This was absolutely not what I had planned to write today. But it was begging to be written. I am totally blaming fialleril with the Double Agent Vader stories and Lectorel with the Tatooine Slave Culture headcanons (both on tumblr). Both of them inspired this story.

The rumors spread throughout the Outer Rim. Never openly, never where just anyone could hear… but they spread. Secretly, slowly, they spread. And changes were coming. Slaver's ships were disappearing, lost without a trace in the darkness of deep space. Without a trace, save for the slaves turning up unharmed and free all over the galaxy. Slaves were disappearing from planets, again turning up free and safe on other planets. Masters were dying, often in accidents, sometimes by murder.

And the rumors spread. Quietly, only when slaves could be sure no masters would hear them. But they spread.

There was a man. A man with hair like a sunset, with eyes as changeable as an ocean. There was a boy. A boy with hair like sand, with eyes like a bright summer sky. The man, it was said, had always been free (a student, a coreworlder), but he was still working to help them. The boy, it was said, had won his freedom in a race(a card game, a bluff), and he knew how to get rid of the detonators.

They carried weapons, it was said. Blasters and vibroblades and ordinary knives… and something else. The stories said they carried lightsabers, just like the Jedi. Their blades were (blue as river water on Felucia), (green as plants on Naboo), (red as the lava of Mustafar) keen, and rarely used. It was said that only slavers ever saw the blades, and only ever for a moment, as they died.

Slowly, the slavers diminished. Soon, it was too dangerous to transport slaves between planets. Soon, only the Hutts would do it.

And then the Hutts started losing ships. And the slaves were returned home, or taken elsewhere.

And the stories grew.

The boy (the man) had killed a Hutt. The man and the boy called each other brothers. The Jedi wanted to find the boy and the man.

There was a planet, it was said, that the boy and the man would always return to. A desert world, where the slaves were now free. The Hutts could no longer control the world.

The Hutts offered bounties on the ones who were attacking their slave ships.

No one with power knew who it was. No one who knew would say who it was. The boy and the man.

Whispers grew. On a world of slaves, sometimes, a lone ship would land, and a pair of brothers would get out. Traders, they would call themselves, looking for cargo.

And revolution would start. Just whispers, at first. But then… slaves would disappear. And then the brothers would walk down the street to the house of the most wealthy slave owner… and the slaves would leave, free and clear. The master and his family would be dead, or in jail. And the lone ship would leave. Always, there would be a sign left that the boy and the man had been there. Their symbol, a circle bisected by a thick line, was always carved into the door.

Freedom spread through the Outer Rim.

Rumors grew. Freedfolk began to free others. Like a snowball rolling downhill, gathering more and more snow, faster and faster the rumors, the freedom spread. Masters found themselves facing mobs of former slaves, losing everything, just as they had taken everything from others.

The Core Worlds, as always, ignored them. Until they couldn't ignore them.

But by then, the Outer Rim was a place of freedom. The boy and the man had done their work. There were still slaves, but fewer and fewer each year. Freedfolk knew how to remove the detonators, how to destroy the masters, how to stop slavers from raiding.

They were free.

And, on an insignificant world called Tatooine, the boy looked up into the night sky. The man approached him. "There's rumors that Jabba is going to try to take over the planet again," the man said. His Core World accent would never disappear, but he would never be a Core Worlder to the people of the Outer Rim. He was one of them. He'd fought and bled for them, beside them.

"Let him try," the boy replied. He wasn't much of a boy anymore, taller than his brother. He was fast becoming a man himself.

Let the masters try. They would never succeed again.

The slaves of the Outer Rim were free.

So… what are Anakin and Obi-Wan? Jedi? Sith? Neither? They're not telling me. The former slaves of the Outer Rim like the mystery too.