Mission peeled Seth's jacket from her shoulders angrily as the harsh rays of Tatooine's twin suns continued to beat down on her on her trek through Anchorhead's winding streets. Bitter tears welled up in her eyes, streaking across her cheeks and making wet trails through the layer of dust that the planet had already kicked up into her face. "She's lying," the young Twi'lek repeated to herself over and over. "He wouldn't have left you, Mission. He loves you. She's lying, he loves you."
The more she spoke what she desperately wanted to believe was the truth, however, the larger the lump in her throat grew. Mission was well-aware that she was white-knuckling the image of Griff she'd built up in her mind to protect herself from the reality of her childhood situation. But as she grew and matured, that reality had only gotten uglier and scarier. And her perception of Griff only continued to crack and crumble with the truth of her childhood demanding to be seen, heard and understood.
"Mission!" Seth's voice rose above the din of Anchorhead's sparsely-crowded streets as he ran to catch up to her. She angrily wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, stuck in the limbo between wanting to allow herself to be comforted by him and wanting to put as much distance between herself and the subject of Griff for a very long time. She stopped moving, waiting for Seth to catch up and angling her face away from him as he approached, skidding in the dirt as he tried to slow his momentum from his run.
"Hey," he said quietly, gently pulling his jacket from her grip and softly placing his fingers under her chin to turn her towards him.
It took one look at her still-watery chocolate eyes before his expression softened further and he wordlessly pulled her against his chest, wrapping his arms protectively around her as she tucked her face under his chin. "The worst part about everything that cantina rat said is that it's honestly pretty believable," she mumbled into the crook of his neck, frustrated at the way her voice broke as she said it. "Force, I can't believe I'm doubting my own brother, but it sounds exactly like something he'd have done."
"You're not a bad sister just because you're having second thoughts about the way things went down with Griff all those years ago", Seth told her gently. "When you were a kid, you had to make Lena the bad guy if you were ever gonna move forward with what little understanding you had of what was going on. You did what you had to do to move on and survive." He pulled away, swiping his thumb across her cheek to wipe away her tears so tenderly that Mission could've sworn she felt her heart skip a beat or two. "Mission, I promised you back on Dantooine that we'd find your brother, and with that, some answers about what really happened."
She laughed dryly. "Yeah, that was a pretty lofty promise to make."
"Hey, I meant it. And I think I know where to start looking for answers."
Mission froze, feeling her heart leap up into her throat. "Seth, please don't get my hopes up."
"No, really," he said quickly, reaching for her hand and lacing their fingers together before giving it a solemn squeeze. "Lena had mentioned that Griff was probably off working in the Czerka Corp mines. If we pay a visit to the Czerka office, we just have to get our hands on a crew roster or something."
"We're here to find a star map, not my brother. If this ends up being some wild goose chase, you know Bastila will put a stop to it, and honestly, I can't really say I'd blame her."
Seth ran his thumb across her knuckles where their hands were joined and dropped his voice to an intent whisper. "Let's just give it a try, Mish. Who knows, he might even be in there."
She was quiet for a minute, avoiding Seth's intent gaze and dropping her eyes to their fingers laced together. She longed to see Griff again, to hear his gravelly laugh and see his crooked grin. That longing had been settled deep within her heart for the past six years. But she couldn't shake the feeling that either they were about to hit a dead end in her search for him, or they were going to find something that would launch them onto a journey of proving Lena right. Mission wasn't sure which outcome was worse.
But she had to know. For Griff's sake, and for her own.
"Okay," she whispered back to Seth, locking onto his eyes and searching desperately for some measure of comfort in the deep green. He smiled softly, looping an arm around both of her shoulders and bringing her into another tight embrace.
"Okay," he repeated firmly, with all the confidence Mission wished she had herself. "Let's go find your brother."
They nearly collided with Bastila, Canderous and Jolee in the doorway of Anchorhead's Czerka office, one party attempting to exit as the other tried to enter. The elder Jedi harrumphed as Seth and Mission skidded to a stop in front of him, crossing his arms. "Slow down, would you? Don't see why you kids constantly have to be on the move."
"You're back from the cantina awful early," Canderous said, his smirk evident in his tone of voice. "Lose all our credits already?"
"We actually haven't played a match yet," Seth said quickly. "We ended up coming across a lead that Mission's brother might be here on Tatooine working for Czerka."
At that, Canderous' expression softened, and he dropped his cocksure stance, giving Mission an encouraging, albeit curt, nod. Bastila, however, propped her hand on her hip and frowned. "While that's likely some great news, Seth, our objective is to find the Star Map, first and foremost."
"I know, Bastila," Seth replied, throwing his hands up in a defensive gesture. "We're keeping our eye on the prize here. But if we can manage to find Griff while we're looking for the Star Map, then I think we should try. Did you guys have any luck getting some information out of the Czerka team?"
She sighed, shaking her head. "Not really, unfortunately. While Czerka's been doing quite a bit of mining out in the dune sea, the reality is that the desert stretches out for miles. They haven't come across anything like the Star Map in any of their excavation sites."
"They did offer us a hunting license as our pass to leave the city, and start looking" Canderous added. "In exchange for a favor."
"Not sure if I like the sound of that," Mission said cautiously.
"It's a pretty hefty favor, so we didn't give her a yes or no just yet," Canderous confirmed. "The local tribe of Sand People has been raiding Czerka's sandcrawlers, and they want us to put a stop to it."
Seth rose a dubious eyebrow. "How do we even do that? What are we even supposed to do, wipe out an entire village of Sand People?"
"That's a suicide mission, even for the crew of the Ebon Hawk," the Mandalorian grunted.
"Then again, I thought that this whole quest to find the Star Forge was sort of a suicide mission anyways," Jolee commented, more to himself than anyone.
"There was an Ithorian in there with us while the Czerka officer asked us to take care of the Sand People," Bastila said. "He was pleading for a peaceful solution, and seemed to think that a droid being sold here in town had the ability to bridge the communication gap between us and the Sand People to broker a deal without bloodshed."
Canderous scoffed, crossing his arms across his broad chest. "As if they'd let us get close enough to talk before gunning us down."
"Can't we just take the hunting license, find the Star Map, and go?" Mission asked. "Who says we actually gotta follow through on the favor?"
"Aside from the fact that it'd drive the princess crazy if we did anything to breach her integrity…" Canderous trailed off, smirking as Bastila turned a fuming glare upon him before continuing, "Czerka's got maps of the Dune Sea for miles that are our only hope of not getting lost and dying of dehydration out in the desert."
"Let me guess," Seth said, "they won't hand those maps over until the Sand People are dealt with."
"Looks like we gotta play Czerka's game here, as much as I hate to say it," Jolee said glumly.
"In that case, we'd better round up the crew and figure out a plan for how we want to proceed," Bastila suggested.
"You guys go ahead," Seth replied. "We still gotta ask about Griff."
"Go ahead and ask," Bastila said resignedly. "But keep your focus, Seth. The more time we take to find these Star Maps, the more time Malak has to utilize the powers of the Star Forge against the Republic."
The lady Jedi turned on heel, striding forward towards the marketplace they'd left Carth, Juhani and T3 at. Canderous clapped Mission on the shoulder before nodding at Jolee and following Bastila's lead. Seth turned back toward the twi'lek, offering an encouraging smile. "You ready for this?"
She shifted her weight uneasily from one foot to the other. "I dunno. I've spent so long wondering when it comes to my brother that it's almost scary to have something concrete to believe in."
He laced his fingers through hers. "I'll be right here."
She nodded at him, forcing a smile before pushing through the door in search of answers.
It took about twenty minutes of cutting through conversational red tape with the Czerka representative, which Seth handled calmly and gently, and Mission, not so much, before they finally got some long-awaited answers about one Griff Vao.
And the news made Mission wish they hadn't gone digging for information at all.
Blundering her way through an awkward apology, the Czerka rep revealed that Griff had gone missing from a job site during a Sand People raid, and was likely being held captive, if not already dead. His poor performance on the job and overall untrustworthiness as an employee hadn't prompted Czerka to take action, and as a result, no one had seen or heard from Griff in over a month.
Mission stopped listening after that. She couldn't hear much beyond the ringing in her ears anyways, as she felt her heart drop to her stomach. She watched Seth press the Czerka rep for more information without hearing the words coming from his mouth, watching the crease between his brows deepen and the tension between his shoulder blades tighten before he dejectedly turned away from the rep.
Force, she wished he'd never looked at her the way he looked at her in that moment. The concern and empathy etched across his handsome features brought her into a place of vulnerability that she'd never wanted to feel, and it took one look from him like that to break the dam and allow the crushing weight of the news to settle in her heart.
"Mission…" he started, very obviously at a loss for words, and she was grateful, because the last thing she wanted to do was discuss it.
"I need to get out of here," she murmured, pushing past him and willing him to follow her all the way back to the Ebon Hawk, because she sure as hell wasn't stopping or looking back. As if on autopilot, she wordlessly weaved her way in and out of the crowds of Anchorhead's streets, through the Hawk's docking bay and up her loading ramp. She brushed past the rest of the crew beginning to congregate in the main hold and made her way straight to the engine room, punching the door controls so that they sealed behind her with a whoosh.
She could briefly hear Seth's voice, muffled behind the door, as he began to explain their situation to the bewildered crew before the ringing in her ears grew far too loud and she dropped to her knees next to the hyperdrive as a shuddering sob wracked her body. Crushing pain from mixed emotions bore down on her, making Mission feel claustrophobic in her own body. Between shaking breaths, she tried and failed to get a grip on the feelings consuming her: Fear for her brother's life. Pain from his abandonment and rejection. Anger at herself for so naively believing that she even had a family to return to after all this was over. Safe behind the protection of the engine room door, Mission choked out sob after heaving sob until her eyes were red and swollen.
She wasn't sure how long she'd been sitting in there, staring dejectedly at the hyperdrive after she had no tears left to cry. Even the gentle knock on the durasteel door wasn't enough to shake her from her melancholy. "Not now, Seth," she replied wearily, loud enough to carry to the other side.
It wasn't Seth's reassuring voice on the other side of the door, however. And Mission's eyes lifted toward the door controls when she heard the soft Wookiee growl on the other side. "[We don't have to talk if you don't want to, Mission.]"
That was all she needed to hear to let Zalbaar in. The Wookiee ducked under the doorframe, like he did with just about every doorframe on the little freighter that had been very obviously not been built for his species, and sat just across from Mission, offering an empathetic growl.
"Seth filled you in, huh?" she asked, tracing the patterns in the grates on the floor to avoid making eye contact that was sure to send her into a storm of emotion again.
"[He told us enough,]" Zalbaar confirmed. "[It's okay not to know how to feel. I didn't either.]"
The simple hint that her best friend offered hit home and hit hard, and Mission allowed a little gasp to escape her mouth as she realized just how much he got it. How much he understood the duality of the pain of a brother's rejection alongside the agony of his demise. And it was enough to have her crawling across the small space between them and curling into his side as he embraced her, allowing her carefully crafted walls to drop in that moment to be vulnerable with Zalbaar, and for once, herself.
It didn't dull the pain one bit, but it lifted a weight the size of a planet from Mission's shoulders that she hadn't even recognized was there.
And that was enough.
It was Seth's soft knock on her dormitory door hours later that finally offered an opportunity to tear her mind away from how awful her sixteenth birthday was turning out to be. Not that it really mattered, she thought as she turned to face the young man leaning against the open doorframe. She hadn't celebrated her birthday in years. Not since Griff had left, anyways. For all his shortcomings, her brother never failed to bring home a sweet cake, singing his birthday wishes to her loudly and off-key until she smooshed a piece of cake into his face to quiet him, laughing. The memory made her cringe now, her heart settling into that uncomfortable melancholy between pain and fondness over someone she hadn't been given a choice but to love even when there were very few reasons to love.
She glanced up at Seth, forcing a half smile. "Hey," she said quietly. "I'm sorry about how I stormed off earlier."
His face softened, and she cut him off before he could shrug the incident off, her hand in the air in a silencing gesture just as his mouth dropped open to reply.
"No, let me do this," she continued, and the gentle look in her eye gave some balance to the edge in her voice. "It was just… a lot to process all at once, and I knew you'd wanna talk through it with me, because you're great and you're understanding and you have the biggest heart, but I didn't want to talk. And I'm not sorry about that, specifically, but I should have just told you what I needed from you in that moment. I shouldn't have shut down and run away. And I'm sorry."
"It's alright, Mission. I appreciate it, but you've had a hell of a day. Anyone would've responded the way you did." He waited a beat, and then, "Do you wanna talk about it now?"
"No," she replied quickly, then sighed with a drop of her shoulders, burying her face in her hands. "At least, I don't think I do. I don't know."
He stepped closer to her then, holding out a hand in an offer to pull her from her position seated at the edge of her bunk. "Then we don't have to. Until you're ready to, on your terms. Until then, though, if you're up for it, there's something I wanna show you."
Mission tentatively put her hand in his, allowing him to pull her along with him through the halls of the Ebon Hawk and down the loading ramp. Tatooine's twin suns were dropping lower in the sky with the onset of golden hour, bringing a reprieve from the harsh heat that had characterized the earlier half of the day. She noticed Seth stoop to pick up a small backpack at the base of the Hawk's loading ramp, and he gave her a small smile that betrayed his excitement for whatever he had planned. "You'll see," he said simply in response to her questioning gaze, slinging the backpack over his shoulders and taking her by the hand again.
He guided her around the back of the ship, stepping over fuel cables and around shipping crates, whispering apologies to a few dockworkers who'd hidden near the back of the hangar to smoke a couple deathsticks as the two teenagers invaded their otherwise quiet space. Mission kept the biting question of "where are we going?" at bay, fully aware by that point that Seth was going to hold tightly to the element of surprise until they'd reached their destination.
Against the back wall of the hangar was a series of steps carved into the wall, a staircase leading presumably to the top of the hangar's thick walls that rose high above the Ebon Hawk's hull. She noticed his grip on her fingers tighten slightly and involuntarily about halfway up the stairs, and she smiled at the fact that she knew him well enough now to know the action could be attributed to his otherwise well-hidden fear of heights. He stopped just before they were about to crest the top of the stairs and find the horizon once again at the top of the wall, turning back to look at her. "Okay. So I got a few ideas from Zalbaar, and Carth, and even Canderous. And I don't know if you were keeping the occasion quiet on purpose or not, but after you left the cantina, Lena had mentioned it was your birthday, so…" he trailed off, giving her hand a gentle squeeze as he guided her past him and up to the top of the wall.
She couldn't help but let a small gasp out as she caught a glimpse of Tatooine's twin suns beginning to dip below the horizon, casting a brilliant golden glow across the vast expanse of desert that stretched out before them for miles and painting the sky in vibrant colors of pink and orange. "Wow," she whispered, glancing back at Seth, who was grinning back at her, his green eyes trained on her as he watched her take it all in.
"Happy birthday, Mission."
She stepped toward him, taking his hand to pull him closer before wrapping her arms around him in a tight embrace. "Thank you," she whispered.
He grinned as they pulled apart, pulling the backpack from his shoulder. "Like I said, I had some help coming up with the idea," he said as he pulled a blanket from the pack, laying it out across the platform and patting it in invitation. She smiled and took a seat next to him, facing the sunset as he continued to dig in the backpack once more. "The sunset was Carth's idea," he said, then pulled out a few nerfburgers he'd picked up from a street vendor. "And the food was Big Z's idea."
She laughed as she took the burger he'd held out in offering, her fingers brushing against his. "Of course it was," she said before proceeding to take a bite. "What was Canderous' contribution?" She asked around a mouthful.
"Oh, yeah," he said with a sly grin. "You're gonna love this one." He reached into the backpack once more, pulling two glasses from a zipped-up pocket before revealing a bottle of aged juma juice.
Her eyes went wide. "Oh, Canderous, you wonderfully di'kut Mando, you've outdone yourself," she said as she took the bottle from Seth's hands to inspect it closer.
"Apparently, the legal drinking age here on Tatooine is sixteen," Seth told her. "So he insisted on ensuring you celebrated, and I quote, 'properly.'"
She laughed freely and easily at that, pouring a glass first for Seth, and then herself. "Well, then here's to a proper celebration," she said, clinking her glass with his. "Let's just not go crazy with this stuff. We're up really high right now and I'm not totally sure if I trust either of us to keep our balance."
"One glass each," Seth promised, corking the bottle and putting it away for safekeeping. "Besides, I want you to remember tonight."
She reached up to put her hand on his shoulder, but with the sweet taste of the alcohol burning a pleasant trail along her tongue, she felt emboldened to move her hand to thread her fingers through his soft hair. "Remember tonight? Seth, today was one of the worst days I've had in a while, and you've managed to make something great out of it in a way that only you can. I don't think I'll ever be able to forget it."
He smiled sweetly, genuinely encouraged by her reassurance. "Well, just in case, I also have a gift for you," he added.
"Seth Avery, you are full of surprises."
"It's nothing fancy, so don't get your hopes up too high, there," he said, and she cocked her head slightly to the side in confusion as he reached for the collar of his jacket, instead of towards the backpack from which he'd produced just about every other item of their evening together. There was the soft sound of clinking metal and suddenly he was pulling the very Republic-issued dog tags she'd grasped in their very first meeting in the Taris Lower City Cantina from around his neck and pressing them into the palm of her hand.
She looked down at them in reverence, tracing her fingers over the embossed Aurebesh lettering. On a field of battle, where casualties ran thick, she knew that those tags would have been the one thing that differentiated Seth from simply being a number on an infantry roster should he have fallen. They were his very identity in the eyes of the Grand Army of the Republic, a piece of who he was… as if he could even begin to be summed up by a name and platoon number, she couldn't help but think. "Seth…" she breathed. The weight of the gesture, of giving her the only physical item he could to symbolize something greater, settled heavy over her shoulders, calling her attention to the somberness of the moment. Seth was giving her more than just metal tags on a ball chain in that moment. He was giving her his heart.
"Now that I'm not necessarily an active duty soldier and I've transitioned from the ranks of the Republic Army to the ranks of the Jedi Order, those aren't really gonna be used to identify me anymore," he said sheepishly, his cheeks flushing crimson as he shyly looked away from her, as if the lack of eye contact made his word flow more easily. "And the whole point is that those are there for the sake of next steps if something were to happen to me, which I obviously really hope doesn't happen, but… if something were to happen to me, it'd bring a lot of peace of mind knowing you're the one who has 'em."
Mission wanted to say something, anything to convey her gratitude and her honor for such a deeply personal gesture and moment, but the words got stuck behind a lump in her throat, and all she could manage was, "Are you sure?"
She wanted to kick herself, for her words that she was so sure sounded dismissive and lighthearted in the face of something that was anything but. But Seth looked up to hold her gaze in that moment, and she hadn't seen him look more sure of anything in the months she'd known him.
"Look when we were in the cantina earlier, Lena asked if I was your boyfriend," he said. "And I don't think I realized it until that moment when I told her no, that there wasn't anything else I wanted to be the answer to that question but yes. And I know that we've given in to our feelings for each other without doing the hard thing of committing to a label, and I know that we've taken a step back now and we've got these boundaries in place, which I think was something we really needed because it's never been fair to us to enjoy the benefits of a relationship without the commitment. So I'm not saying we need to jump into anything right now, if you're not ready. But these tags… they mean something. And what I'm trying to say is that I'm committed to this, to us. And whenever you're ready to take that step, I am too."
And there it was. The security that she'd been searching for, the commitment that had always been missing behind the ups and downs of their relationship ever since the first tentative touches of tangled hands and romantic intentions back on Taris finally clicked into place, and she let out a ragged gasp of relief. "Then ask me."
"I don't want to pressure–"
"Seth. I'm ready. I'm beyond ready. Ask me."
He laughed a little at her insistence, bringing his fingers underneath her chin to tilt her face toward his. "Alright, then. Mission, will you be my–"
"Yes," she breathed, suddenly and immediately, her impatience getting the better of her as she curled her fingers into the fabric of his jacket collar and Seth was laughing against her mouth when she finally pulled him towards her to press her lips urgently to his, his tags clutched tightly in her other hand like a lifeline.
As Tatooine's twin suns dropped below the horizon and dusk overtook the dunes that stretched out before them, Mission allowed her fears and worries to momentarily drop right along with them, finding comfort and security in the newfound certainty brought about by the letters stamped into the tags that hung against her heartbeat.