ADDICTIVE.
There was no other word for it.
I watched the miniature galaxy swirl inside Meteor's open belly pouch slow, unhurried, star-flecked, and felt something pull at me less curiosity than compulsion. My arm extended before I had consciously decided to extend it, and it disappeared inside the void up to the wrist.
The strangeness of what I was doing caught up with me a half-second later. I flinched back.
I had pulled something out with me.
A small glass jar, warm in my palm. I looked back at Meteor: the pouch had sealed itself closed. He sat against Lumi's pillow looking precisely as harmless and cuddly as a teddy bear in mint condition ought to, glowing faintly silver, giving nothing away.
A laugh worked its way up from somewhere low in my chest.
"Thank you, Meteor," I murmured. "For whatever you are. For listening."
I held the jar up. It was half-full of something golden-brown and viscous, catching the faint light with the slow, heavy quality of honey. A small paper label had been taped to the other side. I turned it and read:
[Leftovers of a dilute concentrate of honey, sourced from the Goddess of Healing's treasured bees. It seems to be helpful in healing and improving the voice.]
The corners of my mouth pulled upward. It was exactly what I had asked for.
My mind ran ahead of itself immediately: Lumi's voice restored, sweetened, calling me Dad without the hoarse reluctance of a child who had learned to go quiet... showing me off to her friends, or to her fans as she stands somewhere enormous and lit and —
I caught myself and smiled at the floor.
One step at a time.
Traumas first. Her body was malnourished, and her distrust of people was deep and learned. Both would take time to heal that no magical jar of honey could accelerate. Then practice. Then, eventually, a stage.
I gave her a light kiss on the forehead and stood.
***
The bathroom was in worse condition than the bedroom, which I hadn't thought was possible.
The light switch did nothing. I groped for it twice in the dark before giving up. A sullen cold settled across my shoulders as my eyes adjusted to the dimness. The sink furred with dust and cobwebs. The metal taps rusted through at the joints. I lifted the toilet lid out of reflex and put it back down immediately. The flush didn't work.
I backed in the doorway for a moment, very still.
She didn't use any of it. The money I'd sent. The utilities long cut. She didn't use any of it for this.
I had known that. I had known it from a previous life, known it was coming, and yet knowing hadn't built any kind of defence against it. Anger came through anyway, low and rising, and beneath the anger came the itch, that the compulsive, boneless pull I recognized from years of losing arguments with myself.
I drove my nails into my palms. I counted breaths. I let Lumi's sleeping face surface in my mind like a counter-weight.
The trembling in my arms slowed.
I still have a lot of work to do, too.
The anger was a trigger. The mess was a trigger. Half the objects in this apartment were triggers, catalogued somewhere below conscious thought, waiting. Cleaning this place wasn't just necessary for Lumi.
But that required water, which required a call I had put off for years.
I scrolled through my contacts until I found the name. I stared at it for a moment before dialing.
"Mr. Rockern," I said, and didn't know how to continue.
A low chuckle came from the other end, easy, unhurried, as though no time had passed at all.
"It's a surprise, hearing from you. After everything."
"...You knew?"
Mr. Rockern had served in the military before the substances. He came out the other side of both with the particular calm of someone who no longer had anything to prove, and was clean going on thirty years now. He ran a community centre, a recovery program, a small private real estate operation he'd built specifically around people like me: recovering addicts who needed a landlord with context.
Meeting him on the streets was the turning point I hadn't deserved.
I owed him more than I could repay, and in my previous life I had never tried. Shame had kept me away. I had left Lumi, left his gratitude unanswered, left the debt accumulate in silence until it became another thing I was indifferent to.
"My tenant died of an overdose on my property," he said. "It's hard not to get involved."
"I'm sorry," I said. My voice had gone to almost nothing.
He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, the ease in his voice had sharpened into something deliberate.
"Were you aware of—"
I knew what he was going to ask before he finished.
"She did it behind my back. She must've found our old contacts somehow. Spent all the money I sent back. I was careless. But I am clean, save for the occasional smoke."
The silence that followed was long enough to make me restless. I filled it.
"I know I've been a disappointment. But something about this, coming back, seeing the state of it everything, it cleared something in me. I was arrogant before. I thought winning meant proving I was in control, and the harder I chased that, the more control I lost. I was fighting the wrong war. Trying not to be an addict. Trying to be normal. Neither of those is an identity. They're just reminders."
"... it's the first time I've heard this from you."
I exhaled. "I can't define myself by what I'm abstaining from. It doesn't hold. What holds is something else, like being a father. A reliable tenant. Someone with something worth getting up for."
Another pause. Then Mr. Rockern laughed, low at first, then full and unhurried; the laugh of a man who found something genuinely satisfying.
"Did I say something wrong?" I asked, gripping the phone.
"No. You said something right." The laughter settled. "Addiction is a war. An imaginary war — which makes it no less brutal. Tens of thousands of battles with yourself, each one winnable in isolation, each one slowly draining the reserves. Repetitive use rewires the executive function. Heightens craving, dulls restraint at the same time. You battle each urge believing you can afford to lose this one and win the next. You don't recognize the war until you can no longer surrender."
I had heard this before, many times, in different rooms. It still landed.
"Then how do you win?"
"You've already started." His voice was unhurried. "What you described as identity, community, purpose, that's it. Most people fighting addiction are fighting alone, which is the single worst terrain for it. You were a lone soldier picking battle after battle on open ground. You had access to an army the whole time."
"A military disaster," I muttered.
"Ha. Exactly. But-" He paused. "You should thank your little girl. She's a brave one, insisting to the police that you'd be coming back, and wouldn't let them close the case."
I went still. "L-Lumi did?"
"Little Lumi cleared you on abuse and neglect charges. You may still be on child protective services' radar, but you're not facing prosecution. That's her doing."
Something dropped through the floor of my chest.
I reached for the telepathy instinctively and searched for the memory of it, and found her. The quiver in her small body. The words she had forced out in a room full of adults who had already decided the matter. How desperately she had wanted me to come back, and how she had held that
I pressed a hand over my eyes.
"...I owe her too much," I said. "Far too much."
"She's suffered," Mr. Rockern said quietly. "She may not show it in ways you'd recognize. But she yearns for you. So fight for her. Fight with her. Not ahead of her."
I nodded into the phone, not trusting my voice.
"Alright." His tone shifted warm but practical. "I can't discount the rent again without the tax bureau asking questions. But I can defer things three months. That should be enough time to get stable."
"I'm certain."
"That's what I like to hear from the valedictorian with a full ride to Starvard."
"That's ancient history."
"Don't be so grim about it. I mean it as a compliment. Have you considered going back? Mature student applications aren't complicated with your transcript. I'd sponsor you for the first half of the degree."
I shook my head, though he couldn't see it.
"I appreciate it. But school is too large a commitment right now. What I need is to be present with Lumi, to begin being the parent she deserved from the start."
A pause. "...You're right. That's probably the better road for now." He sighed. "I'm not much use with children, I'll admit. I can't offer much on that front."
"You've already done more than enough," I said quickly, and then stopped, something tightening in my throat. Shame has its own weight. "But there is one more thing. A favor, if it's not too much."
"I'm listening."