For Want of a Slave

Part One of Three in the Seven Distant Stars Series

You are a slave. This fact is hardly surprising given the circumstances of your birth, the circumstances of your conception. Your mother says you have no father, and you take her at face value, for all that your mother teaches you that you are a person, that you have worth, she also teaches you that that personhood is often debated and there are times that instead it is better to be just a thing. A thing with no mind and no care and no memory for what happens to it. That Thinghood and Personhood exist as a matter of objectivity.

Shimi says you have no father, and so you have no father. You are desert gifted and desert born and eventually you will return to that desert, like every other scattered grain of sand.

Your name is Anakin Skywalker, and you are a slave. A slave who fixes and cleans and races and fails and keeps racing because you have not yet died and Watto is no fool, and he knows that any human who can survive a pod race, let alone place within the winners circle, is more worthy than a slave who cannot. Is worth more at the auction house, in the stud book, in the property value equations that the Hutts base the worth of their citizen class.

And Watto wants you to be valuable. Wants you valuable enough to sell, to stud, to take back to the Hutts themselves and pry as much coin from their blunt fingers as there are stars in the sky. He wants and wants and wants

And you want in turn.

You want your freedom, you want your mother to have that same freedom and want to know of the worlds that the spice traders sing. You want to see those distant planets, to feel water on your skin beyond scattered drops of sweat and to see and to love and to know. To know everything and everyone and to just be.

You want to be. You want to be more than a slave. You want to be the Anikkn Skywalker who walked free across that endless sky and pulled the chain-freed people across that same sky, until they too were safe. Safe from fear, from Depur, from the Masters with harsh hands, and those too with soft touches. Until personhood is no longer lost under the word chattel, until memories do not have to be forgotten and children are no longer born fatherless, born as scattered grains of desert sand.

You want to live and to be and to be free, and that desire thrums through your skin through every sun-cursed day and frost chilled night.

And in that brewing storm of want and need and sand, the Jedi come.

They come and they are everything and nothing like the tales told by the spacers who sit around the cantina trying to top each other's stories with claims larger, wilder, and more magnificent.

The Jedi, when he appears, is just a man. A man dressed poorly for a desert planet in synth-wool robes woven too tight and too finely to breathe, and instead just collected his sweat in puddles under his arms and against his chest and back.

The girl who followed him into Watto's, shares the same lack of awareness in her flame colored robes. For all that the outfit is airy and the smooth underlayer would allow sweat to wick away from the body, the ombre dyed velveteen on top was weighing her down just as much as the robes of the Jedi who spoke to Watto with such high handed superiority.

They were Coreworlders. No doubt about it.

You see no harm in sharing a smile, some advice and later the sturdy walls of the two room house you and your mother rent in the slave quarters. The Jedi and the girl were good people and there is something about them, something special that you could feel like an itch across your skin.

That feeling only grows, to a swell of wind at your back, like air cresting a dune, when it leads to your hands on the controls in your too small podracer, to the roar of the crowd at the finish line when your turbines roar pass Shebulba's crashing wreck, and to your mother crying again and again on your ear.

Freedom. Freedom. The Jedi granted you freedom.

And the winds around your soul crash together like two lizards fighting each other for a scrap of meat. The gaping hole of want inside you filled in for the first time in your nine year old life and your soul was satisfied.

You would call no man, no woman, no other being Master again. You had shed the chains that Depur had placed on your wrists at birth and you were finally free.

~SDS~

You should have realized something was wrong when the Jedi failed to free your mother. You had an inkling when he did not take you straight to a medi-doc to have your slave chip deactivated. You knew for a fact when you approached the chrome plated spaceship, and the strawberry blond man greeted your party at the loading ramp with "Master Qui Gon, welcome back," that something had gone horribly wrong.

There was a shout of fear behind you to match the growing dread in the base of your throat and Padme was rushing you forward, rushing you into the chrome plated slavers' ship before you even had time to fully process that all the stories you had heard about Jedi were false.

The ship was in the air before you could try to escape. It was in the air and your new Depur was standing in the hold beside you, breathing heavily and ordering the strawberry blond, and Padmé, and Jar Jar and the rest of the crew to get the ship pointed towards Coruscant.

~SDS~

Space is cold, the Jedi are liars, and the vast capital city of the Republic screams under the compounding weight of its durasteel girdered skeleton. You can hear it, feel it in the particle charged air around you, kicking up like dust in a storm, like ions before the lightning strikes and the harsh winds pass through. The Jedi Council asks you questions, tests you, with cups, and ships, and plants again and again as if they cannot hear the soul of the planet roaring in their ears. As if they are as deaf to the planet's unease as they are to your own.

Depur knows a thousand cruelties, and even with that knowledge you wonder how they can ignore the loud and endless screams.

A part of you, the one that is not sick with betrayal, is almost relieved when they say you are too old to join the Jedi Order, you are almost relieved, mostly nauseous, and full of a growing fear when twelve sets of eyes land on your body and wait for your response to the question, "Are you afraid?"

You do not know these masters, do not know if they prefer their slaves beaten and quiet, or hardworking and jovial, you do not know which answer would best suit their mood, which answer would best protect you from their ire.

"I am." You admit, because honesty is both a weapon and a curse, and you cannot express to a body of people who own you that you are more concerned about whether they will sell you on or send you back to Tatooine to care about the fact they will not add you to their own collection of slaves.

Master Qui Gonn erupts with their denial, claiming you for his own despite their hesitations. It makes you wonder about Obi Wan, who seems perfectly healthy, perfectly mannered, very much a perfect slave. Why would Qui Gon need another? Has- has Obi Wan gotten too old?

Your stomach twists at the thought, and you have to swallow back the sudden flush of acid tinged saliva that fills your mouth. You cut your eyes at the Jedi who bought you, and then back to the polished marble floors that pass beneath your feet as Master Jinn leads the two of you back towards the spaceport and towards Naboo.

~SDS~

You expect things to get better, when you return to Coruscant without your Depur but in the company of two more who you strongly start to believe may have been his.

You are still trying to parse out the Jedi caste system and Obi Wan has been little help. You know there are twelve Jedi Masters, the Depur of the Depur, who are on the council and own all the Jedi below them. You know there are Knights like the newly promoted Obi Wan, who are slaves to the Masters, but also Masters to the young slaves, the Padawans, like you recently have become.

You have considered asking Obi Wan about it, hoping he can better clear up hierarchies and who exactly it is you need to obey, and who you can safely ignore should they try and order you about, but Obi Wan...Obi Wan is sad. He is sad and quiet, and looks at the empty space where his Master used to be and then at the space where you now stand, obedient and waiting at his side and seems confused. He seems confused like you would expect any slave to be when they have suddenly had their freedom thrust upon them. Like he is unsure of how to act, how to be, without the weight of the chains that bound him for so long.

The High Masters do not seem keen on helping him through this, though they too must have experienced such confusion in their youth when they had risen out of the lowest ranks of the enslaved. Or well, the Torgurta woman should have, the green troll, Master Yoda, if your mind remembers correctly, is old enough you are surprised he remembers how to dress in the morning without a hand-slave to wait on him.

They are no use to Obi Wan, just tell him to mediate and release his feelings to the Force, which honestly is no help at all and there is only so much you can do without knowing how life operates within the Jedi Temple, so you do your best to ensure that Obi Wan's water glass never runs dry (and if the endless access to water doesn't hit you as both wasteful and a luxury beyond your wildest imaginings) and generally keep the space around him clean as he shuts away into a blank eyed statue of a man, perfectly poised and kneeling pretty before the wide window of the three room suite he had inherited from his Master.

It continues that way for eight days, until around dinner time, you are forced to admit that yes that cabinet above the small two burner stove is empty, and the scrapings you still have from the midday snack will not feed the both of you, and you are too hungry to give him all of it when you had been eating quarter rations for the last five meals.

You approach Obi Wan, who is as still and poised and silent as he had been since the first day of your internment, and you kneel before him, eyes down and countenance as undemanding as you know how to make it and you say, "Master, do you want me to go to the market and get more food? You're nearly out, and I can't cook you a full dinner."

Not that you know what a suitable dinner is for a Coruscanti, but what matters is the question and the phrasing and the utter lack of demand in your tone. It seems to work too, your voice after so long being a silent presence makes Obi Wan blink and shift and wince, as if his joints turned to rock over the last eight days of his life and he says, "Oh?" Like a child who has learned an interesting fact, and then he says "Oh!" Like you've startled him and he is turning to you, he is looking at you like you are a reflecting pool, like you are a mirror, like the intense scrutiny of his gaze will unlock some hidden world. He looks at you like you are a mystery, like he cannot remember your face, or your reason for kneeling in front of him, your reason for sharing his space.

"We need food, Master," you say as you bend your head down into a bow, deeper than you ever would have given Watto, deep enough Kenobi wouldn't be insulted, for you know enough stories about the Two-Faced to be wary of a high ranked slave granted freedom.

Your master blinks at you for a long moment, then rises to his feet, actions stiff and uncomfortable as a droid with sand in its gears. "Ah... yes right... Anakin," He says your name like a question, and then again, so that it feels more sure on his tongue, and he steps past you towards the door and then out into the hallway, and you tuck yourself three steps behind him, in the locations his shadow would have fallen at high noon on Tatooine, and you follow him through the temple halls, and not once does he check to see your there.

~SDS~

Obi Wan leads you to the dining hall, where he presses a ceramic plate into your hands and scoops piles of food onto it as he guides you down the long buffet and then to an empty patch of table, dotted with other Jedi-Padawan pairs. The other Jedi, regard Obi Wan with sympathetic eyes, nodding gently to him, but keeping their distance all the same.

You don't know if it's due to the heavy oiliness to your new Masters skin, or the general unwashed reek of despair that settled into clothes that were at one time kept in pristine condition. You hope the other Depur don't judge you too harshly for it, for letting your master's usually fastidious nature suffer while he was locked away in his own head. You did your best to dab his face and hands with a wet cloth each night, but there was little you could do when he didn't react to your attempts to provide fresh clothing.

Mostly you're just happy that he would shuffle towards the fresher now and then to relieve himself.

The plate in front of you is piled high with food you have never seen, putting off smells you have never smelled. It covers the spider web cracks in the ceramic's white glaze and as soon as your butt hits the bench seat you are shoveling as much of it into your mouth as you can physically fit. You do not care that the smooth starchy paste is bland, or that the red flecked vegetables are tongue curlingly bitter. You do not care that you have no name for the thin slices of meat, no idea of the animal or being they once came from. All you care is that you have food, food overflowing, and that your masters plate shows more bare ceramic than sustenance.

"I'm sorry." Obi Wan says, after he has watched you shovel bites into your mouth with a wince and cut his eyes down to his own plate, as if watching that instead of you would settle whatever disgust he felt. "I haven't been a very good Master to you these last few days. There are things…" Here he stops and swallows, cutting his eyes up at you, and you can see that they still have that dull glaze of sorrow that they have carried since Master Jinn was killed on Naboo.

"After dinner I'm going to take you to the Halls of Healing. I should have done that days ago." He crushes his eyes together, and the skin of his face scrunches up, "You'll need a check up, and vaccinations, and Master Che will want to take a full panel, and then I need to get you to the Quartermaster for clothes, and a haircut, and things for your room, and I need to go through Qui Gon's things and and—-"

The man...the boy crumples in on himself again and you watch his shoulders shake with silent sobs. You cut your eyes around to the other diners, and find them watching you with concern, and poodoo you are failing this, you are failing your duties to your master, and you don't know how they handle punishment's here, and gods Watto just withheld food, he never would hurt you or mom if something happened, but what if the Jedi…

You reach out a hand and pat it gently against the redhead's fist, where it sits clenched tight around the man's water glass. The motion causes him to release his grasp and instead take your hand in his condensation damp grip. He's gentle about it though, like mom would have been, and he squeezes your hand softly before dragging his hands down into his lap. You cut your eyes again at the other diners and they have turned back to their own plates with the single minded attention of a person paying attention to absolutely one thing in the room and it is assuredly not the food in front of them.

You watch Obi Wan take a breath, and then another, and then a third, and you assume you are safe to eat again so you shovel more food into your mouth while keeping your eyes tight to the redhead's face and you get maybe another third the way through the plate before he opens his eyes and nods to you, very solemnly. "I'll be a good master to you. Just like Qui Gon was to me."

You nod back just as seriously, because you want that very much. You want Obi Wan to be a better master than his ever was, but mostly you don't want him to forget. You don't want him to forget when he was also a padawan, when he was also a slave.

~SDS~

Obi Wan is good on his word. He takes you to the Medi-Doc, no wait that's not right, he takes you to the healer, where a older padawan shadows their master, and helps them draw blood, and run scans, and poke and prod, and test and jab, until both your arms, and one of your butt cheeks is sore with the barrage of needles, of inoculations, and vaccines, and boosters.

They run tests, and take measurements, and they speak in quiet tones to your master, but never to you, and you feel more and more like you are being weighed and measured for auction. You half expect them to strip you out of your skivvies, and to be thrown up onto the auction block where a new buyer can poke and prod and test and see and be just as impressed by the Midichlorians in your blood sample as this healer-in-training is.

Never once do they pull out a scanner to locate your slave chip, never once do they bring out the encoder that would allow them to deactivate it, or to formally change its ownership into Obi Wan's name. It makes you wonder if Qui Gon had changed it to his, or if you were simply labeled as 'owned by the Jedi Order'.

It's late in the evening and you feel your feet dragging by the time you and Obi Wan shuffle out from the healers. He looks down at you with a frown, but it doesn't worry you, because he's not mad at you, the air around him doesn't hum a warning, just sits heavy against your skin like it too is tired.

"Okay." He says, and you can feel the sadness on him now, the despondent, statue Obi Wan returning to the forefront. "Okay." He says again, and when he moves his feet, he does so not to lead you to the quartermaster, but to the room you have been waiting in these last eight days.

Then he looks at the small living space, where you had made a nest on the couch, and to the windows where he had been staring endlessly to the closed door to the spartan room which used to house his master. He looks at the couch, the window, the closed door, scanning slowly back and forth like a droid caught in a glitch.

You take hold of his hand. Carefully, like you had never, nor would ever attempt with Watto, and you lead him towards the cracked open door to the room you knew was his. You lead him to the bed and push him gently towards it and you back up, ever so slowly, keeping your eyes on the bowing form of his shoulders, until you reach the door frame and can pull it shut as you pass through the threshold.

It is silent in the small living space. The door between you two is more than enough to block out whatever sound Obi Wan may be making on the other side. You sink slowly to your knees in front of the door and you let tears that you had been holding back flood out.

You are scared, you are hurt, and you are ashamed. No desert child is supposed to cry, to shed the water is a waste

~SDS~

You try to make friends with the other Padawan your age, truly you do. You speak to them as you would Kitster or Wald, but they laugh at your slow stuttering attempts at Basic, at the way you sink back into Huttese when their primary language fails you. The children your age don't understand when you try to ask them for help, for clarification, for how you should better serve your Master as a Padawan. They laugh and tell you to 'just try harder, Ani' or 'stop being so weird,' before returning to their Jedi magic game.

You can't give up though not with the fear of the unknown curdling in your stomach. You try asking a second time, broaching the subject with an older group of Padawans, and it is then you realize that they don't understand. They don't understand why you would be concerned with your Master's comforts, with ensuring he remained happy with you, content with you, pleased by your efforts and your work. You realize that these children do not view their Master's as Depur, as someone to be treated like glass, with careful attention and a general distrust. You realize they do not fear the repercussions of making mistakes, of insulting or infuriating the beings who own them.

Because their Jedi Masters do not own them. They are not slaves. They exist in a world where their freedom will never be stolen, where they will never be sold, where they will never find themselves elsewhere without so much as a by your leave, transferred with the exchange of credits and transmitter codes.

You lose track of yourself, lose track of yourself in the black pits behind your eyelids, in the feeling of your stomach dropping out from under you, like you had taken a sudden descent in your podracer. It is clear to you, so suddenly, so violently.

Your Master is not a slave. These Padawans and their masters, and the masters of their masters, they are not slaves. Nor had they ever been.

It takes you three months in the Jedi Temple to realize that no, the only slave here is you.

Part 2, A Slave and his Soldiers, will be posted as soon as its written. Thanks for your patience and please drop a review!