Title: A Different Slavery
Characters/Pairings: Anakin
A/N: One wonders if he really felt this way.
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars.
Anakin lives in slavery for the first nine years of his life and when he meets Qui-Gon Jinn it seems for all the world as though this man is his ticket to freedom. The Jedi are creatures of legend, immortal warriors who wield blades of light. Surely they are free from all harm; there is no slavery that can entrap a Jedi, Anakin tells himself.
And so he manages to convince himself for the next six months.
But then, one morning, he looks in the mirror.
Anakin has only a small mirror in his quarters; Jedi are not permitted large mirrors or mirrors of any passable quality (vanity is of the Dark Side, after all). He stares into his small, round face, and the Padawan braid clinks at his side.
It lays like lead against his shoulder, and Anakin realizes what he's traded slavery on Tatooine for.
A mark that signals him as different from everyone else. Labor and pain. A feeling of injustice, constantly on the verge of overwhelming him. A world that forbids him from seeing his mother. A man he calls 'Master'.
Jedi are as much slaves as the thralls of Tatooine. They just call him 'Padawan' here.