Pleasurable darkness

The air on Felucia was thick, humid, and smelled of decay and life in equal, cloying measure. It was a world teeming with the Force, a vibrant, chaotic symphony that usually sang in Anakin Skywalker’s blood. Today, however, it felt muted, a distant drumbeat behind the oppressive heat and the drone of spore-flies.

“The Separatist outpost should be just beyond this ridge, Master Billaba,” Anakin said, his voice a low murmur. He gestured with a leather-gloved hand, his eyes scanning the fungal forest. “Intelligence reported minimal droid presence. A simple reconnaissance and sabotage mission.”

Depa Billaba moved with a liquid grace that belied the treacherous, pulsating ground. Her Chalactan features were serene, a mask of calm contemplation that Anakin had always found both admirable and slightly unnerving. “Simplicity is often a deception, Skywalker. The Force feels… agitated here. Unsettled.”

“It’s Felucia,” Anakin countered, a hint of his usual bravado in his tone. “It’s always unsettled.”

He spoke too soon. The agitation she felt was not the planet’s. It was a predator’s anticipation.

The attack was brutally efficient. There was no clank of battle droids, no hum of approaching speeders. One moment, they were Jedi Knights, masters of their environment. The next, the world dissolved into concussive noise and blinding light. A sonic mine detonated, the frequency tuned not to shred flesh, but to scramble synaptic pathways. Anakin staggered, his ears ringing, a wave of vertigo sending him to his knees. He saw Depa stumble, her hand flying to her temple, her serene expression shattered by a grimace of pain.

Before either could recover, they were on them. Zygerrian slavers, by the look of their whip-cord lean bodies and cruel, tattooed faces. They moved with the silent lethality of jungle cats. Anakin’s hand instinctively went for his lightsaber, but a heavy stun blast caught him square in the chest. His muscles locked, his vision swam in blackness, and the last thing he felt was the hard, fungal earth rushing up to meet him.

Consciousness returned in jarring, painful increments. The first thing he registered was the cold. Not the ambient cool of a ship’s brig, but a deep, internal cold, a void where the vibrant warmth of the Force should have been. He tried to reach for it, to draw it in, but found nothing. A hollow, terrifying emptiness.

He forced his eyes open. He was on his knees, his hands bound behind him by cuffs that pulsed with a faint, sickly red light. Force suppressors. He’d only ever read about them. The reality was a hundred times worse than he could have imagined. It felt like a part of his soul had been carved out.

Across the small, durasteel-walled room, Depa was in the same state. Her Jedi robes were torn and dirty, but she held her head high, her dark eyes burning with a cold fire that defied their captors. They were in the cargo hold of a ship, the low thrum of the engines a constant vibration through the floor.

A tall, formidable Zygerrian with a cruel slash of a mouth and a single cybernetic eye approached them. He circled them slowly, like a connoisseur inspecting a piece of art. His gaze lingered on Depa, a sickeningly appreciative glint in his optic sensor.

“Two Jedi,” the slaver purred, his voice a gravelly rasp. “A Master and the infamous ‘Hero With No Fear.’ My name is Zarek. And I must say, the bounty on you both is impressive. But selling you to the Separatists would be a waste of… potential.”

Anakin strained against his bonds, a low growl rumbling in his chest. “You’ll regret this.”

Zarek laughed, a harsh, grating sound. “Oh, I doubt it. You see, Jedi are a premium product. So rare. So… pure. But their value is not just in their combat prowess. It’s in their spirit. And the breaking of that spirit? That is a delicacy for which the galaxy’s elite will pay a king’s ransom.”

He crouched in front of Depa, his face uncomfortably close to hers. She didn’t flinch, her gaze as steady as stone. “A Jedi Master. A member of the High Council, if our sources are correct. So poised. So untouchable.” He reached out, and Anakin’s heart hammered against his ribs with impotent fury. Zarek’s clawed hand traced the line of her jaw. She remained perfectly still, a statue of defiance.

“We need to verify the quality of the merchandise, of course,” Zarek continued, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper meant only for Anakin. “Clients pay extra for purity. It adds to the… experience of defilement.”

The horror of his words washed over Anakin, cold and nauseating. “Don’t you touch her,” he snarled, his voice raw with a rage he couldn’t physically express.

Zarek simply smiled. “Oh, I won’t be the only one.”

He snapped his fingers. Two other slavers grabbed Depa, hauling her to her feet. She struggled, a brief, violent burst of movement, but without the Force to augment her strength, she was easily overpowered. They tore her tabards and tunic away, leaving her in her simple under-shift.

“Let her go!” Anakin roared, throwing his weight against his cuffs. The suppressors flared, sending a jolt of agony up his arms, but he barely felt it. All he could see was the violation, the stripping away of her dignity.

They forced her onto a low metal table in the center of the room. One of the slavers produced a medical scanner, its clinical, impersonal hum a horrifying counterpoint to the raw brutality of the scene.

“Hold him,” Zarek commanded, gesturing at Anakin. A heavy boot slammed into the small of Anakin’s back, forcing him face-first into the grimy floor. Another slaver grabbed his hair, yanking his head up, forcing him to watch. “The buyer will want to know that the Hero of the Republic saw it all. It adds to the narrative.”

Anakin’s world narrowed to the scene before him. He saw the cold, blue light of the scanner pass over Depa’s body. He saw the tremor in her hands, the only outward sign of the terror she must be feeling. He saw the leering faces of the slavers as they watched. The scanner beeped.

“Well, well,” Zarek drawled, looking at a datapad. “Master Depa Billaba. A paragon of the Jedi Order. Thirty-four standard years old.” He paused, a dramatic flair for Anakin’s benefit. “And completely untouched. A virgin. Imagine that. The Jedi Code, so effectively enforced. This just doubled her value.”

The words were like acid in Anakin’s gut. He thought of Padmé, of the life they had stolen in secret, a life of love and passion that the Jedi forbade. And here, that same code had preserved Depa, only to make her a more valuable prize for these monsters.

“Now,” Zarek said, his voice taking on a darker, more excited edge. “The initiation.”

Anakin’s blood ran cold. “No… please…” The words were a choked whisper, all the fight draining out of him, replaced by a desperate, sickening dread.

Zarek ignored him. He turned to his crew, a dozen of them in the cramped hold. “Enjoy the bonus, boys. Show the Jedi Master what true power feels like. But be gentle. We don’t want to damage the merchandise before the auction.”

What happened next would be burned into Anakin’s memory for eternity, a hellish tableau of sound and motion. He was forced to watch as, one by one, the slavers descended upon Depa. Her Jedi stoicism finally broke. The first time she cried out, a sound of sharp, betrayed pain, something inside Anakin shattered. He roared, a mindless, animalistic sound of pure fury and despair, thrashing so violently that the slaver holding him had to be reinforced by another.

He closed his eyes, but he couldn't shut out the sounds: her stifled sobs, the grunts and cruel laughter of her attackers, the rhythmic, sickening slap of flesh against flesh. He tried to retreat into his mind, to find the quiet center the Jedi Masters always spoke of, but without the Force, there was no center. There was only the raw, screaming input of his senses.

Then, a new sensation. A faint hiss from a vent near his head. A sweet, cloying scent, like an overripe fruit, filled his nostrils. He tried to hold his breath, but his struggles left him gasping. The vapor was thin, almost unnoticeable, but it began to work on him with insidious speed.

At first, it was just a strange warmth spreading through his limbs, a tingling heat that seemed to counteract the cold void of the Force suppressors. The raw edges of his panic began to soften, replaced by something else. Something thick and syrupy and hot.

He opened his eyes, his vision slightly blurred at the edges. He saw Depa on the table, her body trembling, her face turned away, a mask of silent agony. The disgust and horror were still there, a toxic sludge in his soul, but now… now they were mingled with a rising tide of arousal. It was a vile, horrifying betrayal by his own body. His heart hammered in his chest, no longer just from rage, but from a burgeoning, drug-fueled lust.

He fought it. He thought of Padmé, her smile, the softness of her skin, the love in her eyes. The image was a beacon of purity in the filth of his mind. *Padmé, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.* But the drug was a relentless poison. It twisted the image of his wife, blurring it with the brutal reality in front of him. The feelings he had for her, the deep, possessive love, were being warped, redirected.

The slavers noticed the change in him. Zarek’s cybernetic eye fixed on him, a flicker of triumph in its red glow. “See? The body has its own truths, Jedi. Deeper than any code.”

He watched, his mind a warring chaos of shame and burgeoning, chemical desire. He saw the last slaver finish, leaving Depa a broken, trembling heap on the metal table. The room was thick with the smell of sweat, exertion, and the sickeningly sweet vapor.

Anakin thought it was over. He prayed it was over. But it wasn't. This was only the beginning.

Zarek walked over to him, hauling him to his feet. The drug was now a raging fire in his veins. His thoughts were fragmented, his body humming with an energy he couldn’t control. He was hyper-aware of everything: the slick sweat on Depa’s skin, the faint scent of her blood, the shallow, ragged breaths she took.

“Now for the final piece of the initiation,” Zarek said, his voice low and hypnotic. He pushed Anakin forward, towards the table. “The narrative is not complete until the hero falls. Until the protector becomes the predator. Show her. Show her that even the Chosen One is just a man. An animal, like the rest of us.”

Anakin’s feet moved as if through mud. His mind screamed *No!* but his body, saturated with the aphrodisiac, was a traitor. He stopped at the edge of the table, looking down at Depa. Her eyes, hazy with pain and trauma, flickered open and met his. For a second, he saw not a Jedi Master, but just a woman, terrified and broken. He saw a plea for help.

And then the drug, Zarek’s words, and the darkest, most possessive corner of his soul converged. A twisted thought, born of his slavery, his rage, and his desperate need for control, surfaced in his mind: *If anyone is going to touch her, it should be me. I can be… gentler.*

It was a lie. A monstrous, self-serving lie to justify the abyss he was about to leap into.

He reached out, his hand shaking. He didn’t know what he was doing, what he was becoming. He was no longer Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight. He was a creature of instinct and chemicals, a slave to a new master.

Zarek’s hand landed on his shoulder, a firm, approving pressure. “That’s it, boy. Claim what’s yours.”

The words resonated with a terrifying, familiar echo. *This is yours. You won it.* Watto’s voice from a lifetime ago, talking about a broken droid. The concept of ownership was branded into him.

He looked at Depa, and the last vestiges of the Jedi Knight in him died. He didn’t see a colleague to be saved. He saw something to be possessed. Something to be controlled. Something that was now, in this moment of ultimate degradation, his.

He moved, and as he became an active participant in her violation, a part of him broke free and watched from a great distance, screaming in silent, unending horror. But the part that was in control, the part fueled by the drug and the darkness he’d always held at bay, felt only a terrible, surging release. A final, damning surrender.

***

The hours that followed were a blur of crashing comedowns and stark, agonizing clarity. When the drug finally receded, it left Anakin curled on the floor of a different, smaller cell, shivering and retching. The full weight of what he had done crashed down on him. It was a physical burden, crushing the air from his lungs, filling his mouth with the taste of bile and self-loathing.

He had not just watched. He had participated. He had taken the last of Depa’s shattered dignity and ground it into dust under his own hands. He was a monster. The slavers hadn’t just broken him; they had remade him into one of them. The image of her eyes—the flicker of terror when she realized what he was about to do—was a brand on his soul.

The door to his cell hissed open. It was Zarek. He tossed a small ration bar and a bulb of water onto the floor. Anakin didn’t move.

“Eat,” Zarek ordered. His voice was devoid of its earlier theatrics, now just cold and commanding. “The training begins today. You need your strength.”

“Kill me,” Anakin rasped, his voice a shredded ruin. “Just kill me.”

Zarek chuckled, a dry, humorless sound. “And waste such a promising asset? I think not. You misunderstand your new reality, Skywalker. Death is a mercy you haven’t earned. You are far more valuable alive.”

He crouched down, his cybernetic eye whirring as it focused on Anakin’s face. “Listen closely, because this is the new truth. You and the Jedi Master are a matched set. A story to be sold. She is the Unbroken. The proud Chalactan Master, defiant to the last, whose will can only be bent by overwhelming force. The clients who buy her time will relish the struggle. Her resistance is the core of her appeal.”

Anakin’s stomach clenched. They were turning her trauma into a selling point.

“And you,” Zarek continued, his voice dropping. “You are the Fallen Hero. The Willing One. You fought, oh yes, but in the end, you surrendered to your base nature. You discovered you *liked* it. You are the one who gave in. The one who will enforce our will, because deep down, you want the same things we do.”

“That’s not true,” Anakin whispered, the words tasting like ash. “It was the drug.”

“The drug was a key,” Zarek corrected smoothly. “It didn’t create the door; it merely unlocked it. Your role is to be the eager one. The one who learns quickly. The one who shows the other slaves how to please their masters. And, most importantly…” He leaned closer, his foul breath washing over Anakin. “…you will be her keeper. You will be the one to break her, day after day. Because you’ve already crossed that line. For you, there is no going back.”

He laid out the twisted logic of their plan with chilling precision. Anakin’s cooperation would be framed as a choice. A choice to protect Depa from the others.

“Every time you follow an order,” Zarek explained, “every time you put the leash on her, every time you bring her to a client, you will tell yourself you are doing it to spare her the cruelty of my other men. You will be her ‘gentle’ handler. And in doing so, you will become the very thing you hate. You will become her master. Your desire to protect her will be the chain I use to bind you both.”

He stood up, dusting off his trousers. “Your first task is simple. She has not eaten. Take this to her. Make her eat it.” He threw a second ration bar at Anakin’s feet.

Anakin stared at the bar as if it were a venomous snake. The thought of facing Depa, of looking into her eyes again, was more terrifying than any battle.

“I won’t,” he said, his voice shaking.

Zarek sighed, a theatrical sound of disappointment. “I had hoped you were smarter than this.” He tapped a comm on his wrist. “Ghor, get the vibro-brand. It seems the Master needs a new mark to remind her of her station. Something… visible.”

Anakin’s head snapped up, his eyes wide with panic. A brand. Another scar to add to her collection of torments. Another piece of her they would take.

“No! Wait!” The words tore from his throat against his will.

Zarek smiled his cruel slash of a smile. “Ah, there he is. The protector.” He gestured to the ration bar. “The choice is yours, Skywalker. A moment of your discomfort, or a lifetime of her pain. What kind of hero are you?”

Shaking, his entire body trembling with a mixture of self-hatred and desperate urgency, Anakin picked up the ration bar. Each movement was a betrayal. He stood, his legs unsteady, and walked towards the door Zarek held open.

Depa’s cell was just across the narrow corridor. She was huddled in the far corner, wrapped in a thin, coarse blanket. She had tried to piece her torn robes back together, a futile gesture of dignity that broke Anakin’s heart anew.

When she saw him in the doorway, she flinched. It was not a large movement, but it was as devastating as a physical blow. Her eyes, once filled with the wisdom and calm of a Jedi Master, were now haunted, wary. And when they looked at him, they were filled with a new emotion he had never seen directed at him before: fear.

He took a hesitant step inside, the ration bar held out in his trembling hand. “Master Billaba… Depa… you need to eat.”

She said nothing. She just watched him, her body tensed, ready to recoil.

The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. He could feel Zarek watching from the corridor, feel the weight of his ultimatum. He had to make her eat. He had to follow the order.

“Please,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “He’ll… he’ll hurt you if you don’t.”

Her gaze flickered from his face to the ration bar and back again. A flicker of understanding, perhaps. Or maybe just resignation. Slowly, deliberately, she shook her head. A single, silent act of defiance. Not against Zarek. Against him.

Anakin’s desperation mounted. He couldn't let them hurt her again. He couldn't have that on his conscience, not on top of everything else.

“Depa, you don’t understand,” he pleaded, taking another step. “You have to. I can’t let him…”

He reached for her, intending to put the bar in her hand, to beg her. But as his fingers brushed her arm, she recoiled as if burned, scrambling back against the wall.

That small act of revulsion lanced through him, sharper than any blade. She was afraid of *him*. She was disgusted by his touch. The shame was a white-hot fire, but beneath it, something else stirred. Something dark and ugly. The dregs of the drug, the poison of Zarek’s words, the festering wound of his own possessive nature.

*She is my responsibility now. Her safety is my responsibility.*

The thought was a dangerous comfort. It reframed his role. He wasn’t just a fellow prisoner. He was her keeper. Zarek was right.

His voice changed, the pleading edge vanishing, replaced by a harder, firmer tone he barely recognized. “You will eat this.” It wasn’t a request.

She looked up at him, and for the first time, a spark of her old fire returned to her eyes. A defiant glare. “No.”

The word, so simple, so final, broke something in him. The fragile control he was clinging to snapped. The shame and the guilt and the desperation twisted into a cold, sharp spike of anger. Anger at her for her defiance, at Zarek for his games, at himself for his weakness.

He moved quickly, closing the distance between them. He grabbed her arm, his grip far rougher than he intended. She cried out, a small, startled sound. “Let me go, Anakin.”

“Not until you eat,” he snarled, the words alien in his own mouth. He was a stranger to himself, a monster wearing his face. He forced the ration bar into her hand, his fingers closing around hers, crushing them until she held it. “Eat it. Now.”

Tears welled in her eyes, tears of pain and betrayal. She looked at his face, at the cold fury in his eyes, and her defiance crumbled. With a shaking hand, she brought the bar to her lips and took a small, forced bite.

Anakin let her go, stepping back as if he’d been shocked. He looked at his own hand, then at her, huddled and crying silently as she chewed the dry, tasteless food.

He had done it. He had followed the order. He had forced his will upon her. He had protected her from Zarek’s brand, but in doing so, he had seared his own mark onto her soul.

He turned and walked out of the cell, not looking back. Zarek was leaning against the opposite wall, a look of profound satisfaction on his face.

“Very good,” the slaver purred, clapping him lightly on the shoulder. “You see? You are a natural. The first lesson is complete.”

Anakin stared down the dark corridor, his vision blurring. He had become the tool of her oppression. And the most terrifying part, the part that made him want to claw his own skin off, was the flicker of dark satisfaction he’d felt when she finally obeyed. A sense of control. A sense of ownership.

He was losing himself. No, he was already lost. He was now a different kind of slave, bound by a different kind of chain, and he was dragging Depa Billaba down into the darkness with him.