Chapter Text
The strange, new alien is the beginning.
Ani doesn’t really believe in spirits, Gods and Goddesses, unlike most slaves. They’re nice stories—Ani especially likes the ones about tricksters who outsmart those who would want to capture them—but he knows better. If Gods and Goddesses were real, why did he have a slave chip somewhere in his body? Why did mom hide him in the cupboard whenever the magic told them Watto’s customers were that sort?
Magic though, magic was another thing. He believed in magic like he believed in the sun or the stars. Magic made his body stronger and mind sharper. Magic told him when to run and when to make his eyes go big and round and pathetic. Magic kept him, and by extension Mother, alive considerably more than Watto’s somewhat lax shroud of protection. Personal slaves were, technically, not to be messed with. In reality, Watto would sell them at the drop of a hat, if anyone offers him more than what they’re earning. He doesn’t enjoy their pain as some masters do, but he doesn’t care about it either.
It is magic that tells him that something big is happening. Magic that bubbles underneath his skin and tingles on his scalp. Magic that opens a special sort of sense for the new, incredible presence on Tatooine.
Ani doesn’t know what type of being this Orochimaru is, but the golden, slitted eyes and the paper-pale skin mark him as a creature straight from one of Mother’s stories. A Jinn would offer you three wishes, twist and turn them in a way that would hurt you most and then claim your soul as punishment.
Looking at Lord Orochimaru—and he must be a Lord, honestly—Ani can believe it.
“I see,” Lord Orochimaru tells Watto. “You are the child’s owner. How fascinating.”
Watto squints. He doesn’t have magic, Ani knows, but he survived long enough on Tatooine to spot a predator when one is prowling through his ‘shop, tail flicking in a contemplative, methodical way. “Look, are you buyin’ something or what?”
Lord Orochimaru’s eyes slide away from Watto and fix back on Ani. He really misses the safety of the cupboard. He is safe there, usually. You can’t fight monsters, you can only hide, appease or beg. Only, he doubts there is any hiding from this man. Appeasing him would require knowing what he wants, which he doesn’t. So he can only beg.
Beg for what? His life? It’s not, technically, threatened yet. To spare Mother? She’s junk-diving, thank the Gods, the monster doesn’t even know she exists. No, the man spotted Ani somehow and is only, at this time, interested in him. So—what should he beg for?
“Come here, child.”
Uh.
Watto’s frown deepens. “Alight, friend, I think—”
Without so much as a blink, Watto is enveloped in a large sphere of—air. It blocks sound, whatever it is. Which he knows because he sure would have heard all the shrieks that look to be coming out of Watto’s mouth.
“I am not your friend.” Golden eyes don’t waver. “Breathe easy, child. I won’t hurt you. I don’t want or need to do so. I am simply curious.”
Right.
Best go the safe route. Watto isn’t likely to survive whatever is going on here, and nobody is going to begrudge this man a couple of worn-down slaves. He doesn’t know what to beg for yet, but he can try preventative appeasement? “Curious, master?”
Abort, abort. The magic shrieks in his head. No-no-wrong-wrong-not-never-.
“I am most certainly not your master,” hisses the possible-Jinn. “But that is an acceptable starting point. Why don’t I liquify that sorry bit of organic material—” Indeed, Watto’s body implodes, the sphere of air growing pink and gross and fascinating. “And you and I sit down and have a chat. You can tell me where in Gods’ name we are, and I can feed and water you. How about that?”
Lord Orochimaru is, as far as Ani can understand, a dimension traveller. More importantly, he is so blasé about this, that he gets the impression a jump like this one is a relatively common occurrence.
He is, more importantly, immensely, forbiddingly powerful.
“It comes with age, swanlett,” he says, looking like the concept of elegance made flesh, as hundreds of his conjurations sweep through Tatooine, collecting, killing and mulching the bodies of slave owners.
“Swan?” Ani is so confused, that he could pass out. The white birds from Coruscant?
“Mm, you are correct. Swans are dull creatures, pretty though they might be. You are so very clever, aren’t you? I can see it in your Chakra.”
Usually, Ani would brag. He is clever. Now—Magic isn’t telling him Lord Orochimaru is wrong like that but—Well. He is already paying a lot of attention to him. Maybe it’s not clever to make it worse?
“Ah, yes, that was an insensitive question on my part.” Lord Orochimaru takes a long, languid sip of tea—which he conjured with magic like it was nothing—and purses his lips a little. “Do you have family here, child? Someone I can bring you, that will represent your interests.”
Uh.
“I will not harm them,” Lord Orochimaru says, smile deepening. It’s very strange. Every show of Ani’s distrust only serves to amuse the man. He almost looks approving. Whoever he is, he is a very strange jinn. “Unless they are slavers, in which case I will harm them as long as I can keep them alive. And, trust that I am very good at keeping people alive far past the point of what would be considered reasonable.”
Ani’s brow furrows. “Why would—Ooh.” That would be messed up, if his family was free and he wasn’t. “Nah, mum is a slave like me.” Phew. “We’re both mechs. Mechanics.” Well, Ani is. Mum is—a personal slave. Watto might not have been physically compatible with humans, but some of his customers were.
“Excellent. Will she know to look for you here?”
“Mm. She should be back from the scrapyard soonish.” Honestly, it doesn’t seem like there is anything to do about this Lord Orochimaru other than to survive him.
“While we wait, come here. I need to scan your vitals and make sure your—situation doesn’t come with any hidden surprises.”
Oh. “Like my slave chip, you mean?”
The pause in Lord Orochimaru’s smooth movements and hitch in his magic is telling. “Precisely.”
Lord Orochimaru locating, cutting out and letting Ani crush his slave chip goes a long way toward proving his good character. That said, Ani is still thirty per cent sure this is all a hallucination. He had those, before. Ani works with a lot of unfamiliar ships with unfamiliar engines and unfamiliar fuel sources. Sometimes he’d get stuck. Sometimes, the fuel would be a bad fit for a human or whatever Ani is. He’s had plenty of wild trips, some lasting days. He knows how vivid they can get.
Alright, so what? It’s either a hallucination or it’s not. If it is, then he should enjoy the good dream. If it’s not, he should enjoy his good life.
Whatever. The point is that mum eventually comes back and is immediately swept up in the chaos of an elegant, serpentine alien who has more power than he knows what to do with and is interested in making sure Ani wants for nothing. Shmi Skywalker, apparently, falls under ‘a thing Ani wants and therefore needs to have’.
Ani tries to mediate the conversation, mostly by directing Lord Orochimaru’s attention to himself and giving mum some time to compose herself and stop shaking in the face of, well, a being so chock-full of magic it’s hurting his eyes a little just to look at him.
“Ah, my clones have encountered a species that call themselves Hutts,” Lord Orochimaru says out of nowhere. “They appear to be without a single thing that would recommend them. I don’t suppose you know more?”
Uhh. “Hutts own this planet.“ Mostly true. Not just them, but if it means Lord Orochimaru will slaughter them and spread their dust through the dunes, Ani will sleep easy with his small manipulation. “And everybody on it, more or less.”
“I see. Fascinating. Well, that’s that, I suppose. Now, while I am by nature very comfortable with the heat, the dryness of this planet is beginning to weigh on me. I have a sensitive complexion, you see, and prefer more humid climates—”
Ani doesn’t, admittedly, understand much of what happens over the next several weeks. It’s not a hallucination, he’s more or less learned to accept that, but—
But he isn’t ruling out a coma. It’s just too whimsical, and not in a holomated-puppies-and-lothkittens-saving-the-day-with-the-power-of-friendship sort of way. This is whimsical by Ani’s standards, meaning there’s more than enough horror and death and misery to make the good bits stand out and shine. There is no denying that Lord Orochimaru and his conjurations killed twenty thousand beings in a matter of days, without so much as a by your leave. There was no negotiation process, no chance for them to plead their case or ask for mercy. If you were a slave owner—as identified by a slave, yours or someone else’s—that’s it, no questions, no procedure. Hutts, as far as he can tell, were all killed, slaves or not, except for their children who were left to fend for themselves, Ani is pretty sure.
All of that would be insane in itself, but Lord Orochimaru showed no signs of leaving or returning to wherever he came from. After the purge, he just—moved on to other tasks.
Most pressing of which was, apparently, terraforming but with magic. Ani doesn’t know a lot, but he listened in on the broadcasts and had, occasionally, searched Tatooine on the HoloNet. The AgriCorps—which he understands to be Jedi but for plants—judged them to be beyond fixing. Lord Orochimaru, however, doesn’t seem to be operating within the same parameters.
“The atmosphere is surprisingly hospitable, considering. Elevated levels of hydrogen, which is convenient. Plenty of oxygen. What happened to all the water, again?”
Um. “Nobody knows.” Best not get into the woo-woo stories about spirits and punishment. “It just went away, I think.”
“Curious. Come along, let us explore one of the empty seabeds and see if there is truth to be found there.”
Ani beams. He never went further than the Mos Espa, unless the scrapyard counts. “Awesome!”
Whatever investigation Lord Orochimaru is undertaking, it lasts longer than Ani had expected. He stops counting time after the third week. They trek here and there and everywhere. Well—he says trek. Lord Orochimaru runs and Ani hangs on his back and whoops as quietly as he can, as they practically fly over the endless desert dunes, encountering the occasional patch of sparse vegetation. Lord Orochimaru would stop to carefully magic away samples each time, and continue on. There is no rhyme or reason to it. Oftentimes, Lord Orochimaru would have Ani point to a random direction and off they would go, magic shielding them from the punishing air resistance, to say nothing of sand and insects that would scrub their skin to the bone otherwise.
Nights are no less magical. There is no real method to Lord Orochimaru’s madness, but there are a few overarching characteristics. He likes change, he likes movement. Progress. He doesn’t like the idea of standing still. He likes luxury.
The last bit is not that apparent during the daytime. They stop for food and, in Ani’s case, naps and lessons, but those tend to be working meals, of sorts, eaten out of napkins and bags and suchlike. When it’s time to camp, however, Lord Orochimaru never hesitates to indulge. From enchanted bits of parchment—actual, real parchment, like in the stories—he conjures cushions, tents, blankets and comfort clothes. He erects magical barriers against the wind and pests and insists on cooking fresh food if he doesn’t conjure entire meals already prepared. After the ridiculously lavish meal comes the music. As far as he can tell, Lord Orochimaru has a thing for music and engineering instruments, because he’s never once conjured the same instrument twice in all the nights they did this ritual.
Every night, Ani would fall asleep under the stars, magic purring under his skin, while the mysterious, melancholy music would weave through the air, and every morning he would wake up, a little less terrified that it was all a dream.
“I think I have a rough idea of this place,” Lord Orochimaru says one day, seemingly out of nowhere. Ani looks up from his notebook—he’s been learning how to write basic, using ink and paper, actual, organic paper, like a crazy person. “We can return and start fixing it up for you.”
For him?
“For now, let me check on your work.”
Ani gulps and calms himself as best he can. He’s never once been punished for his mistakes; why would that change now? He’s getting better, even if the stupid brush is floppy and unpredictable and impractical.
“Very good, Ani. You are making great progress. Continue working hard, and we might be able to move on to the next stage sooner than I expected.”
What? “Next stage? Like, another language?” Maybe it’s written Huttese? Is there such a thing as written Huttese?
Lord Orochimaru makes a small, amused sound and bends down to correct Ani’s grip on the stupid brush. “No. You are learning how to write, yes, but the main purpose of this is to get you accustomed to using a brush and ink. The next step is calligraphy, the bedrock of Fūinjutsu.”
“Cool,” he says promptly, lost. “Great.”
Lord Orochimaru’s lips twitch and he runs a cool hand through Ani’s hair. Not being an idiot, he leans into the touch immediately. Lord Orochimaru, he notices, produces very little of his own body heat. “Fūinjutsu is one of the most versatile and useful disciplines to know, and one that takes the longest to master.” He pauses again. “It is also what you insist to call enchanting.”
He drops his brush.
Ani hasn’t been counting days, exactly, but he thought he had a rough idea about how much time they spent roaming around. He didn’t, as it turns out. Three months. They spent three months just—messing around.
The silence that spreads around them as they move through the town is a little disheartening. He doesn’t blame them. Lord Orochimaru is a benevolent God, but being mercurial is in the job description. More importantly, even the babies understand that, well—Lord Orochimaru hasn’t claimed them as a people. He’s claimed Ani, for whatever reason, and they are part of that package. Somehow, Ani has become the most influential human on Tatooine, and, through Ani, Shmi.
He steels his heart a little as they reach his home. Lord Orochimaru has his own house, of course, he built it the first day he arrived here, but he often joins Ani at theirs. If things weren’t—as they were—maybe Ani would be a bit suffocated by this. If things between him and his mum were better, he might have appreciated some alone time. As things are? He almost dreads being alone with her, and his magic tells him she feels much the same.
The problem is simple and obvious and possibly unreconcilable. It didn’t start with Lord Orochimaru, it’s just more obvious now.
Mum doesn’t know what to do with him. She loves him, he doesn’t doubt that. Never has. Shmi loves him with all her heart. She is also terrified of his magic in an almost religious way. It wasn’t a big issue before, because they had bigger things to worry about, but now that Ani is out and about? Now that Lord Orochimaru will possibly teach him to use his magic on purpose and not just let it buzz around and destroy things when he’s upset? Now, mom is proper frightened.
It doesn’t help matters that Ani’s magic acts up when he’s sad or anxious or angry, and these days he can’t help feeling those things when they’re together. He can’t help it. She’s his mum and she’s afraid of him or for him or something. Feeling it, knowing it, always means he grows more and more agitated, which makes things around him explode, which makes mum more afraid, which makes him angrier and on and on and on—
It’s not a working system. Ani is a kid, yes, but he’s an engineer, or will become one in the future. He knows when a system needs a tune-up and when it’s time to move on. Bit by bit, he starts spending more time at Lord Orochimaru’s house. The first few days, he keeps a close eye on mum, just in case—He’s made mistakes before, he’s not infallible. But, not. In this, his instincts were correct. She’s relieved—and guilty, yes, but the relief is stronger, still.
Lord Orochimaru doesn’t comment, but Ani feels his discomfort and vague disapproval. Family is everything to Ani’s God. Millenia after losing his blood family, he still remembers them, honours them with his music and his mannerisms, and introduces himself as the Head of a Clan that hadn’t existed for so long they aren’t even legends anymore. This thing, with Ani, is difficult for him to accept.
“It’s hard on her,” he says quietly. They’re taking tea on the roof, that night. Tea and delicious flaky pastries filled with some sort of white nutty cream. “She—She is very religious. Keeps telling me I was conceived by the Gods. She’s scared of magic, always has been, and now there’s you—She doesn’t have to pretend as much anymore.”
“Conceived by the Gods?!”
Ani smiles, small and sad. “Yeah, I know. ’S what I thought, too. Mum was a slave for a long time. Babies happen, you can’t control that. I don’t blame her for the story or begrudge her faith. For a long time, it was all she had.”
Lord Orochimaru’s lips purse into a tight line. “She is welcome to her religious practises, but you are entitled to know who and, more importantly, what you are.”
He shrugs. From all the things messing him up at this time, his parentage isn’t even on the list. “Can’t say I care, if I’m honest.”
“Well, I do. But I accept you would rather not upset your mother. I’ll conduct a thorough screening once I build the proper facilities. Now, how far along are you in the last set of worksheets I’ve given you—”
“The work I plan to do on this planet will be—extensive,” Lord Orochimaru declares the following day. The faint buzz of conversation in the makeshift city square disappears as if snuffed out by a giant hand. “With that in mind, it would be best if we create a haven. The type of terraforming I have in mind will make the rest of the planet inhospitable for some time.”
“When you say haven,” Ani says, evaluating the horrified stares of the people around them. He is the only one that would dare ask anything of Lord Orochimaru. “Would everybody be welcome?”
Lord Orochimaru cuts an impatient hand through the air. “Of course. All I need to do for now is to establish a reasonable perimeter around Mos Espa and write basic weather control. I will likely have to add more in the future as things develop, but for now, the biggest problem will be the weather patterns.”
Right. “The whole town,” he says, not so much for himself but the benefit of their captive audience. “Everybody can stay while you—improve the planet?”
“Yes, yes. It will become easier for a little while, once I manufacture some surface water, and then a whole lot worse once the cascading effects of my interventions start becoming violent. I have no doubt you will enjoy it immensely, Ani.”
Ani smiles, excitement quickly filling up all those problematic corners of his soul clogged with angst and anxiety and sadness. “I don’t doubt it.”