Severance

"Let go of me!" Dia cries, struggling to twist his arm out of Aurra's grasp. "E chu ta, murishani!"

"Kriff, can't you shut him up?" Bane complains, heaving Grane's corpse onto a hovercart.

With quick fingers, Aurra ties Dia's wrists together and stuffs a rag in his mouth. Try as he might, Dia can't free his hands, and can't speak through the rag. He twists around.

"Elan!" he tries to shout, his voice muffled by the rag. "ELAN!"

The windows of Elan's house stay dark.

"Why are you doing this?" Boba demands furiously. Aurra's beefy Klatooinian associate, Castas, holds him back with one arm. "Let him go, you don't need him!"

"Sorry, kid," Aurra says, not sounding too apologetic, "but our bounty's dead and we were supposed to deliver him alive." She hoists Dia up and over her shoulder. "We'll hand this slave over to the Hutts as a peace offering."

The Hutts? Cold dread pools in Dia's stomach, and he kicks and writhes desperately until Aurra's forced to drop him. He lands on the sand and spits the rag out of his mouth.

"Please!" he begs. "Please, not the Hutts! I can't go back! Please!"

"Can't you do something else?" Boba pleads. "You could – "

"No," Bane interrupts. "Now shut up and accept it, both of you. Aurra, knock the slave out if you have to, but we've gotta go now."

Aurra shrugs helplessly and tugs her blaster off her belt. "You heard him, Boba. We'll still train you if you want, but this one's fate is sealed already."

"No!" Dia scrambles backwards and holds his hands up uselessly as Aurra levels the blaster at him. "Wait – !"

Blue light hits him and he collapses in the sand.

________

Boba would fight Aurra, Bane, and Castas barehanded, tooth and nail, but he'd be knocked out instantly, he knows, and then Dia would have no one to help him.

Instead he yells, begs, and threatens as Dia and Grane are carried to Bane's ship, to no avail. Aurra is mildly apologetic, but Bane doesn't care in the least. Castas drags Boba into the ship, but he would've followed anyway.

"All you care about is the stupid bounty," Boba spits as Bane straps Dia into a seat. "You don't even care that Dia's a person, not an object."

"You're right." Bane stands and towers over Boba, his red eyes narrowing dangerously. "And if you don't let it go, I'll turn you over to the Hutts too."

Boba gulps and takes an involuntary step backwards. A hand drops onto his shoulder – Aurra – as Bane sits in the pilot's seat and fires up the ship.

"Take a seat, Boba," Aurra says, sliding into the co-pilot's seat.

Biting his tongue, Boba sits next to Dia, whose head lolls against his chest. He looks uncomfortable, so Boba gently moves him until his head rests on Boba's shoulder.

What a fool, he thinks, not unkindly, to swear a life debt so easily, when he didn't have to.

In Boba's book, a life debt goes both ways: now Dia's his responsibility, and he's got to save him.

"I'm sorry, Dia," he murmurs. "I'll figure something out, I promise."

________

Hours Later...

Dia curls in the corner of the dank cell where he'd woken up, wishing he could melt into the rough stone wall beside him. He keeps his eyes shut tight until they hurt, and his forehead pressed to his knees.

"It's okay, it's okay, I'll be okay," he repeats over and over.

A dozen other slaves are in the cramped cell with him, some holding onto each other for strength, others curled up tightly into themselves, like Dia.

Laughter from the main room drifts through the vents, along with the smell. Hutts all give off the same smell – a permeating stench of slime. It's not as nearly bad as on Nal Hutta, but still enough to bring back memories of that horrid place.

With a whimper, Dia digs the heels of his palms into his forehead.

Bilbousa, Nal Hutta; 25 BBY

A thick fog hangs over the town, reeking of slime, grease, and rotten eggs. Huge, curled roots arch above the narrow roads, but provide little shelter from the relentless rain.

A young child, arms and face stained with mud, lugs a pail down one of the streets. The liquid, sealed inside, sloshes heavily with every step he takes. His long hair is a knotted mess, hanging in front of his eyes and clinging damply to his neck. He pauses to shelter under the roof overhang of a saloon, carved out of a swollen plant pod like many of the buildings in the spaceport. He sets the pail down and sits on the lid, leaning his back against the wall of the building.

Pushing some of his dark hair from his face, he tugs at the metal collar around his neck, wishing it would just fall off. He knows messing with it too much will make it explode. He's seen some slaves do it accidentally. Others on purpose. He drops his hand.

Night is creeping in, but the glowing-neon cantina sign above his head offers a warm light.

"Hey, stop loitering!" An Ithorian barkeep shakes his fist at the child, who scoops up the pail with a startled yelp and scurries away. "Damned nuisance."

The child hurries through the streets, towards a looming bulbous pod, the largest in the spaceport. The windows shine yellow like the eyes of some predator animal. After crossing the bridge, suspended over the bubbling, vile swamp, he reaches a side door and stands on his toes to open it. Heaving the pail into the empty hall on the other side, he pauses again to catch his breath.

"Diaro! Where have you been?!"

Dia jumps up as a middle-aged human storms around the corner. She wears clothes that probably used to be white, and her face is redder than the mubasa sauce stains on her apron. With her hands planted on her hips and a scowl etched permanently onto her face, she towers over the child.

"Sorry," Dia murmurs, pushing the bucket towards the cook.

The cook rolls her eyes, easily lifting the bucket. "For kriff's sake, go wash the mud of yourself!"

Dia ducks his head and walks as quickly as he dares down the hall to the left, his shoulder brushing the wall. No one he passes spares him a glance, and he slips into the slave quarters. They have a small, attached refresher, where he hastily scrubs the mud from his arms and face. He makes a half-hearted attempt to wipe off some of the mud on his shirt. His clothes are already ruined, just loose rags he managed to scrounge, and he's nearly walked holes in the soles of his shoes.

If he lingers much longer, he'll get in trouble, so he pulls the loose curls back over his eyes to shield his face and leaves the refresher.

Before he hurries to the kitchen, though, he pauses at his makeshift bed: the one thick blanket he managed to claim, spread on the floor. Kneeling, he pulls up the corner of the blanket to reveal rows upon rows of tally marks, and takes a sharpened rock from his pocket, adding one more.

"A hundred and twelve rotations," he whispers.

An older slave, dead now, once advised him to count the rotations since he's been enslaved. Dia still does, though he isn't sure why. It only adds to his despair.

The cook sends him to the pantry, where he shoos away a rat and grabs a bag of slime pods. Pushing open the pantry door with his shoulder takes his full weight, and he stumbles outside, nearly running face-first into the legs of a Nikto guard.

"Sorry," he murmurs, keeping his eyes down.

He begins to step around, but the guard catches him by the shoulder.

"Chuba." The guard grabs Dia's chin and inspects his thin, dirty face. "You're Diaro, right?"

Dia nods as best he can. The guard takes his wrist instead, dragging him from the room. The bag of slimepods drops from his grip and spill across the floor.

"W-where are we going?" Dia asks anxiously.

"Gardulla's ordered you be taken to the slave market," the guard replies, coarsely uncaring even as Dia's eyes widen in horror, "to be sold to whoever'll take you."