Chapter Text
Steam rose from the Sith stronghold, covering the sky in an undulating mass of grey. Sadow's Valley saw little sunlight reflected in its ice these days. Without the machines throwing steam into the air, it would still be hidden underneath the permafrost, and Feuilly, peering up against the near solid vapor, would be forced to excavate another Sith ruin on another forsaken planet. He had dug mines on desert planets, where the evershifting sands abraded his skin down to the flesh, his blood so thick from lack of water it collected like glue in his wounds. He'd built statues of Sith lords on top of mountains where the thin air caused him constant migraines, a sacrifice made for monuments to vanity no one but the slaves that built them ever saw. He'd pulled blocks of marble out of the jungles of Dxun where no machine could reach until the heavy rope left permanent marks on his shoulders. Maybe, on the next planet, he'd gather sand for construction on sunny beaches, or run light errands for kind masters in the big cities of the Empire. Or he'd look back on Sadow's Valley like he did on Dxun and Tatooine, with the nostalgia of a very foolish man.
“Almost time,” he said. The rising darkness provided the cover they needed, their best fighters stood ready and the spy from the top of the valley had given all the information she could. He'd run out of reasons to delay. Climbing into the ruins every day was easier than to keep talking. “You still remember the plan?”
“We practiced it enough.”
Feuilly nodded. They had, crouching in foul water hidden in the ruins, one eye always on the melting ice walls threatening to break open in deadly flash floods.
“Has your leg healed up?”
“Feuilly.”
His shoulders sagged and he turned around to face his oldest friend. Bossuet flashed his usual cheery smile.
“You'll be exposed almost the whole way, there's something more we should be able to do. I'm scared to lose you."
Bossuet rubbed his bald head and knocked it for good measure.
“Thick skull here. It won't break that easy.”
After that, they didn't exchange any more words. Good luck felt too hollow, goodbye too final. Bossuet hugged him, their wet clothes sticking uncomfortably to their bodies. Feuilly held on for a beat longer before he forced himself to let go.
He returned to the excavation site alone.
The guard closest to him facing the worksite didn't see Feuilly approach until he'd come close enough to reach out and touch his weapon. The guards cradled them close, longingly sweeping their fingers along the barrels, following the slaves' every motion. Feuilly kept his head low as he wound his way through the guards at the ruin entrance and over the pipes siphoning sludge out, carefully choosing each step to avoid tripping on uneven ground hidden by the murky ice water. He caught glances from the other workers and shook his head.
They had spotted guards outside the camp and the worksite during the shift change today and quickly rumours had made the rounds that they had been discovered. The tension in the camp was higher than they could affort, people on the edge of making costly mistakes. Feuilly paused for breath and looked for his assigned workstation.
An armoured gauntlet gripped his shoulder.
Feuilly stared straight ahead.
Caught.
His panic given voice wailed, pounded a headache into his temples.
Discovered. Run!
Feuilly remained still. Each muscle locked up, his eyes dry and cold because he didn't dare blink. Fear whipped his heartbeat into a frenzied rage, but it was an old companion, a guest that had overstayed its welcome.
“Where's the other one?”
“Still out, sir.”
The guard forced him to the ground, the metal of his armour biting cold and hard through the rags Feuilly wore. He forced his hands to rest loosely at his sides, to not curl and clench into fists.
“I can see that, slave. Why hasn't he come back is what I want to know.”
When Bossuet and Feuilly planned for today they had accounted for every contingency, starting with guards questioning Bossuet's absence. Even though sweat collected at his hairline and bile sat at the back of his throat, Feuilly could give the answer. But this hand had been a weight on his shoulder his entire life, the condescension in the guard's voice more familiar to him than the fading memory of his mother's lullabies. He knelt on the ground drenched and fearful, less than human through the eyes and the actions of the man above him.
Through this last shot at freedom he had reclaimed the courage of a human being.
“Must have gotten sick of your ugly mug.”
The blow hit him like a ten meter drop. He fell forward, the skin on his hands tore open on the rough stone. The boot coming his way grazed his stomach, Feuilly rolled onto his side to avoid it, but the second kick hit the mark, forcing out what little air he'd sucked into his lungs. He scrambled to get to his knees, and was forced down by a boot crushing the space between his shoulderblades. Gasping against his burning lungs and slipping on thin ice he barely kept his head over the water. The world swam out of focus, reduced to nothing but grey stone and his own bleeding hands, until he was pulled up by his hair and the carved ceiling of the ruin swept into view.
“Clever, are we?”
His eyes squeezed shut of their own volition, hot tears pooling at the sides. The guard ripped out strands of hair as he shook Feuilly. He dry-heaved, dizziness and nausea and all-encompassing terror mixing beneath his heart.
“Are we?” he repeated, hissing at his ear. Scorching hot spittle hit Feuilly's cheek. Dreams of the future had given him courage, the immediate threat of abuse at the guard's hands drove it away.
He was an animal again, cowering away from pain.
“No, sir. I'm sorry, sir. Please forgive me, sir.”
“The vermin wants forgiveness. Think you can get away with insulting your betters, do you?”
His body was knocked against the guard's solid armour as he pulled him up and close against his face, his feet scrambling for purchase.
“Tell me what you are.”
Shame coiled in Feuilly's stomach, but he knew the answer. He gave it.
“I'm vermin, sir.”
Abruptly he was dropped, knees and hands hitting the ground again.
“Damn right you are. Go join the other vermin in your hole before I change my mind.”
Feuilly didn't get to his feet. He crawled out of sight, around the first corner, only then pulling himself up against the ancient pillars. He blinked hard once, then twice, teeth catching on his chapped lips, but the tears formed too quickly. He wiped them away, the dirt and sweat on his face hiding his moment of weakness, protecting him from the pitying and knowing looks of others. He breathed deep, forced his emotions away. If Bossuet came through all this would be over soon. The thought calmed him enough to keep his eyes dry and clear, seeing for the first time the youngest slave in their camp standing in front of him.
“Made a gravity check, huh,” Gavroche said and gestured at half of his own face to illustrate what Feuilly's looked like. He grinned a toothy smile and Feuilly did his best to mirror it.
“Something like it.”
Gavroche handed him his mining gear and together they headed down the hallway to join the other slaves working to free it from centuries worth of ice. Sith carvings came alive under the flickering lights of torches and headlights, screaming out of silent stone throats. Feuilly woke from his share of nightmares, of half-forgotten stories of Sith apparitions dragging the innocent towards madness and death, but he'd gotten used to the glum and stuffy air, could some days almost ignore it. The only one he'd ever known not scared of the ruins at all worked next to him, half his size and age, and much braver than he was.
“Bossuet's on his way?”
Feuilly nodded and sent the pickaxe flying down. Ice cracked, tiny splinters hitting his hands. He did it again, matching the rhythm of his work to the count he kept in his head. 978 seconds since he last saw Bossuet.
“Not long now.”
“You could have sent me,” Gavroche said reproachfully.
Feuilly reiterated his self-made promise never to tell anyone how long he'd considered it.
Cameras sometimes didn't follow targets as small as Gavroche, and Feuilly had seen him sneak around guards, dropping into camp after an adventure no one had even known he'd been on until he returned. Guards who relished in punishing adult slaves sometimes hesitated with children, and should he be captured, Gavroche knew far less of their plans than Bossuet. It would have been the smarter thing to do, even if he'd never be able to look at himself again.
“You already helped plenty with the keycards to the lifts.”
They hoisted up a block of ice, large enough to warrant both of them carrying it to the side, their bare hands stinging from the cold.
“It's just,” Gavroche said, panting at the weight of the cube. “Don't know if sending Bossuet was a good idea. He's got negative force.”
Feuilly hesitated for a moment, but Gavroche's statement didn't make more sense.
“What?”
Before Gavroche could answer another slave approached. An older man, hunched from enduring years of labour, older than Feuilly saw himself becoming. This time his hunched back hid something other than old pain.
“Broke on the big block down the western corridor. Guard believed it when I said some of it got swept away,” the man said, holding out smooth plastic and metal. Feuilly took it, hid it quickly in his rags lest the guards made a surprise round and found them. The threat of ice bursting kept them away, but Feuilly didn't risk it.
“Thank you, Mabeuf. Now get back before anyone realises you're gone.”
The old slave hurried away, head darting around to see if anyone had spotted his absence. On Gavroche's insistent tugging Feuilly took out their little treasure. A power coil from a mining blaster, almost burnt through. If you knew the equipment well, you could fake the power coil burning out, accompanied by a small spark that would startle a slave and cause him to drop the coil in the water. The guards, thinking the burnt coil had no use left, would give the slave a new mining blaster in exchange for the rest of the old and not ask for all the pieces. Then it was a simple matter of retrieving the coil and putting it together with the other parts and pieces they gathered, stole, and snuck out under the noses of the guards over months and years. A poor armoury but better than going with fists and stones against rifles.
Feuilly and Gavroche headed deeper down the hallway, soon surrounded by steam thick enough to obscure their vision. They worked with picks and axes, broke off chunks of ice with small picks. Their masters demanded manual work around the detailed frescoes that lasers might damage, but the larger reason was their reluctance to equip too many slaves with blasters at once. They distributed a handful each day to prevent an armed insurrection. Today the camp's best marksmen carried them.
Gavroche returned to explaining the concept of negative force.
“You know how Jedi are always dodging bullets and winning at card games?”
“I don't know if they play card games,” Feuilly said, although he saw where Gavroche was going with this.
“Why wouldn't they? Anyway, Bossuet and I figured, if the Force makes things go your way, and the more you have, the luckier you get ...”
“Then Bossuet can't have a lot of it.”
“Exactly. We figure he's got a rare case of negative force. It doesn't like him, see, so it-”
“Out! All out, now! Lay down your work and line up!”
The overseer's order echoed through the ruin, mixing with the trampling of feet as the slaves scrambled to obey. The overseer never called them away from their work without reason. The guards entered the ruins for surprise inspections, moving around and sometimes over the slaves as they searched for contraband. They wouldn't demand the slaves exit the ruins unless they needed them all in one place.
Feuilly, sweating despite the cold, stopped Gavroche in his tracks.
“Stay here.”
“What? No, they'll find out.”
“They won't find out. I promise. Just stay here, hide, and wait until it's over.”
The low light made it difficult to keep up eye contact but Gavroche's eyes found his, hard as his own, no sign of the terror that made Feuilly's hands shake.
“You're going to do it.”
“Promise me you'll stay here.”
“I can help, Feuilly, let me come up with you, I'll-”
“Get a move on!”
They flinched at the echoes ringing in their ears. Feuilly pushed Gavroche back into the hallway, pressed his finger to his lips and went to climb up the slope out of the ruins.
The other slaves surrounded him, casting worried glances in his direction. One of them showed the blaster he held behind his back. Others clutched their pickaxes, pieces of wood, rocks.
The sun sunk behind the mountain range, the clouds of steam breaking as the heating machines turned away from melting the glaciers to keep the Sith lord warm in his stronghold during the night. Feuilly imagined patterns in the steam and the constellations of the stars beyond, lined up with the other workers. He counted in his head.
1 346 seconds since Bossuet had left for the valleytop.
“Start counting, overseer.”
A Sith had come down. There wasn't supposed to be a Sith. They never set foot on the worksites. Feuilly's eyes went straight to the lightsaber at his hip, a double blade with jagged metal edges. His people stirred, heads turning up and down the line, looking to Feuilly for reassurance he could not give. The guards couldn't discover Bossuet's absence. Feuilly glanced in the direction of the lifts, caught the eye of one of the slaves. The slave shook her head, pleading silently.
1 591 seconds since Bossuet had gone.
He had hoped that Bossuet might go and come back undetected, but planned for being discovered. The weapons they cobbled together over the years lay hidden at the camps, a brisk walk away. With armed guards and a Sith surrounding them they might as well have been on another planet. The signal sat on his tongue, tempted him to speak it while they still had the element of surprise. He swallowed it, kept counting down the seconds.
1 701. If the overseer used the shock collars while Bossuet was still in range, they'd lose more than their lives. They'd lose their last chance at freedom.
But if they finished counting and came one short, two with Gavroche hiding in the ruins, the end result would be the same. If they did, no amount of troublemaking would distract them from Bossuet.
“Just keep quiet,” the slave next to him whispered.
Feuilly closed his eyes, the overseer's voice counting the slaves like a sharp pendulum swinging towards his neck. No solution presented itself. If he gave the signal the Sith would slaughter them all. If he didn't Bossuet would be caught and their entire camp would be exterminated to set an example.
One thousand eight hundred and twenty six.
Feuilly stepped forward, whole body shaking.
The overseer spun on his heels, two arm's lengths between them.
“Get back in line!”
1832.
“You do not own us!” he shouted, voice breaking. “We will be free!”
Mayhem broke out. The slaves roared in defiance, repeated Feuilly's desperate battle cry. The heat of blaster fire grazed his cheek as they opened fire. Those who had no weapons swarmed the guards, overwhelmed them with sheer numbers. Someone barked orders, the guards attempted to close their lines. Through the havoc a lightsaber activated with a hiss, red light reflected off the ice.
The water disturbed, the quiet broken, slaves fell as the guards returned fire.