Chapter 2: Flashbacks and Girl Talk

Barris had long given up trying to sleep. At first she had tried to sleep on her back, the way she usually did, but it just seemed too rigid a position this time. She had turned onto her stomach, which gave her a stomachache, and then either side, but both ways felt so awkward that she couldn't fathom getting any rest in either position. Then she tried to perform some mind-clearing techniques, yet they didn't do much to clear her mind. Every time she thought she could sleep, she would remember Master Swiftwater telling her to get some rest, and that would remind her of how quickly Commander Cody had fled the mess hall.

And then she could practically see her peace of mind heading for the hills.

It wasn't like her to be so…so…"distracted" was really the only word to describe it. Usually she was so focused and driven, the way her master taught her to be, but now, she was absolutely a mess.

It had to the unit, she told herself. Everyone knew the 49th Defense Corps was a little oddball, a bit on the weird end. Not nearly as…interesting as the 666th, but still not exactly normal. Yes, it had to be the unit. Maybe she'd been spending too much time around Demo, who was certainly a mess and certainly insane.

Oh, she wasn't even fooling herself. The most contact she'd had with Demo was watching a poker game with him in the lounge. In fact, she wasn't even that distracted until a few hours ago, when she went to deliver a few maps to Master Swiftwater and found out Commander Cody….

Commander Cody…?

"Oh, Force."

She remembered the first time she had met him. It was an unexpected mission, really, because of all the Jedi in the Order no one would have thought Master Kenobi and his troops could be scattered across an entire planet. There had been an impressive space battle involving not just Master Kenobi and the 212th but also Master Skywalker and the 501st—and his Padawan, Ahsoka, of course. Then the reactor on Kenobi's ship had been hit, and the evacuation order had been sent out. Unfortunately it seemed the guidance systems for the escape pods had been going through a routine reboot, and the best the clones could do was guide them to a crash-landing on the planet below. Some hadn't made it; the rest were more or less stranded.

That was where the 41st Elite Corps came in. Their objective was to track down the members of the 212th and then commence a rescue. Barris and Master Unduli had naturally been sent with them, and when Skywalker's own fleet finished the battle they had aided in the mission. As soon as Ahsoka was free to begin searching, she met up with Barris, and they used the Force to find the lost unit.

It had been a few tiring hours of hiking and hoping to run into the presence of any of the survivors when Ahsoka decided to make it a game. They were on the jungle planet Teth, a humid and harsh environment which should have worn down even Ahsoka's seemingly endless energy, but it hadn't put much of a damper on her spirits. Barris was uncomfortable in the traditional Mirialan robes that hung heavily around her ankles, and couldn't fathom how Ahsoka could be so nonchalant.

Ahsoka had suddenly paused in the middle of clambering over a fallen tree and tilted her head to one side. "Do you feel that?"

Barris had focused until she did, indeed, feel it. "It's a soldier, but…what is he doing all alone?"

"Not just any clone," the Togruta had proclaimed triumphantly. "It's Commander Cody. He probably left his pod to go look for help. I bet he knows where Master Kenobi is!"

Her companion sighed in relief. Finally, they could find out what had happened to the Jedi Master. "Let's go find this Commander Cody, then."

"Wait," Ahsoka had said, adopting a sly grin. "What do you say to a little bet? Whoever finds Cody first gets to eat the loser's dessert tonight."

"I suppose…."

And before Barris had finished, there was a streak of red in the direction of the commander. Had anyone been watching they would have then seen a green blur dressed in heavy robes pursue the streak, shouting, "Hey, no fair! Ahsoka!"

Barris raced to find the commander, more for the joy of the competition than the thought of having Ahsoka's pudding. Usually it was gritty and tasteless anyway. But then again, the 41st had just made a stop to refuel and get fresh supplies, which almost invariably meant the pudding would be smooth and rich and very delicious.

So Barris then decided to even out the odds a bit. If Ahsoka had a head start, there was no reason she couldn't give herself a small edge. Following this logic, the older Padawan waited until she was close to her friend and then executed a brilliant jump that sent her far ahead of the other girl.

"Hey, that's cheating! You can't Force-jump ahead of me!"

Barris had turned and ran backwards, laughing at the expression on Ahsoka's face. "Perhaps next time you shouldn't give yourself a head-start! Looks like I'm get—"

And then she'd tripped, slammed into something very hard, and fallen on her face in the mud. The something she'd slammed into gave out a muffled cry that sounded like "Ooff!" and then what sounded suspiciously like a few choice swear words, but she hadn't been able to tell. Instead, she was a bit busy trying to pull herself up and get a good look at whatever or whoever she had inadvertently slipped into.

White armor. The piece that covered the abdomen, to be specific, and naturally the breastplate as well, which had a few streaks of yellow on it. That was all she saw at first, and then she had looked up to see his face.

It shouldn't have been a surprise to her. There were well over a million clones in the army, and Barris had been in the war since the First Battle of Geonosis, so one would think she wouldn't be shocked by the face of a clone. Strangely enough, this time she was. He had the same sharp nose that curled at the nostrils when he grimaced, the same black hair cropped to standard military length, the same broad forehead as his brothers. The biggest difference was the misshapen scar that seemed to form a lopsided triangle with one eyebrow before forming a sideways C just about his left temple. It was intriguing, really, and such a bizarre shape that one had to wonder what in the world had given it to him.

Then, as if that hadn't been enough to catch her attention, that was when she had looked into his eyes.

Clones didn't always have quite the same eye color. All of them had brown eyes, but in some it was hazel, others an unattractive muddy color, and in a few a rich caramel. His were none of these, but instead a deep shade of dark chocolate. She had never seen anyone with eyes that color, regardless of species or age.

Entranced, she had watched a score of emotions flicker on his face. Annoyance at first, then confusion, then vague recognition as he took in the lightsaber strapped to her waist. And then pure embarrassment, not the kind which turned one's face red but more of the sort that did slightly tinge one's skin pink.

What's so embarrassing? she had wondered, probably looking a bit flabbergasted herself. It was then that she remembered tripping into him and the mud all over her face.

A little-known fact is that Mirialans don't turn red with humiliation. At that moment, Barris had been proof enough of that. She had instead turned a most unattractive shade of purple.

Things hadn't gotten much better from there, even when the two had wiped most of the mud off of her face and his armor and Ahsoka introduced them and assured Barris she had won the pudding and the clone had said he knew exactly where Kenobi was. Even finding Master Kenobi just in time for a transport to pick him up and save his life hadn't been enough to lift her out of her gloomy, mortified haze. At least her face had regained a semi-normal color, which made it harder for Commander Cody to sense her discomfort.

Ahsoka, being her best friend, could unfortunately pick up on her unease from at least three klicks away. One might think this would mean she would not have asked Cody to search with them when he was clearly the source of her friend's humiliation, and one would be horribly wrong.

On the swiftly dwindling plus side, the pudding had indeed been delicious, Barris had more or less helped save the life of the most famous Jedi Master besides Yoda, and Co—the commander had cordially declined the Togruta's offer to join them. In the case of the latter, sadly, she couldn't help but think the commander was embarrassed by her tripping into him, and as soon as they were alone Ahsoka began pressuring her about her "bumping into Cody".

If first impression were everything, she had most certainly failed this one.

"But that was all in the past," she whispered to herself. Commander Cody couldn't really still be that upset by the whole falling-on-your-butt-in-the-mud thing. Could he?

She was interrupted from this train of thought by some shouting outside. The door opened up with a whoosh and the first of Barris's temporary roommates stormed in.

"I don't believe it! Would it kill them to even give us the vaguest hint about what kind of crisis we're supposed to be flying into? I mean, come on! They tell us we're needed immediately across the galaxy, ask us to fly to Cerea, land at midnight, then immediately take a two-hour hike to a 'secret landing pad' so we can be ferried to a base that's supposed to be a myth, from which we'll directly be taken to wherever the kriff this mission is going to happen, and they don't bother to at least mention how long it'll take to get to this base! This has got to be the most fiefekarking, convoluted, inconvenient waste of time in the history of the whole karking Republic!"

"Hello, Bluebird," Barris called halfheartedly. The Lieutenant was one of a handful of female clones, with chin-length black hair, a thin, feline face, and piercing almond eyes as well as very colorful language when she was pissed off.

She halted in her pacing and quickly snapped off a salute. "Sorry, Commander, if I disrupted anything, and sorry for the language. I just received word that when we land on Cerea, we're hiking to a landing pad and being taken to the famed Evanescent Base. I suppose I'm just a little upset at how certain government officials neglected to tell us this until a moment ago, sir."

Barris waved away the apologies before it hit her. "Evanescent Base? The one that changes location on practically a weekly basis? Isn't that a myth?"

The clone shrugged and headed to her bed, pulling out one of many vibroblades on her belt. "Evidently not. But that's enough about the 'mystery mission'. You sound pretty down, sir. Is everything okay?" She began absentmindedly flipping the knife in her hand, tossing it up in any number of tricks.

"No, thank you, Lieutenant, I'm just having trouble sleeping. I was trying to meditate when you came in."

Her roommate colored quickly. "Sorry, sir. I had no idea you were meditating. If I had known—"

"No, it's alright. I wasn't doing a very good job of meditating anyway." She sighed. "I was actually thinking about Cody…"

"So someone has the hots for the commander?" joked Bluebird. She laughed at the Padawan's face. "Don't worry, sir, I'm just kidding. But just between you and me"—she leaned closer and lowered her voice, no longer fiddling with the knife—"I think his scar is hot."

"A scar can be hot?" Barris was clearly flabbergasted.

Her companion shrugged. "Of course it can. And his scar is very, very attractive. It really brings out his eyes. I just love it."

Now Barris was horrified. Lieutenant Bluebird was never distracted and seemed to always dismiss dating as a waste of time. How could she go on about how hot one of her own brothers was, even if she was made of completely different genes from them?

"It's not that I'd even think about going out with him," she added quickly. Force, but sometimes she could practically read minds. "It's just a bit of girl talk."

"Girl talk?" asked Barris.

"You know, it's useless poodo normal girls always gush over, like proms and makeup and the latest in fashion and whether or not some guy is cute. I know neither of us are exactly 'normal', but that doesn't mean we can't have a little girl talk every now and again." She winked clandestinely at her.

Barris considered this, and then nodded. It made sense; why couldn't they get a chance to act normal every now and again?

"So," began Bluebird again. "What do you think about Commander Cody's scar?"

After a long moment, the Mirialan admitted, "I suppose it does bring out his eyes nicely."

Well, here it is. My second chapter! Yay! I had no idea how many people would like this story.

Internet cookies to all my reviewers! Extras go to:
darthritter86, for the constructive critisism
enteryournamehere5 and Edward's Forever Lover, for reading this even though I know you guys don't like Star Wars
Aurora Lunar 0Love This0, for inspiring the story as well as Barris's flashback
natcat13, for the idea for the mission (which will begin-ish soon)
and an honorary cookie to Queen, for being the first person I've seen to give out internet cookies

A quick message to CaptainKale: my computer's being stupid, so I can't figure out how to respond to your message, but if you send me a short review I should be able to do it.

Feel free to review, provide suggestions, give ideas, or just ask questions. Happy Turkey Day! Sorry this took so long!