A/N: I don't own any of this. Disney lets me share the story with you as long as we don't get paid for it. So let's keep our voices hushed and enjoy the show.
Warning: UnBetaed. Yeah, all the mistakes are mine. I had to get this out before I mulled over editing it yet again. Umm. So...There is forced drug use, homelessness, abduction, child abuse and implied future rape/non-con in the later part of this chapter. The next chapter will have the much the same warning. Yes, this and the next chapter are dark. I will keep to the teen rating, so it's not explicit. The contents of this section describe a few of many risks people on the streets, in desperate situations and in conflict areas, in our real world have to face each day. You have been warned.
Remember- Comments make baby Wookiees smile
Timeline: Main story is Star Wars rebellion era. pre-ESB Hoth, This chapter section is a pre-Clone Wars Force vision.
Grasping Perception
Chapter Three
Princess Leia spiraled into the dream vision of the young child.
The child stared into the rippling reflection of himself in the dark surface of the puddle framed by melting slush. A dangerously thin, hollow cheeked human toddler stared back with luminous deep set eyes of umber bordered by olive green, bright golden flecks sparkled in the depths of the irises. His dark hair was filthy, matted, and the bangs hung at his jaw, the back section tumbling over his bony shoulders. He was dressed in clothes either far too small, or oversized pieces scavenged from refuse piles. His shoes were in tatters held together by strips of cloth wound around the foot. Similar strips of cloth served as crude wrappings for his hands.
She knew it was a 'him', a male. When the child's body shifted, she knew instinctively that this being of her dream vision was entirely male. He was incredibly young, surviving by a primal instinct, scavenging refuse for food, fighting alley vermin nearly his size and twice as mean, unwilling to give in to the overwhelming odds. Struggling against the massive obstacles stacked against him by fate and the antipathy of the society he lived in.
A dull nagging pain rippled through his gut. He clenched himself against the constant diarrhea that plagued him on his empty stomach. His fingernails were thin and peeled, his fingertips split with dehydration. Despite all of Leia's experiences under Vader and Tarkin and the challenges of the war effort following, these sensations of this being were wholly unfamiliar to her. The hunger that gnawed and turned the bowels to liquid. The aching chill that the child knew, knew, would not be assuaged. He rose, the dizziness roiling over him like a state of drunkenness. He braced himself on the moist stone of the wall behind him and slid his body upward. The evening supper crowd were beginning to disperse. Food would be available in trash receptacles, patio tabletops and credits chips would be everywhere, pockets, tables, and bar tops. He eased out of the alley. His eyes slid around the streets picking out locations where other competing scavengers could emerge from. He slunk forward, his body sensitive to the bulk and bulges of the hips and thighs of the adults around him. A few blocks later in a better neighborhood, he spied a young couple at a sidewalk café dabbling the sides of their mouths with their napkins. He knelt down next to a planter his eyes locked on the woman's half consumed sandwich.
He rushed forward, focused on the partially consumed food, briefly noting the location of purses and wallets on the customers' tables. His mouth watered, it didn't matter what it tasted like, only that it would fill his belly. He approached within a few meters, using passersby as cover. The man the boy had spied, slid a fur shawl around the woman's shoulders and kissed her affectionately on the cheek. The woman gathered up her belongings and the couple left the restaurant, their arms wrapped around each other's waists.
The boy slipped between a Duros and a light post, pacing behind one couple and then followed another as they strolled past the café. Squeezing between the balusters of the café railing, and he paused between two planters with brittle yellowed flowers, eyeing the leftover food. Deciding it safe, he surged forward and clamped his hand around the woman's sandwich. The small child gulped down the food as quickly as he could, then he spied the glimmer of metallic rectangular ingots amidst the food pile. He knew these credits were important, they could be traded for food. He reached for the metal chits.
A hard shove landed him into a tangle of limbs and chair amongst the planters. One patron cursed as a larger youth pushed the child aside and snatched the credits, stuffing them into a belt pouch beneath her clothes. A dark blonde blur vaulted over the café's decorative fencing, pushed her way through the dispersing evening crowd and disappeared into the night. The boy was choking and gasping, a piece of bun lodged in his throat, he scrambled to untangle himself from the chairs, crawling out from underneath the mess of metal furniture to confront the concierge and waitress on his hands and knees.
"Get out of here you little vrelt!" The waitress howled. She whipped at him with a wet cleaning rag. The painful lick hit him square in the rear. He yelped and tore through the interior of the café, bouncing off of chairs, servers and patrons. Food was still paramount in his mind. Buns, pastries and easily grabbed items disappeared from table tops as he scampered past. He tripped and slid on his side underneath a table, a slice of nerf roast clenched between his teeth. A green skinned Rodian lady shrieked at him as he emerged from beneath her skirts, another heavier elderly Rodian began pummeling him with her handbag. He grabbed a long narrow loaf of bread off of a deli tray and deflected her blows, retreating between the planters. The violet eyed alien whacked at him one more time and was unintentionally disarmed when the strap of her handbag looped around the breadstick. The youth jerked the bread back in astonishment. The purse tore out of the lady's hand, soaring across the café to plunge in the café aquarium of fresh ormachek and gorgs. The radial jet splashed onto a nearby table soaking the patrons, tossing two ormachek onto the floor where they flopped helplessly.
A hush fell over the nearby patrons, servers and sidewalk crowd. There was a gasp from one patron and an outraged scream from his wife. Servers sprang into action, fussing and apologizing to the shocked customers. Chaos erupted in the far end of the restaurant from where the Rodian female and human child squared off. A pair of busboys attempted to recapture the escaped live food. The boy, rigid in amazement at the fluke event, found his gaze travelling to the gaping face of the elderly Rodian. A slow sideways smile crept across the child's face. He could hardly resist a self-satisfied shrug at the rodian. Handbag gone, she growled and resorted to squeezing her bulk between the planters to grabble with sucker tipped fingers at the urchin, cursing. The boy slunk through a gap in the fencing, leaving a faint grey smudge on the cream stonework and vanished into the gradually dissipating crowd.
Skipping along happily while shoveling the food in his mouth, the boy travelled along a quiet side street, humming contentedly. The long bread stick had made good barter for a few dry hours and a heel of soup in a shared stairwell. Two of the honey slathered pastries were exchanged for a blanket he had traded away three nights prior. No credits, but it had been a good night. The local Corsec police had shown up a moments after his hasty departure from the restaurant. The apathetic officers had duly taken their notes, promising to sweep the local streets clear of vermin. He'd observed from the edge of a nearby rooftop as the police hassled the scruffier locals; uprooting the old veteran and his collection of treasure he was hawking, pushing Ria and her shivering children out of the public transit kiosk. They worked the ground level block around the café, displacing the undesirables, the unkempt, the unseen.
The roar of a departing starship distracted the child. He was approaching the perimeter of one of the many ports throughout the city. He loved the cacophony of engines, repulsors and repair crews mixed with the heady smell of grease, sweat and coolant. He became less aware of his surroundings as he focused on the glow of a corvette's sublight engine array as it streaked into the dawn. There was a flicker of awareness of something behind him, a faint rustle of fabric, and the piercing smell of something medicinal.
A rough callused hand jammed a foul smelling rag into his mouth and he was hauled backwards, gagging. The boy kicked wildly, twisting and writhing in his captors' grip. His arms were slick with the moisture from that night's snowfall. He worked his arm free, and dragged the rag from his mouth, gasping. The large brute's hairy forearm got too close as he pinned the boy's limb to his side, attempting regain control of the squirming youngster. The child bit down, hard. There was a yell and then a vicious backhand across his face, and the boy reeled, seeing stars. The iron grip held him upright as the man pulled back for another blow.
"Sling, don't mess his pretty face up too bad. They pay more if the wee ones don't look too beat up." admonished a rail-thin woman in her forties. Her blonde hair was messily styled in an ostentatious updo, heavy makeup gave her a hollowed menacing look. A nearly indecent bosom spilled over a worn leather corset and the cuffs of her pants and shirt sleeves were fraying. She cupped the flailing child's bony chin, assessing him like a piece of meat. Her nails dug into his jawbone as she turned his head side to side. She opened his mouth, counting teeth, looking at the angle of his jaw, the deep set, dark glittering eyes. "Boys this pretty and unwanted are hard to find." Her finger tugged at the boy's tunic noting the margin of swarthy skin versus the pallor beneath the rags, the scuttle of arthropods in his mop of hair. The child wriggled, covering himself.
"We'll need to clean him up." The gaunt woman unclipped a comlink from her belt, barking into it, "Got one." She nodded to another being behind the brute that held the boy. The medicinal smell strengthened, and the boy kicked wildly. The woman accepted a cylinder from the being and caught the boy's ankle, she took a half step back, straightening his leg to jab the hypo into his thigh. When she released him he snarled, bucking, squirming and twisting futilely in the man's grip. The terror was thick in his throat. As the anesthetic took effect, his struggles decreased to sporadic twitches, vision narrowing to a fuzzy pinhole.
How much time would pass he never knew, it was hard to tell. The dawn had been approaching when he was abducted. They had poured his spindly form into the back of a speeder, the orange rays of the rising sun filtering through the cloth they had draped over his twitching body. The speeder ride was brief, staying within the inner city. He glimpsed a gaudy red peeling building façade as the big brute hauled him out of the speeder in broad daylight, his slight form easily mistaken for a roll in the cloth. It went dark again for a time, voices were muffled, unintelligible, after a time he drifted off into effects of the hypo's drugs, finding a small measure of comfort in finally being warm.
The smack of his body against the cold ceramic made for an abrupt awakening. There was sensation in his limbs again, it felt as though he had regained some motor control. Two pairs of hands pulled at his tunic raising his head enough to see dingy white tile. Mold and scum accumulated in the corners of the tiled cubicle, there was one entry with a raised tile lip, a spout emerged from a pipe the ceiling, the knob in the upper wall appeared to be some sort of control, and a rusting drain marked the base of a slope of the floor. The pale yellow lighting flickered and buzzed just beyond the confines of the stall. The boy tested his limbs and found enough control to draw himself back into the corner, away from the spigot and the two burry shadows in the entry. His harsh breathing echoed around him.
"What's he like not sedated" said a voice made of black velvet, echoing through the room.
"Wild, uncontrollable, gotta be whip smart for being on the street that young. Took a bite out of poor ol'Sling." The madam's hard drawl listed. " Not a being suited for general slavery."
The madam from the alleyway stepped into focus, she unwrapped a coin-sized biscuit and tossed it at the boy's feet. It broke in twain upon landing. The boy scrambled to retrieve the halves with fumbling fingers, including picking at a few crumbs. After sniffing it, he shoved the whole mess into his mouth. It was chocolate, sweet but with an acrid after-taste. He briefly considered spitting it out.
"Everyone's a slave, Madam" declared the man from the doorway, enunciation crisp, the tone aristocratic.
"Aye, ya got that right." Agreed Madam, " Me, you." She eyed him critically, "I bet you are a slave to more secrets than I will ever be." She remarked, indicating the stall. "Watch this," She beckoned. The man stepped over to the stall, peering over the door at the child.
Remaining partially sedated, the boy stared in bewilderment as tiny specks began dropping from his hair. Gut cramping, he turned onto his knees on the cold tile, and watched in horror as a rain of dying arthropods fell from his body. A least three varieties of crawlies writhed, kicking their many legs on the tile beneath him as they perished. He gagged in revulsion.
"Oh, oh! Let's get you washed up then." Madam clucked. She reached over the door, swiping at the knobs. A wet gurgle sounded from within the walls and icy water began shooting at the boy from the spigot, rinsing the dead bugs into the corroded drain. Putting up his hands unsteadily, body not fully cooperating, he attempted to block the cleansing spray, then began to shriek.
Velvet voice made a disgusted sound, pacing away from the stall.
"I did not desire to see that." He flapped his hand, dispelling what he'd witnessed. The child's cries began to abate as the water warmed up. A line of grey-brown water trickled into the drain from beneath him. The madam tossed in a bar of soap. Shrinking back, the lad eyed it, suspicious, clutching his knees to his chest.
"Oh for the love of…." Madam started. She swung around the doorframe and called into the hall beyond the shower room. A moment later, two wan looking young women entered. They were instructed to wash the youngster quickly as he was emerging from his drugged state earlier than expected. The madam soothed her customer, tapping her claw-like nails on the stall's outer wall.
"You wanted to see if we clean them up. We do. We're not those Hutt-spawn from the north side, I have standards. The girls will give him another anti-pest scrub, trim his nails and hair. He'll be ready for you by tomorrow night." She promised. "Do you need him sedated again?"
Velvet voice growled, " Did you not mention he's uncontrollable? Of course, I want him chemically restrained, but conscious"
"Well, some customers like a bit of a fight." The madam mused.
"I'm already contributing enough to this… event for my guests, I don't need the risk. " The aristocratic voiced man snapped. The slim shadow reached into a coat pocket, counting out high value credit chits. He pushed them into the madam's hand. "Do you offer to take care of disposal?"
"We can. I'll give you Sling's comm code. It'll be half again for the disposal."
The child was ultimately dressed in mismatched, undersized clean smelling clothes. His feet remained bare, but he was indoors, thankfully the warmth was everywhere. He spent the next night and day in a near stupor. Each time that he started to emerge, they stuck him with another hypo-shot, sending his brain spinning once more. The anti-pest treatment cleaned out his bowels, as well as the crop of parasites on his body. Nails were trimmed, the girls opted to leave his sun-bleached, light brown hair long, only cutting back the most troublesome locks. He had a vague recollection of feeling this cleanliness before, it was associated with a raven haired woman, her emerald eyes sparkling with love. Unlike his current surrounding, she had once made him feel safe, warm, cared for. He clung to her familiar comforting image in his fogged brain, and she radiated a terrible sadness. She looked down at the dreaming toddler clutching her skirts, gently disengaging his hand, a glowing blue halo radiated around her. The shimmering woman of his memory gave him the gift of his name and whispered in a desperate tone.
"Han, RUN!"
