▸ Column · Post-Imperial Outer Rim — Tatooine underworld years, the comlink and holographic communications era, Fett serving as Daimyo of Mos Espa
BOBA FETT replies.
Replied to by Boba Fett, with a rebuttal from Jabba the Hutt.
The letter
My husband stepped away from his comlink for a few minutes — walking the perimeter, said he needed air — and a holomessage lit up from a name I didn't recognize. Kira. I'm not proud of it, but I opened the thread. Seven months of good-morning transmissions. A holo from a suite on Nar Shaddaa he'd told me was a spice-trade summit. Plans for a rendezvous next month. We've been bonded eleven standard years and have two children who still run to him every evening. I put the comlink back exactly where I found it and have said nothing for four days. Now I can barely pass him food at the table without my hands shaking. Do I face him with what I know, or pretend I never read a word — and was it even wrong to look?
Boba Fett replies
Looking at his comlink wasn't the betrayal. He ended the terms. You just confirmed the breach.
Four days of silence and you're still in the same position: holding information he doesn't know you carry, and doing nothing with it. That's not patience. Patience is deliberate. What you're doing is paralysis, and it only helps him.
I came out of a Sarlacc with nothing but what I'd survived. What that teaches you: don't announce your position before you've secured a place to land.
The children live in your home. Whatever you share — finances, agreements, the ground you'd each be walking into or away from — know that terrain before you move. Not because you've decided anything. Because you never move from a position you haven't mapped. A quarry who sees you coming is already gone.
When you've taken the measure of what you're stepping into, then you decide. Not while your hands are shaking. Not from a corner you've backed yourself into by waiting four more days.
What he broke has a price. You're owed it. Collect on your terms, not his schedule.
— Boba Fett
Jabba the Hutt weighs in
My friend, the hunter advises you to secure an exit. Hoo hoo hoo. He has always thought like a hired hand — collect the bounty and move on. He never understood that the true profit is in never resolving, in staying at the center of the web while others come to you.
Your husband does not know you know. That is the most valuable thing in your possession. The moment you spend it — in a confrontation, in a tearful scene at the table — it is gone. He is warned. And whatever he does next will be on his terms, not yours.
While you hold this, he is indebted and doesn't even know it. Patient collectors never have to chase their quarry.
— Jabba the Hutt
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