Four days he’d been chained in the lowest level of Kragan’s new palace. Strung up by his arms, uncomfortably so, but also chained down by his ankles, forcing him into a permanent kneeling position with his arms outstretched to either side of him. Four days of being dressed in nothing but his own undergarments, forced to deal with hot Lok days and freezing Lok nights. Four days of being denied food and water.
Four days of personal beatings by Kragan Garr.
There wasn’t an inch of flesh colored skin left on him. He was a gross collage of blue, black, and yellowing bruises. Angry red lacerations decorated his back, his chest, his arms and legs—all the work of Kragan and a notched whip. Both his eyes were swollen: the left one completely shut, and the right one nearly so. His nose had been broken, and no one had bothered to reset it. Kragan had taken a bat to one of his knee caps, and it was just a bruised and bloody mess. And he was pretty sure at least two of his ribs were cracked.
He didn’t look like a man. He was certainly no pretty boy anymore. He was just a corpse, one too delirious from starvation and pain to know it was already dead.
And the truth was: he deserved it.
There were nearly a dozen innocent people dead, because of him. Nubians. His own people. Shot in the back like animals, right in the center of the marketplace on Theed, all to thin the crowd so that the bounty hunter tracking him could have a clear shot at him. They had died to make killing him easier.
And they would never have been in harm’s way, had he not returned home to bury his uncle.
He’d known it was a danger. The whole reason Klein had chased him off of Naboo in the first place was because of his bounty. He knew the risks of returning. But Gatz had, selfishly, chosen to ignore them because he thought he was honoring his uncle by organizing his funeral. There was no one else to do it now, after all. But getting people killed, because of his own carelessness… that didn’t honor the man at all.
That was why Gatz had given himself up willingly. That was why Gatz, for as much pain as he was in, couldn’t bring himself to hope for a rescue. Not just because he deserved this punishment, but because… it had already been four days. R4 knew he was missing, but he was just a droid. His only salvation lay in Valery, but if his droid had been smart enough to find her, then she’d have already bailed him out of here. She wouldn’t have left him to rot for four days.
Kragan told him otherwise, of course. Told him with every beating that she wasn’t coming for him, and never would. That he was nothing but a convenient tool for her, and now that he was no longer useful, she had decided to discard him. Because, why else would she not have saved him yet, if that wasn’t the case? Kragan was wrong, of course. Valery didn’t see people like that. Even if she did, she wouldn’t feed, protect, comfort, and train someone she only saw as a tool.
But the longer he was here, the more he suffered. And the more he suffered… the more he was beginning to believe his captor.
The door to the chamber clicked, the electronic lock opening. Gatz already knew who would walk through it. With fear seizing his heart, and making his broken body tremble, Gatz quietly tried to prepare himself for the next round of beatings.
