Cuyanir (A Rexsoka SWTCW Fanfic)

45

Rex could hear the song again. There was no visual image to put with it this time. But it was there, and it was stronger and louder than he had ever heard it. He felt a familiar tug in his gut to find it, to search it out. 

He came awake slowly, his first sense being pain. A constant and intense ache that made up his entire being. Then came movement. A rumble from the floor beneath him, and he knew he was on a ship. Then the events of the past day came flooding back to him in a tidal wave of memories. He let out a pained moan as he opened his eyes and tried to sit up. A hand was placed on his shoulder, mindful of the bruises. 

He managed to flutter his eyes open to stare into the concerned face of Obi-Wan leaning over him. The other man cracked a grin at seeing him wake up. 

"Hello there." He said, helping Rex to sit up. "I was beginning to think that we had lost you for good. Didn't Anakin tell you not to pull jedi stunts if you couldn't use the force? What were you thinking, jumping out of a balcony in a coliseum arena that was forty feet off the ground?" The general chided him as Rex leaned back against the cell wall. That was were they were, some sort of prison cell in a ship. Rex had a bad feeling about this. 

"Anakin doesn't like to lecture us on stuff that he's going to do anyways. Besides, I was tackled." He grunted, looking between the bars to try to get a better understanding of where they were going. Obi-Wan shook his head. 

"I should've... I thought I had him trained better than that." He complained. Rex shrugged, and regretted the movement as every bruise and sore muscle rebelled at the tremor. A guard in zygerrian armor opened their cell door and made a gesture with his rifle. Obi-Wan staggered to his feet and helped Rex up. They hadn't bothered to remove his zygerrian armor, and the heavy weight of it made it that much harder to limp after Kenobi. 

They were herded down a ramp and into bright, hot daylight. Once Rex's eyes adjusted, he stared at the visage before him. A rather fat zygerrian was in a hover chair at the end of the walk, addressing the general. Rex wasn't really paying attention. The missing togruta colonists lined the walk in front of them, each standing on a hexagon set into the ground. The zygerrian said something more, and then Rex heard the screams.

One of the lines of colonists had been dropped into oblivion beneath the fortress. Just like that, and because the sleemo wanted too. 

He heard a distant echo of Krell's voice in his head. 

"Why, why order your men against each other!?"

"I'm surprised you could figure it out, for a clone. Why? Because I wanted to. Because I could. Because you. are. inferior."

Rex forced the memory down with a few rapid blinks of his eyes. They were on the move again, being pushed into the belly of the fortress. 

Ahsoka sat in the dark. Wind whipped around her cage, and she knew that there was an endless pit beneath her. Her neck was burned and itched from the shock collar around her neck. Her breath came in ragged gasps. A low chuckle rang around her, and a golden light from an electrowhip suddenly appeared from a repulsor platform hovering just outside of her cage. THe slave master holding the whip laughed. 

"I have heard tales of a jedi's resolve, let's see how long it takes to break you down to the primal animal you are, skug." He snarled, and struck out at the cage with the whip. It snapped through the iron bars and hit Ahsoka. The pain blinding her as a horrible scream tore from her throat. She wasn't grounded. The electricity had nowhere to go. She distantly recognized the putrid smell of burning flesh. 

She clawed at the air, hands brushing against white hot metal. Black danced through her vision and she was having trouble breathing properly. And then the whip was disengaged and she collapsed to the micro mesh floor of her cage. She struggled to stay conscious. 

"There you go, lick you wounds like the animal you are." The slave snarled. Ahsoka realized that she had been sucking on the end of one of her lekku, something she hadn't done in years. She raised her head wearily and somehow found the strength to rasp a hoarse whisper. 

"You are more barbaric than I have ever been." Her voice grated against her montals and made her shudder. She barely recognized it. The slaver snarled and spat on her. 

"Filthy wretch, you are little more than a feral beast, and you dare speak to me with sentient words?" He snarled, sounding more like an animal than Ahsoka ever had. He struck the cage with the whip again, and the pain returned with a vengeance. Ahsoka howled, a scream that only a pained togruta could make.

The slaver laughed. 

The mines were something that even the most twisted mind couldn't dream up. The dim, harsh red light from the safety lights and from the molten earth burning beneath them making the room too bright and not bright enough at the same time. Rex and Kenobi were shoveling some sort of slag into a cart while the groans of slaves around them formed a single cry of pain. Obi-Wan paused for a second, his limbs trembling as he leaned on the pitchfork in his hands. The fat zygerrian came over in his hover chair an floated next to the slag heap where they and the governor were working. 

"Get to work, Skug."The keeper snarled. Obi-Wan raised the pitchfork wearily and started to shovel again, but he wasn't moving fast enough. The slaver began to whip the governor next to them, yelling for Kenobi to get back to work. For every time Kenobi messed up, the governor was whipped, or Rex was, or any other colonist within reach. Soon they all began to avoid the general, except Rex. 

He was forced to continue wearing most of the zygerrian armor. They thought it funny, to see a slave laboring under the weight of something they all wore with pride. They took the back plate though, and there was nothing to stop the blazing whip from slicing line after line across his back. He didn't give them the satisfaction of hearing him scream, and his lips were bloody and cracked from when he had nearly bitten through them. 

It was the second night in the mines, and Rex was laying in the barracks where the slaves slept. It was cold there, a stark contrast from the mines. The ceiling was open to air but the walls were electrified. No climbing out that way. 

He closed his eyes, and was almost asleep when a strangled sob came from the bunk above him. Kenobi. This was torture in the worst way, and even a jedi couldn't withstand it forever. His own tears stung on the cuts on his face, the burns and the salt stinging and making his eyes well up again and again in a vicious cycle. 

This was worse than the hell he called umbara. 

A/N ~ I almost felt bad writing this. This is just the beginning. RotD: I am a word of letters three; add two and fewer there will be. What word am I?