Chapter Text
Vander
Vander was pissed.
As he locked up the Last Drop for the night, he couldn’t shake the frustration rolling through him. He’d given Harik the lecture of a lifetime for his reckless decision. Sure, the river was clean now, and people were already collecting fresh water, but Vander couldn’t bring himself to celebrate. Not when he knew what came next.
Harik’s theft wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things—a few parts no one would miss. But the problem wasn’t what he stole. It was who he stole from.
Councillor Bolbok.
A man known for his pride, his paranoia, and his deep-seated resentment toward the Undercity. To someone like Bolbok, a robbery wasn’t just a crime—it was an insult. And men like him didn’t let insults go unanswered.
Vander took a steadying breath and pushed through the door to Benzo’s shop. His old friend had just sent Ekko home and was in the middle of closing up for the night.
Leaning on the counter, Vander stroked his beard. “I can’t believe the kid pulled this without even mentioning it to me. Not a word. I only found out a week after the fact.”
Benzo sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Shit, Vander. I’m sorry. He came by asking about parts for the filter, and I might’ve let it slip that they’re only found in Piltover. Should’ve clocked it when I saw that scheming look in his eye.” He exhaled through his nose. “Same look you and Silco used to get before a job.”
At the mention of Silco, Vander’s jaw tightened. He gave Benzo a sharp look, and his friend quickly glanced away. They had an unspoken rule: don’t bring up Silco. Not after what happened on the bridge.
Vander exhaled heavily. “I should’ve seen it coming. From the little he’s said about his people, they sound like the type to do whatever they think is right—consequences be damned. But unlike Silco…” Vander trailed off, rubbing his eyes. “Harik realized what he’d done. When he saw the danger, the risk, the way it could blow back on the Lanes—he went pale. ”
Benzo hummed, pouring a drink. “He’s a good kid, Vander. Still adjusting to a different world, but he’s got his heart in the right place.” He took a sip, then smirked. “In all honesty, I wouldn’t mind if he kept fixing things down here. Just needs to learn how to cover his tracks better.”
The corner of Vander’s mouth twitched. “Yeah, well, he won’t get the chance.”
He glanced toward the door. “Any word on our guest?”
Benzo set out three glasses and pulled the closest thing they had to whiskey from beneath the counter. “She’ll be here soon, I think.” He sighed, shaking his head. “Not that I’m looking forward to it.”
As if on cue, the door creaked open. Five enforcers entered—four lingering outside, one stepping in.
Sheriff Grayson.
Vander slid the third glass across the table, and it landed in her hands. “I think I know why you’re here,” he said, masking his irritation with a mock-friendly tone.
Grayson exhaled sharply. “Yeah, you do.” She took a sip of the whiskey, barely hiding her distaste for the taste. “Factory robbery. Near the bridge. What do you know?”
Vander raised a brow, playing dumb. “Anybody hurt?”
She shook her head. “No. Just some stolen parts—trinkets, really.”
Vander feigned relief. “That so? You got a description of the perp?”
“Again, no.”
He let out a low whistle, shaking his head. “Then why are you bringing this to me? Do you even know if they came through the Lanes? Because I can only help if they did.”
Grayson narrowed her eyes. “That’s a question only you can answer, Vander.” She reached into her coat and handed him a list. “Anyone come through here trying to trade these?”
Vander took a quick glance before handing it off to Benzo. It was his job to know what was being traded in the Lanes.
Benzo studied the paper, taking his time. “Nope. Sorry, Sheriff. Nothing like this passed through. And if it had , people would talk.”
Grayson sighed, rubbing her temple. “Councillor Bolbok is hounding me for results. He’s pissed and pushing for my men to be… more convincing during interrogations.”
Vander fought the urge to snarl. He knew what that meant.
When she finally left, he sat down heavily, staring at the glass in front of him.
Benzo gave him a wary look. “Something wrong?”
Vander exhaled sharply. “Someone should’ve talked by now. Harik wasn’t exactly subtle when he was working on the filter. Why hasn’t anyone given him up?”
Benzo poured another drink. “Sevika, from what I heard.”
Vander blinked. “Sevika?”
Benzo nodded. “Word is she’s been telling folks that Harik was acting on your orders. That he’s planning to fix more of the Undercity’s infrastructure. People are eating it up—even the lowest of the low want clean water and air. And since the kid did it for free , they want him to keep doing it.”
Vander felt a heavy weight settle in his gut.
Sevika hadn’t said a word about this to him earlier. That worried him.
She was loyal—Vander had no doubts about that. But throwing his name around? Making promises he couldn’t keep? That was dangerous.
Because if Harik kept this up, if he kept stealing from Piltover to fix the Lanes, then Bolbok would take action. And worse—Vander’s agreement with Grayson would be broken.
And that would mean Piltover’s wrath coming down on them.
He rubbed his temples. He’d have to talk to her. She wouldn’t like what he had to say, but she’d understand. She had to. Because if she didn’t, things were about to spiral out of control. Even if she didn’t like it she’d understand, she was nothing if not loyal after all.
Harik
Harik dragged the broom across the scuffed-up floors of The Last Drop, grumbling under his breath as he worked. This was just one of the many new rules Vander had slapped on him after that factory job. He couldn’t go anywhere without either Vander or Vi tagging along, wasn’t allowed out of his room after sundown, and now, on top of everything else, he had to help around the bar. Vander said it was to keep him occupied and in sight so he didn’t pull any more “reckless stunts,”
Not that sweeping was the worst punishment. Harik had done plenty of it during the Clone Wars—Master Fexis had insisted on it as part of his routine whenever they were between missions. Back then, it had been a way to focus his thoughts. Now, it just felt like a slap on the wrist. He kept his mouth shut, though. Vander’s lecture from last night still played in his head, and he wasn’t in a hurry to hear it again.
What really got under his skin was that Vander seemed to think he’d done something wrong. Harik didn’t see it that way. Sure, he’d broken the rules—but only once! And it had been for a good reason. He could feel Vander’s mixed emotions whenever he was around—pride, frustration, and this thick layer of worry that Harik didn’t understand. He’d tried to get Vander to explain what he was so afraid of, but the man had shut him down every time.
Still, it wasn’t all bad. When Vander told Vi to keep a closer eye on him, he’d had to explain why, which meant everyone else found out what Harik had done. Claggor already knew, of course, but Mylo and Powder’s reactions were… entertaining. Mylo had actually said something nice to him—Harik thought Powder might pass out from the shock. She wasn’t as amused when she realized Harik hadn’t let her in on the plan, but he’d managed to smooth things over by pointing out it was all spur-of-the-moment. Vi, though—Vi had been impressed. She didn’t say it outright, but Harik could tell. She even said she wished she’d been there to stick it to Piltover herself. That one small moment of approval made Harik grin like an idiot.
But even with the others warming up to him, Harik couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off with Vander. The way he acted—it wasn’t just about the factory job. There was something else going on, something Vander wasn’t telling him. Harik was sure of it. And sooner or later, he was going to figure out what it was.
The Last Drop was pretty dead today. Harik moved his broom across the floor, barely paying attention to what he was doing. Instead, his ears tuned in to the low murmur of conversations around the room. A bit of gossip here, a plan for a heist there—just the usual undercity stuff he’d come to expect.
He shuffled over to the pool table, where a group of guys stood talking, the clack of pool balls mixing with their voices. He didn’t mean to listen in—it just kind of happened.
“—and then the damned enforcer hit him with the butt of his rifle, even though he was cooperating!” one of the men growled, slamming his pool cue against the floor for emphasis. Tattoos covered his arms, and a pair of lip piercings glinted in the dim light. “Now my brother’s got cracked ribs. And as if that’s not bad enough, Progress Day’s coming up. They’re making him pull double shifts in the mines.”
“Yeah, things have been rough,” muttered another guy, this one wearing a dusty miner’s uniform. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. “Enforcers have been way harsher lately. You think it’s ‘cause of that robbery?”
That last comment hit Harik like a brick to the chest. His broom slowed as the words sank in. During Vander’s lecture, the old man had warned him this would happen—how his actions could have consequences for other people. At the time, Harik hadn’t really believed him. But hearing it spelled out like this, from people who were living it? It felt different. More real.
It wasn’t a new feeling for Harik. Back during the Clone Wars, he’d made choices that left men under his command dead. Even when they’d won the fight, there’d always been casualties. He remembered the way it felt to watch them carried away, knowing it was his orders that had put them there. That guilt had been with him for a long time, but after what the clones pulled at the end of the war? He’d buried it. Or at least, he thought he had.
He shook his head, trying to push the memories away. When he glanced up, Vander was watching him from behind the bar. Harik must’ve had some kind of look on his face, because Vander’s expression shifted. It wasn’t angry, not even disappointed—just this quiet, knowing look, like he understood exactly what was running through Harik’s head.
Harik quickly looked away, focusing on the floor like it might swallow him whole. He didn’t want sympathy, and he definitely didn’t want Vander thinking he was cracking. So, he tightened his grip on the broom and kept sweeping, pretending the knot in his stomach didn’t exist.
“It’s not the robbery that’s got the topsiders so riled up,” a woman’s voice called from the corner booth. Sevika. She was sprawled in her usual spot, cigarette in hand, exhaling a cloud of smoke as she spoke. “Like you said, Progress Day’s coming up, and every year those blue-and-gold bastards come down here to make sure we don’t get any ideas about going topside.”
She rose from her seat with the slow grace of someone who owned whatever space they were in, her empty glass dangling from her fingers. As she strolled past the pool table toward the bar, she kept talking, her voice carrying easily over the low murmurs in the pub. “They like to make sure us sump rats don’t taint their pristine image for all the foreign visitors. Wouldn’t want the undercity making them look bad.”
Her words struck a chord. The patrons around the room began muttering their agreement, their stories tumbling out one after another. Tales of rough treatment during Progress Days past—beatings, arrests, broken homes—spilled into the open. Harik listened, the bitterness in their voices setting his own nerves on edge. He hated how much it all sounded familiar. Every story, every injustice, reminded him of the Republic’s darker days and the Empire’s iron grip. Even after fleeing to the unknown regions after the Empire rose, he’d still heard the whispers of its brutality.
Sevika returned from the bar, a fresh drink in hand, and deliberately knocked over a tray of food as she passed. She barely paused, just waved Harik over with a flick of her fingers. Vander, watching from his spot at the bar, gave Harik a pointed look that said everything without a word. Harik sighed and moved to clean up the mess, broom and tray in hand.
“You did good work with the river filter, kid,” Sevika said casually as he swept the food into the tray. The comment caught him off guard, and for a split second, he froze before quickly masking it with indifference.
“How’d you figure it out?” he asked, not bothering to deny it. What was the point?
“One of my guys saw you out there in the middle of the night,” she said, taking another drag from her cigarette and exhaling the smoke in a slow, deliberate plume. “I take it the old man didn’t take it well?” She nodded toward the broom in his hand.
“To put it mildly,” Harik replied, keeping his tone neutral. His mind worked overtime, trying to figure out what she wanted from him.
“It was a good thing you did,” she said, and to his surprise, she sounded sincere. Harik’s senses stretched out, testing the edges of her emotions. Nothing malicious. No blackmail, no manipulation—just genuine approval. “It’s been a long time since anything good come to this side of the river.”
Harik didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t. He kept sweeping, waiting for her to get to her point.
“Are you thinking about doing stuff like that more often?” she asked, her tone curious but not pushy.
“I was,” he admitted, glancing at her. “But Vander’s got me under watch now. Besides, I’m not sure I want to keep going if it means more enforcers coming down here.”
She opened her mouth, probably to repeat the same argument she’d made to the guys at the pool table, but Harik raised a hand to stop her. “We both know what you said back there was only partly true.”
There was a moment of silence between them, heavy but not tense. Then Sevika shrugged. “Y’know, this kind of thing happens all the time, kid. Pilties get all bent out of shape over something small, send the enforcers down to crack heads, and eventually, it blows over.” She paused, her gaze turning thoughtful. “But ruffling a few feathers topside? If it means clean water and air for people down here? That’s worth it. In the end, you’ll help more people than you hurt.”
Those words hit Harik like a punch to the gut. For a moment, he wasn’t in The Last Drop anymore. He was back aboard his master’s Venator, standing in the aftermath of another battle. It wasn’t Sevika speaking to him—it was someone else. Someone with a helmet painted in fire markings and a thermal detonator sketched on the side. Corporal Payload. Traitor.
“Help more people than you hurt,” Payload had said, finding Harik brooding over the bodies of the men they’d lost. Those words had been meant as comfort, but now they just twisted in Harik’s chest.
He shook himself out of it, forcing the memory away. Sevika was watching him, waiting for something, and he turned to her with a sharp question that had been eating at him since this conversation started. “Why are you so interested in what I do with myself?”
The question came out more biting than he’d intended, but he didn’t care. He barely knew Sevika—he’d only ever seen her during poker nights at The Last Drop, blending in with the smoke and laughter. So why the sudden interest?
“It’s rare to see someone actually doing something good for the undercity,” Sevika said, leaning back in her chair with her cigarette smoldering between her fingers. Her eyes flicked toward the hazy ceiling as she spoke, the words laced with a quiet frustration. “We’ve been on a steep decline for years. The undercity’s started cannibalizing itself, and no one does anything but watch it burn.”
Harik didn’t respond right away, but her words stuck with him. They made sense. Too much sense. He could feel her sincerity—it seeped through her usual tough exterior, carried by a quiet edge of worry. She wasn’t just buttering him up; she was worried for the city and desperate for anything that could slow its decay.
That thought lingered in Harik’s mind. She wasn’t wrong. Maybe the city did need more people doing the kind of work he’d done, no matter how risky. Sure, Vander would be upset, but Vander didn’t need to know. He just needed to cover his tracks better next time—make it look like there was no robbery at all. The real problem was Vander keeping him on such a short leash. That was an issue Harik would have to figure out, but he was confident he could pull it off.
He sighed, meeting Sevika’s gaze with a serious expression. “Meet me back here in ten days. We’ll talk about it more then.”
Sevika’s eyes widened slightly in surprise, but she nodded in confirmation. She opened her mouth to say something else, but Harik had already turned away, heading back to finish his mundane task of sweeping floors.
Harik watched from the sidelines as the usual chaos unfolded in the Last Drop’s living space. Mylo and Claggor were bickering—again—over something neither of them would remember by morning. Vi was shadowboxing in the corner, fists moving with sharp, practiced precision. Powder was hunched over her workbench, tongue slightly sticking out as she tinkered with her latest attempt at a bomb.
She’d let him help with plenty of her inventions—mechanical toys, traps, even smoke grenades—but never the bombs. Those were hers and hers alone. Her passion projects. She wanted to perfect them on her own.
Harik sat apart from the group, absently sketching in his worn notebook, half-listening to the banter while his mind wandered. His pencil traced the outlines of creatures from far beyond this world—Wampas, Loth-cats, Banthas—his thoughts elsewhere.
Should I really go through with this?
His mind was elsewhere.
Sevika’s offer still sat heavy in his thoughts.
Was this really the right move?
His pencil hesitated over the page. The question gnawed at him. He’d spent years being taught that action carried weight, that every decision had ripples—consequences. He could still hear his master’s voice, low and patient, warning him of how easily good intentions could lead to ruin.
But then another voice whispered through his mind, bitter and sharp.
"Doing nothing has consequences too."
That thought quieted his mind for a few moments. It got him to think, to reflect on everytime he asked a senator or general why they were not stepping in on certain conflicts.
How many times had he heard it? “It’s not our place.” “We can’t afford to get involved.”
How many times had those words left people to suffer?
But that voice— that voice—he couldn’t stand.
"Sure, things aren’t great down here, but they could be worse." it whispered as if it were try to tempt him into surrendering to a life of accepting these injustices.
“Could be worse” he spat out quietly like a venom on his tongue. That thought sounded like a bad joke.
Because he had seen worse.
He shut his eyes. Memories came unbidden—cities left to burn because the Republic debated instead of acting, entire planets abandoned because someone decided the risk was too high. He had seen what happened when people refused to step in, when they turned a blind eye for the sake of stability.
What helped stop all that madness? Was it the senate? The republic? No it was the Jedi
He had watched the Jedi step in when no one else would—on Ryloth, where they liberated an entire people from Separatist rule. On Mandalore, when they overthrew Darth Maul’s tyranny. On Kiros, when they stopped the Zygerians from turning Togruta colonists into slaves.
The Republic hesitated. The Senate debated. The Jedi acted.
They were always there so why shouldn’t he be the Jedi that steps in to help now?
His pencil shifted to the familiar shape of a Purrgil, the great space-faring beasts he’d seen only in temple archives. He barely noticed when Vander came back from wherever he’d been.
“Lights out,” Vander called gruffly, as he always did.
The others groaned but didn’t argue and neither did he trudging up the steps and closing the door behind him.
He waited. Listened.
Once he was certain Vander had turned in for the night, he moved.
Sliding a loose floorboard aside, he pulled out a bundle of schematics and unfolded them on the floor, tracing each blueprint with careful fingers.
His probe droids had done well. Mapping an entire city, especially one as vast and layered as this, had been a challenge, but the droids were designed for urban warfare. They had tracked every underground pipeline, every service tunnel, every forgotten system buried beneath the weight of Piltover’s negligence.
Most people didn’t know about these systems.
They had been built years ago—designed by some counselor he forgot the name of in an apparent act of charity, meant to filter out the worst of the toxic mining gases. But like everything meant for the Undercity, they had been neglected. Left to rot.
Harik traced the routes with his fingertips, mapping out potential targets. The places he would need to hit. The parts he would have to steal.
He paused.
What if I make things worse?
The thought clung to him, wrapping tight around his chest. What if, by trying to help, he ended up making things harder for everyone? What if this wasn’t the right move?
Another memory surfaced—his master’s voice, warning him to think before he acted, to weigh the risks. He had spent his whole life hearing that restraint was the path of the Jedi.
But then he thought of the Clone Wars.
He thought of the planets left to burn, the people the Republic abandoned, the atrocities that were allowed to happen because no one wanted to make things worse.
Harik closed his eyes, exhaling through his nose.
No. Doing nothing isn’t an option.
The Jedi had always been at their best when they acted, when they stood for something.
The Republic hesitated. The Senate debated. The Jedi acted.
He remembered hearing the stories as a youngling, the way his masters spoke of their duty—not to power , not to politics , but to people.
This was no different.
Yes, it was a gamble. But it always has been.
And if there was one thing Harik knew with absolute certainty, it was this. It was a gamble worth taking.
10 Day's later
The decision was made.
A quiet exchange—nothing more than a subtle nod and a hushed “I’m in” —was all it took. Harik slipped Sevika an address before turning on his heel and walking off, disappearing into the shadows of the Undercity.
Sneaking out from under Vander’s eye was easy, the man didn’t put bars on his windows and Harik was no stranger to dropping off from high places.
He’d made sure to pick a meeting spot well out of Vander’s usual haunts, somewhere forgotten and unimportant.An abandoned factory at the edge of the Fissures. It was massive—vaulted ceilings, rusted catwalks, a forest of empty crates and broken machinery. The kind of place that should’ve been crawling with squatters or a gang running smuggling routes. But no one had claimed it. Too out of the way.Too far gone. The perfect hiding place.
Harik sat on a decrepit wooden stool, knee bouncing as he listened to the slow echo of footsteps. Sevika and seven of her crew entered, their figures silhouetted in the dim light spilling through shattered windows. Without a word, they gathered around a battered wooden table, its uneven leg forcing it into a slight wobble.
Harik didn’t bother with pleasantries.
Harik took a steadying breath and moved to the board he had set up, a map of Piltover and the Undercity pinned to a rusted metal sheet. A single factory was marked in red.
“We start small,” he said, skipping any formality. No greetings. No wasted words.
He slid a binder across the table. “These are the parts I need. With them, I can build a localized air filter. Small scale—two, maybe three blocks—but enough to test if it works. See what we can get away with.”
Sevika flipped through the pages, barely skimming before arching a brow at him. “Why not just steal the parts to repair the old filtration system? That’d do more good.”
Harik had already thought about that. He had agonized over that.
“Because that’s too big of a move,” he explained, keeping his voice even. “We don’t want enforcer attention, not yet. They expect the air down here to be toxic. If it suddenly isn’t , they’ll notice. They’ll investigate. And they’ll shut it down.”
Sevika studied him for a moment, then smirked—just slightly. She already knew the answer. She had been testing him.
Harik didn’t let it bother him. He had worked under a commander who challenged everything—Master Fexis never let a plan go forward without scrutiny.
You get those parts and those parts only, understand?” Harik’s tone was firm as he met the crew’s eyes. “We’re not in the business of accumulating personal wealth. I’m sure you all have your own ways of going about that.”
He didn’t need the Force to tell that none of them had an issue with his rule. Not yet, at least.
Harik laid out a map of the service tunnels, jabbing his finger at two circled spots. “These will get you to the factory unseen. They’re off the books, no one’s watching them. Stay low, stay quiet, and no one will know you were ever there.”
He flipped to another set of documents and handed them over. “Follow the highlighted path. No guards along the route. And do not engage with anyone. We do this clean.”
Sevika smirked but didn’t argue. She took the documents and gave a curt nod. “We hit it tomorrow night.”
With that, she turned on her heel and left, her crew following.
Harik exhaled. The factory was quiet again, but his thoughts weren’t.
He knew Vander would see this as a betrayal. And maybe, in some way, it was. But was he supposed to just stand by and let the Undercity rot? Vander wanted peace, but peace didn’t fix poisoned rivers or choking air.
He needed to be a good Jedi.
Or else… What had Master Fexis died for?
2 days later
The next 2 days were good ones.
Harik, Ekko, and Powder had played some chaotic, nonsense game that didn’t seem to have actual rules. Ekko had painted an hourglass on his face, wore makeshift cardboard armor, and carried a fake sword. Powder had drawn war paint across her cheeks and stuck a pot on her head for some reason.
And Harik?
Somehow, he got roped into having a thick yellow streak of paint smeared across his nose and cheeks.
It mostly involved them chasing each other around, swinging sticks—except for Powder, who cheated and used her paint gun.
It was strange, playing like this.
Foreign.
Like wearing a memory that didn’t quite fit.
By the time they’d tired themselves out, they collapsed in a tangled heap, using him as a pillow since he was the tallest of the three. Eventually, they drifted off, but Harik stayed awake, eyes trained on the room.
He didn’t sleep unless his back was against a wall.
Vi must’ve noticed and taken pity on him because, after a while, she quietly carried Powder and Ekko to the couches.
Harik gave her a silent nod of thanks before heading out to the bar.
The Last Drop was alive with noise.
Progress Day was coming soon, which meant the trenchers were drinking, celebrating in their own way. The music, the laughter—it was all loud and reckless, the kind of joy that burned hot before it flickered out.
He spotted Sevika across the room. She saw him too, tapping the table in silent invitation.
Problem was, Vander was right next to her.
Harik needed a distraction.
His eyes scanned the room before settling on the drunkest man he could find. A subtle nudge of the Force to his stomach—nothing too aggressive, just enough—
The man lurched forward and vomited spectacularly.
Not the most elegant solution, but it worked.
Vander, grimacing, immediately moved to help him outside. Harik took his chance, weaving through the crowd and dropping into the seat across from Sevika.
“We’ve got maybe a minute before he comes back,” he said quickly. “Spit it out.”
Sevika chuckled, lighting a cigarette. “Job went smooth. Route was clear, no trouble. Parts are at the warehouse, waiting for you.” she puffed the smoke before continuing “You’re surprisingly good at planning for a brat” she complimented?
Harik nodded. “Great work. I’ll let you know when the filter’s done. Until then, do… whatever it is you do.”
Sevika snorted as Harik clapped her shoulder awkwardly and hurried back to his spot at the counter, just as Vander reentered—shoes ruined, face unimpressed.
Harik almost felt guilty.
Until he remembered he was still grounded.
Harik had worked through the night, surrounded by the dim glow of oil lamps and the ever-present hum of the warehouse’s leaking pipes.
The technology on this planet was infuriating.
Everything was gears, steam, and crude chemical reactions. Nothing was efficient. Nothing was simple. A basic power cell would have done the job of half the machines he had to tear apart and rewire. Instead, he had to wrestle with archaic mechanisms just to build something as basic as an air filter.
At one point, he had seen a nose hair trimmer the size of his lightsaber. Absolutely ridiculous.
He let out a sigh, rolling his shoulders before examining the half-finished air filter in front of him.He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve and leaned back, surveying his work.
It was ugly. Clunky. A mess of metal and piping.but it was coming together. It was halfway finished—an ugly patchwork of stolen parts and improvised mechanics—but it worked. Or at least, it would work once it was fully operational.
It wouldn’t change the entire Undercity overnight, but it would clean the air for some. Two or three blocks, maybe. That was something.
And something was enough—for now.
Harik felt something spark in his chest.
Excitement.
This was going to help people.
Still, his mind raced ahead.
Water purification. Structural repairs. Hell, even power grids.
So much to fix. So little time. So few resources.
For the first time in a long time, Harik wanted something. Wanted to build, wanted to fix. The Jedi had always spoken of peace, but they had spent most of their time putting out fires. He had seen them act as warriors, as generals. But what if they had been builders instead?
What if peace wasn’t something fought for, but created? Built?
What if, instead of being warriors, they had been healers?
Harik curled his fingers into a fist.
Maybe he couldn’t heal the galaxy.
But maybe he could heal this place.
Sevika had started calling their group the Thieves guild, it had a nice ring to it he supposed.
The Thieves’ Guild didn’t have to be just criminals.
Maybe, in time, they could be something more.
Harik exhaled, running a hand over the filter’s casing.
He had no idea if Vander would ever understand. Maybe, in some ways, he was betraying the man’s trust. But standing still had never been an option.
Not for a Jedi.