Chapter 33.

                                    

                                          
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I wrapped my cloak around me, bracing myself against the chilly wind that blustered down the street. A sheet of rain was thrown at me, but I merely turned my face from it, pulling my hood lower. My boots splashed through puddles collected on the grungy ground, and my black clothes clung to my skin. My fingers were numb, though I was used to it by now.
                          
It had been two weeks – two weeks since my stomach had been given a good meal, two weeks since my body had been offered comfort in sleep, and two weeks since my heart had been anything other than frozen. I was familiar with it.
                          
Glancing down the streets at the cross intersection I had come to, I headed left, staying close to the skyscraper of a building, having been satisfied that there were no ruffians or bounty hunters hiding. Nearly every being in the galaxy knew what price they could get on my head. But I was no stranger to being a convict, a criminal, a runaway. This was normal. I was accustomed to it.
                          
My hand fiddled with the gun concealed under my cloak. I had almost been caught too many times, and security was a thing of the past. Certainty and safety were just ideas and concepts now – that which only others could experience. I could but look through that unbreakable glass and watch the memories or the lives of others if I wanted a taste of them. But this was nothing new to me. This was my life. I was inured to it.
                          
The deep grumble of thunder rolled through the blackened skies far above, and I cast my eyes upwards, catching sight of the heavily populated airways as speeders and ships played dodgems with each other. The first week had been fine. It was only when the second had dragged on that I finally admitted to myself how much I wished I had a ship. If I could just get off this planet, maybe things would change for the better. But my mind was quick to remind me of the unlikeliness of my thinking. So I had resigned myself to this future. I had little other options. And that was that.
                          
A crackle of lightning set the sky a blinding white for half a second before it was plunged back into its gloomy blackness. Another torrent of rain flooded down, pouring down in grey walls and saturating anything and anyone in its path. I ducked under the eaves of an abandoned building, crouching beneath its shelter and listening to the pounding of the rain. A shiver ran down my spine, and I curled up against the wall, tucking my soaked cloak around myself.
                          
I brushed my gloved hand across my face, pushing back my drenched dark blond hair and catching on the scar on my left cheekbone. I sighed. It kept splitting. It would nearly heal up, then I would get trapped in another brawl, and a fist to the face would open it again. 
                          
I watched the rain drops splatting in the puddles, sending out perfect circles across the water's surface, and waited for the rain to abate. This was my life now: cold, lonely, and empty. It was everything I had feared, everything I had fought and struggled and begged not to have. My choices and my actions had dragged me here, and there was nowhere for me to go from them. I didn't deserve another chance, and I wouldn't dare to ask for one. No one would extend it to me. I had betrayed each and every of my friends, had nearly killed most of them, and had distanced myself from them – probably forever.
                          
Pulling my knees closer to my chest, I felt a gentle tug at the shallow scar across my waist. That one had healed, but the memories had never faded. Did he know? Had he ever found out why I had received this scar? And why did I still care?
                          
Because it was my one gate out of this life. If he knew, maybe he would welcome me back. Maybe, just maybe, he had not given up on me. Maybe somewhere in the depths of his heart, he remembered – remembered to look past the seen and to search for the unseen. He was good at that. He always had been. But this time ... this time must have been that time of one too many. He must never have known. If he had, he would have come. It was as simple as that.