Long Grift: Ever Circling Skeletal Family
"I must speak with Mistress Fauve right away."
Gilbar Monparte cocked a brow at the young slave standing before him and did not withhold the long-suffering sigh that escaped him.
It was the so-called Jedi Naz had sold him two cycles ago. Monparte believed in the Force about as much as he believed in the compassion of others.
"Oh?" he said, wondering what in all the names of the Gods could be so important. He decided to humor the boy. Brushing past him he said, "I'm afraid that's quite impossible. Mistress Fauve has just lain down for a nap." Much to his annoyance, the slave scampered after him.
"Could you wake her?"
"Of course not!" Monparte quickened his pace and started down the grand staircase. It was a beautiful piece of architecture, spiraling and widening the long way down until it reached the bottom where the lip of it spilled out into the wide lobby. Its rails were made from the majestic chuka tree and intricately hand-carved by the natives of Erez. He lightly trailed his hand over the deep grooves as he descended. "Mistress Fauve has just had her medicine – she's very tired and cannot be disturbed."
The slave frowned. "You mean spice?" he said without thinking.
Monparte whirled on him and grabbed a fistful of thick ginger hair. "No," he seethed, tightening his grip painfully. The boy's mouth hung open in shock, and he was precariously balanced on one step. Monparte shook him and the boy stumbled to his knees. "No," he said again, "Medicine. Who told you spice?"
The slave's mouth opened and then shut quickly. He shrugged. "I can't remember."
Monparte pressed his lips into a thin line, finally releasing the boy with a sharp shove. The slave tumbled down a few steps but managed to catch a rung in the handrail before he fell too far. Gray eyes set beneath a brow furrowed in misunderstanding stared up at him.
"Sir, I just need to speak with someone. I apologize if I've offended you…"
"What is it you need to tell your mistress?" Monparte snapped, suddenly so very sick of this particular slave. "Why aren't you with Master Peyton? You are not to leave him – you've been reprimanded for that before."
The slave winced. "I – I know, but he's taking a nap and I just thought – "
Monparte's knuckles whitened around the handrail. "What do you need to tell your mistress?" he repeated icily.
"I – " The boy was obviously flustered. He straightened on his knees, not standing from the steps just yet. "I am not a slave," he finally announced. "I am a Jedi and I need to get in touch with the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Will you give me access to an interplanetary communication unit?"
Monparte blinked once at the formal tone before bursting into an uproarious laughter. Tears of mirth sprang to his eyes and he wiped them away, gasping helplessly for air around the noisy guffaws. "You – you! A Jedi! Naz must have insisted it so badly that he convinced you…" He grinned down at the boy in amusement. Everyone who heard the stories right knew Jedi were only wrinkled old sentients with powerful minds, not young boys with skinned knees. "That I will tell your mistress!"
* * * *
Obi-Wan hunkered down underneath the freezer's ventilator, avoiding the worst of the constant blow, and tucked his frozen hands under his arms, crossing them over his chest. He could still hear his new 'master' on the opposite side of the door, a heavy slab of metal he had spent the last ten minutes trying to push open.
Peyton Fauve was older than the Obi-Wan, by at least a year or two, but had the mind of a young child. He was, essentially, a twelve-year-old with the body and urges of a young man. And Obi-Wan was becoming quite sure that all the Jedi patience in the galaxy would not hold up against this one spoiled boy.
The Padawan's plan to speak with Gilbar Monparte, the man who had purchased him, had not gone as smoothly as he would have liked. It seemed he had caught the man at a bad time… He would try again as soon as the chance presented itself.
"Are you cold yet? Are you cold?" Shrieks of excitement, dulled by their passage through the thick door, were accompanied by loud thumps of Peyton pounding on the sturdy metal.
"Peyton, please!" Obi-Wan called, as loudly as he could and hoping his voice would not be totally absorbed by the thrumming ventilator, "This is not a game!"
"Are you cold?!"
Obi-Wan squeezed his eyes shut. Was it his imagination or were tiny icicles growing on his lashes? "This is not a game, Peyton! I am very cold!" Risking a more powerful chill, he moved out from under his shelter and to the door, turning his back to the frigid gusts. His thin clothes did nothing to protect him, and the increasingly violent manner of his shivering began to worry him. "Peyton?"
There was a long pause and the Padawan became fearful that the other boy had left him. But then:
"Obi?"
Obi-Wan swallowed his swelling fear and answered, "Yes?" wishing for the wobble to leave his strained voice.
Another pause. "You're mine."
Obi-Wan gaped at the frost-covered exit. This whole escapade was about proving who was in power? It was a ridiculous thought, a childish one – it was Peyton to the letter.
The Padawan heaved a sigh, clenching his teeth together in an effort to end their chattering.
"Yes, Peyton. But you're…" How was he to handle this? Peyton obviously thought of him as some sort of big toy, the way he knocked him about and treated him. He finally settled with, "You're breaking me, Peyton."
"What?" the other boy demanded.
"You're breaking me!" Obi-Wan voice came out strained and he waited until he was sure he could continue in as calm a manner as possible. It was so cold. "You're breaking me… Do you remember Shiva?" Other slaves had told him of the Rii'Diarian slave Peyton had owned previously – he had crushed her to death in some awful game created on a whim – the kind of game in which only Peyton knew the rules to. Obi-Wan did his best to avoid those entirely, but it was difficult sometimes. The other boy was too used to getting his own way and would not be swayed or distracted for long.
"Shiva is broken," Peyton announced. "That's why Mother gave me you."
"Yes," the Padawan conceded, "You don't want me to break, do you?" His knees felt weak.
He thought Peyton had left again when the door suddenly opened and he spilled out into the numbing warmth of the kitchen. He lay on the tile floor, his shaking even more pronounced, unable to move or stand.
"Obi. Obi…!" The voice had a touch of alarm. "You're not broken. Mother will be mad!" A big hand snatched a fistful of his flimsy shirt and jerked. "Mother will be mad, Obi."
The Padawan closed his eyes. "I just need a – a minute, P-Peyton."
"The food people are coming back, Obi. Get up!"
"Peyton, p-please!" Before he could stop him, Peyton began dragging him on the floor.
"You were supposed to get up. You're in big trouble, Obi."
* * * *
Obi-Wan stood sullenly at the base of the huge tree Peyton climbed, trying to stand in such a way so his shirt would not stick to the lash marks on his back.
"Sir Monparte doesn't like you, Obi," Peyton called down.
The Padawan's cheeks were still red from the punishment. He had to begrudgingly accept that no one here believed him. The rustling in the leaves above him paused and Peyton shouted, "Obi?"
"I'm right here, Peyton!"
"Oh." The boy giggled and resumed his ascent. "I thought you had left. You're not supposed to leave me."
"I know, Peyton."
"Because you're mine."
Obi-Wan sighed. "Yes, Peyton."
"You left me earlier to bother Sir Monparte and they whipped you."
"I know, Peyton." He was unable to keep the edge out of his voice and he snapped, "I know, I was there."
The older boy climbed higher, disappearing into the thick leaves overhead. Obi-Wan glanced about nervously, hoping they would not be seen. He would bear the brunt of whatever punishment Peyton's mother deemed fit to dish out – her boy could do no wrong, after all.
He decided that there was no getting around it – when Peyton had it in his head to do something, not much could pull him away from the idea – and sat down at the base of the tree, gingerly fixing his shirt to escape the sharp sting of his wounds. Obi-Wan's eyes fell shut and he evened his breathing, forming mental images of his home to help him calm.
He recreated his room in his head, then the short corridor to the den and kitchen… Qui-Gon was there, at their computer terminal, peering down his nose at the soft glow of the screen and lightly stroking his short beard. Obi-Wan broke out into a wistful smile – that was his master. Muttering soft damnations at whatever he did not agree with and turning to tell his Padawan how things in the galaxy really should be. That was Qui-Gon.
The Padawan knew his home would be all the sweeter when he finally returned…
* * * *
His spine ached like it never had before.
His knees were raw from the carpet beneath him.
His neck was so stiff that even the slightest movement caused him pain –
He had been there, kneeling on the floor of the House's main room, for hours. Obi-Wan could feel the glare of the great family's eyes; their anger was an almost physical presence. They had questioned him endlessly, picking his answers apart and dissecting them as if the situation was more complex than it was – so much more than an achingly simple mistake.
Peyton Fauve had fallen from the tree. Obi-Wan had climbed up after him, hoping to keep the boy safe from just such an accident. Staying in the frame of mind that Peyton was his responsibility kept him sane enough while he waited for this nightmare to end, but it seemed he had only made things terribly worse.
With one leg hooked over a high branch and both arms hugging the trunk of the tree, he had hardly been in a position to grab Peyton when he fell sprawling through the air, tilting backward and landing hard on his neck.
Obi-Wan had cried out when he heard the resounding snap of bone, and slid down the rough bark to find that he was too late – of course. Peyton's eyes were open and the blank stare was a chilling reminder of the life lost early on in this terrible, terrible mess. His hands had hovered over the cooling body, trembling with shock, as he completely forgot everything around him.
He had failed.
Failed in his personal quest to be a Jedi in these circumstances, to go on and do what he had been conditioned and trained to do his entire life. To protect those who could not protect themselves – and Peyton had simply fallen. A victim of gravity, Obi-Wan supposed, and that was unusual since gravity had been defied for centuries. It was meaningless now – sentients could hover, fly, skim through the air as if it had solidified beneath their crafts. The boy had simply fallen but that had been enough.
Someone had seen and alerted the family, because Obi-Wan heard the muffled pounding of footsteps through the grass soon after, crossing the lawn, and he was bodily jerked up and pushed away while two of Peyton's brothers took his place at the fallen boy's side.
And now the questioning was finally over. Peyton's only parent, the Great Mother, regarded him silently, chewing on her ever present stick of spice. In anger, Peyton's brothers had hit Obi-Wan and he felt vaguely ashamed of his haggard appearance in the presence of their rich clothing – but then again, he was just a slave, after all. His cheek throbbed heatedly where one had backhanded him but he made no move to soothe it through touch.
"It may very well be true," the Great Mother began, her words slow and methodical, slurred by the spice stick tucked into her wrinkled cheek, "That you could not have helped our Peyton. I am partly to blame – I gave you to him – I should have had better judgment. A life has been lost due to my rash thinking." She waved off her children's soothing hands ("Oh, no, Mother…"), and said, "But I am certain that none of us – especially myself – could bear to see you in our house again, could bear to have you serve us any longer. Peyton was very dear to us all…
"A very close friend of mine, Bazil Grey, is willing to take you on for a short while. Regrettably, he is moving off-planet soon, but can use the extra help in his fields."
She paused, puckering her wrinkled mouth around the sticky sweet brown stick, and let her ancient, faded eyes slide half shut. "We are very disappointed," she said gravely, tiredly, and despite his position in their household, Obi-Wan's heart ached for their loss.