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sullustangin · 1 year

Text

For @starknstarwars

This was my gift for the SWTOR Summer exchange. I got the lovely Sixth Line to work with, and it was a joy to make something for one of the nicest folks in the SWTOR community.

Summary:

Vexa Pasan dutifully performs her meditative exercises, but her mind wanders. The Battle for Odessen will eventually come -- and then where will she be?

Fic:

One eye cracked open. The blue one. Halfway. Didn’t want to be too obvious.

The rocks, a few yards away from her, were all in flight.

There was one for each of them: Vexa herself, Papa, Master Praxis, BD-4, Zallia, Master Nightstar. Six for the Sixth Line. (She’d considered adding one for Theron, but then she’d have to add one for the Commander, and then she’d absolutely have to add one for Lana, and that was getting ambitious, even for Vexa.)

And all of the rocks were all off the ground and steadily rotating around her.

“It counts!” she crowed to herself. Slamming the eyelid shut, Vexa squeezed her face all tight to make sure she didn’t jinx it. “BD, can you take a holo? I’m not gonna be able to hold this until Master Praxis gets back.”

She knew this, because Zallia was on Odessen, and the two of them had a habit of wandering off whenever they were in the same vicinity without an immediate mission. (Most of the time. Sometimes, they did wander off right before a major mission, and Theron stomped around until they shook loose from somewhere in the base.)

The droid whirred happily and with a ‘beep!,’ the moment was captured for posterity and for Morff Praxis. A job well done.

On the other hand, maybe she should have asked Papa. He was just a dozen yards away, trying to lurk and hide as best as his large form could.

Pasan Powin didn’t know it yet. And maybe Vexa wouldn’t tell him until she was too old to hide it. But there were a lot of benefits of being able to sense people and read their identity like the spine of a library datapad. Everything was laid out: names, titles, and depending on how ‘dense’ they felt, how many years. Or least, how many lightyears they’d travelled, as Zallia would put it. Some people had more than others, even if they were the same age.

Vexa was rather pleased she’d come up with the datapad comparison herself. It would be useful in explaining it to a non-Force User one day.

(Some of the best things were the secrets you kept to yourself.)

…The Commander was much, much heavier than she looked. So was Theron, but somehow…. They were like acrobats, keeping each other flying through the air, defying gravity, always making the next handhold, the next knee hook over the trapeze --

Master Praxis… well, he looked as heavy as he felt now, most of the time, so that wasn’t exactly a big surprise.

(If the adults still thought she was ignorant of what Master Praxis had done as The Hand and as a spy, they were really trying to pretend her childhood would last forever here on Odessen. Giving her Holonet access in her room for ‘homework’ was apparently part of this delusion.)

When Master Praxis didn’t look drained, Zallia was in the room, and she was the strangest adult Vexa had ever met, Imperial or Republic.

In so many ways, Zallia was the worst adult: she couldn’t get to work on time, she couldn’t dress as anything other than ‘smuggler,’ she always seemed to be out of credits, she was always on the verge of losing her contracts, she drank a little too much (a lot too much), and she said things that would get Vexa into trouble if/when she repeated them….

And yet she knew exactly how the universe worked, and she was the very best pilot the Alliance had, and she helped Vexa make friends, and the Sixth Line just couldn’t work without her. Somehow –

What was it Master Nightstar had said? “Affinity and balance.”

Master Nightstar worked very hard to keep herself light and unburdened. Attachments worked against her mission. Strangely, Lana was the same way: she was free of weight. Lana rarely mentioned her life before meeting Theron and the rest of the Sixth Line. Master Nightstar and Lana (“just Lana, thank you. No ‘Lord Beniko,’ please”) were sparring partners and well-matched. Lana was a Sith and had done things, but they seemed to fit inside her without too much trouble.

But for Master Nightstar, there was perhaps one very deep, well-hidden weight inside of her… one she never revealed to anyone. Vexa could feel it, but she couldn’t identify it. Sometimes, it unbalanced her, and she stumbled in saber practice against Lana (who always stilled her hand for the other woman).

The feeling – it felt like her own mother and the space left behind.

And how Vexa felt about it. How it gave her weight.

She could tell how much the datapad’s storage unit weighed; she couldn’t tell what was on it.

Vexa didn’t want to dwell on that anymore, especially since Papa was relatively close. Grief kept itself very well-fed, and such feelings started both of them down grumpy paths.

Zallia weighed differently than anyone else, as if she had a different storage system.

Hmmm.

…Vexa didn’t like it when she noticed her own father.

That was when she thought she weighed most like Zallia. Different storage systems, similar weight…and maybe because of the connection between father and daughter ---

Oh, she was going to have to explain this to Master Praxis or Master Nightstar one day, if only to make herself less uncomfortable with the comparison. Her father was nothing like Darmas Thane. Never! Ever!

…

But sometimes the lightyears between father and daughter, both for real and not for real (like, a metaphor: raining cats and dogs) were very similar.

The rocks hit the dirt, and Vexa felt the impact and imagined the little ‘poofs’ of dust that came with it. She finally opened her eyes.

Oh.

Wow.

That wasn’t a little ‘poof’ of dust or a series thereof.

That was a massive ‘poof!’ of dandelion fluff exploding as a few of the rocks had landed on small bunches of them.

Where had they come from?

…where had they all come from?

…Vexa had read about Jedi Masters who could meditate for extended periods of time, but she very much doubted she’d managed to meditate for three-quarters of a year from the hot dry days of Odessen summer to its spring.

Vexa had started this exercise in a dusty little clearing just off the side of the main door to the speeder pool.

Green was everywhere and all around her. Grass of deepest emerald. Wildflowers, small and white and tall and yellow, even blue ones. Even the bushes that Master Nightstar had been fairly sure “weren’t going to make it” (due to an incident involving Theron and a speeder bike with a stuck throttle) had grown and flourished in the short time that Vexa had been meditating. They were blooming out of season.

…

In the Pasan family records, the garden bloomed on the day of her birth.

She’d done it. Not her father. Not her mother. Her.

In her pride, Vexa couldn’t stop herself from looking right at her father. She turned around and defiantly sought his face, demanding his attention. Did he see? Did he see her?

Did he see her?

Papa had given up his attempts to be stealthy and had found a few outdoor storage crates to perch upon. He sat, hands clasped in front of him, as he watched his daughter become a Jedi, just like her mother before her, before him.

Vexa was going to be a Jedi Master. She was going to save a lot of people. She knew it.

And not even Papa could stop her now. Not with spring all around her in the last, dry gasps summer before the autumnal rains finally arrived on Odessen.

Papa steadily walked toward her, his eyes on her. Yes, he did see her. And her.

There was no profound proclamation. Simply: “It’s time to make supper.”

He didn’t like this at all.

Mostly, he was mad at himself; Morff shouldn’t have left Vexa for so long…even if it was to make sure Zallia was fine (more than fine. Exceedingly FINE, stars). Now it was suppertime and she was gone…

And he was very discontent.

A garden had bloomed.

He had missed it. He didn’t think Powin did (because Powin would love to think he was suave and sneaky and smooth, and he just wasn’t when it came to Vexa, especially as she was getting older).

Now the garden – how could he describe it?

Morff stroked his beard in consternation as he watched the garden wither, as if some darkness was attacking it at its roots. If this was what he thought it was, it was indicative of some deep problem within her –

It was when she was breading the Baatu chicken that the image overwhelmed her vision.

Vexa saw the brief spurt of blood on the beautifully tiled floor, before her father could get to her, before the wound could cauterize.

Her mother screamed –

Vexa flexed her hands and looked up at the ceiling for a moment, before returning her attention to the chicken. The egg yolk dripped from her hand into the crumbs. Its viscosity rolled over the crumbs, sticking to them---

The blood spurted onto the dry dirt, out of green skin, and it behaved like the yolk and the crumbs, the dirt rolling up into the slick blood before it dried down in the heat –

Vexa closed here eyes and flexed her now-cold hands. Dinner. Focus.

Papa noticed. He always did. “What’s troubling you, child of mine?”

“Visions. The same sort that began my journey as a Jedi.” Vexa didn’t want to tell him the details.

They lapsed back into silence as she continued breading the cutlets. The thoughts seemed wary to come back now that someone else had been alerted to their existence.

They talked about Divinia a lot, these days. How she always masqueraded while she was in the Sith Empire. How Light she truly was. How Light she knew Vexa was.

They didn’t talk about the end. It didn’t matter – it was one moment in time that changed it all …but nothing could be undone. Nothing could be fixed.

…but why was it coming to her now, paired with a vision of her father falling in battle on Odessen? Near the dirt by the speeder pool.

Where a garden used to grow…

Fear of loss. Of the attachment being severed. That led to the Dark Side. Maybe her father slipped that much further down after, now unable to clamor toward the Light that Divinia had lived in and that drew Vexa into its mantle.

It was fear. It wasn’t the future.

Unless it was. Jedi had a bad habit of seeing beyond themselves, interpreting what they saw as incorrect. Master Praxis had warned her of this, while at the same time acknowledging…. He was confident in his own visions on certain matters. “One will come to pass on Odessen,” he had said, and Vexa totally noticed how his eyes trailed after Zallia as she crossed the docking bay, datapad in hand to talk to Aygo.

So that was a bit of a wash, in terms of assuring herself it wasn’t going to happen (but then again, one didn’t need the Force to see Master Praxis and Zallia coming, really).

Zallia could be delightfully direct with others. Vexa sometimes ached for that liberty of speech, even if the audacity made her squeal and the adults groan. Other times, she did like the waltz of the Sith, with careful words and deliberate steps. The elegance reminded her of her mother and how she got what she wanted and needed, without need for violent or cruel action.

…today, while covered in egg, panko, and a little bit of chicken fat, Zallia’s route seemed the best. “Father, when it comes time to defend Odessen –”

“I want you nowhere near here,” Papa cut her off before she could finish the question. “You are a padawan, not a knight. And I’ll not lose you yet –”

“But what if I lose you,” Vexa pressed the question to her father. “Should you die –”

Despite the mess on their hands, Papa grabbed Vexa’s wrist. “Please don’t think it –”

“I need to know whether –” Now Vexa’s courage quailed; she thought of a little bird with a feather atop its head, wobbling in fear. She’d found the word in a holonovel. But she was brave, just like both her parents, and --- “If you were to fall… would you expect me to fall to the Dark Side? Become like you?” A split-second hesitation and then the searing point of the question: “would you want me to?”

Powin Pasan had always been torn about his daughter’s path. If she was Sith, he could always protect her. He could always watch over her and guide her to be a reasonable and sane person in their complicated culture. But if she was a Jedi, she would fly free and inevitably part from him, once the Eternal Empire was defeated.

Sith do not do well in letting go. It is not part of their understanding of the universe.

Morff Praxis knew that was part of why Powin didn’t want him to train Vexa. He would lose her, though not in the same way he had lost her mother, but in a way, the permanence would be the same.

But then there was Vexa’s nature, which the Light called for, LOUDLY. VERY loudly. Apparently, from the moment she entered the galaxy.

There was always going to be a war for Vexa Pasan. The events of her life drove her down one path, but the nurture of those around her -- not to mention her own choice – was driving her another way.

…There was always a waxing and waning of faith. It was to be expected; only the greatest of Jedi were utterly steadfast. Mistakes were made, doubt appeared…

Morff let out a sigh of relief as he sat down on the crates not far from the garden patch. Yes, it had withered, for a while.

But then it had started to bloom again, as if a crisis had passed or a vital question had been answered.

As long as the garden could return, especially out of season, then all would be well.

#swtor #swtor fan fiction #oc: vexa pasan #oc powin pasan #oc: morff praxis #smuggler saga #starknstarwars #giftfic

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