Darkness of Twin Suns

Sith Apprentice

He still remembered his first pod racer.

It had been his second love, after his Mother.

His shining beacon of hope for freedom....

The frame had been what started it all.

A miracle.

A sign....

The scrap heaps on the edge of town never had anything big.

That was bought or sold on the market. The best you could hope for was small bits and pieces only worth something together if you took the hours to collect them.

Anakin knew he had always been an obedient slave.

He had to be, because obedient slaves were the ones allowed small freedoms by their Master.

The freedom to spend those hours collecting parts.

Whenever he poured over the piles, searching for something no one else could fix, he found the rusting frame.

He was 7 years old, and had recognized it from The Pod Race almost 2 years prior. The driver had been an idiot, some rich boy from The Republic, and apparently he was idiot enough to toss his Pod, rather than to sell it as scrap.

Hours after he found the parts, it was during the dead of night, he returned with his friends and Mother.

Together they dragged the heavy metal thing through the sand to The Slave Quarters, where Anakin covered it with a thick blanket to keep it safe from the winds.

He'd gone to bed, hands twitching with his eagerness to work on it.

Even now, almost 8 years later, he could close his eyes and see the pod. He could imagine it in his mind and reach out to fix every outdated tube and ill fitting part as if it were in front of him.

He could remember working by the three brother moon's glow night after night.

He could remember his want for it to be finished, because then he'd finally have a pod of his own.

A pod that would work with his small frame and four inflexible appendages, not against them.

A pod that he could win a race with.

The design had been good, the mechanics a work of art, the system, perfect. And yet, deep with Anakin there had been an itch he couldn't shake. An itch that said if he didn't have decades old fragile wire and thrice outdated parts only he could make function, it would be better. Faster. More stable.

And it would already be The Fastest Pod On Tatooine, he'd known that deep in his bones.

He'd planned meticulously what he would do when he was done. He would begin in the smallest races, where anyone could enter and it was free, and keep on winning until he had enough for the entrance fee for the bigger ones.

Then he would race until he had a sponsor, and then, with a few more big wins, he might have enough to free himself.

Anakin had confided, once, to Kixter that he felt there was a Krayt Dragon inside him.

Kixter had laughed. He didn't intend for the laugh to be mocking, but it certainly came out as such.

"Krayt Dragons are free." He had told Anakin.

"You are a slave. You don't have a Kryat Dragon, you have a Salacc, who is trapped in one place and may only eat what his Master gives him."

Shame had burned within Anakin, for he liked to imagine sometimes, that if he let his dragon loose, he would be free at last. But after that, the fantasy was stolen from him.