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The pit loomed below.
All in all, it wasn't that similar. The walls sloped downward with corroded metal plating instead of ruddy sands, and the water-filled basin at the heart of it was already a far cry from the dry, shrieking pit on Tatooine.
Whatever creature the syndicate housed in it, though, was just as deadly, and no doubt as furious. He hadn't had much of a chance to get a good look at it, during the fight he found himself in, but the rumblings of its presence vibrated down his spine with an uneasy similarity all the same. And it was, of course, used by this particular syndicate as a deterrent against crossing them all the same.
It wasn't a Sarlacc. It wasn't.
But his mind didn't seem to care much for the difference, and he felt himself growing a little sloppier in the fight than he would have personally cared for. His assailant should have been an easy kill, or at least easy to take down. He should have been. Boba had been fine until the natural progression of the fight had led to this room, backing him over the scaffolding that only provided just enough protection from the pit below.
He felt the gaderffii knocked from his grip after a horrendous opening he'd left from his last swing, mind entirely somewhere else and too slow to compensate for the blow. The metallic clang of it echoed as it hit the scaffolding. His opponent was only equipped with a rudimentary staff, nothing that could do real damage against beskar, but-
Another blow struck his side, knocking him off kilter, and-
He lost his footing.
His stomach pitched around at the throw of gravity as he fell, and the anxiety-ridden nostalgia of it clawed at him. He was falling again, and he'd done this before, he'd been here before and the jetpack wasn't responding and he only had so much more time left before he couldn't fight off the inevitable anymore. He hadn't been able to stop it before, but he'd be damned if he wouldn't claw his way out of it this time before it had the chance to happen.
He slammed into the metal of the pit's sloped siding, his upper back and shoulder connecting with a painful, audible crunch, and within moments felt himself sliding downward already.
The knife in his vambrace sprung out in his mad dash to find purchase on the walls, shrieking against the metal and slowing his descent, grinding to an eventual stop. The creature below hadn't been too happy with the noise though, and Boba could feel it as the walls of the cavern reverberated further. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and cold, cold fear rippled through him.
He just had to keep himself from falling further. Keeping himself from going any lower in this forgotten pit, any closer to whatever creature thrashed around the water's surface, was now his number one priority.
The vambrace seemed to be holding for now, he just needed to activate his other and begin the arduous process of crawling out. Hopefully the enemy above wouldn't give him too much hell once he got near the top. He couldn't see him anymore, so he may have assumed Boba was as good as dead and left.
Boba made the gesture necessary to unleash the other vambrace's blade, but was simply met with a jolt of pain that hindered the motion. It'd been the same shoulder he'd landed heavily on, perhaps a bit too heavily.
Boba bit down the sharp sting of it and tried again, but he wasn't able to get the motion sharp enough to spring the blade out, not with how uncooperative and sluggish his shoulder felt. All of the movement was jostling the other blade it seemed, and he felt himself lurching down another couple feet before the metal caught on something again.
The creature below shrieked once more. It felt like a taunt.
Desperation greeted him like a long forgotten friend.
He brought his other arm up, blade be damned, and struggled to get a grasp on the wall. Again, he lurched downward a few more inches, the motion ripping a shout out of him, distorted by the vocoder. He was beginning to panic- he knew he was panicking.
Boba Fett, renown bounty hunter the whole galaxy over, did not panic.
But the weary, withered man who'd clawed his way out of certain death once before, surviving and outlasting the Sarlacc and all the things that came with it, did. He had every reason to.
He went very still, doing his damnedest to avoid falling any further as he ran the possibilities over in his head. The adrenaline that typically fueled him, gave his attacks that extra kick necessary to return triumphant job after job, now only added an uncomfortable haze to his thoughts.
The jetpack was the clearest option, but he wouldn't be able to diagnose it if he couldn't see it, and he couldn't bring down his other arm to analyze the information on his vambrace. His current boots lacked the spiked tip they featured in the past, a feature he was now sorely missing, so they wouldn't be any help in his attempt to climb upwards to safety. The whipcord was stored in the same vambrace that held him precariously on the wall, he wouldn't have a chance to aim it at anything without letting go first.
He had plenty of explosives strapped to the various pouches and belts in his robes, but he was too close for comfort to use them, and lacking in options to escape from the creature if the explosion didn’t even kill it-
The walls suddenly shook.
The creature definitely knew he was here, and was evidently fed up at Boba's refusal to fall further into the pit. And as he heard a resonant thud followed by another shaking of the walls, it seemed the cursed thing was finally trying to do something about it.
The walls shook a third time, and this time the blade screeched as he fell another inch.
He was rapidly running out of time and options.
Did he even have many options in the first place? What else truly was there to do? He couldn't fly, he could barely move without upsetting the precarious balance he'd found, which was being whittled away bit by bit regardless. He'd been out of options the moment he fell, and the truth of it was only just now beginning to sink in.
He had no knowledge of the creature below. He had no guarantee if his death would be swift and painless, or a drawn out nightmare as with the Sarlacc.
The air reverberated with an underwater thud. The walls shook again. Boba fell another few inches. He could hear the thrashing of the water closer now, with the center-point of the pit only a drop of some twenty-odd feet at this point. It'd be faster if he just let go, but some mindless instinct urged him to hang on regardless, prolonging the whole ordeal.
Boba heard another large clang of metal, but this time it came from above. Perhaps the rest of the syndicate had shown up now, to ensure they finished the job. It was shortly followed by the sharp sound of blaster fire, however, as a full-out fight seemed to start above.
He recognized at least one of the blasters by the rich tone of it, an IB-94 pistol. He'd heard it many times before, either by the sound of it firing at close range, covering his back, or the handful of times he'd borrowed it himself when the need arose.
"Din!" he shouted up from the pit. The blaster fight was damn loud, as all blaster fights were, and he wasn't sure how much the sound of his voice carried through it.
The creature below snarled at the cacophony of noise, and slammed into the wall again. As before, the walls shook, and Boba slid down further.
"Din!"
He felt the panic rising once more. Din was here, but if the amount of blaster fire he heard was anything to go off of, Din wouldn't be able to reach him in time, if he even heard him. Din would have no idea what became of him, what happened to the once famous bounty hunter that vanished once only to vanish again. The bitter anguish of that irony settled into his gut, just alongside the horror of it that already resided there.
The creature thundered down below again.
The walls shook a final time.
The blade of his vambrace skittered along the surface of the wall, and didn't catch on anything this time.
Gravity rushed to meet him, but his peripheral vision picked up on something else rushing to meet him faster.
It wasn't a very graceful rescue.
The breath Boba had been holding as he fell whooshed out of him as he slammed into the opposite wall of the pit, hearing Din grunt similarly, both carried by the momentum of Din's jetpack. He angled away from the wall and they shot upwards, back towards the scaffolding from before.
The knowledge that he'd been close enough to the surface of the water for one of his boots to fill with some of it was a bit startling; The realization that his salvation had been an extremely close one. He clung to Din a little tighter as the creature screeched at its lost chance.
Din, to his credit, seemed to have enough of a grasp on Boba's terror at the situation to land a good distance from the edge, where the pit no longer loomed. He set them both down as gently as could be managed, and Boba found himself slumping forward into Din's grip. Din immediately busied himself with patting down Boba for any obvious injuries, but when Boba didn't let go just yet, Din seemed content enough to wrap his arms back around him and not let go either.
It was- comforting. Reassuring. Eventually, wrapped in that comforting warmth, his breathing slowed until he wasn't harshly sucking in air through the filter of his helmet, mirroring Din's less extreme effort to catch his breath from the fight.
"Why didn't you comm me earlier?" Din finally asked. He made no motion to pull away fully, but did pull back just enough to meet the gaze of Boba's T-visor with his own, as if trying to glean anything from the impassive beskar. His hands continued to rest on Boba though, one on his arm and one cupping the back of his neck. The whole moment was surprisingly tender, all things considered. "I wasn't sure where you went after we got separated," Din finished.
And- that had certainly been an option, hadn't it? It would have only taken a quick tap to the side of his helmet, honing in on Din's frequency and letting him know what happened. He just hadn't even considered the option in his blind panic earlier, not familiar with it even being an option. But he also was not familiar with being wrapped up in the same level of irrational terror that struck at his heart earlier.
"I'm not used to having anyone to call," Boba answered truthfully. It was maybe a bit more vulnerable of a response than he'd have typically liked to give, but, well, he could blame it on his currently shot nerves.
It stood to reason though that Din, ever one for fairness, would respond in kind with his own sort of vulnerability.
"I'm just glad you're alright," Din said, voice soft even through the modulator. And then his helmet was tipping forward to meet Boba's, resting there gently, and Boba thought his heart might burst if the universe seemed intent on throwing any more world-shattering events at him today.
They stayed like that for some time, Din a reliable and soothing presence against him. He nuzzled his helmet into Boba's in a decidedly tooka-like manner, and huffed a light laugh when Boba tentatively reciprocated.
He'd have thought it strangely domestic, were they not currently situated in the middle of a rival syndicate's base, surrounded by the smoking handiwork of Din's blaster as the creature below faintly shrieked out its displeasure at the turn of events.
With the adrenaline now mostly out of his system, it was becoming more obvious just how many aches and pains truly plagued him. He wasn't sure how many were from the fight, from the fall, or from Din's chaotic rescue, but it didn't particularly matter.
Din finally pulled back and Boba, begrudgingly, let him. He didn't go anywhere though, only far enough to unhook something from his belt and press it to one of Boba's hands.
Boba looked down at the thermal detonator, tilting his head. "I have my own."
"A whole satchel full, I'm sure," Din responded, and he wasn't exactly wrong. "But give it one more from me." Din pressed the detonator into his hand again, and Boba took it this time, the symbolism of this moment not lost on him.
He extradited himself from Din's grip to approach the edge of the scaffolding once more, to observe the thoroughly pissed off creature below, as the visible bits of it thrashed just along the water's surface. How many people had the syndicate terrorized with this abomination? How many found their end in this exact place, after standing where Boba was now? The same fate Boba had almost been met with twice over now? No, it wasn't the Sarlacc, but the intention of its use was just the same.
Din's hand remained a steady presence on his shoulder.
The Sarlacc was long gone, consumed by the larger creatures of Tatooine and the sands of time, and well out of his reach for any form of cathartic revenge. He wouldn't find any closure there. But, perhaps, he could feel the possibility of it in his grasp, with his actions here and now.
Prepping the explosives wasn't terribly difficult, as Boba simply packed every detonator, charge, and vaguely incendiary doodad he'd brought with him into a spare bag, before launching it into the pit with as much force as he could muster.
He held onto Din's gift, though, saving it for last. And he couldn't resist leaning over to give Din's helmet another brief, fond tap of his own, before activating the detonator and chucking it over the side. Boba was never really one for emotional words and grand statements, but he hoped Din could read the unspoken thank you in his actions, in his body language.
As to be expected, the thermal detonator joined the bag below, both of them sinking just below the surface of the water, before the rumblings of an explosion seemed to rock the very foundation of the building. Boba reached out to Din as the scaffolding rattled with the shockwave of it, still acutely aware of his jetpack's dysfunctional status. A bit of the water reached even up to the scaffolding, coating Boba’s visor with a fine layer of mist and carrying the smell of sulfur and char with it.
The turbulent waters below finally grew calm, and so did a piece of Boba's soul. A small piece, maybe, but a piece nonetheless.
The walk out of the now empty facility was quiet, but not uncomfortable.
"My ride's busted," Boba started as they stepped out into daylight, reaching back to tap on the apparently very unlucky aforementioned chunk of durasteel alloy. "Mind sharing yours again?"
He could've taken a moment, checked out the readings on his vambrace and likely found the cause of the problem. But, as far as excuses went, it wasn't a particularly bad one.
Din simply chuckled before opening his arms, waiting for Boba to step into his space.
And he did.