Mission Vao was fourteen years old.
She was a small, blue twi'lek. Her skin was blue, not a dark blue like cobalt, but a brighter, more vibrant blue. Closer to cyan really. She knew a lot of things. More than anybody her age should probably know about.
Shooting a blaster, rigging a pazaak table, hacking, pickpocketing. All important skills for a Lower City twi'lek.
Oh, and she had a Wookiee best friend.
That was pretty awesome, right? Unique? Her eyes tracked the mysterious guy wandering around the cantina. He looked like the perfect impersonation of somebody trying to act natural. His face was lax. His hands were just barely tucked into his pockets. He moved fluidly, soberly.
Mission Vao didn't know who he was, and she knew everybody. That instantly drew her attention. He was kinda cute too. That helped.
A bubbly feeling sprung up in her belly. It pulsed and stretched, contracted then simmered. She tilted her head slightly. It was weird. Uncomfortable.
Then those stupid rodians had to show up and ruin her people watching. It was all the usual threats and insults, familiar and boring. Zaalbar was at her side in no time, two entire trays of food held in each paw, the fur around his mouth matted with crumbs of food.
Mission thought he looked funny. The rodians looked ready to crap their pants.
When they retreated, she returned to her people watching, a confident smirk on her face, and nearly had a heart attack.
Mysterious stranger guy was right there, looking straight at her. That bubbly feeling returned. She swore the warmth swimming in her cheeks was definitely not a blush.
He was still cute up close. His eyes were blue, bright, like electricity. Intense too. Was she sweating? Why did she suddenly feel like giggling?
Mysterious stranger guy had a friend with him. An older looking man with a horrid, flashy orange jacket and the beginnings of a rough beard. Mission didn't recognize him either. He definitely looked old enough to be her dad.
He looked grumpy enough to be a parent too.
"Good job dealing with those thugs," Mysterious stranger guy said.
Mission smiled. She drew herself up to her full height, a mighty 5'2, and placed her hands on her hips. "Nothing I haven't seen before. Speaking of which, you two are new around here, right? I don't recognize you, and I know everyone in the Lower City."
The two men glanced at each other. An entire argument raged between them all in the span of a second before their eye contact broke. Mysterious stranger's casual smile returned.
"We're new," He said, "I'm Alexander."
"Carth," The older man muttered, like his name was a tooth being pulled from his mouth.
She smiled. Alexander. That was so . . . cute.
"I'm Mission Vao," She declared, "That's my friend, Big Z."
"A twi'lek and a Wookiee in the Lower City," Alexander said, "That's a pretty rare combination."
Mission glanced at Big Z, who hadn't even noticed the two newcomers over his mountains of food.
Man, Alexander was gonna think she was so cool.
She turned around. "You could say that. Welcome to the Lower City, Alex."
000
At first, Mission didn't like Bastila Shan.
She was uppity and bossy. She walked around like she owned the place. She was the picture perfect type of 'adult' that drove Mission Vao crazy.
And she never smiled. Mission wasn't sure she'd ever seen the woman with anything but an expression of grim determination. Her brows were angry. Her lips were cinched into a tight line of tension. Her pupils were a deep black surrounded by troubled clouds.
She was still really, really pretty but like . . . still annoying. And stuff. Not that she ever noticed how pretty Bastila was. Like, really pretty.
Um.
Anyway, the aftermath of Bastila's rescue (yes, it was a rescue) was a blur of planning and plotting and trying to figure out what they were going to do. Days passed with all of them crammed into that crappy apartment.
Sometimes, Mission would see Bastila and Alex sharing words with each other. They were always hushed, bordering on intense. Alex's face sparkled mischievously. Bastila's grimace never softened.
Most times, it always ended with Bastila stalking away with a huff and Alex's eyes lingering just a second longer than necessary.
Mission wasn't jealous. She was so not jealous. She definitely wasn't fixated on Alex and his stupid, handsome face. Her palms definitely didn't get uncomfortably humid whenever he was around.
She would glare at Bastila sometimes when the princess wasn't looking. It should have been easy to just not like her. Yeah, Bastila was older and prettier and the same species as Alex, but it was all still unfair.
Rarely did the glares stick though. More often than not, the glares softened into something more innocent. Staring. Mission stared at her, unapologetic. In those moments, she'd forget about Alex completely.
But that didn't make sense, did it? Mission . . . Mission didn't . . .?
Her stomach turned to mush. She didn't understand. She didn't understand a lot of things. Her eyes tracked from Alex on one side of the room to Bastila on the other. The mushy, warm feeling didn't change at all.
Mission made a face. She'd never felt warm about anyone before, much less two people. Obviously she loved Big Z, but this warmth was different. Intense. Kind of scalding, honestly.
Maybe she should go see a Doctor. Or maybe Zaedra would know something about it. It could just be a twi'lek thing.
Yeah. That was probably it.
000
Mission started liking Bastila a lot more when the Jedi saved her life.
They were deep in the Sith's military base. Everyone had hesitated to bring her along, much to her chagrin, but when they realized she was the best hacker they had available, it quickly became clear that she would be needed.
Bastila was a picture of perfect concentration. She cut through the air seamlessly, her yellow lightsaber cleaving swaths through the Sith's defenses. It was mesmerizing, and honestly made it hard to focus on anything else but watching the Jedi's form in action.
Like, seriously, how inconsiderate of her.
Mission stayed near the back of the group, blaster out but completely unused. Carth and Alexander formed a wall in front of her, blaster barrels smoking as they picked off any stragglers retreating from Bastila's blade.
Halfway down the long corridor, they passed a door to their left that apparently wasn't where they needed to go. Mission paid it no mind. That was her first mistake.
Just as she stepped by it, the door burst open and a combat droid stepped through. Time slowed. Mission could practically see down the blaster barrel pointed a few inches away from her face. Her heart tightened.
A wave of energy rippled across her body. The droid's blaster was jerked up and away from Mission's face. The blaster bolt meant to end her life left a harmless, black pockmark in the ceiling.
Instinct took over after that. Mission sidestepped, raised her blaster, and spat a bolt right through the seam between the droid's head and its shoulders. There was a boom, a flash of smoke, and then the droid's head was spinning on the floor a foot away from its body.
She turned, huffing a sigh of relief, and saw everyone staring at her like she'd just grown three heads.
"You okay, pipsqueak?" Alexander asked.
She was so shaken with adrenaline, Mission couldn't even flush at Alex's nickname for her. She nodded, her mouth as dry as a cotton ball. "I'm good."
That seemed good enough for Alex. Bastila stared at her a second longer before she scowled and continued advancing forward.
After that, Mission didn't hold a grudge anymore. She no longer glared. She exclusively stared when she thought nobody would catch her looking.
After all, Bastila had saved her life. It was like something out of a holovid!
She still needed to talk to Zaedra about it. It didn't seem to be getting better. If anything, the feelings were only getting worse and more intense.
Maybe tomorrow.
Except tomorrow never came, and by the time Mission had been dragged to safety on the Ebon Hawk, Taris was already gone.
000
Numb. She didn't feel a thing.
Mission Vao was fourteen. She had no home. No family. They were gone, buried under fire and rubble.
She didn't cry. She didn't scream. She felt frozen in place. No progression, no regression, there would never be anything else in her life except this feeling of despair choking the air from her body.
She could drown here and she wouldn't care.
She wouldn't feel anything ever again.
000
A month spent on Dantooine. Mission didn't feel fourteen anymore.
It was such a startling difference from Taris. Completely rural, with actual grass and wheat, and a breeze that didn't carry the smell of oil and rust. Blue skies, darker than her skin, and stringy clouds. It was so quiet here.
She tried not to think of Taris. Her friends. Better to avoid it, than to risk spiraling back into the crippling numbness.
The crew tried to help, but they had all drifted apart as their indefinite stay at the Enclave dragged on longer and longer. Big Z loved her, but he was never one for comforting words or big emotions. Carth was withdrawn, moodier than normal, impatient and guarded. He glared at every Jedi that walked past him like they were his worst enemy.
Canderous was . . . Canderous. He disappeared in and out. T3, cute and cuddly as he was, was just a naive astromech droid.
She missed Alex. On the rare days she did see him, he always looked frustrated, grim, angry. With his Jedi training, those days of even catching a glimpse of him were increasingly rare.
Sometimes she saw Bastila too. She didn't look much better. Exhausted. Sometimes she said hi. Sometimes she didn't.
The warmth was gone. It felt silly, like the bygone problems of an immature girl. She was only a month older but it felt like she couldn't even imagine her life before the bombardment as anything other than a fantasy.
Stupid crushes. That's what they'd been. Mission understood that now. Alex, with all his mysterious charm and electric good looks. Bastila, with her beauty and fierceness. How she managed to get a crush on two Jedi, Mission had no idea.
She felt stupid. She was sure Alex and Bastila would laugh at her if they ever found out. She was just a crazy teenager, right? Not like anyone would ever take her seriously.
Nobody ever seemed to care what she thought.
With a sigh, Mission stopped and sat in Dantooine's high grass, viewing the rolling plains extend forever out to the horizon. The sun was starting to curve downward, casting long shadows from the trees across the grass.
The breeze slid over her lekku, light and tinged with heat. She liked to come to the plains. The Enclave always felt stifling, the Jedi stiff and uninviting. Nobody ever smiled much.
Here, she could feel open and free. Time stood still on the plains. There was no war, no bombardments, no pain. Just Mission, bright blue amongst the golden wheat that came up to her knees.
She'd have to take Zaalbar with her next time. He would love the tall, willowy trees.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a faint noise. She perked up, brow furrowing, eyes darting left to right then left again. She'd never heard that noise on the plains before. Was that . . . laughter?
Curious, the twi'lek stood and wandered in the general direction of the noise. As she walked, she started to pick up on other sounds. Voices. Two of them. A little bit more laughter. She realized that whoever they were, they were somewhere over the hill in front of her, just big enough of a swell to hide the plains on the other side.
When she reached the top of the hill, Mission froze.
At the bottom of the hill were two people. They sat across from each other, maybe two or three feet separating them, basking in the sunlight. Mission resisted the urge to immediately drop down to a squat and hide in the grass, as though she were intruding on something private.
Alex and Bastila. Mission couldn't hear what they were saying, but she could hear the mirth in their voices. Alex said something, hands gesturing in front of his face like he was drawing art in midair, and Bastila's face bloomed into a smile, peals of bright, golden laughter exhuming from her like sunlight.
Alex laughed, loud and abrasive, and nearly fell onto his side with how hard he threw back his head. That only made Bastila laugh harder, both hands cupped over her lips as if she were trying to keep her laughter from awakening every kath hound in the plains.
It was almost overwhelming. Mission had never seen Bastila so relaxed, so completely basked in golden joy. Her pigtails swayed in the breeze. Her shoulders trembled with barely suppressed giggles.
She had never seen Bastila smile. It was so beautiful and wholesome and . . . warm.
And Alex was himself, practically glowing like a supercharged hyperdrive.
The joy was infectious. Mission couldn't help the slightest uptick of her lips into a grin. Something tickled in her stomach, like the briefest of sparks in a pit of coals. A sting of warmth, a familiar mischievousness burned like kindling all the way up to her eyes.
She whistled. The reactions were instantaneous. Bastila went stiff as a board. Alex looked up, saw Mission, and somehow managed to smile even wider than before.
"Mission!" Bastila spluttered, "What are you - how did you -"
Alex snorted. "Uh oh, somebody else is gonna know you aren't just a total killjoy every day."
"I am not a killjoy!"
Alex ignored her and stood up. He walked up the hill, face beaming, and wrapped an arm over Mission's shoulder, giving her a small squeeze. "I missed you pipsqueak. I know I don't get to see you a lot nowadays, but I hope you realize that I haven't forgotten about all those credits you cheated me out of in pazaak."
Mission smiled. Warmth buzzed across her face. Still, she elbowed him in the side. "I don't cheat!"
"And I am not a killjoy, Alexander!"
Alex shrugged. "You know, if you've gotta be so defensive about it, then maybe . . ."
Bastila crossed her arms over chest, even as her eyes glinted with amusement. Mission giggled, an actual giggle, and realized that for a moment she actually felt as light as air.
Happy.
Time stood still and everything was golden. The sun. The glistening wheat. The glow of the sunlight around Bastila's face. Alex's smile. Frozen. Picture perfect.
Golden.