Chapter Text
As a universe unfolds, every event, no matter how unconnected, may one day seem to form a net, strings upon strings dragging unwitting protagonists to their fates. A delicate and intricate work of art, like the neural connections in the human brain. But if one or two strings snap, the universe may unfold into an entirely different future.
In another universe, decades and decades of hatred, years and years of war end in betrayal. Sister gone, father shot, and soon his people slaughtered. Jango Fett lives on, survives them all. And then, you know how the story goes: an insane Jedi on one of the moons of Bodgen, Kaminoans with their long necks and cloning genius, Tyranus. An army of men with metal chips in their brains. And a dusty arena full of blaster bolts and fallen bodies. Fett’s jetpack sparking, broken but he doesn’t know it yet. He shot the reek right through the eye but it ensured his death; he cannot escape. Purple blade burning through cloth and skin. A little boy watching, scared, he would be twisted bitter in the years to come.
But in this universe, one difference changes the turn of fate. Arla Fett isn’t left on Concord Dawn, stolen by armored Kyr’stad and molded into an assassin, broken. Jaster saves her too, drags the two crying children through the burning fields. Two Mandalorians hold their bleeding, dying father on Korda Six; two swear vengeance on Kyr’stad and on that traitor Montross. The haat mando’ade, Arla Fett their mand’alor, launch a bitter attack, bring violence down upon those aruetii mando’ade. Kyr’stad is almost defeated, dregs of what it once was, licking its wounds and plotting vengeance. And so the fate of Mandalore is pushed back by nearly two years. Two years as Kyr’stad lays its trap on a snowy planet. It seems that Arla’s vengeance has simply postponed the haran be haat’ade. But in those two years, the galaxy carries on as normal, Mandalore only a tiny piece in its cogs. Which is how it came to be that on 42 BBY, Galidraan, an older, more scarred Jango Fett comes face to face with Padawan Learner Obi-Wan Kenobi.