HELLO! :D It's me again, I'm back! I apologise profusely for my extended absence and thank you all for your continued patience with me. I'm also terribly sorry that this is such a short chapter, but don't worry, more will be following soon. :) I hope this update cheers everyone back at school up a bit.

This week's shout-outs go to: Time-Dog, sarahmichellegellarfan1, ahsokanerd, ArtistsChild93, Soofi Mtz, Lilyssy, Sarahfelixclaremordred and AliceTo! Thanks so much for reviewing, you lovely lot! :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. Only Alice is mine.


Super quick recap: Alice just arrived at Jabba's palace, she's a slave girl, Lando's a guard, we're going undercover, and ACTION!


Nyra guided Alice towards Jabba's throne; the huge slug didn't pay them any attention, just went on munching live, frog-like creatures straight out of a bowl of liquid by his throne. Gross, gross, gross.

"Master," Nyra said, bowing once before addressing the Hutt smoothly in the same alien language she'd used earlier. Listening to it now, Alice could almost catch some sense in it; some of the words sounded familiar, but minutely altered so they weren't at first recognisable.

Jabba rumbled something dismissively in reply, and Nyra turned to Alice, "Up there. You go."

"Right," she whispered back, following the way the woman pointed to where a large ornate fan rested in a corner, "thank you." She took Nyra's hand in hers and gave it a grateful squeeze. The woman blinked in surprise, then smiled, and moved away, heading across the room to join an impossibly odd selection of people, including a frankly bizarre she-woman-frog thing with huge eyelashes and puckered-up lips. Woah. Mother of all duck faces.

"Concentrate, Alice."

Oh. Yeah. Right.

She got to her feet and edged her way around Jabba's throne to where her new best friend, i.e. the fan, was waiting for her. She picked it up, hefting it in one hand, then glanced around uncertainly. So do I just like…start fanning him? What if he doesn't want to be fanned? What do I do then?

Taking her life in her hands, Alice bravely took up a place behind Jabba's throne and started wafting the fan gently back and forth. When the slug didn't immediately explode (literally or otherwise), she breathed a sigh of relief, and decided that the best thing to do was probably to keep going until someone told her to stop. Probably that would turn out to be easier said than done – it was quite a heavy fan, now she thought about it.

Luckily, there was other stuff to keep her entertained in the meantime. Across the room, Nyra had joined a row of two other women, and the frog lady was strutting back and forth, clearly preparing to do something. There came a sharp burst of static, like microphone interference, then suddenly someone shouted what Alice guessed would be an alien approximation of 'A one, a two, a one, two, three, four!', and a hitherto unnoticed band began to blare out a harsh, jazzy sounding tune. It became clear a moment later that the frog lady was in fact the lead singer of this odd little ensemble, and Nyra and her two companions were the back-up vocalists.

As the song rambled on, another woman, green-skinned and wearing a jumpsuit that was practically made of string, strode into the clear space in the middle of the room. Alice watched, the muscles in her forearms starting to burn dully, as the woman started to dance. She was good – the one jolting detail that stopped Alice from enjoying the performance at all was that she was chained by the neck to Jabba's throne. She was holding it in her hands, giving herself slack so she could move freely. It was a reminder – as if Alice needed one – that she'd walked herself into quite a serious situation indeed.

The song came to an extremely dramatic conclusion, and there was plenty of applause; but Jabba, it seemed, was an unimaginative sod as well as a pervert, and demanded the same song to be played a second time. Alice was almost starting to get bored and was gazing around the room when suddenly a small alcove to the right caught her eye, mainly because it was specially lit from above, museum style. She frowned and peered closer. Standing there against the wall was a thick slab of dark material, with the outline of a man half emerging from it. Alice's eyes widened and she looked away quickly, trying to keep her expression neutral.

Oh my god, it's Han. He's right there. Can he hear anything? Don't worry, buddy, we're going to get you out of there…

Swinging the fan with new determination and plotting the moment when she would blow this popsicle stand wide open with Han and Lando in tow, she almost missed what was happening right in front of her. The green-skinned woman was still dancing, when all of a sudden, so quickly that she barely saw it, Jabba grabbed hold of the end of her chain and started dragging her towards him.

She resisted, playfully tugging the links back from him – but when he refused to let go, she started first to struggle, then to scream. Alice stopped fanning and stared in horror as she fought to break away from the super slug's slimy grip – no one else seemed to even notice, at least until Jabba, clearly infuriated by the woman's attempts to elude him, slammed something with a thick fist. Instantly a section of floor beneath the woman's feet dropped away, and with a scream, she disappeared. At the same time, another slab of concrete slid away, revealing a grate looking down onto a grimy pit.

Holy crap!

Throwing her fan to one side, Alice dashed forward to stare into the gaping hole in the floor. She wasn't alone – as soon as the girl fell, everyone in the room had crowded eagerly forward, including Jabba, whose throne moved jerkily across the floor to give him a prime viewing spot.

She elbowed her way between two cow-faced aliens and peered between the bars. She could just see the green-skinned woman crouching in the shadows, quite clearly terrified. For a moment she glanced up at the room above, and Alice had to bite her tongue to stop herself from yelling anything inappropriate. Like: for God's sake, help her, please.

Suddenly a vicious growling noise rumbled up from somewhere in the pit beyond her line of sight, and the woman let out a shriek of fear, throwing herself into a corner and cowering.

With a rush of horror as she understood what was going to happen, Alice stumbled backwards, bumped into someone, and fell over, taking the unknown person with her.

"I'm sorry," she said quickly, shoving herself away from the stranger as quickly as possible and keeping her eyes on the floor, "I didn't mean to-"

An unpleasant chittering noise interrupted her, and she flinched back as she looked up and saw the huge black eyes and mass of quivering tentacles on the face of the alien before her. Jesus…

"I'm sorry-"

"Allow me to assist you," said someone, their voice sounding slightly distorted, as though coming over a PA system.

Alice looked up, and saw, to her utter fear, the pastel green hand of Boba Fett stretched out towards her.

"Uhh…" Intelligence snapping back into her brain, Alice ducked her head, avoiding his helmeted gaze as she put her hand into his, "Thank you, sir."

"You're not hurt?"

"No…fine, thanks…"

He cocked his head on one side, "Good. Jabba would be upset if his slave girls weren't able to dance for him." He tipped his head back towards the circle of aliens currently watching Jabba's last slave-girl being eaten by some unknown monster.

A sweat broke out on the back of Alice's neck and she instantly developed a stutter, "O-of course, sir." She swallowed and curtsied as best she could, "Excuse me."

Pulling her hand away from him, she hurried through the crowd, searching desperately for Lando's distinctive helmet. Eventually she spotted him loitering near a back wall. She had to resist her urge to pounce on him, telling herself that making a beeline for the man who'd brought her here as a captive probably wouldn't be that sensible. Luckily, she spotted Nyra standing just past him with the rest of the band, her lip curled slightly as she watched the crowd, and changed her course slightly, heading for her fellow slave instead. As she passed Lando though, she knocked into him deliberately, bumping him so hard he stumbled.

Thankfully, Lando was smart enough to understand her game.

"Hey," he snapped, his hand shooting out to grab her upper arm and pulling her close to him, "watch it."

Alice bowed her head in an attitude of apology and hissed, "I can't do this."

"What?" He muttered back, keeping one eye on their surroundings, "Why not?"

"Boba Fett just said something to me!"

"He didn't recognise you, did he?"

She twitched nervously, "No, I don't think so, no…"

"Then what's the problem?"

"Well, the other tiny little baby problem is that that woman just died!"

He winced. "I know, and I'm sorry, but you can't back out now."

"I don't see why not," she said, defiantly.

"Alice, you're a slave now."

"…Oh. Yeah."

"I'm sorry you had to see that," he whispered quickly, releasing her and pushing her a couple of steps away from himself with an expression of disgust, "but as long as you keep your head down and don't draw attention to yourself, you should be fine."

She cringed, and stumbled away in the direction of Nyra, who to her faint alarm was watching both her and Lando with an expression that was completely inscrutable and yet somehow very knowing. Luckily, by the time that Alice actually reached her, it looked like the band was ready to strike up again, and Nyra just placed a gentle hand on Alice's shoulder, before pushing her back towards Jabba's throne.

Feeling a bit stupid, Alice completed her round trip of the throne room and took up her place with the fan again, keeping a slightly paranoid eye out for Boba Fett, though she couldn't seem to spot him anywhere. The band was playing a painfully upbeat, cheerful tune.

It was a long time before they band finally lowered their instruments and started packing them away. There was a round of applause that Alice didn't feel inclined to join in with, even if she hadn't been holding a huge fan. Slowly, people started filtering away, leaving the room through the many myriad doors that honeycombed the walls. It was like there'd been some secret signal to leave. She glanced tentatively at Jabba – he was still lounging in his throne, but after a second, she realised from his rumbling snores that he'd fallen asleep. So…can I go, or what?

Nyra appeared beside her, and reaching out, took the fan from her grip and set it back against the wall. "Very good," she said, in a tone of approval, "his mightiness tired. We may eat now, rest."

"Alright," Alice said, flexing her fingers, which felt as numb as her heart did right now, "okay."

Her fellow slave gave her a small, slightly pitying smile, and beckoned her across the room. As she followed quietly behind, she felt a hand on her shoulder, and a low voice muttered, "Well done." She turned, trying to find the source of the voice, and just managed to catch a glimpse of Lando's dark eyes and warm smile gleaming at her from beneath his helmet before he melted back into the shadows and disappeared.

Alice tried to pay attention to the route they took – she noticed that Nyra was taking her down a completely different set of corridors from the ones they'd walked down before, anyway. It's lucky I've got a chum to tell me where to go, she reflected as they walked, otherwise I'd be screwed.

They came to a halt in a dormitory-type room that was full to bursting with female slaves – true to what the doorkeeper had said, none of them were human. Alice's jaw dropped slightly as she saw just how many of them were crowded into the one room. There were ten beds in the room, shoved close together; there had to be three times that number of slaves. Nyra forged ahead, unconcerned, but Alice had to force herself to move, shrinking into herself as she squeezed through the crowd of women.

Her guide didn't stop until she reached the end of the room, where one of the beds lay conspicuously empty – obviously Nyra had some kind of stake on it. To Alice's surprise, she turned towards her and gestured towards the empty bed, "Wait here," she said, in a motherly tone.

"B-but-" Alice stammered guiltily, "I don't want to take your space…"

But Nyra would brook no argument and pushed Alice gently down onto the mattress before settling her lithe frame on the floor and staring peaceably up at the small skylight cut into the ceiling above Alice's bed. Resigned, she lay back on the rickety bed and tried to get as comfortable as possible; then she tilted her head back and gazed up at the skylight, just as Nyra was.

Lando had said that he would try and find her after dark – would he have to wait until the other girls fell asleep? What if she fell asleep before he came? She was ridiculously tired…

Trying to keep her eyes open, she listened to the sounds of the other women as they settled down to sleep, and wondered how long they had been here, and how many of them had been slaves all their lives. She thought of the woman who had died dancing today – Christ, I don't even know her name – and clenched her fists.

She wished there was some way she could get all the other slaves out as well, though realistically she knew it was impossible, unless they managed to kill Jabba or something. She could just imagine the look on Leia's face if she and Lando turned up not just with Han but with thirty-odd slave women in tow.

"Be still, Alice," Ben said, sounding fond and vaguely amused, "all will be well. You must simply trust in the Force."

It's alright for you to say, she retorted, you're not the one in the bikini.


Despite her best intentions, she did end up falling asleep, only to jolt awake a few hours later.

She never usually woke up during the night, apart from after one of her nightmares; but then again, she didn't generally sleep in unsafe, wooden beds in the middle of a mumbling sea of sleeping slaves in a crime lord's palace. She sat up, squinting through the darkness – the room was lit only by the moonlight streaming in through the window about her head. It picked out the faint forms of the other women in the room, all sleeping peacefully, far too peacefully for creatures enslaved.

Feeling vaguely sick, she got to her feet, and began to pick her way across the room and towards the door. She didn't know why the sight of her fellows all asleep disturbed her quite so much, but she couldn't think of anything worse than remaining in the room with them. Perhaps I should get some exploring done…

She poked her head around the door, glanced left, then right, then stepped out into the corridor, her bare feet making no sound on the stone floor.

Right, Jabba. Time to get to grips with your palace.

Throwing caution to the winds, she wandered away down the corridor, making a careful note of the number of doorways she passed and which way she turned. She'd been walking for about five minutes when she heard a rattle of metal on metal to her left. Curious, she paused, and poked her head carefully through the door from where the sound was coming. Through the gloom she could just made out a wide expanse of metal bars; presumably a row of prison cells. Well, that's useful to know about…

"You! What are you doing?" Alice jumped, and whirled around to find Lando grinning down at her, his moustache twitching in amusement at his own wit.

"Lando," she hissed, thumping him solidly in the shoulder, "you almost gave me a bloody heart attack, you moron."

He gave her a quick smile and pulled her into a small alcove where the shadows would hide them from prying eyes, "Sorry I couldn't come find you earlier, Fett put me on an earlier patrol shift than usual. What are you doing wandering around?"

"I couldn't sleep," she said, defensively, "I thought I'd get some exploring done, in case I ever have to make a daring escape."

"That's more than likely," he said, looking serious for once. "Did you see where Han is?"

"Yes."

"And do you think you could find your way there from your sleeping quarters?"

Alice thought back to the route that she and Nyra had taken to get back to the dormitories earlier, and nodded, "Yes, I think so."

"Good. Meet me there tomorrow night after everyone's asleep. We'll get him out of hibernation and get out of here."

"Thank goodness. Boba Fett was looking at me weird today."

"Maybe he likes you," Lando said, waggling his eyebrows comically.

Alice was not amused, "Shut up. Or I'll shave your moustache off while you sleep."

"You wouldn't dare," he said, narrowing his eyes.

"Well, I guess you'll never know until it's too late. I should get back to bed. Don't want to blow this undercover thing on the first night."

He nodded, and with a tentative smile, she slid out of the alcove, turned and started heading back towards the dormitories. She made it all the way to just outside the costume store, when quite suddenly, a hand closed tightly around her wrist. Alice jumped and nearly cried out, but the sound was stifled by a gloved hand that smashed roughly into her mouth. Her heart pounding and locked in an iron grip, Alice glanced down, and felt ice spread through her veins.

Boba Fett's green-suited hand encircled her wrist, his fingers digging into her skin. As she stared, panic-stricken at the floor, he leaned forward and murmured in her ear, "I don't know what you're up to, slave. But I know you're hiding something. And you should know that at the first sign of anything…suspicious..." He carefully shifted his hand from where it rested over her mouth to wrap easily around her throat, "It will give me only too much pleasure to turn you over to Jabba and have him deal with you as he sees fit. Do you understand me?"

For a moment, she could barely reply; his grip on her neck brought back a spasm of the panic that she'd felt when Vader had strangled her, and it stuck her words in her throat.

"Slave?"

"Yes, sir," Alice whispered, forcing the word out.

"Excellent."

He released her, and she staggered forward numbly, single-mindedly following the route back to the dormitory whilst running over his threat again and again in her head. He suspects me, but he doesn't recognise me. He doesn't know what I'm doing…maybe he thinks I'm an assassin or something…

Shaking, she slipped back into the room, and practically flew across the floor to her bed. Remind me never to go exploring again…


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