Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

First comes the day,

then comes the night.

After the darkness

shines t hrough the light.

The difference, they say,

Is only made right

by resolving the gray

through a Jedi’s keen sight.

Journal of the Whills, 7:477

‘Be-boo weew!’ The shrill pitched binary shattered the quiet of early morning laying thick over the one room house (calling it a ‘house’ was really overstating things, to be quite honest, but it sheltered him from Jakku’s extremes and that was what really mattered) and the young raven on the stone slab which was all he had to pass as a bed shifted with a low groan. Unsatisfied with his reaction the little droid rolled a bit closer and repeated its message only to receive a similar response: this time the youth turned onto his side and nestled closer to the rock. Emitting an annoyed stream of beeps and whistles, the Astromech reached up with one of the spindly arms stored in the compartment on its front and delivered a sharp prod to his exposed calf.

“Yow!” The raven jumped, flailed around a bit in an artless attempt to get away (which only resulted in him becoming tied up in his own sheets) and toppled to the floor with a thump.

‘Fee-oo.’

“What do you mean ‘nice landing’?” he grumbled as he sat up, massaging his leg with one hand and rubbing sleep from his emerald eyes with the other. “Suns and stars, B-95, did you have to poke me so hard?”

‘Fee-oop.’

“You’re worse than your Master!” He said it without thinking and promptly had to grit his teeth, bracing himself against the onrush of unpleasant feelings. Anger. Regret. Loss. All of it still just as sharp and vivid as they’d been the horrible night when the Empire had come and stolen everything that he’d had left which truly mattered. He hadn’t succeeded in the revenge he’d sworn to take that night. Yet. But he would, he told himself, one day very soon. Statistical likelihood of success be damned!

Harry James Potter was nothing if not so incredibly determined that he was capable of breaking logic through sheer force of will. Tom had always said he had a head like a Luggabeast. Painful as the reminder was, he couldn’t help but smile sadly as he pushed himself up onto his feet and started in on his morning routine. Pausing as he passed to peer out the window at the level of light he noted “you let me sleep in?”

A string of binary was swift to inform him that it’d been trying to wake him for the better part of two hours. The little raven sighed and let the matter drop, leg still throbbing where the droid had poked him. Aware that he had very little time to spare if he was going to get to where he needed to be before the heat set in and the stretch of open desert between Niima Outpost and the old wreck he was well into the process of stripping of its useful parts became impassable he ate quickly, packed away a bit of food and plenty of water for later, changed into his gear, grabbed his stun-staff from where it rested propped against the wall beside the door and whistled to B-95 before trotting out the door.

The thick cotton and straps of leather that he wore beat back the below freezing early morning temperatures as Harry headed around the back of his badly beaten land speeder and dropped his bag into the compartment he found there, leaving it open for the droid to settle into. He pulled himself onto it, secured the shemagh around his face to keep out the wind and sand and started the vehicle up. The motor caught and growled, the land speeder lurched forwards and the young scavenger began maneuvering free of the outpost where he’d spent most of his life.

With nothing but red sand in front of him for miles, the green eyed raven opened the clutch and pushed the aged speeder to its top speed. Listening to the metallic pinging sounds of the sand bouncing off the scratched and rusted metal. Feeling the wind, still frigid but rapidly warming as the sun began to make an appearance on the horizon behind him, brush against what little of his skin wasn’t covered by his protective gear. Listening to the roar of the engine.

The past sank its claws into him and tugged. Color faded out and blurred together, edges softened by a dream-like quality; sensations dull but still distinguishable for what they were. Large hands, warm and calloused and pale despite all the sun they’d been exposed to, keeping the vehicle upright and on the proper course while he only pretended to drive as at the time he wasn’t tall enough to even reach the pedals. The safety of the solid chest behind him and the knowledge that the older boy wouldn’t allow him to fall and get hurt. Closing his eyes and imagining that, instead of riding a land speeder, he was flying across the desert on wings of his very own.

Shemagh muffling his growl and the wind ripping it free and flinging it behind him Harry shook his head harshly. Freeing himself from the crushing grip of the memory and focusing all of his attention on his surroundings instead. Red sand. Towering dunes with long shadows stretching yards from where they stood. Blue sky, devoid of clouds. Blazing, pale sun. Hard to believe this place had once been lush and flourishing. Green. Covered in deep forests and even deeper lakes and seas. What sort of horrendous catastrophe must have happened to reduce Jakku to this? How long ago must it have taken place for there to be no traces left?

The sun was near to halfway through its journey towards the crown of the sky and the heat had long ago reached the point of becoming unbearable. Sweat trickled down his back and dripped into his eyes. The speeder snarled as it slowed and Harry swung around the base of yet another dune, much relieved to pull to a stop in the looming shadow of a near-to-gutted Star Destroyer.

“Is it me,” he asked as he dismounted the vehicle, B-95 landing with a thud in the sand beside him “or does it seem to take longer and longer to get out here every time we make the trip?”

‘Bee-beep.’

“Yeah, yeah. ‘Get to work Harry, we don’t have all day’.” He pulled his stun-staff free of where he’d stowed it during the trip and started towards the massive hole punched into the ship’s side. “Slave driver.”

The droid refused to dignify his behavior with a response but still followed him into the slowly corroding husk which blotted out all view he had of the sun and the sky. Pulling a lantern from his bag and turning it on, Harry hitched it to his hip for light and strolled forwards with just enough confidence to make it obvious to anything that might have been lurking there (be it rival human scavengers, Jawa, an Acklay or something else) that he wasn’t something it was wise to mess with. No longer in need of his shemagh the raven pulled the cloth wrappings down around his neck and ran his fingers through his sweat soaked hair.

Where to start? He’d already spent most of the week before scrapping out the contents of the section of the ship which lay to his right (towards the prow and consequently, with the placement of the hole he’d entered through, was the shortest walk from where he now stood) so the little raven made the decision to move deeper into the wreck.

“Come on B-95, we’re charting some new territory today.” With any luck his swing of good fortune would persist and he wouldn’t discover that such ‘new territory’ would be rife with trouble. Badly as he missed Tom he doubted that the older boy would have been pleased to have him die doing something stupid after all the effort that he’d put into teaching him to survive, and he couldn’t leave poor B-95 all alone in the world. At least, not before he didn’t have any other choice.

Tightening his grip on the stun-staff relieved a good portion of his tension. Harry turned his attention to their surroundings, scanning the mess of tangled wires twisted bars and hunks of metal which had once been the cavernous halls and wide decks of an Imperial Starship for anything worth the effort of harvesting. Scrap metal and copper rich wires were all well and good in a pinch to keep him scrapping by, but if he really wanted to eat well that night without worry about going hungry for weeks because of it (and, sun and stars, he did) then he needed something impressive and rare, or at least valuable, to show for his efforts. A hologram projector. Parts from a shield projector. Any weaponry or tech, like Climate Disruption Arrays or pieces from broken droids.

Spying what appeared to be some manner of control panel or computer (which was considerably far beyond his five feet five inches of reach, given the Star Destroyer’s belly-up position) Harry felt that his prospects for coming upon just such an object were fairly high. All that remained for him to do was rip the thing apart and sort the diamonds from the coal, metaphorically. Oh, and the simple to solve problem of the fact that the system was about thirty feet above his head.

‘Bee-oo-beew?’

Harry looked down at the little droid and nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I’m going to be focusing on today. Better we reap the benefits of it now than risk losing it to someone else.” He said. “Keep sharp, since I’ll be tossing what’s not useful anyway. I don’t want you getting damaged by any fallen debris.

‘Beeew?’

“Strenuous?” he glanced up at the system again and shrugged. “You’re probably right, I’ve never used the Force for such a prolonged period before, but I’ll be fine. And I promise to take breaks if I need to.”

Tom wouldn’t have needed to take breaks had he been there. He always had been stronger than Harry. Constantly pushing himself in search of more and more power. Clawing at limits. Leaping over boundaries without looking first. Teaching Harry to do what he could whenever he learned something new, or at least attempting to teach Harry (he took to some things, like lifting and pulling objects around him with only his thoughts, better than others, like using his bare hands like the shock-staff he was now armed with) and just causing general havoc.

It had been Tom’s pride in the fact that they weren’t just orphaned unwanted freaks after all but Jedi, or at least could have been had the Empire not eradicated them, and his resultant openness with their abilities that Harry now knew had drawn the Empire’s destructive attention. In hubris, Tom had authored his own demise and come close to doing the same him as well.

Harry had been much more careful after being left all alone, again, at only twelve. Had never allowed himself to become rusty, had kept prodding at possibilities like he’d known Tom would have wanted him to (though he still couldn’t come close to what the older boy had been capable of), but had kept it under wraps unless absolutely certain he was in private.

Or at least in a situation where any unlikely witness could be killed without any consequences falling back on him.

Leaving his stun-staff impaled upright in the sand which, over the passing of the many years since the crash of the imposing ship, had accumulated within the wreckage Harry closed his eyes and focused on his breathing. Reaching in towards the core of himself where the tether which linked him with all that surrounded him, all that was, and expanding himself to his immediate vicinity. Feeling each grain of sand beneath his feet, every small creature living in them, the droid which sat beside him and the ship which overshadowed them both. Seeing how each shown with different brilliantly colored lights. All attached to their own gently waving strings. Reaching out to him just as he was reaching out to them.

Mentally grasping the thread hanging down from the system Harry focused on pulling it towards him. Knowing he wasn’t strong enough to wrench the thing free of its moorings or, stars forbid, drag the entire downed ship towards him. As expected the applied tug worked in the opposite direction and his feet left the ground.

Harry’s body collided with the metal skin of the system with a loud clang and enough force that he almost lost his concentration then and there.

‘Vee-eew.’ Came the dry comment from below.

“Maybe just a bit.” He groaned, chest aching from the blow. Harry had little doubt he’d end up with at least a few light bruises come morning. “I’m alright.”

‘Bee.’

“Yes, I know you didn’t ask that!” Muttering under his breath about rude droids and with half of his attention fully devoted to keeping himself pinned to the formation of computers in front of him Harry opened his pack and pulled out his tools. Tearing away the metal panels until a good sized opening had been left behind and setting in on the mechanical entrails with thin, skillful (if unfortunately short, like nearly every other part of him thanks to a childhood of malnutrition) fingers. Ripping out wires, stripping them, and pocketing the ones that proved to be formed of valuable metals. Stowing a beautifully intact power cell. Tossing aside bits and bobs so badly broken by the Star Destroyer’s impact with Jakku’s surface that he couldn’t even recognize what they were supposed to be any longer and hearing them clatter to the ground far below like shale knocked from a crumbling clifftop.

Feeling drained enough after four hours had gone by that he feared he might lose his focus and suffer a potentially fatal fall the raven lowered himself back to the ground by means of slowly releasing the mental string and plopped down into the sand to take a break. Eating his lunch and indulging himself in some of the precious water he’d brought out with him (not too much, though, as it was important to conserve such resources for unexpected times of need in climates as unforgiving as this one) while mentally taking stock of all he’d managed to acquire and its worth. Provided that bastard Borgin didn’t insist on undercutting him again, he should have been enough to get away with only working lightly for the rest of the week. Not that he’d take that chance.

If he didn’t keep himself busy with something his mind departed from the real world. Delving instead into the past. What he’d lost. What could have been. Sitting through his memories of Tom with the newly mature eyes of a seventeen year old. Noticing things he’d been too innocent and naive of, back when the older male had still been breathing. The way his eyes would rest on him too long, possessive and patient, waiting for something. Something he could guess at but would never truly know, now. The way that that look had steadily intensified with each year Harry grew older from more familial to more…something else. How the man he’d thought of at the time as an older brother and best friend, nothing more, had begun to glare at children Harry’s own age in the handful of months leading up to his death. How those blue eyes, framed in long lashes and frozen glassy by death, had continued staring at him even after Tom had fallen to a glowing red blade through the heart.

No! No! Don’t start thinking about that! Shoving the last bit of tasteless food into his mouth, washing it down with a bit more water and forcing himself to swallow Harry stood up. Dusting himself off and going to retrieve his staff. He couldn’t let himself start thinking of that because it inevitably led to worse thoughts. Images of how the light of burning buildings had danced in those lifeless eyes. Of how his blood had looked almost black in the dark night as it dripped from pale lips, still parted in a shout for him to run which never fully left his mouth before being silenced. Of the fight they’d had earlier that night, and the lie he’d told him that now he could never take back. I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. I’m sorry, Tom. He’d hidden in the desert that night, had barely survived the cold for long enough to make it to dawn, and had returned once the Empire’s forces had left to bury his family only to discover his body had been stolen.

B-95 was all that he had left of him, now, aside from the painful memories he was as desperate to hold onto as he was to forget.

Harry was freed from the hellish spiral of his thoughts by an echoing boom from overhead, so loud it made the ship that they were standing in shudder and caused the little raven to jump a mile with a cry of alarm.

‘Weew!’

“I don’t know!” He shouted, taking off running back towards the hole they’d first entered through. “Let’s find out!” His feet drew hissed protests from the sand as he ran through the darkness of the hull of the ship, the lantern on his hip bouncing wildly around and throwing dancing points of light across the twisted metal walls. Tearing around the corner and tripping over his own two feet, Harry spilled out into the boiling desert as another explosion echoed overhead. He looked up.

A smaller starship, an X-Wing or an A-Wing he couldn’t tell between his position on the ground and the damage it had taken, spiraling down from the desert’s white-hot sky like a shot bird. Trailing fire behind it as it fell.

Swearing loudly Harry ran to his speeder and, barely giving B-95 the time to get on, took off across the sand amid a peel of shrieks and beeping from the startled droid. He’d been a scavenger almost all his life, ever since having been taken in by Tom at five years old, and had long ago learned to recognize what ships were what and whom they belonged to on sight all to better gauge the quality of the expected haul to be gained. While, admittedly, he didn’t know all that much about the political climate beyond Jakku Harry did know one thing. That was a Rebellion ship, and if time and luck were on his side he might just have an in-route to joining them: his best chance at avenging the family he’d lost.

The engine of the speeder below him roared and snarled as it was pushed beyond its limits but the sound was drowned out by the impact of the ship against the blistering sand just on the other side of a ridge of dunes. Flames shot upward amid a cloud of black smoke, the snap and crackle of the fire as it began to devour the ship fully audible and the chemical smell of fuel and burning rubber sharp against his nose.

The fastest way to reach the crash site would be to go over the ridge rather than around it. Even dangerous as such an action was (the sand was loose near the peaks, unstable, and the likelihood of capsizing the speeder was incredibly high) he didn’t have a choice. If the pilot of that ship was still alive they wouldn’t continue to be for much longer.

“Hang on!” He shouted over the rushing wind. “We’re going over!”

The droid emitted a noise which sounded remarkably like a resigned moan as it braced itself in the speeder’s back compartment. The raven let up on the clutch just slightly and shot up the side of the dune, losing contact with solid ground for a moment as they crested the peak and making a wobbling landing on the other side.

In that moment he made the determination that he was very glad it wasn’t a sky-speeder which Tom had salvaged and repaired all those years ago, despite his fantasies of flight during his younger years. B-95 was probably thinking something along the same lines.

Harry killed the engine at the base of the dune and leapt from the speeder without waiting for it to come to a complete stop, heedless of the droid’s shrill calls of warning from behind. A wall of smoke and fire reared before him like an angry serpent, lashing out with fumes and heat instead of fangs and venom. He threw an arm across his mouth and nose, hoping to filter the air enough through the thick cloth he wore to make it breathable, and felt blisters bubble up along his skin.

“Hello?” He knew, already, that there was very little chance that anyone who had been on the ship had survived the crash. The wreckage was so badly mangled it was left utterly unrecognizable and, from the look of matters when it had dropped from the sky it had been shot to hell, but he still called out. Expecting nothing. Trying regardless. “Hello? If anyone’s still alive in there say something! Make a noise!”

The vicious crackle of fire. The loud pinging sound as metal grew so hot that the dents put into it by the impact popped out. The hiss of sand as it slowly gave way beneath the burning ship’s weight. And then, there, a groan! Someone was alive after all, somehow, though were clearly too badly injured to talk. Without another moment wasted or a single thought spared to himself, much to B-95’s clear frustration, Harry took a running leap through the curtain of flames and forged onwards through the conflagration towards where the weak sounds were continuing to come.

“Keep talking!” Well, it wasn’t really ‘talking’ but that distinction hardly meant a thing at the moment. Removing the arm slung across his face to ensure his words were clear and immediately beginning to hack and cough on the fumes by consequence he squinted his stinging eyes and kept going. Edging delicately through the forest of jagged superheated metal and puddles of fire. “Keep talking, please, I’m almost there!”

The groans had been reduced to strangled whimpers now, issuing from only a few more feet in front of him. After clambering over a slowly melting hunk of metal and jumping down again he caught sight of them: a prone figure lying in the sand, just below the cloud of toxic smoke, pinned beneath what looked like an entire third of the ship.

Dark sky! He knew without even having to attempt it that he wouldn’t be able to physically lift nearly four metric tons of Starship, would have to use the Force to even stand a chance of moving it enough to pull the man out, and that as much danger as that could potentially put him in later that he couldn’t just abandon him to die. Huffing as best he could around the painful lump the chemicals he was breathing in had formed in his throat, Harry trotted the last few feet forward and rested his hands on the pinned figure to blindly feel for the extent of his injuries.

In his entirely non-professional opinion, it was bad. Not that he really knew terribly much about injuries this extensive. Of course, crunching sounds and an excess of blood usually weren’t the greatest signs in the world.

The flames were rapidly growing closer, the smoke thicker, and the air around them was already hot enough to burn. It hurt just standing there, and he doubted it’d be much longer before all semblance of consciousness was lost.  A quick retreat was paramount, but might be difficult considering the fact that the wreckage was sitting on the wounded man’s legs. There was little chance of him just getting up and running out once he’d gotten it off of him. It was a good thing, then, that the little raven was a lot stronger than he looked because he was going to have to drag his wounded ass back on the speeder.

The sooner that he moved the nearly four ton hunk of metal the better because they were running out of time.

It was harder to focus with so much going on around him. With where he stood surrounded by various, rapidly encroaching dangers. His mind kept wanting to jump from the heat to the smoke to how hard it was to breathe to the fire and it was difficult to reign it in, having never managed to really muster up the necessary discipline to make it come naturally (not that he’d really had much occasion for life or death practice either). The threads, when they finally came into view after three wasted minutes of fruitless scrabbling, were thin and brittle. The lights washed out and faintly flickering. Harry grabbed hold of the proper one and tugged. The ship lifted just slightly. His focus strained, the thread snapped and the wreck crashed back down into the sand but the wounded pilot was free.

Now to get them both out of there. Dragging him wasn’t an option with all the bits of twisted Starship which lay scattered about in the sand. Pulling an arm around his shoulder and helping him hobble away wasn’t an option either as, on top of the aforementioned broken legs he seemed to have lost consciousness. He couldn’t afford to have his hands full if he needed to climb over anything else, not to mention the fact that he still needed to cover his mouth with something if he was going to keep even a margin of the smoke away. That left him with little other choice but to throw the poor sod across his back and hope he stayed there.

Leaving a pair of broken legs to dangle like that probably wasn’t the best medical decision but he couldn’t do anything else. Harry would just have to deal with the repercussions of the choice later. Pausing only long enough to use the cloth length of the shemagh to tie the pilot’s hands in place around his neck so he wouldn’t have to hold them there himself Harry took off running back the way he’d come in. Ducking under busted pipes which had peeled back on themselves into razor-petaled flowers and skirting puddles of thick tar formed by the mix of burning fuel and sand only to find his path blocked by the wall of fire which was considerably taller than he remembered it being.

Without the breath to waste on swearing the little raven skirted the obstacle in the Northward direction until he discovered a bridge through the fire formed by a now unrecognizable piece of metal. It was about as hot as the surface of a red dwarf star and the definition of unstable, but at the moment Harry Potter was the definition of reckless desperation and jumped onto it anyway. It wobbled with a loud clattering sound, attempted to capsize him and almost succeeded, but both the raven and his passenger made it across and the young scavenger collapsed into the desert sand, gasping on the clean air as the blazing ground cooled his burned flesh from its exposure to the flames.

With the urgent rattling of machinery the Astromech appeared in his line of vision, tweeting a rapid insistence that he get up and keep moving at least a little further. As badly as he wanted to rest he knew that the droid was right, there was no guarantee the wreckage wouldn’t suddenly explode (taking everything in its immediate radius which it) and the pilot was in terrible condition. Needed treatment, at least in some basic capacity, if he was going to stand any chance of survival. And then there were Harry’s own wounds.

Still struggling to breathe with his stinging lungs the raven had to make two unsuccessful attempts before he managed to get to his feet, and then another three to lift the pilot under the arms and drag him back beside the speeder. A trail of soot and blood smeared across the sand behind them, glittering the deep red of precious gemstones in the unrelenting sun.

I wish you were still with me, he found himself thinking as he bent over the man; a pale blonde dressed in the tattered scraps of what had likely once been a uniform though it was hard to tell with all the blood that he was covered in. You’d know what to do. None of this would be any problem for you to handle. All it would take to get this bastard up and walking again would be a wave of your hand. Maybe that was a slight exaggeration, but not by much. When Tom had first discovered that, atop having the ability to burn cut and break bone all without lifting a finger, he could grow new skin heal torn flesh and mend shattered bone he’d begun to experiment with the extent of his power.  First on animals. Then himself. Then, once he felt certain he’d mastered it, on Harry whose impulsive nature had left him with plenty of minor injuries. Once sure of his limits he’d opened his services to anyone in Niima who might need them.

For a pretty price, of course.

They’d never feared hunger again, after that. Sadly, healing had been one of the many things Tom had been capable of that Harry simply wasn’t. Not to the degree he’d need to be to continue in the lucrative field of mending wounds. That was why he’d fallen back on scavenging, the profession Tom had taught him. It was something that he knew that he could do. Of course, even that had been running dry in the last few years.

‘Bee-doo-oo-beep!’

“Yes, I know I have to do something! And I’m going to!” Harry snapped, resting cautious hands against broken ribs and closing his eyes. “I just don’t know if it’ll work.”

Pressure was about as good for his concentration as a creeping wall of flames and, on top of that, he wasn’t quite certain how he was supposed to go about manipulating what was in front of him in order to achieve the desired outcome.  He tried envisioning the broken bones healing but that did nothing. Attempting to mentally push them back into what he thought was their proper alignment roused his patient long enough to let out a howl and promptly faint again. Even using the threads literally in an effort to sew the wounds shut had no noticeable effect.

Eventually, Harry at least managed to stop the bleeding. In order to do anything else it looked like he’d have to procure medical supplies back at Niima and resort to going about the matter the old fashioned way.

So much for having enough food to scrape by with a light workload for the rest of the week. Hopefully the rebel would survive, because all Harry would have achieved if he kicked it was a waste of precious time and resources. He pulled the cork out of his jug of water and carefully gave some to the unconscious blonde to make up a bit of the blood loss he’d suffered before hauling him off the ground and shoving him into the back compartment along with the day’s takings.

‘Voop?’

The raven looked down at the droid as he secured the hatch of the compartment back into place. “No, I’m not going to leave you out here and come back later.” Not going to lie, he was a little bit offended that B-95 would even ask him that. “You’re riding up front with me tonight.”

An excited peel of trilling made him smile in spite of everything as he bent to pick up the little droid. Cradling its metal body in the crook of his less injured arm and then shifting it into his lap once he’d situated himself back on his speeder. Starting up the engine and hearing its familiar metallic growl, Harry turned the handlebars and started back towards the Outpost.

Travel back to Niima usually felt longer than travel away from it to one of the remaining crash sites, but with all that was on his mind that day it seemed as if his speeder had been equipped with Light Speed capabilities while he’d been rooting around in the smoldering wreckage. There was maybe an hour left of light by the time he puttered to a stop outside his tiny dwelling and the sun had been reduced to a deep orange globe which hung above the western horizon. Dismounting and setting the droid gently in the sand Harry dusted himself off and popped open the compartment, hauling the blonde out and into the house.

Leaving a guest, especially an injured one, lying on the floor was hardly good manners so it looked like he’d be going without a bed for the foreseeable future. Not that there was really much difference between his bed and his floor but it was the etiquette of it all that really mattered. Giving him a bit more water and then covering him up with his thin blanket, Harry asked “will you please stay here and watch him? I’d rather one of us be here if something happens, and I’m not just talking about a turn for the worse.”

The rebel hadn’t shot his own ship down. Whoever was responsible (space pirates, bounty hunters, the Imperial Fleet or someone else) was bound to come looking for him soon, if they weren’t already. And even if he had slipped away for the time being, which seemed to be the case considering he hadn’t seen another ship in close pursuit when the X-Wing had crashed, they couldn’t be that far away. After all, you didn’t end up in a place as remote as Jakku without meaning to.

The droid seemed to share this sentiment whole heartedly and beeped a short farewell as he exited the building.

It was getting to be about the time of day when all of the scavengers working in the surrounding desert would converge on the area to sell off their finds but it seemed that the raven was still a few minutes ahead of the dusk crowds. Borgin and Burke’s Scrapyard was as barren as the rest of Jakku save for the owner (an elephantine beast with a face capable of redefining ‘ugly’ across the whole of the galaxy whom Harry had never liked) who sat behind the open window.

“Potter.” He drawled, nonexistent lips revealing a large mouth full of rotted teeth as he spoke. “You’re usually one of the last to come in. So why are you here before everyone else tonight?

“Unexpected circumstances.” Harry bit back. “Trust me, Borgin, I’m not exactly pleased to have to see your ugly mug early either.”

Watery yellow eyes, tiny and set deep into his flabby face, narrowed. “Well then, runt, let’s see.”

“Half for food and water and half for medical supplies.” Harry said as he unloaded his cargo onto the counter top in front of him. Watching with hawk-like attention as the alien’s stubby clawed fingers picked through it all to make sure he didn’t try and pilfer anything.

“Four ration packs and two aid kits.”

“What?” the raven hissed, green eyes flashing. “The power cell alone would have been worth twice that a month ago you sun forsaken skive!”

Borgin’s claws clattered against the counter top as he heaved himself up out of his chair, looming through the window at him. “Watch your mouth, runt! Prices change; you want something for that, you’ll take what I give you or get nothing at all.”

Harry gritted his teeth and growled. This went beyond being stiffed! What he was being offered wasn’t even half of what the parts were worth, never mind the cost of the labor it had taken to harvest them! But he needed those supplies too badly to risk pushing the alien into making good on his threat. “Fine.” He said. “Hand it over.”

The gathered parts disappeared into the scrap yard and the ration packs and medical kits took their place. Harry snapped them up before Borgin could get it into his misshapen head to change his mind.

“You know, runt, I’d be happy to give you a better deal if you’d trade me something worth the loss.”

“And what sort of parts are you looking for that would make it ‘worth the loss’?” he drawled. As much as he hated the greedy plonker he’d be sure to keep a look out for whatever he was really after if it meant an end to being shorted.

“Not parts. Riddle’s droid.” Borgin fixed him with a sharp toothed grin. “He kept the best salvages to himself for almost a year to build the thing and it’s not as if he needs it anymore. What do you say to one hundred ration packs and thirty aid kits?”

The stun-staff hit the overhang which shaded the window with a shuddering bang and showered the area in blue-white sparks. Borgin hissed and retreated further into the safety of the building as Harry glared daggers at him.

“B-95 is my last connection to Tom, you bastard! You could offer to sell me the entire bloody galaxy and I still wouldn’t even consider selling him! To you or anyone else!” Staff in hand and supplies slung under his arm he turned on his heel and stalked back towards his speeder.

“I’d advise you to quite trying to be Riddle, runt!” Borgin snarled after him, though he didn’t dare emerge from the building and put himself within range of the little human’s weapon. “Not only is it a bad aesthetic for you, it won’t land you any better off than he is: dead!”

Harry flashed him the rudest gesture he could think of, mounted his vehicle and drove away without looking back.

Chapter Text

Alarms wailed a thunderous clamor all around him, the control panel of the unfamiliar X-Wing a wash of urgent color and flashing emergency lights. The distressed ship shuddered as it plummeted out of the sky, destroyed engines spewing comet tails of fire. Carving a corkscrew of black smoke against the backdrop of pale and cloudless blue as it spiraled towards the inevitable impact with the desert far below. Closer and closer until all he could see was red sand and certain death.

Draco’s silver eyes shot open and he jerked upright, pain flooding his body from a combination of deep-set stiffness and his partially healed wounds. Collapsing back onto the stone slab he’d been laid out on with a low groan the young TIE Pilot gave himself a few moments to gasp for air and gather his wits before turning his attention to the effort of determining his surroundings. Not an Imperial prison (the Emperor’s Enforcer wouldn’t have bothered to take him alive) and not a Rebel prison either.

A small stone dwelling bare of any furnishings aside from the poor excuse for a bed which he was now laying in, the only source of light a pair of small windows carved into the dismal walls. On the floor, opposite the bed, was a nest of ratty coarse fabric not unlike the worn out blanket draped across his waist, likely what the owner of the ‘house’ had slept on during the time that he had spent unconscious.

Whoever they were, they appeared to be absent for the time being.

For a second time, much more mindful of how incredibly stiff he was, Draco slowly pushed himself into an upright sitting position and began the process of looking himself over. Bandages were sparsely spattered across his chest and arms, intermixed with puckered pink cuts and silvering burns. His legs, crushed below a sizeable portion of the ship, were shot through with a dull ache but didn’t seem to be broken any longer. Nor did his ribs, though his sides were still tender and splotched with yellowing bruises. It was clear that he’d been out for a while.

He could vaguely remember someone shouting at him from amidst the ruination of twisted metal but they couldn't have lifted the ship off of him, unless…but that was impossible.

The Emperor had had them all killed or converted years ago, the most recent of them (and by far the most vicious) being Grindlewald’s favorite bloodhound Darth Voldemort himself. He must have imagined it, the notion of his rescuer using that power of all things…but how had they freed him otherwise?

A stream of unintelligible beeps and whistles (Draco had never been particularly good with binary nor, for that matter, fond of droids in general likely stemming from a rather terrible encounter with a malfunctioning B-1 as a child)) heralded the arrival of the strangest droid he’d ever seen. At first glance, due to its spherical body, it looked like a BB-unit but on closer examination it became immediately clear that that wasn’t the case. Maybe it had been, once upon a very long time ago, but it had since been converted into something…else. A franken-creation of scavenged parts from droids of all types (and not just Astromechs) which had been welded together and animated by some eldritch and unmerciful God from the darkness beyond the outer rim.

Maybe his injuries had made him a little bit overdramatic, but he couldn’t help but shudder on seeing it. The welding work looked incredibly similar (if considerably more roughly done) to that of Nagini, the massive P-Series Destroyer which trailed Voldemort like a shadow and had been specially outfitted by the Sith Lord for use as an all-terrain attack dog.

Fraken-droid beeped at him again in a business-like tone (or at least as much of a business-like tone as something which couldn’t truly speak could possess) and unfurled a small handful of spindly silver limbs from the little square compartment set into its front. Spider-leg like and glittering in the late afternoon sun which streamed in through the small windows they reached towards him. On instinct and with no weapon readily available with which to defend himself Draco turned to the only course left to him, retreat, and pressed himself as close against the wall behind him as he could.

The snarl of an engine from outside saved him from the terrible fate of being poked and prodded by what he guessed were the droid’s arms (suns and stars, thank goodness! Because the ends of those things looked much sharper than anything he wanted near him). The little metal nightmare ball’s pyramid shaped head pivoted towards the door of the dwelling and it burbled a piercing greeting while retracting its limbs.

The blonde couldn’t contain a sigh of relief.

“It doesn’t seem like our guest is overly fond of your tender loving care, B-95,” said a voice from the doorway. Draco looked over in time to see a figure wrapped head to toe in thick fabric and leather straps, all covered in sand, step through. From their proportions alone he could have easily mistaken them for a woman or a small child, but having heard them speak the TIE Pilot knew that he was looking at a man.

When the droid beeped again it sounded upset.

“Yes, I know that you know what you’re doing. You’ve looked after me for five years now and I’ve turned out…passable. Ouch! Hey, I’m only teasing!”

The terror orb made a smug whirring sound as it once again retracted one of those spindly arms. The little man rubbed his shoulder where he’d been poked, propped the Stun-Staff he’d had slung across his back against the wall beside the door and pulled the shemagh off of his head.

Draco wasn’t in to that sort of thing by any means, suns and stars he was very much a fan of women and had never once felt even the slightest inclination to play for the other team, but supposed his savior was accurately describable as ‘pretty’. It was difficult to tell precisely what physique he had with all the fabric he was buried under but his wild hair, cut unevenly with a knife just below his ears, was as black as open space and his face was delicate like a porcelain doll’s. Thin pink lips. Smooth skin tanned deep brazen by the desert sun. Button nose. The blonde had never seen eyes like his before. At least, not on a human. Rimmed in thick lashes and outlined in black, they were a clear crystal green and vibrantly alert. They regarded him with curiosity, but something about the raven(perhaps his stance or the slight tilt of his head) told Draco that his gaze could turn predatory at a moment’s notice.

He doubted that he’d be in any real trouble in a fight if such a thing were to occur. He was a highly trained elite pilot of the Imperial Navy (or at least had been before he’d decided that he’d had enough of being considered ‘expendable’ and deserted, nearly losing his life in the process).

“In any pain?” the raven asked him, dropping the rolled up shemagh into the corner and crossing towards his nest on the floor.

“Nothing unbearable.” He said, looking down at his wounds again. “How long have I been out?”

“Almost two weeks.” Was the calm reply. The little male had made himself quite comfortable amidst his nest of cloth and now had the franken-droid sitting in his lap like a pet as he sorted through strange-looking grey boxes with no labels. Draco eyed them dubiously through his surprise.

“Two weeks?” he repeated. “That isn’t possible.”

“How so?”

“Because my wounds have healed too quickly for that little time to have passed.” He drawled, speaking as if the answer should have been obvious. Which it really should have been. “It takes six to eight weeks for even a minor fracture to heal and my legs were completely broken.”

“Maybe your ‘wounds’ were minor.”

“I crashed into the side of a sun forsaken planet! My wounds were not minor!”

‘Weew.’

The raven set aside the small pile of boxes with a dull clatter. “You’re right, B-95. Sadly, we’ve neither the soap nor the water to spare to wash that language out of his mouth.” He said. “You’re right. If left to their own devices your wounds would have healed much slower. But I have a few little tricks up these sleeves of mine and I had to do something to stop you from bleeding to death. Guess I was better at it than I thought, though clearly the effect was delayed, because between that and the more mundane treatment you’ve healed a lot faster.”

“So you did use the Force, out there in the desert.” He hadn’t entirely meant to, but old habits die hard and Draco couldn’t help the accusatory edge which had invaded his voice. “You used Force Lift to get the ship off of me and Force Heal to fix my wounds! You’re a Jedi! One of the ones who hid after the fall!” He hadn’t thought any of them were left, aside from Dumbledore.

For a split second a deep fear, not all that unlike an animal which a hunter had cornered in its hole, flashed across his face. Then, with a highly undignified snort, his features scrunched up and he burst into raucous laughter. A metallic sound, as deceptively delicate as the rest of him, which was as effervescent of the fine champagne his father would drink among other war profiteers when Draco was younger, before he’d joined the Imperial Forces in a poorly thought out search for the beautiful lie of ‘glory’ on the field of battle. The truth was that all of them, from the lowest attack droid all the way up to Voldemort himself, were nothing more than the grimy cogs of a well-oiled war machine chewing up the galaxy as the Empire expanded.

“A Jedi? Me?” he snickered, all traces of that split second terror gone. The change was so complete that Draco could almost convince himself that he’d imagined it. Almost. “The Jedi Order fell twenty three years ago, they say. I’m seventeen, so I can’t possibly have been a part of it. Unless, of course, you know of some ‘Jedi power’ which one can use to age backwards?”

“So you’re a Force-sensitive, then? That’s close enough.” He said. “Who taught you how to use the Force?”

It wasn’t an expression, this time, but an involuntary twitch which answered the blonde’s question with an obscure truth before Harry could speak. “No one taught me how to use the Force. I can’t use the Force.” Draco couldn’t help but wonder how often this boy, who was the same age he was, had had to lie to have gotten so damn good at it. “Whatever you think you saw when you were in that wreckage, forget it happened. Between the cloud of smoke, the fumes from the fire and the shock of your wounds those memories can’t be trusted.”

The blonde half expected the little raven to attempt a Mind Trick on him, but the other male was either unable to do so or unaware that it was possible. Draco didn’t believe that his perceptions had been affected to the degree he wouldn’t recognize the Force when he saw it after having seen the Sith (Bellatrix, Rudolphus and, ever since he first appeared five years before, Darth Voldemort) in action on more than one occasion. Still, he’d keep quiet about the matter.

At least for the time being.

“Who are you?”

Green eyes flickered up to him as he drew a small knife, roughly made from what looked like scrap metal. “Harry. Harry James Potter.” He reached over, picked up one of the boxes again and cut it open, pulling out a three gallon jug of what he assumed was water and an unappetizing block of something which, from the look of it, was supposed to be edible. “What about you?”

“Draco Lucius Malfoy.” He looked away from the food (he wasn’t certain he was going to be able to survive on Jakku, provided he was even right about where he’d landed, if that was really all there was to eat) and back to the droid. It turned its head to stare right back with a questioning beep. “That thing yours?”

“B-95 is not a thing.” The growling tone in Harry’s voice was rather frightening when combined with the knife in his hand. “And no. He’s not mine. He was built by my older brother, Tom Riddle.”

“I take it you’re only half-related.”

“Not related at all, actually.” He said. “I’m an orphan. So was he. Tom took me in when he was thirteen and I was five and he found me starving in the street.”

“Was?” Draco asked, heart sinking.

“Yeah. Was.” The raven stowed the knife away and set the ration block delicately amidst the slashed up remnants of its wrapping as B-95 let out a miserable sounding whistle. “He was murdered half a decade ago. Tom liked to tinker, built the little Astromech from scratch and scavenged parts when he was only ten years old. B-95 is all I have left of my brother. AI may not truly be able to feel, but I like to think we’re close.”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” the blonde said delicately, eyeing the smaller male to gauge his reaction, “who killed him?”

“One of the Empire’s sun forsaken Sith!” He snarled, and for a moment Draco caught an alarming glimpse into a well of hatred so deep he didn’t doubt it could have fueled the nightmarish fighting style which seemed to be the Emperor’s favorite method in which to train his Force-wielding puppets: Juyo. “We got into an argument that night. I can’t even remember what it was about anymore. All I know is that I ripped off the charm he’d made for me years ago and threw it at him before running out. One moment I was stamping down a dark alley and the next the entire Outpost was in flames and I’d been cornered. I don’t even know what they looked like, it was pitch black out and their red lightsaber was so bright it made it hard to see anything else. Tom had run after me and attacked the Sith from behind, but all he had was a Stun-staff. He sacrificed himself to save me and I never even got the chance to bury him.”

The Empire was looking for no less than total control of the galaxy. Total control meant war. War, inevitably, meant casualties, some of them innocent, and where Draco felt sorry for what Harry had gone through in a disconnected sort of way (almost apathetic really) he’d long ago come to accept such realities as a simple fact of life. But why Jakku? Why would Grindlewald have even the slightest interest in a planet quite literally made of sand, especially enough of one to send in a Sith instead of just normal soldiers.

Unless he’d somehow found out about the fact the young man in front of him was Force-sensitive, which he supposed was very possible considering he’d managed to find all the others.  But why attempt to kill him outright when he’d given all those before him instead, unless the Sith he sent had acted against orders in the heat of the moment, and why leave the job unfinished? Whatever the answer, not wanting to once more draw the Emperor’s eye would explain Harry’s refusal to admit to possessing the Force.

“You’re a rebel pilot.” Not a question, but a statement. Draco startled from his thoughts and looked up at him.

“What makes you think that?” Stupid! A knee-jerk reaction, one made out of surprise. Even if he stood a good chance at winning if a fight did break out, though perhaps less of one now that he knew some extent of what Harry could do, it’d be better for him in the long run if he didn’t tell the boy who clearly hated the Empire with a burning passion that he was a part of it without an immediately available method of permanent escape. Preferably to an entirely different planet where he couldn’t be hunted down and murdered in his sleep.

“You crashed in an X-Wing and that’s a rebel ship. So you must be a rebel.” Draco had to admit that, outside of extenuating circumstances like stealing one of the ships belonging to the captured rebels in the brig to escape from the claws of service in the Imperial Navy, Harry’s logic was just about air tight. “I’ll admit to trusting you as much as you trust me, but there’s no need to be dishonest about the obvious Draco.”

Wasn’t that rich, coming from someone who’d obviously used the Force despite ‘not being able to’. The TIE Pilot had to bite down on a derisive snort and allowed himself to slump forwards, as if he’d been caught out. “Dark skies, I suppose it’s pointless to try and deny it why you recognized my ship. Yes, I’m a rebel pilot. I was flying an important mission for the Rebellion in the Jakku System when I ran into a Star Destroyer. I tried to escape but a TIE Fighter gave chase and shot me down.” He looked up at Harry through his lashes. “I was out looking for Force-Sensitives, actually. To take them to the Rebellion and have them trained by Dumbledore as the next generation of Jedi, but it seems like Grindlewald had that idea a while ago. Snapped them all up. Turned them Sith.”

The glare he received through narrowed green eyes (at that angle they had an uncanny yellow sheen to them which led Draco to suspect that Harry had been dipping into more than just the light side, though perhaps unknowingly) made it quite clear that he wasn’t stupid but likely thought the blonde was for having attempted such a rouse at all. “If the mission was sensitive in nature just say so. Pulling a Pole-snake’s tail will only get you bit.”

Draco wasn’t certain what a Pole-snake was. Wasn’t certain that he really wanted to know.

“Sensitive.” It was as good of an excuse as any. Dark Skies, it could get him out of answering any more specific questions that he didn’t actually have satisfactory explanations for. “A lot about the Rebellion is ‘sensitive’ to those who aren’t a part of it. The Empire’s reach is massive, after all, and staying under their radar as much as possible is our best tactic of survival. Secrecy our greatest defense.”

Much to his relief, Harry nodded along with his words. “Understandable.” He said. “I’m sure we all have things we’d rather keep hidden from them.” Draco’s relief was promptly crushed when that statement was followed up with “but that’s fine. You can tell me all the ‘sensitive’ details that I could possibly need to know once you’ve taken me to join the Rebellion.”

The blonde felt like he’d been stepped on by an AT-AT. “What?” Suns and stars, Harry wanted to join the Rebellion? Draco could have laughed at the ridiculousness of it all: clearly, over exposure to Jakku’s boiling sun had fried the little raven’s brain inside his skull. “You want to join the Rebellion?”

“Not particularly, no. What I want is to see the Empire burn in the same fires that took Tom from me and killed so many others. The Rebellion is my best chance of doing that. The only other option would be going it alone, and I may be reckless but I’m not stupid.” Harry leaned back, placing his hands behind him to hold himself up and stretching his legs. “Why do you think I risked my life to save you? It wasn’t all basic decency. You’re a member of the Rebellion already, which means you’re my in route to becoming a member too.”

As if he’d go anywhere near the Rebellion! That’d be inviting them to throw him into a jail cell! But Draco couldn’t go back to Canto Bight, on Cantonica, where his family lived. It would be far too easy for the Empire to find him if he did. He’d have to go somewhere else and live out the rest of his life there (preferably somewhere far away like Ryloth or Kashyyyk no matter how impractical doing so might be) but he’d need a new ship in order to get off Jakku, and the best method which he could see of getting access to one was playing along with the idea that he’d be taking the raven where he wanted to go.

Once he had the ship he’d just run off with it, leaving Harry behind amidst the arid hills of ruby sand. Sure it was underhanded, but they’d both be better off for it. The little male would live longer if he never left the planet they were currently standing on, regardless of how poor the conditions were.

“I suppose we could do with all the help we can get.” Draco reached up and ran his fingers through his pale hair, leaving the usually orderly strands sticking up in a disarray to rival that of his host. “There’s just one problem. I’m going to need a ship if I’m going to take us anywhere.”

‘Ooo-wee-poo!’

Harry set his hand gently atop the droid’s head. “It’s impolite to be suspicious of guests, B-95.” He said, then returned his full attention back to Draco. “Jakku’s the sort of remote in which you usually only end up when you’re looking to. Full time residents are scavengers, typically, like me. But we get a lot of traffic here too from…admittedly unsavory types. It’ll take a while to gather the necessary materials, even working together, but for the right price we’ll be able to commandeer a ride. There’s a bit of trouble with that plan though.”

Wasn’t there always? “What would that be?”

“Very few people are paid in coin here. Most of us, myself included, work for supplies. Ration packs. Aid kits. That sort of thing. We’ll trade those to the pilot, who will then be able to sell them back to Borgin at the scrap yard for money. But that means we’ll have to get our food and water somewhere else.”

Somewhere else? That wasn’t exactly encouraging, seeing as they were on an entirely desert planet and Draco couldn’t imagine where that ‘somewhere else’ could possibly be. “How?”

“Hunting and gathering. If you’re willing to put in the work and foot the risks Jakku has more to offer than you’d think but most people aren’t. And it’s easier, especially if you’re alone like I am, to trade with Borgin.” He said. “Tuanulberries are edible. So are Bloggin, which are fairly easy to kill once you find them. Crickets are too if you’re desperate enough to stick an insect into your mouth. I would know: They’re largely how I survived before Tom found me. And I suppose that something on a Happabore would be edible if you managed to bring one down: they’re rather large.”

“That covers food.” Draco said. “But what about water?”

“There’s a massive lake not far to the west of here.”

“Is it hard to get to?”

“Not particularly, no.” Harry replied, picking up the ration block and cutting it into portions with his knife. “All you have to do to reach it is travel through Kelvin Ravine. Of course, that’s the only way to reach it.”

“And no one uses it?”

The little raven shook his head. “Nope. Tom and I did, but we stopped expending the effort after he discovered a…certain skill in healing which made procuring rations as simple as asking for them. And after he died going back to using it wasn’t an option for me.” He said. “It isn’t very wise to attempt to brave Kelvin Ravine alone.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s where the Ripper Raptors live.” Finished dividing up the rations, Harry poured a portion of the water into a cup and brought both to him. “Not to mention the fact that a couple of Ackley have made dens in the area as well; they’re not native to Jakku but they’re terribly adaptable and I can only assume one of the ships which crashed here was carrying some of them and they survived the impact. Eat.”

The rations were just as terrible as Draco had feared: tasteless, dry and with the texture of dried grass. It made him want to wretch but he doubted his host would much appreciate the waste and he was hungry enough that he managed to force himself to choke it down followed abruptly by the cup of water.

“I’ll start teaching you the ropes of scavenging tomorrow.” The last traces of light had begun to fade as the sun slipped fully below the horizon outside. Draco could barely see two feet in front of him anymore. He heard the gentle rustle of fabric as Harry nestled down into his bed of cloth. “We start at dawn, to get out to the Starship Graveyard before the head becomes unbearable, so you’d better get as much sleep as you can.”

With no light and nothing else to do Draco had little choice but to follow the smaller male’s direction. Lying back and shifting into the most comfortable position he could find against the stone he stared up at the dark ceiling, thoughts trickling back to what had led him to crashing on that planet in the first place.

He’d been careful not to think of it around others. Not to hint at it. Not to speak of it to anyone so that precisely this scenario didn’t occur. Yes, somehow, it hadn’t been enough. Somehow, he had known. And now he was chasing him down the hall towards the hanger where the captured ships were being held. It wasn’t ideal, the closest thing to a TIE Fighter that was there was an X-Wing and he hadn’t any idea how to operate one, but one look over his shoulder was all it took for Draco to hurriedly dispense with any notion of changing course for the main hanger instead.

Red eyes gleamed from behind the silver mask the Sith Lord wore, bear of features, reducing him to nothing more than an emotionless manifestation of certain death bearing down on him at a horrifying speed. The Force pushing his movements to a blur of color. Draco knew it wouldn’t do much to save him, but punched the button beside the entry way and sent the blast doors slamming down as those of the launch bay ground open.

With the hiss of metal being instantly vaporized the blood red blade of the Sith Lord’s lightsaber rent a glowing gash through the barrier between them. Draco took a running leap for the X-Wing’s ladder and scrambled into the cockpit, flicking every control he could get his hands on and managing to start the engine just as Voldemort broke through the door. The cross guard light saber shot passed as he flew out into open space, clipping the craft’s left wing and sending him spinning. Swearing loudly and through sheer luck alone, heart racing so fast he felt that he might pass out at any moment, the blonde managed the right the damaged ship and speed away.

He didn’t get far. How anyone could move fast enough to cross an entire Star Destroyer in the span of two minutes, even with the unnatural powers of darkness behind them, Draco had no idea but the next thing he knew a TIE fighter was on his tail with its guns full blast. The gelid hiss of that horribly familiar voice crackling over the transmission made it starkly clear who was piloting it.

“Going somewhere, little dragon?”

He needed to lose him, fast, and maybe he could have if it had been a TIE fighter he was flying. Draco had come up against X-Wings a good handful of times, had shot down more than his share of them in past battles, but he’d never flown one of the sun forsaken things before and couldn’t make heads or tails of the controls. The monster behind him was merciless in his bombardment and as the engines were blown out by precise shots and his wounded ship was dragged into the desert planet’s gravitational pull he was forced to accept the fact that there was nothing he could do.

Why hadn’t Voldemort pursued him past then, instead of veering away back to the Star Destroyer on its way to another bloody conquest. His reputation was that of an Akk-Dog, chasing his prey to the point of obsession until he was absolutely certain of their death, so why had he suddenly deviated from that pattern? Why had it almost seemed as if he was avoiding Jakku? What could this giant ball of sand possibly be hiding that could be powerful or frightening enough to set a Sith Lord running with his tail between his legs? And why, if he’d been there for two weeks already, had there been no signs of an Imperial search force?

The answers to these questions Draco doubted he’d ever know.

Chapter Text

The stone windowsill was cold to the touch, its rough-cut contours pressing into the skin of his arms and cheek as he sat draped across it watching the last moments of the stars’ steady march towards dawn. The wind smelled like iron and damp sand and tugged at the loose strands of his wild hair. The faintest tinge of grey had begun to become visible along the east horizon, dispelling the shadows which hung there like a curtain, but outside it was still as black as pitch.

Harry had tried to sleep, scavenging was grueling enough of a line of work without having to watch someone who’d never done it before and hadn’t a clue how and knew that, now more than ever, he’d need it. But the night hadn’t allowed him to. The silence too busy hissing malicious whispers into his ears. Tom’s voice ringing back to him like an echo from the past.

Special. It said. We’re special, you and I. Alike. The only family either of us need. Repeated alongside Jedi! Not freaks! Jedi! All along, we’ve been using the Force! in an endless loop. His own mind conspiring, it seemed, to drive him mad.

He’d waited five long and painful years for his chance at revenge, and now that it was finally within sight if not quite yet within reach the past seemed content to haunt him more than ever.

The familiar whirring clatter of metal against stone alerted him to the droid’s approach. When he heard the questioning whistle, Harry pulled his eyes away from the rising sun to look down.

“Morning, B-95.” He slid, half boneless, down off the windowsill and into a heap against the wall. “And no. I didn’t. Not really.”

B-95 rolled closer until it was almost in his lap and the little raven reached out towards it. Running thin, calloused fingers along the seams of the welding which held the Astromech together. Tom’s work, from back when he was still inexperienced in working with metal and fire. But still better than anything that Harry could have done, especially at the age that Tom had been when he’d made it, which made the raven thank his lucky stars that it had held together all these years. That he and B-95 had never gotten into a bad enough scrap that the droid had needed any serious repairs.

He probably wouldn’t still have B-95 if it had.

“We’ll have them on the run soon. Especially that Sith bastard responsible for his murder.” Absently, he traced the weld-seam along the side of the little droid’s head. “The leader of the Rebellion is a real Jedi and once we’re safe there I’ll let them know what I can do. He’ll train me to fight them and then I’ll put a stop to all of this.”

‘Voo.’

“Ambitious? Tom wouldn’t be pleased that I’d settled for anything less.” Harry pushed himself onto his feet and stretched, joints popping like blaster fire. “But it’s about that time where you and I should be getting around to waking our friend over there.”

‘Weew!’

Harry smirked and shook his head. “Entertaining as it might prove to be to let you do the honors, I don’t think Draco would appreciate that over much.” He said. “Though I’m certain it isn’t you.”

The smirk transformed into a brief smile when the droid responded with the binary equivalent of “of course it isn’t me!”

“Because we both know you’re a little metal angel.” He side-stepped B-95 and proceeded towards the bed, taking a moment to examine the blonde’s wounds before reaching out to shake him. “Draco.”

The X-wing pilot grumbled something unintelligible and turned over in his sleep.

Harry shook him again, slightly harder this time. “Draco, you need to wake up.”

A similar response, only this time the grumbling was a bit louder and verging on coherent.

“Draco Lucius Malfoy either get up now or I’ll use my stun staff to convince you! We don’t have time for this!” Moments later silver eyes, bleary with disturbed sleep, where squinting up at him reproachfully. “Good to know you take my threats seriously despite being almost twice my size.”

He walked back across the room and picked up another portion of the unpleasant rations which was all they had at hand to pass for food and, after pouring a second cup of water and grabbing an aid kit, took them over to where Draco now sat propped against the wall. “Eat these while I have a closer look at how you’re healing and change the bandages.” Harry said. “I’ll dig out Tom’s old robe when I’m finished: they’ll be a bit loose on you since you’re a fair bit slighter than he was but it’s better than nothing and with your skin you’d boil out there.”

“Usually it’s kinder people than you who go around saving total strangers from the wreckage of their burning ship.” He drawled.

Harry laughed at him: a single hollow sounding bark entirely devoid of humor. “I’ve always had a bleeding heart, Draco. I still do. But these past five years I’ve learned to keep a tourniquet on: without someone stone cold around to balance them out, people like that don’t live long around here. Don’t live long anywhere, really.” The lid on the aid kit popped open with a quiet snap. The raven rummaged around inside of it with one hand while using the other to pull his knife from his belt again. “A better question is what in the galaxy did a droid ever do to you to make you dislike poor B-95 so much? All he’s ever done is try to be friendly, and he wasn’t outfitted to be capable of permanent damage.”

‘Bee-boo-wee-bee!’

“What did it, sorry, he,” Draco quickly corrected when Harry shot him a warning glance, “say?”

“Oh, nothing really necessary to the conversation.” His tone was dismissive, almost flippantly so, as he used the knife to cut the bandages from the blonde’s left forearm. “He simply made the rather unhelpful observation that, though not outfitted to be capable of inflicting lasting harm, he’s fully capable of finding a way to circumvent that fact if need be.”

Draco sent an uneasy glance over at the nightmare ball which seemed to use its single lens to direct a thousand yard stare into his very soul. He shuddered, and then hissed in alarm as disinfectant stung one of his still open burns. “Suns and stars, warn me next time Potter!”

“Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry and went on with wiping down the area before applying some foul smelling sickly blue salve and wrapping the burn in fresh bandages.

“What about your own burns?” the blonde asked after a small eternity had passed, if only to break the monotony of crackling wrappings and fabric being cut. “Surely you must have some. You climbed into the wreckage of a burning starship.”

“Don’t worry about me.” The smaller male didn’t even bother looking up at him as he finished his work and closed the kit. “I’ll be fine.”

Setting it aside, Harry ducked down below the stone bed and pulled out a compartment which Draco hadn’t realized was there. The raven pulled out a bundle of clothing, handling it with care, and slowly unwrapped it; removing the shattered pieces of a stun staff much like the one which Harry kept propped beside the door (little more than twisted metal and frayed wires) before shaking out the fabric and draping it over his arm.

“It was washed before he put it away: the only time I’ve removed it in seven years was to wrap up the pieces of the staff Tom used to try and fight the Sith off.” He ran his fingers tenderly over the coarse fabric. “When we stopped scavenging he didn’t need the robes anymore. That’s why I still have them.” Abruptly shifting his expression, Harry thrust the clothing towards him. “Put it on while I find the shemagh. We’ve wasted enough of the day as it is.”

“Put it on? With you in here?”

The little raven turned back to look at him long enough to send Draco a piercing glare. “Yes with me in here. I’m not about to stand out in the cold so that you can change your clothing.” He pulled the shemagh that he was looking for from the box and threw it at the blonde’s head. “We’re both men anyway so what does it matter?”

‘Veee?’

“You’re right, B-95. There are more important things that both he and I have to be worried about than briefly seeing each other in a state of advanced undress.” Wrapping his own shemagh around his face with practiced ease the raven set about stowing rations and water in a small pack for later. “If you’d rather wear that robe on top of your clothing you’re free to (not that I’d really call what’s left of that uniform you’re wearing ‘clothing’ by any stretch of the imagination) but I wouldn’t recommend it. We can’t carry around near enough water to afford to have you sweat that much.”

Not wanting to give the smaller male reason to make use of his stun staff as incentive or worse, sick the little droid and its spindly arms on him, the blonde did as he was told; swiftly changing out of his ruined TIE Pilot uniform and into the strange robe belonging to a dead man. They smelled like age and stone from years spent stored within the drawer beneath the bed, but hidden underneath that faint traces of oil herbs and wood smoke still clung to the fibers.

Harry had been right to expect the robe to be loose around his shoulders and arms, but as far as length went it fit well. There was sadness in the set of the raven’s expression when he looked the blonde over, but it passed quickly once he realized that Draco, despite fumbling with the effort of wrapping the shemagh around his head, was looking.

“Is scavenging a particularly dangerous job?”

“No more so than the job you’re used to.” Harry grabbed Draco’s shemagh and righted it with a sharp jerk which very nearly ripped his head off. “At least when their clothing isn’t attempting to emulate a snake.” The raven shoved the bag of rations into the blonde’s chest, nearly knocking him over. “Come on.”

The little male swept from the building, somehow managing to look regal despite his small size and drab dress. B-95 spared only a few seconds to stare at Draco with its lens-eye before beeping and rolling out after him. Shifting his grip on the pack that he’d been given (well, ‘given’ was a bit too gentle of a descriptor) he followed the pair out of the door.

“Ever ridden a speeder before?” Harry asked without turning to look at him, lifting the little droid into the speeder’s back compartment, the matte black finish of the stun staff slung across his back catching the glow of the rising sun.

“Have I ever ridden a speeder before?” Draco repeated the sneer on his face clear in his voice. “Have you forgotten that I’m a pilot, Harry? Or was the X-wing not enough of a hint for you after all.”

“Need I remind you, Draco, that your performance in that X-wing gives me the reasonable expectation that the only thing you’re capable of doing with a starship is crashing it?” If there had been any doubt that the raven could bite back harder than a Hssiss and wasn’t afraid to do so before, it was gone now. “I was only asking out of courtesy, Malfoy, but seeing as you clearly don’t appreciate that courtesy I’ll be sure to check myself in the future before making the mistake of doing it again. You’re riding in the back seat.”

“The back seat?” Draco spluttered; sure he’d never actually driven a speeder before but he was a TIE Fighter pilot! Maybe he couldn’t fly an X-wing worth a pile of Mynock shit but a hunk of rusted parts which looked to be barely holding itself together couldn’t be anything short of child’s play to drive! “But-.”

Harry’s eyes flashed like Apatite when he turned his head to glare at him, the piercing look enough to pin him in place. “Back seat or back compartment: your choice.”

“But what about the Droid?”

“He doesn’t have his master’s issues with sharing, do you B-95?”

‘Beeoo.’

Both man and droid stared at him expectantly, looking like a pair of hungry Banshee. “Well?”

Not wanting to be stuffed into what all but amounted to the trunk, the blonde let out a huff of defeat. “I’ll take the back seat.”

The other’s response was a smug sounding hum which left Draco resisting the urge (and only by a thin margin) to reach up and strangle him. The Imperial deserter clambered up onto the ramshackle speeder and wrapped his arms around Harry’s waist to keep from falling off the back; much to his surprise given how small the raven was, beneath the thick robe Harry was surprisingly fit.

“Secure?” the little brat had the gall to ask, and in quite a polite and pleasant tone too, having turned his head to look at him. “It certainly seems like it, with how hard you’re squeezing!”

“Maybe I’m trying to shut you up!” Draco grumbled under his breath. Harry let out a chuffing sound but didn’t otherwise reply; B-95 did so for him, delivering a rather sharp prod to his lower back and making the blonde jump. Turning his head sharply to glare at the droid, he hissed “watch it, scrap ball!”

“Snapping at my droid isn’t very endearing.” The speeder’s engine caught with a roar and Harry pressed down the accelerator. Turning away from the little dwelling and driving out into the red expanse of desert. Already it was beginning to warm. “I’m not going to fight his battles; I won’t have to.”

Draco rolled his eyes, pulling the fabric wound around his head up further on his face to keep the flying sand and dry air at bay; his fear of droids aside, he felt relatively secure in his ability to punt the thing over a dune if need be. Ignoring B-95’s high pitched whir as best he could (though, if asked, he’d have to admit that he slid as close to Harry as he was able in an effort to evade the scrap pile terror’s reach) he turned his attention to watching the sand pass by below them.

He didn’t know how far from Niima Outpost he’d crashed or how far from their destination, which Harry had called the ‘Starship Graveyard’, the crash site had been but it must have been quite a good distance at least because they rode across the desert for what seemed like an eternity. The sun climbing ever higher, brightening from pale yellow to a deep glowing orange as it hastened towards the crown of the sky, and the temperature rising until Draco felt certain he’d boil in his skin at any moment. As badly as the blonde found himself itching to rip the thick robes that he was wearing off of himself Draco doubted he’d have any skin left by the time night came if he did so.

“The Starship Graveyard is just beyond this next set of dunes.” Harry called over the whistling wind. “We’ll be heading to the North Western side of it; it’s been almost completely stripped now but the Starships are smaller. TIE Fighters and X-wings mostly, though their pilots left them in much better shape than you did.” Something told Draco that the other male wouldn’t allow him to forget the manner in which they’d met for quite a while at least. “It’ll be a good place to start teaching you the basics so that you can actually be of some use once we get around to harvesting a real wreck.”

“Whatever you say.” He grumbled in response. “You’re the one who knows what they’re doing.”

The broken down husk of what may once have been an Imperial Attack Cruiser jutted out of the top of the dune above them like the sun-brittle bones of some long extinct beast of nightmare, casting strange shadows which ran down the ruby sides like rivulets of water. He stared at it, wide eyed, as they skirted around the hulking foot of the dune and into the Starship Graveyard itself.

If the sight of the Attack Cruiser had been surprising what Draco now found himself faced with was almost unbelievable. He’d heard about the Battle of Jakku, of course, and others like it which had occurred throughout the Galaxy just prior to Fudge’s death and the complete fall of the Republic but to hear of something and actually see it for yourself were two very different things.  Star Destroyers. Battle Platforms. Bits and pieces of Hammerheads and other older ships which had likely crashed there long before the Battle of Jakku now buried beneath Man-of-Wars and a detritus of things that weren’t even Starships at all like AT-ATs, Scout Walkers and droids of all sorts all jumbled together into a mind-boggling amalgam of tech from both sides which, in his mind, had ‘breach of security of top secret designs’ written all over it.

Not that the scavengers inhabiting Jakku spared enough time to bother figuring out how things fit together before they industriously set about the task of ripping them apart. Maybe that was for the better: having some scrap rat selling top secret blue prints drawn up using their own intimate knowledge of the bowels of (admittedly somewhat obsolete by that point) military vehicles and shock weapons would only impact his father’s business. And competition, even if it was fairly far removed from the profiteering rings of places like Canto-byte, was never something received with open arms.

They ended up pulling to a stop beside a gutted Asteroid Hopper which had gone belly up on impact with the planet’s surface and now lay three fourths buried in the scarlet sand. Harry dismounted without giving the blonde behind him the chance to let go, nearly dragging Draco off into the dirt. He paused long enough to help the droid down, thanked by a high pitched burble, but didn’t spare so much as a glance in the taller male’s direction.

Grumbling about rude sand-scavengers Draco picked himself up and followed Harry away from the speeder. The little menace had already managed to scramble onto the top of the upended ship and now crouched at the crumpled lip of the Asteroid Hopper’s torn hull, watching him with those vaguely yellow eyes.

“Come on, Draco. The sooner that we get started on this the sooner we can distract ourselves from the heat because it’s only going to get worse.” The blonde let out a sharp huff, grabbed hold of the ship and began to haul himself up after him. “Keep an eye out for Steel Peckers; they tend to congregate in places like this, where the activity has died down.”

“What are Steel Peckers?” Draco asked, watching the smaller male slip easily through the hole and drop down into the darkness below; landing with the echoing tang! of rubber against eroded metal.

“Big birds with a taste for scrap, except they have eating it and not selling it in mind. They’re not aggressive the way that Ripper Raptors are but they are territorial and will attack scavengers to steal their salvage.” He said. “Get down here!”

“What about your droid?” Draco wasn’t looking forward to joining him inside the twisted metal carcass and thereby, despite his dislike of droids, was more than pleased to use one as an excuse to avoid doing so just a few precious moments longer. “If there are really hordes of silicavorous birds flying around out here don’t you think it’s a bad idea to leave it sitting out in the open?”

“B-95 is outfitted with a miniaturized stun-staff which is more than enough to keep them at bay.” Harry replied, arming himself with a number of frankly bizarre looking tools which before that point had been hanging from his belt. “Stop stalling and get down here!”

Called out and with no means left to avoid it, Draco lowered himself into the wreckage as well. Without sparing another moment Harry turned and started walking towards what, to the blonde, looked like little more than an unrecognizable hunk of metal.

“Pay attention because I’m going to be quizzing you on this and a handful of other things over lunch.” The raven said, waving something vaguely reminiscent of a fanged wrench a few inches away from Draco’s face. “I’ll be teaching you the same way I was taught: get something wrong and I’m going to smack you. Bruises and scars tend to function well as reminders.”

“Your brother hurt you?” He’d been a member of the Empire before booking it in an effort to save himself (they hadn’t exactly been known for being particularly kind to those beneath their rule or particularly gentle in their enforcement) and had been to war on a number of occasions but from the way Harry made it sound he’d been a very young child when his ‘brother’ had first taken him in and Draco liked to think that his stance on flat out abuse of children was what separated him from the Sith.

“Tom would cuff me on the ear if I revealed myself to have not been paying attention to something integral to survival, but it was rarely even hard enough to leave a bruise.” Harry told him, not removing his eyes from the featureless amalgam of melted metal in front of them. “But he wouldn’t stop me from getting hurt. From learning important lessons, like how to fight and that even when you’re not entirely alone in the world you can’t let your guard down and expect help to come. He only ever stepped in if it was a certainty I’d die otherwise. Like when I fell into the den of a Nightwatcher when I was seven.”

“That sounds like conditioning you put soldiers through while training them to go off to war, not any way to treat a child.”

“Maybe that’s true on whatever planet you came from.” With a final twitch of the wrench the front of the metal blob popped off and fell to the floor with a clatter. “On Jakku, survival is a war. And it’s a rare person who spares the time or energy to care for someone else. The fact that Tom was so harsh proved he loved me; if he hadn’t he’d have never let me learn to defend myself.”

“I think your absent parents have left you with a twisted view of ‘love’, Harry.”

The raven grunted in response before brandishing the wrench like a baton and pointing it at something inside the misshapen object. “First lesson: if nothing else, you can always depend on wires to scrape you by. Mundane metals like copper and steel are fine, but some of the more exotic ones are worth diamonds while others are worth sand. And in case you’ve yet to notice,” yellow-green eyes met his with sharp amusement, “we’ve all already got our fill of sand here.”

“Hard to believe, Potter,” he shot back, “but I have noticed that. It’s sort of hard to miss.”

This comment went entirely ignored as the smaller male returned his attention to the array of bits and bobs in front of him which made very little sense to Draco. “The real gold mine, however, is anything made out of Neuranium, which I’m sure you’ve heard of?”

“It’s a metal-like substance used to shield from radiation: it’s used to stop scanners and allow ships to pass unnoticed.” He said. “You’d be hard pressed to find much of it, though. It’s mostly used on modern Imperial Military ships and in trace amounts: it’s so dense that any more than that would warp gravity around the outfitted craft and defeat the purpose of using it in the first place.”

“Part of the reason why it’s the ‘gold mine’; sand sifting around some of the bigger ships is the best way to find it but by this point I doubt there’s any left.” Harry said. “If, by some miracle, we did manage to find enough to fill a thimble we’d be able to buy an entire ship for ourselves, never mind just a ride. War profiteers love it and will pay their body weight in coin for half that much.”

“Really?” that was news to Draco, not that he’d ever been all that involved with his father’s business. “Why?”

“Why?” the little raven turned and fixed him in a suspicious look. “What do you mean, why? You’re a rebel, aren’t you?”

Dark skies! “If it’s not used on X-wings I don’t know about it; I tend to keep my nose out of things that aren’t my business.” He crossed his arms over his chest and, at least in his opinion, did a good job of fixing the smaller male in an affronted glare. “You don’t have to like me, Potter, that’s fine. But I’d appreciate it if you’d turn down the suspicion.”

The scavenger kept him fixed in that searching glower for a few moments longer before finally seeming to judge Draco honest enough. “They sell to the Rebellion and to some of the more illustrious scoundrels throughout known space; the ones who have reason to suspect that they’ll come into contact, hostile contact, with the Sith.” He growled the last word, wrenching a handful of wires from the melted control box with enough force to make the taller male jump. “Scanner beams and radar aren’t the only type of radiation that Neuranium blocks. Weapons and armor forged with the powder intermixed into the metal become, at least to a certain point, lightsaber resistant.”

“How do you know this?” Had someone told him? Draco couldn’t imagine that there were any books on the subject, especially on Jakku. As a matter of fact, he doubted Harry was even able to read!

For a split second he thought he might have seen the raven smile (or at least smirk) but it was gone before he could be sure. “I know how to make a menace of myself around Niima: if there’s one thing small statures are good for, it’s eavesdropping.” He said. “It’s part of the reason that I’m…well, ‘disliked’ might be a bit too lax a term.”

Could the other part of that reason be the fact he’d shown himself to be possessed of at least a little bit of an ankle-biting nature? “Only part of it?”

“The other part is just another reason among many for me to hate the Empire.” Harry thrust the wires in the blonde’s direction along with a small knife and demanded “strip these.”

“Jakku isn’t really in the Empire’s control.” Though it wasn’t really ‘free space’ either. Rather, it was a planet which fell into that strange, twilight grey area. “So it can’t possibly be policy you’re talking about.”

The other’s response was another bitter laugh. “The more you talk the more removed you reveal yourself to be. Maybe things are different in the Rebellion; maybe relations between species are more like they supposedly were back before Grindlewald, but down here in the real world sentiment spreads faster than even the grip of the Empire’s claws.” Clenching the wrench between his teeth Harry reached over to correct Draco’s stripping method before resuming both his dismantlement of the control box and his diatribe. “I suppose it’s difficult to be choosy about the Force Wielders you take if you really want control of the Galaxy, but outside the Sith the message of the Empire is a pro-human one. Pro-human and anti-alien. Tensions have been badly inflamed because of that, and maybe it’s all well and good on worlds where the majority of the population is human or where the ratio of humans to aliens is near about equal but here? You and I are it. Two humans drowning in a sea of hostility and sand.”

“What about your brother? He was human, wasn’t he?”

“Half.” He said. “On his father’s side.”

“And his mother?”

Harry shrugged. “Red skinned and left handed, but that’s about all he’d say about her. That and the fact that he, through her, was a ‘Pureblood’ who’s line stretched back to Korriban.” He said. “Whether that’s a time a place or something else altogether I have no idea but it made the other residents of Jakku scared enough that very few were willing to mess with him. And none more than once.”

Korriban. He’d heard that name before, but for the life of him couldn’t remember where. A passing conversation? A debriefing? One of the history holocrons his father had procured with great trouble from the raided archives of the fallen Jedi Order? Whatever the source had been, hearing it again brought with it a strange chilling effect and, despite the oppressive heat, raised goosebumps along his arms.

“But nothing stops them from messing with you?” Draco already knew the answer from the tone the raven had used.

“Borgin shorts me every day; sees to it that I have enough to stay alive and even that only just. I think he likes to see me suffer.” He said. “Partly because I’m human. Partly to get back at Tom.” Shoving both the fanged wrench and a number of unnamable metal pieces broken off of the control box into the small bag he carried Harry turned away from him. “We’ll head back up now and break for lunch. You’ll have fifteen minutes to memorize the function make and value of the pieces in my bag before I start quizzing you on them.”

Without another moment’s pause or notable amount of trouble the little raven reached up, grabbed hold of the sides of the tear in the metal and hoisted himself out of the ship. With considerably more struggle and none of the grace, Draco followed him out.

“Tom?” the thin voice of the child on his back filtered through the surrounding cacophony of the outpost and the harsh rasp of the sled full of supplies which dragged along behind them. It had been almost six months since he’d first found him sat in a small hole, eating crickets which he managed to capture with an iteration of the ability they both shared that was about as graceful as a one legged Gnaw-jaw and looking thin as death and, according to the little raven, today was his birthday. He was six years old. Tom had asked him what he’d wanted to mark the day as the special occasion it was but all the smaller boy had done was stare at him blankly as if the prospect was something he’d never heard of before. Which, he supposed, made sense. After all Harry was even more unlucky than him, having lost his parents without ever having known them at all.

Shifting the child’s weight in his arms, the brunet said “yes, Cat Eyes?” The nickname he’d given Harry soon after meeting him on account of his vividly green eyes was usually enough to make the child laugh and duck his head against the side of Tom’s neck but not this time. He simply stared with a morose tint to what little he could see of his expression (the kid had a terrible habit of removing most of his shemagh by the time the day was over and had gotten badly sunburned on more than one occasion because of it). “What’s wrong?”

“Why do you always cover your face?” he asked, a mix of curiosity and hesitance in his high voice. As if he were afraid he’d get himself in trouble for wanting to know about something which could be deemed as not concerning him. “I understand why we need to have face clothes,” ‘face clothes’ was the term which Harry had coined for the shemagh (not being able to consistently pronounce the word at the time) and it never failed to make him smirk “outside because of how hot the sun is. But you even wear it inside when you’re sleeping. Isn’t it uncomfortable to have it on all the time?”

“A little.” Tom admitted as he turned the corner and started down the street their house stood on, B-95 trundling along beside them. “But I wear it to protect you. Because I don’t want you to be frightened and have nightmares about how ugly I am.”

“Ugly?” Harry demanded, sitting up. He sounded affronted that Tom would even suggest such a thing. “You’re too nice to be ugly! I bet you’re actually really pretty and just don’t want anyone else to know!”

“I used to be pretty.” He agreed. “But a few years before you and I met I was attacked by a Ripper Raptor and terribly disfigured. It’s an awful scar and I’m sparing everyone by hiding it.”

“I don’t want you to have to hide from me.” The little raven said with a pout as he settled back against Tom’s shoulder. “I want your face.”

“Harry?”

“For my birthday. You said you’d give me anything I wanted and I want to see your face.”

Well, that made a lot more sense the second time. “I don’t know, Cat Eyes.”

“Tom!”

The brunet heaved a heavy sigh as they at last reached their home, releasing the sled and lifting the small child down into the sand. Children at that age, it seemed, didn’t have much care or comprehension for the discomfort of others. But he had promised to give him something and Harry hadn’t asked for all that much, really (Tom’s own discomfort with his destroyed appearance aside), not to mention the fact that if the little raven proved able to stand his deformity he’d at least be able to have a margin more comfort in private. “That’s really what you want, Harry?”

Even so young he was perfectly capable of looking mulish. “Yes! No one should think that they’re ugly and need to hide! The only one I know who really is ugly is Borgin and you’re too nice to be Borgin.”

‘Having a soft spot for a fellow ‘freak’ is not the same as being ‘nice’. Tom thought. But Harry wasn’t yet old enough to understand such nuances so he let the matter drop to the ground beside them and lifted the day’s supply of rations from the shed. “Alright, then. Come on, Cat Eyes.”

The younger boy darted through the doorway without another moment wasted, followed closely by the droid. Shifting the weight of the rations in his arms to one side and bending to pick up the sled (he hated using the thing but there wasn’t really much he could do when the damned speeder had broken down) Tom walked inside as well.

“I’m going to take it off now.” He could hear the resigned hesitance in his own voice as he set both the sled and the rations down, reaching up to unwind the fabric from around his head. “Let me know if you want me to put it back on, if the sight is too terrible to bear, and I will.”

The moment he pulled the cloth away Tom expected the child to scream, or at the very least to flinch and recoil, but all Harry did was snicker. Pressing his pointer finger up to his face in a poor imitation of the jagged scar the brunet had revealed. “It’s small.” He said, holding the same finger towards him with a large smile. “Only this long.”

“Yes, it is small.” Tom replied with a disgruntled sigh, unable to stop himself from twitching beneath the innocent interest of green eyes. “But where it wouldn’t be overly noticeable on someone like you, Cat Eyes, in the face of such absolute perfection as what used to be my face it draws far too much attention to be abided by.”

“You’re so prissy, Tom!”

The brunet rolled his eyes and smirked. “’Prissy’ or not, you’re the only one who’s seen my face since that damned beast attacked me. It’s quite a privilege. A real gift.” The smirk grew wider as he winked, making the raven giggle. “Guard it well.”

The uniform black beyond the protective walls of the ISD Damocles was interspersed with only a few stars; distant and spaced far apart from one another, gleaming silver and gold from thousands upon thousands of lightyears away. The single pane of uninterrupted glass which made up the far wall of his chamber in the belly of the Star Destroyer reflected back at him a ghostly approximation of his own image: skin deathly pale, eyes scarlet pinpricks and that damned scar!

The frigid pads of the ancient gauntlets he wore traced delicately along the jagged crevasse the Ripper Raptor’s talon had cut into his face. Meandering a directionless path across the bridge of his aquiline nose. Beginning just above the brow ridge of his right eye and ending just below the swell of his left cheekbone. Just over three inches long but undeniably ruinous to his once perfect features.

His father’s features.

Growling under his breath, Voldemort spun abruptly on his heel and stalked towards his bed. Collapsing onto it with all the grace which he possessed and none of the poise he took pains to radiate while in the view of others. It had been five years to the day since he’d been forcibly parted from the little raven. Three since his brief return to Jakku under orders to ‘sever his attachments’ as proof of his loyalty to the Emperor: he’d stayed far from Niima Outpost despite the desire to see him again and had instead spent the time recovering the Song Steel talons he now wore from one of the many long forgotten ruins spread throughout both known and unknown space. Fragments and memories: all that was left after the diaspora of his people when Korriban became uninhabitable. He’d told Grindlewald he’d done as ordered, had lied directly to him at great risk to his own life, had forced himself to come to terms with never seeing the other man again and allowing Harry to think him dead and suffer because of it all to keep him safe. And now, because of some spineless TIE Fighter rat that’d just had to desert over the very planet he was trying so hard to avoid, it was all potentially for nothing! When he finally got his hands on the Malfoy brat (and he would, it was only a matter of time) he’d make him pay dearly for it.

Snorting in disgust he hooked one finger beneath the thin chain strung around his neck and drew out the bauble attached to it, the harsh motion causing the Kyber Crystal set into the back of the gauntlet to flash in the harsh light. The little charm he’d created for Harry from a Krait Dragon Pearl the color of nightshade, left to him by his mother after her death and something which she had undoubtedly gotten from his father before he’d abandoned them both: the man for whom Tom had been named. There had been no hesitation in killing him on Coruscant; the man had had the much undeserved honor of being the first blood drawn by his saber.

The Sith Lord’s brooding thoughts were interrupted by the metallic pounding of a knock on his door. “My Lord, are you masked?”

Despite his mood, a smirk pulled at the corner of his lips as he reached for the mask sitting on the bedside table. It was remarkable how quickly those beneath him had learned, after the first couple beheadings, that the crime of seeing his face carried the punishment of death. “I am.” He drawled, the built in filter reducing his voice to a thin hiss. Pushing himself back onto his feet, he said “come in, Yaxley, and deliver your report.”

The door slid aside with the clinical rasp of compressed air and the Storm Trooper Captain stepped into the room, the white plastoid armor that he wore leaving his reflection clear against the dark window. “My Lord” he said, “the Emperor is on the holocron. He’s asking to speak with you.”

Beneath the cover of the mask he wore, Voldemort sneered. “Is that so? Well then, you’ll have to excuse me Yaxley. I can’t afford to keep our supreme leader waiting.” Brushing passed the still kneeling Storm Trooper and heading towards the open door, he added “dismissed” solely as an afterthought and swept down the hall.

The holocron was housed on the upper deck, and that meant approximately four floors and six stairways stood between him and his destination. Provided that no one stopped him (and really, he doubted that anyone on board his ship would be dumb enough to do so as most, with very few and notably grating exceptions, were members of his Death Eaters: more commonly known throughout the Empire as the 501^st Legion) he’d arrive there in just under five minutes.”

Really he could have made it in a tenth that time if he wished to, but there was no need to rush.

Voldemort was met with the usual sea of banal, half-fearful greetings and salutes from the white-clad Troopers that flooded passed him, all of which went without reciprocation of any form. While mounting his third flight of stairs Voldemort caught a brief sight of Greyback and returned the Trandoshan’s gesture of respect with a leisurely nod which would have been entirely missed by anyone who’d happened to blink in that moment.

Nagini met him at the top of the staircase with a short burst of binary he answered with a smirk, resting a hand on the droideka’s plated head as it fell into step beside him. “I’ve been called on for a conversation with our leader.” He could have easily programmed his companion to speak like some of the more advanced droids, but if asked by anyone he’d simply feed them the curt lie that the chatty nature which seemed to come inherent with choosing to do so grated on his nerves. The truth was that the choice had been one made solely for nostalgic reasons (though admittedly Nagini and B-95 were in entirely different categories, given that the P-series was built to kill and approximately twenty times the astromech’s size). “No doubt that womp rat Castofar informed him of the little dragon’s flight and I’m to be taken to task like a misbehaving child at his father’s foot.”

The droideka warbled as its metal legs clattered up the staircase behind him.

“Don’t worry, my dear. He puts far too much faith in the ‘prophecy’ he loves to tout, though the Bogan knows he never actually quotes the thing so no one else really knows what it says, and too much faith in the fact that I’m the mentioned ‘Sith’ari’ to go so far. Not over something like this.” The doorway which opened onto the upper deck was just ahead now. “Wait here for my return; I won’t be long.”

Leaving his companion behind Voldemort continued forward down the hall and through the doorway. The cavernous room on the other side was dark, illuminated only by the pale blue glow of the titanic form of the Emperor’s holographic image. All of the Sith present on the Damocles had gathered there already and all, barring Castofar, rose when he entered the room, resuming their former positions only after he’d knelt at the image’s feet.

“You called for me, Master?”

“Is what Castofar has told me true, Voldemort? Has there been desertion under your watch?” Grindlewald snapped his displeasure crackling clear as day across the feed. “I put you in charge of the Damocles, gave you command of the 501^st and named you my Enforcer, my Fist, despite your not having even a year of training because of the raw promise that you showed and the pedigree of your blood. But it seems my confidence in you may have been…misplaced.” He sat back in his throne. “That you allowed the Malfoy boy to escape-.”

“He did not escape, Master.”

The Emperor’s fingers clenched, white knuckled, against the arms of his throne. His blue eyes narrowing. “Oh?”

“I pursued him when I caught wind of his intention and shot the X-wing he attempted to use to escape down. He crashed into the planet we’d been passing by without even a single engine left working. The likelihood of a non-Fore User having survived such an impact is less than one percent.”’

“And which planet, precisely, were you ‘passing by’ at the time?”

“…” it was difficult to force himself to say the name. “Jakku.”

Voldemort had little doubt that there was no sound in the galaxy or beyond that he hated more than Grindlewald’s laughter. “How interesting it is that, somehow, you always seem to be being drawn back to that worthless planet.” He said. “I’d advise that, once you’ve finished making use of our informant’s lead on the Rebellion’s operations on Had-Abbadon, you return to Jakku and make certain there are no loose ends. And that you keep well in mind the consequences of egregious disobedience.”

“Yes, Master.” He ground out between clenched teeth.

“Castofar.”

The Advozse rose at last from his kneeling position. “My Lord?”

“You will take over command of this mission, to ensure that my young apprentice in his inexperience doesn’t continue to make such oversights and mistakes.” He said. “Voldemort, from this point until the foreseeable future, will answer directly to you.”

Barely giving the brunet enough time to let out an indignant snarl the holocron cut out and the lights in the room went up.

“I’d warned our Emperor about the consequences of allowing one such as you so much power.” Castofar met his gaze unflinchingly, the short horn protruding from his forehead casting a strange shadow across the sharp-cut features of his imp-like face. “I’m pleased to see he’s finally come to agree with my assessment. The Sith’ari is meant to be a perfect being in the Dark Side of the Force: the embodiment of all the Sith are and aspire to be. One such as you, Tom Riddle, could never be such a thing.”

“How dare you!” He recognized the Bastail-esque shriek instantly and knew, without having to look, that it belonged to his second: Bellatrix. The red Twi’lek had leapt to her feet and now stood with her orange eyes flashing and sharpened teeth on full display as he black-tattooed Lekku writhed like agitated serpents. “How dare you speak to the Dark Lord in such a way! As if you were his better, or even his equal! As if-!”

“Bellatrix, enough!” The Twi’lek fell silent instantly. Voldemort turned his unforgiving eyes on the older Sith. “Tom Riddle is dead. You, Castofar, ought to be better aware of this fact than most. You are the one who killed him, after all.” He said. “And as for your last assertion, I fail to see why you’d think such a thing. My line is Red Sith, unbroken all the way back to the golden age of Korriban! The blood of the first Sith, the ‘Dark Jedi’ exiles, runs in my veins. My mother bore the marked features!”

“But your father was a human and that made you, when you lived, a half breed!” The Advozse said. Bellatrix hissed but held her tongue. Rodulphus, Rabastan, Barty and McNair were all glaring. “And all you are now is a necrotic abomination, continuing to function only through a fel combination of modern technology and ancient alchemy of the foulest order!”

“The pinnacle of power offered by the Dark Side: the very manipulation of life and death themselves. What was it that you said about the Sith’ari embodying all that the Sith aspire to be?” their audience sniggered. Behind his mask, Voldemort’s face had blossomed into a vicious grin. “We’ll be arriving at Had-Abbadon in approximately another week’s time and if that coward Wormtail’s word is good we stand to have quite the fight on our hands. One never does know what those Rebels are capable of. I suggest you watch your back.”

After flashing Castofar the rudest gesture known on Jakku the Sith Lord turned his back on the little gathering and exited the room.

Chapter Text

“Sun Forsaken birds! Get away from me!”

Harry looked up from packing away what little they’d managed to gather and shook his head. “I told him to hold it. And warned him about the Steel Peckers. Twice. So I’m afraid I don’t have much sympathy for him.”

‘Vooo .’ B-95 agreed, turning his head in the direction that the shout had come from.

The raven, finishing up and shutting the compartment with a metallic clang, turned as well and leaned his weight against the speeder with a heavy sigh. “Well, they’re not going to kill him so we can afford ourselves a bit of entertainment at our Rebel ‘friend’s’ expense,” he said, “Maybe he’ll learn at least a small lesson about listening before he gets into a spat with something more dangerous than a flock of silicavorous vultures.”

‘Bee-doo-weew’

“Gnaw-Jaws. Ripper Raptors. Nightwatchers.” Harry counted each off on his fingers. “Teelo.” Though admittedly it might have been funny to see the blonde be put on the run by a Luggabeast-mounted lizard person who wasn’t even half of Harry’s size. “We should see him come around that corner over there in about three…two…one…”

The pilot bolted from the shadows of the fallen TIE Fighter he’d stepped behind a handful of minutes before to relieve himself pursued by a sizeable flock of angrily shrieking Steel Peckers. The five massive birds darkened the reddening sky with their large wings and a rain of mottled, ragged feathers showered the sand as they dove down at random intervals to peck at the blonde with their iron-tipped bills and snatch at his clothing with their blunted feet.

It was at once evident both that Draco did indeed have competent, or at the very least fairly competent , combat training, and that said combat training was not in any way geared towards fighting off swarms of infuriated birds. Maybe things would be different if he had a weapon on him (which he didn’t—with Tom’s stun staff in pieces, Harry hadn’t had any to spare and didn’t feel comfortable handing his own over to someone he barely knew and consequently leaving himself unarmed) be it a staff, a blade or a blaster. But he didn’t have a weapon, all he had were his hands, and that led to a rather bizarre and wholly ineffective attempt at what was either pointless flailing or some obscure martial art which exposed his fingers to more of the bird’s fury.

After he and B-95 had had a good laugh at the other’s expense, Harry pushed off from the speeder and drew his stun staff from his back. Leaping into the middle of the fray without a moment’s hesitation, all it took was a few precise swings and a small shower of sparks to send the entire flock packing with a chorus of hoarse caws.

“Thanks.” Draco sounded like he meant it as he nursed his bleeding fingers.

“Sand for brains,” Harry retorted, returning the staff to its usual place slung across his shoulders. “Next time, listen when I tell you something. ‘Trained paramilitary’ or not, you don’t know this planet the way that I do and if you’d been attacked by anything other than Steel Peckers you’d probably be dead!”

“You know, Potter,” Draco drawled as the raven turned away, stalking back towards where he’d left both the speeder and the Droid, “Most normal people, when put in a situation where someone thanks them, reply with ‘you’re welcome’. Did Tom not teach you manners before he kicked it?”

The blonde barely managed to avoid being struck with the staff when Harry spun around and swung at him. The solid whoom it made as it flew passed was more than a little bit intimidating. “Get on the Sun Forsaken speeder before I leave you out here!”

Draco stared after him for a solid handful of seconds, stunned that the raven would have lashed out so violently (though admittedly he’d said what he had solely for the sake of digging at him), before unfreezing and following Harry back towards the speeder. Still fiddling with the innumerably tiny cuts now covering his bloody hands.

“Sorry.” It was clear that he didn’t entirely mean it. Harry responded with an acidic glare, lifted the little Astromech back onto the speeder and trotted around the opposite side without a word. “Potter–”

If the glare and silence hadn’t been enough, his attempts to speak being purposefully drowned out by the snarl of the engine confirmed the fact that the little scavenger didn’t want to hear it. Draco would have to make more of a conscious effort not to antagonize the raven, as much as the other’s demeanor grated on him in many various ways; really, he had to have more screws loose than the Astroid Hopper they’d spent the entire day ripping apart if he really believed that the Rebellion had any actual chance of winning against the Empire, never mind his ‘if all else fails I’ll take them on myself’ attitude. And as relatively certain of his own ability to take Harry in a fight if need be (though it’d probably behoove him to disarm the raven as quickly as possible if it did come to that, because if the near miss of having his head lopped off by the stun staff showed him anything it was that he knew how to use it) ending up left behind in the middle of Jakku’s desert to fend for his own sweet arse wasn’t an experience Draco was particularly keen to have.

He’d been put through the typical training of the Imperial military (though it had had nothing on what the bucket-heads in white armor were put through) and was good enough at what he’d done to be hand selected for the crew of the Damocles (and hadn’t that turned out to be a ruddy nightmare! With how often heads rolled for accidentally happening upon that red-eyed bastard without his mask on, Draco had taken to checking around corners with a hand mirror!) he wasn’t a survivalist by any means. He didn’t know the backend of a Bantha from the front, as they’d have said back on Cantobyte (though where had anyone living there run into one of the things... he hadn’t a clue, seeing as they were native to Tatooine) and didn’t want to attempt to rectify that fact in a trial by fire.

His intentions to leave Harry behind on that parched hell planet aside, it was probably better he not offend him too much before then. And that meant no more bringing the name of the raven’s precious dead ‘brother’ into his insults.

Stuck once again with the ‘back seat’ but having enough sense not to attempt to push the matter any further than he had that morning, Draco clambered up onto the speeder, not wanting to give Harry the chance to make good on his threat. The little bastard didn’t bother giving him the chance to catch his balance or wrap his arms around his waist like he had earlier and slammed on the accelerator. Only B-95’s position poking out of a small hole carved out of the back panel saved him from topping arse over teakettle off the back, and the little Astromech gave him a binary dressing down which he could barely hear over the rushing wind because of it. Draco had to resist the urge to squeeze the little raven until he couldn’t breathe anymore and was well aware of the fact that Harry was unabashedly smirking.

Should someone be in need of directions to any of the places on Jakku, they’d be much better off seeking aid from Harry, who’d lived on the planet for his entire life, than they would be asking Draco, but that wasn’t to say that the blonde didn’t know where he was going when he needed to. A trait that all pilots, or at least all good pilots, needed to have was a perfect grasp on their sense of direction so as to prevent themselves from becoming turned around in dog fights. This afforded him with the ability to be certain of the fact that Harry had swung around to the wrong side of the dune despite only having traveled the route between Niima Outpost and the Starship Graveyard once.

“You’re going the wrong way,” he shouted over the wail of the wind and the clatter of sand against the front of the speeder. With his arms wrapped around the little raven, Draco was in the prefect position to feel his body jerk as he let of a derisive snort.

“Am I?” Most of the effect was lost behind them as they rushed onwards, but the false surprise was still enough to annoy him. “I can’t believe it! I hadn’t realized I’d driven the pair of us in completely the wrong direction! I mean, I’ve only lived here for seventeen years.”

Petulant little… the blonde ground his teeth but again bit down on the urge to retort. “Where are we going?”

“Oh, so we’re going somewhere now? I’d thought I’d simply turned in the wrong direction.”

“Potter!”

Briefly, the smirk became a sneer. “We won’t have enough food to last the week relying on rations alone, and we can’t use any of what we receive in the future if we’re going to stand a chance of stockpiling enough to purchase taxi fare off Jakku.” He said. “We’re going to swing by the Sinking Fields and check out one of Tom’s favorite hunting grounds. If the Bloggin are still there we don’t have much to worry about.”

“And if they aren’t?”

“We’ll have to suspend our stockpiling efforts until we find them.” Harry said it like the matter should have been obvious to a child, looking upwards towards the sun and clucking his tongue. “We won’t make it out there before the edge of evening.”

“Is that a problem?” Draco shot at him. “Afraid of the dark, are you?”

“No one of their right mind is afraid of the dark , Draco.” He said. “If my early childhood before Tom found me taught me anything beyond the callousness of strangers, it’s that you’re much better off devoting your energy to fearing what uses the dark to hunt.”

The young TIE Pilot got the sudden impression that the raven was no longer talking about desert game birds and a chill passed down his spine. “B-But most of the wildlife on this planet is silacavorous, isn’t it?”

“On paper, yeah, but the Gnaw Jaws won’t pass up a chance to strip the flesh off your bones if they’re given one. Of course, they’re not what you really have to worry about where we’re going.” He chuckled wickedly. “What you really have to worry about are the Nightwatchers. Naturally silacavorous, yes, but prone to eating whatever poor Sun Forsaken thing has the misfortune of fitting in its mouth. And when you’re the size of a Star Destroyer full grown, a lot fits in your mouth.”

The size of a Star Destroyer when fully grown? With how pale he was Draco doubted the fact was noticeable, but he felt the blood beginning to drain from his face. “Well,” he said sourly, “at least we’ll see something that size coming.”

Harry shook his head. “You’d be surprised,” he said as they flew across the red landscape, “what the desert can hide.”

That, the blonde thought, was not in any way comforting. Suddenly terrified of the very earth beneath them Draco pulled his feet up even further, eyeing the sand like it had tried to personally attack him. With a muted sense of surprise, he realized Harry didn’t seem amused.

They drove on and on as the sun sank progressively lower, staining the sky in progressively darkening shades of red, orange, and blue as the burning orb took on the hue of sweet berries, as the stars began to make themselves noticeable in the crown of the heavens where it was darkest. Passing through yet another valley which threaded its way between two dunes, Harry slowed the speeder to a stop and killed the engine.

“Down there.” He raised a gloved hand from the handlebars and pointing in the aforementioned direction. “The Sinking Fields.”

Draco…didn’t have a name for the land formation which now stood ahead of them—had never seen anything like it before, even in pictures. It wasn’t quite a valley, and wasn’t quite a field. The closest thing he had to describe it was a caldera, but given where they were he doubted it had anything to do with a volcano. The land dipped before them, sloping gently into a bowl shaped formation. The sand at the bottom was slightly lighter in color than it was where they stood and the lip was a ridge formed of dust pale rock.

Looking around at their surroundings in shock, he caught sight of something poking up from the earth just beyond the edge of the bowl opposite them, which he at first mistook for a small tree. Oddly shaped and vaguely resembling the curve of a scope lens, large gleaming orbs were secured to either end but between the distance and the thick shadows of twilight further details were impossible to make out. Draco blinked, rubbed his eyes and looked back at it only to find that whatever it was (if it had ever even been there at all) was gone now.

Better that he put it out of his mind, not let it get to him, because the last thing he needed was for the little junk rat to jump down his throat about being frightened enough by his stories of ‘Nightwatchers’ that he was allowing it to get to him; never mind the fact that he could have sworn the gleam he’d seen was eye shine.

Harry had scaled the ten foot rock face and was already halfway down the sloping side of the Sinking Fields, his staff in one hand and a light, pulled from the pack around his waist, held high in the other. B-95 was still secured in his compartment of the speeder. The Droid turned its pointed head in Draco’s direction and whistled.

“Oh, quiet you!” he hissed, turning his back on the Droid and making his way down the rock face himself.

Traversing the wall of the Sinking Fields, as he soon found out, was a great deal more treacherous a task than one would suspect from just a cursory glance. The rock was brittle and so threaded with cracks that even something which looked immovably solid was anything but, and as such, climbing down the ledge was an exercise in observance (how Harry had managed to scale the thing so quickly he hadn’t the slightest clue, though Draco highly suspected his smaller size and lighter weight to have something to do with it). Once he reached the bottom it was even worse! The sand was loose, mixed badly with the angle of the slope of the land and made it almost impossible to remain upright. Draco only reached the bottom because he fell and slid down on his back, ending up at the feet of a highly unimpressed scavenger.

“The grace you possess is positively breathtaking.” Harry drawled, leaning heavily on the stun staff with a careless stance. The wan tinge of the light in his hand brought out the yellow in his eyes, combining with the deep shadows cast by the shemagh to create something unnerving. “In the future, walking sideways helps.”

Once again making no efforts to help him up, Harry turned and began walking away. Using the staff more like a walking aid than it was probably meant to be, prodding at the sand in front of him with the same cautious curiosity as a Hothian might prod at the ice when searching for hidden crevasses. Draco doubted he wanted to know what the other boy felt the need to search for.

“What’s the verdict, then?” he demanded, pushing himself up with a huff and batting away the sand which had the audacity to cling to him. It was dark, far too dark for his liking with the stars and thin strip of moon doing little to relieve the oppressive black, and cold. Far too cold far too quickly to be in any way comfortable, being used to constant temperatures and comparatively lush surroundings as he was. And then there was the silence: the only sounds aside from their footsteps and breathing were the sigh of the wind and hiss of sand. On nearly every other planet that meant one thing: something dangerous was near. But Harry didn’t seem bothered, so perhaps it was normal on Jakku.

Either way Draco was unnerved and found himself wishing he was still armed with a blaster.

Harry paused but didn’t look back at him right away. First he took a deep breath of the freezing night air, almost as if he were expecting to smell something other than the sand steadily leaking the day’s gathered heat all around them, and scanning the area (what little of it could be seen beneath the thick veil of darkness), before finally turning to look.

“I’m not the hunter that Tom was, but from what he taught me and as far as I can tell the Bloggin are still here. A bit thinner in population than they used to be, maybe, but more than enough to support the two of us long enough to gather the rations we need to pay our way out of here no matter how long that takes.” He said. “The next time we come by here I’ll set up some snares; we’ll get by on Tuanul berries and what little is left of our rations until we catch the first one; it’ll be big enough to last us the week once its meat is dried.”

Well, it was no ‘feast of kings’ but at least dried meat and berries were better than the fibrous mystery substance that made up the rations the majority of the planet seemed to subsist on. “Sounds fine.”

“Uncomfortable?” it was hard to tell with the shemagh that he wore but Draco knew the other boy was grinning.

Annoyed, he wrapped his arms around himself to better fend off the cold. “I don’t like the silence.”

He expected Harry to mock him, but instead he abruptly sobered, the barely noticeable grin withering away like an unwatered plant in the hot sun. “Yeah.” He said. “Me too. When there’s no sound….your mind makes its own to fill the silence. And it’s usually your worst memories which are the most eager to get out.” Seeming to suddenly realize how candid he’d been, the raven frowned and started back towards where they’d left the speeder and the Droid. “We don’t have the time to stand out here if we’re going to make it back to Niima before the bloody sun rises.”

Draco wasn’t about to complain about the matter. Not if it meant getting the hell out of there as soon as possible.

Going down the slope had been bad, but going up it was even worse. Harry made it look easy, turning broadside and shimmying up the sloping side of the Sinking Fields, before scuttling up the stone rim like some sort of spider and disappearing over the edge. Even doing all he could to emulate what he’d seen of the raven’s technique, Draco only made it back to the stone rim after three successive falls and had to scale the ledge without even the consideration of aid.

All that drove him onward through aching muscles, cut fingers and the fear of yet another fall were violent fantasies of digging his thumbs into the yellow-tinted eyes which watched his every move with rapt attention. Whether it was spite or a warped idea of precisely what ‘care’ was passed down to the raven by his own treatment which drove him not to lift a finger Draco didn’t know but he heavily suspected his motivation was the former.

Either way, something seemed to catch his attention enough when the blonde was half way up that he stiffen and look away.

“What?” Annoyed and having heard nothing himself, he was half-convinced the scavenger was just trying to scare him.

“Nothing.” Harry almost tripped over the word; pupils dilated so far his eyes looked black. If that wasn’t enough to convince Draco something was, quite the contrary, very wrong the fact that the smaller male reached down to help him was. “Come on. We’ve been out here long enough.”

His grip was powerful and his strength surprising, especially given Harry’s stature: he managed to drag the taller male up over the lip of the ledge with very little assistance from the blonde and hauled him over to the speeder without giving him the chance to catch his feet. At least this time, being so aware of the raven’s agitation, Draco managed to catch a firm hold on him before Harry slammed on the accelerator and the speeder shot forwards.

The blonde was left entirely out of the loop when B-95 emitted a stream of beeps and squeals to which Harry responded with a snarled “I know!”

The engine whined as it was pushed to and passed the limits of its top speed, the wind tearing at his ears, but beneath the deafening white noise Draco could have sworn that he heard something very big rushing up behind them. Even while well aware he wouldn’t be able to see anything through the darkness he turned to look but never got the chance.

The sand erupted beneath them and the massive shape which emerged flung men speeder and droid aside like children’s toys. Harry and Draco hit the sand with heavy thuds. The speeder fell with an echoing clang, rolled end over end and came to a stop on its side a hundred yards away. Aching all over and unconvinced that nothing was broken, Draco pushed himself up onto his hands and knees before turning his attention to the thing which had attacked them.

The two things which registered instantly, even with the thick pall of night which lay over the desert, were ‘big’ and ‘lots of teeth’. When he squinted, he could make out a pair of bulbous red eyes perched on a vaguely t-shaped eye stalk which he now suspected had been what he’d seen when they’d first arrived at the Sinking Fields. And what the eyestalk was attached to could only be described as a living nightmare. A yawning cavern of a mouth filled with drool-dewed fangs the length of his arm, inhabited by a trio of sharp blue tongues—behind it a fleshy body of mottled, plated hide and an underside lined with six pairs of red claw like legs.

“What is that thing?” he demanded expecting an answer but receiving none. Confused annoyed and terrified as the great worm turned towards them, the young TIE pilot cast around through the darkness. Eyes landing first on the fallen staff, discarded in the sand a handful of yards away, and then on—“Potter!”

The scavenger lay motionless another few yards beyond the staff, looking for all the world like a dropped doll with the way his limbs lay limp around him. Dead? Unconscious? Draco had no way of knowing and the worm-monster-thing didn’t seem to care, moving in on him and poised to strike.

Dark skies! Heaving himself up off the ground and grabbing the fallen staff, Draco rushed towards the monster. He was far from well versed in the use of a staff and hadn’t exactly been trained to fight against giant worms, but if the little scavenger got eaten by the thing he’d almost certainly never leave Jakku so he couldn’t just stand by.

The ionized prong at the tip collided with the beast’s side with a piercing zap and a flash of pale blue light (suns and stars the thing was powerful!), the long shaft shuddering in his grasp as the worm screeched. The sound setting his ears ringing. It spun around with a shocking speed for its size, gnashing its massive jaws, and lunged. Draco swung again, sending another shower of sparks cascading down onto the sand. The beast hissed and snapped its teeth, showering him with an unpleasant coating of thick drool. The blonde TIE pilot shoved the staff into its mouth, contact with one of its tongues lighting the cavity up with a pale glow.

With another painful squeal the giant worm turned tail and burrowed back into the sand, all twenty meters of the thing disappearing in the blink of an eye. Nightwatchers (if that was even what the creature which had attacked them was) didn’t appear very well prepared for prey which fought back. Which, he supposed, was understandable for something which primarily ate inanimate material.

Unsure of whether the thing would come back Draco quickly covered the short distance between him and where Harry lay unconscious. Turning the little raven onto his back and checking him over for injuries but finding nothing immediately evident. As far as he could tell, the impact had simply knocked the scavenger out.

“Harry.” Draco shook him but received no response. “Harry!” He slapped him, the sharp sound echoing across the dark sand.

The raven’s body jerked and he opened his eyes, blinking blearily. “Wha-?”

“A giant worm monster threw the speeder and the impact knocked you out. It’s gone, now, but I don’t know what shape the speeder is in or if that thing will come back.” He said. “We may end up having to walk.”

“Giant worm monster?” he sobered abruptly and sat bolt upright. “Nightwatcher! You scared it off?”

The blonde sent him an unimpressed look. “Just because I’m not an ‘almighty desert survivalist’ doesn’t mean I’m useless, Potter.” He said, standing up and handing him the staff. “Help me roll the speeder back over. I don’t think either of us is strong enough to do it on our own.”

Harry, still unsteady, got to his feet and smirked at him. “You’re covered in worm drool.”

Draco shuddered and glared at him. “Don’t remind me.”

B-95 was still in once piece much to Harry’s relief and Draco’s…well, he wasn’t certain if ‘disappointment’ was exactly the right word. The little Astromech chirped at them rather helplessly as they approached.

“We’ll get both you and the speeder upright in a second, B-95.” Harry reassured the Droid, trotting around to the left side of the upended speeder. He braced his shoulder against one of the metal panels and looked expectantly over at Draco until he did the same.

“Push on the count of three?” the blonde questioned, paying particular attention to the hand which Harry had subtly placed, palm down, against the speeder. The raven nodded. “One. Two. Three!”

The little scavenger could attempt to convince him that it was the speeder’s shape or the slant of the land or the fact that the ground was covered in sand but the young TIE pilot was well aware of the fact that they should not have been able to flip the vehicle back upright so easily. Not with only two of them. Yet the thing, very cooperatively, rolled back into its proper position.

“Is it workable?” he asked, eyeing the smaller male but knowing better than to attempt to question him on using the Force.

“It’s dented all to hell and back.” Harry said, running gloved fingers over the craters in the metal skin. “All we can do is try and turn it on and find out.”

With any luck, even if the speeder was damaged, it would still be capable of functioning. At least to the point of being able to get them back to Niima Outpost because the thought of walking miles through the freezing pitch black desert, potentially to run into another bloody thirsty slobbering worm, was not in any way appealing.

Thankfully, after a few attempts and quite a great deal of coughing and spluttering, the engine caught and growled back to life, the sound of it forcing back the oppressive silence. Draco sighed in relief. Harry too seemed glad they weren’t going to be stuck on foot.

‘ Vee-oo.’

“We can worry about removing the dents later on.” He said, slinging one leg over the seat and settling into place. Chartreuse eyes fell on him. “Coming, worm spit?”

Harry seemed to find the blonde’s efforts to flip him off hilarious.

“Still awake back there?”

Draco wasn’t about to admit to the fact that he’d been in the end stages of dozing off, though with how heavily he’d been leaning against the smaller male up until then Harry probably already know. “Yeah.” Neither of them mentioned how thick his voice sounded. “Do you really think I’d sleep on you, Potter? Not in a million years.”

Harry snickered as they turned the corner onto the street which lead to the scavenger’s claustrophobic dwelling. “Course not,” he said. His tone was enough to make a couple of the smaller muscles in Draco’s face begin to twitch. Pulling to a stop, the little raven dismounted the speeder and went to free the Droid from the back compartment. “We’re only allowed so much water in a day so normally I wouldn’t do this, but I’ll bring what’s left of the day’s ration out so you can wash up. Nightwatcher spit stinks and I don’t want it in my house.”

He didn’t care what the other’s reasoning was. All Draco wanted was to get the steadily drying goo off of him.

Harry disappeared into the dwelling and reemerged carrying two mostly full jugs of water. “This one’s for you,” he said, setting one down, “and this one’s for your clothes. Once you get back inside we’ll go over where we’ll scavenge tomorrow which will have the best yields.”

“What am I supposed to wear while the robe is drying?”

The little raven snorted. “The air, obviously.” Leaving the bright red blonde behind in the sand, Harry and the little Droid went back inside.

So it was either not wash the robe and have to deal with the sickening stench of worm spit, not to mention the fact that he’d be stuck sleeping outside if he did so, or wash the robes and be left to sit around wearing nothing but the night air until it dried? He wouldn’t be able to sleep with the rust and rotting meat smell so in the end it wasn’t really much of a choice. Sighing heavily, Draco pulled off the sticky robe and shemagh and picked up the first jug of water. The desert night was cold enough standing there naked. Standing there naked and wet? He could imagine the frost crystals forming across his skin already.

Draco scrubbed the fabric quickly and hung it over the door before picking up the empty jugs and scrambling inside.

He found Harry waiting for him, still smirking and holding the thin blanket which spent most of its time draped across the bed. “At least you’re easy on the eyes.” The raven said as he handed it over.

“You’re type, am I?” Draco was surprised to find his voice to be verging on flirtatious despite its sharp edge as he wrapped himself in the cloth.

“No. My type is brunet.” That same expression of sadness flickered over the smaller male’s face again as he turned away, removing a folded piece of parchment from a crack in the wall which had previously appeared far too small to be able to fit anything into it. The incredibly dry paper crackled loudly as it was unfolded, lain out on the stone bed and smoothed down until it passed for a poor imitation of ‘flat’. The young TIE pilot hesitated to call what was scrawled onto it in faded ink a ‘map’ per say but that seemed to be what Harry was using it as. The little raven jabbed his finger at a blotch of ink on the ‘map’ and said “this is the Stardship Graveyard. I’ve made a habit of scavenging the Western and Southern sides because the Eastern and low North-Eastern sections, though much more rich in yield, are Teelo territory. The things are small but they’re bloody vicious and it wasn’t worth their ire.”

“Small and vicious?” Draco repeated, shifting his position against the cold stone floor. “What else might that describe, I wonder?”

Harry shot him the sort of glare which plainly said ‘I’m trying not to allow myself to interpret what you just said as a compliment’ and continued, “but seeing as there are two of us now and that you’ve proved at least semi-competent fighting against something it’s worth the risk. We need to be as efficient as possible to cut down on the stockpiling time.”

“We aren’t just set on the Empire without any combat training, you know. And just because I spend most of my time in a Fighter doesn’t mean I’m dead weight without a starship,” he said, “but I can only do so much without a weapon.”

Harry fidgeted and shot him a sideways look. “I might be able to get you one tomorrow morning. But I don’t want you sticking your nose in it, Malfoy; you don’t know how things work around here and you’re only going to make things more complicated,” he said, “What do you want? Staff, blade or blaster?”

“I’m best with a blaster but if you can’t get one go for the blade,” Draco said, “I’ll leave all the staff-work to you.”

“That’s probably for the better.”

The blonde huffed. “We’re calling it a night, I assume?”

“You assume correctly.” Harry blew out the candle, plunging the room into darkness.

It didn’t take him long to fall asleep and it seemed like only moments later that he was awoken by the sloshing clatter of the refilled jugs being set down on the stone floor.

‘ Dee-eeoo.’

Draco sent the Droid a dirty look.

Harry snorted. “Well, not everyone’s a morning person B-95. Sometimes that’s just what you get for being nice.” He said. “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

“And you want to know which I’d rather hear first?” the raven’s answer was a smirk. “Good news.”

“The blaster is in the back compartment of the speeder.” Harry told him, looking every bit like an overfed Bastail. “As well as a blade.”

“You managed to get both? How?” he asked. “You didn’t have anything of value to trade for them, did you?”

Did that damned smug expression ever leave? “The weak-willed can find me rather persuasive when I want them to,” he said. “Tom had a much easier time with it but I did learn from the best.”

“And what’s the bad news?”

“We’re not going to be able to head out to scavenge. Not today. Not for the next couple of days.” Harry folded his arms. “A haboob-giant sandstorm-rolled in from that direction overnight. It doesn’t look like it’s going to hit Niima but going through it isn’t a good idea. We’ll use the time to get a grasp on the going price for our fare.” Harry tossed the still barely damp robe at him and told him to get dressed before ducking back out into the sun.

Glaring at the Astromech until it followed the raven out of the house, the blonde quickly pulled the robe over his head and followed the scavenger.

“You’re going to get sunburned,” Harry chirped from his perch atop the speeder. “It’s not wise to leave shelter without something to cover your face, especially with skin as pale as yours.”

“I’d rather get sunburned than wrap a clammy cloth around my face.”

“Suit yourself.” Pulling open the back compartment, he reached in and dragged out a sword and a five-generations-behind-common-line-rusted-near-to-hell-blaster which the blonde had doubts still functioned. “You’ll probably regret that decision soon enough once your face starts peeling like an over ripe Tuanul Berry.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, taking the sword and blaster and securing both around his waist. “Now what?”

“We head into Cratertown and stop by Ergel’s Bar.” Harry shifted position until he was properly straddling the speeder and leaned against the handlebars. “Climb on.”

Chapter Text

It had taken them two hours to reach Cratertown from Niima Outpost heading westward at the highest speed the beaten speeder could attain, and for all Draco knew they could have turned around at some point and gone back. He may have only seen two settlements on the desert planet at this point, but they all looked like carbon copies of one another in the young TIE pilot’s eyes. The same glaringly pale blue sky; same view of the massive haboob which hung over the Starship Graveyard; the same lopsided, mud brick buildings; and, of course, the same sun forsaken red sand. Harry pulled around a corner and slowed to a stop before dismounting and lifting B-95 down. Draco followed him off. In the silence which followed the engine being cut, he could hear the wind whistling through the narrow spaces between the buildings and the sharp snap of the flags which adorned the rooftops—a sad attempt to break the monotony of the skyline. An Eopie stood lashed to a nearby post. It raised its head to look at them and trumpeted.

“Where’s this Ergel’s Bar you mentioned, Potter?” the blond demanded, turning his head towards the raven and the droid as he squinted against the sunlight. “All I see is a whole bunch of nothing and a beast of burden known for flatulence. I don’t assume that this thing,” he pointed at the Eiope, “is what you’re planning on us using to get off this planet.”

“Of course not. Eiope are alright for land travel and dragging heavy loads but they’re not starships. We’re going to be walking over to Ergel’s Bar from here; it’s about halfway across town.”

“Why are we walking halfway across town when you have a speeder? We could just drive there.”

“Because I’d like to keep my speeder. At least until we have our ride out secured,” he said, leaning his weight yet again against his staff. “Dark skies, with the way you’re talking Draco it almost seems like you’re opposed to a bit of exercise. It’s not even half a mile.”

“I’m not opposed to the principle of exercise,” Draco said, crossing his arms, “but I am opposed to putting in any more effort than is necessary in this heat! I’ll keel over and die of heat stroke if we do.”

“No need to worry about that, Draco,” Harry informed him cheerfully as he began walking in the direction of their destination. “Your face is going to melt off your skull long before that happens. It’ll be a much more painful death, I expect, than a mere heatstroke. What, with your tongue burning off and your eyes boiling inside your skull.” The smirk on his face was edged with playfulness. “It’ll be such a shame, too.”

“Why?” the blonde drawled. “Because you’ll miss me?”

“Miss you? Don’t flatter yourself, Draco, I don’t care a lick about you . But if you die I’ll lose my in with the Rebellion.”

“Arse.” Harry’s laugh rang against the nearby buildings. The TIE pilot felt at his cheeks and winced. “Is my face really sunburned?”

“I told you that you’d regret not wearing the shemagh,” the raven replied in a singsong voice, waltzing ahead of him with mirth glittering in his green eyes. “Just like I expected, you’re well on your way to looking like a stewed Tuanelberry.”

Draco groaned, following after Harry while covering his face with his hands the best that he could. “We’re heading back to Niima Outpost after this aren’t we?”

“Oh, no. No, no, no.” The other trilled. “We’re going to Kelvin Ravine after this and are facing down the Ripper Raptors living there in order to get to the lake on the Ravine’s other end. I have containers for water and berries in the back compartment. By the time we’re done here you’ll be scarlet and it’ll serve you right.”

“Are you kidding me, Potter?”

“Not at all; pain is the best teacher,” he said, “You’ll keep that shemagh on in the future, wet or not.”

“If my face is too sunburned to be able to wear the bloody thing how is it supposed to heal?” Draco growled. “I don’t suppose you intend to let me stay inside until it has?”

“You’d be right.” The raven told him, and from the gleam of his eyes Draco could tell he was smirking. “You brought this on yourself my rebel friend. You’ll have to bear the consequences—that’s how things work here.”

‘ Bee-oo!’

“Thanks, B-95! I knew I could count on you to agree with me!”

“Of course the sun forsaken ball of scrap metal agrees with you—you’re his current master and he has it out for me!” Draco hissed, almost losing his footing in the sand.

“Maybe B-95 would like you more if you didn’t treat him so badly.”

“Not letting him near me without any other choice isn’t treating him badly!” The blonde snapped. “Need I remind you that I have a blaster?”

“You don’t: I am the one who gave it to you, after all, and I don’t have any memory problems which would prevent me from recalling what I did this past morning,” Harry replied, entirely unruffled by the other’s only half serious threat. “And I’m also not at all intimidated by the fact that you have a blaster because I know you won’t shoot me. No matter how much I nettle you.”

Draco sneered at the little scavenger who trotted jauntily ahead of him, the stun staff he held making muted thuds against the sand with every step. “And just what makes you so certain of that?”

“Reality,” was the immediate reply. “You’re not dumb enough to kill me no matter how big of an annoyance I make of myself. Because you know you need me to survive on Jakku.”

“And after we get off Jakku?”

Harry pulled his shemagh down far enough to reveal a savage smirk. “You haven’t even seen half of what I can do. And the steadfastness developed by a lifetime of being very small and fighting very large things, I’m sure you’ll quickly find, makes me quite a considerable handful and a half.”

Sad part was Draco didn’t doubt that for a moment. “How long until we get to where we’re going?”

“Not much further.” Harry replied as they came to another corner. “Ergel’s Bar is just down the street at the edge of town, right next to the landing strip.”

Music, reedy and spry, could be heard dimly even from where they stood. Ahead, at the far end of the street, stood a squat building somewhat wider than those which made up the rest of Cratertown. Behind it, a bit further out, was a flat strip of land which had been beaten down into a stone-like hardness; spotted along it were the hazy, hulking forms of starships owned by the patrons of the bar: everything from single passenger ships to massive cargo ships which more likely than not had been co-opted and rebuilt to fit the needs of the smugglers and space pirates who now owned them, either through coin or theft.

They were finally getting somewhere; after today, even if it’d be a while yet before they could return to gathering scrap and exchanging it for rations, Draco would know exactly how long he had to wait before he’d be able to get off Jakku and could begin devising a proper plan to leave the little scavenger behind.

“Ever been to a cantina?”

The question pulled him out of his thoughts; Draco looked down at the yellow-green eyes which stared up at him through the chink in his shemagh. “No.” He’d come from a proper family of war profiteers who drank fine liquor and wine at high-brow parties, rubbing elbows with the upper class. The Malfoys had no reason to so much as look in the vague direction of seedy, smuggler-filled holes in the wall. And that, really, was all cantinas ever were.

“That snobbish tone says that they’re below you; an odd thing for a rebel to think.” Those eyes were now hooded, glaring at him with a detectable gleam of danger and looking more yellow than he’d ever seen them. The droid burbled, its head sliding forward and lens-eye seeming to squint. The edged smile from earlier returned: it looked like a Vornskr baring its teeth this time. Ice trickled down his spine when the raven said, “that sounds a lot more like what an Imperial would say.”

Thinking fast, he quickly defended himself by saying, “morally, getting friendly with criminals is below me! The Rebellion, after all, is supposed to be a source of good. Keeping such company would only taint that image; sure, sometimes we’re forced to deal with them for supplies or information but making a habit of it is more than a little bit untoward.”

For a tense moment the raven continued to glare at him, then he straightened from his coiled posture and a wide grin split his face. “So you’ve never had Knockback Nectar?”

He’d never even heard of such a thing! “Is that a drink?”

“Made and served right here on Jakku; I’ve been coming here to Ergel’s Bar for a couple of drinks every other month or so ever since I was eight. Always make a point of asking Ergel what it’s made of and he always says the exact same thing.”

“You’ve been drinking since you were eight? No wonder you’re insane!” The blonde snorted; he’d only reached what his parents considered ‘proper drinking age’ a year ago but had been too busy serving to actually engage in any drinking. “Do they not have minimums here?”

“Course they do: you have to be old enough to walk and talk at the same time.” Catching the look on his face, Harry snorted. “In case you haven’t noticed Draco, we don’t have all that much to live for on this floating ball of sand. Being off our nuts on something supposedly strong enough to get a space slug drunk is how most of us cope with our circumstances.”

Draco grunted in reply and crossed his arms. “I think I’ll pass.”

“Nonsense!” For someone so small Harry had a fair bit of weight behind him, and when he slung an arm around the TIE Pilot’s shoulders (having to first jump up in order to do so) it caused him to stumble. “We want them to talk to us, at least. Preferably to deal with us. But they don’t trust people who don’t at least attempt to tackle the Nectar.” Harry said. “And don’t feel bad if you can’t handle a full can your first time; it took me about a year to be able to make it through my first can. It’s known to be a bit abrasive.”

“Marvelous.” What in dark skies was he getting himself into?

The entrance to the cantina was as lopsided as the rest of it, hung from the top of the doorframe in place of a door was a fluttering piece of dirty fabric which looked to have once been used as an oil rag by a giant. Painted above it in a barely legible, crowded together hand were the words Ergel’s Bar.

“Right this way, your highness.” The raven smirked at him again when Draco rolled his eyes and pulled back the cloth door. “Let me do most of the talking; something tells me I’m less likely to get us neck-deep in trouble.” He didn’t really want to talk to a bunch of alien criminals anyway.

The inside of the cantina was dark and dry, smelling of tobacco and sand and something offensively sour. Smoke hung in a pall, unmoving and crowded against the ceiling, blanketing the mass of figures crammed in around dirty wooden tables. A band was huddled in a horseshoe shape in the far corner, adding into the talking and laughing and yelling a series of high-pitched trills and whistles. Harry had fully removed the shemagh from his face and dropped the fabric to hang around his thin neck.

“I can’t even hear myself think, Potter!” He drawled, wincing and covering his ears. “This noise is atrocious!”

If the little scavenger had heard him, he didn’t respond. “Come on,” he said, striking out through the packed room, “I see two empty seats at the bar.”

Left with no other choice but, perhaps, to go back outside and wait (and Draco wanted no part of that, especially given the fact that he was already sunburned) the TIE pilot growled in annoyance and followed the raven away from the blinding brightness of the door.

Harry had already leapt up into one of the two stools by the time he got there, leaning his elbows on the bar and kicking his feet beneath it. To his right was a tall, harshly weathered human with a cragged face and robotic arm and to his left, beyond the other empty stool where Draco was expecting to be sitting, was an Uthuma; the chain around its neck clattered as it emptied what looked like hydraulic fluid into its fanged maw. A haggard looking man stood behind the bay, eyeing the raven’s grin with resignation.

“Hello, Harry.” He said, dropping a rag onto the sticky surface of the bar. “It’s been a long time since you’ve come in with company.”

“People in Niima aren’t the fondest of me, Ergel. You know that; we’ve talked about it before.” Harry said. “And I always bring B-95.”

‘ Wee!’

“Company that can drink, I meant.” The man sized Draco up out of the corner of one eye. “You know you’re welcome to move to Cratertown and come work for me. You’re in here often enough to know how the place works and have asked me what Knockback Nectar is enough that you can answer when someone wants to know.”

The little raven laughed and smiled, rocking back dangerously on his stool. “You make it sound like I annoy you.” He said. Ergel made a non-committal sound and picked the rag back up. “I appreciate the offer, really, but Niima has too many memories for me to just move elsewhere and I don’t plan to spend my life on Jakku.”

“Neither of you did, if I recall. Tom had your head filled with notions of exploring the Galaxy together.” He shook his head. “That man always was a hopeless romantic. And you meant everything to him; you were probably the only person he really cared about at all aside from himself. And as much as he hated being stuck on Jakku he couldn’t have left you behind, he wanted to find danger and adventure out there, but didn’t expect it would find him first.” Using the incredibly dirty rag to wipe down the already dirty bar, he said: “It was a shame. Tom could be an arse but he didn’t deserve to die like that. What can I get for the two of you?”

“What do you have?” Harry asked.

Draco could see the other man’s internal eye roll. “Knockback Nectar. As always.”

“And what is Knockback Nectar?”

“Something you know everything about except the recipe!”

“For the sake of my friend, here.”

Ergel sighed, dropped the cloth again and rubbed the bridge of his crooked nose. “I don’t bother enough with it to really know all that much about it, I just sell what they give me, but from what I understand it’s made from some species of lichen scraped off the buttresses in the south. They pickle it in fuel barrels, I hear.” He said. “That’ll be two cans?”

“No!” Draco yelped, horrified by the thought of drinking anything like what had been described, only to have the raven clap a hand over his mouth.

“Ignore him.” Harry snickered. “We’ll take two cans.”

Ergel bent to pull two, dented oil cans from underneath the bar and picked the spigot up off the bar. “Has your friend there ever actually drank before?”

The raven looked over at Draco, hand still planted over his mouth. The blonde glared at him. Harry grinned even wider. “I’m not sure.” He said. “Probably not. Either way, he’s definitely never had something like Knockback Nectar. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.”

Another sigh. “If he dies it’s on you, not me.”

“Understood.”

Draco growled at him, unable to really do much more than that with the raven’s hand still firmly planted over his mouth. The oil cans, filled with their order of Knockback Nectar, were set in front of them with the clang of corroded metal against wood. Harry released him, picked up his can and held it towards Draco. “Cheers?”

Annoyed but not wanting to drive the little scavenger to be even more unreasonably irritating he picked up his own can and tapped it against Harry’s. The liquid inside sloshed about audibly. Harry knocked back half of the Nectar in one. Draco gazed dubiously down into his can: the black, sludgy fluid had a number of spongey particles floating in it. He could feel multiple eyes resting on him, not just Harry’s, and knew he didn’t have much other choice.

Steeling himself and pinching his nose, he attempted to mimic what the smaller male had done. No sooner had he done it did he realize that he’d made a horrible mistake; it tasted like sour spit and motor fuel, burning the back of his throat before promptly turning his lips and tongue numb. He spat it out immediately but it was too late, his teeth were buzzing at a deafening volume and he’d gone momentarily blind.

“I told you it was strong!” Harry snickered gleefully, the sound backed by the raucous laughter of the other patrons at the bar. The Uthuma to his left clapped him on the back with enough force to throw him forward onto the bar, knocking over the oil can in front of him and spilling the Nectar across the stained surface of the bar. At least now he had an excuse not to drink the rest of it. “You know, most people have enough sense to take small sips of mysterious alcohols. All you had to do was make an effort to drink it, there wasn’t any need to try and be a hero.”

Gasping a few times and managing to regain his breath the TIE Pilot glared at the other man with watering silver eyes. His vision had thankfully returned, but it was still a bit fuzzy around the edges. The numbness caused him to slur when he spoke “ha the ‘ell ca oo drin tha?”

“Why? Because I’m small? Practice and learned tolerance. Give yourself a few minutes and the numbness will go away.” Finishing off his first can Harry tapped on the bar in request for a refill. The sludge hissed into the rusted container. “Now that we’ve had a chance to satisfy our thirst shall we move on to business?”

“Business?” the man to his left repeated, squinting at him with his good eye and looking well into his fifth can of Nectar. “What sort business would tha be, little scavenger? Your kind and my kind tend ta use Starships for different things.”

“A smuggler then?”

“Who wants ta know?” the man grunted back, squinting even harder now as he stared at Draco. “’E a friend o yours? Looks damned familiar, though this sun forsaken drink makes it difficult ta remember why. Probably tha hair.” At this point the smuggler made a drunken swatting motion above his own head and almost toppled backwards off his stool. “Wha er you ere for?”

“My friend and I are looking for a ride off Jakku; we’ll tell you where but not why. Will pay well enough in rations that you won’t be interested in knowing. You can exchange them for coin with Borgin.” He said. “We’re not looking for much beyond a ballpark price; can’t be certain, after all, which of you if any will be around once we’ve stockpiled enough supplies.”

“Would all depend on where you’re going, little one.” The Uthuma regarded them with glinting eyes sunken deep into the sockets of its skull-like face. “The greater the distance the greater the price.”

Harry looked expectantly at Draco, who by then could manage a more understandable slur of “Kashyyyk.”

A number of grunts went up around the bar and the nearest few tables.

“There’s two of you; you’d have to pay not just transport but fuel and for the space you take up.” One voice said.

“And time and effort for those of us not goin tha way otherwise.” Said another.

“How much do these rations go for?”

“Depends on the sort.” Harry said, turning in his stool to face the rest of the room and leaning back against the bar. “Food packs go for about two Galleons. Med packs go for around five.”

Hissing and muttering went up among the smugglers around them before a figure of “a thousand Galleons, at least” was given. “Maybe up to three.”

“We’ll go for 1500 to 2000 just to be safe; that’ll take us most of the rest of the year.” Harry said, throwing back the rest of his second can of Nectar and sliding gracefully off his stool; to Draco’s amazement he didn’t so much as stumble. “Ready to go?”

“The sooner the better!” Draco jumped to his feet, almost tripped over his shoes, and stumbled after Harry out of the bar. The desert light was blinding and he hissed, wincing, raising a hand to shield his eyes. The heat of the day was still incredibly oppressive but it was better than being trapped in an overloud smoke filled building which smelled like Knockback Nectar and sweat. “Are we done here now?”

“Yes.” Harry told him, amused. “Come on; I’ve got some water back at the speeder that you can use to wash that taste out of your mouth.”

Small mercies. Still somewhat unsteady, Draco hurried after the little raven back down the street towards where they’d left their transportation. The Eopie was still there when they arrived and, this time, barely spared them a glance.

The back compartment of the speeder opened with the thin pop of metal and Harry bent to rummage through it. A moment later he straightened up and tossed a partially filled jug at Draco which sloshed loudly when he caught it. The blonde unscrewed the lid and swiftly washed the awful taste of Knockback Nectar out of his mouth. Spitting into the sand, frowning and handing the jug back he asked “you can’t possibly enjoy the taste of that!”

The little scavenger shrugged his narrow shoulders, smirking as he returned his shemagh to its proper order. “Acquired tolerance and acquired taste, I suppose. I’ve had a lot worse than Knockback Nectar in my day.”

“I know.” Draco drawled as the other dropped the jug back into the back compartment and pulled it closed. “I’ve had the rations here.”

“Poor sheltered little rebel,” he snickered, “I wasn’t talking about the provided rations.”

There were worse things that could be eaten that were available on the planet? Hopefully he’d manage to be lucky enough not to have to sample them before he managed to get away. “I don’t want to know,’ he said, clambering up onto the speeder in an effort to get the little raven to hurry along. “Let’s just head to Kelvin Ravine, get the water and those berries and get back to Niima before my skin burns off.”

“No one to blame but yourself,” Harry chirped, yet again, as he lifted the little droid into its proper compartment. Draco had to resist the powerful urge to elbow him in the face. “Don’t expect getting on with things to be of much help to your sunburn circumstances; round trip from here to Kelvin Ravine and back to Niima Outpost again will take the rest of the day. We’ll get back around nightfall.”

The blonde huffed, narrowing his eyes at Harry as he bounded around to the front of the speeder and climbed on. “How long until we get there?”

“How long?” The raven began counting off on his gloved fingers and then informed him, “Three hours, give or take a handful of minutes. Once we see the Ravine, pull your blaster; you’ll want it in hand because the minute the Ripper Raptors see us they’ll attack. And they’re capable of a hell of a lot more than Steelpeckers are.” The fuzzy image of a familiar, scared face flashed through his mind’s eye and Harry’s grip on the speeder’s handles tightened to white knuckled. “I’m sure you don’t want to go through having your fingers torn to ribbons again.”

“No,” Draco said sourly, “I’d prefer not to have that happen.”

The other’s snort was drowned by the starting engine. Harry pulled the speeder around and sped out of Cratertown. The scenery they passed was the same as they had that morning, while traveling out of Niima; the same as when they’d traveled to the Starship Graveyard; the same as when they’d traveled to the Sinking Fields. The same red sand. The same towering dunes. The same pale blue, cloudless sky. Everything was, infuriatingly, the same.

Draco didn’t pay that much attention to what they were passing. The direction they were headed in. He just kept staring straight over Harry’s shoulder until, finally and far off on the horizon, the dark shape of the towering Ravine rose ahead of them.

Reaching down to his belt and fumbling for a moment Draco managed to pull the blaster from his belt with a quiet click, barely audible over the engine’s roar.

“I hope you’re a good shot,” Harry shouted over the noise, “because I have to drive this thing and I can’t make use of my stun staff at the same time.”

“You don’t need to worry about my aim.” He called back. “Just keep us from crashing when these Ripper Raptor things show up.”

Harry grumbled what sounded like ‘I know how to drive’ but it was difficult to tell over the growling engine. The little raven pressed down on the accelerator, pushing the vehicle faster. No sooner had the Ravine’s jagged walls come into more detailed view did a flock of dark winged creatures rise up into the cloudless sky in a chorus of hoarse caws.

“Here they come!” Harry ducked down over the handlebars as the first Ripper Raptor dove down at them, covered in brown scales and with wings spanning six feet to either side the thing had a wickedly curved beak full of jagged teeth and thrust forward talons which ended in razor-like points. The blaster bucked in his grip when it fired, the jet of red light colliding with the beast dead on and sending it spinning to the ground with a shriek.

One down, about fifty more to go.

The craggy sides of the Ravine covered them in shadows and closed out the sky until all he could see were the birds. Harry had pushed the speeder to its full speed and was whipping around corners and obstacles abruptly enough that he almost unseated Draco several times. Unable to properly aim at the flock which was rapidly gaining on them from his twisted up position he flipped around in his seat, clinging to the speeder with his legs and hoping it would be enough to keep him from flying off.

Draco took down close to thirty of the things before the remaining flock gave the effort up for lost and retreated. Returning to their nests with the sharp flapping of leathery wings.

“That’ll be the last we see of them for today,” Harry said, “They’re not quite dumb enough to try again so soon; they won’t bother us on the way out.”

“Good to know.” Shoving the blaster back into his belt, Draco flipped back around to face the front. The speeder slowed to a more reasonable speed. A narrow offshoot rapidly approached to their right, branching away deeper into the Ravine; Harry was actively avoiding looking in its direction. As they passed Draco caught sight of a thin opening in the rock at the far end. “What’s down there?”

The set of the raven’s shoulders tensed and he turned his head enough to glare at him. For a moment Draco was certain he wouldn’t answer him, then he sighed and said: “The past.” Returning his attention to where they were going, Harry informed him, “we’ll reach the lake in a couple of minutes.”

They swung around another corner and the Ravine opened up, the sand ahead dropping into a shallow sparkling lake. Growing around the water’s edge in sparse and scattered clumps of silver-green bristles were woody shrubs of a sort which were unfamiliar to the blonde. Harry cut the engine, jumped off and rushed around to the back. The blonde followed him at a more sedate pace, reaching the back of the speeder just as the little raven lifted down the droid and popped the compartment.

“Alright, I’ve brought enough containers to hold a week’s worth of water for the two of us and a good five pounds of Tuanelberries. More than enough for us to make a good meal of tonight and to go with the Bloggin as a side; we’ll set the traps tomorrow.” He said. “I’ll handle picking the berries. Can you get the water?”

Draco looked from the empty jugs to the glittering lake and back again before raising an eyebrow. “Careful, Potter. I might mistake you for purposefully giving me the easier job.”

Yellow-green eyes blinked slowly up at him before Harry made a soft chuff of amusement and leaned his hip against the speeder, slinging his arms across his narrow chest. “I’m certain your opinion of me would insist otherwise, but I’m not a total arse,” he said, “We’ll stick around for maybe two hours if you’d like—filling those jugs shouldn’t take even half that time, and the lake is just deep enough to swim if you’re interested in cooling off.”

“And getting sunburned on the rest of my body?” He picked up the first jug as Harry pushed away.

“Just don’t expose your skin for more than thirty minutes; you’ll be fine.” The raven walked away with the container for berries in his arms and the little droid at his side.

‘Oo-bee-ooo?’

Harry shifted the empty container, looked down at B-95 and smiled. “No, I never actually intended to let him suffer; at least not completely. That would be a little bit unreasonable,” he said, “I’ll make a burn ointment tonight out of the Tuanel sprigs; it won’t take the pain away completely but he’ll be able to wear the shemagh tomorrow so it won’t get any worse.”

‘Weeoo.’

The raven couldn’t contain the sudden laugh which ripped free of him: Draco, who’d since rolled up his robes and begun wading into the shallows, looked over in confusion. “What do you mean I shouldn’t bother? He’ll still learn his lesson and I’d feel bad if I just left him in pain,” he said, “I know it’s probably what Tom would have done but, like I told him, I have a bleeding heart. Sometimes it still shows through.”

B-95 gave the binary equivalent of a grumble. Harry reached the first patch of berries and knelt in the sand, taking the lid off the container and setting it down beside him. The bush rattled as he took a dry, prickly branch in his gloved hands and began picking off the glossy mauve berries. They hit the bottom of the container with dull plunking sounds, reflecting the sun with the color of Tom’s eyes. Harry focused his gaze on the silvered leaves and thorny branches instead, stripping the pungent springs before his emotions could overwhelm him.

It wouldn’t be much longer now before he could finally have his revenge. After another handful of months he’d all but certainly leave Jakku forever: all that remained was to get a final rate of exchange from Borgin—that would be liable to be the equivalent of pulling teeth—and he’d be set. He just had to hold out a little longer.

By the time Harry had filled the container to the rim he’d made a full revolution around the lake; and Draco had finished drawing water and met him at the back of the speeder with the last of the jugs, a trail of dark footprints left behind in the sand.

“That’s everything we’ll need,” Harry said as he hefted the heavy container full of berries up into the speeder’s back compartment. “Have you had a chance to enjoy yourself? Leisure tends to be scarce around here.”

“I’d rather get out of the sun as soon as possible.” Draco grumbled, resuming the futile effort of covering his face. “Lessen the damage as much as possible.”

“Worries you won’t be as pretty after your face has swelled up and peeled?”

The blonde took a swipe at him but the little scavenger danced out of the way, laughing. “Shut it, Potter!”

“Oh, come on Draco. I was only kidding,” he said, circling around to the front and perching himself behind the handlebars. “If you’re ready to head back to Niima Outpost than we can head out now. There’s nothing I really want or need to do here so I’m not opposed to heading back; we’ll swing by the Scrap Yard on the way to get a final exchange rate so we can know for sure how long it will take us to have everything together.”

“Before I get any redder, if you don’t mind.”

Laughing, Harry revved the engine and turned the speeder around.

The sun hung on the edge of setting as they pulled up outside the Scrap Yard, the tail end of that day’s business eyeing them as they walked off with ration boxes in hand. Hopping down from the back of the speeder the little raven asked: “Coming or do you plan to stay here?”

Eyeing the front of the Scrap Yard dubiously, and Borgin leering at them from behind the little window, he shook his head. “I’d rather be seen like this by as few people as possible.”

Snorting, Harry told him to suit himself and trotted away.

Placing his clawed hands against the wooden counter Borgin leaned forward, looming over him with narrowed yellow eyes. “What do you want now, runt?”

“I only have a question, Borgin. I won’t be here long,” Harry grumbled, restraining himself from pointing out the fact that he was even less pleased to have to be there than the other was to have him. “What’s the current exchange rate on the ration boxes?”

“Exchange rate?” a wide grin split his scaly face, revealing rows of pointed teeth. “What a shame—you must have had some plan involving the coin you could have gotten. A real pity this establishment just today ended our buy-back policy on ration packs. See,” he lifted a small plank of wood and leaned it against the window, “we even have a sign. Looks like you’re never getting off this planet after all; no smuggler would be charitable enough to take you for free.”

Harry hadn’t paid much attention to the other patrons beyond their immediate surroundings while they’d been at Ergel’s Bar but hidden among the smugglers and roughnecks there must have been another scavenger, and they must have ratted him out to Borgin. But to think that the bastard would really go this far… “You’re out for me to such a degree that you’re willing to cut into your own profits just to screw me over? I’d say I’m flattered but this is ridiculous even for you!”

“I warned you about attempting to act like Riddle when you aren’t even half of what he was and never will be. If good sense won’t convince you, perhaps this will.” The chair behind him groaned as he lowered himself back into it. “But if you’re really so desperate a change back to the old policy can be arranged, for the price of the droid.”

Harry turned on his heel and stalked away, blood boiling at the sound of the other’s laughter.

“Bad rate?” Draco asked as the raven tromped towards him.

“No rate. He heard about our visit to Ergel’s and decided sacrificing his profits was worth fucking me over.”

“So we’re stuck here?” He’d be trapped on Jakku forever, or at the very least however long it too an Imperial Search Party to come looking, tormented by a tiny mad man? He was doomed. Doomed! Though whether it would be Voldemort or Harry that ultimately killed him was still up in the air.

“No. There’s another option but I really didn’t want to have to use it.”

“Why not?” Draco asked as Harry revved the engine again.

“Because I’m not the welder Tom was and don’t trust my abilities to hold up in open space, but now we don’t have a choice. The advantage, at least, is that scavenging the necessary parts to finish building it will take less time than scavenging to stockpile.”

“It?”

“We’ll talk more when we get home,” he said, pressing down on the accelerator, “It was my brother’s biggest project and his biggest secret. I don’t want anyone overhearing.” When they pulled up outside the house Harry leapt off the speeder after it had barely had the chance to stop and bolted to the back. “Help me get this inside; I’ll explain while I make the burn ointment that should help take the edge off.” A part of him was aware he was babbling but Harry didn’t care as he popped the back compartment and seized the first container he could get his hands on and he rushed inside.

They’d managed to haul the entire load inside after the better part of fifteen minutes. Harry sat curled atop his nest of fabric, grinding Tuanel leaves and water together into a foul smelling paste with a stone pestle while Draco observed him nervously from the bed.

“Being trapped on Jakku means being trapped in a life like this one. Even with certain tricks and abilities we’d perfected over years we didn’t have much in the way of good prospects. My brother wanted to explore, to see the Galaxy, but most of all he wanted the two of us to have a better life. So after we shifted professions from scavenging for money to healing he started scavenging for his own uses and began building a Starship up in the abandoned village atop Kelvin Ravine. He’d almost finished it by the time he died; I haven’t been up there in five years but I know it’s still there. The village is considered to be haunted and next to no one is brave enough to risk the rumors could be true.” Getting to his feet, Harry crossed the room and handed him the bowl. “Put this on your face. You’ll be able to wear the shemagh tomorrow without too much pain.”

“How long do you think finishing the ship will take?” His original plan might no longer be an option. If that ship didn’t have TIE Fighter controls in it he’d have a hard time piloting it anywhere. “I’ll need to take a look to make sure it’s something I even know how to pilot.”

“Tomorrow,” Harry sighed, suddenly sounding very tired. He stepped away and returned to his nest. “We’ll look it over and then start scavenging with an eye for the necessary parts. Hopefully, my questionable welding skills won’t end up killing us both.”