Chapter Text
So, this was Oba Diah? It wasn’t quite what she’d expected, not that she’d really spent any time at all wondering. For the wealth gangsters flaunted, they sure didn’t take care of their cities very well, or this was the poorer part of town. She supposed she’d seen similar on the lower levels of Coruscant.
Bridges cris-crossed over each other, there was flying traffic, but also still plenty of things that moved along the ground. Mostly animals toting carts full of goods to sell or supplies. Several of the bridges she crossed didn’t look very sturdy, she was glad she was relatively light. She’d left Rafa and Trace in their cells while she went to scout things out. She liked them alright, even if they argued constantly, but she didn’t want them getting into even more trouble while she was trying to figure things out.
She’d ended up in some kind of market area and would have just passed through, but she was almost certain there was a slave auction going on in the far corner and remembering Anakin’s anger towards the Zygerrians before, she’d turned to head that way without thinking. There wasn’t a whole lot she could do by herself here with no backup, but she could at least gather information about it and send a tip to the Jedi later once they’d gotten out of here. She doubted they’d do much about it, but reporting it still felt important.
She was halfway across a particularly unstable looking bridge when she heard the snort of a dewback or similar pack animal behind her. They either hadn’t seen her walking there or didn’t care because if she’d not stepped to the right and caught herself, the thing either would have trampled her or thrown her off the bridge. Not trusting herself to move until it passed, she just balanced as carefully as she could on the edge, trying not to worry about the way the whole bridge trembled under the weight of it crossing. She could hear speeders whizzing by over the roads below.
The creature was about three quarters of the way past her when suddenly she was falling after the loudest crack imaginable. She might have managed to right herself, but she was pretty sure one of its feet kicked her hard in the face as it panicked too. Her eyes started watering and everything went blurry. She could just barely make out shapes and shadows beneath her but couldn’t get her bearings. She tried to reach out to grab something to catch herself, but before she found anything to hold onto, something heavy and big hit her so hard she thought her skull cracked and she blacked out completely.
Her head was pounding. Was that her groan? What happened? She tried to open her eyes but everything around her was dark too. She staggered to her feet and had to catch herself on the wall. She looked down at her wrists in surprise when her hands had moved together instead of gone where she’d sent them. She heard chains rattling behind her and saw something hooked to her right ankle too.
What the kriff? Where was she? Why was she in chains? Why was everything dark? What had happened? She leaned unsteadily back against the wall and squeezed her eyes shut willing the headache to recede. She’d been… she’d been… she couldn’t remember. It felt like it was right there, but no words or places followed the thought. Everything was just blank. She shook her head. That can’t be right. Maybe once the headache receded her thoughts would come back.
She rubbed her wrists. The shackles were uncomfortably tight. There was something around her neck, but when she reached up to investigate it, it sent a shock through her, and she fell onto her side panting in surprise. She didn’t know what that was, but she wasn’t going to mess with it again. Her head hurt too bad.
She curled up on her side trying to take a deep breath. This didn’t feel right, but she couldn’t come up with why. No matter how she pushed her thoughts to come up with something, everything before she’d woken up was just… blank. She asked herself a dozen questions and couldn’t answer any of them. Okay, don’t panic, - uh… uh… she couldn’t even come up with her own name. Okay, I’m panicking now…
She squinted as a bright light opened above her. Or rather something else opened letting in the light. It was too bright, and she had to cover her eyes.
“Get up, skug! It’s almost your turn,” something growled at her with a weird accent.
Skug?
“My turn for what?” she asked, trying to look again. She thought she could just make out an outline of a Zygerrian male guardsmen uniform, not that she knew why she knew that.
“Silence, slave!” He hit her with a strange electric whip, and she convulsed under the shock.
“But… I’m not a slave!” she said in confusion. Though she couldn’t figure out what else she was so why was she sure of that? He hit her again and she rolled onto her back feeling weird and tingly when the shock ended.
“Slaves don’t speak unless spoken to,” the guard replied angrily.
“Where am I?” She flinched as she heard the whip buzz past her head, thankfully missing her this time.
“Disobedient scum!” he growled, and she was hit several more times with the painful whip. She stopped talking. This didn’t make sense. Where was she? Who was she? How had she ended up here? Had she always been a slave? The more questions she asked, the less she knew.
The floor beneath her started rising towards the still too bright light and the cruel man above. He unlocked her ankle but roughly dragged her to a cart full of other people that were shackled too. She shivered from all the fear, not really knowing what was happening or where they were being taken.
She was tied to a platform, that rose up in the center of some kind of arena. All the faces she saw felt evil and jeering. She heard things being shouted but nothing really made sense to her. She was hit several times by more guards with whips for disobeying things she wasn’t even sure she’d heard. Eventually she landed on her knees, just wishing for this all to be over soon.
More time passed, more unanswered questions. She learned quickly to do what they said even if it didn’t make sense. The pain of not doing it was intolerable. Every time she forgot to stay quiet and tried to ask a question, she was punished with more pain. But no matter how hard she wished for it; no memories ever came back from before she’d found herself here. Everything just felt blank. She couldn’t think of a single memory of who she was or where she’d come from or anything. It was just emptiness, like… whatever inside her head had once held that information had simply been discarded completely.
“You’re a worthless little skug!” People seemed to say a lot, if they answered her at all. “And you’ll learn your place!”
No matter how many times she asked, she got the same answer. No name, no sense of identity, no nothing. She was just ‘slave’ or ‘skug’ or ‘girl’. Most of the time, they never even addressed her, they just expected her to move. Any time she didn’t do what they asked, electricity would shoot through her body from this weird device around her neck. Or they’d hit her fast and hard with their electric charged whips. They also seemed to take a lot of pleasure in knocking her feet out from under her or shoving her face in the dirt and sand. A few times it was water, and she was left gasping for breath.
She didn’t really believe this was all she was, but as time wore on, she still never got real answers. Maybe this was her life? Maybe this had always been her life? It wasn’t like she could remember anything different. What a cruel fate if it had been though, to forget all the torture and pain, and be forced to relearn it. She wished she could forget it again but still do what they said so she didn’t have to be aware of it anymore.
Day after day, orders were barked at her, even the slightest hesitation or delay was painfully punished. She learned the right way to clean, how to cook and serve food, how to bow or stay out of sight. She learned to obey her master’s every whim. Sometimes that meant chores, sometimes it meant errands, sometimes it meant letting him touch her however he wanted. After awhile, she kind of became numb to all of it. It was just the way it was, and she still had no idea if or what else she could have been.
There became a point where she couldn’t disobey even if she wanted to. And the few lucid moments of awareness scared her. But most of the time, she just felt blank. Like they’d somehow reprogrammed her, made her believe these things that must be true. She didn’t know any different, maybe they were true?
There was also no concept of the passage of time. Each night was just another scratch on the dirty wall. People would pass through, talking about all sorts of strange things, none of it made sense to her, so it must never have been part of whatever had existed in her world before the time she could remember.
But on day twenty-three, she awoke with a splitting headache. She heard something electric, heard someone crying. The desperation in his voice ripped her insides into pieces. “What have I done?” It echoed around in her head; it made her heartache. She didn’t recognize the voice, but it pounded against her skull like it was demanding her attention. Nothing else she felt or heard made any sense to her, but that voice… that voice… whoever it was… he was something. Some piece of the infinite unknown, a big piece, she was sure. But after that night… she never heard it again. And it became the one thing that haunted her more than the endless lashes or punishments. More than getting hit or kicked or spit on or used. She wanted to know who he was and why he felt so important. Why she’d heard this, whatever it was.
But maybe it had just been her imagination? Maybe it wasn’t anything at all. Nothing really felt real anymore, maybe it wasn’t either.