#anyway shoutout to the fic writers who include jango fett or alpha-17 (who is his own bucket of worms) in their fics in any way

[herenya-writes]

hello i am once again thinking about clones and the impossibly complicated feelings they (Cody) must have around Jango Fett. that's Prime. and most of it's going under a cut because there are a grand total of two people in this world who give a shit about any of this but my brain would not let me rest until it existed on the screen

that's the guy. the one so perfectly forged for war and your life purpose that they made a million just like him. he is literally everything you could ever want, hope, dream, aspire, strive, bleed bleed bleed to be.

he's not your dad because dads are something that people have, and you're not really a person. you were born from a tube alongside hundreds of the same face but sometimes you look up through the windows and you see your face reflected back, older. kinder? distant. too distant to matter.

he's not your dad and you aren't a person, but you could have been. you know you could have been because little Boba Fett is a person. he has a name, first and last. he has a dad. he looks just like you but he is better. worthier. loved.

firmly in headcanon territory here but maybe Prime isn't just a distant figure for you. maybe he's the first person who you told your name to. maybe he taught you how to throw a punch. maybe he beat you bloody and raw and you silently thanked him for it because every time you fell you rose more perfect, more whole, more like him. maybe there were moments when you thought that maybe you were a person because he looked at you with a kind of sadness that can only come when someone loses someone they love.

and yet.

one day Prime leaves. you go back to training, to molding your hand to the shape of a blaster's grip and your body to the shape of a GAR-issued cot. you fight and learn and bleed and salute and march and train and you are everything the Kaminoans promised and more. Prime might have forged himself in the heat of battle time and again, but you have improved on the old formula. you cannot surpass Prime (he is a person, and you are not) but you know your hands are faster and your heart beats stronger.

and then comes the red dust of a distant campaign. maybe you weren't there. maybe you were on the other side of the planet or stuck behind rain-blasted walls parsecs away. but whether or not you saw doesn't change the truth (you need to be a person to be a witness) that Prime chose the other side. you, for whom loyalty to the Republic comes before all else, learn that the man whose face you wear did not choose to stand beside you.

between one breath and the next that will never come, a Jedi with a sword straight from legends (from flash modules) separates Jango Fett's head from his shoulders and Prime dies. ignoble.

a week later you salute your Jedi. crisp. clean. perfect. loyalty in your blood and the thump of a thousand synchronous footsteps rattling your sternum.

what is the legend of Prime? what does it mean that you never say his name? at night, if you dream, do you dream of the buzz of plasma over your skin? or the impact of a blaster, unerringly aimed at your own weathered face?