Many hours later, he didn't know how long, really, he awoke to the comfort of the blankets. The furry creature was laying on his naked chest, purring and warm and comfortable. He could feel, immediately, that he was in no danger, that the man was downstairs somewhere.

He let himself enjoy the bed for another few minutes before he pulled the little animal off him, giggling when it mewled and tried to climb back atop him. He sat up, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, aware that he had bedhead and, all at once, the intense urge to pee. So, after he tucked the data pad into his pocket, did his braid up, he took the creature and his lightsaber and went to the stairs.

Corsen was on the bottom floor, reading from a tablet. Upon hearing the boy's footsteps he stood, nodding smoothly and looking in earnest at Dawsen. The boy said, his voice groggy and sleepy, "Heya."

"Hello. Want to eat?"

"I gotta pee, actually. After that, I'll figure out what else needs to happen."

The man pointed under the stairs. "Right there, son, get ya settled and come out here."

He tried to set the creature down but it wouldn't go, instead climbing up his arm and laying across his shoulders. He shrugged, going into the little toilet room and, without even pulling the curtain, he took his pants down and started to urinate. He didn't even think about anything other than the satisfaction of being well rested and comfortable, his mind straying to the horror of what might have been if he hadn't rescued.

He shook his head, settling himself. That hadn't been his fate, so he had no right to think about it. No right, and no need. He stood for a good hand minute, eyes closed, holding his foreskin back with his thumb and forefinger, slipping into his meditation, feeling the world around him. Save for the man and the little creature on his shoulders and some indiginous he was aware of something dark and terrifying here, some abomidable, hungry energy that hated endlessly.

All in a rush the memory of what had happened to Oren came back to him, somehow forgotten as he had slept, fortunately, but, when it came, it slammed into him hard, and he almost fell to his knees. He put himself away, however, and leaned against the wall of the little toilet room. As on the volcanic plains he felt that electricity crackling and sparkling and breaking between his fingers, shocking him even as it invigorated him to the deepest parts of him. He slammed his hand against the wall, pushing his forehead against it, trying to calm himself, trying to let his anger settle, but there, within the roaring, swelling fury of it, a guilt that he had never sensed before. He felt as though something on the planet had known he was hurting, that he was suffering, and knew it, and wanted his hate to be worse.

The little creature on his shoulders mewled softly, and pressed close to his face, licking his cheek, breathing hot, delicate wet patterns on his skin, and, all at once, as it had come, he remembered himself. The electricity that crackled and sparked on his hand didn't abate, however. It went between his fingers like lightning between a series of rods, breaking and shifting and growing when he clenched his fist. It felt good, better than anything he had ever felt before, as if he was giving in to something, even though he had no idea what the lightning was and how it was manifesting.

After another half minute of him breathing heavily, the electricity slowly dissipating, at the creature licking his cheek, he became aware that the man was standing in front of the door, looking in at him. He turned his head to look sheepishly over at the man. "H-hey."

"You hungry?"

The boy nodded. "Yeah, I am."

"I made something earlier. I'll heat it up. You slept for most of a day. You look a lot better, got your color back. You were sickly pale when I found you. Healthy now, and stronger. You feel better?" He held his hand out, touching Dawsen's shoulder when he came forward, leading him in to sit at the table and going to the stove to reheat what he had made. His eyes looked inquisitively over at Dawsen.

"Yes, I feel a lot better. I, well, I need to start exercising. I can go outside and set up a course, if you want to keep this interior space calm-"

Corsen waved his hand. "It wouldn't bother me at all to have you train in here. You need to be in top physical shape, I understand. You have your way of coping, as I have mine. I've been trying to map out how we'll be fulfilling the contract. I'm going to trust you, even though I don't know why I am, to do the heavy lifting here. If you so desire."

Dawsen nodded eagerly. "I'll be ready."

"Excellent. You'll enjoy it, I can tell. You have that fire in your eyes. A lust for adventure." He looked as though he had something more he very much wanted to say, but he just watched the boy for a few seconds more before he returned to his cooking.

Dawsen's jaw churned about as he tried to voice what he was thinking, but he couldn't make it come out clearly, so he shut up. He watched the cant of Corsen's hips as he leaned, the broad stretch of his back, not overly built but muscular all the same, handsome but not pretty or ugly. There was something almost boyish in him, even though he was probably twenty nine. It was a sort of beautiful graceless passion that Dawsen had seen in boys at the Jedi Academy, and, after a minute, he realized he was staring like a complete fool at the man.

He rose, his cheeks burning, and he said, "I-I'm gunna check outside for a minute." Oblivious to his thoughts, Corsen just nodded and waved his hand. He peeled the creature from his shoulders and sit it on the table, taking his lightsaber in hand and heading to the door and down the steps, looking at the large ship out here, then the small craft he had been rescued in. The R4 unit was off on the side of the room, ahead and to the left of him, doing something with a computer, probably calibrations for the engines or weight estimations.

His eyes sized the space up, trying to determine where he could exercise comfortably, safely, with less possibility of damaging equipment or himself. He sat on the wing of the small ship and meditated, ignoring the flashes of lightning that were still shooting from his hand, less and less now that he wasn't focused completely on his anger. He felt his guilt again, ebbing and surging in him as he tried to forget everything save the present, and, once again, the memory of Master Yoda's voice said that guilt was a path to greed, or something like that. He tried and failed for a time to just feel the metal under him, and, when he succeeded, he went up his body, loosening his muscles, feeling his heart beating inside him, his braid laying across his shoulder, his eyes loosely lidded and twitching as though he was in REM sleep. He was aware that Corsen was watching him, and could feel the man's thoughts of him.

His eyes opened, and he looked in at the man. He called, well aware that he was blushing deeply, "Do you mind?"

Corsen retreated behind the wall, thankfully.

He meditated until he was just aware of the Living Force, permeating all, existing throughout all of creation. He extended his will, his own power, until he could feel the crates that surrounded him, feeling for what was inside them. The unimportant ones were stacked, shaped into an obstacle course. He made it so it was a run around the entire chamber, as large as he was capable of making it with the number of boxes and crates that were available. He set long beams down for balance, some sections where he would need to leap from a small bucket to another small bucket, landing on the very rim of the buckets themselves. No room for error.

He thought back to his training, before and even after he had earned his lightsaber. He had had to traverse a chamber that was filled with lights, along with the other Padawan Learners, and not cross any of the beams. He had always excelled in and very much enjoyed these trials, just about as much as he had enjoyed the lightsaber training and combat they had performed, starting first with probes and small drones and eventually learning the forms. He was excelling at a few of the forms, and struggling in others. He was proud and happy, as he slowly positioned everything, that he had had his training.

When he was done he was tired, as applying the Force in that way was ultimately tiring, and Corsen had been sitting watching him for a while, allowing him to finish what he was doing so that he was settled and focused for later. One more thing off their list. He opened his eyes, allowing his awareness of everything surrounding him to diminish, and, after a minute, he stood, stretching up toward the sky, then touching his toes. He went to the inside of the modular home that Corsen had built and sat at the table.

He was served. Corsen had a look of distinct pleasure on his face as he sat across from the boy, as if he was glad to find someone with him again. Dawsen could feel that it had been some time since Corsen had really had anyone with him, and, while this was sad, he also understood that the man wanted some freedom. That didn't stop him from enjoying the fact that someone was here with him now, inhabiting his space, here to share his goals and problems and hopes. He smiled at the man before he started to eat, drinking from a cup that was filled with a delicious blue milk that he had had on the Outer Rim before.

Corsen waited for him to finish eating. When he had, the man cleared his dishes and said, "How's your obsticle course work?"

"It's enough for me to practice different movement techniques, depending on how I go from side to side. I can go in every direction, essentially, and always have a new course."

"Well of course. Did they teach you this at the Jedi Temple?"

Dawsen shook his head. "I reverse engineered it from a trial room we had to go through. Its similiar but different, of course. We had to navigate lights. I hear that the Sith had to negotiate real traps that would kill them if they made mistakes, and I believe it.'

"How are you going to go about training?"

"Well, after an hour or so, I'll just do practice runs, down and back, while focusing on the Force to guide me. I'll do things like run with my lightsaber out, which has obvious merits, or hold something in the air beside myself to make my concentration better."

"You mean," Corsen pointed at the maze, "do acrobatics and stuff with something floating beside you?"

Dawsen nodded as though it was the most obvious thing ever. He made his lightsaber float and did a hand stand, lifting off one hand, then onto two fingers. He set the lightsaber on his right foot.

"Okay, show off, I get the point."

The boy righted himself. "That's legitimately an exercise we had to do at the Academy. Making things swirl around us, or stacking objects. Makes our focus sharp, attuned."

Corsen rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Well, remind me to never cross ya."

Dawsen giggled and hugged the man, forgetting himself entirely for a moment. When he realized what he was doing he pulled away awkwardly and went to the door, blushing to his neck. "I'm, uh, gunna meditate."

Corsen laughed softly. "If you want a shower, you know where it is. I'll be in here preparing for the run we gotta do."

Dawsen grumbled something under his breath and went outside, meditating for an hour or so. He did all that he could to focus on his goal, knowing his body and mind needed to be sharp. He couldn't focus on or think about the fact that Oren was dead, or that he had no idea of what was on the data chip he had been given. And, deep in the core of him, he couldn't fathom what was wrong with him, why he was so interested in Corsen. It had to be respect. Yeah, that was it. Respect for having been helped when he was desperate. He told himself that it couldn't possibly be anything else...