Through and Through

Coruscant

"You want to buy some deathsticks?"

The question lingers awkwardly in the air, same as it always does. It's been well-practiced at this point, a cold call drowned out by the blare of music and desperation. My head antennas fidget as I wait for an answer, nervous as a dozen patrons brush past my mousy form. I fake this stupid half-grin as I stare up at the man, like confidence is going to change the fact that every night club-goer this side of Happyland has already been asked the same question a half dozen times.

All the same, the man doesn't look up at me, not once. He just leans against the bar, stares straight ahead, waves his hand nonchalantly. "You don't want to sell me deathsticks."

"I... don't want to sell you deathsticks," I repeat in that same gravelly tone. I don't know why I said it, obedience kind of outweighed reluctance there. Maybe my voice was looking out for my face.

"You want to go home and rethink your life."

His follow-up is frank, unembellished. He nods as he speaks, acts like he's said the simplest thing in the galaxy, like I haven't already tried it a thousand times before.

But the suggestion feels a little different than all the others, a little warmer. There's a friendliness in his indifference, like the man cares but knows he can't care too much, can't care more than I do. Because if he did, then it'd be all for nothing. I'd just be the same guy I ever was. The same leech feeding off somebody else's optimism, preying on their hopefulness for me.

"I want to go home and rethink my life."

Gravity feels a little lighter as I speak. Like I unloaded a burden that's been weighing me down. I guess when you know someone else cares for you, you don't have to care so much. I know the words are wrong and nothing's going to change, but it feels good to say them. It's a high that I didn't have to go out and buy or fence for, because it was a little simpler than that. Because it was free and I could have it whenever I wanted.

So I step away from the bar, away from the club's ambience altogether. Past its exotic patrons and neon lights. It was kind of nice not regulating myself to my nightly vigil. It makes the city feel different as I amble down the street, a little quieter.

It's been years since that happened now. Years and years. Things have gotten easier now, a little less desperate.

These days I don't sell deathsticks, don't sell much of anything, really. Now I just try and come home after work at the packing plant. Work and home, work and home. It was hard at first. Ma passed away and I always had the debt collectors breathing down my neck. But it got easier. Maybe I just got smaller. War has a way of making you feel that way.

And it was only a couple days after I got my new 'life directive' that war really started to take hold. It didn't mean much to me at the time, but once pictures of beheadings and immolations start hitting the HoloNet it gets hard to watch your Gammorean soap operas in peace. It gets even harder to ignore the fact that there are bigger things out there, people worse off than me, and, at the risk of sounding absolutely pathetic, that it actually makes me feel better. Not in the 'I enjoy people suffering' way, more in the 'your life isn't as bad as it could be' one.

Still, it's the kind of thing that gets your patriotism going, shoots a surge of adrenaline where you sense of right and wrong should probably be. I actually considered enlisting at one point. Me, a scrawny twenty-four-year-old Balosar from the Tibanna district. Actually got halfway through the recruitment process, but they told me I'd have to get my antenna palps removed and that was a no go. It all worked out in the end, I suppose. Turns out we had people who would do the fighting for us. 'People', not droids, but those guys might as well have amounted to the same thing.

I suppose it was a little better that way, a little more humane. They kept us safe and we got taxed to keep their war effort going. I don't know if that kept us even, but at least nobody said otherwise.

Sometimes I think it's a shame I decided to stop selling deathsticks when I did. Business was always at its best when people wanted to find a way to stop thinking about something.

I don't think about those days so fondly though, not anymore. When I do its usually a sign that I'm stuck in a rut and need to rethink whatever it is I'm doing. But sometimes I'll still get nostalgic and find myself standing at Galactic Crossing, anyways. It is a pretty famous landmark, after all. You might have seen it on a post card or two. It's a crosswalk at the heart of the city, the crossroads between the Senate Building and the Jedi Temple, the central hub of the central hub. Millions of humanoids pass through every day, going about their business, setting off in a hundred different directions. Everybody shares the Crossing though, as brief a reprieve as it is, a few seconds at most, but they always come here before they disappear. They always come back.

I just stand in the middle of it all sometimes, more so when I was a kid looking for an easy mark. You would be surprised how many tourists you can trick as an 'orphan' if you stand at the right street corner and say the right things. But I still like to come these days too, act like I actually have a reason to be here. I'll close my eyes and I'll pretend. Maybe I have to go meet an important client in the business district, or I'm a politician late for a Senate hearing, or maybe a diplomat that arrived from some far-off world here to negotiate a trade dispute.

But that's when I open my eyes and I'm all alone. This time with a dozen hover speeders veering through the crosswalk I was supposed to vacate ten seconds ago.

Most people would argue I'm a loser, and with a bunch of drivers trying to flatten and fling expletives at me as I cross the street, it's hard to argue with them. Really though, I think I just don't like coming outside, because when I do it generally ends with me doing something stupid like this. If it's not that it's just because I really need that one job because I really need that money because I really need to be able to stay at home and stop coming out and doing stuff.

Case in point: the alleyway that beckons as I finally clear the crossing. Once my heartbeat's back to a respectable rate I slouch on over to it, get reacquainted with the shadows. Alleyways used to be like a second home for me. And it's funny, because these days I don't even really have a first. Sure, I've got a couple places I can hole up in for the night, so long as nobody notices I'm around, but not a real home.

The wheels keep churning though. I keep trudging down the back street, resenting my need to drop out of school all the more. Don't get very far before I'm tripping over something. Shadows still blind me but there's no ignoring the bundle of flesh, the soft grunt beneath my boot. Once the initial shock wears off I keep walking, don't even bother looking down, probably just stumbled on a sleeping vagrant. I've been there.

"Wa- wait, please."

I pause then, not at the whimper but at the voice itself. Youngest drifter I've ever heard.

Now I turn, squint through the darkness, pan towards the silhouette staring up at me from the ground. Then I curse. It's definitely a kid, can't be older than a teenager, could have been friends with my younger brother if I ever figure out where he ran off to. He's got robes on, simple threads, the kind of stuff you might find in the trash heap at a clothing company. But their familiar garments, the same ones that man was wearing at the club all those years ago.

More noticeable is the trails of blood, one streaking from his back, two more through his side, the rest smeared across the concrete. "What the hell happened to you?"

"I... I'm hiding."

I kneel down beside what's left of him, noting the blaster scorch marks. "From who?"

"From... everyone."

We don't say much for a moment after that. I don't think he could even if he really wanted to. I'm not a doctor, but I take my jacket off anyways, try and stop the bleeding, try and cover up the gaping holes. I want to pick him up, race down the mammoth passage for help, back towards the crosswalk of people that just can't be bothered. But I've been here before, I already know when it's too late. So I just end up holding him instead.

"Is... is it going to hurt?" He finally croaks.

"Is what going to hurt?" I ask, pretending like I don't already know the answer.

He doesn't respond though. Just sits there and withers, like he's already relegated himself to his fate, past the point where he can answer for himself.

"I mean, it can't hurt more than it already does, right?" I finally ask with a dumb laugh, but stop real quick, realizing it's not helping. "But... if it does, it's because there's a purpose. There's always a purpose. Just like anything else. Because even the bad things have a purpose, even when you don't think they do. Even when it feels like its just the whole universe conspiring against you, there's still gotta be a reason for it. And when you know that, accept that, and decide not to think about it anyways, that's when things get a little better. That's when they don't start to seem so bad. "

Halfway through stumbling through my speech, I kind of started realizing that this wasn't working. That 'helping' might be just as hard as 'getting helped', at least when you're still trying to pretend like you've already got the answers figured out. I think the kid realizes the same thing because he starts laughing in between coughs of blood. "You sure do talk a lot, mister."

That's when I smile, lean up against the wall a little taller. "I guess I do."

Silence overtakes us again, this time for the last time. It's kind of sad watching somebody melt away in front of you like that, watch a kid go to waste in a few mere moments. It makes you feel bad. There's some medicine I used to sell that could have helped me with this.

But, a couple moments later, it's a hand around my shoulder that tries to help instead. "Sir, we'll take him from here."

Generally, having someone approach you in a dark alleyway is cause for alarm, but the man's voice is familiar, same as the million others who've used it. It plays on every viewscreen you pass by on your way to work, the reels and reels of War propaganda.

I turn to address the real hero. The clone trooper. He's faceless, even now, with his helmet tucked beneath his arm.

It wouldn't be for a couple more hours that I'd realize what he and his men wanted the kid's carcass for, what they had already done to the rest of the Jedi. For now though, I just nod my head.

"Right."

Slowly, reluctantly, I stand up, grip that blood-soaked jacket in my hands a little tighter. I'd like to think I took my own advice for once, but it's somebody else's words that I keep coming backing to. Some days I don't think I was supposed to rethink my life, just rethink thinking at all. Numb's still a feeling, no matter how you slice it.

I stumble back out of the alleyway at the thought, wrench myself back into the flood of patrons. Blissfully ignorant to the smoke tracing the skies far above us all.

End