Summary: "It becomes evident early on that something's wrong." Rain is a rare thing on Tatooine. Cobb knew that he shouldn't have allowed the town's mining operations to continue while the sands were still wet. He just didn't expect everything to go so wrong. Post TBOBF, AU.
A/N: Inspired by Justified, in some weird round-about way. And by Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. season five. Also somewhat so by sof_gigante's Lost in the Dark. Title from Long Hard Times To Come by Gangstagrass.
On This Lonely Road, Trying To Make It Home
It rains for the first time in fifteen years. The sand is soft and heavy.
The ground rumbles beneath their feet with just the first explosion, and he curses himself.
.
He should've known.
"Cobb Vanth, it has been proven by the killings of Jia Bross, Reeve Vesset, and our very own Drash Thatcher that your condition has left you a danger to both yourself and those around you. The punishment decided upon for your actions is execution. How do you plead?"
"Guilty, Lord Daimyo."
A harsh tug on some hidden catch drops his right arm.
The sound of it hitting the floor resounds in his ears more than that of the door's lock settling into place. In his mind's eye, dust falls in curtains around him.
"Move! C'mon, let's go!- hey, no, leave that."
"But-"
"We'll get you another one! It's really not worth your life." He shoves the miner up the tunnel. The pickaxe hits the floor, and it's all he can do not to trip on it as he stumbles past. "Now, move!"
"Yes, Marshal!"
Cobb watches the younger man disappear up into the dusty darkness ahead of him. His feet slide on the shifting sands beneath his boots, and he clutches onto a too-soft wall to right himself. His heart thuds with a fear stolen from a thousand memories. The support beam next to him shudders, and he presses on.
His people- the ones who were far enough from the explosion to survive- are counting on him to get them out fast enough.
"Marshal, where are you?!"
"Right behin'ja!" He wheezes. "Keep goin'!"
They're still pretty deep in the mine. He's not sure if they can outrun the worst of the collapse quickly enough. It's quite almost directly at his back as it is. All he's lived through, and being buried alive may still be what his existence comes down to. A fate worse than death itself. Fear coils so tight in his gut that he feels sick.
But he must keep vigilant, as he has more important things to worry about right now. Like keeping an eye out for anybody who gets turned around back toward him. He can't have anyone heading back the wrong way and dying for their trouble; there are more than enough bodies at the bottom of this mine already.
"Call out!" His voice tears his throat up before it leaps free and bounces off the tunnel walls. "How're we lookin'?"
"Still going!"
Cobb grits his teeth, and tries to pick up the pace. He's no young man, and he can tell that he's fallen behind. There was distance in the miner's voice. Too much of it. "Don't stop!"
The rumbling of rock and sand has grown louder, and if there's a reply from the men ahead, he doesn't hear it. If the collapse hadn't been upon him before, it's certainly about to be. Or so the dust swirling around into his eyes tells him. And he'd been trying so hard not to breathe it in.
He knew he wouldn't be fast enough. He damn well knew it.
Someone ahead screams.
Cobb Vanth's rebuilt shoulder tears right through a support beam, and he hits the ground hard, writhing like a womp rat in an ankle trap.
His ears don't quite ring loud enough to drown out the collapsing of the tunnels, and he doesn't have the breath to twist around onto his stomach quickly enough to heave himself back to his feet by the time the wall of dirt and sandstone is truly on top of him.
"That damn rain," he chokes out, right before a sizable chunk of rock drops onto the side of his head.
"Kneel."
And he does, because there's power to that voice. To the voice of the man who circles around behind him. To the man who doesn't try to hide the sound of his blaster sliding free of its holster.
The metal of the barrel is cool against the back of his skull, a relief from the heat of the twin suns overhead.
Cobb keeps his chin up and waits. Doesn't meet any of the gotra's gazes, but doesn't avoid them either. They're not his enemies. He did this to himself, even if he hadn't been in his right mind. He messed up.
His fingers twitch against the rope holding his arm to his back.
"You do not need to be reminded of your crimes, Vanth. Nor do I need to remind you that the safety of my people is and has always been my greatest priority. I know that a man in your standing understands that- you would do the same, were you in my position." Boba Fett says. "You have before. But this time, you have spilled innocent blood. That cannot be forgiven no matter who you are.
"I only wish to ease your suffering, and that of those who you may come to harm in the future. I know you can understand that, too. You're a good man, Cobb Vanth. Your bravery will not be forgotten."
He closes his eyes with the click of Fett's weapon. He knows what comes next.
PTCHEW!
Cobb flinches.
And, then, he opens his eyes. He's alive, Cobb realizes, and turns his head until his would-be killer is in his peripheral.
"You missed." He quietly offers. But he knows, that it was no accident.
.
Boba Fett sentences him to exile.
They have him laid out on a stretcher mid-transport to a speeder when he wakes up. The side of his head is sticky and warm, his hair matted with blood. It hurts so much that he doesn't even try to open his eyes. The warmth crosses one of them, though, so he'd not see much out of it anyway.
His breath stutters through the mask strapped to his face, and he coughs.
Cobb thinks his head might be on fire.
"Marshal?" Murmurs a familiar voice, and gentle hands remove the rebreather to force some water down his sandy throat. He chokes, and half of it comes right back up. His chest feels like it was crushed by a Wookie. "Can you hear me?
"Do you remember what happened?"
His body is too weak to form the words needed to say that he doesn't.
The Mods aren't pleased with Fett's decision. He posts Fennec as the personal guard to his cell for that final night in the palace.
He's surprised he lives to see the dawn.
When he wakes up in Mos Espa, they tell him that it was a mining accident. That a boulder smashed in the side of his head. That he should be dead.
He scoffs.
They tell him that he's been unconscious for several weeks.
.
"The road of recovery for such an injury is steep, and you may never recover. But we'll do our best. You're in good hands with us, Marshal."
The terms of exile, Boba Fett tells him, are as follows:
-His new arm isn't to be returned to him.
-He is to be allowed his blaster, but only as a means of self-defense against attackers. As if he'd stand a chance against anyone with true ill-intent.
-"Don't try to come back. In your condition, crossing the desert will get you killed."
-When enough time has passed, an ambassador will be sent out to observe and report back to Fett on his progress. If the Daimyo sees fit, he will make the journey out to evaluate Cobb himself. He may one day return to society.
.
"I will choose trusted members of my gotra to bring you food and water once every month. If they catch you doing anything you shouldn't be, they will report back to me and I will extend your sentence. Don't make this harder for yourself, Vanth, I do not wish that upon you."
"Don't you?"
"...What?"
Cobb laughs, bitter and tired. "Put me down, Fett. 'S best for everyone."
"Maybe so, but I will not give in to defeat so easily. Your actions are unforgivable, but you do deserve another chance. Don't waste it."
It becomes evident early on that something's wrong. That not only has his body come out of the mineshaft damaged, but so has his mind.
Speaking is a difficult task. The things he tries to say aren't the ones that come out of his mouth. His words catch and slur together. The first one that comes out right is one that he uses to curse his skint luck and the situation it's gotten him into.
He brings his metal fist down on the bedside table so hard that the corner snaps off, and then he falls into laughter so strong that they have to strap a mask to his face so he can breathe.
After that, things only seem to get worse.
Cobb sees things that aren't there, hears voices that no one else can. His flesh hand shakes, and nothing he does can make it still.
Things feel fuzzy even as fragments of the accident return to him. His therapist asks him if he'd felt trapped in the tunnels, and he threatens to throw her down there to find out for herself. She smiles through it and asks if he feels threatened.
"Always," he mumbles, and it's the seventh word he's conjured up that's come out right.
Scott's ghost stares at him through the window.
The ride out is quiet. The shape on the horizon that is to be his new home mocks him long before they arrive.
The doctors diagnose him with schizophrenia.
He refuses to take the medications they prescribe him. He's taking too much shit to help his body knit itself back together as it is. The conversations he has with his apparitions seem to be helping his vocal cord to thought coordination anyway.
The first true conversation he has again is with one of them, Scott sidling into his room in the dead of the night.
"Hey, Marshal."
"Not today, Deputy." Cobb says, tired. "Go on patrol."
It's silent for a long time.
"I can't." Scott finally says, and when Cobb turns his gaze to him, the man's torso is riddled with the blaster wounds that killed him.
"No, I guess not." He quietly agrees. "Get some rest, kid."
The stitches in his head come out the same day the doctors decide that his spine has healed well enough for them to allow him to try walking again.
He can't quite straighten up all the way yet, and his bad knee almost gives out when he first puts pressure on it, but there's a relief to walking himself to the refresher after months abed. To feeling water run across his skin.
His first thought at the sight of himself is of how badly he needs to shave. Funny, how the doctors would keep the side of his head clear of hair, and not the rest of his face.
His lips curl, and the scarring that mars the right side of him stretches with the motion. The muscles beneath twitch as he runs metal fingertips across the wrinkled skin, and it's then that he knows that the scar will never fade. The damage done to his face is as irreversible as that which was done to his mind.
"You're lucky to be alive." Boba Fett murmurs from behind him.
He shakes his head. "Aren't we all?"
There's no response, and his gaunt reflection stares back at him. Had the room always been empty?
There are times when he forgets that the hallucinations aren't real.
The day they first give him free rein to the palace is one of them. He runs off down some dark corridor to the sound of slaves shouting for help. He's assigned an escort, after that- it's the Mod girl, Drash. Even at night, someone stands watch outside his door.
He's never left alone.
It doesn't take long for the anger, the resentment to worm their roots deeper into his chest; Boba Fett's keeping him in the very building that's wrapped its chains around the most tortured ghosts in the galaxy. Cobb didn't escape the lordas just to end up locked away in the heart of their territory.
The whole situation triggers him- his hallucinations, Huttese, and all. A violent nature he'd thought left behind in the old days starts clawing its way back up, desperate to break free.
Drash grabs ahold of his arm to keep him from running off one morning, and he snaps. Her blood colors the floor, and he colors the brig.
He spends four days and four nights in near-complete solitude.
.
One might argue that what happens when they finally confront him is more their fault than his own. Cobb Vanth never wanted to hurt anyone.
The sand stretches on from the old Lars homestead in every direction.