Between studying the holocron Thelion had provided and the various lessons on Soresu along the journey the former vagrant known as Milo barely had time to spare. When he wasn’t learning he was eating, when he wasn’t eating he was sleeping. A routine he fell into quite easily, half-practiced by the month now he had spent within the Order.
Yet with each world they passed the shabby padawan grew restless. The Core, the garden of the Galaxy, loomed closer and closer, and with it memories. Red streaks began to appear on the man’s left arm, crossing over and between the dozen prick holes of stim injectors, that old familiar thirst returned with each parsec. A few weeks’ journey and a month apart of an Order wasn’t enough to truly stem an addiction. Proximity only made it worse, worse than when he’d found Alora’s stash.
Just a step away from those old stomping grounds, away from the slime and the slop, the din of speeders, the bang of blasters, and the groans of the sloshed and bleary-eyed. All it would take is just a quick stop, didn’t even have to be on Empress Teta. Any suitably industrial world would have consumers, and with an air-tight lie he could slip away to get that fix. Could probably avoid notice if he remained in his room, feigning ‘studying’.
Just a step away. He thought, the words a chilling reminder of his life before, and the only reason he did not vocalize his craving. Just a step away from the dens, the shine, the glamor… Just a step away. No he wasn’t that far from his old self, if anything the stress of it all had drawn him closer. The war, the rules, the anxiety. A quick prick of an injector and he’d be free of it all.
The journey fell into a haze as he fell further into his studies and meditation, capable distractions, yet when laid down to sleep there was little to drown out the thoughts.
It came as a surprise when the Sanctity exited hyperspace, leisurely descending towards the frozen world of Ilum, a cherished and hidden jewel of the Jedi. Forgotten was the goal, the destination, replaced instead by that intense need.
Letting Vosca depart for her own journey the vagrant, surely that is what he still was despite the robes, remained within the ship for a time. Tired eyes glanced at the controls, part of him yearned to take off. To fly away and leave his companion to return to the glittering core for his due reward. As he snaked a hand around the wheel guilt, like a spark of static, forced his hand back, joined with old memories long since recalled.
He scrambled out of the ship, away from the Temple, and into the frost. As if to escape the pain that dwelled between his ears.
Step after step he fled, further and further from the ship until it was not even a glimmer upon the horizon. The rest of his flesh joined the redness of his arm, his pace slipping from a panicked haste to a weak stumbling. Driven by some animal instinct to flee from ephemeral terror.
When he tripped on an uneven piece of ice he met blackness before his head touched the snow.
__
Home for some is a place of peace, a place one calls their own. Be it a shanty in the Outer Rim or an estate within the Core. For young Milo and Garo, brothers by necessity if not by blood, it was the driest alley or the warmest vent. Wherever the two of them could find shelter from the acrid winds that blew though even the depths of the Ecumenopolis.
One couldn’t survive downlow alone at their ages, yet together? No chit was safe from their greedy sausages. The two of them, free from the wagging fingers of parents, and quick enough to avoid the law’s long arm, embraced the inhibition that the freedom of youthful crime gave them. The high of too many credits, and too many substances for the young to acquire.
“Can you feel it, Milo? The life of the city, the heart of the galaxy?” Garo had said, as they stood lay atop a shorter spire above the industrial sector, watching the speeders fly through their skylanes.
Eventually, though, something always catches up. For Garo it was an arm full of needles. A truly legendary bender, the boy lost his senses after the seventh needle. Three of which still pierced his skin.
He was never the same after that, a twitch in the eyes, a bend to his fingers… Alive, within some Teta hospital, to live out his early onset twilight without a single thought passing behind those cloudy eyes.
__
Milo shook awake. He was home, back in the musty durasteel cutout with barely a sense and a throbbing head. The breathing of last night’s companions, other stim-heads and glitter-geeks serenading him with their own fitful rests or morning hits. Cottonmouthed, the vagrant searched for a drink within the empties that lie scattered and piled along the floor. Straying from one room to the next.
Reprieve could not be found, he and his kind were thorough with their indulgences. Or so he thought. A lone injector rested upon a table within the main room, its brilliant crimson catching his eye. A distraction from his dry throat. The rickety cooling unit above him clicked with each rotation of its internal fan, cutting through the groans of the discarded.
Drawing his sleeve to his elbow he counted each visible hole, though he could barely remember the night he got one from the night he got another. There was little nostalgia in their recollection, but rather a certain despair over time wasted, lost, all to the needle. It was hastily crushed as he lined up the rocket red injector for another few hours of bliss, glancing up briefly.
The shine of an old, dusty, mirror caught his eyes. Cracked in much the way he felt yet surprisingly it had not shattered. There he stood, a mop of hair caked in grime, a scraggly beard long since cared for, and… Robes. What was left of them, their once rigid creases having long since given out, its edges fraying. His index finger gripped the trigger reflexively, as if to ward off the memories as they began to flood his senses. He’d lost it again, that fragile hyperlane known as life, having steered it away from the right and narrow into the addictions of old. He could barely recall his time upon Viscara now, just as Garo was now merely a ripple within the pool of his mind. Yet with each passing second another memory returned, with a hoard of regret along with it. The clicking of the AC unit only adds to the vagrant’s growing agitation.
The edge of the needle centered in the silver cylinder and scarlet housing pressed against his arm, eager to take him once more into the warm arms of a chemical prison. Faces flew past his eyes, Thelion and the Order, Teth, and Alora. Garo. Individuals that had, at one point or another, put a bit of faith in the oil stained vagrant. Individuals that he had let down by once more chasing the Corellian Run.
The pain of memory, compounded by the pounding in his head, and that damned clicking. Just a flex of the finger would drive it all away.
The vagrant’s eyes trailed up his arm once more, weary orbs regarding those thin veins, and innumerous holes. Following them like a marked trail all the way back to the needle.
Click, click, click, click…
His greatest failure. He was always quick to give in.
Click, click, click, click…
He knew he’d never make it off-world. The moments between trips were always painful, and would always be painful.
Click, click, click, click…
Perhaps it was time to truly give in, as Garo accidentally had. To seek peace beyond the injector.
Click, click, click, click…
What was the delusion that gave the vagrant the false hope of liberty from his addiction?
Click, click, click, click…
It was… The Force. The hand that staved off death with merely the brushing of its fingers. The warmth of life, not just his life but all life upon Teta. The brief, momentary, connection shared as he had once plummeted to his death. Something, truly, sublime. A feeling that no stim could ever emulate, the passions of life. Chaotic and tempestuous, yet orderly in its existence.
With a breath the vagrant closed his eyes and breathed, reaching for that sense long since dulled by chemical fixations. Frayed twine seeking to coil around a thread of the expansive web. To feel the activity, the vibrancy, and joy… Of life. He needed merely a touch, just a memory, that it was there. That he could find it. Just a step closer. Just an inch…
Life flowed through him, and his own threatened to flow out, yet he remained within and apart. That familiar glow dragging him closer. Revitalization and serenity, aspects of it and its ordered chaos. This was why he left. To seek out this connection, this truth he never knew nor comprehended.
This peace.
With a sudden roar Milo tore the injector away and flung it against the mirror. The glass shattered.
—
Startled awake, the Padawan could barely move. Covered in snow and chilled to the bone his muscles protested every movement. Clenching his fists he pushed himself up, bursting from the thin layer of snow and into the waning daylight.
The shivering took him, and every motion was more difficult than the last. Yet on his knees he took a deep breath, his mind only now collecting itself. Ilum. I’m on Ilum… What was that, a memory? No it couldn’t have been… It possessed not the fog of remembrance and far too many details. He glanced to his right hand and, holding his wrist, slowly began to uncurl his frozen fingers, the tips of which having begun to discolor.
A blue light flowed from between his fingers, illuminating his face and the cracked grin that was beginning to grow. A hoot and a laugh followed shortly after. “I can feel it, Garo,” he shouted,”I can feel it!”
Clenching his fist over the crystal, seemingly wrenched from the ground, he pushed to his legs and began to stagger back to the ship. Hoping that his foolish flight wouldn’t cost him his life, all the while with a grin plastered on his face.
—
The journey back was far more enjoyable for Milo, though he wouldn’t stop thumbing the crystal. While the sting of addiction still chased after him he found it easier to ignore as the two of them pulled into Coruscant. His compatriot, Vosca, showed him around the Grand Temple, its various halls and terraces, and of course the Archives. It was… Refreshing, compared to the Temple on Viscara, more familiar. Just as ascetic but closer to the bustle of life that Milo had known throughout his whole life. While others felt the Force strongly within nature and solitude, this Padawan found it in the racket and the rush.
His eyes strayed to the lower levels once or twice but he found the pull easier to ignore.
As they drew away from the planet Milo felt a brief longing to return to the world, knowing that his fate was elsewhere, though it was sooner than expected as the two of them had forgotten something rather important… A temperature controlled container within which two hotdogs waited for a certain Knight.