Chapter Text
Year 956 (44 BBY)
By this point, Jango has lost track of the number of times he’s tried to escape. The results are always the same: he reaches the edge of the compound, the collar around his neck incapacitating but failing to kill him, and the guards he’s humiliated with his efforts taking a vindictive amount of pleasure in beating him into submission.
In many ways, they’re worse than the ‘training and rehabilitation’ he’s forced to endure at the hands of his new ‘owner’. Jango is Mando’ad: he understands what it is to unmake someone and remold them into something else. This may be a perversion of everything he knows, but he does understand the process. The stress, the cold, the sleep deprivation, and humiliation are all carefully designed to break his spirit. To make him less. It’s cruel but impassive torture. Detached. A system of control.
The guards are mere beasts, delighting in every way they can enforce their dominance and authority over the helpless. Jango is a favorite of theirs. The idea of forcing the true Mand’alor to heel is more than any of them can resist.
Even knowing that, Jango doesn’t care. There’s nothing they can do to his body that is a greater shame than that which he would bring upon himself by giving in and submitting to the collar that’s been forced on him.
And they have tried. If there is a torment they can concoct, it has been inflicted upon him. Jango wears his hatred like a cloak and hides his mind away from them.
It will be the same this time, he thinks, but instead of dragging his shuddering body towards the barracks, they bring him before Zola himself.
Maybe this is the time they kill him. The idea is a comfort. Let him die today, unbroken and defiant, instead of as an old man stripped of every fiber of his honor and self-respect.
The shock collar he wears is a brutally effective tool. There’s no resisting it, no enduring its power. Electricity hits him with such intensity his muscles spasm and lock. Movement under his own power is impossible and will be for hours. Enough time for the guards to have their amusement with him before he becomes dangerous once more.
That doesn’t stop them from fastening the front of the collar to a chain dangling from the ceiling in the middle of Zola’s grand entertainment area. Jango is just tall enough for his feet to touch the ground, but the effort of keeping himself upright and balanced while his arms and legs still shudder and tremble weakly is all-consuming.
“I knew you would be a handful,” Zola chuckles, approaching him with the languid serenity of a man who has no fear of the killer in chains before him. “A fine prize for my collection, but so much work.” He reaches up and brushes the sweat-soaked hair from Jango’s face. The length of it is all he really has to indicate just how long he’s been here. Months now, not weeks. Jango is too weak and too exhausted to snap his teeth at the hand on his skin, but oh, how he wants to.
“One of these days, they will kill you,” Zola warns, nodding his chin at the cluster of guards that ring the room. “I’ll have to punish them, but you’ll push them over the edge... that’s what you want, isn’t it? To die.”
Jango doesn’t answer. It’s what he wants. What he deserves.
Zola sighs and shakes his head as though he is a disappointed parent. “What are we up to now? A hundred lashes? Nowhere near enough to kill you. Not yet.” He studies Jango’s emaciated body. They’ll give him clothes when he ‘earns them’, when he’s graduated from the training program and a good, mindless, broken little drone. Until then every sharp line of bone and every wasted muscle is on show for them to see.
“I have a proposal for you, Jango,” Zola says, using his name for the first time. Jango jerks, trying to remember the last time he heard it spoken allowed in a voice not his own. “A deal, if you will. A hundred lashes now, and the promise to kill you the next time you attempt to escape, or....” his easy smile grows wider. “Or you live, and I give you something better than death.”
It hurts to swallow beneath the collar. Jango clings to the chain it’s attached to and tries to give himself just a little more space to breathe. Men like Zola don’t give anything away. And they don’t make deals with slaves. Awkwardly, Jango tries to spit at him.
Zola moves closer. “Oh, you’ll want to take this. You see, I have a new acquisition. Fresh off the deck. A prize even more valuable than you. A Jedi.”
Jango’s vision blacks over. With that one hateful word, he’s back in a place even worse than this, the air ripe with the smell of burnt flesh and spilt blood. The sound that escapes him is one of pure, anguished loathing. The jetiise took everything from him and didn’t even give him the mercy of death. It’s because of them that his people are dead. It’s because of them that his buir is rotting in the dirt, his throne empty and beloved Mandalore at the mercy of imposters and usurpers.
It’s because of them that Jango suffers, day after day after day.
“I thought you might like that,” Zola smiles. “Chose to live, and I will give you your revenge. Twice your punishment, and my promise that the attention my loyal guards pay you will be...redirected for a time.”
Live, he says. As though he has any kind of say in making him. The thought of a jetii knowing just a fracture of his humiliation and pain is too much to resist, and the chance to die after he’s seen it will always find a way to present itself. He nods as best he can.
Zola winks. Nods his head. A deal struck. Jango can’t bring himself to hate that commonality, not if he gets to see even one jetii bleed.
At a wave of his hand, the large doors at the end of the room slide open. Two more guards step inside, a small, limp figure dragged between them.
They dump a child at Jango’s feet. Step back and smile. Jango knows he’s lost.
He wants to see a jetii suffer. A Knight. A Master. Not... kriffing hells, not this. The boy can’t be more than a year into his teens. Too young to have even fought at Galidraan. Far too young to have taken a life. The thick collar that hangs around his neck looks like it weighs more than he does, and the heavy chains are obscene around his skinny wrists and ankles.
“No,” Jango growls. “Tha-” The jolt of power through his collar is blinding. It closes his throat and sends sparks of colors dancing across his vision.
“This is Jango,” Zola says, his voice soothing and low as he helps the boy up onto unsteady feet and holds him upright with an arm around his shoulders. “Jedi killed his whole family. And he’d like to see one suffer.”
The boy - Obi-Wan - looks sick. Either he’s drugged to the eyeballs, or there’s something in the collar. He can barely stand, and he struggles to focus his gaze on Jango, even when Zola directs him with a hand under his chin.
Jango tries to find his voice. Tries to tell Zola where he can put his lies. Zola only flashes Jango a malicious smile over the boy’s shoulder.
“Jango and I made a deal: you endure his punishment.” Obi-Wan blinks slowly, the words having little impact. “Two hundred lashes with the vibrowhip. It won’t kill you-” It might. Gods, it might. Vibrowhips don’t break the skin by design, but that many... the shock alone could be deadly. “But you’ll wish it would. It’s not fair, I know. It’s your first day here, and it’s a lot. Say the word, and I’ll give him three hundred lashes and let you off with just half. That’s fair, right?”
“I’ll-” Jango starts to say he’ll take it, every last kriffing stroke, and he’ll thank the shleb for each and every one before he allows a child to suffer. Jetii or not, Jango swore an oath to protect all children. He spits the first word out, sticky and thick against his swollen throat, but the rest of his argument is muffled by the rough leather edge of one of the guard’s belts as it’s forced between his teeth. The guard, one of the ones how rejoyces the most in Jango's pain, winks at him before stepping away.
Next to Zola, Obi-Wan starts to shake his head. “No,” he says slowly, the effort clearly more than he can easily manage. “I can take it. Don’t hurt him.”
Zola doesn’t hesitate in handing the boy off to the guards. “You heard him.” There’s no doubt in Jango’s mind that Zola has known right from the very start how this would play out. Not when Obi-Wan is positioned perfectly to give Jango the unrestricted view he claimed to want. “Hate is such a terrible, terrible thing,” he whispers mockingly to Jango, who snarls and struggles against his bonds. “You can’t escape it, and you can’t escape me. Watch what your hatred has wrought, and know that every time you even fantasize about defying me, I will tear him apart in your name. Jedi are such durable creatures after all. Even the little ones.”
Jango lets go of the chain holding him up and lets himself choke, reaching for Zola with every intention of breaking the shleb’s kriffing neck.
Zola dances back, laughing. “I knew I’d break you eventually, Mando. I always do. Now, enjoy your revenge.”
It doesn’t take long for them to make Obi-Wan scream, and it takes even less for Jango to give up on his dreams of death.
He doesn’t deserve it.
Year 968 (32 BBY)
Jango jerks away from Vos as the man lays a friendly hand on his shoulder. Vos blanches, stumbles, and embarrassed by the violence of his response, Jango reaches out to steady him. Instead, Ben puts himself between them, his hand extended towards Vos in warning, and his eyes flashing with fury.
“Do that again and I will forget that you are my oldest friend.” It’s been years since he’s heard Ben sounding that angry.
Feeling awkward, Jango attempts to reassure him. “It’s fine, it was an accident.”
Vos looks sick as he shakes his head. “No, forgive me.” He hastily refastens the straps of his gloves.
“If you stay,” Ben growls, “you stay to protect all of my people.”
“With my life,” Vos vows, his words hoarse.
Jango is missing something here. Jetii banthakark. But whatever it is, Ben is furious and he steps in closer to Jango, anger bringing life and strength back to his tired face.
Good, Jango thinks. The angrier Ben is, the stronger he is, and if they are to face the creature who set all this in motion, they’re going to need all the firepower they can get.