WARNING: I upped the rating on this because this gets intimately dark. Like it's not explicit but it's slavery and graphic murder. Possible suicidal thoughts.
Chapter 3 - Hell to Pay
Shmi Skywalker had been incredibly generous and lovely. Seeing her be so happy with her stepchildren and her husband who utterly adored him, he regretted never bucking the Council to check on Anakin's mother himself.
Even if she had still died at Tusken's hands, he would have had a decade of knowing she was a free woman who was both cared for and caring for a beautiful family.
Obi-Wan stayed with them for a week.
It was pleasant to not be chased out off the premises like a vagabond.
Obi-Wan helped her cook, clean, and make minor repairs, all the while they traded stories.
It was difficult for Obi-Wan not to overshare, to not expose what had come to pass. Still, it was healing to talk about Anakin's childhood, to for once be looking for all the good times, the fun, the endearing, and even headache-inducing moments of the life they had once shared together.
In turn, Shmi told him things about Anakin's early life that he wasn't even certain Anakin would remember, he had certainly never shared any of these stories with him.
Some were heartbreaking and others made him laugh until he cried. Obi-Wan realized how incredible Shmi how much she had protected Anakin, as well as the nature of most of his trauma.
Internalized empathy was an insidious thing.
Shmi had taken much abuse to compensate for a toddler's natural behaviour to develop as much as possible.
But in doing so, all of Anakin's memories of being safe, of being able to play and have freedom, were medicated by feelings of pain and terror, of the surety that he was not safe and the person he loved most in the world was hurting.
Living in the slave quarter at all must have been hell, Anakin's had no natural shielding.
Had that been the root of it then? When he was moved to a place that was so dramatically different where everyone was trained to regulate their emotions so all Anakin had been left with was echoes of the past?
Echoes that he had no way to verbalize because the pain and the trauma he felt didn't have many tangible incidents he could attach it to other than fear for his mother.
Obi-Wan was a Master of suppressing past trauma and letting it go.
But he realized, that what Anakin needed was to face the fears in order to overcome them. Moving forward had been impossible until he knew what he feared.
Obi-Wan had been much more goal-oriented.
Which had bit him in the shebs when he was stuck in isolation with nothing but regrets and ghosts for company.
He had nowhere to run, but now…
Now the galaxy was his to escape to, and he had never been more tempted. The prospect of returning to Coruscant seemed somehow a worse fate than walking to his own execution.
In the course of mourning, Anakin ended up gravitating toward a Master he had never known personally.
But of the people who felt Obi-Wan's death most keenly, Master Ali-Alann could be picked out swiftly.
Master Ali-Alann invited Anakin over to his apartment for tea. Over the course of which, Anakin learned more about Obi-Wan than he ever had living with the man.
He learned that his deceased Master had been taken on the older side of acceptable age, and he had been clearly mistreated. Master Ali-Alann believed, though he did not know for certain, that Obi-Wan had been rescued by Master Tholme from a warzone.
Obi-Wan as it turned out, had just as many anger issues and difficulty making friends in the beginning of his time here as Anakin had.
Obi-Wan, despite being an emotional youngling —just like Anakin— had always been gifted with shielding which is why his first friend had been Master Quinlan Vos who was a touch clairvoyant.
It helped Anakin a lot to know that Obi-Wan hadn't been perfect, that he had felt things as deeply as Anakin had, and that he had overcome his own history that didn't sound very pleasant at all.
It gave him hope that he could be like his Master, and in honour of his Master, overcome his past to become one of the greatest Jedi Masters ever.
Anakin found himself returning to the creches each night to drink tea with Master Ali-Alann.
It was in Mos Espa he found trouble, or rather he overheard it.
In Huttese a male masked Bounty Hunter said, "No man can survive that many opponents. Not even the great Jango Fett. Is ship is ours and his son will make a fine slave for Jabba."
Obi-Wan found his feet following these morons with a death wish toward the shipyard.
"The child is too small for anything now, but give him a few years, and the Legacy of Jango Fett will be a fine piece of meat."
"If you're so confident" another countered, "why are you at the ringside?"
"Because, I was paid in Beskar and," he jingled a key fob with a metal chain. "I ain't letting no mechanic run off with Fett's fine vessel."
It was child's play really.
Obi-Wan picked up a piece of trash metal with one hand and opened his hand, pulling the key fob into his palm.
The man spun round to see where his prize had gone.
The only thing he saw was the pipe Obi-Wan swung at his face.
The rusted metal clanged against something. So he aimed again for the kriffar's head.
Not hard enough to kill, he knew that Jango's blood lust would not rest until fully sated.
Logically, being from the future, he knew Jango would make it out of this.
But Boba Fett wasn't like four years old yet, and Obi-Wan could not let any of the clones stay in Jabba's hands.
He did kill the one who had taunted his friend. And the one who had been holding Jango's helmet Obi-Wan bludgeoned into a state that might lead to a coma if he didn't receive medical treatment.
Dropping the bloodied pipe, Obi-Wan patted down the di'kuts, taking all their credits, a nice rifle, a blaster, and many excellent blades, most of which he was sure were Jango's.
It was over in a few minutes, it was nice to be young again.
No one approached him during this exchange.
Stripping the one many of Jango's Beskar was a nuisance but it was a short walk to Slave I.
It was a lovely ship. He flew it to the outskirts of Jabba's Palace where he knew he would be out of sight. He debated wearing Jango's armour.
Obi-Wan thought it was probably a bad idea to storm the palace as a Jedi. He couldn't quite get over the instinct that he needed to hide his identity, so he tentatively strapped on.
The armour felt safer than anything had for a long time.
Jango hated Jabba.
He was going to kill the slug; how dare he kidnap his son?
Every moment Jango waited, his knees arching on the stone ground, cuffed at the heels, his arms and hands bound tight, a gag that was secured by lock and key in his mouth, was another moment his ad'ika was being held in slave custody.
It was also a reminder of the years he spent, sold into slavery by Death Watch.
It was humiliating, disgusting, and they would burn for it.
However, no one touched his skin; no one dared. He hadn't had much of a galactic reputation before Galdiraan, things were different now.
If handlers were smart, they would have drugged him, if they were smart, they would have waited until he was weak from starvation and thirst: if they were smart, they never would think to use him like this.
But they weren't smart.
They thought they wanted a fight, what they were going to get was a blood bath.
He knew why he was here, of course, the Krzye Clan had neutered Mandalore and Death Watch had maligned any goodwill for Mandalorians had throughout the galaxy.
Jango Fett had once been a leader of men, a man trying to unite his people toward a common good and independence of those who would use them and their resources.
What he was now was a bounty hunter without equal.
He was not a lowly slug, nor was he an animal.
Thankfully, they did not blindfold him. It meant he could assess exits and what weapons were available.
He did that as his sanity was slowly chipped away at, his patience long since expired.
When finally they unchained him. He didn't strike, he made a show of falling forward, flexing every muscle he had to encourage blood to return to his digits.
He even pretended to limp as he forced himself to hobble into the pit.
He had fought in pits before.
But then he had been wearing a collar.
His 'opponent' was a blonde and blue-eyed child who looked as if he were dying from lead poisoning.
Wearing only a thong, Jango could see the scares and the open sores.
For a moment, Jango was reminded of his first few months as a slave, working in an undersea mine on some backward planet.
There had been a boy there targeted by the foremen for some unseeable reason.
Despite every odd, that boy had survived. When Jango had tried to protect the child, the boy was already halfway through staging a full revolt and escape plan for every slave there.
Jango had lost track of that founding in the chaos, that child with a Mandalorian heart.
The child in front of him was not that.
He looked scared, his fingers nearly dropping the wicked-looking blade in his hands.
Then someone shouted something and the child's face twisted.
Twisted and twisted, until his eyes went dead, the fear drained out of them before refilling with a mad glint.
A mockery of a smile painted over his face as he panted through his teeth.
This child had been broken inside and out.
He had a knife and arching his back, arms limp, he threw his head back and laughed like a coyote to the moons.
His head rolled forward, looking at Jango with predatory eyes, his lips began to move, his voice whining out a chittering cackle. A sound that became interspersed with a low whispering, as if he were trying to console himself.
It was disturbing as hell.
The boy rushed him with a high-pitched cry that didn't sound at all human, his arms trailing behind like a cape. Jango waited for the knife to be stabbed toward his heart. He dodged it, grabbed his shoulder, then as quick as thought, a hand to the chin, and snapped the boy's neck.
He didn't feel good about it but he knew the boy had been destined for death, slow or fast, his death was assured.
A roar went up in the stadium.
Jango ran at the wall, it was barely six feet. Speed leant him wings, he grabbed one of the upper bars. And pulled himself up and through the square patch designed to keep things much bigger than him in.
A guard came at him with an electric prod. Jango ran toward him, dropping to his knees so he slid underneath the strike. He grabbed the prod, spinning it, he jabbed it at the nearest person's face. He stole their blaster as they fell screaming, holding their hands uselessly around his burned face and fried eye.
Jango spun, shot the first guard through the heart as he turned to gape at Jango.
The whole incident took mere seconds.
The room began to panic.
Jango struck indiscriminately, bodies dropping to the floor as he worked his way to the head of the ring.
"Kill him! Kill him!" shrieked the one who had bought him.
The guards got blaster bolts beneath their chins, through the tiny brains.
"Names," he growled.
The horned giant wimped but babbled the names, after which, Jango to the electric proud and shoved it down the man's throat, slowly enough that he would still be all by the time it reached his stomach.
He watched yellow pink eyes widen in horror as he gagged and burbled.
Jango activated the prod and stepped back. The slaver seized clasping to the ground twitching as he vomited around the handle.
It wouldn't be a particularly slow death, but he would suffocate choking on his own blood as felt his insides sizzle.
Jango turned on his heel, stooping to pick up a better blaster.
Outside, he found several speeders outside and picked the best one and hotwired it.
He sped toward Jabba's palace, uncaring of the night.
He would get his son back.
And there would be hell to pay.
Obi-Wan walked in through the front door, his cloak hiding the shine of polished Beskar.
Obi-Wan let himself be lethal now, avoiding every slave, servant, and dancer as he made his way to Jabba's throne room.
Where he used one of Jango's knives to plunge through Jabba's eye and brains.
Obi-Wan left one minion alive, doing his best to mimic Jango's voice and accent, the voice emitter doing some of the work for him.
He held a blaster to the man's temple as he deactivated and removed every slave chip. He let one of the slaves kill the man afterwards. The freedwoman chose one of the bars used to operate one of the pieces of machinery to carry out the deed.
By the time Obi-Wan had moved to Tatooine with Luke, Jabba had begun to grow complacent, hiring out more droids and selling off the majority of his slaves. But this was currently a transition period between Hutts where a show of wealth and power had been seen as necessary.
The result?
Seven hundred and eighty-two slaves were freed and only three droids —who were compacted.
Among those freed, a small Boba Fett who thankfully hadn't been chipped.
Obi-Wan shot the last employee in the head.
There would be no survivors to tell tales of the freed slaves.
When Boba spotted him, he shouted, "Buir!" The child ran to him on pounding feet.
Obi-Wan went to a knee, accepting the hug but shushing him. Obi-Wan spoke in Mando'a, "I'm not your Buir, but he is on his way."
Boba froze, staring up at him with big browns eyes, darker than Cody's had been, "Who are you—"
"I am of Mandalorian birth and I know your buir as the rightful Mand'alor. I only mean to help you both. His armour remains his, I was merely borrowing it to get you home safely."
Boba bit his lip.
"May I pick you up?" Obi-Wan asked still in Mando'a.
"Lek," the boy said, holding up his arms.
Obi-Wan smiled beneath the helmet, picking the child up, safe in his arms. A part of him wished he had raised Luke himself, but he had known he was too broken to give Luke the childhood he had deserved.
Obi-Wan began giving instructions in Basic and Huttese. Being the working Force of the Palace, it was a simple thing to steal valuables, weapons, and ships.
Obi-Wan brought them all back to the Lars farmstead.
Shmi welcomed them all with that smile of hers and Obi-Wan helped the people organise. Some wanted to go to back to their homeworlds, others requested to go to Alderaan where their chances of being sold back to their systems would be impossible.
Obi-Wan helped them allot rations, credits, and fuel. He was also able to give back the credits —and then some— to the Lars had given him for his journey back to the Temple.
Obi-Wan stayed the night but left at dawn with Boba on Jango's ship. If Jango shot before asking questions, he didn't want anyone but himself caught in the crossfire.
AN: Thoughts, Western Ghats flying lizards, or feedback, pretty please?