Author's note: Okay, so this isn't a new story, this is just me posting it on this page because I couldn't give it the attention that it deserved so I'm moving it over here. I'm excited to know what you all think! I am open to pairings and input! Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Warnings: Hints of prostitution, language, OOCness and unbeta'd.
Word Count: 4,217
She curls up into a tight little ball, trying to block out the cold. Her little stick arms wrap around her legs as she buries her face into the little pocket of space between her knees and her chest, trying to keep warm. She wiggles her toes a little bit, her cloth shoes are thin and torn making it impossible to keep the cold out. Even her clothes are thin and tattered, the only thing in tact that is misplaced is a long bright red scarf wrapped around her neck and arms. It's very long and made of hardy material.
She shivers to herself, letting out tiny whimpers into the tiny pocket of warmth, praying under her breath that she would somehow be able to escape the cold soon. She's so tired, both of the cold and in general. She knows that she can't go to sleep, though. She just has to sit there and wait. Not too much longer. Not too much longer.
The little girl runs her hands up and down her arms a bit before pulling the scarf a bit tighter around herself, hoping that it would suddenly turn into a coat and provide her with more adequate warmth than it was. But no such luck. She still had a little bit longer to wait.
Her back hurts, being bent over her body, trying to conserve body heat. Her butt is numb from the cold and sitting on the hard concrete floor. Every bit of revealed flesh on her arms, legs, face, ears and back is in complete pain. The cold air stabbing at every inch of revealed flesh. Her body is going numb, yet she still can't move. Not yet. She has to just stay put until it is time, then she can go. She can find somewhere warmer and hopefully survive the night. Maybe... maybe she's being over dramatic.
She can hear people walking by her, but either she is too small or no one cared to notice her because no one stops. Not one single person. It makes her a little bitter, a strange feeling for a small seven year old girl. The bitterness isn't foreign and something that she hasn't felt recently either. She has felt this bitterness many times, but hasn't dwelled on it for long. She can't allow herself to. She's not going to let herself do it.
Someone stops in front of her, she can hear the scuff of their shoes by her feet. She doesn't move right away, but when they don't leave, she slowly raises her head to look up at the man standing over her. He was all dressed up in a cloak, scarf, hat and boots. He looks down at her curiously, tilting his head to the side.
"What are you doing out in the cold, little one?" the man says, a white puff of mist around his mouth when he speaks. "Where is all of your clothes? Aren't you cold?" The little girl looks down the road a bit to see a woman with bright pink hair waggling her finger at every man that passes by her. The man follows her gaze for a moment, watching the woman as she tries to get someone's attention, when she finally does and they disappear around a corner, he looks back down at the little girl. "Would you like to go into this shop here?" He nods toward the shop that she was leaning against. "It's much warmer inside."
The little girl nods slowly. Anything to get out of the cold. The man holds out his hand for her to take. She hesitates for a moment before taking it and lets him lift her to her feet and pull her into the little diner. They sit by the window she was originally sitting in front of but inside and on opposite booths. The man removes his hat and scarf and lays them on the table in the corner.
The little girl looks down at her shivering legs, watching them dangle over the edge, unable to reach the ground yet. She pulls the scarf around herself a little bit more but now that she's out of the cold, she is starting to feel better. Her skin is burning from the extreme change of hot and cold, but she's just glad that she doesn't have to be outside anymore.
None of the occupants in the diner looked up when they walked in other than the waitress that assured them she would be there in a moment after she finished taking another man's order.
"Are you hungry?" the man asks, now revealing that he was a human man, probably in his forties or fifties, white, with short brown hair and green eyes. He lowers his hood and takes off his hat, laying it on the seat next to him.
The little girl nods slowly, still staring at him curiously. What could he want? She was so hungry and cold that she was willing to trust just about anyone if they got her out of the cold and got some food in her stomach.
"What would you like to eat?" the man asks. The little girl shrugs her tiny shoulders, pushing a dark pink strand of hair away from her face. The man stares at her for a moment before saying, "I can't hear you, little one. You have to speak up."
She hadn't opened her mouth at all since she met him. She looks at him for a moment to see him staring back, waiting patiently for her to respond to him. She hesitates. Her mom doesn't really like it when she speaks too much. She much prefers that she be quiet. Slowly, carefully, the little girl whispers, "I don't know..."
He tilts his right ear toward her. "What was that, little one?"
"I don't know," the girl says a bit louder.
The man nods slowly, leaning back in his seat, green eyes studying her curiously. The twi'leki waitress pushes her blue leku over her shoulder and holds up a pad of paper with a pen poised over it, waiting. "What can I get for the two of you?" She looks between them, patiently.
"Pancakes for the little one," the man says, "with milk, and I'll have a coffee."
The woman nods before leaving the two to their silence. The little girl looks up at the man curiously, having never had pancakes before, but hoped they were good, and just happy that this man was helping her out. She hoped her mom wasn't too cold out there so that they could go home soon. She quite liked the nice man, but she didn't want to be away from her mother for too long.
"Thank you..." the little girl says softly.
The man nods, interlacing his fingers on his lap, still watching her closely. "You are welcome, little one. May I know your name?"
The little girl blinks large green eyes innocently up at him. "Sakura... Haruno."
The man offers a thin, kind smile. "Sakura, now that is a pretty name."
Sakura smiles back, finally warming up. Her skin is starting to stop hurting, which is good. "What's your name, Mister?"
"Cordella," the man says. "Cordella Yon.
"Cordella?" Sakura says softly. "Thank you."
The man smiles a little bit more, his expression soft. "You're welcome, Sakura." A moment of hesitation before he asks, "Was that your mom we saw out there?" The little girl nods.
"Mommy comes out here every couple of days. She says she has to put food on the table." Sakura shrugs her shoulders, picking at the loose threads of her pathetic excuse for a shirt. She is starting to get full feeling back in her fingers and toes. It's a nice feeling. Definitely better than being outside in the cold.
"Where did you get that scarf?" Cordella asks as his coffee is set in front of him and her cup of milk is placed before Sakura. The little girl takes a tentative sip of it, smiling a bit before taking another, savoring the taste.
"A nice lady gave it to me," Sakura says, staring at her reflection in the milk, one of her fingers lightly touching the bright red scarf with obvious affection. "She said that she didn't want me to be cold."
"She seems very nice," Cordella says. He takes a moment to sip at his own coffee, letting it warm him a bit. Sakura's pancakes showed up a minute later and while she started out slowly eating, savoring it like with the milk, it quickly became less about the taste and more about filling her very slim belly. She hadn't had a good meal in a long time. Maybe she should save some for her mom. Yeah, she'll probably like that.
"She is..." Sakura says softly, stopping eating for a moment. "She's gone now. She had to go somewhere and she's not coming back." Sakura wilts in her chair a bit, thinking about the faceless woman that gave a scared, cold little girl a hand knitted scarf. She doesn't need a name or a race to know that she was just a good woman and wherever she went... well, it doesn't change the small act of kindness she did.
"Sakura," Cordella says, "do you know why I brought you here?" Sakura stuffs some more pancakes into her mouth, looking up at the older man with wide green eyes, shaking her head slowly. "You're special, child."
Sakura stares at him, blinking long, thick lashes quickly before chewing a bit and swallowing. "I'm special?" She murmurs, like the words were foreign. No one has ever said that to her before.
Cordella nods. "You know, there is something that exists in this universe that binds everything together. It exists everywhere. Around us, inside us. It flows through everything and connects everything. Not just on this planet, but on all of the planets. It's just a physical thing, but it's also a spiritual thing. It's a mental thing and something that exists on an entirely different plane of existence altogether. Something that we can somewhat control if we are strong enough but mostly, it controls us."
Sakura stares up at him, green eyes wide and mesmerized. "What is it?" She asks softly.
Cordella smiles. "It's called the Force."
After that, for two weeks, every day that Sakura was out in the cold, Cordella came to see her. He would feed her and tell her about the Force, and tell her that she was special. He told her that she had a strong sensitivity to the Force and had she been born closer to the Republic controlled space, she would have been found by the Jedi long ago.
He told her that she didn't belong where she was. That she had great power inside of her that she needed to learn how to control. He wasn't a Jedi, but he knew the Force and had spent pretty much his entire life training and learning how to use it and understand where it flows most and how strong he could manipulate it. He felt that there is something in her so strong that it's begging to be let out.
The Force isn't something that one would only need a few weeks to study before they know pretty much everything they need to. No, up until the day they die, they are still learning about the Force. About what it really is and does and how it flows. It's something that Cordella takes great enjoyment from studying and people watching those with the Force. No two people feel the Force or interact with it the same and it fascinates him to be able to watch people interact with the Force. It's part of the reason he was so interested in her.
That, and he said it was a shame to see such power go to waste. Untapped. Unrecognized.
The more he spoke of the Force and training and how there was more out there for her than this little, cold, unforgiving city, the more she began to wonder what it was like to go out there and explore. To be more than just a little street rat. She wanted to see the Force, and feel it like Cordella does. She wants to be able to help people, rather than watch them go by. She wants to do something more than she is. But in order to do that, she had to leave her mother. The woman who brought her into this world, yet never paid her much heed.
Sakura wanted to be with her mother, but the more she thought about it, the more she watched her mother, the more she had to wonder if maybe she did her mother more good by going. If she left, became strong and one day returned, then maybe she would somehow be able to save her mother from whatever darkness she knew was circulating around her.
Sakura couldn't help but wonder. And wonder. And wonder. Until there was nothing left for her to do but agree to go with Cordella. So, after four whole weeks, Sakura left her home planet with Cordella without telling her mother goodbye, merely bidding her well until the next time they saw one another. Not with words, but a parting kiss to her mother's sleeping forehead one early morning.
She hasn't gone back since.
She followed Cordella everywhere he went, learned everything she could from him. In some ways, Sakura suspected, that he was lonely. He wanted to teach someone as much as she wanted to learn from someone. He's a good and patient teacher that seems to genuinely want to teach Sakura everything that she would want to know and more. He was her caregiver and never asked for anything in return except to be able to watch her as she used the Force. To be able to study it and her as he has done with so many others.
It was when Sakura was ten years old, three years after she joined Cordella, that she unlocked her greatest Force gift. Well, her own Force gift. It was weak at first, something that happened once in every one hundred times she would touch someone or something and took great focus. But as she matured and the more she used the ability, like anything, she began to get better at it and it began to happen more often.
Sakura had the ability to see into the future through the Force. Some times it's just a simple image, nothing more. Or a voice. A sound. And sometimes it's an entire scene. All laid out so neatly with faces, conversations, it's almost as if she is right there in the moment, living through it.
They were jarring, strange, sometimes they would come with objects, sometimes with things, but every time it happened, Sakura would feel displaced afterword. It all depended on what happened and how long she was seeing the vision that would depict what sort of state she was in when she came out of it. Most of the time, she's fine afterword. She can continue on with her life like nothing happened. But other times she's left so physically exhausted that she doesn't know what's going on with her. She feels like she's being swallowed up by a black hole.
Cordella began to worry about her and her Force Sight. He was worried about how it drained her and what it did to her when it was particularly powerful. He began to discourage her from using it, but she didn't always have the choice in the matter. It would just trigger itself. Sometimes it would be such a strong impulse to 'see' something that she wouldn't be able to stop herself. It's like a build up inside of her that she simply can't ignore for too long before she has to 'see'.
He left her to seek more information about what's going on. He said that he had to go places and see people that he didn't want her to meet with. So he told her to continue to train and live her life and that he would find her. It was such a vague thing to promise and normally she would probably think he was ditching her, but Cordella had this uncanny ability to find her no matter where she was. She was a very curious child that would often wonder off and need to be sought out, she's been told.
So she's not worried. She knows that when the time comes, he will return to her once he finds something to help her. She's not sure if there is anything out there, but she believes that he believes there is something out there, and he's doing it for her. She will let him do as he likes. It's just kind of the relationship that they had, after all.
When Cordella left, the first thing she did was return home. She was seventeen at the time, so she wasn't surprised that her hometown had changed so much since she had last seen it. It had been ten years since she last returned to it. It was strange walking down those one time familiar streets to see that some stores remained, others didn't. It was odd to see everything either exceedingly withered or newly redone. And it was extremely melancholic to see that the old apartment building that she used to live in was gone.
Along with Sakura's mother.
Some of the faintly familiar faces would uses voices that are no longer in her memory to tell her that they haven't seen her mother in years. That she vanished not long after Sakura did. Kicked up a storm, ranting and raving, and then vanished without a trace. Sakura spent a few months there, trying to locate any clues on her mother, but found nothing. Not even the Force could help her. Or, perhaps it wouldn't. She has been trying her hardest to ignore it for the last few months.
Cordella always said that the Force was a living thing. That is was a living thing in the form of a great river with many small breaks the spider web off of it so that it can touch every single thing in the universe. People, places and everything in between. Big and small. Nothing is just ignored by the Force without reason.
Sakura just wanted to find her mother, and when that wasn't happening using the normal methods that most have to use, she turned to her other skillset. The Force. But even that just wasn't happening. Nothing was working, so finally, Sakura got the hint that her mother was probably no where else on the planet and had to move elsewhere. She sort of became a nomad. She was still training, still learning all about the Force and herself.
So she follows her instincts going from world to world doing what she can to help and hope that the Force intends to one day bring her back to her mother. But only time will tell. She will just have to keep moving, make a big enough splash and let people see her very unique pink hair. People will talk. Hopefully someone would have seen her mother, who - if she remembers correctly - shares the same hair, and tell Sakura about her. Or her mother is out there looking for her and word of Sakura would get to her.
Sakura rarely left the lawless lands outside of Republic controlled space, but she did visit planets on the Outer Rim that were not controlled by the Republic. She wasn't sure where Cordella was or what he was doing, but she was curious as to why he never went into Republic controlled space. She remembered that he once told her that he was born on the center of galactic community. Coruscant.
She asked him why he left the Republic. He just stared into her eyes, offering a tiny smile before patting her on the head and telling her that he'd tell her all about what happened when she's older. Sakura was ten at the time and didn't really think much of it, but when he left and she was by herself, the curiosity resurfaced once more. She didn't want to go there just yet, but she was curiously watching them from a distance.
Sakura was so used to Cordella being the most powerful Force being in her very tiny universe, finally being able to see that there was so much more was liberating. She could feel the Force more powerful than any time before. She enjoyed the feeling and explored it.
"Thank you," Sakura says to the rodian merchant. Sakura gives a little wave before turning around and mingling back into the crowd on this small moon. The pink haired girl bows her bare shoulders inward to avoid contact with other people. Her thin white arm warmers are neatly pushed up to the middle of her upper arms, but she's still nervous about getting too close to people.
The burning heat of the sun beats down on her shoulders and bare back. The frills of the front of her white shirt wrap neatly around her slim throat with a small tie on her lower back to keep it in place. Her skin tight black pants tuck into simple black boots with a light pink skirt that doesn't wrap around her entire legs, just the back, that goes to her knees tied together in the front working as a sash, blowing behind her in her quick movements. There is a bright red scarf around her neck flowing with her as well, so long even wrapped a few times it goes past her waist.
She looks down at the bag over her shoulder, pushing the fruit she just purchased into it for later. She breaks from the crowd and head down a separate allyway, humming under her breath as she goes. Sakura pauses and turns her gaze toward the sky feeling a strange shift in the Force. Something powerful in the Force just landed on the small moon, which is odd. The only people she could think would be Jedi but there is no reason for them to come here. Not that she really minds one way or the other, she has never actually dealt with a Jedi before but it's curious as to why they were there.
Sakura may be going from planet to planet helping out where she can but she can't imagine she's done enough to garner the attention of the Jedi. Curious.
"Sakura!"
Sakura lowers her gaze to a pretty blue Twi'lik staring at her from the other side of the allyway in front of the pink haired girl. "Alii'yasha," Sakura says, tilting her head to the side. "What's up?"
"You were looking for Boata?" The pretty Twi'lik asks, staring with large orange eyes. She crosses her arms over her chest when Sakura doesn't respond right away. "Am I wrong?"
"No," Sakura finally says, shaking her head. "You aren't wrong. Did you find him?"
The Twi'lik laughs, shaking her head. "No, but I found his little brother, Corata." She smirks, pleased with herself. "Is that good enough?"
Sakura nods, walking up to the woman and holding her hand out toward her. "Your payment."
Alii'yasha looks down at her hand for a moment as if it was some kind of dangerous animal rearing back to strike before she places her hand into Sakura's. The pink haired girl closes her eyes and barely has to summon up any of the Force before she feels someone's presence right over her shoulder, so close, looming even, but not dangerous. She feels no danger from this person.
"Marry me, Alii'yasha," he whispers. Sakura pulls her hand away.
"Brahba is going to ask you to marry him," Sakura says, forcing herself not to take a step back and put distance between them. Alii'yasha's eyes light up, surprised.
"Really?" She blinks a few times, looking around for a moment before she smiles at Sakura. "Well, thanks." With a little wave she rounds the corner about to leave before poking her head back into the ally. "Corata is in the market now. By the Ithorian stall. You know, the one with all the exotic plants?" Sakura nods slowly. "Good. Thanks!" She waves her hand and disappears around the corner.
Sakura waits for a moment, considering what to do before turning around and heading back the way she came. She could feel the Jedi moving closer but she had something she had to do. Whatever he, she or they wanted, it would have to wait.