Chapter Text
Imperial farm planet - Early 10 ATC
Lechra’s cough wracked Tahrimi’s body, jangling in her mind and setting her nerves on edge. If any of the Sith overseers heard, she knew what would happen—there was only ever one solution for their brutal masters. They had been working in the fields for only a few hours, but the wind that day was brutal, and because it was the dry season the dust clouds would make even the healthiest slave choke when they breathed. But it was worse for Lechra, who had been sick for days with no hope of time for recovery. Tahrimi knew that if she Sith didn’t kill her sister, the illness and the work just might, but she knew her sister to be tough, had to believe that, somehow, she would pull through if only the Sith did not know of her illness.
All day they worked, with Tahrimi steering her sister farther out into the uncultivated land, trying to keep away from any overseer. The grueling work strained her muscles and her anxiety only served to increase her exhaustion. The hours passed in a blur of sheer terror and mind-numbing fatigue; every moment that Tahrimi’s guard slipped ever so slightly into contented complacency, Lechra would cough, or a Sith would wander too close, and waves of adrenaline would pump anew through her blood and wind up her already over-stressed nervous system.
“Can’t you try to be quieter?” She snapped at her sister once, following a particularly brutal coughing fit after lunch. But her annoyance ebbed almost immediately under the pathetic, suffering gaze of her little sister. Lechra could barely speak for her illness, and she looked as though she were about to faint. Tahrimi looked around and saw no nearby Sith, or at least none paying them any attention. “Okay, just sit here, take my cloak, I’ll do your work for you. You need to rest. It’s alright. I’ll be fine.” She settled her sister into a natural seat formed by two rocks that would keep her out of view of the closest Sith overseer. The wind bit into her exposed arms as soon as she removed her cloak, but she didn’t care. What didn’t kill her made her stronger—she had learned that quickly the hard way, many years ago. Of course she could do her sister’s work and her own. Of course she could withstand the cold and the sharp dust. Of course she would do it all without complaining or making any show of discomfort. Of course she would, because she had to. For her sister. She had to keep Lechra alive. She was all Tahrimi had left; the only thing Tahrimi cared about anymore.
Pain. Exhaustion. Tahrimi could feel tears burning in her eyes as she forced her body to carry on working double, even as her every limb protested. I can do this. You can do this. It must be done, and we all know I will succeed, she thought to herself, plunging the plough into the dirt and shoving it several feet forward. I am not weak. The Sith have made me strong. My will has made me strong. Nothing and no one will beat me.
The work day ended, finally, long after the sun had sunk beyond the horizon and the distant stars of other systems hung coldly in the sky, seeming to tease Tahrimi with their illusion of proximity. She wiped her forehead wearily under her horns when she heard the Sith shouting at them to get back to their bunkers. “Come on, Lek, time to go home,” she murmured as she dragged her tools along in one hand and reached out another to pull her sister up. Lechra slumped against her body, shivering--Tahrimi couldn’t tell if it was from fever or effort to stand. She hugged her sister close and together they struggled back with the rest of the slaves, weary, bleary-eyed, broken. Amongst the crowd of other hunched over, limping, pathetic creatures the two sisters did not stand out, and passed quietly along under the eyes of their overlords.
In the bunkers, Tahrimi lowered Lechra down onto her cot and covered her in the thin rag the sith allotted them for blankets. “I’m going to go get us food. Sit tight,” Tahrimi murmured. Dragging herself back to her feet, she plodded off to join the queue of other slaves at the back of the bunker which opened into a small corral. At the centre was a great fire where some slaves sat roasting the scraps of meat the sith threw to them each day. Those same slaves distributed the food as evenly as possible, with the sith standing guard. Tahrimi’s stomach twisted painfully when the scent of roasted meat wafted to her. She hadn’t eaten in days. No one got double portions; if a slave wanted to eat, he had to drag his sorry ass to the fire, otherwise he could lay on his cot and starve. So Tahrimi had been giving her sister her portions; she ate half once every three days, to stay alive. The smell of food made her woozy, and she thought she might faint right there for hunger. Pull it together , she snapped to herself, clenching her fists as though that might frighten off unconsciousness.
She shuffled forward with the crowd, her mind drifting in and out of focus. Between hunger and exhaustion, it was all she could do to keep herself standing upright. But she had to feed Lechra; if she did not, her sister would certainly die. Almost there. Just a couple more people and then you can go sith with Lek, she told herself as her mind fogged over again. And then, suddenly, as she floated in a strange limbo which heightened sound and dulled vision, all of her senses seemed to come painfully, vividly alive. Without seeing, Tahrimi saw that the sith overseers were paying the horde of slaves no heed; without feeling, she felt the bowls of food left unattended by the cook who had turned to tend to the fire; without knowing, she knew that this was her chance to feed herself and her sister, and no one would be the wiser. Without thinking, Tahrimi acted on this strange, almost living instinct that had come over her. She unobtrusively moved forward, squeezed between two of her fellow slaves who looked just as dazed as everyone else; she reached out for the bowls, somehow knowing where they were without knowing, stacked one atop the other, turned and shuffled back the way she had come, just as dead and unassuming as you please.
By the time she reached Lechra, the strange effect had worn off and the world in all its fuzzy dullness and haze of exhaustion had reclaimed its place. Tahrimi practically fell onto the cot beside her sister. “Here,” she said, handing her sister one of the bowls.
Between coughs, Lechra frowned slightly, looking at the two bowls with obvious worry.
Tahrimi just shook her head. “Don’t worry. Just eat.” She alternated between wolfing down her own portion of food and helping Lechra eat.
When they finished and Tahrimi started unlacing her thin, worn leather shoes to get into bed, Lechra reached out with one weak, skeletal hand and clasped Tahrimi weakly on the forearm. Tahrimi looked up at her sister, laying her own hand over Lechra’s. She was smiling--weakly, and so sadly it broke Tahrimi’s heart. “Everything’s going to be ok. I’ll take care of us, I won’t let us die here,” Tahrimi promised, hoping she did not feel as broken as she felt. She reached out and brushed a strand of her sister’s sweat-soaked light brown hair off her forehead where it had got caught on her horns. Lechra’s skin was still un-marked light-red; they had become slaves before the year when Lechra would have gotten her first tattoos, and though there were other zabrak in the camp, no one had the time or the energy (or the right) to perform the ceremony. It pained Tahrimi every time she thought about it, that her sister should be barred from such an important rite. I cannot let her die un-marked, I cannot. We will get out of this, and she will be welcomed as a mature zabrak properly, just like she deserves, she thought, clenching her jaw to keep back tears which would only distress her sister.
Tahrimi kicked off her shoes and crawled onto the cot so that she was snuggled close to Lechra. She adjusted their blankets so that Lechra was tucked in tight and hugged her, willing her own minimal body heat to warm up her shivering sister. Within seconds she dropped into a deep, exhausted sleep.
A shriek.
Tahrimi’s blood went cold. As if in slow motion, she turned around. She had been so focused on keeping herself working that she had forgotten to keep a look out for overseers, forgotten to check that her sister was still protected from their view. A Sith stood over Lechra’s frail body, tucked away in the roots between a lone, dying tree, with a look of hateful malice upon his blood-red features.
No.
The Sith lifted Lercha by her throat with the force and threw her back to the ground. She fell in a heap, a trembling, weak specimen. Easy prey. “So, it seems we have some rotten little vermin who thinks she can take a break!” His voice almost cracked with sadistic glee as he grabbed Lechra by the wrist and dragged her up so her face was level with his. He pinched her cheeks between his hands, hard, and turned her head up so that her watery eyes met his. “Filthy li’el vermin you are, too,” he growled, disgusted, throwing Lechra back down so her back faced up. The untethered his slave-whip and cracked it with brutal precision over Lechra’s boney back, over and over.
The sudden and strange vivid awareness of the world assaulted Tahrimi again, and suddenly she could feel the life leeching out of her sister with each blow that the Sith let fall on her, knew irrevocably that her sister was on the brink of death, pushed further across the threshold with every passing second. Anger, desperation, fear: they were alive, a bright and raging fire that had smouldered within her for eight years and which suddenly imbued her limbs with the energy of rage. She launched herself at the Sith, attacking him with a strength she did not know that she possessed. She knocked him back and attacked him with a flurry of punches, pushing harder into that vibrating energy as her sister’s life force grew weaker. In the relatively short time it took the Sith to recover himself and Force-push Tahrimi away, she managed to bruise his face severely—the only part of his body not covered in armor. With a grunt, Tahrimi tried to get back up, ignoring her aching body that trembled with exhaustion, driven only by the feral need to protect her dying sister; but her limbs were unresponsive. No matter how hard she pushed, a force like a steel barrier kept her bowed before the Sith, facing her sister. Their eyes were level. Lechra’s eyes were barely open; what little Tahrimi could see looked glazed over and vague with pain, fatigue, exhaustion.
“Lechra! Lechra, stay alive. Look at me—look at me!” Tahrimi begged, her voice cracking with effort as she strained futilely against the force-hold the Sith exerted over her. “Lechra, no, don’t give in! You will make it through this--I-I’ll get us out of this, I—” She broke off as Lechra’s eyelids drooped further; her voice seemed to stick in her throat, lodged behind sobs so violent they were noiseless.
“Oh, don’t let’s stop. Your futile pleas are so… delicious,” the Sith said in a silky, morbidly pleased tone.
Tahrimi watched, helpless, horrified, as her sister weakly moved the hand nearest Tahrimi, crawling her fingers painfully over the dirt, reaching out for Tahrimi.
Desperately, frantically, Tahrimi struggled against her Force bond; she threw herself with all her strength against the invisible steel holding her in place, tried with all her draining might to reach back to Lechra--to hold her hand while she died. Sheer terror seared through her and she actually managed, with difficulty, to raise her hand from her side and extend it towards Lechra.
Growling angrily, the Sith stomped his food down on Tahrimi’s wrist, cracking it, and held it there.
Eyes streaming from pain, exertion, and horror, Tahrimi lay helpless and watched Lechra’s final efforts cease, the breath of life leave her body.
Her sobs finally erupted in a tortured scream. “No…. no! No! ” She shouted, her voice cracking and her body shivering uncontrollably with pained cries. Writhing suffering, resentment, terror pooled in her chest, building to an uncontrollable pressure. Tahrimi thought she was going to suffocate. This is all his fault . She snapped her eyes up and glared at the Sith through burning tears. Just the sight of his face brought the chaotic, oscillating mass in her chest to a boil and in a rush of energy it exploded out of her on the breath of her pain.
The Sith flew backwards several feet, knocked away by the blast of energy, and with him his hold on Tahrimi. She struggled up and moved over to her sister’s corpse, cradling Lechra’s head in her lap. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry…” she whispered over and over.
“So, slave, you have Force sensibilities,” the Sith growled, as he stalked back over and leaned over the sisters, leering disdainfully down at the zabrak with bright orange eyes set deep in crimson red skin. “And very strong ones at that.” He chuckled menacingly. “But you’re not stronger than me, alien slime, remember that. I’ll teach you to regret your foolish impertinence.”
Rimi scowled and spit at his feet in utter disrespect. “Do your worst, I dare you,” she snarled. So what if he killed her now? Her sister was gone; she had failed Lechra. She was alone, with nothing left to live for. At the very least she would die standing up against the brute who had ensured her sister’s undeserved death. A worthy end .
The Sith chuckled again. “Oh, I was so hoping that you would say that,” he said with a nasty grin. He straightened up and Tahrimi braced herself for a lightning shock, a Force-push, anything; but he merely turned away from her and stalked off.
Tahrimi did not leave her sister’s side; stayed kneeling on the ground in a daze of dread and utter loss as she held that lifeless corpse, the remains of the person who, until that point, had been the only reason for Tahrimi to live. The abyss of pain that had yawned in her from the very first day of the Empire’s attack on her home expanded to such magnitude in that second that Lechra died that it stopped being an abyss of anything—Tahrimi’s entire being was a negation: she felt nothing, she was nothing. It seemed as though she too had lost her soul, like she was merely a mechanical body devoid of life yet still living. That vibrating energy that had come with the fear and the rage in the moments before and after Lechra’s death had since abated, leaving Tahrimi hollow, powerless, fragile. The only thought, the only semblance of anything tangible that remained to her, was one single line that echoed through that empty cavern that had once been her soul: this is all my fault .
She was vaguely aware of being lifted away from her sister, at some point, pulled up by harsh hands and dragged off somewhere by a Sith; she was only aware because Lechra’s body drifted farther and farther away until it disappeared into the fold of the horizon, abandoned on the ground where she had been slain. Tahrimi would never see her again. And the last thing she would remember was Lechra reaching in vain for her hand.
Minutes, hours, days could have passed and Tahrimi wouldn’t have known it. She didn’t eat. She didn’t move. She knew she was inside, but she didn’t know where and didn’t care. All she knew was that Lechra was gone and nothing else mattered. Whatever Force sensitivity the Sith claimed she possessed was useless; she could not find Lechra, no matter how hard she tried; all that existed was a great void where a warm heart should have been beating. This is all my fault. If only I had paid more attention in the field; if only I had cared for her better; if only I had been strong enough to defend her… If only I had been strong enough …
“She’s as good as dead, milord.”
A strange voice penetrated her thoughts. She knew the speaker was referring to her, but who he was or why she did not know. Did not care. Nothing mattered. Nothing at all.
Tahrimi was aware that she had been moved again at some point, only vaguely registered that she had been put on a starship--and that was because she felt the kind of nauseated that she’d only ever felt the one other time she’d travelled through space: when she was taken from her home planet as a slave to the Imperials. She spent all of her time in her quarters. If she wasn’t asleep, she may as well have been. Emptiness consumed her every waking moment. In fact, she felt more alive and awake in her dreams than when she was actually awake. In her dreams, Lechra lived; her parents lived. They walked together, through lush fields that Tahrimi had never known but which felt as familiar and comfortable as home nonetheless. Sometimes she would not wake right away and they would walk for hours together until they suddenly reached their home on the Zabrak homeworld, and they would all sit together doing nothing but completely content. It was the only happiness—the only emotion at all—that Tahrimi knew for nearly a week.