Chapter Text
Ailyn Fett doesn’t know her mother; according to her buir, she left on a bounty when Ailyn was only a year old and never came back. With the state of the galaxy, it’s pretty easy to draw the conclusion that she’s dead, and Ailyn knows that that’s just a way of life. She grows up jumping from planet to planet with her buir and learning the way of the Mando’ade, the way of their people; she learns about the Jedi and how they murdered her ba'buir and how they burned, she learns how to hunt, and she learns how to fight. Death is a natural part of life, and Ailyn knows the best way to end it a little faster.
By the time she’s twelve, she knows a couple hundred ways to kill a man. She’s had to learn how to be fiercely independent, because her buir ’s work as a bounty hunter means that he’s rarely ever home. She learns how to pack up and move on the smallest of notices, because home isn’t a place - no, home is at her buir’s side, traveling the galaxy and hunting for their next pay.
The life with her buir is the only one Ailyn knows.
But she also knows that she’s different.
It’s not just her ability to hold an object and learn the history of it that sets Ailyn apart from her buir, but strange things tend to happen around her. She has a sense of the best roads to take, she can tell who they can trust - and more often than not, who they can’t - and sometimes, when she gets really angry, items get picked up with an invisible hand and thrown against walls. She never tells her buir about these things; she doesn’t know what they are, and it scares her.
And the more scared she gets of herself, the more the strange occurrences happen, and it’s some of the few times that Ailyn is glad that her father isn’t around more often.
At twelve, Ailyn is taller than other Humans her age, her skin, while lighter than her father’s, is tanned from their travels on Outer Rim planets and their current employment on Tatooine. She keeps her dark hair long and loose, and the black marks of Clan Vel bisect her eye. The armour she wears communicates to the sleemos around her that she’s not to be messed with, and while she doesn’t wear the traditional helmet of the Mando’ade, the design of her blue armour is obvious. She’s smart, and most importantly, she’s dangerous - and that means she’s safe to come and go as she pleases, because no one wants to anger Boba Fett.
Angering Boba Fett means angering his employer, and the Hutts own Tatooine.
Ailyn Fett is untouchable, but even if some di’kut worked up the courage to try to take her on she has a utility belt filled with fun little surprises, a high quality blaster on her thigh, and the hilt of an electro sword taken from a defeated Kage Warrior on her hip. She can walk through the marketplace and get the best deals, and she never has to worry about someone trying something.
She’s examining some glass beads, admiring the way they reflect light in the Tatooine suns, when a faint tingling on the back of her neck has her straightening, hand falling to her blade as she casts suspicious eyes around her. A small rusty cackle at her side has Ailyn startling, and she leaps away, pulling her sword from its sheath, and she glares at the creature that had somehow managed to sneak up on her.
Whatever it is, it’s about half her height, and absolutely hideous, with wrinkled green skin, large pointed ears, and thin wisps of white lining its ugly skull, wearing ragged and threadbare clothing that swamps it’s small body. Three-fingered clawed hands lay innocently on top of a gnarled cane, hunched over and ancient, and it watches her with glittering dark eyes that makes Ailyn feel like it can tell what she’s thinking about it.
But something about it, makes Ailyn feel warm and safe.
“Greetings to you, youngling.” The thing garbles at her, completely uncaring of the sparking blade being pointed at its face. “Speak to you, perhaps, I can? Many things we have to say, important they are.”
Ailyn hesitates, but lets the blade drop, twisting the hilt to sheath it once more, studying the creature with shrewd blue eyes; something about it makes her feel safe, like she can trust it. It’s rare that she finds that anything makes her feel safe, but this creature does somehow.
“Fine,” She says slowly, tossing some wupiupi onto the stall and collecting the beads she had been looking at.
“Join us, can my companions?” Ailyn follows its dark eyes, catching sight of a Mandalorian in beaten brown beskar'gam standing in the mouth of an alley, an Amban sniper rifle visibly slung across his back, and a bundle in his arms.
“Fine.” She agrees stiffly, turning on her heel to stride back towards the hut she and her buir live in while being housed on Tatooine. She doesn’t have to look behind her to know that the weird goblin and its Mandalorian friend were following her, hyper aware of the sound of the creature’s cane clacking against the ground, and the loping gait of an armoured Mando’ad. They walk through the twisting streets of Mos Eisley, ducking through alleys and side streets, until she finally reaches the door of the house she lives in, keying in the code and leading her strange new guests into the modest main room, having them take a seat on the nearby couch, while she goes through the motion of making tea.
When she places the tea in front of the goblin, not offering one to the Mando’ad in respect for his privacy, she finally gets a look at the bundle the man had been carrying around; it’s a baby, or at least she thinks it is. It’s small, and green, and wrinkled, and stares around the room with big black eyes, cooing gently, little claws curled into the fabric of the man’s shirt.
It’s so ugly that it’s probably the cutest thing Ailyn has ever seen.
The baby’s massive eyes meet hers, and it chirps at her, ears perking up curiously.
A loud slurping makes Ailyn startle, pulling her gaze from the baby, to stare at the goblin. It’s drinking the tea, the noise filling the otherwise empty room awkwardly, a loud, drawn-out sound, that finally tapers off to silence as the creature smacks its lips. “Good, this tea is. Skilled, you are, youngling.”
“Thanks.” Ailyn says slowly, visibly off kilter, staring at the thing, “Are you here looking for my buir? Because he’s out on a hunt right now, so you’ll have to wait.”
“Here to see your father, I’m not, young Ailyn Fett.” The Mando’s shoulders jerk faintly at the name, but Ailyn is too startled by the creature’s words to give it much more than a passing thought.
How does it know her name?
“Yoda, I am.” The creature - Yoda - says, “To you, the Force guided me. Through you, does it flow. Uncontrolled and wild it is. Your fear of it, I can sense; dangerous that can be, with such a strong connection.” Ailyn jerks away from it - him? - pressing herself back against the hard cushions of her chair as his ageless eyes study her. “Harm, to yourself and others, it can cause, if learn to control it, you do not.” She presses her lips together, and even if something tells her that Yoda is right, she doesn’t want to believe it, and from the knowing glint in the goblin’s dark eyes, he could see that. “Training, you need. A Jedi, you could be.”
A Jedi.
Ailyn immediately turns defensive, leaping to her feet and pulling out her blaster, but she doesn’t pull the trigger, and the Mando’ad stiffens.
But the Jedi only continues to watch her with fathomless eyes.
“A Jedi?” She spits, and she can faintly hear a cup shatter. “Why would I want to become one of those skanah! Your kind murdered my ba’buir!”
“A proper understanding, you do not have, young one.” Yoda says calmly, “Fell in battle, Jango Fett did, a battle he started. Murdered, he was not. Long dead, is the man who did so, destroyed the Jedi Order is. No one left to blame, there is.”
Ailyn’s arm shakes, and she’s torn, because Yoda’s words ring true to her, but her buir’s stories of the crimes the Jedi had committed against their Clan had too.
“Well,” She says aggressively, hesitant but still angry, “How do you expect me to be a Jedi if your Order is gone?”
“A New Order, there is.” Yoda tells her cryptically - somehow the goblin managed to make even the simplest of statements sound like a riddle and it was frustrating. “Led by a new Code and a dear friend, it is. There, you can learn.”
“How do I know that your ridiculous space magic exits and you’re not just insane?” The creature raises a brow, sending a reproachful glance towards the shattered cup on the table, then meeting Ailyn’s gaze once more, and she scowls back at him.
“Show you, I can.” Yoda reaches into his wide sleeve, pulling out a small silver cylinder that seemed so innocuous but so important at the same time, and he offers it to her. Her gut tells her to take it, and Ailyn only hesitates a moment before reaching out.
Her fingers brush against the humming metal, and she gasps as the world explodes in sounds and colours.
( -the Temple is burning, the Force cries in grief as its children fall, their betrayal and fear projected into the world around them. Darkness lays heavily on Coruscant, the Sith have won.
The Master had been under their noses the entire time, and the Apprentice was once one of them; he was once one of the children taught and cradled by the Light, but the Sith encouraged the Darkness in him.
A Knight who became the Apprentice, and led their men to kill their children.
The Sith Master laughs, rattling and haunting, and the Sith Master wins.
The Jedi are dead.
But some remain to guard the flames of hope.
One of the Force’s dearest children fans the fire, and Light begins to return to the galaxy.
Hope burns bright once more- )
Ailyn gasps as she comes back to herself, hand curled around a silver lightsaber hilt - it hums in her grip, happy and welcoming, protective and nurturing. Before her eyes, the short plasma blade swirls from green to blue, casting the room in a burning light.
“What the kriff is going on here?!” Ailyn spins, lightsaber still in hand, to see her buir in the doorway, shoulders tight and body language screaming protective fury, and she yelps, letting the blade slip from numb fingers as the now deactivated weapon clatters to the floor.
“Buir!” She squeaks in greeting, right as the Mando’ad on her couch says,
“Fett.”
Her buir stiffens, buy'ce swinging to glare at the man in brown beskar'gam, “Djarin.”
“You, uh…” Ailyn smiles awkwardly, fumbling for the lightsaber, “You know each other or something?”
“Or something.”