give me six hours to cut down a tree, and I will spend four sharpening the axe.

CHAPTER ONE

ABRASION

abrasion –– is the process of scuffing, scratching, wearing down, marring, or rubbing away. it can be intentionally imposed in a controlled process using an abrasive. abrasion can be an undesirable effect of exposure to normal use or exposure to the elements.


Vader hadn't been back to Tatooine in twenty-three years. All it took was two hyperjumps, an hour of dogfighting, and a lucky shot to send him back, careening towards the sands.

Right before he crashed into the dunes, a bitter thought crossed his mind in his mother's voice: what comes from the sands will return to it.

The CRUNCH was the most gut-wrenching sound he had heard in a long time. A wing caught on the ground with a spray of sparks and sands as the entire pod went tumbling down after, lights and alarms screaming as Vader futilely tried to yank the TIE into submission with the Force. Concentration slipped through his fingers like water as something punctured his armor––at his arm? Chest? Leg? He didn't know––. Before everything went mercifully black, he caught sight of the desertscape, as barren and stark through red lenses as it had been at nine, nineteen.

Not even rage, warring against the drag of sleep, could wash out the acrid, biting sting: he'd die here. Not at Obi-Wan's hands, not on Mustafar, not even by his master's grace.

Back on Tatooine.

Vader considering, in his fading moments, another thought: with his mother. Shouldn't that be enough? Perhaps he should wear a smile on his dying breath…

Vader didn't die.

He knew this, sharply, suddenly, furiously: the cracked red of his ocular receptors was hit with the bleak, brackish light of glow-lamps hanging just out of his vision. The crooked HUD was struggling to compensate for the light; he heard the whine of his respirator struggling, the armor heavily weighing him down on a long, steel table––

––not a medbay. Not the Exactor, the Fortress, or even the cursed Death Star––

Vader blindly seized up with the Force everything he could find; in the back of his mind he felt a surge of relief and grime gratification as something rattled and banged, someone cursed––someone?

"Shit!" he heard the same voice. It came in stretched and buzzing through the damaged receptors. He reached up, and up, the weight of his prosthetic behind it and ready to––too slow, too slow, Vader thought, panicked gnawing on the edges of his mind, seconds too late––"Stop moving!"

Everything went black.


Vader didn't die.

He knew this, sharply, suddenly, furiously: the cracked red of his ocular receptors was hit with the bleak, brackish light of glow-lamps hanging just out of his vision. The crooked HUD was struggling to compensate for the light; he heard the whine of his respirator struggling, the armor heavily weighing him down on a long, steel table––

––not a medbay. Not the Exactor, the Fortress, or even the cursed Death Star––
Vader blindly seized up with the Force everything he could find; in the back of his mind he felt a surge of relief and grime gratification as something rattled and banged, someone cursed––someone?

"Shit!" he heard the same voice. It came in stretched and buzzing through the damaged receptors. He reached up, and up, the weight of his prosthetic behind it and ready to––too slow, too slow, Vader thought, panicked gnawing on the edges of his mind, seconds too late––"Stop moving!"

Everything went black.


Vader lived.

He came back around, slowly, this time: slowly enough that he felt the movements of hydrospanners and wrenches deep in the mechanical guts of his control box.

The Force froze the air at Vader's command. Lucid, this time, as he raised arched his neck as much as he could to capture the gaze of the intruder. The lamps flickered in the already dark room, the spanner's whirring froze, finally––finally––he heard the man's breath catch as Vader twisted it in his throat.

"I don't need to move to kill you."

The vocoder wasn't damaged. Much. There was an echo at the end, but it got message more than across.

"Funny," the man rasped out. Despite the slow purpling around his throat, tighter and tighter and tighter, do you want to know what it feels like not to breathe, his hands were steady around his tools. A vein popped in his eye as he drove the spanner like a lance through something in Vader and everything went white. "I don't, either."

Alarms screamed at him across the HUD as Vader released the man with a roar, who went stumbling back down off the slab, but Vader's control of the Force abandoned him as feverishly grasped at it like he used to grab his mother's skirts.

Vader sucked a breath––or tried to––but the respirator relentlessly poured oxygen in. He laid there, stiff and immobile and docile as a kitten, as the man stood up, and Vader could feel his grim satisfaction.

"I'll kill you for this," Vader promised.

"Sure," said the man, flippantly, "but for now, stay put."

Vader could do nothing, frothing with rage that could only escape in artificial breaths, but watch as the man crouched on the slab next to his prone body. He was inches from Vader's grip, but something that even the Force could barely touch arrested his every movement from reaching up and snapping his neck.

The man worked diligently at his control box, but didn't touch––wisely, Vader thought sourly––whatever had debilitated him. It was maybe minutes, maybe hours, but soon the white echoes of pain faded from his gaze and the HUD calmed. Vader could make him out more clearly even in the low light.

He was young, the mechanic, Vader realized. Maybe younger than he thought. A tool belt was slung around waist, different size hydrospanners nearly spilling out of the pouches, and the pockets of his mechanic's overalls, running up and down his legs and jutting out above his boots, were stuffed with stray bolts and screws. Even his tall boots had spare, frayed wires slipping out the top.

The mechanic's overalls were tied off at the waist. He wore just a singlet and a rag slung around his neck as a poor excuse for a scarf. Protective goggles were pushed up into untamed curls that looked as oil-stained as his rags.

If he noticed Vader stared, the mechanic didn't seem to be bothered. He kept his eyes at his work, clips holding a bundle of wires tight above the shell of his control panel as he worked the spanner.

It was his arms that caught Vader's attention. His hands were gloved––sensible for a mechanic––but his arms were bound in once-white rags and leather up till the elbows. More tools snuck out the various pouches in the bindings––and the handle of at least one knife.

He was most definitely still on Tatooine.

In fact, if he tilted his head back, he could even catch a slash of the harsh suns forcing through the rags thrown over them. But Vader didn't dare take his gaze off his mechanic.

Usually, for maintenance, he had been painfully conscious. But he'd never been in a position to observe, and usually with a much less obliging droid mechanic. Now, Vader watch with rapt attention what he could see; he didn't know the extent of the damage, but it most have been a lot for the boy to be able to have get so deeply into his systems.

The mechanic spliced a series of wires back together, and Vader's shuttering HUD suddenly lit up with information, clear and crystal-bright.

The boy didn't even look back to check on the helmet and see if it had worked. That was when Vader knew the mechanic was good.

His skill wouldn't his life––now he was more of a threat than ever that he had been so close to Vader's systems––but perhaps Vader would gift him a painless death. Life on Tatooine had mostly likely been punishment enough.

Unaware to Vader's thoughts, the mechanic simply shut the control panel, screwed it tight, and sliced open his left forearm.

"Where are we." He would wring as much information out of the boy before he killed him.

"Tatooine." The mechanic's hands didn't falter as he worked open a bunch of wires outside the frame of his skeleton.

"Where?"

"You're an off-worlder," the mechanic remarked, eyes still down, "I don't think it matters to you."

"And how do you know that?" Vader demanded. He was more curious than he wanted to admit. Did the mechanic recognize him as Darth Vader, all the way out here on Tatooine? Or simply an Imperial?

"I pulled you out of that ship myself," he replied matter-of-factly.

The slightest bit of unnerving crawled up Vader's mechanical spine as the mechanic spliced open a series of wires. Those were his connecting nerves: that should have hurt. But Vader didn't even feel the slightest pinch.

Anyone on any planet should not have been so…nonplussed. Everyone had opinions on the Empire, good or bad, even as backwater as Tatooine. It was frankly impossible that Vader had crash-landed in front of the only un-politic person in the entire galaxy. And even less so that anyone would show enough mercy to Darth Vader to disconnect his nerves before yanking them out.

Vader's intrigue won out over his good sense. The man would be dead soon, Vader assured himself. There was no one to witness this but him and a ghost.

"Selling me for scrap?" he asked acerbically as the mechanic tossed the bundle of wires to the floor.

Finally, the mechanic looked up at him. His eyes were pale and face unamused. He had a sharp jaw and a strong, straight nose, but looked too fresh-faced for anyone on Tatooine.

"Not nearly," he said. He jerked his chin towards the arm. "This is almost twenty years old. Even for Tatooine, that's shit scrap."

Vader breathed out. He still couldn't do anything.

He stood up on the slab as he wiped his gloves on a rag, avoiding the lamp by sheer instinct. The mechanic stepped off and down, leaving his back wide open to Darth Vader who had a lightsaber still attached to his hip.

Vader traced his movements as best he could with his limited range of vision. He didn't have to wait long before he came back with––an arm.

Not his, and certainly not Imperial regulation. Vader could see the imperfect soldering, and definitely a homemade mix of durasteel with something else; the wires had all been stripped to be replaced with white, and Vader could see the detail of individual labelling.

In the mechanic's other hand was a saw and a .

Vader's breath didn't speed up. It couldn't. But his respirator whined to keep up with his beating heart.

"Don't look," the mechanic said, tone even, "this won't be pretty."

Vader roared as he thrashed against whatever held him down.

"Not again," the mechanic snapped, dropping the arm and the saw next to Vader with a heavy thud. The Force reached out and––


The boy dies.

Vader woke up tasting his blood on his lips. The mechanic's blood would be on the air soon, and that would have to satisfy him. Until then––

"You're awake," interrupted the dead man. "Good. Now get out."

Vader sat up––unheeded and unimpeded.

The vocoder didn't let him gasp, but that was what it was. His limbs––all four of them––were lighter, limber; he could feel the poles and rods that had attached to his shoulder to support the weight of the left arm's durasteel had been removed. His replacement knee joints moved without creaking and pain; the steel-enforced hip maneuvered freely.

His padding had been torn to shreds and his cape was little more than a tear. Through it, he stretched out his arms––moving freely, easily, lighter than in decades––and see four, sleek replacements of some strange durasteel hybrid. His skeletal limbs were chrome-gray with a twisting of only a dozen white, slim, labelled wires, tied off together in neat bunches.

The weight. Vader's head nearly spun at the lightness on his chest. The cavity where the control box had been was nearly gone; the box was flush to his skin and felt emptied of wires and metal. The HUD––clearer than ever––was reporting positives on all signs, except for nutrition. His oxygen was clear and easy.

Suddenly the metal man was once again as much man as metal.

"What did you do."

Vader's voice thundered through the workshop. It barely deserved the name: the roof was low and sloping, Vader's helmet brushing the top, and the oblong shape was a mishmash of duracrete and stone. Every spare surface was littered with as many tools as its master had stuffed away. The two small slits of windows, covered in the same rags as the one the mechanic wore as a scarf, gave as much light as the dim glow-lamps. A faded green tarp hung over a door, the wind ruffling the bottom and brushing sand in across the bare, but clean, floor.

"I fixed you," answered the mechanic, back to Vader. He was sat on a stool, hunched over the only proper table in the workshop, goggles down and welder in hand.

"You––you––" Vader struggled for the words, struggled for the rage, because the only other person who had cared enough to resuscitate him piece by piece, screw by screw, inch by inch, was his master. He had long given up his body to the service of the Empire, but it was the Empire's, not this Tatooinian junkrat. "You changed me."

The mechanic dropped his welding and turned around on his stool, pushing up his goggles into his hair. His eyes narrowed in what

"I dragged you in here three days ago half-dead," said the mechanic, "because your life-support suit was doing it's fuckin' best to try and kill you. That thing's a piece'a shit, and it's ancient. I'm not a doctor. 'M just a mechanic. I fixed what was broken…or bad, I guess."

The mechanic waited for just a moment. Vader couldn't answer that.

The mechanic turned back around to the desk.

Vader stood there, in a new body, facing the man who had gave it to him, slackjawed and stunned with fury for lack of anything else. He wanted to bend something until it broke, until he could pick up the pieces and make sense of what had been there with what was left. But the only answers were left in his new sculptor.

"How did you stop me?" That was the most important point. The best weapon of the Empire could not be stopped.

"Oh, right," said the mechanic, not turning around. He fished something out of the bindings around his wrist and tossed it over his shoulder. Vader caught it, automatically, in hand and flipped it over. It was a round disk, lined with intricate arrays, and tiny stray, frayed wires struggling out of it like a halo. "I found this in your control panel. I think it's some sort of override switch. It also jacked up whatever was in your system and knocked you the hell out. I pulled it after installing the last arm."

The disk crumpled within his hand. Vader stared at it, numbly, unsure whether that had been the Force or his own hand.

"A restraining device," Vader said, every word strung taut with rage. A restraining bolt. Was this how his master planned to end his apprenticeship? Shut him down like a faulty droid? Not even the honor of a duel, or lightening surging through his systems?

"And a tracker, too, I think."

The mechanic seemed unfazed by Vader's anger. Somewhere beyond the burning of himself, like the collapsing of neutron star, Vader felt the foggy mist that swathed the unfathomable man. It swirled around him lazily, unbothered, like the Force couldn't quite pierce through it.

The thought occurred to Vader suddenly. The mechanic had known what it was and yet willingly taken it out.

"I could have killed you."

The mechanic drew the piece closer to him, and Vader saw the hint of an almost-smile unfurling on his lips, like he found it funny. "You already promised you would."

Irritation struck through Vader again, lightening quick. He had things to be doing, he reminded himself. He was not dead. He had a duty to the Empire. The Death Star plans and the princess. Whatever tricks his master was up to––they had been dealt with. By the boy.

Which brought him back to the mechanic.

Should he kill him? Vader wondered idly. He was defenseless, and certainly wouldn't be missed. Yet…he had done a better job servicing Vader's mechanics than any droid had ever done. Even if he bribed him, people on Tatooine were easily bought––literally.

"What do you want?"

"For you to get out of my shop," the mechanic responded, flatly, slipping his goggles back over his eyes. "I already told you."

Vader ignored him, restlessly stalking closer. "What did you want? Money? A position? Debts paid off? Why did you––" his lips curled underneath the mask, "––rescue me?"

Vader could see his jaw clench. "I wanted your ship. You came with. Now I want you to leave."

Vader ground his teeth. "And why did you fix me?"

The mechanic's shoulders strung tight in irritation, but he didn't look up. "You could be fixed. I guess."

"You guess," Vader repeated. "I told you I would kill you, boy, and I didn't not mean it in jest. Give me a reason not kill you."

Finally––perhaps actually sensing danger––the mechanic dropped his tools with a clatter and spun around the seat, throwing his goggles down too.

"I didn't see why you had to die if I could fix your parts," he said, "so I fixed you. It's what I do." He pointed the spanner in his hand towards the door. "Now I have other things to fix. So go before I start regretting it."

Vader remained unmoved. The mechanic gestured, annoyed. "You want a reason? I was bored. Didn't have clients. Seemed like the right thing to do. Take your pick. Now, can you leave––?"

"Then what do I owe you?"Vader interrupted. "Since you have clients, and have been neglecting them."

The mechanic dropped his hands and scowled. "Nothing."

"I find that hard to believe," Vader scoffed. "You run a shack mechanics shop in the middle of village in Tatooine. I'm sure you need the money of a clearly rich Imperial officer. So what's the price?"

Was it freedom? Vader wondered. He didn't see a master around, but maybe the man would name a slave-price. How easily would his new creator, the subject of his Empire, be bought? Who would he run to about rich Imperials?

"Just go," snarled the mechanic, slamming the spanner down so hard it left a dent in the metal. "Leave me alone is what I want. Stars, I should've picked up those droids instead."

Vader froze.

"What droids?"

The mechanic looked up at him, cross. "Will you leave if I tell you?"

Vader considered it for a split moment. "Yes."

He was truthful, because even he wasn't sure if he was lying yet.

The mechanic eyed him, rightfully suspicious, but answered: "An R-2 unit and a 3PO. They landed a couple hundred yards out from you."

Vader's mind was already shifting back to the chase. An R-2 unit…could it be the princess's?

"Whatever it is," interrupted the mechanic, sounding carefully detached. Vader looked up to see the slightest bit of wariness––for the first time––sliding into his gaze. "I don't want anypart of it. Tatooine doesn't need a war, as well. And I sure as hell don't."

But Vader couldn't unfasten his curiosity from the mechanic just yet. "What makes you think they're important?"

"The Empire's already here," the mechanic pointed outside his poorman's door. "With you in all your TIEs. The Rebellion's coming soon."

His prediction was more than accurate. Vader could always use an intelligent operative, especially if his master was proving to be hostile. Even if this one couldn't recognize Darth Vader on sight.

The boy will live

"Very well," Vader announced, hand on his lightsaber hilt. As much as Tatooine might not want a war, there would be one as soon as Vader stepped out the door. "We're leaving."

"'Bout time," the mechanic muttered, and turned back.

Vader stood behind him, impatient. "Where's my TIE?"

If the mechanic had patched him up so easily, there was no way he could have resisted the TIE.

"Suns," the mechanic put his head in hands, hissing. "It's out back, but it's completely busted. Take whatever the hell you want, if it gets out of my shop and off this starsforsaken planet."

"And I'd suggest you take any valuables," said Vader, "or sentimentals," he tacked on, as an afterthought.

"What the hell are you talking about?" the mechanic demanded, bemused. "I'm not going anywhere."

Vader considered. The mechanic was awfully attached to Tatooine, or at least his shop, for some completely unfathomable reason.

He would soon see.

"You're not going to have much of a choice," Vader called over his shoulder as he strode out and quickly made his way 'round back. He tried not to notice the villagescape, or how much he recognized Anchorhead by sight alone.

The mechanic's junkyard was massive, stretching out at least a couple acres of the desert. Camouflaged under piles of junkers and meticulously, purposefully broken speeders and TIE wings were the remnants of his TIE advanced, half-completed, a small cargo ship, was what Vader wanted: an X-wing.

He breathed in, taking the Force with him, running under his skin like an underground river beneath the burning sands. He closed his eyes. He could feel the mechanic's dim presence in the Force, clouded and indifferent, and beyond that––villagers, the muted pricks of stormtroopers, and…yes. Speeding towards Anchorhead, X-wings, a sharp path downward.

Not taking a chance on Darth Vader's survival.

Vader's eyes snapped open and he knocked away the other ships and parts with a single snap of his wrist. He took a running leap towards the cockpit, unlatching and starting the engine before he even ended his descent in the seat.

A smile very nearly touched his lips as the hatch hissed closed overtop him and he ran blindly through pre-flight checks, moving smoother and faster than almost any craft he'd ever flown. This boy was a very good mechanic.

Within seconds, he was in the air.

He launched straight up with a single, smooth loop up and over the village so he could gain height and a little bit of homeground advantage. The winds took a billow of sand and errant linens up in the air; as he hung upside down for just that split second, he saw the form of the mechanic go sprinting out of his shop, wrench and jaw hitting the ground.

Vader took off like a shot. Whatever madness the mechanic had rigged into the X-wing, it would save its master's life: Vader was running down the two Rebel X-wings in almost minutes, two dark birds high up in the bright blue sky, preparing to strafe Anchorhead.

He could feel their surprise in the Force and hair-trigger switch to fear as they recognized him: one pulled out of the strafing run as his partner went up first against Vader in defense.

It was laughably easy, not just in skill but in speed: within minutes Vader was ducking the hail of X-wing debris instead of the X-wings themselves.

Vader pulled off one last loop to settle into a pre-landing run as the Force lit up in warning. His spun around, sharp, and began to careen into a landing: he saw the mechanic shout at the shocked villagers to run for cover as the mechanic dove straight onto the ground, Vader's X-wing feet above his head.

He rocked to stop with a spray of sand and lifted the hatch with a flick of the Force to rise on top of the nose, balancing on a tilted.

There––coming up the road from the desert in was a speeder full of unremarkably dressed citizens with blasters and grim faces. Rebels.

Vader unhooked his lightsaber, but didn't light it.

Instead, he turned to the mechanic, crouched in the middle of the sand-strewn Anchorhead road, bare yards from the X-wing, protectively cast around him.

"You saved my life," Vader rumbled. He reached out a hand. "Let me save yours."

The mechanic cast a wild glance over Vader's shoulder.

Vader kept his eyes on him.

The mechanic scrabbled to his feet. His first few steps were shaking, but sprinted into a leap––

––Vader caught his forearm just as the mechanic grasped his.