#That so long as she was alive Izo will always have somewhere to return to.

[koorinohebi]

Answer to Bond 10 line.

[konohanashuffle]

Okay so as we’ve seen the Star Wars fanfic I write really isn’t Star Wars fanfic so much as Star Wars: The Old Republic fanfic, but this one is pretty detached from the events of the game.

Obligatory disclaimer: I did a cursory lookup on canon jawa shit but there is virtually no canon jawa shit so I kinda just rolled with it. And I kinda don’t care very much?

Might be more to it later, but don’t hold your breath.

Sea of Sand, Sea of Stars

When the sand people come, Izo's clan is ready. Ready is practicality. Ready is refurbished blasters with most of a charge and maybe a working rifle if you have one. Ready is lookouts at every corner when the sandcrawler is on the move and twice as many when it's not. Ready is what you have to be when your path through the Dune Sea skirts the sands so close to their territory.

Ready isn't always enough.

Izo wakes to battle, disoriented and annoyed, because his shift isn't for another two hours, and Koti promised not to sneak off early this time. Koti is their best salesman, best liar. Koti even lies to the tribe, and it's made him more than a little unpopular. Koti is his best friend.

Koti's body hits the metal floor in front of Izo's pallet with a dull, wet crunch, hood slouching off his small face. Koti won’t be sneaking off early anymore.

Izo scrambles for his blaster, a shrill howl in his throat (partly anger, mostly terror), and flings himself into the chaos. Almost.

He fires off two shots before retreating. He kneels next to Koti and pulls his hood down to cover his dulled, yellow eyes. His slack, needle-toothed mouth.

It's sentiment.

It saves his life when the half of the sandcrawler behind him explodes.

--

The sand people come to kill and take what prizes they can. The gamorreans come to pick over what remains. The sands come last to cover it all.

Izo wakes to pigs, grunting and snuffling. Izo wakes to blood-smell and smoke-smell and the start of rot, to searing pain up and down his back. Izo wakes to the beating sun, gleaming through a gaping rent in the sandcrawler’s chassis.

“Anything?”

“Dead jawas. Dead sand people. They messed this up bad.”

Izo hears footsteps over the pain. Close to him. Next to his head. A spear’s butt digs into his gut and shoves.

He squeals. It’s a weak sound, but the gamorrean hears it.

“This one isn’t dead.”

The spear shoves again, and Izo claws at it -- tries to claw at it. His hand twitches weakly, and he makes a small hissing noise. The gamorrean laughs.

“What do we do with it?”

“Dunno. Kill it like the rest?”

“Sell it?” chimes in a third, more distant voice. Its suggestion is met with snorting chuckles.

“Eat it, maybe. Won’t get nothing on market.”

Izo barely has enough spark left in him to care what happens to his body before he returns to the sands, but he does know he wants to return to the sands, not stuff a pig’s fat belly. He squeals again, claws again.

They laugh. They laugh and laugh. They leave.

The one with the spear grabs him by the foot and drags him along with no consensus on his eventual fate.

Izo claws at the scored metal floor until his fingers are too sore to grip. It doesn’t take long. He bumps over broken beams and scattered salvage and his people’s corpses. By the time they reach the gamorreans’ speeder, his eyes have glazed.

They throw him in the back with their third- and fourth-hand loot, and he watches home recede into sand and gently wafting smoke.

--

Somewhere between the choking ride across the sea of sand and the searing wait outside the cantina, Izo becomes resigned to the fact that he isn’t dying, not yet.

Not dying means thirst. Hunger, too, but thirst comes first, always. He pushes a stubby arm into the loose pile of refuse the gamorreans have left him, pressing his leather-dry tongue against the backs of his teeth.

It takes some shifting -- and a little more movement than his injuries seem to think necessary -- but he finds a faintly sloshing canteen among the salvage. An accidental acquisition, but a lucky one. His people have learned never to question luck.

He drags it to his mouth and tilts it just enough to take long, slow laps of the liquid, enough to wet his tongue. He replaces the cap and lowers it as stumpy gamorrean feet make their way out of the cantina.

The one with the spear prods him, and he growls, waving him off with a flutter of his hand. It’s enough, at least, to convince him that Izo’s still a potential profit. Or meal. Or whatever.

When the speeder’s on its way in a gust of sandy dirt, Izo reaches for the canteen again. He doesn’t drink this time, but wonders. Whose life was he drinking? Which corpse does he owe an apology?

The scent’s too muddled with smoke and pig to tell.

He drinks again, apologizes to his clan in general.

--

The gamorreans, it turns out, have a dirty little stall in a dirty little market in a dirty little town. A dirty little spaceport is probably included, judging from the number of ships Izo can see flying in and out.

The gamorreans are hawking scrap and, now and then, hawking him. It’s a great joke to them. They snuffle and snort and slap their bellies, and Izo stares at their speeder with his hands in his lap and thinks of ways to disable it.

He’s come up with twenty-seven that would only require him to cut a single wire. Thirty-three that would take two. And one that would require the thermal detonator one of the pigs has on his belt.

None of them are especially likely, as they have him cuffed and chained to the stall. None of them except the one involving the thermal detonator.

He considers it.

But no. Too risky, too messy. Too many potential consequences.

One of the pigs tugs at his chain, pulling him off the ground by his cuffs to display him to a passing rodian. As far as Izo can tell, the rodian doesn’t even look, and he’s dropped like a sack of so much, well, scrap.

He gnaws at his restraints for a moment, venting frustration more than accomplishing anything, and it earns him a kick.

“Those cuffs are worth more than you, desert rat.”

“Pig,” he says in response. “Fat pig, fat stinky pig.”

The gamorrean doesn’t understand him, not in his native dialect, but kicks him again anyway.

It’s hours of this, watching the sun shrink the minimal shade the stall grants him, imagining the speeder exploding in a shower of wire and metal. Jawas’ bodies are more efficient than most at retaining moisture, but he’s parched and hungry and the canteen is nearly empty, hidden under his robes.

It’s hours of being hauled up by his chains and shaken, kicked to make sure he’s still alive, of weakly hissing “pigs” as his eyes begin to glaze. The entirety of his back is a single, dull throb, burn and infection and no shaman to salve it away.

It’s hours before she stops in front of him, staring down with hands on her hips, backlit and glowing.

“How much?” she asks, and the gamorreans snuffle, at first confused as to what she’s attempting to purchase.

“Him,” she clarifies, pointing. “The jawa. He’s for sale, right?”

“Oh! Yes, yes!” It’s the pig with the spear, suddenly bright and cheery. “We’re taking offers.”

“Fifty.”

The gamorrean is, for a moment, taken aback. “One hundred,” he counters, cautious now and frowning. “Took a lot of effort to get him, you know.”

“Please, he’s obviously damaged goods. Try to tell me he wasn’t a lucky find in a wreck.”

Izo stirs, but he hasn’t got enough energy to do more than listen to them bargain down his worth. His fingers clasp loosely at the canteen.

“Seventy-five.” He spreads his fat hands and attempts to put a sympathetic look on his tusked and snouted face. “I can’t go lower, you understand.”

The spear-pig is extra bad at bargaining. Koti would be embarrassed for him.

“Fifty,” she repeats, and Izo feels a pressure against his mind that nearly jolts him from his lassitude. “He’s not worth more than that.”

Her posture hasn’t changed, hands haven’t moved, but the atmosphere shifts, subtle, and the spear-pig goes slowly, oddly slack.

“Fifty,” he agrees. “He’s not worth more than that.”

“Good deal,” she says, and tosses the credits on the rough metal of the stand.

Izo is vaguely aware of being pulled to his feet, of tottering along after her at the end of a length of chain. He’s vaguely aware of falling, of hearing worried noises from his new owner.

“Shit! Crap! Hey -- you all right?”

He tastes dust on his tongue as the light fades.

--

He wakes up.

At first, that’s surprise enough.

He wakes up in a cool, dim place with a hum of machinery all around him. It’s a soothing lull at first, like home, but that immediately makes it less soothing, because it’s not like home at all.

Home is (home was (home is)) hot and loud with baking metal and the smoky rattle of a jury rigged engine, every thump and clank familiar. The regular pop of Oka’s solution to their overheating problem. The bump in the treads where Ziz replaced one of the slats with scrap from the hood an old speeder.

This hum is like silk -- Izo’s felt silk once, soft and smooth and alien and Koti took it away to make a sale -- and silk is scarier than the banging wheeze when they broke down two miles outside sand people territory.

Izo jolts. His back sets up a howl, but even that is muted and cool, and his hair stands on end under the fabric of his robes. He remembers now. He remembers being bought and walking until he fell and then “oh!” says a voice.

“You’re awake, hey --”

He hisses. His feet push underneath him and his toes dig in, and he sees her.

“Wait,” she says, “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Even Koti couldn’t have told a bigger lie. His skin prickles, and his hair fluffs, and his body tenses just that little bit more.

“Um,” she says. “Is your back okay? The doc said you’d need the kolto packs changed out at least once --”

She sounds like she means it. She looks like she’s worried. But when she moves to stand up, he’s gone. His body twists, and his feet hit the floor with a metallic thud, propelling him out the door at a frantic, pain-hobbled pace.

“Wait! Aw, come on --”

He hears a gusty sigh and the creak of her weight settling back in the chair before he’s out of earshot in the dim, twisting corridors of the ship.

He gets lost immediately.

He gets lost immediately, but he knows machines -- he knows energy conduits and maintenance corridors and how to follow the pulse of life to its heart.

The ship is so cold.

Not like his sandcrawler. Not like his desert. The rolling dunes flash before his eyes and he stops, curling himself against the wall. He probably won’t see his desert again.

He’ll probably be cold for the rest of his life.

His fingers press into metal and push him away from the wall. He goes deeper into the ship’s bowels.

Truthfully, though, there isn’t much deeper to go. It’s a small ship -- tiny -- a freighter not made to carry much freight, a vessel built to require only a single pilot.

The blast of heat from the engine room is welcome and incongruous -- something’s broken, something’s not quite right -- but for now he doesn’t care. For now he finds the darkest corner of the room and huddles there, eyes fixed on the open doorway.

--

She finds him, of course, not more than an hour after his flight, and for a minute or two she stands in the arch of the engine room door, pressing the heel of her hand into her eye.

“Hey,” she says, and he watches her, two wide, glowing eyes in a patch of shadow, and she rubs her eye again. Frankly, she looks exhausted.

“Hey,” she says again. “You left this.”

She holds the canteen in her outstretched hand.

“It seemed important to you, so I’m just gonna leave it here.” She gives it a little shake, and he hears a little slosh, then another as she drops into a squat, setting it at the top of the ramp.

She scrubs a hand across the bridge of her nose.

“Look, those bandages need to get changed, so.” She breaks off with a snort and a small laugh. “Yeah, just. Whenever you want that done, let me know, all right?”

She straightens, then, lifting her arms into a long, weary stretch. He hears her back pop once, then again.

“See ya,” she says, tossing an absent wave over her shoulder as she leaves.

He waits until her footsteps have receded, faded, disappeared. Then he waits some more.

Once he’s sure -- not sure sure, but sure enough -- he makes a hurried, limping dash up the ramp and back down and a stumble on the way back to his corner. He clasps the canteen to his chest and slouches, scenting it -- home, smoke, death, pig, and now human -- before he opens it and drinks the rest.

The last of the desert’s milk.

He sings softly afterward. Songs of home, songs of lament. Songs of mourning. His small fingers cap the canteen, and he sings his clan to the long night.

--

She brings food twice a day for two days, leaves it at the top of the ramp without a word and walks away.

The time he guesses, without the twin suns to tell him day from dark, and on the second he learns that the lone pilot is not so alone on her ship.

A patter of footsteps betrays the others first, then a babble of young voices. Two. Close to his engine room, then closer still.  

He hunches, but where is there to run?

But then, her footsteps, clear and crisp -- her voice, sharp and authoritative.

“Micah! Ciera!”

The other two go still all at once.

“What did I tell you? Leave him alone.”

“But I just --” The first, a boy-child, pleading.

“We just wanted to see him.” The second, a girl-child, placating.

A boy-child. A girl-child. Her children. He watches their shadows play against the wall as she catches their shoulders and turns them away from the engine room.

“Too bad.” She starts to march them up the hall. “Leave him alone.”

After a beat, he barely hears, “and I know you two haven’t touched your lessons today,” followed by twin “awwwwww”s in chorus.

On the third day, she stops at the top of the ramp, and she stays.

--

Rory likes to think she’s patient. Twin children with a firm grasp on the Force’s manifest applications would seem to make it a necessity. But when the third day passes with only the barest sign that her new passenger exists, she decides it’s time to stop hanging around in Tatooine orbit.

She’s barely going to be on time for her next job without another day of giving him space.

So she walks to the engine room with food in one hand and a change of kolto packs in the other, and she squats in the entrance, realizing shortly afterward she hasn’t planned exactly how she’s going to convince the spooky jawa to come out.

She sets the food down and uses that hand to scrub wearily at her face.

“Hey,” she says, for lack of a better beginning. “I brought your dinner.”

She looks at the tray -- it’s the same as ever, dried rations and rehydrated … well, rehydrated something. Typical spacer fare. She’s not sure it’s all that good for him -- what his dietary needs even are -- but she shoves the tray down the ramp and it skids to a halt partway into the room.

The kolto packs she plops on the floor next to her.

“Brought the kolto, too. I really need to look at your injuries, if that’s all right.”

It’s apparently not all right.

The only thing that indicates she’s not talking to empty air is the ball of tension and living energy she can sense behind the pipes in the back right corner.

After a few moments more of silence, she leans back until her weight is resting on her backside instead of her knees and ankles. She stretches her legs out in front of her. Sighs.

“Look,” she says. “I didn’t mean to trap you on my ship. I didn’t even mean to take you offplanet.”

The tension in the corner balls up tighter.

“No, I mean --” She pulls her knees up and rests her arms on them. “I was gonna just let you go. You know, take you to the edge of town. I didn’t know you were in such bad shape, and then, er, I couldn’t just leave you with the medic.”

She also recalls the medic was adamant about not letting her.

“And that still stands,” she adds. “I’ve gotta break orbit today. Appointments to keep. But I can take you back down and get you home to your clan or whatever.”

Silence again. For a moment, she’s sure even that won’t get an answer, but --

“Izo’s clan is dead,” says the corner, more slowly and quietly than she’s ever heard jawa trade language spoken.

He’s edged out from behind the pipes, watching her with glittering, yellow eyes. One small hand grips the nearest of them, nails scratching the metal.

“Izo has no home.”

Izo, she learns shortly, is his name -- Izo of Barren Ridge in the Great Sand Sea -- and between the sand people and the gamorreans, Barren Ridge in the Great Sand Sea is down to a handful of elderly and children, who will likely disperse to other clans the next time they gather.

“I’m sorry,” Rory says around the sudden burning in her throat. His grief is keen and dull at the same time, a wound sealing around the blade that cut him, and she closes off her stretched-out senses, muting the feedback.

Even so, she can find nothing else to say.

“Do you want to go back anyway?” she asks at last.

He hunkers down. His head dips, the edge of his hood drooping over his eyes, and for a moment she’s worried she’s upset him, but a quick brush up against his emotions reveals he’s only thinking. Deeply.

She leaves him to it, tipping her head back to let her own gaze drift ceilingward. It’s quiet for a while, with only the hum and chrr of the engine, low and even. Soothing.

She lets her senses relax, easing them out across the ship. Izo’s still a tight ball of thoughtful energy, and there are Micah and Ciera in their cabin, their thoughts intertwined in the way they have been from birth. They look up at her touch -- ‘look up’ -- and return that mental pressure with a tickle, with a giggle, and she smiles.

Then Izo stirs, and she retreats with a snap, straightening to meet his sudden, intent gaze.

“Izo,” he begins, thoughtful as ever, “does not want to go back.”

“At all?” is her immediate, blank response.

“Not now,” Izo says, one hand reaching up to tug at the top hem of his hood, down and down, but not quite over his eyes. “Izo will miss his desert. But Izo has no home now. Not in the desert. Not here.”

He pauses, fidgeting at his hood again, and Rory gets the sense that he’d be chewing his lip if that were a mannerism his species indulged in.

“Izo does not want to go back. Not now.” He stops, hesitates. “Not yet.” Then, even slower: “But where can he go?”

Rory has an answer to that, and she almost lets it spill out of her mouth without thinking about it, but she bites down on the impulse, relaxing into a cross-legged posture and frowning.

“There’s a whole galaxy of places you can go,” she points out, and the hood wags, caught between a nod and a shake of his head. “But a lot of ‘em aren’t going to treat you a lot better than Tatooine.”

Don’t. Practicality rattles at the back of her mind. Don’t you dare. Cost analysis and rationing and safety concerns join the chorus. Don’t you do it don’t you dare don’t you fucking --

“You could always stay here,” she says, and finds herself without a follow-up.

The hood tilts. Yellow eyes blink.

“I mean --” She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, sighs. Commits to it. “I get around a lot. You can see plenty of planets, maybe find somewhere you like. Or, whenever you feel like you’re ready … I can take you back to Tatooine.”

He watches her for a moment more. Gauging. Probably frowning.

“Izo can stay,” he says at last.

“Yes.”

“What must Izo pay?”

“Pay?” She drums her fingers against her knees. “Um, nothing?”

The hood waggles adamantly. “Izo will help,” he says. “Izo can fix. Build. Izo will fix your engine.”

“I --” Rory is still fumbling for a response when the small figure finally steps out of the shadows, marching past the food tray to stand in front of her. “Sure,” she says, as his small, paw-like hand extends toward her. “Guess I can use another mechanic.”

She takes his hand, hesitates.

“What’s wrong with my engine?”

There’s no flash of teeth beneath the hood, but she feels him grin anyway, gripping her hand once before turning to go for the food tray.

“Izo will fix,” he says.