.

Jango parked Slave I at the spot the armorer had showed him. It was a good placement, left Jango close to the dwelling and with a good view of the surrounding area to keep watch and defend. It definitely helped sooth Jango while a bit of his armor and his crystal were in the forge.

If Jango concentrated hard enough, he could still feel the crystal, he was pretty sure. There was a feeling of warmth and soothing that Jango was almost certain wasn’t his imagination or memory.

Boba went to sleep late, after spending so long napping, but Jango did eventually get him to sleep before settling into the pilot’s chair, all monitors on, for his own rest.

He Dreamt again, remembering Cody’s life once more.

It was his first time experiencing order 66.

When Jango woke up, he launched up and over the dashboard, trying to get more air as he dry heaved.

He thought the kid’s brain shutting down had been awful. But it was the same mechanism used without any reprieve this time. The same feeling of the brain not responding, but there was still stimulation, still senses and watching his-Cody’s body move, feeling it think but not with any agency. The actual memories were unusually hazy of the months Jango spent experiencing that way of living, if it even was living.

Just remembering the clearly remembered haziness made Jango gag again.

The crystal was far away, but Jango could feel its concern, the warm fire of its attempts at comfort. Jango focused on the sensation and tried to control his breathing.

It worked a bit. And then his brain brought back the moment he sho- Cody ordered his general shot to the front of his mind and Jango was gasping for air again.

It must have taken him several minutes to gather himself enough to move again. He kept the sensation of the crystal, its warmth, in his head as he stumbled to the bunk he’d set up Boba’s crib on.

Jango watched Boba’s chest move up and down, peaceful and oblivious. He reached out his hand and through the bars, grabbing Boba’s small, soft hand in his own.

Jango was still wound up when the sun rose again and the armorer finished the job, calling him into the workshop just before lunch.

He carried Boba in his arms this time, the young child looking around the forge wildly before starting to reach out to try to touch anything. The armorer tilted their head in amusement, body language welcoming and relaxed.

Jango shifted Boba to his hip and grabbed the new karta beskar from the armorer’s hand. The front was now fairly convex instead of slightly concave. Jango flipped it around to see the crystal settled securely into its new setting. The smoothest side was facing him, the prongs folded over and smoothed precisely so that the crystal wouldn’t be able to move.

Jango clipped it back onto the rest of his armor and kute. It still fit snugly between his hal’cabure.

It felt so right to have the crystal back on him. It felt like it was almost melting into him with how it warmed him and settled down.

Jango suppressed what would have been an almost reverent shudder as he took a deep, freeing breath of relief. It was good to have his crystal back.

He gave the karta a few taps, increasing his strength each time. The force of the blows dispersed properly, barely any noticeable change to the force hitting his sternum.

Jango lifted Boba back in front of him from where the boy had been trying to grab the armorer’s tools. “It’s well done.”

“It was an honor,” the armorer assured him, bowing their head respectfully.

“Honor doesn’t put food on the table, or fuel in the forge,” Jango found himself responding as he pulled out the payment.

He left before the armorer could count the tip.

Jango distracted himself for a while with getting the ship into hyperspace and on track back towards Kamino before taking care of and playing with Boba for several hours.

Boba had enough mobility to play wrestle with his arm now, and Jango almost wished he had someone else with him, if only to take holos of the adorable image.

But eventually Boba tired out and Jango had to put him to sleep. Which left him alone with the crystal and his thoughts.

And the memories.

It wasn’t that Jango… well, he did have doubts now, which was quite unusual for him.

His anger towards the Jedi hadn’t been doused, he knew. He still needed them to pay somehow for Galidraan.

But it was harder to keep that at the top of his priority list with all of the Dreams and future-memories. Boba had been- would have been in so much pain. And Jango, who could still see Boba’s shocked face at his death the moment he wanted to, couldn’t help but prioritize his ad. If it came down to an opportunity to take care of Boba or kill a Jedi, he’d take care of Boba. Which included making sure he stayed alive for his ad.

He could run. Hide himself and Boba away from Kamino and Tyranus and the rest of galaxy and pop back up in two decades when the jetiise were gone. Or just stay under the radar for the rest of his life.

Except that idea had him thinking of either his parents, who had done that and gotten burned to death for their troubles, or Cut Lawquane. Which gave him a slightly queasy feeling.

Had Cut also been affected by whatever brain thing the Kaminoans had done to the other clones?

He suddenly remembered the hysterical clone from Rex’s life, Fives. Orders and chips. The Kaminoans had physically booby trapped the clones’ own heads.

If he had thought that having millions with his face running around the galaxy worshipping the Jedi was bad, then having millions with his face running around more slaves than they already had been – than he’d ever been – was complete haran.

It all settled uncomfortably in him. But there wasn’t really much he could do, let alone that he was motivated to do.

Many of our kin have ended up in more than one trade to make ends meet.

That wasn’t his business, not anymore. No matter how much his heart tugged in old, useless habit.

Jango wandered through the dorm areas silently. He’d told the Kaminoans that he would be observing the clones personally at random to get a better idea of how the training was actually working, from his more combat-experienced perspective. The Kaminoans weren’t ones to turn down free labor, especially labor that got them more data, and let him do so without bothering him.

He’d found a few of the vode he’d Dreamed of. It had been odd to see them as himself, instead of through their own eyes, or the eyes of their vode.

It had also been odd to see them so young. He’d found CT-7567, who wouldn’t be Rex for a few years yet, and found a child already hyper-vigilant and nervous from how much the Kaminoans watched the blond “mutation”. Jango could see how the child would grow into the man he’d spent a night as, but only just barely. Not-yet-Rex was only one and a half, three developmentally, and devoted just as much energy to playing with blocks and reading as he did to being anxious.

But tonight, he was silently wandering the CC barracks.

He could hear a scuffle two rooms ahead of where he was, and then a cry of “Osik!”

There was muffled laughter as he approached.

Jango checked the room number and looked it up in the roster he’d gotten from the Kaminoans.

Finally.

CC-2224’s room.

“Kote wins again, Wolffe,” a smug voice proclaimed.

“Let me go, Gree,” groused a voice that couldn’t growl yet, even though they were clearly trying.

“You can’t fight Fox unless you bet something, though,” a much lighter voice announced.

“Hey Bly, want to split my dye-dust? I’ll trade you some for some of your fluff,” a very smug voice that reminded Jango far too much of himself said.

“Oooh, yellow! Yes,” answered an enthusiastic voice.

“Next time I’ll win!” a voice that was probably Wolffe declared angrily.

“Sure you will, you’ll wolf him right down,” said a flat voice.

“Neyo, I will wrestle Skillet for wire and choke you with it.”

Jango counted them again in his head, confused.

The dorms only had six beds, six clones, and it was past curfew. Kote, Wolffe, Gree, Fox, Bly, and Neyo. That was six. CC-2224, Cody, was supposed to be in this room.

Wolffe and Fox and Bly were clearly the same as they’d been last time. Wolffe and Fox had appeared in the Dreams. He’d gone through four months as Bly before the man had shot down his general. He was pretty sure that he’d heard Neyo and Gree get mentioned a few times.

But there was no Glory he could ever recall.

All though…

Kote. Cody.

CC-2224 was in that room. And he had to be Kote.

But why was he Kote instead of Cody?

“Let’s sleep. The alphas are going to wreck us tomorrow,” one of them ordered in Mando’a.

“Did Alpha really name you Glory for being such a reg maker?” another grumbled, apparently addressing Cod- Kote.

“He didn’t name me for being unable to use my brain, at least,” Kote responded, voice a little muffled.

There was shifting for a few more minutes and then silence from the room.

Jango silently walked away, thoughtful.

Why was CC-2224 Kote now? Jango had barely changed anything with the clones. And even then, it was mainly with the Alphas. He’d barely changed the other clones’ curriculum, at least out of the curriculum so far. He hadn’t bothered to impact the other vode, and didn’t plan to.

The crystal up against his chest felt vaguely amused and lightheartedly happy.

Jango sighed and pushed the issue out of mind as he approached the apartment. Cody or Kote didn’t really matter to him, in the end.

Except apparently it did, if the way his brain refused to let him sleep that night was any indication.

Cody was Kote. Something had changed besides Jango’s deliberate changes.

What else had changed without him knowing?

He was a simple man, trying to make his way through the universe. He wasn’t supposed to be concerned with that sort of thing. Not anymore.

Except now it seemed like the floodgates had opened, and he had interest due on these kinds of thoughts. Bane had bothered him less since Jango had pushed him to take the bad job. More jobs were going differently because he’d taken out Sing and Castas and Bossk and Cadossk. Jango had more information on the Mando people than he’d ever bothered with in his last life.

Cody was Kote now.

Jango rolled over and grabbed his karta from the bedside table, tracing where setting met crystal. The crystal practically hummed with some sort of excitement.

Part of what had gotten him to the position of Mand’alor, despite his inexperience from being so young, was that he had always naturally thought of not only the mission in front of him, but the big picture. It seemed like he wasn’t able to keep those thoughts at bay anymore.

Millions of his lookalikes were being raised for slaughter and use. They’d be more independent, more active, than last time. They would probably be more tied to Mandalorian culture than last time too. Last time their ties had been on par with Kryze’s enforced nonsense while she and her people had the advantage of actually being on Mand’yaim with all its cultural resources. This time the vode would definitely outstrip her.

There were plenty of other Mandos who were willing to partake in their culture more than her as well, both this time and last, but they weren’t as organized, as together, as Kryze’s stronghold or the vode.

And that wouldn’t exactly get better when Dooku and his mysterious master tried to play war games with the galaxy.

Even if Jango kept himself alive this time, Boba had more chances of going out into a galaxy somehow worse than the one Jango had grown up in, despite the future probable lack of Jedi.

An old anger, one that had been snuffed down to barely heated coals, started simmering at the thought.

He was Unpainted, without self-identity. But Jango was still Mandalorian, he’d never been able to let go of that part of himself completely, even if he had ever wanted to.

He couldn’t leave that still smoldering outrage alone, not when it was reigniting for his ad. He couldn’t just leave the galaxy alone to stumble on its path toward bleak pain and then leave Boba to it.

For a second, Jango thought the crystal in his hand would burst from all the joy and excitement it was sending to him.

This hunt, Jango thought with annoyance, had been supposed to be a break, nice and simple and producing enough results to let Jango feel productive and relax.

The past few months of trying to investigate Dooku and his master under their noses had been slow and largely fruitless. Most of his leads had come from his continuing Dreams. The crystal had also tried to help, in its own way, mainly providing supporting warmth but also almost psychically tugging Jango towards leads.

It still wasn’t enough. Everything seemed so convoluted, Jango couldn’t tell what was part of the plan versus just the regular attempts of people to get ahead. Jango couldn’t tell what was worth paying attention to if he wanted Boba to grow up into a galaxy he could thrive in. Especially as a Mandalorian.

And his efforts to learn about the state of Mandalore, in and out of Mand’yaim, and start to connect back with people, on the other hand, had been uncomfortably successful.

Another grenade landing near him thankfully drew him out of those thoughts to jump behind another stalagmite and shoot the grenade away from him.

The job had been supposed to be a simple artifact retrieval between two gangs, one active in the whole sector, the other local to the system. Jango knew the details from doing a consultant fee for a hunter named Suki in his last life.

But there was apparently a third group that Jango was pretty sure was a cult, not a gang, that shouldn’t have existed. All the groups had deeper pockets than they should have and the planet they’d all decided to blow themselves up on was marred with geologically unstable caves. Which Jango was pretty sure was the same as last time but was still a pain to deal with.

And all Jango had wanted was to sneak in and steal the kriffing tooka-flarynx hybrid back while everyone was asleep. But apparently all three groups had to have a shootout with zero sense of stealth tonight.

What was even the point in hiring a bounty hunter if you were going to raid the group’s base anyways?

To try to kill him, apparently, Jango realized as some of the gang member’s of the group who’d hired him came into the cavern and started shooting at him.

Jango fired off a shot, nailing one of the gang members between the eyes, before dodging with a roll. He really didn’t understand why some people bothered to go into battle without a helmet.

The crystal in his heart warmed, excited and amused. At least one of them was having fun.

Jango managed to weave his way through the stalagmites to the stairs to the walkways above them. How the Fressk gang had no one patrolling up above on the things was stupidity beyond Jango’s comprehension, but the sort he would take advantage of.

There were still a few Fressks and Pritheens taking a shot or two at him once in a while, but they were more focused on trying to kill each other than him as he ran along and didn’t fire back, the crystal warming up more against his chest. Pretty soon the two gangs were completely ignoring him.

Jango watched them pick each other off until a di’kut threw another grenade. In the already unstable and partially bombed cavern.

Jango swore as the cavern shook and shifted, noting the cracks at the far edge and where the exits were.

And then one of the cult’s anoobas, apparently completely loose, ran into the cavern in a blind frenzy and directly into a weaker part of the wall, instantly killing it. Some of the rocks started to fall.

Jango didn’t even bother swearing as he started running to the closest exit.

And then his peripheral vision noted the sudden halt of movement on the far side of the cavern.

Jango stopped, looking over to see that the rockfall had stopped. The beginnings of it suspended in midair.

Then the rocks… floated down, instead of falling. More rocks came after them, but they quickly piled up into a pile that was supporting the cavern and its walls instead of leading to collapse.

A cloaked figure, their hand raised towards the incident, walked into the cavern from another far entrance.

Jetii.

Jango immediately pointed his blasters at the being, even as the crystal burned brightly against his chest in elation, practically singing.

The remaining gang members immediately started firing on the jetii. Jango found himself holding back for now.

He watched the Jedi dance around, not bothering to pull out their lightsaber as they dodged with ease.

The jetii stopped, holding both arms out, palms facing up, as a volley of blasters dove towards them. Jango watched the bolts freeze in midair, and then the Jedi gestured and the bolts reversed course, some hitting the blasters, some directed down at the others’ legs and feet.

Most went down with just that, crying out and shaking on the floor, but a few didn’t. The jetii moved on them, quicker than they could really react, incapacitating or knocking them out in a few decisive hand-to-hand moves.

The jetii would be a hard opponent if Jango fought them.

If.

It shouldn’t have been a question, but… somehow Jango found himself lacking the absolute, reactive murderous anger he was used to with jetiise. Instead, the jetii felt… familiar.

The figure finished with the gang members and looked up, towards Jango. Jango couldn’t see much with the hood still drawn over their face and them being so far away, but he thought there was a smile on their face.

The jetii started walking towards him. Jango left his blasters at his side, neither aiming them nor putting them away.

The crystal in his karta was still happy, if anticipatory, with none of the worry it flashed when Jango was in actual danger.

The jetii got close enough for Jango to confirm there was a soft smile on their face, the expression somehow familiar, and then stopped.

They reached up and pulled back the hood, revealing a familiar face and red hair, with eyes glowing a very familiar blue, still smiling as he looked at Jango and spoke in a familiar tone.

“Hello there.”