Youngling

The youngling stone, to Mical, represented everything he hated. It was a low, smooth, flat sort of rock surrounded by shrubs and little flowers, and always a pack of a dozen or so little boys and girls; they were all identical, to Mical’s eyes, dressed in the same sandy-brown robes with their hair pulled back the same way. They spoke in the same tone, followed the same orders, and they all shared the same name.

Youngling.

Never before had Mical hated a word so much as he hated this one. Youngling, to him, was like a chain being wrapped around his neck. Because Youngling was the word that had stripped Mical’s name from him, stripped his past from him, stripped every shred of his identity from him. Youngling was the word that shoved him into this cluster of children, of dumb, blank, identical children, and it was the word that told Mical that he was the same. Just the same.

Mical knew he wasn’t the same, and so while the other children played games around the rock, waiting patiently for word on their progressions towards apprenticeship, Mical would stand off to the side in the flowers and the wild grasses, making shapes out of mud – or he would wander out into the plains, and chase the mynocks and sometimes Kath pups, if they came too near. The other children thought he was strange. Maybe he was.

One day he was making a painting out of mud on the stone pathway towards the enclave. He wasn’t sure what the picture was supposed to be, but he hoped that it was something profound. A Twi’lek Jedi Master watched him from his seat nearby. The man didn’t say anything, so Mical simply shut him out. He just splattered and smeared, working his delicate fingers through the grime of the earth. It was his favorite thing, to be in touch with the earth and all of its beauty.

“Little youngling?”

It was the Twi’lek man.

Mical set his jaw and kept working. His name wasn’t Youngling, and so the man couldn’t possibly be talking to him.

But the Twi’lek wasn’t about to give up. “You, there, boy. Youngling.”

Mical glanced up at him, and the powerful gaze which met his own told him to submit. He did, turning to bow. “Master.”

The Twi’lek nodded by way of acceptance. “What are you doing, there?”

“I like to think it’s art, sir.”

The other seemed to consider this. “Why are you not with the other younglings?”

Mical hesitated. He had learned long ago that blatant honesty amongst the Jedi was frowned upon, at best. “They are too… stiff,” he began, carefully. “They do not like the things that I like. They look alike.” He bit his lip. “And I hardly know how to address them.”

The Twi’lek opened his mouth, and then closed it. “What do you like, my boy?”

Mical smiled, and he knew how to answer this question honestly. “I like to learn.”

At this, the man started to laugh. “Very well, then. Turn those robes inside-out, won’t you, and go sit with the other children. Check those hands before dinnertime. Dirty nails are hardly desirable.”

Mical sighed, and did as he was told. He wiped his hands on his robes and reluctantly went to sit amongst the other children. One boy, one of the few Mical didn’t consider horribly dull, looked at him and smiled. Mical smiled back – it was a reflex – and then looked beyond his companion to a flock of apprentices crossing across the walkway.

These were the only training apprentices in the entire enclave so far, or so Mical had heard. There must have been eight of them (a fair-sized number, though the average would swell to fifteen per year before the war). As usual, the majority were boys; amongst them, there were only three girls. He recognized one as Atris, who had once given him a wax candle she made when he had trouble sleeping in the dark a few years ago. The other he knew was Bastila, who couldn’t have been older than eleven and who wasn’t really an apprentice yet, and whose budding gift had already begun to make her a showcase amongst the Jedi Masters in the enclave. From the way she floated along behind the group, she probably wasn’t accepted into their little clan; she was more of an annoyance. The others most likely didn’t even see her.

Mical believed that Bastila was one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen. It wasn’t a sexual admiration – he was old enough now to know better than that, because he hardly liked girls at all – but an envy of her looks. He was jealous of her flawless pale face, her wide eyes like forget-me-nots. And he wouldn’t forget; he memorized people’s eyes, always. It was how he remembered people, no matter how much they changed, because their eyes would always remain the same. To Mical, they were the most important part of a person, the most beautiful part.

But it wasn’t Bastila who had really caught his attention.

Though there were many boys there (including Revan, who was infinitely fantastic in looks, and would later be remembered for his ‘face which could bring an army to its knees,’ though personally Mical found the man’s beauty jarringly unpleasant) – Mical’s gaze focused rather on one of the homeliest of them all. Mical didn’t know his name, but he had seen this boy around before. His talent was exceptional. His eyes were exceptional.

Looking at him over the narrow space of the walkway Mical felt something in him kick. It was a part of him that was dormant, still, at nine years old; but still it stirred inside of him, flooding his senses with awkward heat. He gripped his robes nervously, holding them to his body – he was afraid that the boy might look at him. That the boy might look at him with those powerful eyes, those eyes the color of water cresting on the shore, silver faded with foamy green.

The apprentice was not actually beautiful, not in the physical sense; in fact, he was rather awkward in appearance. His limbs were oversized for his body, which was short and slim like a broken willow branch. His lips were full and seemed to hang from his face, too heavy for the slight, delicate curve of his cheek bone. Big, silly ears poked out from beneath a shock of sandy hair, which came down to his neck in clumsy waves. He wasn’t special – but for his eyes. His lovely eyes.

But then Mical could see that the apprentices were playing with a ball of some sort, and Malak, awkward Malak, lost his grip on it… It came rolling to a stop right at Mical’s feet.

Mical stared at it dumbly, and the apprentices stared at him, waiting for him do something. He mouthed wordlessly at the ball, shocked.

“Hey, boy! Toss it to us, won’t you?”

That was Revan, Mical thought, yet he couldn’t bring himself to look up, to see those green eyes fixed on him. He reached out one shaking hand, and couldn’t grab it. It was too far away – and, oh, how embarrassing to climb down from the rock to it! To expose himself as he turned around, exposing his dirty, mud-caked self… He was so imperfect, so abnormal…

There was a loud sigh (“Oh, well, really!”) and then a big, tanned hand was reaching out right between Mical’s feet to scoop up the ball. Mical looked up sharply, knowing he shouldn’t, knowing who it was – and green eyes looked back at him.

It was the apprentice. He was smiling. His teeth were crooked but beautiful.

“Hello.”

Mical groaned quietly. He’d never made such a noise before, and startled himself.

“It’s all right, I’ve got it,” the apprentice continued, and touched Mical’s cheek. “You don’t need to be afraid, you know. You’ll be an apprentice one day, too.” He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper; his breath tickled Mical’s lips. “I can tell.”

Mical’s lips moved but no air came out. He could feel time slipping away from him with a terrifying speed, but for every moment he scrambled to regain his senses more of his mind would fly away, until he was sure it was about to vanish forever – and the apprentice’s eyes were like a row of teeth, ripping through Mical’s exterior to his very soul, which was devoured whole.

“There must be a ripped chord in the universe right there, my fellows, where people spontaneously become retarded,” Revan said in a slow, articulate sort of way that made the comment really drive home.

The apprentice whirled around and stuck out his tongue. The moment shattered into a million pieces. The wind caught his sand-colored hair and for one blissful second, his entire face was lost, and Mical took a single breath.

“Thank you, boy,” the apprentice said, turning back around and flashing another smile. His smiles were so frequent and so heartbreakingly intimate.

Mical pursed his lips until they were white. Something was pressing out from the inside of him and stretching the universe with its sheer size. He couldn’t be sure exactly what it was, but when the apprentice walked away with his flock of companions, the sensation leeched away into the world again. The wind blew, and the world remained unchanged.

Once in the night, many years later, Disciple woke screaming. Pretty green eyes blinked at him in the dark, and he never forgot eyes. Never.

“Train me,” he rasped into the dark, feeling for once just like himself.

The Exile smiled his happy smile, and he did.

-- fin