not, in fact, a work in progress. sorry.
Kal's five years old and he's on a walkway, high in the upper levels of Imperial Center (Coruscant, his father insists on calling it, always Coruscant, and Kal gets muddled in class sometimes). He's not walking but balancing as if on a tightrope at the circus he's only ever seen on the Holonet, carefully stepping along the seam of the durasteel panels below his feet, pleased that he's keeping to a straight line. He reaches the end of the walkway, steps onto the panel that opens to the wider building-lined walkway, and turns in a single jump to grin proudly at his parents.
They've stopped too far from him to notice, though, and Kal frowns. They're arguing again. They're always arguing, and they think he doesn't know, but he's not stupid. He's five, but he's not stupid. Even when he doesn't see, he knows when they've been arguing: his mother has that fake too-bright smile and his father's even grumpier than usual.
He doesn't know what it's about, but he wishes they'd stop. If they didn't argue so much, they'd have more time to notice when he walks a perfect straight line along a walkway and jumps all the way around in one turn. Wouldn't they?
Maybe they'll stop soon.
He's figured out the reason for his parents' arguments by age nine. He still doesn't really understand them -- his parents or the arguments -- but he knows why, now.
His father doesn't like the Empire.
Kal shivers when he thinks that, every time, and has to look around to make sure no one noticed. There's rumours of mind-readers working for the Emperor, right? Jedi-like men and women who can tell just by looking at you that you're dishonest, that you're a traitor, that you should be arrested and locked up and never ever let out. And knowing about a traitor is just as bad as being one, if you don't report it.
He can't report his father, though; he just can't. Anyway, it's not that bad, is it? Just disliking the Empire. After all, Kal doesn't like school, but that doesn't mean he convinces others to hate it, or that he's plotting to blow it up, or that he wants to kill all the teachers. It's just a bit boring. Maybe his dad just thinks the Empire's a bit boring.
Even Kal thinks the Empire's a bit boring, sometimes. All those cartoons on the Holonet -- he thinks there used to be better ones when he was little, but he doesn't really remember. There's none worth watching now, though. And he's only allowed to read certain books in school, and listen to certain music groups, and visit certain 'Net sites.
And what about the Jedi?
They're the bad guys, of course. The evil people the Emperor had to get rid of, because they hated the Empire, too, and weren't going to let it exist. Not let it exist! And some of them were even aliens. Imagine that! Aliens who thought they could just not let the Empire exist.
Except, that's not quite the version he hears from older kids, his friends' big brothers and sisters. Kids who claim to remember Imperial Center (Coruscant, they call it, just like his dad) before the Emperor was in charge. Kids who tell him, in hushed voices, about Kenobi and Skywalker.
Kenobi and Skywalker.
They make the Jedi sound pretty wizard, and they make Kal want to believe them. Is it too exciting to be true?
Or is just too exciting for the Empire?
His twelfth birthday party isn't really a party; it's just two of his friends and him going for dinner (paid for by his mother) and to see a holofilm (mocking Garik "The Face" Loran for the whole of Jungle Flutes) and then hanging out at home and looking up dirty sites on the Holonet.
Kal's mother is out with her own friends and his father's working late in his office, occasionally coming out to yell at the boys to be quiet. (His parents don't argue anymore; they just spend as little time as possible in the same building.) Kal rolls his eyes whenever his father shouts and grins at his friends: it's no big deal.
There's a knock at the apartment door.
Kal freezes. It's probably just his mother (why would she knock?). Maybe it's a relative bringing a gift (but his father's parents came earlier and his mother's family still live on Corellia). It must be one of his father's colleagues.
That last one doesn't make him feel any better. Just what does his father do these days, anyway?
He gestures for his friends to close the 'Net sites, and while they're busy trying to get rid of all the questionable ads, he opens his bedroom door and peers out into the hall towards the entrance. His father's standing at the door, just as frozen as Kal was a few seconds ago, and when he glances back at his son Kal's insides turn cold.
His father's scared.
Kal's ushered back into his room and the door's locked from the outside and then he hears nothing, nothing but the front door opening and quiet voices (angry on the part of his father; entirely impersonal on the part of his visitors) and the front door closing again.
His mother comes home an hour later and unlocks his bedroom door, sends his friends home, and spends the whole night staring unseeingly at the Holonews.
His father doesn't come home at all.
"Kenobi and Skywalker," seventeen-year-old Kal thinks he hears the Holonews say, and he looks up from his homework like someone's jolted him. He should be studying -- he needs to pass the exams to get into the Imperial Academy, his father can't pay his way in anymore -- but he feels like something exciting's about to happen, he can feel that rush he remembers from being a child and listening to stories that shouldn't have been told. Kenobi and Skywalker. Aren't they dead?
It's not Kenobi and; it's something about a Luke Skywalker, a boy just two years older than Kal. But the excitement doesn't fade. The newscaster makes no mention of the original Skywalker -- after all, that man no longer exists according to the Empire, does he? Kal checked -- and this Luke is apparently an enemy, the worst traitor of all. He blew up the Death Star.
(Isn't that something a Jedi would do?)
The newscaster drones on, implicating Luke Skywalker not only in the destruction of the Death Star, but that of Alderaan, too, and a thousand other Rebel plots against the Empire. Kal stopped listening a while ago. He's busy thinking of adventures and Jedi and all the things that thrill him a whole lot more than be a good boy and go to the Academy and make your father proud, as if his father was even still alive.
Kal's pretty sure, now he thinks about it, that the Imperial Academy is the last place to which Reylan Durgen would want to send his son.
He puts down his pen and stares at the screen thoughtfully. Has he really just decided not to go the Academy? Just because he heard the name Skywalker on the news and thought of being nine years old again, thought of his old stupid dreams of being a Jedi? That's the most ridiculous thing he's ever come up with, and he's come up with a lot of ridiculous things before. He knows he can't be a Jedi; he knows he can't do anything except go to school and get a job and live the middle-class life he's always lived. Trying to do anything else would be stupid.
He doesn't pick up his pen.
One ship: check. A run-down old Corellian freighter purchased from his uncle with his life savings.
One droid: check. An even older astromech donated by his uncle because otherwise it would've gone to the scrapyard.
One exasperated mother: check. "It's just a year out," he's told her, smiling and bright and so very earnest at eighteen. He's got the acceptance letter from the University of Kuat to prove it. He's just postponing his attendance there by one year to travel the galaxy a little, see a few planets, experience some culture.
Sure. One year.
That's all.