- Joined
- Jan 2, 2013
- Messages
- 674
- Reaction score
- 13
God, what is it that I remember? I remember the sharp, fiery pain of a thousand needles stabbing into my nerves as my arm was replaced. I remember being shackled to the coarse stone floor, acquiring new scratches, gouges, bruises and cuts on my legs every day and night. I remember my stomach wrenching itself inside out of malrnourishment, and often vomiting up the contents of what little I was graced to devour simply because I couldn't handle it. I remember the relentless cracks of leather whips, and the way they dug into my back like claws, rending flesh from bone until you began to feel nothing at all.
To have endured all of the horrors that I did, to have seen the worst of humanity and have your life unrecognizable because of it, was not something easily remembered or forgotten. I had a pathetic, childish illusion in some obscure corner of my mind that I was important to the universe. I wanted people to love me, my masters and my fellow slaves, simply because I felt the things they did: heat and cold, pain and loneliness. How foolish was I? I was no child in those pits. No, I wasn't even human. I was the lowest form of life condemned to this damnable atrocity. I didn't even know my name.
After that, I didn't expect anyone to love me, and they didn't.
My survival was up to me, and me alone. I had nothing and I had no one. That was... until he came along.
Shackled in my cell, bloodied and exhausted from the day's work, I risked a glimpse upward. A man adorned in a fine suit, undoubtedly crafted by the careful hands of a professional running into the thousands of credits, haunted the doorway to our hopeless, rundown, pathetic excuse for a living area. This was a weekly routine of the slavers, to invite wealthy visitors to their ragtag operation in an attempt to coerce them into purchasing one of us. After all, the work of a slave could only earn them so much money. Better to sell us to the highest bidder.
"Yeah! Time to show him around."
The second slave driver rose to his feet, rotting teeth drawn into a smug grin as he approached this new visitor. I resigned my head back to the rock below, trying to force myself into a slumber―one I would hopefully never wake from. I felt the smog of the great machines littering the underground flood my lungs, and I couldn't control the hoarse, gagging cough that soon followed. My frail body curled up into a pitiful ball in the floor as I jerked uncontrollably with each cough, and again I felt my stomach cave in on itself with each exhale.
Soon the pain subsided, and I returned to my misery.
"Who's this?"
The voice startled me, but I was too exhausted to move. There was no jump of fright, nor did I even have the energy to react at all. I stayed in my disgraceful fetal position, my eyes barely catching sight of the slave driver and the newcomer. It was obvious he was looking me over, but why?
"Ah, Slave Four-Six-Eight-Five-Three," the driver acknowledged, folding his hands behind his back. "A diligent enough worker. Fake arm. We've had her since she was born―a debt owed by her family."
"I'll take her," the gentleman in the suit said. The slaver cackled mockingly, with unattractive snorts surfacing intermittently. It took him several solid minutes to compose himself before he responded.
"You can't have her! Her debt is far too much," he chided.
"How much?"
"About seven million credits total."
"Consider it paid," the man said nonchalantly, as if the incredulous amount was nothing but pocket change to him. "I'll wire the money to you immediately. I want her," he commanded, rather than requested. The slaver's brow furrowed in lucid curiosity, his bug eyes widened at his unexpected profit. He snorted, shuffling through his ring of keys to find the one labeled with my number. My head finally lifted from the ground, my soft green eyes peering into the man's ocean irises. Was this for real?
"Here," the slaver said, handing the man the key before hastily scurrying off to make sure he wasn't being cheated. The man bent over, unlocking the door to my cell. The rusted hinges creaked as they wavered open, and the man stood, waiting for me to emerge.
"Coming?" he asked. I hesitated, too nervous to believe this was true. This had to be a joke, right? Who would pay seven million credits for a slave up front, without even knowing how she performed or what she was like? Precariously my left foot strayed outside of the confines of my cell, followed shortly by my right. There were no lashings. There were no shouts, no beating. This was really happening.
Without a word the man turned away and began heading for the entrance, beckoning for me to follow him, and I did. [floatleft]http://th03.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/i/2013/244/f/1/tungstenicity_ii_by_markjaybee-d6kl2ci.jpg[/floatleft]It was only a few hours before we arrived at his immaculate abode, nestled comfortably within the sky-high lofts of Coruscant. It was a thing of majesty, his residence, with glistening durasteel, antique décor, and exquisitely high-priced and lavish furnishings everywhere the eye wandered. I was breathless with awe, and found myself absorbing all of it.
"How old are you?"
I shook myself back to my reality. This wasn't my home. I was still a slave after all, and it was only be the benevolence of my new master that I was permitted to grace this room.
"Twelve, Master." He made a disgusted sound.
"Please, don't call me that," he requested. "Call me Lance. If that makes you uncomfortable, 'sir' will do."
What? He wanted me to call him by his real name, instead of what he really was to me? I was baffled. I had somehow jumped from one extreme to the other in a matter of hours, and I was beginning to believe that I had passed to the netherworld, and this was all a vivid dream. Whether it was or not I knew my place, and I was obliged to abide by his rules.
"Yes, sir," I said tentatively.
"What about your name?" he asked next.
"I am Four-Six-Eight-Fi-"
"No, no. Your name," he said in a flustered tone of voice. "Not your number." I stood in confusion for a moment before being able to answer.
"Sir, where I come from, we don't have names. We have numbers. Our name is our number, and that's all I've ever known." Lance sighed in dishevelment; I obviously wasn't giving him the answers he had been hoping for. He took a seat in a well-cushioned chair and braced his right ankle on his left knee, his hand straying to a stand with a box of cigarillos on top. He grasped the box and flipped the lid, removing one of the brown rolls of tobacco from its carton. Seizing a lighter from the same stand, he lit his addiction and took a hefty drag. Smoke slithered through the air and through his teeth as he exhaled.
"Serenity," he said. My eyes narrowed in confusion as he pressed the cigarillo to his lips, the cherry at the end glowing brighter as he took another drag. "I'll call you Serenity. Serenity Labelle, because that's my last name. Is that okay with you?" I couldn't reply. How could I? He was actually naming me, and passing his surname onto me as well. That, aside from whisking me away from the unbearable work in the mine shaft, was the greatest gift he could have ever bestowed upon me. All I could do was nod in meek understanding.
"Good," he said. "Now, Serenity, I want you to follow Ceefour to the dining hall. He has a meal prepared for you." Lance clapped his hands, and I turned at the telltale metallic shuffling of a service droid. It stood in a nearby doorway, leading to what I assumed was the dining hall and kitchen area.
"After that, we'll get you suited with a brand new arm. One that's more suited for someone of your status now, rather than those ignorant brutes with a distorted sense of superiority in the mines." I flinched at the mention of receiving a brand new arm. That was an excrutiatingly painful procedure, at least down in the pits. Lance shot me a reassuring glance.
"Don't worry," he said. "It will be completely painless. I'll make sure of it. Now go on, go eat." I turned to leave the room, but not before looking at this mysterious person named Lance lounging in his chair. He nodded once again and made a motion for me to continue onward, and so I did.
In fact, I hardly felt like a slave at all anymore. Occasionally he would ask me to run an errand, and of course it was my duty to keep things clean around the house, take care of the service droid as much as he took care of me, and other simple everyday house chores. Still though, how could he stand it? I became somewhat selfish, impatient and, of course, I was still insecure. I made plenty of mistakes, and at times I knew I was hard to handle. No matter what though, he always handled me at my worst... and so that charade was short-lived, but nary did it leave any sort of mark or impression upon him.
Ten years I spent with him. Ten wonderful years that felt all like a dream, but it wasn't. By the grace of some greater power, I was bestowed upon the most amazing person I had ever known.
I took a seat in one of the several chairs set across from Lance, no doubt positioned as such in order to entertain guests―though I had never seen him have a single one over in all the time I had lived here. Not that I really minded, because I was perfectly content knowing that I had Lance to myself. He had admittedly grown much more rugged than he was before he had bought me, and time had not been gentle in its work on him. He still had his same cigarillos, clenched softly between his teeth as he took brief drags. The sweet smell of its wine flavor was a norm for me now, and it was a sense of nostalgia and safety.
"What is it?" I asked him. I had inevitably broken the habit of addressing him as sir, but it was still an internal conflict addressing him by his first name. I didn't feel entitled to do it.
"Well, I'm going to talk to you like an adult," he began. "Truth be told, Serenity, I'm dying." I felt my heart sink into my chest. This was not what I had been anticipating when he had told me he needed to speak. Was this old news to him, that he felt was now okay to tell me? Was it a new development?
"From what?"
"That does not matter," he rebutted. "Nor does it matter how long I've known, so you can dismiss that from your mind." Damn. He knew me too well. "What does matter is what I have to give you," he continued.
"What's that?" I inquired, my curiosity piqued.
"Freedom," he said. I felt a soft chuckle escape my lungs and squeeze through my lips, and I waited for him to show some hint that he was joking... but none came. I could tell that he was serious.
"Doesn't that take a long time?" I asked. Where I came from, it wasn't as simple as "once you buy the slave, they're free". Where I came from, they kept strict, albeit discreet, tabs on most every slave they sold. I knew they were doing the same to me.
"It does, but the papers are sitting right over there," he commented, making a gesture with the hand holding his cigarillo. "Your previous owners' names are on there, as is my own. All you need to do is sign it yourself." I stared at Lance in disbelief. He was lying. I scrambled from my seat and over to the table on which the papers sat, and went over them several times. I absorbed every line, and did everything I could to authentic it to make sure that the document itself was real.
"How long have you been working on this?" I asked.
"Ever since I took you under my care."
He made no hesitation. There was no delay in his voice. It was unabashed honesty, through and through. For ten years Lance had been working on setting me completely free from the confines of slavery, and I never knew. I never even caught on. For ten straight years, he had been diligently working on freeing me, all the while managing to keep it a well-hidden secret from me. I felt hot tears burn at the back of my eyes, and I couldn't help but walk back over to him, paper in my hands.
"Oh, Serenity, please don't cry. You know how I feel about theatrics." I hastily wiped the tears from my eye with my biological arm, resuming my seat.
"But... why?" I asked.
"Because, I never really thought of you as a slave," Lance began again. "Yes, I had you do some frivolous chores. Yes, I had you run errands. But those are things that any father would expect of his daughter, aren't they?"
My heart tensed.
Daughter?
All this time, he thought of me as his daughter? I was never a peace of property to him?
"I had every intention of freeing you from the moment you came into my care," he continued. "It took me a while to do it, but there it is."
"But... what do I do?" I asked in confusion. I had never known a life other than indentured labor, serving others. It was everything, it had built my world, taught me everything, how to eat, drink, breathe. I was certain that I would die as a laborer to someone else, yet here I was... I was on the verge of obtaining my freedom, and the only thing I felt was morbid confusion.
"You go out and start your life," Lance replied easily. "In fact, I've set up some work for you with the Hutt Cartel."
"The Hutt Cartel?" I asked. "Aren't... aren't they criminals?"
"Serenity," Lance said in exasperation. "Just because what someone does isn't legal, doesn't mean it's bad," he stressed. "I'm setting you up with an honest sect, one that's not out for galactic domination like those idiotic Imperials. Don't worry," he affirmed. I knew that I could believe him. I could hear it in his voice.
"Just promise me," he started again. "Promise me that you'll make something of your life. Live it to the fullest, and don't you ever let anyone else live it for you. You are your own master now." I nodded fervently, feeling the tears rising up, threatening to burst like a dam trying to hold back too much water. He smiled at me reassuringly, and took a pen from the confines of his jacket pocket, handing it to me. I took it delicately in my mechanical arm, signing my life to myself.
I was free.
If you actually read all of that, you're a boss! Thank you!
The end of this bio consists of the timeskip events. She ages ten more years, all the while working for the Hutt Cartel. I may flesh it out more later, but it's 5:30 in the morning and I'm tired and don't have the energy to think anymore. I hope you all enjoyed it, and I love you if you actually read all of this.
Last edited by a moderator:
