Chapter Text
The ocean. How you miss it so much.
As you stare at your drink, you debate sipping this questionable blue liquid that you were forced to order. The waiter droid told you that you had to order a drink to sit in this dingy little bar as per their policy, it made sense; you guessed, given that you were in between the middle and lowest levels of Coruscant. It was the cheapest drink they offered even if it was a little more than you’d spend your measly credits on, but... you wanted to treat yourself. A little treat to keep you going.
The color of the drink made you think of a simpler time. You closed your eyes momentarily, reminiscing of a place where you could still hear the waves beat on the sandy beaches, your wet hair sticking to your skin, and your toes burying themselves in the sand beneath your feet. You were what? Maybe 7 at the time? It was a quaint fishing village, what was meant to be a quiet life on the shores of your homeworld had changed overnight. You could almost hear the laughter you shared with your brother as the two of you ran circles around your parents. The very same people that sold you.
Your eyes open back to the cold metal table underneath your arms, your hands mindlessly swirling the mysterious liquid. Adjusting your back slightly into the corner of your booth, you eye the surrounding patrons. The stark difference between your memory and the life you live now makes you scoff. From sunshine on your skin to hiding in a dark corner of this bar. How long have you been running for now? Decades? It’s been so long since you’ve seen your village. You had tried finding your home planet when you first escaped, but as the years went by, you began to slowly mull over if you even wanted to find it. Your family had sold you to some random rich businessman, given the history your species had, he gave a hefty amount for you. Except it wasn’t a random rich businessman, but a crime lord benefiting from trafficking your kind.
Sipping the ambiguous drink, you can’t help but scrunch your face to the taste. It was sour, too sour for your taste. It felt laughable, the drink continued to remind you of how you got here. You had argued with yourself for years, thinking that your family might at least try to find you, contact you, or at least your own sibling would try.
I OWN YOU. THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU, WHY DO YOU THINK YOU’RE STILL HERE?
You shook your head as Dugal’s voice interrupted your thoughts. Hoping to drown it by chugging your drink, the sour taste barely covered his sneering face and cold voice. Dugal wasn’t his real name but that’s what the others called him in your village. He who brought darkness. When he arrived, he was like the thunderclouds looming over your home, his disgusting tendrils tasting the moisture in the air and his dark soulless eyes looking over your quaint little village. You’ll never forget how they glared at you. The screams that came after, the wailing of the children around you were sounds you can’t forget.
Your species was a fundamental part of his business. Sometimes you wish you weren’t born as an Elixe, maybe you wouldn’t have even met the guy. But you were lucky, as lucky as you try to convince yourself. His business relied on the subspecies of your kind that were bred to be like cattle over centuries of removing their cognitive thinking, their senses, and their humanoid bodies. People who knew of your history were either too old, dead, or just didn’t care. But you can’t help but feel bad for them every time you encounter them in cold, metallic capsules locked away in dark desolate storage rooms. You remembered how many of them were stored on his ship, rooms stacked full of them while he prepared more to store people like you. That was the main reason your species was spread so wide across the galaxy; you were either nomads or constantly raided for the benefit of others. As beautiful as the galaxy was, it was cruelly unempathetic.
You recalled the day your life changed from how the other older villagers reacted, the children thinking if they promised that they would no longer misbehave would mean they could stay home. You figured the elder had some sort of deal with him to keep the rest of the village safe. Except for the ones he chose to take along with him, which included you and a few other unlucky kids. You dreamt of spitting right in the elder’s face, but you were too young to even realize what was happening. The subspecies didn’t live long, and that small detail was the very reason he started targeting their humanoid counterparts. What you shared with your subspecies was the ingredient he commonly used for poisons and aphrodisiacs for the rich. The very part of you that helps you escape the many bounty hunters that he has sicked after you. And speaking of bounty hunters…
It was almost too small of a detail to miss, the ripple of conversations momentarily stopping to gawk at the figure at the entrance to only continue conversing amongst themselves. You glanced at the armored man; he stuck out, partly with the way his armor shone in the mildly lit room and partly because he was a Mandalorian. You averted your eyes as soon as you glanced at him just as the other patrons did. You could only think of one reason a Mandalorian would be here, and you didn’t want to wait to find out. You were almost giddy though, they sent a kriffing Mandalorian after you? You’ve read about them through holopads and books while waiting it out in cargo holds to avoid being captured.
Evading Dugal’s henchmen at first wasn’t easy but expensive and time-consuming for him. You recalled the day you escaped him and stupidly tried to start a second life on a new planet with a new job to fund your way back home. The man that came after you… it was a memory so jarring that you didn’t even want to think about it, the scar on your back is a reminder of how it turned out. The bounty hunters that they enlisted afterward were easier to evade since they were given barely any information other than an asset and a female thief. It confused them whenever they found nothing on you or slipped away when they tried to keep you cuffed to their ship. The miscommunication came from the fact that what Dugal was doing was beyond illegal, so listing you as his property wouldn’t work, and giving away your species meant divulging his business secrets. Even if this guy was a Mandalorian, you doubted that he knew what you were capable of. Or at least what your genetic makeup was capable of.
He strode to an empty booth; a few steps were all it took. He sat down with his legs wide, and shortly after turning his head to survey the patrons around him, kept his T-visor fixed to a spot two tables to the left of you. But you felt his eyes on you, unwavering, studying. You tried to not look at him, meeting his eyes would only confirm that you were the quarry, but you could see the rifle poking out from behind him in your peripherals and you felt sorry for the ones he shot from afar, realizing too late once the blaster shot hit them. He was a tall, looming threat. His figure takes up most of the space in his booth. The Mandalorian was different from the previous hunters you’ve encountered; they would stride straight to you and demand you hand over the asset with a blaster planted at your head but he’s just… sitting there. Somehow that felt even scarier. Your fingers subconsciously twiddled with the glass, you needed a way out, but you had to be patient.
The man exuded confidence like he knew no one would take him on or bother him. Except, of course, the dumb droid that bothered you earlier. An opportunity you didn’t want to waste, you tightened the hood around you and hoped that the droid’s torso was wide enough to cover the Mandalorian’s view of you. You slid to the right, knowing that it was where the back of the kitchen and, presumably, a staff exit was. With a hand to the wall and head lowered, you traced the hallway and quickly rushed past the swearing cooks, and the bustling droids, and out the back door.
As soon as you shut the door behind you and into the back alleyway of the bar, you felt the familiar feeling of rain hitting the top of your hood. Turning your head up to the artificial clouds, you momentarily relished the feeling of droplets on your face. You loved the rain, even if it was the artificial weather system of Coruscant, it still calmed your beating heart. Stepping over the garbage, you swiftly navigated the alleyways till it spat you out into the crowded streets of the middle levels of Coruscant. There was a reason you picked this bar; it was close to the docking bay for passenger cruisers, and the streets were busy enough that you could get mixed into the crowds. However, you were hoping that the next bounty hunter wouldn’t find you for at least another few days for you to fork over enough for a ticket. But you had to get a drink. You swore at yourself and your little treats. The ticket would mean being able to keep your clothes and humanoid form for longer but it’s fine. You’ve done this before. You’ll just have to suck it up and be uncomfortable for a couple of hours... maybe days...
By now, the bounty hunter should be going through the alleyway unless he left through the entrance, but you doubt it given the fact that most bounty hunters had some kind of tracking system built into their helmets. A reminder of your encounter with your first bounty hunter who smugly pointed out that he followed your footsteps even though you didn’t even know you had a bounty for your capture. You crouched through the crowds, weaving through them so you wouldn’t bump into them and slow down. You just needed to get to the loading docks where they were preparing to put luggage or hopefully, larger storage units meant for cargo holds for you to hide in.
Next to the queues of people lining up to get their tickets checked, a little further down the end of the line was the ladder you scouted out weeks before. You slid down the cold ladder and quickly put your back to the walls of the hangar. The last thing you need is a dockworker to spot you and make a fuss. Thankfully, the rain and thunder kept the sound of the shutter door quiet, and you were lucky they were busy conversing amongst themselves near the opening hatch of the large passenger cruiser. It was the end of the shift for them, so they were killing time before having to haul the rest of the cargo onto the ship. You remember sitting by the docks watching and memorizing their nightly routines. You had come to Coruscant many times before and the inflated number of people helped you escape many times.
You picked a crate with what you assumed was a brand of wine labeled on the sides and pried open the lid with a fork you stole from the bar, inside were bottles upon bottles of Andoan wine neatly stacked on top of each other. You only recognized the brand from slinking around the upper levels of the rich and luxurious since stealing from the poorer folk of this planet felt wrong. It’s not like the rich would notice anything missing. Thankfully, the wine was about the same color as your nonhumanoid form. It’s the perfect place to hide. You opened one of the wines and drained it onto the floor haphazardly, you weren’t sure how long you’d been sneaking around here, and you needed to do this quickly before he saw you. Then you undressed, you couldn’t take your clothes with you and so, you balled them and threw them as far as you could into whatever dark corner you could muster.
The next part was the uncomfortable stage, you felt your body shrink into the bottle and extended what used to be your hands to close the crate lid above you. Elixe’s pure forms were like water except less viscous, your species could fit into a container as small as a cup but any smaller and you’re pushing the limits of your organs. You hated this form, it’s what Dugal and other assholes tried to harvest, and it kept you vulnerable, one pierce and your organs are spilling out everywhere on the floor. It saddened you, that what was part of Elixe’s tradition of keeping this form hidden from anyone, but your close family and eternal spouse had been used to make tacky desserts for the rich and to be used to hide as you are now.
It was beyond uncomfortable trying to situate yourself, but your body froze the moment you felt vibrations getting stronger towards your crate. It must be his steps. They felt heavy. How heavy even was that armor? The vibrations stopped right at your crate and then a brief moment of silence. Then the crate lid was swiftly removed. As quickly as the lid was removed, a blaster was pointed right at the center of the crate. His visor stayed fixed to where he aimed but then his head slowly tilted. You had chosen a bottle that was stored below others, but it felt like he was staring straight at you. He stood there, stoic and still as his unwavering aim slowly lowered. You’ve seen this reaction so many times before, they think they’ve caught you only to be dumbfounded when there’s no person, no body, and no trace of you. He put his blaster back in his holster, his leather gloves gripped the sides of the crate as he continued to inspect the crate.
But then his hand slowly started to reach towards you, how? How did he – Then there was shouting, you couldn’t hear what was being said but the Mandalorian’s head quickly snapped to the side, towards the entrance of the hangar. He straightened his posture, his gloved hands no longer gripping the crate. As quickly as he did, he left. A few seconds later, an angry-looking dockworker placed the crate’s lid back on, and judging from the jostling, he sealed it back up. Great. You’re sealed in this damn box now. No matter, you were going to get out as soon as the passenger cruiser took off.
But this time, you were equally dumbfounded. Did Dugal update your information? He wouldn't, it would mean divulging his secrets and the bounty hunter guild wouldn’t take it up unless he personally hired this Mandalorian and told him. Your heart sunk, or at least where your heart was. You remember reading about Mandalorians and how honorable they were, given the similarities between your traditions. You never thought one of them would be scummy enough to bring you back to a trafficker. But there were stories of Boba Fett and maybe this one wasn’t even originally Mandalorian. It would be ignorant to think an entire race would abide by their code or anyone donning the armor would. Hopefully, this was the last time you saw that terrifying scum. Hopefully, he’ll get tired of you. But of course, things have never gone your way.