Pairing: Mando/Din Djarin x OC/Aiya - though not paired in this. Pre-meeting.
Summary: Pre-Story (to come). Aiya reflects on how things are and her past/present on Tatooine.
Warning: Slavery, mentioning of sex work and prostitution (only if you know what goes on at the Palace).
A/N: I thought this would be very appropriate for Aiya, and a great way to introduce her character before I get the story up. She’s one of my favorite characters I’ve created. Aiya and Din are just lovely together (though you don’t know that yet). This is just a very short drabble that might get included into the story.
Masterlist
There weren’t many moments of quiet for the life of a slave on Tatooine, especially not one under the thumb of her owner. Aiya knew that if she slacked off any while working in the scrapyard then the likelihood that she would be rented out or loaned to Jabba’s Palace again were extremely high. She would take the long days working out in the unforgiving suns and burning her fingers on hot metal or soldering than being there.
But in the earliest hours of the morning after the Palace was closing down and the business had yet to open, Aiya liked to get up. It was earlier than she needed to, but she would take any bit of time she could to just feel like she owned some sort of control in her life. A life that did not belong to her. Aiya would get up and stand on top of the shop roof where the transmission antena was accessible to watch the sunrise over the horizon. The occasional bantha would cry out, and every so often a patron of the cantina out too late would stumble by on their way to their lodging, but for the most part it was just Aiya basking in the less intense warmth of the first sun coming over the horizon.
For someone that was so very tired of the sand and heat, she knew it was the most beautiful sight she would most likely ever get to see. There wasn’t much promise that Aiya would ever be free, or live to see another day. Not when sickness could sweep through the slave’s quarters faster than a professional racing varactyl, or the fact that the visitors to Mos Eisley and Tatooine in general, would have a shady variety.
Mos Eisley was far quieter than Mos Espa where Jabba’s Palace was located. It was at Jabba’s Palace when she was younger that she lost the only family Aiya had left. Abandoning Tatooine with freedom and a romantic companion, Aiya’s sister had been gone for years, it felt, leaving her entirely too alone upon returning from her consignment to the Palace. While she preferred Mos Eisley to Mos Espa, it came with a sense of hollowness. Her quarters were no longer filled with the hushed giggles from you younger sister, Odalla as she told of the adventures she and her best friend has snuck off to have when she was supposed to be working in the scrapyard.
But Oda was gone, and as the years passed without her return to free Aiya, Aiya lost what little hope she had left festering in her breast. It was just Aiya and the solace of the sunrise over the horizon of Tatooine.
