Author's Note:
So. My sister got married and since my parents are dead I had to stand in for them. Add to the fact that I was actually holding back the pain from the stomach bug I had the day before, it was a special kind of torture. Didn't get better until two days afterwards, so yeah, my regular schedule went out the window. Sorry about that.
'-
Punishment
Pain does not actually hurt that much compared to being powerless. This was an old lesson that the twins received a refresher on.
'-
The day had barely even started when the Skywalker's modest room received an unpleasant visitor. When he made his way to the door, he could see his mother shaking her head, while a more annoying voice droned on. Tom didn't need to hear the conversation from the beginning to know it was upsetting her.
"This is for their own good, Shmi. If you had taught them better they wouldn't be in trouble now," the grizzled Saurin said. Ta'krul stood with all the pride of pompous windbags everywhere. Shmi Skywalker gasped, hands covering her mouth in disbelief. "It's better that they learn now to become better slaves."
"No, no, no… it's not true. Why my babies, Ta'krul?"
He scoffed. "They are not babies anymore. They are ruffians and a positive menace when no one's looking. They need to be taught a lesson."
"They didn't do anything wrong!"
If Tom hadn't clenched his hands around Anakin's arm, the blond would have jumped ahead and tackled the geezer, four-year-old body or not. Tom sighed as he distributed his weight a little before his twin marched away and dragged him along. Anakin was still a little too touchy to anything and anyone that distressed his mother.
"Seriously, if we're going to kill him, we should find a place without eyewitnesses," Tom whispered. "You wouldn't want her to see it, do you?"
Most people can't tell a lie worth a damn, and any moderately skilled interrogator would be able to pry the truth from them without much difficulty. It wasn't much of a stretch that Shmi Skywalker was as average as anyone else. Tension radiated away from Anakin in one final sigh.
"I really shouldn't, not in anger" Anakin growled.
"But would you? I mean, it's not as if he's anyone too important, or anything," Tom speculated.
Anakin sighed, even as they ignored Old Man Ta'krul's further efforts to inform their mother of what their mistakes were, what their punishments were and the precise time and date for it. "We're not risking Dark Side, Tam."
He shrugged. "Well, I still needed to ask. I suppose it would be such a bother to drag him around with these chubby arms and legs, though. Yeah, not worth the bother."
Anakin snorted, still too pissed off to correct his brother's words. Even so, there was a glimmer of a smile.
The twins would've been fine being ignored, but they attracted attention just as they were turning back. Old Man Ta'krul pulled himself to his full height and stared at them.
"You two! Listen and remember well! In two more hours you'd be taken to the Southwest kitchen to be punished. Remember your mistakes well and repent."
Anakin balled his hands into fists, but only glared back. Tom settled giving him an unamused look. He could complain, but it would've been taken even more wrongly. It would've been a fiasco after that, and Anakin certainly didn't need any more triggers. The silence stretched on to uncomfortable levels. They had unnerved the Saurin slightly—the leave he took was certainly awkward. Neither of the twins had blinked or took their eyes off him when he walked away.
Well, Tom thought, that wasn't so bad. It was just tedious. It wasn't as if he was unaware of what was in store for him today.
Then his Skywalker mother came over to the two of them, hugged them, and promptly burst into tears. Anakin hugged her back just as tightly while Tom gave an awkward wriggle from where he stood.
I take it back, he groused. This is… uncomfortable.
'-
The Southwest kitchen wasn't precisely a room as such; it was a small plaza bordered on all sides with a kitchen. The plaza itself was lightly covered with tent at all times, unless there was a sandstorm coming and then the tent would be lower in height and tightly wrapped. Its large size meant that it wasn't often used, not when there were other kitchens in the complex just as large and outfitted with more modern trappings.
What it was still often used for was as an open-air abbattoir, and as punishment grounds. Tom walked into the plaza beside Anakin, shirtless, Ta'krul Has Dal walking in front of them. There was small channel cut into the stone on the grounds, painted red from the last animal they slaughtered there. The stone basin the channel emptied to was still half-filled with blood.
He stepped on something small and squishy. It was pinkish. He resolutely did not try to pick out the details.
The place stinks with blood too, as well as the half-rotten remains of the occasional forgotten offal and intestine. The miasma permeated uncomfortably to the back of his nose, choking. If he wasn't as used to it, he would've been tempted to gag. The skins of various animals were piled on one corner. There was a skinned eeopie hung on a meathook, headless.
A man that couldn't have been anyone else but the butcher (no one was as bloody as he is) looked disgruntled to have been usurped from his own grounds, but said nothing except for murmurred curses as he stood aside. Some of the older children had been dragged there too, and they were looking at anywhere but the Skywalker twins. Several other adults of various species hung back, ill at ease. Two other women were alternately trying to hold back Shmi Skywalker and calm her down. He tuned them out. There was a loud argument between Leena and some furry guy that he could care less about, but it would seem that his rank won out in the end because she ended up getting the slave children to enter the plaza. The younger ones were in various shades of curious and alarmed.
It was probably all the blood and butchered parts. He could hear a young boy choke off a scream from a skull at his feet.
There was that little girl with large dark eyes again, fear for them in her eyes and not a little worry too. She would've approached them and asked them what was wrong if her father wasn't holding her by the shoulder. The lizard boy next to her clung to his mother's skirt.
It could be due to the chains around his and Anakin's wrists.
"Attention!" The old Saurin called out. It was without a doubt the beginning of another long winded monologue and Tom could almost feel himself being preemptively sleepy. "We are all here to observe Discipline meted out and enforced—"
"Speak for yourself, old man!" Leena snapped.
"—don't be insolent, Caretaker, and know your place!"
Leena's eyes narrowed, her tentacles twitching. "I don't remember the punishments ever being this hard for anyone so young, Ta'krul. Why them, huh? Why not Akhee when he pinched one too many yoghurts from the kitchens?"
"He was lashed too! Sure you are not an idiot—"
She took a step closer, undaunted. "But not with this sort of audience! They're only four! Have you lost your mind?!"
"Are you challenging me?"
"Everyone, please calm down!" A third voice cut in. "Can't we just finish this? Now?"
It was an orange-coloured, furry male who said this, and he reminded Tom of some bizarre bipedal dog of sorts. He did manage to represent everyone else's distress with the rising animosity between the two. Most of the people there overruled the old geezer's officiousness, though no one could get him to back down on the punishment. Other women held their children by the shoulders firmer now, or picked them up and hugged them. More people had to come out to hold back Shmi Skywalker once more, and Tom stared at her tear-streaked face without understanding what it meant.
"Now, turn around boys, and walk up to those two posts. Trust me, it would be easier this way," the orange guy from before informed them. Anakin had gone ahead and followed the instructions, so Tom followed not long after that. "Thank you."
Old Man Ta'krul muttered under his breath. "Really, this isn't the way to do things…"
"Are we going to get this done sometime soon, or is this going to drag on until lunch?" Leena's voice was snide as she asked.
"Well, then!"
He gasped in surprise. Tom staggerred as the first lash of the whip hit and the pain seared his back. He gritted his teeth. He could hear a similar stumble next to him as the next crack fell upon his twin, along with a curse one wouldn't expect to hear from a four-year-old. Then, it returned to him with as much force as the first, the pain more vivid, and then the lash fell on Anakin again.
He could hear someone's choked sob and put it out of his mind, too focused on the burning sensation and too angry to care.
He could hear the youngest of the children crying.
It was too easy to change the pain into anger and use that to build a plan to erase this pisshole from the galaxy map some day. It had the beneficial side effect of stopping him from actually lashing out his uncontrolled magic.
It was certainly a lot easier than acknowledging just how helpless he was right now.
'-
They did not get as many lashes as they were supposed to, because the old geezer's hands were cramped after a while—yes, both of them, after he tried exchanging them.
Tom wasn't sure if his magic was leaking again but he wouldn't care if it was true. His entire back was throbbing and he could feel the occasional trickle of blood flowing.
The old man tried to get some others to replace him, like that orange guy, but almost everyone else had a good excuse or another and had gone off to their respective tasks. All that were left were people who clearly disagreed with him, like Leena.
Leena helped him up. "Are you alright?"
"Do you want me to answer that?" Tom asked back, voice raspy. It could just be the heat and he hadn't drunk enough water. She flinched, but he had moved on before she answered. Elie seemed to be hovering over Anakin even as he avoided her. The guilt he could feel from her direction didn't matter—what would he do, blame her? She was as powerless as any other slave her. Nothing mattered. He just wanted to lie down—
Tom hit the floor in exhaustion and passed out.
He would've been relieved to find out that Anakin dropped out not long after him.
'-
When he woke up, he was lying on a cot, on his stomach. His back was burning a little less than before and the astringent smell of medicinal salve was in the air. Anakin was in the cot next to his, for some reason also waking up at around the same time. Tom looked around the room and saw Shmi sleeping on a chair. He dragged himself up into a sitting position, wincing all the time.
"Shit," he spat.
"You could say that again," Anakin muttered.
"Shit," Tom replied, droll. His twin rolled his eyes.
"I remember being lashed when I was small, but I never thought it'd be this bad."
Tom gingerly touched his back and regretted that decision very quickly. "We don't remember a lot of things when we're small."
Anakin didn't answer immediately. When the silence began to confuse him, he carefully shifted himself to sit face-to-face with his sibling. The blond Skywalker was staring at his hands, opening and closing them slowly like late-blooming flowers. He experimented with poking his twin through this weird magic-sense they have, he could sense Anakin's emotion's churning beneath the calm waters.
"I don't know how long I can do this," Anakin said, answering Tom's unsaid question.
"Do what?"
Anakin looked up. "I can bet this wouldn't be the last lashing we get. Yesterday wouldn't be the last party Gardulla has either."
"Of course not," Tom replied. Some uncertainty lingered in his expression at Anakin's statement. Anakin sighed and spoke up further.
"Tam, if I see another idiot forcing himself on Mom, I don't know if I can hold back."
I don't know if I want to hold back, Anakin continued mentally. Someone might end up armless, or even dead.
Tom opened his mouth a little before he shut it again, thinking. "Oh, that. Not that it wouldn't help weeding out the local idiots—"
"—that's absolutely not low profile, Tom—"
"—but yeah, you have a point."
Anakin sighed. "Tell me something I don't know."
"But you weren't with Gardulla anymore when you met the Jedi, right? So you did go away at some point."
Anakin yanked his hair. "I was with Watto, but that's still another year!"
"No, it doesn't have to be so at all. If you can remember why you were transferred in the first place, we can try to make sure that it happens sooner, or find an alternative plan," Tom replied. "Now, think back on it and tell me the details. We've got a plan to make."
Anakin recalled both Gardulla and Watto's podracing habit, and how they were never ones to leave alone any bet with attractive enough odds. They were still talking when Shmi Skywalker woke up and saw her children ignoring their wounds until she made them both lie down again. If she hadn't been staring them down (or gotten one of her friends to stare them down), it was doubtful that they would have rested.
'-
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