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Shadows of Survival

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At some point - Obi-Wan didn't know why, and neither did Laks'mi - there came a time when the slavers stopped feeding him entirely. He'd noticed them giving him less and less to eat; if it weren't for Laks'mi's help he would go through several days without eating. But from then on, the slavers only gave him water and blue milk.

His body grew gaunter still (he hadn't even known that was possible), and the last remnants of fat quickly faded away, leaving only bruised and bloody skin stretched over a skeleton. Laks'mi continued to help him, doubled her efforts to bring him more food, but it was never enough. He was so cold, and it was all he could do to coil himself up tighter than a bronzium wire and shiver, his teeth chattering and his fingers and toes blue, and hope that he would make it through the next hour. He supposed he could only be grateful that the planet was entering the spring; he knew he would not have survived the deep winter months otherwise.

Winter blizzards and storms began to die away. The weather began to settle, and the slavers could take him to parties again. Obi-Wan knew now how to take himself away, how to shut his mind and seal off all feelings while they committed those atrocities to him, violating him over and over again. And when they were done, he would be exhausted, and the only thing he was capable of doing was closing his eyes and going to sleep, no matter where he happened to be.

There was never a time anymore when he was awake to hear Laks'mi coming to visit him. He was always sleeping, his weakened heart struggling to pump out the next beat. Laks'mi had to wake him every time she visited now, and waking up was always harder than it had been the previous occasion.

But it was always a relief to wake to hear Laks'mi's voice saying his name through the door window, instead of bring roughly kicked and slapped awake by the slavers. It was beyond him how he managed it nowadays, getting from one place to the next without Anakin's help, when the slavers made him get up and move, out to the ship and to the next party.

On one such occasion, after the last snows for the year, when under any other conditions Obi-Wan would have appreciated the rugged beauty of the snow-covered planet, this time he couldn't find the energy within him. Not even the elegant white blanket, two metres deep, glittering frostily under the weak rays of the sun could stir up a single flicker of admiration in him; nor could the forests and trees and bushes weighed down with sparkling ice and snow, dangerously beautiful icicles hanging delicately from every branch; nor could the lakes and rivers frozen with thick sheets of ice on the surfaces, navy-blue waters flowing beneath, the waterfalls themselves turned to shimmering ice of gradients ranging from pure white to pale blue; nor could the occasional cries of birds and animals muffled by the snow.

The planet would have been breathtakingly beautiful in the winter, had Obi-Wan been able to appreciate it. Now, as he trudged through the layers of snow, his toes nearly falling off his bare feet with the cold, he could only think miserably of how the weather was another way to torture him. The slavers couldn't even begin to guess at the effort it cost him to lift each foot and place it down again in front of him, crunching through the snow. They only used the sedative on him once he was on the ship; Obi-Wan had seen them pour the liquid out onto the cloth from a bottle they no longer kept stored in a locked cupboard, but left on a table.

He discovered why they had stopped feeding him once he was at the party: even the novelty of a Jedi sex slave wore off eventually. He was getting too old for them, too tired. He also discovered that Rafan and his friends liked to find out how long each slave lasted once completely deprived of food. The record, he was told, was four days.

So, he and Laks'mi couldn't wait for much longer, then. Stripped naked from his party outfit, Obi-Wan was on his hands and knees, someone penetrating his anus while he had been forced to take someone else's genitals into his mouth and suck. He kept his eyes closed, knowing if he opened them all he would see would be the man's waist and pubic hair. He could feel blood and semen dripping over his legs, as usual. Pain ripping through him, as usual. Obi-Wan steeled himself in despair, knowing all he could do was to wait it out, and then it would be over sooner.

The party was in full swing, and although Obi-Wan shivered constantly no-one cared. He ducked his head, shielding his mouth and nose as a couple of them urinated on him. He whispered his apologies to the other slaves when the slavers forced them to have unsafe sexual intercourse with each other. They laughed and jeered at him when he was made to masturbate in front of them all, and again when he was made to sing and dance for them, naked.

They teased him with food, dangling pieces of roasted meat in front of him. When someone inevitably dropped some, Obi-Wan was on it in a flash, not caring that it was visibly covered with dirt from the floor. But he had barely swallowed it when they forced their fingers down his throat and made him vomit it back up; Obi-Wan was so exhausted and so hungry, starving beyond his wildest imagination, that he almost cried.

But, regardless of how tired or hungry he became, he always made sure that he kept himself watching constantly for an opportunity to escape. So when a new slave, bought and brought by other masters, still fit and healthy, started to put up a fight and capture the attention of everyone at the party - Obi-Wan saw his chance. With no strength left to get up, the Jedi Master painstakingly crawled on the floor, using the tables and chairs as cover. The guards at the entrance marched over to help subdue the slave, and Obi-Wan knew they wouldn't be distracted for long.

The unguarded door was just a couple of metres away from him now, but here was also where the cover of the tables and chairs ended. Obi-Wan stole a glance behind him, saw that the guards and slave masters were still occupied with the screaming slave, took a deep breath - it was now or never - and moved out into the open view of the room.

His heart banged against his ribs as he shuffled, on his hands and knees, over the threshold. If any of them looked towards the door now, they would see him, and it would all be over. Obi-Wan kept his head down and his limbs moving - if he could just make it to the ship, then he could fly it towards the last logged coordinates, get Laks'mi - 

Obi-Wan heard a shout behind him. The ship was just twenty metres away. With a rush of strength and adrenaline suddenly fueling his body - he was so close - he staggered to his feet, began to lurch towards the ship - 

But the guards were quickly gaining.

Obi-Wan urged himself faster, every muscle on fire, his lungs burning, his heart almost ready to burst out of his chest - but just moments later, he was slammed to the ground, and he struggled uselessly, but he knew it was over.

He'd failed.

"Tryin' ter get to the ship, huh, Jedi slave?" one snarled, hot breath on his throat. "Tryin' ter escape, were yer?"

Gasping for breath, Obi-Wan was unable to reply. They yanked him upright, with so much force that Obi-Wan heard and felt his wrist bones break, and he was dragged back over the door threshold into the party.

"Got 'im!" yelled a guard, gripping Obi-Wan's upper arm like iron.

They threw him into the centre, and the other slaves were made to form a line in front of him, and Rafan himself stalked from one end to the other, brandishing a blaster, and Obi-Wan knew what was going to happen before it did - 

He closed his eyes and begged for their lives even as blasterfire echoed through the room, as red flashes lit up behind his eyelids, as he heard the sounds of bodies falling to the floor. Tears began to stream down his face as he pled, but to no avail; the final slave slumped to the ground, dead with a blaster wound to the head, the echo sounding with a dreadful finality through the room.

And then blows were raining down on him like never before; hands and feet and elbows were punching him and hurting him and kicking him from all directions like he'd never experienced; and they kept coming, but Obi-Wan just let it happen, having finally learnt his lesson - 

He blinked blood out of his eyes, knowing several bones were broken; he coughed blood as they continued to beat him brutally, with a level of savagery he would never, in his entire life, even thought was possible - 

They burned his legs and hands and genitals with flames, the fire burning his skin away, but Obi-Wan made no sound. They jumped on him, jumped on his head; Obi-Wan heard his bones cracking, heavy boots landing on his skull over and over again - they carved words into his skin, and Obi-Wan knew they would scar, that he would forever be branded with the words 'cocksucker' and 'wanker' and 'arselicker' and 'slut', that everyone would know what he was when they read the word 'WHORE' engraved permanently on his face - 

They smashed the bones of his wrists and hands with a mallet, his bones shattering into a hundred tiny pieces, his flesh torn open and exposing the tendons and fragmented bones. His ankles were snapped, rendering him unable to walk; they beat his face with a metal rod so many times it bent out of shape and his nose was broken into a bloody pulp - they force-fed him human excrement, submerged his broken hands into boiling water and kept them there even as he screamed with the agony, blisters forming and skin peeling away before his very eyes - 

A pole wrapped in barbed wire struck him, and struck him again, and Obi-Wan could do nothing; pain tore through his whole body so severely he couldn't do anything but yell; glass bottles swung into his skull and smashed, and he stepped on the shards, still more blood streaming from the cuts on his skin - 

Several of his teeth were ripped out of his mouth. They dropped heavy balls on his stomach. They punched him until their hands and knuckles were covered in his blood. They rammed a vibroknife up his anus - Obi-Wan was out of his mind with the agony - he was shrieking and screaming and crying and he wanted to die, he wanted it all to be over, why couldn't death just take him - 

He was barely conscious while they hammered small, sharp nails and objects into his skin, while they forced shards of broken glass into his anus, while they poured scalding water all over him. Blood was lying in a sticky pool all around him, but they didn't stop - they forced him back to awareness, they wouldn't let him go, they wouldn't let him die - 

And then they went for his eyes, and though he didn't understand what they were saying, they were telling him that he would never see another opportunity ever again - and they gouged his eyes out with their fingers, pulling viciously on the optic nerve until it snapped in two - he was completely blind, blood streaming from his empty eye sockets - they cut off three of his fingers, leaving behind bloody stumps - 

His head was forced back and liquid was poured down his throat, a liquid that burned and bubbled its way down into his stomach, a kind of chemical cleaner - they made him keep drinking, and keep drinking, until Obi-Wan fell back and began seizing so badly he knocked tables over - 

Unconscious, with over a litre of chemical cleaner in him, the seizure wouldn't stop. He jerked and convulsed uncontrollably, bloody froth bubbling from between his lips; his eyes would have rolled up into the back of his skull if he'd still had them - he choked, inhaling his own saliva and vomit -

He urinated and defecated on himself while seizing, and the lengthy duration of the seizure - over thirty minutes long - seemed to go on and on and on until it finally stopped. But Obi-Wan never knew that it had stopped, because though the seizure was over he hadn't emerged from the state of unconsciousness.

In a deep coma, unlikely to wake up, the Jedi Master was carried to the ship and thrown unceremoniously into his cell. They left him there alone without a backwards glance, and the only person who cared was a young Togruta girl. Hidden, she watched the masters key in the passcode, and when they were gone she let herself in - and she saw an emaciated man lying almost lifeless on the floor, savagely beaten, and covered in so many bruises and so much blood and with so many broken bones he was completely unrecognisable. 

Shaking him gently, tapping his face, elicited no reaction whatsoever. Laks'mi knew what must have happened: a failed escape attempt. There was no other reason the slavers would have hurt him this badly.

Obi-Wan was barely breathing, his heartbeat the faintest, slightest, slowest pulse in his neck, so weak it was little more than a flutter. His injuries were too severe. There was no question about it: Obi-Wan would die, and soon, if he didn't receive proper medical help.

Laks'mi couldn't let that happen. Not to her only friend in the galaxy.

They had to get out of here - now, with the last vestiges of Obi-Wan's life trickling through her fingers. Now was the time to carry out the escape plan she and Obi-Wan had discussed together.

And this time, they would succeed.