Chapter Text
He's walking, and it's like a thousand other battlefields on a thousand other planets. Flames, wreckage, and the smell of death clinging to him like the clay on his boots.
Ravagers didn't have many limits, but this utter subsumption to the anarchy of death is one of them and Stakar wishes he'd never gotten involved. It's enough for him to curl his fingers and make a quiet, fierce promise to himself. After all, these Ravagers, these people, are his. He won’t lead them into this again, fodder for the war machine of careless men. It's time for the Ravagers to become their own.
When something shifts on the ground, Stakar startles, brings his weapon up, eyes scanning for the source of the possible movement. And then he finds it and his grip tightens unconsciously. It's a tiny, blue crumpled body, out of proportion set against the harsh suffocating scent of blood, the rough scarred leather, the other bodies laying around it, and the wrongness of it makes his bones jar.
And breathing. Unlike everything else around it, this one's chest is rising, falling, scrawny and alive - if you could call it that.
“What’s this then?" Stakar says softly. His weapon is aimed, primed to go off on a moment.
The rumpled figure rolls over, slowly.
"Go ‘head,” says a lispy, hoarse little voice, and later Stakar would wonder that such a small sound would have the power to stop him in his tracks.
This wasn't the voice of a warrior, or even a soldier. This was the voice of a child, and Stakar is sluggish with shock, unable to process for a moment what he's seeing. Because it's one thing to know that child battle slaves are common practice for the Kree, that innocents are often the victims of the merciless stars, and it's another to see one here.
This is war, this is screams and smog and not being able to breath, this is the kind of heat that has grown men go weak at the knees, and this…this is not the place for eyes like that, big and wide and terrified and young.
He jolts back in shock, and the boy hunches his shoulders, cringing on the ground, not even bothering to bring his arms up in defense.
"Yer just a kid,” Stakar says stupidly, still processing it, knowing he's stating the obvious. Those eyes shoot up to meet his, confused, apprehensive, and glowing, Stakar suddenly realizes, glowing a faint red that pulses with his fear.
His arms shift as the weapon slumps out of position, and the movement spooks him. With a pathetic little cry, the child tries to use his arms to scramble backward, but then seems to stop himself, closes his eyes.
For a moment, there's just the sound of his heavy, gasping breaths as he tries to regain control, and then a small, panted, "Do it."
Stakar’s brows draw together as he stares down at the kid, whose eyes meet his, frustrated, angry, appealing.
“Just do it! Do it!"
Stakar can feel his heart twist painfully as he realizes what the boy is asking, and before he can think, he's grasped him by his skinny forearm and jerked him close.
"I don' kill kids!" he grinds out before letting the boy go and turning away, struggling with the scarred memories in his head, when he realizes what he's done. There is a child on the ground, wounded, scared - and Stakar has just manhandled him.
When he spins back around those eyes are gazing up at him with an utter lostness, and he swallows.
"Go'awn, kid," he rasps. "You better run. Run the heck outta here, and don' come back."
And then he comes to his senses and realizes the kid's got nowhere to run. This is the end of everything, a forsaken field of death and broken bodies, and suddenly, he doesn't want that tiny thing gone, anyway.
He wants him right here, where he can scoop him up in his arms and shield him from things he never should have had to see or feel. The kid pulls himself up slowly, climbing from the clay in listless, dragging movement and then stills, lifting his eyes defiantly to meet Stakar’s.
"'m not going back,” the boy bites out savagely. "So you'd better kill me.”
Yeah, this boy is not going anywhere, and Stakar’s a little surprised by how at peace he is with that. He shakes his head.
"C'mere, son.”
He uses his softest voice, one that would probably shock most of the Ravagers if he ever used it around them. For a moment, he thinks the boy will run, will panic, will throw himself away from the imposing figure before him, and without thinking Stakar sinks to one knee and leans forward, as if he could draw him to himself with pure power of will.
The child hesitates, shoulders tight and braced, eyes flickering with doubt and tears. And then Stakar blinks and a trembling body is hurled into his, tiny arms wrapped around him, a chest heaving with sobs, a forehead pressed desperately into his shoulder.
Instinctively, his arms wrap back, and Stakar settles into how incredibly right it feels, to be hugging this tiny, foreign thing. He feels a wet, sticky, warm substance against his skin, and realizes in horror that it's the child's blood.
It's not too much trouble to reach his arm around the boy's body and pick him up as Stakar rises into a stand, cradling him in his arms like a baby, and it hasn't escaped his notice that the slight body is still trembling against his.
"Howd'yeh like ta come home with me?" Stakar says.
Eyes rise to meet his, and he realizes that for all the fierceness of those little hands as they clutch on to him, the boy’s still leery.
"Where?" he mumbles. "Who are you?"
Stakar's arms just tighten around him.
"We're the Ravagers,” he says, and it's pride, and it's a promise, and the boy relaxes and leans into the arms that are shielding him as Stakar strides away from the battlefield and back toward his ship.