Fanfiction inspired by Ammie Hawk's Shattered Pawn and Hades27's A Slave's Freedom
Some of the characters are OOC.
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns Harry Potter and Gundam Wing AC is probably owned by KÅichi Tokita.
The expanse of blue sky from the window of the shuttle from Earth up to the Colonies was the most amount of sky that Harry had seen in his entire life. Having been a slave for all of his teenage life, the only sky he really remembered was when was first bought by his previous Master seven years ago and the sky had been dark and raining down in sheets then. This sky, the blue expanse that Harry imagined the ocean to look like, was something so amazing that Harry had never even imaged it in his dreams. Fluffy pink and yellow colored clouds stretched out across the line where Earth met the edge of space and soon enough, the only thing that Harry could see was the dark black of space up ahead.
Softly sighing in disappointment, he leaned the side of his head against the window and pulled the blanket over his chest where it had fallen tangled over his arm. Harry and the rest of the slaves that had been attached to his Master's household were on the shuttle to the space transfer station that had been built in the years after the war. From there, they were to be sold as assets from his Master's household and the money from their sale given to the bank in help with his former Master's incredible debt. How the 98-year-old man had been able to avoid paying his taxes for the last seventy years Harry would never know. It was actually quite the bit of luck that the slaves were being sold away- any of his Master's sons or grandsons could have taken control of the household and that would have been a disaster, not that it hadn't been that way basically the last couple of years. Harry shivered, snuggling as much as he could under the blanket. No, when his Master had started going senile and his sons and grandsons had come to take over the house- that had been the worst time of his life. He glanced around at the couple of other slaves he could see. Yes, it was entirely luck that none of them would ever be in the service of the Smither Family.
Closing his eyes as the lights dimmed in the shuttle, he could hear the gentle hum of the engines and the whispered murmurs of the other slaves. Harry had been one of the first slaves ever in the Earth sphere, shown to the world by the black collar that adorned him as a strip of black metal skin at his collar bone. The first slaves had basically been branded- the skin around their necks had been cut off and a metal collar made especially to fuse with the leftover muscle of the neck was attached, creating a slave collar inset in skin. It was originally used to prevent slaves from ever finding a way out of their collar to freedom, but when they realized that gundanium metal was never going to come off unless the Master consented, the construction of the collars became looser. The newer ones were like a traditional collar, circling the neck with a clasp in the back that snapped open when the slave's end of captivity was reached.
Harry would never be free. It had taken him three years of waking up every day to agonizing and crushing depression to finally realize that whoever had branded him had not wanted him to be free. His Master had been nice, if old and senile, but he had always been treated as a slave and he always would. The crushing weight of the idea of eternal slavery really wasn't present anymore, just the ever present numbness of this fact. It placed him at a different place among his fellow slaves, just a step above. None of them had the branded collars, only those light-weight ones that marked them as temporarily enslaved. They would be free and only knew of slavery for a little while- maybe five or ten years.
Harry had envied them once. Now he stood cool and distant and they kept their distance, unable and unwilling to interact with him. It was almost comical because as the slave that had been attached to the Smither household, he had previously had jurisdiction over all of them. He had seen many slaves come and go as their time dictated and none of them had wanted a repeat experience so he had never seen them again with collars. Likely, after the selling, he would never see any of them again, with or without collars. At most, some of them might be a slave for the next fifteen years if they didn't have a repeat offense and then they would be on their free way. Harry snuggled deeper into the shuttle's cushioned seats. No, he didn't really envy them anymore. They just went about their lives waiting for the day they would be free and never taking in the now. Harry only ever had the now. Only the now.
He hoped that his new Master would be kinder than those who had owned him the past couple of years. Anyone would be better than them.
The transfer station was bigger than the last time that Harry had been here. He wasn't sure why that was, having come here when he was a mere eleven years old, but it seemed bigger. Wider or more spacious somehow, he thought. However, there were definitely a lot more people than the last time he was here as he was pushed into a line at the back of the stage, staring at all the crowd that stared back at them.
As soon as the transport shuttle had landed, they had been taken in a line through the crowd of shops and businesses that lined the slave block. Sometimes, Harry had heard, they keep the slaves at the auction stage for the night if the crowd isn't large enough to attract a large enough sum for the slaves being bought. This wasn't going to be the case today and as soon as they had reached the stage, they had been lined up across the stage in rows, those with the collars with the least time remaining at the front, those with branded collars at the back; from least expensive to most expensive. Harry was only in a row with two others with branded collars, both of whom looked to be over thirty years old and hardened from prison.
It had been exactly the reason of full prisons that had sparked the first interest in slaves and collars. Tested on prison inmates first, the system was proved economically viable enough for use on the rest of the prisons. As they were going through a war at the time, the amount of slaves into the future weren't going to be a problem. However, the number of those original collars, the Branded, only was in the hundreds, not the thousands or ten-thousands that the other collars numbered. Harry didn't need to look at the faces of the other two Branded, they were the same as he was. Harry had actually met several other Branded in his short life, but he had never been acknowledged by any of them, just as he never acknowledged them. Life was long enough, none of them needed to be reminded of their place.
Harry watched as those that had been part of the Smither household were pulled out of line by the dozens of slavers when their row moved up as various Master's bought them. The technology of the slave system here was more advanced than even seven years ago. Every slave was entered into the slavers database as soon as they entered the area as their collar was scanned by the various towers that existed all over Earth and the colonies. Those attending the auction were allowed to tap into that database through whatever source of technology they were using and determine who they wanted to buy when the row came up. Harry knew that many of those potential Masters had seen him and the other two Branded, but the Masters weren't allowed to access Harry and the other two's information until their row came up.
It was strange, Harry thought as the next row stepped forward to be bought, how quiet it actually was. There were people talking as they stood below the stage and squabbled over various things as the shops that lined the slave market hadn't closed at the start of the auction, but he had always remembered the slavers yelling out names and prices and attributes to each slave as they went up. The silence to the buying and selling of humans was something almost startling. The practice had become so commonplace that it seemed like even the slavers themselves had become as numb as him.
As the row in front of them moved off, those not sold to be brought back again tomorrow or bought offline in the pens, Harry and the other two instinctively stepped forward. He could see all the faces blending into each other, the tops of their heads like some sort of multi-colored sea of grass springing up from a similar sea of eyes and noses. Out of the corner of his eye he could see a rotating replica of him and the other two on the side screens, counting out statistics and prices as those who wanted a forever-slave bid without remorse on three lives and perpetual obedience.
The other two were eventually led off as their sale price was reached, but Harry stood there for a longer period of time trying to ignore as the side price kept escalating, numbers being replaced by each other so fast that Harry could hardly keep track of them. He knew that at eighteen, having been a slave already for seven years and going to be one for a while more, he was worth a lot of money. The first time he had been sold, he had been young enough that he was not allowed by law to be auctioned off on stage and had been bought by a wealthy man at the rich sum of fifteen thousand credits. If Harry had been calculating right, he had just surpassed that amount about a minute ago.
The number wasn't important, but the owner was. Many people started to disperse as they realized that this might go on for a while. Harry didn't actively try to search for his new Master (if the bidding ever stopped), but his eyes drifted blankly over those left watching the stage or intently scanning their electronic devices. How many of them left actually bidding on him was unknown, but he figured at least two or three of them considering how rapidly the counter was still increasing. At least one of the bidders was a group of people in the back shaded under a variety of black umbrellas.
The slavers next to him shifted nervously as the numbers continued to increase, at least forty times as much as he was originally sold for. Some of those that had left had decided to return and the sound of people talking louder and louder drifted up to him through the fog he found himself in. Surely, Harry thought, I'm not worth as much as they're spending. There must be something else going on here that's causing this spike. Harry figured that those muttering around the stage also thought there was something else going on here and eyed him speculatively. He stared coolly back at them until they looked away, unnerved by the blank gaze. It wasn't every day that a slave could stare back at someone and not be reprimanded for it.
All of a sudden there was a significant increase in the sound from everyone around the stage and even a few cries of outrage. The slaver next to him who had faced the board the entire time sucked in a breath. Harry was almost afraid to look. His eyes betrayed him as they darted to the side for a split second as he was led off the stage, but he caught the number. Fifteen million credits. A thousand times he was bought for merely seven years ago. Harry hadn't felt this much shock since he had first been branded and shivered involuntarily. There was something beyond the scope of simply owning a slave that had caused his price to be that much. Harry didn't want to know how much they'd take it out on him. Maybe his death would come early from this new Master.
The slaver house attached to the side of the stage wasn't very big, just large enough to accommodate the number of slaves they normally received and a couple tellers who made sure the money went through and the new Master understood the contract presented upon them through their new slave. Usually this was taken care of through technology, but sometimes there was a new Master who had never before owned a slave and they had to go through this process manually.
However, as soon as Harry stepped inside led along by two slavers, he knew that whoever had bought him, at such a price, had owned slaves before. All of them were waiting, the slavers standing off to the side awkwardly as if in the presence of someone who needed to be waited on. One of the men was tall and dark skinned with a beard that Harry before didn't know could exist on a human. He carried an umbrella under his arm and a shorter, straight-backed blonde man stood next to him, facing away and talking quietly into his phone. Harry's eyes drifted over the rest assembled, all of them in protective stances around the younger blonde man, hands on their sidearm.
The head slaver stood between Harry and the dark skinned man. They stood in silence for a minute before the blonde shut his phone with a snap and turned back around. Light blue eyes and fair features caught his eye for a second before he bowed his head. If anything, Harry wasn't going to be rude to the man who owned him many lifetimes over, even if it was the last thing he did. For all the money that he was bought for, Harry had never felt more worthless in his entire life.
"Mr. Winter," the slaver started, "as the transaction is complete and the papers are in order, you're free to take your purchase with you." He shifted nervously for a second and Harry watched the shake in the man's knees grow. "Due to the amount paid for it and potential hard feelings from the other bidders, may I have you and your men escorted to the port-." The head slaver was cut off and there was silence for a second. Harry didn't dare lift his head up to see what was going on, and just when Harry thought the head slaver might pee himself, a voice spoke out.
"Please leave us." Harry heard the head slaver quickly bow and round up his employees until it was just Master, his entourage, and the slave.
As drilled into his head by his lifetime as a slave, Harry dropped to his knees, placed his hands in a triangle shape on the floor and bent his back and placed his forehead below his triangle. It was all done in a single smooth motion before he could offend Master, and Harry could feel the stillness that his actions had place in the company of Master.
There was a harsh whisper that Harry didn't quite make out before there was a rumble from who Harry could only assume to be the tall man. "Your Master greets his slave. You will swear allegiance to him through the Vow now."
There was another harsh whisper, and Harry waited a second to see if there was a name forthcoming, as there should have been, but there wasn't. Was he to Vow to everyone here? With no name, there was nothing to bind him to his new Master; it wouldn't reset the branded collar.
"Slave," the deep voice came again, impatient this time, and a harsh whisper from the other, maybe his blonde Master. Harry realized dimly in the back of his mind that the whisper was in a language he didn't know. Then there was suddenly someone kneeling next to him and a hand on the back of his neck where his branded collar met the top of his shirt and even though Harry had been trained not to flinch, there was a minute twitch under the hand that his Master surely noticed.
"Now you will say the Vow," intoned the deep voice, and the ritual started. His Master's burning hand on the back of his neck, and the cold concrete under his body, words tumbled out of his mouth as if pulled from his very soul in a language he didn't know and had never known but had always known the words to. There was a deep hollow in the center of his chest spread as the sibilant sounds dripped from his lips in tune with the blood that suddenly dripped from his nose onto the floor until it was hard for Harry to breathe. A hand reached for the blood and then the ritual was over and Harry could breathe again.
Master's hand left his neck and Harry struggled to catch his breath. There was a click of boots as someone walked swiftly away and it was almost five minutes before his breathing returned to normal. There was still blood dripping on the floor from his nose, but he knew that it was a matter of time before it stopped. A hand gripped his upper arm and pulled him to his feet. Harry kept his gaze on the floor, but could see the bodies standing around him, but not the one of his Master. That must have been the sound of someone walking away.
"Now we can go," came the rumble voice. A large hand lifted up his head and a cloth was dabbed against his nose, wiping off the blood. Harry kept his eyes lowered and there was a sigh before he was handed the cloth and was marched off towards the entrance.
Harry wondered what was going to happen now. He now had a Master who seemingly didn't want him and then there was his Master's large protector who was harsh one minute and kind the next. And he still didn't know what was going on with his purchase. He cursed his former, dead Master in his head for a second before they stepped into the light. Damn that old man for dying. And damn himself for killing the old bastard.