There is nothing more beautiful in the galaxy than a sunset. When the sky lights up with warmth, and the sun itself falls below the horizon to wash everything in the glow to send off another bountiful day and begin the calm, quiet night. Sunsets on Ev'ren are as beautiful as they are uncommon, coming only once every few years when the planet's axis tilts just right towards their star. It would remain above the horizon for a few short months, then dip below the mountains and pull the cities into twilight once more.
With its decent, celebration would follow, welcoming the familiar darkness that almost all life on the planet's surface had evolved to love and thrive in. The Tarael, the dominant species of Ev'ren, were absolutely no exception to this joy in a new cycle of twilight. The coming of darkness sparked a spiritual reconnection to nature and their planet.
For one young half-breed with only a few years to her name, it is her first experience of a sunset. She sits on her father's lap, held loosely in his arms as the rest of her extended family watch in awe from within a glass dome sitting on the very top of their family tower. The dome's sole purpose is for this event-to see the sky for the few hours as the sun dips from sight and leave the other stars their stage once more to glimmer down Ev'ren's towering cities and thick jungles.
The young girl can't even speak yet, but her emerald eyes hold a wonder that is far from subtle. She looks into the sky in awe; the vastness of space isn't entirely lost on her, but she still reaches up with her hands to play with the colors that begin to paint the darkening sky.
Her father chuckles. "I still don't understand what you see up there," He says, briefly looking straight up, to the clouds that had begun swirling in the sky. From beside him, he can hear his wife chuckle, the noise feeling like a gentle caress against his mind.
"It is because you are human," She explains. Her voice is soft as it echoes faintly in the man's head, but it is very, very powerful. "You can't see all the colors in the sky in the way that we do. They swirl and mix together like seafoam and water." As she speaks, the father can hear how the words start to lift in excitement, echoing the small noises that come from their daughter as she reaches harder still; as if inspired by her mother's description of the colors in the clouds.
"I often forget," The father begins, smiling as the child starts squirming, reaching harder for the colors as they brighten. "How much like you she is." The sun is dipping lower now, and the city below begins to fall into the crawling darkness, but little orbs of artificial lights already signify the beginning of celebration. At the top of the tower, the small family has a few more minutes to enjoy the sight, surrounded by extended cousins, aunts, uncles and then some. They murmur in excitement, all awaiting the last few moments, when the light would flicker only once more in a brazen attempt before being snuffed out. The land would be in shadow, but the sky would glow with fire and life.
Though their whispers and thoughts are excited and awed, some even beginning to speak of the week-long celebration that has already begun. They are all so happy. But for the small family, the happiness is as fleeting as the sunset, the daughter's inherited superhuman sight. It only brings worry.
"...Will she ever have it?" The father whispers to his wife, low enough in hopes that nobody can pick out his voice. His wife is silent, then laughs, a feigned sound to cover up his question to anyone that may have heard. They never risk letting anyone know about it. It risked everything they have worked for to live a happy life together.
"I don't know." The female Tarael cannot hide the intricate, complicated worry that holds onto the edges of her words. "For her sake, I hope that we never find out."
The shadows from the setting sun finally reach the top of the tower, crawling from the floor to the glass ceiling, and finally enveloping everything and everyone in the soft, dark glow of twilight. The child coos in ignorant, innocent happiness.
Many years later...
Sakajin woke up suffocating. Her chest felt heavy; lead weight pressed down on top of her ribs, making her lungs feel as though they were caving in on themselves as she was violently ripped from sleep. Her long ears brushed against the sides of be bed, and suddenly it felt like the room was caving in on her. Sakajin needed to breathe.
The first terrifying moments of consciousness was a mixture of reality and nightmare; her eyes searched around the bay area, waiting for a hulking beast to come barreling out every shadowy corner of the room.
Her mind echoed with that taunting, soft voice for a few seconds before it, along with the feeling of lead, began to fade away. But the fear didn't fade. It remained for a minute longer as the half-breed's body had to make heads or tails that it had been sleeping. Her stomach churned. The monsters weren't real.
It took a little while for Sakajin's heart and breathing to steady enough so she could begin collecting her bearings. Let her mind step out of the limbo between being asleep and awake. Those were the most terrifying of moments after a nightmare. They were the moments when the monsters seemed to chase after you, and for Sakajin, those monsters had been chasing her for years. The nightmares, the fear; it was nothing new, but it scared her all the same into double-checking the shadows of the bay before finally letting her eyes veer off towards the opposite wall from where she slept.
Red numbers flashed over the screen, and after a moment to comprehend the meaning of the numerals, Sakajin's stomach dropped a little bit.
At least the nightmares had a good sense of time.
She was already climbing out of the top bunk (avoiding the poles of the bedrame with her tail) and pulling her covers around her feet when the bell sounded. The lights flickered, then flashed on; it didn't bother her so much as it did everyone else in the bay, groaning and muttering to themselves about how much they hated wakeup call. But as complain as they did, everyone couldn't deny that they wanted to eat.
Sakain was already dressed for the day as the other kids rolled out of bed. The girl below her, on the bottom bunk, was always the slowest. It seemed a wonder some days that she even managed to wake up before breakfast was done being served entirely.
"Come on," Sakajin said, gently pushing a hand to the other girl's shoulder to pull her from the seductive clutches of sleep. "Come on, Tari, if you don't wake up you know you're going to be last in line." Those last in line for breakfast were never guaranteed to get something. And when the orphanage only offered breakfast for the children due to its poor funding, it meant that if a child missed breakfast they probably weren't going to get anything at all. Tari, a Twilek, wasn't even all that good at begging for food.t begging for money or scraps.
Sakajin continued to bug the girl for as long as her patience could hold out; it luckily didn't take much more than another firm nudge before the slumbering Tari began to stir.
"Leave me alone," she mumbled, almost too low for Sakajin to hear. "I don't need breakfast." She tugged the thin blanket tighter over her body, as if outright rejecting the offer.
"Oh come on," the half-breed said gently, trying not to be too rough when she tried pulling the blanket back again. The Twilek was just being stubborn-a lot of the kids were sometimes. When the only outlook of your life consisted of begging on the lower streets of the Coruscant capital, it could leave even the most hopeful of eyes dull and lifeless. "You can't lie, you said that yesterday too. I'll even show you the good streets today if you want and-"
The movement was so sharp and sudden, it caught Sakajin off guard for a moment. Tari whipped around on the bed, throwing her blanket off just enough so she could sit up and stare Sakajin down. Her expression held obvious loathing.
"Stop trying to make me do things!" She hissed, eyes feeling like hot coals burning in the fire pit. "I don't need help from a halfie like you!"
The words stung. They were a hard stone in Sakajin's stomach, settling heavy enough to make her feel sick for a moments as her mind processed the level of livid anger in the other orphan's tone. Everything started working again, reality cold and painful as she could only stare open-mouthed while Tari pulled the blanket back over herself and laid down in her bed.
Halfie. Half breed. Like an insect, it buzzed inside her head, echoing over and over even after she left the bay, even left the building.
Stupid halfie. Can't do anything useful, you don't even look normal.
No wonder your parents left you here.
Sakajin didn't bother getting breakfast that morning. She didn't want to be around anyone else in the orphanage, honestly, so she took to the lower streets of Coruscant instead. She knew most of them by heart anyway; the ones close by at least. The ones where people would pay more attention to her talents than her four-eyed face.
Most people never expected a 12-year-old to have a fascination with mechanics, let alone any ability to fix anything more complicated than glueing things back together. But Sakajin, who had built her survival on her apparent talent, wasn't exactly like most kids her age. She always had too much pride to beg, and feared too much that relying on the empathy of others alone wouldn't get enough to survive. Fixing things seemed like an easy alternative.
You did something, and someone gave you money for it. It felt more like a job than any other option she had, and when the girl found she had a skill when she was given to the orphanage, she refused to give it up for anything. It was her secret, her pride, her way of life.
There were three or four streets that always had the best people to give Sakajin their trinkets. They were the richer streets closer to the Jedi temple; where people had the money to send their things to reputable mechanics, but were too greedy to waste so much money. Why give so much credit to someone when Sakajin would only charge a small fraction in comparison? And for things like radios, comlinks and the like, it wasn't like she had a lot of room to mess up. It got her spare change, and that spare change got her food.
By the time the girl made it to her favorite street, the sky was already bright, just past breakfast time. Her stomach was already growling. She did have some bread packed away for later, but that was supposed to be for lunch, something to keep her going so she didn't have to wander back closer to the orphanage and beg like the other children. Sakajin refused to beg; it made her feel helpless.
Her resolve didn't last so long, so soon enough, she was settling herself down on the corner of a street, a thin blanket set out beneath her kneeling body, and her tools sitting just beside her, neat and orderly. This was both so she could grab any of them easily, but also to make sure that they were all still there. She'd had a few stolen a time or two, though there weren't all that many that she didn't make herself (and thus weren't all that expensive).
The day began normally, with Sakajin's mouth stuffed with bread and her eyes peering across the street, silently waiting for someone who might be familiar with her face to ask her to fix something. There were only a few who did, and only one or two of them were people who were just genuinely kind, wanting to give her a job so she had a little change in her pocket when returning to the orphanage. The rest were just the kind who wanted the cheapest job done-and who was Sakajin to argue with that? She got money either way.
It wasn't long before she got one. A gruff, humanoid-looking man handing her an object attached to a wrist-strap. She swallowed down the stale bread and took the item into her hands, rolling it over her fingers to give it a look.
After a glance-over, it was only a little entertainment projector; the internal bulb used to project the hologram looked awkwardly shoved in, and some of the wires seemed a bit twisted, so the only thing that happened when it was turned on was a fizzle, a brief flash of light.
It was an easy fix.
"I'll give you five credits," The man said, standing stiff as all old, rich men did, with no time to waste on little things like an orphan fixing his finicky equipment. It was a familiar attitude that Sakajin had grown used to seeing as a staple on the streets, and knew well how to barter with them.
"Ten," She said without a beat, already poking one of her tools into the funnel that housed the internal bulb. "I can get this done for ten credits."
"Why does a little brat like you always try to do that? Bartering up when people are already giving you money for things anyone could fix." He made it sound like she should have been grateful that he was giving her any credits, but she merely scoffed, still poking around until she coud get directly to the bulb and push it back in place with her bare fingers.
"Because if you took this to a mechanic," Sakajin said, briefly glancing up at the stiff, grumpy old man. "They could charge you a lot more." Everyone knew that. The people who only gave her one job, or the people who came back every day. They knew the only reason she was there was simply because she was convenient. Experience had taught Sakajin well how to fix most basic issues within the time it took to wait for an airbus to ferry them off into the richer, upper parts of the city. She gave the man a smug look, feeling a little amused at her own wittiness that morning. "If anyone could fix it anyway, you'd already have done it yourself."
The man didn't have much of a response for that, though whether it was because he felt sympathy or annoyance was unclear.
"Feh, you little sha'zok," He grumbled, cursing in a foreign language that Sakajin thought she heard once before. "Ten credits it is, but hurry up, I have somewhere to be."
It took some effort for the girl not to give a witty reply, because everyone told her that same sentence. People had places to be, others to meet, important things to do in their lives. And she was just….part of it, a little speck that they'd hardly recall the next day.
It was a cycle Sakajin had done over and over again for years, and she hardly figured that it would be changing anytime soon; not until she was too old to keep living in the orphanage at least, and they kicked her out. They did that every now and again to the older kids, when the budget got even worse and they couldn't afford the extra mouths to feed with one measly meal. She still had a couple years left before she was part of the oldest bunch.
Best not to dwell on the thought.
She finished up the little trinket only a few minutes later, making sure it worked in the end by turning it on. The lights flickered for only a moment before it flashed with some colors, the small hologram finally appearing above it in an image of a welcome screen for the software loaded onto the projector.
She handed it back to the gruff man, who paid her by dropping the credit chips into her palm.
"Thank you," she said, though he didn't reply. The man just took what was his, made sure she hadn't broken it further, and then stepped into the moving crowd of people stepping past her on the sidewalk. Sakajin stared down at the chips in her hand, then after a sigh, placed them in the pocket of her pants.
An hour passed, and the sun got even higher in the sky. Sakajin had already eaten all of the stale bread in her pack, and was left with the boredom of waiting for someone else to show her some sympathy (or pity, depending on the person). She called out her services every now and again in the few languages she knew, and found herself several times denied when she asked someone close enough to ask directly.
Time and time again, she'd get her hopes up, ears and tail pricking up, only to find they were just going into the building beside old cantina that kept annoying her ears when the band inside got too loud.
It was late afternoon that the hybrid started wondering if she should just start picking up her things. Ten credits wasn't a lot to one person, but when that ten credits would be the only thing feeding her, it meant a helluva lot to Sakajin. In fact, since she had long-finished the bread and felt her stomach already complaining for food, she figured that the money would be for dinner that night, maybe lunch the next day if she could hold off that long.
While she was figuring her plans out, Sakajin didn't notice that another man had approached her. She only noticed when his shadow fell over her. She peered up to see him standing over her, a towering, robed figure that made the back of her mind shiver in an odd, split-second feeling of dread and caution.
His features were hard to see beneath the hood of his robe, but figuring that he had a job for her one way or another, the child piped up.
"Have somethin' for me to fix, sir?" She asked, making sure to be extra-polite since she'd never seen the man before. Politeness always kept her on a person's better side, it sometimes even earned her an extra credit or two if they happened to be having a good day. "I can fix anything from a timekeeper to a hologram projector. I'm a lot cheaper than any other mechanic around here."
When he shifted, Sakajin caught a glimpse of the man's face. He looked older, peering at her with eyes that looked far more inquisitive than anything else. Like he was searching her face. She shrugged the feeling off and tried to look and feel calm while waiting for his response, which took a few long seconds. It started to feel a bit awkward, and she ready to open her mouth to ask again when he finally spoke.
"Do you think you could handle a comlink?" His voice was deep, rumbling calmly, like a tone she expected from a grandfather. Without hesitation he reached into his robe, and pulled out the small device to hand over to her.
"It depends on what's wrong with it," Sakajin whispered, her focus already shifting onto the small piece of technology; she couldn't remember the last time she'd fixed one. Even then, the fix had been purely aesthetic due to a cracked casing. "I'm not gonna try fixing something that I can't fix."
"That's an admirable quality," The man said, as if he was weighing everything she said, which was odd enough. But the man's eyes fell heavy on her as well, and she knew that he was watching, though for what, Sakajin didn't want to try figuring out. She didn't reply either.
With a bit of careful prying, the child got the casing off the comlink, and looked over the few, but complex, components within. Thankfully, the problem looked obvious. One of the crystals that kept communications between complinks stable looked cracked. When she explained this to the man standing in front of her, he finally seemed to shift, breaking his stone-cold form when he brought a hand up to stroke at his chin.
"How long have you been doing this?" It was calm, conversational. In fact, the man's question came at such a surprise that she almost dropped the tool she was fumbling with.
Sakajin looked up at him, then awkwardly, back down to the broken comlink. Obviously, she wasn't used to anyone trying to talk to her outside of forcing her asking price as far down as they could, as if the orphan wasn't already asking for cheap compensation for fixing random bits.
"I…." The memories all ran together, as did time. She had kept track of it long ago, but after the first year the girl just...stopped. There wasn't much of a point. "I came here when I was 12, and I think...it's been two years?" She let out a sigh, but glanced up to answer him more firmly. "Two years, sir." It was hard to remember even that much. A lot of her memories had turned foggy.
"Fourteen years old and able to fix things as complicated as a comlink?" He said, stepping off to the side of the sidewalk to get out of the constant current of passerbys, though it took Sakajin a moment to realize that it meant he was standing directly beside her set-up. The feeling of cautious rose up in her chest again, but fell as the man continued in that gentle, grandfather-like tone. "You're quite a talented young lady. Not one I've seen before."
"I'm sure there are a lot of people better than me," Sakajin tried to shrug off his compliments. It was confusing what he hoped to get from them, if they were anything other than hallow, kind words.
"But not as many who are so young."
It was hard to get the crystal out of it's housing, so the girl resorted to breaking it out, using the existing fracture as a way to pry it apart even more. The crack sounded loud enough to hear even through the hum of conversation and noise passing in front of her spot on the road. It was an intended noise, but it left her feeling a little more awkward, if only because she broke a very integral part to the comlink and the owner himself was staring at her working, more or less.
She felt a little nervous, wondering if he was about to call her incompetent, try to raise a fuss that she had broken his item without any sense to what she was doing. But the man was silent, simply letting her work as she replaced the crystal with one of her own, one she had been keeping in a little pouch with the rest of the random bits from discarded parts and junk tech.
With a little bit of working, it managed to fit perfectly within the chamber, and the rest was just putting it back together.
"How did a child like you get here?" The man questioned gently, taking back the communicator. "I only recognize your species from someone I once knew long ago." Sakajin couldn't force her focus anywhere else but up at the man's face, and noticed that she could finally see most of his features with the light from the settling sun. He looked old and dignified, with a face that told a story all in itself, his eyes a mix between soft and solemn. And those eyes were still on her, waiting for an answer that felt hard to give.
"My parents…." Sakajin felt a bit of a rock in her throat, but swallowed it back. It had been years since the disappearance of one, but the death of the other still left a harsh pain deep in her chest when she thought about it. "My father died before I came here. My mother…." She paused, unsure if he was legitimately asking about such a stupid, cliche sob story that almost every orphan could give him. She wasn't the only one with dead or lost parents.
"Your mother left?" he offered, and Sakajin nodded, not bothering to go into detail on the matter. It didn't feel very appropriate, especially with a man she barely knew, no matter how friendly he looked. But she did feel as though he didn't mean any harm by the questioning. The hybrid wasn't sure how, but it was a feeling, deep in her chest that offered an almost unconscious reassurance that didn't come all that often with other people.
The silence that came after made Sakajin feel a little twitchy. She waited for him to say something, eyes finally glancing down at the worn fabric she had lying beneath her body.
"What is your name, little one?"
Green eyes blinked, and deft, oil-stained fingers started playing with the little tools sitting beside her. Sakajin was far out of the zone of comfort, at least in terms that she couldn't remember the last time anyone wanted to know her name. She couldn't remember the last time that anyone cared about her, honestly, so the fact that a random old man was asking felt….weird. In a good sort of way, at least, so her response was quiet.
"Sakajin," She mumbled. The man, who had amazing hearing to hear the word despite the background noise of people and hovercars alike, repeated it.
"Sakajin," he said, as if trying to recount it in his memory, looking over his fixed comlink with a curious expression. "...Well, it seems to me you know your way around machines. Far more than I can say for anyone your age, or species for that matter."
The mention of her race put the girl at a moment of cautious curiosity. It was a touchy subject for those who knew enough to see that she was only a half-breed, and even touchier when those people decided that she was worth less as a living being because her father was a human and her mother was not. Even as a young child, she knew to keep people thinking she was just another exotic species from the outer rim planets. It made things easier.
"What do you know about my species?" She finally asked, deciding at last to start putting away her tools. "You sound like you know stuff about them."
The man huffed, turning over the comlink in his fingers before turning his face and seeming to look out into the crowd of people. Sakajin didn't know what he was doing at first, and merely followed the trail of his gaze, but finding nothing but a constantly-shifting crowd of people, none of which seemed to be paying an old man and a poor girl any mind whatsoever. Perhaps that was what he was looking to see.
"I know enough," he finally said, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a handful of credit chips. Sakajin already felt there were too many when he saw the man holding him, but her eyes didn't widen until she saw what color they were.
She froze, staring at the handful that took both of her hands to hold, an uncountable number of chips. There was another rock in the girl's throat, one that kept her from saying anything while her mind merely tried to get past the cog kicked into the gears, figuring out (slowly) that the chips she held weren't denominations of 1, but 10 in themselves. She held at least fifty chips, so…
"Sir? I-this-" The girl had never been paid more than ten credits at one time, so seeing that many felt like some sort of error. Of course, he seemed like a man who was able to count and see just fine, so she just stared dumbly between the credits and up to the man's face. "-this isn't right. This is at least-"
"500 credits," He finished for her, proving that he knew exactly how much he had paid for something that anyone else would be tried to give her three or four for. Hesitantly, the young girl took them as just coming from a very, very friendly old man, and started pouring them into her little pouch. The kind old man, having put away his comlink, knelt down next to her so he was almost eye-level. Sakajin finally peered her eyes up to look into his own just as he spoke. "You did quite a beautiful job. You are a very resourceful young girl, despite what you've endured. Your mother would have been quite proud of you, Sakajin."
Her heart froze for a moment. Looking as though he knew the reaction he would get from what he said, the man waited patiently for the response, as if he had absolutely nowhere else in the world to be.
The thoughts that flew through the girl's mind were scattered and stupid, coming out of her mouth without much of a filter to stop and think for just a few moments. "...Did you know my mother?"
It was just a well-meaning wish, one anyone could think to say to an orphan, if only to try to instill the fact that their lost parents would be proud of where they were. But the man said it with more meaning, like he had known the woman personally. Something about his tone, his stance, or simply the look in his eyes set Sakajin's mind to thinking it was more than just that.
And it all finally came crashing down when the man's smile got only wider, and he carefully lifted back the hood on his robe.
"Your mother was a close acquaintance of mine. My name is Count Dooku."
She stared at him. The entire world seemed to stop, all in the span of time that it took for him to say that sentence. The people around her, passing by without a thought, the cantina buzzing with noise or the cars all whizzing by overhead. None of it mattered to her, as her mind held tight only to the man's words. Count Dooku. The name in itself sounded regal, like he was a man who was far, far more than a friendly old grandfather type. Her mother would have known some very important people in her life, and apparently, this man was one of them.
The Count didn't wait for her to say anything in return, but stood up once more and pulled his hood back over his head. The girl's green eyes tracked him, not straying even for a moment, when her pouch fell over and spilled out some of the credit chips he had given her.
"I am willing to offer you something far better than the life of a beggar, " Dooku began, adjusting his robe and turning to look once more towards the shifting crowd of people, towards the setting sun as it just started to dip into the horizon (though was already covered by the shape of far-away buildings). Sakajin blinked at him. Trying to comprehend everything that he was saying beyond the fact that he knew her mother, however personally. He knew her enough to know Sakajin existed-that Annamarie had a daughter named Sakajin. The questions had no end to them, but the girl couldn't even begin to think of asking.
"I've been looking for a mechanic as of late, and considering I made a bit of a promise to your mother, I feel you are well qualified for it."
Mechanic. Job. Offer? Her head was swirling with what it all meant. Just one surprise after another, all in rapid succession and it left the girl dazed. But he knew her mother, and he was, without mistake, offering her a job. Even she, the little 14-year-old who'd gotten by on change alone, understood the depth of how much the offer meant to her. It would change her entire life.
She wouldn't be making loose change anymore. She'd have a job, maybe even a place to lay her head down for the night where she wasn't surrounded by dozens and dozens of other people who thought her beneath them. It was an idea that seemed just as stupid and far-off as seeing her mother again, whom she had long accepted as being dead.
Sakajin jumped up onto her feet, so quickly in fact that she wobbled, nearly falling back onto her tail when she beamed up at the man.
"A job?" She asked, wanting to hear the man say it again, one more time so she could be sure her mind wasn't just so starved to exhaustion that she was hearing things.
"Yes," Dooku said, chuckling and raising a brow of amusement. "A job. I've been looking for someone who can be a droid mechanic for some very….specialized models. Nothing I'm sure you can't pick up, with how much you already seem to understand." His eyes seemed to glimmer with more information than he let on, but Sakajin, too excited for the fact that someone had listened to some of her thoughts at night, didn't notice at all. "I assume you want to take my offer?"
"Yes!" The girl shouted. The yell was so loud that it drew some attention, a few pairs of eyes peering over at the odd pair for a few moments. But they quickly turned away, back to their own business while Dooku shushed her with a wave of his hand. She picked up her things in a haste, dropping her voice, though her expression never fell. "Mr. Dooku, I just-I'm-thank you." She felt as much of a stumbling mess as her words sounded, dropping a few of her tools in the haste to get everything together.
"No need to thank me," The man murmured, leaning down to pick up the last tool Sakajin had dropped, handing it to her carefully. "Consider it a return of a favor on something your mother did for me."
The man smiled, and Sakajin, feeling stupidly giddy, smiled back.
They never did return to the orphanage for any paperwork, though when the man promised to tell Sakajin more of her mother, she hardly cared in the slightest. It took less than 24 hours for her to settle into the ship the man commanded. She had her own bedroom, her own job, and never had to worry about being picked on or hungry. For the first time since she was a little girl, Sakajin finally felt like she was safe, in an emotional and financial sort of manner. She felt like the world wasn't threatening to crumble beneath her feet, thanks to a mysterious man who knew her mother and gave her a chance.
But it would be several years before Sakajin would realize the offer was far more complicated than simply giving her a job. And that realization had a name.
General Grievous.