Author's Note:
My littlest brother caught dengue fever last week. That wasn't as worrying as the fact that he dropped into shock and had to be moved to the ICU last Saturday night. Considering that my father never left the ICU alive, pardon me if that gave me the chills and I couldn't think of anything else than him. So, with many apologies, here is the belated chapter.
'-
Banquet
In which Tom figures out that they've been complacent. What happens next isn't pretty.
'-
Tom made sure that Anakin and Shmi were already out of the way.
There was an adult body motionless on the floor.
He should've known the apparently easygoing life they'd had so far couldn't last. They were slaves, to one of the major crime bosses of Tattooine. Which part of that life did he not get?
How did they get to this point again?
There are more than seven sentient species on Tattooine, Tom thought back to all the things that Anakin had been trying to stuff into his brain.
More than seven sentient, spacefaring species set on settling this sad planet, and half of the crime lords here are unsurprisingly human, Tom concluded on his own.
He wasn't sure that Anakin noticed that, not the way he did. Darth Vader still had 'following orders' to explain his career, no matter how shoddy the excuse; Voldemort has no such recourse. He was quite aware of humanity's weaknesses and vices—and humans can be quite depraved indeed. He would know—he played his underlings against each other utilising them whenever he suspected that a coup was in the works, or someone was getting cocky.
Sure, Anakin might've gotten around this life once already and knew what to expect, but he was sure the blond had fallen back to old habits and patterns after a while without a second thought. It wasn't such a bad thing to do when one was intent on merely surviving, but Tom was sure his sibling didn't have that many memories from around this age either, if the way he was unfamiliar with many of the staffs around were any indication. Children had a limited view of the world, and that would affect what memories they keep… as well as what they would not even remember because they didn't even realise it then.
That Anakin wouldn't know about some of the things that could prove to be a threat to them should've been his first warning. He realised that and increased his own awareness. He kept his eyes open and absorbed as much useful information as possible about his new surroundings and began figuring out how things worked—first in the kitchen and slave dining area they seem to be confined to, and then the greater compound of Gardulla's. He'd thought it would be enough instead of bringing the concern to his brother and talked.
He felt like casting the Cruciatus on himself for that carelessness. Why on earth did Harry even consider making the deal to you, if not for the gains of getting two minds on a problem?
The overconfidence was going to be the death of him again if he didn't watch it.
Megalomania could possibly also evolve later on from that bad seed and mess with his actions even more, but this wasn't the time for post-op analysis nor for being nostalgic and maudlin. You see, there's this fracas that had somehow developed…
'-
It began with curry.
Tom had a large dish of eeopie curry to balance as he dodged a panicked girl in the same livery already, urgently trying to locate a strategic place to set it down at, while at the same time ensuring that he kept an eye on his brother. From a distance and across all the people, all he could see was Anakin was staring a little too long at some spot to his left.
Anakin, someone's going to be looking for their drinks soon. He tried his best to draw Anakin's attention back to the bottle he was carrying. It wasn't working. He pulled his mental shields down, not caring whether he'd be able to pull it back up without assistance later or not. There were no Jedis or Siths around to notice, were there?
Anakin!
That yell got his brother moving, but from his distant look, Tom knew that Anakin wasn't fully here yet. He had to place the pot down for now. No one would be looking for him specifically back in the kitchen to bring food out. There were a lot of people serving as waiters today.
Anakin, what's wrong?
His brother wasn't answering and that was a cause of alarm on its own.
He could feel sparks brewing right across the bond he shared with his twin and backtracked his thoughts as he scanned the room again, trying to find out whatever it was had set his brother off. Right, the minor crime boss at one end of the table and the tentacled dancing girl he'd just dragged into his lap. Her face was thickly made up, and her clothes made him wonder how her assets had yet to spill out completely in that getup. She was playing coy, and he was happily trying to get his hands on her.
"You're the prettiest girl here, you know that?" The orange-green crime boss said.
"I bet you say that to all the girls."
"Nooooo. You are. I challenge anyone to call me wrong!" He blabbed. She giggled at that. Tom scoffed. That set Anakin off? The scene was as predictable as it was nauseating, and they were…
Wait.
Not everything in this room is as it seems; hadn't he learned that lesson enough when he arrived at Hogwarts? Was he a wizard or a muggle? He was not a child, and neither was Anakin, and regardless of how they had acted so far, that was all it ever was—an act. He remembered the useful trick that the blond had taught him to use by connecting to the vivid magical field around them (this universe's magical atmosphere was certainly stronger than what he was used to, or maybe it was earth that was weaker than general). It was not exactly legilimens, as they weren't trying to read people's minds with it, but one can feel the emotions of other people if one paid attention.
The dancing girl's smile was a little too wide, her laughter a little too forced. He wouldn't have noticed it if he didn't pay attention, and he wouldn't have if he hadn't tried feeling her with this very convenient magic sense (Force sense, whatever, Anakin could correct him as many times as he wanted later on, Tom just wasn't used to it yet).
Under the veneer of activity and poise, she was a turbulence of self-hate.
He twitched a little and studiously avoided sensing her again. Her emotions scraped at him like sandpaper—and he'd only scratched the surface.
Tom relieved another young servant of a dish that had to be delivered to the table, earning a thankful look from the boy. Tom paid him no mind—he was just too lazy to go all the way back to the kitchen when he had things to watch here and it gave him an excuse to approach the table to drop it off. His attention turned to the left from the blue girl and saw a green one, just painted and outfitted in the same way and with a different crime underling. This guy was all sleazy smiles topped with the unshakeable belief that he was the Universe's gift to women. Unlike the other girl, the green one's discomfort was palpable and she wasn't even acting coy when she said no. Predictably, the guy wasn't even listening to it. No one paid attention to Tom as he slunk around and dropped the large plate he carried on the table.
He checked on Anakin again through their bond and found that even if his brother was in a foul mood, he was also slightly distracted by something else somehow. No emergency there yet.
"I said I don't want to—"
"Aww, don't be that way, babe. I'll show you a good time, I promise—"
"I said—"
He forced a kiss on her, and it earned him a slap. Tom couldn't help but felt his senses on alert before the sleazeball laughed it off. He wondered if the girl knew what it would entail if he had complained about her conduct to Gardulla. Maybe she was new.
She met his gaze before pressing her lips in a thin line and looked away as embarrassment warred with anger, but what was unmistakable was her stubbornness despite it all.
It was Leena.
Tom stared for another moment before he shook his head, not quite believing his eyes. To know that the green female was someone he did know brought with it another layer of… wrongness he didn't know was possible. Her shoulders were curled upon herself instead of the straight and unwavering mistress of the kitchen—an unconscious reaction for prey creatures to make themselves look smaller and hopefully less noticeable to a predator. She wasn't the loud and insistent guardian of the kids, she was prey creature. Something was off in his universe that Tom didn't like it. He liked things to be predictable and in their proper places.
But of course things weren't right in the universe. It was the cynical voice he had developed since his first death, and here he thought he'd conveniently lost it somehow.
She is a thing, here, the same way that Anakin is a thing and Shmi Skywalker is a thing and we are. A Thing, that is. Things are there to be used and with no right to dissent or complain.
He gave her whatever wish she had to not be recognised, walking away without a backward glance as he searched for his brother through the crowd again. He didn't know what Anakin would've done in his position, but he was quite aware that he was a mere four year old without a wand, without a competent hold on wandless magic either. Even Anakin was still spotty on that count. Interfering with anything now was more trouble than it was worth, though he wouldn't say no to nuking this place from orbit if he had the opportunity to at some later date. Maybe even with the slaves and all. Surely an easy and quick death would scarcely be more miserable than continuing their pathetic lives?
…no, he didn't hate this place.
Really.
Hate implies that there is something very personal about the affront. To him, there wasn't anything personal about his intense dislike of the hell-hole that Anakin had the misfortune to call childhood. His opinion that the place could use a little… redevelopment was a very sane, very reasonable assessment that he was sure any planetary development panel would agree with.
He would also admit that he had never even thought for a second about how slaves and other people living in indentured servitude lived before this—it wasn't as if modern Britain and the wizarding world had anything like it. Even house-elfs were mostly out of necessity, as they fed on the magic of stronger beings to help sustain them (else they wither away or go mad, which was never pretty). The system was also not beneficial to any creature except the ones at the top, greedily draining the ones at the lower rungs out of anything worth leeching. Now that he'd seen firsthand how such an environment warped most of the sentients within it, he decided there was no good reason to allow it to stand.
It was a system that was not conducive to produce anything much out of it, if it ever did at all.
Oh, sure, it was better than outright chaos and war and people killing each other or tribes running raids and counter-raids against each other and killing themselves off into oblivion. Yet when that's the best reason you have for keeping a social system around is that it's better than war, there's definitely something wrong with it.
Of course, the same thing could be said of Death Eaters and any other Voldemort's force of terror, and how in the end, it was designed to improve no one's lot but the dark lord's own, but Tom was conveniently not-thinking about it. It had occurred to him, yes, but as it was rather unpleasant to be reminded of one's own incompetence and bad choices, he glossed over it. He thought he had a pretty good reason to do that too. Focus, he thought, on the present, and not on the past.
So he pulled himself out of his thoughts and tried to locate Anakin again.
It was annoying having to duck or avoid some people's steps just because they weren't looking down. On the other hand, it made him completely free to walk around not doing his supposed job as most wouldn't even spot him loitering.
He felt Anakin's emotions spike, and Tom ran towards his brother without thinking.
Anger, as familiar to him as the back of his hand, but this time it was burning hot and swirling than his own cold and sharp-edged one and he knew for certain that it was his twin's. There was a crash in the direction he was running to, but there had been more than a few crashes all around, considering that people had begun to get drunk. He counted that as a good thing, as it meant Anakin wouldn't be drawing attention with whatever it was he did, and he found his brother soon enough after that.
There was a man coughing and gasping on the floor. Anakin was staring at the fool with an intense malice—Tom was sure his eyes were not supposed to be yellow.
"Ani! Ani, it's alright, shhh, it's alright. I'm here for you Ani. Everything would be fine…" Shmi hugged Anakin, running her hands through his features to ascertain her son was alright. Anakin blinked and his eyes were blue once more, and he stared at his surroundings like a man not fully awake from a nightmare. Neither of them had seen him yet, so Tom was free to continue to observe.
"Mom?"
With his light coloured eyes and blond hair, Anakin looked so painfully young and lost.
"I'm alright. Shhhhhh, my poor, poor baby. Everything would be alright…" She crooned and petted him like one would treat skittish wildlife.
He'd only noticed that Shmi was wearing the same sort of getup he had seen Leena and other dancing girls wore. He'd recognised the top, or the nonexistent scrap that it is, anywhere. He could easily guess the sort of task that was assigned to his mother.
It wasn't hard to imagine what his brother would do if he saw a guest being stupid, and doing actions that can certainly be classified as tempting suicide-by-Skywalker.
The air reeked of the Dark Arts.
He twitched. Not good, he thought quickly, looking around. It would explain that blast of power he'd felt bursting from Anakin. If the way the closest slaves had backed away from them, he guessed it wasn't unfelt either by the non-magic sensitives.
To his continuing surprise, Shmi was unaffected. He had no idea how ordinary woman like her could've shrugged away anything she'd been experiencing before and was more concerned for her son (who could certainly defend himself), than her own well-being. She fascinated him, this Skywalker mother of his, with her expression of endless compassion (how does she generate it without limit?). He looked away. There wasn't enough time to analyse her.
They were in enough crap already.
Bollocks, Tom thought, pinching the bridge of his nose.
A quick glance showed that Shmi was uninjured, as was Anakin. So… priorities. Damage control it is, then, he decided.
It would've been better if the idiot was just dead—a corpse can't talk, after all. With the feast going on, it would provide a lot of suspects to take the suspicion off them. He could bet that the man had made some enemies in the course of his chosen career. Unfortunately for him, the idiot was still breathing, him being flat on his back and dead drunk notwithstanding.
He'd just have to work with that.
Tom took a glass from the table. "Sir? Are you alright? You look like you could use a drink."
He did his best to look helpful, even going so far to assist the man to sit. The idiot took it, and predictably raved about the unthankful serving girl who couldn't see that she was being lucky that he had chosen her, and the boy who didn't know his place and need to be—
Once the man was comfortable enough to relax his guard again, Tom walked right up to his face, held his temples and made sure the man stared into his eyes.
"Legilimens." He enunciated.
"What are you doing?"
He cursed inwardly for his shaky control right now, but ploughed on. "Legilimens. Legilimens!"
"Stop that—"
He stopped reacting once Tom managed to launch himself inside his head, tearing his puny defences down and strolling through his thoughts and memories like he owned it. Then, he wrecked havoc with the man's short term memories. If he tore thoughts instead of plucking them, threw entire memory sets in disarray instead of collating them aside, well, the man's overall well-being wasn't Tom's concern at all.
Now, where is that memory? He thought he saw glimpses of Shmi Skywalker's image, the man's graceless groping that made Tom consider skewering his hand with a red-hot nail to teach him a lesson (she was his mother here, certainly not the stupid man's property). He caught it, as well as several others where Anakin started to collect uncontrolled magic around him, in which not a little were tinged with darkness. It was not with little delight that he figured out his brother had unconsciously been applying a type of Cruciatus (who knew how similar they are?) At the very least the man had gotten what he deserved.
Tom shredded the memories until nothing remained but a fuzzy groping and intense pain. Let's see if he learns from his lesson, shall we? He thought to himself, darkly amused. The man was swaying, his nausea beginning to be obvious. Some blubbering and headaches wouldn't kill him. He thought he heard the man heave and backed away quickly, leaving him to puke his guts out.
Some vomiting wasn't going to kill him either, Tom noted to himself, not entirely displeased by the development. Now, to make sure that Anakin wasn't still tapping on the Dark Arts. He strode quickly to where the remaining Skywalkers were sitting on the floor.
"Anakin. Anakin."
His brother was shielding his eyes from the light, groaning. Some side effect of the power rush, maybe. He spoke quickly, in a lower tone to make sure only his brother heard it. "Take Mother out of here and make sure no one finds out where you're both are. We need to get her to some place safer."
He turned to Shmi. Taking a deep breath, he tried to remember how to look worried. He was supposed to be worried for his brother, right? So nervousness it is. The tremors were easy enough to show. He was still high on adrenaline.
"Mother, can you please take Ani back? He… hasn't been feeling well."
To his surprise, she pulled him into her arms and hugged him. He froze for three seconds, and thought it was really a matter of good luck that he didn't have a wand on him or he'd have sent a curse her way. Her scent was comforting instead of unpleasant for reasons he couldn't quite explain, and it was pricking his curiosity. She kissed his forehead and let him go.
"I'll take care of your brother, Tam. Are you sure you'll be alright?" She asked.
He nodded, and he couldn't help a smirk from forming. Considering that the other option was for Anakin to use Dark Arts to kill idiots left and right, the situation was still an improvement over that.
"Of course I will. Don't worry, Mum."
'-
So… where was he? Fracas, check. Unconscious idiot, check.
Right.
After seeing Anakin and Shmi off, he walked back into the banquet and considered watching the vomiting idiot to make sure the quick mindscrew he did worked and he dodged the clumps of people and congregating crowds. The closer he got to the fool, the more lingering looks he noticed that he was getting from the other kids, and even some of the adult slaves. The guests were too occupied with their own entertainment and fun most of the times, but it still made him wary. He rolled his eyes. It was the orphanage all over again, though the difference now was that he couldn't care less.
When his way forward was suddenly blocked, he looked up in annoyance, to the familiar lizard face of old man Ta'krul.
"Tamlin. I was looking for you."
That sounded ominous. He kept his expression neutral. "You were, Sir?"
"Anakin's behaviour to a guest is atrocious. I heard you weren't much better either." He said with a sniff, bearing down at him with the full weight of his gaze. Tom kept the slightly vacant smile he had, his voice pitched to be perfectly pleasant.
"I'm sorry that a guest was disappointed. But he did have a good time, didn't he?"
Ta'krul huffed, his look turning into a full glare. "Enough. There's no need to pretend anymore. We know you've been up to something, and it's best if you were to admit it straight away."
He sighed, appropriately morose, "Anakin can't ever see Mother being sad, you see? He gets carried away."
"Well he should think before he acts, then! All actions against the most honoured guests are fitting for punishments."
"He didn't mean to push the man out of his chair," Tom said, keeping his face blank as incredulity flashed past Ta'krul's face at the moment. "I helped him up, but he threw up. Maybe he drank too much."
"He pushed the man out of his chair," Ta'krul said slowly, staring at Tom. Tom nodded with the same smile he had the entire time.
"Yes. Why do you ask? What did the guest said?"
"You should make sure that it does not happen again," the protocoler snapped at him, and Tom pretended he didn't notice the not-answer given. Old man Takrul didn't have an ounce of proof, then, he reasoned. "There are enough witnesses of the argument that happened after that."
"Of course I will." He held back from smiling wider. It would've been too obvious.
"You should count yourself lucky that you'll only receive some lashes for it. Learn from it."
His eyes widened, incredulous. Wait, what? Lashes? What the hell?
"Lashes?"
"We don't believe in soft modern discipline, boy! Nothing makes slaves toe the line properly like a good lashing!" The Saurin retorted firmly, pride suffusing his voice. Tom was still staring at him in disbelief.
"Don't worry, we have your size too, it wouldn't be dangerous, not like if we used adult-sized whips tomorrow morning. We're not barbarians, you know? Sleep well and tell your brother to sleep well too—it would be your last chance for a good night's sleep in more than a week."
Tom held back from allowing his eyebrows to rise incredulously high on his face as he watched the Saurin walk away, the alienness of this world still jarring to him. Is he even serious? Fuck it, he is. What sort of messed up place did Anakin grow up in, anyway? He gave a cold glare to anyone bothering to look at him with schadenfreude, or even worse, pity. It wasn't as if the punishment would kill him, he knew. He wasn't an actual four years old and neither was Anakin.
It didn't mean that he wasn't pissed off.
That's it. I'll find a way to nuke it from orbit years from now.
'-
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