Chapter Text
Zabrak children grow tall quickly.
It’s not something most outsiders are aware of, as Zabraks tend to keep their children hidden safely away until they are strong and clever enough to survive whatever the galaxy throws at them. By the age of five, most Zabraks are as tall as a human adult, though they still very much are children on the inside. Perhaps it was useful for survival, millions of years ago, when being a bit bigger and stronger helped children fight off predators and escape enemies. In modern times, though, it only causes needless confusion for well-meaning non-Zabraks.
The most reliable way to judge a Zabrak’s age is by their horns, if they have any. (Many female Dathomirian Zabrak don’t have horns, but that quirk of evolution is a discussion for a later time.) Infants and children barely have horns at all. Just shiny little nubs that happen to be razor sharp. As Zabraks mature, their horns get longer and duller, losing their shine with age and wear. Essentially, intrepid wanderers of the galaxy should know: if the Zabrak’s horns are long and matte, they are an adult. If their horns are short and shiny, they are a child.
Perhaps this fact should be more widely known, but Zabrak are cagey about their children, and most education systems value teaching their students arithmetic and grossly-oversimplified galactic history over the finer details of such a marginalized species— regardless of how fascinating Zabraks may actually be. For example, there are no records of the Jedi temple ever teaching Zabrak biology or gerontology in any form, other than the most simple of lessons in the healers’ hall. An egregious oversight, to be sure, but that is only to be expected from an organization that sees no harm in stealing infants away from their parents and training them for war. Far greater oversights have happened under their watch. For example:
Maul was only eight years old when Obi-wan Kenobi cut him in half.
He was only eight years old when he fell down that cursed reactor shaft on Naboo, crying and wailing for the master who’d hurt him, or the mother who’d sold him. No matter the atrocious acts he’d committed, he was only a child, seeking warmth and approval from the people who’d raised him, who’d only ever seen him as a weapon.
And Kenobi, for all his goodness, saw him the same way. As a weapon and a villain. Not as a person, and definitely not as a child. Perhaps the honored general might’ve shown mercy if he had known how to tell a child apart from an adult, but he didn’t. And the past, as every tired historian and mournful soldier knows, is immutable.
Maul fell down that shaft begging and hoping for some caring adult in his life to come and save him, but nobody came, because there was no such person. He survived by sheer luck— for all the killing intent Kenobi had put into that blow, he’d underestimated the resiliency of Zabrak biology. The resiliency of Maul.
For a human, having one’s upper and lower halves separated is a death sentence. For Maul, it very nearly was. But he was strong in the Force, and well-trained to boot. He survived the fall and staunched the bleeding on his own. It is highly likely that he discovered some rudimentary form of Force-healing, seeing as he made the trip to Lotho Minor without succumbing to his injuries.
After that fateful fight, Kenobi went his own way, back to the comfort of his Jedi temple and his people. But Maul, the child, was left alone with life-threatening injuries, to fend for himself. His master did not search for him, and his mother did not seek him out. He was alone.
And in that junkyard on Lotho Minor, Maul’s aloneness bloomed into something far more debilitating.
For the first few months, young Maul felt very smug for having secretly survived his fight with Kenobi, an opponent that he secretly knew he could never beat. Surely his master would be along shortly, and while he would certainly be punished for this loss, he would ultimately be forgiven, and perhaps his missing lower half could be repaired somehow. Even with his injuries, he was the fiercest thing in the junkyard, and he used his prowess in the Force to carve a place for himself to live while he waited for his master.
But then the months turned into years. One year, then two, then three. Maul’s loyalty to his master, the loyalty that had been carved into him with Nightsister magick and Force lightning, didn’t wane, but his mental health gradually did.
Utter isolation is dangerous for any social being, especially a child. Maul’s only company in the caves and scrap heaps of Lotho Minor were vermin and a rather depraved clan of Anacondans that eagerly sought his death so they could feast on his corpse. Not suitable company for a well-adjusted adult, much less an abused child.
Slowly, Maul’s grasp on reality loosened. It started with things that could easily be explained away with the Force. Faint whispers at the edge of his hearing and the strange sensation that he was being watched, even when he knew he was alone. For a while, Maul pushed the unwanted apparitions away and focused on getting himself off Lotho Minor. Perhaps this was a test of some sort. His master wanted him to prove his strength by returning to him on his own. Maul could do that, though the thought of being expected to rely only on himself made him feel sick for some reason.
It was during this time that Maul fashioned his first set of cybernetic legs— the horrifying spider-like ones that functioned through a mix of genius, luck, and whatever mechanical knowledge Maul could glean through the Force. He didn’t initially intend to make spider legs. He couldn’t figure out how to coordinate just two legs to be stable enough to walk on, so he added more. And more. Until he was confident in his ability to move unhindered.
The Anacondan clan was nearly wiped out, in those first few weeks after Maul figured out how to walk again. He was eleven during this time— still so tragically young, but equally deadly. The surviving snakes avoided him when at all possible, only adding to Maul’s sense of isolation.
Maul was stranded on Lotho minor for eight years. Eight years alone, hurt and lost, during the most formative part of his life. He did many gruesome things during this time, and he fell to depths unimaginable. Perhaps this time of his life is best left to imagination, and a curious inquirer need only know this: by the time anyone thought of Maul again, or decided to go looking for him, he was in the most pathetic, pitiable state possible. The damages of his past and the isolation of his present left him violent, unstable, and unable to tell reality from delusion. Many a scavenger ventured to Lotho Minor, looking for salvage, but none who happened upon Maul returned to tell the tale. In his state of mind, even his grasp of the Dark Side slipped into something much more ambiguous— still full of pain and rage, but not coherent enough to be considered a true Force tradition. This unpredictability in the Force became his modus operandi later in life, but it does not change the fact that he was left to rot in squalor for the majority of his young life.
And the end of those eight years, when Maul was sixteen, is where our story begins. Where young Maul is reunited with his brother, his savior, the specter from his past.
Savage Opress.