She held the hug for a mont longer than socially acceptable, a silent confirmation that the emotional hook was set deep. When she finally pulled back, her indigo eyes glistened. She blinked it away, forcing a small, reassuring smile.
"Don't you worry about a thing, Ezra," she said, her voice a little thick. She brushed a stray noodle off my cheek with a surprising tenderness. "We'll figure this out."
We.
The word echoed in my mind, a triumphant gong. It was the shift. The transfer of responsibility. I was no longer a solitary problem; I was our problem. My inner Machiavelli popped a bottle of cheap space-champagne.
She stood, pulling gently to my feet. "Co on. It's not safe for you to be out here alone after dark." Her gaze swept the square, her expression hardening as she took in the lurking figures in the shadows. The Twi'lek who'd haggled fiercely over fruit was back, but this ti her sharp edges were pointed outward, protecting . "This is no place for a kid."
My tiny hand was enveloped in hers. It was warm, firm, and startlingly real. A strange, unfamiliar comfort.
"Where are we going?" I asked, my voice small and trusting, playing the part to the hilt.
"My place," she said, her tone leaving no room for argunt. "It's warm, and there's more food. We can talk more there, and in the morning, we can... we can go to the Imperial authorities and file a missing persons report for your parents."
The words hit like a splash of ice water. The Imps. The one variable that could shatter this entire con. Filing a report on two known seditionists would be like handing the wolves a map to the sheep pen, with as the bleating, adorable bait.
This next performance couldn't just be good. It had to be flawless.
I ripped my hand from hers, stumbling back a step. The move was sudden, violent, a physical manifestation of pure terror. "No!" I shrieked, my voice cracking with practiced panic. "Not the white-helts!"
Vasha stopped, turning to with a confused, slightly hurt expression. "Why not, Ezra? They can help. They have ways of finding people."
This was the pivot point. Her default setting was to trust the system, the veneer of order the Empire projected. I had to shatter that illusion for her, using the most potent weapon I had: a child's unfiltered fear.
I shook my head violently, backing away until my shoulders hit the grimy wall of a stall. I dredged up the real mory—the thudding boots, the splintering door, the cold, chanical voice. I let that genuine terror flood my system, then cranked the dial to eleven. "They're scary," I whimpered, my voice trembling. I hugged myself, making my small fra seem even more fragile.
"The bad n in the white hats… they ca to our neighbor's house," I lied, weaving a new thread into my tapestry of tragedy. I needed a specific, believable story. "Mrs. Elona. She gave cookies." I sniffled, making the detail feel personal, real. "They yelled and knocked over her plants. They took her away. Her little boy, Jax, he cried and cried."
I looked up at Vasha, my eyes wide and swimming with tears. "I never saw them again."
The lie was vicious, calculated to strike at the heart of her empathy. It wasn't just about scary stormtroopers anymore; it was about a specific, relatable tragedy. A kind old woman. A crying child. A family torn apart.
Vasha's face went pale. She looked around the square, at the Imperial banners, at the patrolling troopers in the distance. They weren't symbols of order anymore; they were the "bad n in the white hats." In my story, she heard the whispers she'd probably tried to ignore, the hushed horror stories that circulated on every world the Empire touched. She saw the face of Jax, the crying boy, and she saw .
"Mom said... Mom said they take people," I whispered, delivering the final, devastating blow. "She said they make people disappear. She said if we ever saw them, we should run and hide. She said to never trust them."
It was a perfect echo of the anti-imperial rhetoric her own people probably whispered in secret. It rang with the brutal, undeniable truth of the galaxy. It wasn't just a child's fear; it was a parent's warning.
"Okay," she breathed, her voice barely a whisper. She knelt, her eyes level with mine. The sympathy was back, now forged into a grim, protective solidarity. "Okay, Ezra. No white-helts. I promise."
But I couldn't accept that easily. I had to show her that my fear was deep-seated, that her promise needed to be ironclad.
"You promise?" I pressed, my voice small and wavering. "You won't let them take ?"
"I won't let anyone take you," she said, her voice fierce, a low growl of protective instinct.
She held out her hand again. "But you still can't stay out here. It's not safe. Will you trust ? I'll keep you safe tonight."
I hesitated, for show. I looked at her outstretched hand, then back at her face. This was it. The mont of commitnt. I had to seal the deal.
Slowly, tentatively, I reached out and slipped my small, grimy hand back into hers. Her fingers closed around mine, a warm, reassuring cage.
As she led away from the market, into the quieter, residential side streets, a cold, triumphant satisfaction settled in my chest. This wasn't a victory. It was a successful acquisition. I hadn't just found a al ticket; I had found a shield. A kind, beautiful, and profoundly manipulated Twi'lek who had just promised to stand between and the Empire.
The first night of my new life would not be spent in a cold alley. It would be spent in a warm bed, under the protection of my first, unwitting asset.
I was getting very good at this.
--
Vasha's hand in mine was a grounding force as she led away from the chaotic heart of the market. We moved into the quieter, residential sectors—vast, stacked gabuildings that blotted out the stars, their sides crisscrossed with external walkways and dimly lit corridors. The air here slled less of spicy food and more of ozone, damp concrete, and the faint, tallic tang of overworked machinery.
I kept my head down, my steps small and hesitant, playing the part of the scared, overwheld orphan to perfection. Every ti a speeder whizzed by overhead, I'd flinch, pressing a little closer to her side. She'd respond with a reassuring squeeze of her hand. It was a silent, perfect dance of manipulation and compassion.
Her building was a monster of grey duracrete and rust-stained tal, a hive of countless identical doorways. She led up three flights of rickety external stairs, the city sprawling out below us like a circuit board of flickering lights.
Her apartnt was… small. And cluttered. But it was warm. The main room served as a living area, workshop, and kitchen all in one. A workbench covered in tools, droid parts, and tangled wiring dominated one wall. A stained sofa was cramd against another. The air slled of soldering flux and reheated noodles. It was the sll of a life lived, of soone working hard just to get by.
"It's not much," she said, a little self-consciously, as she shut the door behind us, the deadbolt clicking into place with a solid, reassuring thud. "But it's safe."
I just stared, my eyes wide. I let my gaze wander over the scattered droid limbs—a protocol droid's arm, a pit droid's leg, the dod head of an astroch sitting on a shelf like a bizarre trophy. "You fix droids?" I asked, my voice filled with a genuine-sounding childlike wonder.
The question seed to put her at ease, shifting the focus from my tragic backstory to her everyday life. A small, proud smile touched her lips. "I do. Mostly loaders and maintenance droids down at the spaceport docks. Keeps the lights on."
She pointed to the lumpy sofa. "You can sit. I'll get you sothing to drink. Water? Or I think I have so blue milk."
"Milk," I said imdiately, because what seven-year-old wouldn't?
As she moved to the tiny kitchenette, I let my act soften. I was in her space now. The terrified-on-the-street routine needed to be dialed back, replaced by a cautious, tentative curiosity. I perched on the very edge of the sofa, my feet dangling high above the floor, and looked around the room.
It was a bachelor pad, Star Wars style. No, a bachelorette pad. A single thermal blanket was folded neatly on the sofa, suggesting it doubled as her bed. A datapad lay on a small table, its screen dark. A couple of worn-out work coveralls hung from a hook by the door. This was the ho of soone who lived alone and worked a tough, physical job. There was no sign of a partner, no family photos. Just Vasha and her droids.
She ca back with a cup of blue milk, which was just as weirdly vibrant and delicious as I'd imagined. I drank it slowly, taking small, polite sips. The grateful, well-behaved orphan.
"Better?" she asked, sitting on a crate opposite .
I nodded, wiping a blue mustache from my upper lip with the back of my hand. "Thank you, Vasha." I made sure to use her na. It built familiarity, reinforced the connection I was forging.
We sat in a comfortable silence for a mont. She wasn't pushing, wasn't interrogating. She was letting decompress. It was a smart, kind move. It also gave the opportunity to plan my next one.
"That one's head looks funny," I said, pointing at the astroch head on the shelf.
She chuckled. "That's R4-P17. He had a run-in with a clumsy cargo lifter. His logic circuits are a bit scrambled." She leaned forward, a conspiratorial glint in her eyes. "Sotis, when he thinks I'm not listening, he sings old drinking songs from the Clone Wars."
I giggled, a genuine, unforced sound. It was a ridiculous image. "Really?"
"Really," she confird with a solemn nod. "He's got a terrible voice."
I giggled. Not a calculated, charming little-boy giggle, but a real, honest-to-goodness snort of a laugh. It just popped out. A droid with scrambled circuits singing old war songs? That was objectively hilarious, no matter what universe you were in.
"He sounds like a fun roommate," I said, pointing at the head. "Does he take requests?"
Vasha laughed again, a sound that made the cluttered room feel warr. "Only if the request is for static or a lecture on the proper torque for a G-2 motivator." She stood up and stretched, her shadow long in the dim light of the apartnt. "Speaking of which, I've got an early shift at the docks tomorrow."
My eyes darted to her workbench, a chaotic landscape of tal and wires. A hydrospanner lay next to a datapad displaying a complex schematic. A detached protocol droid hand sat palm-up, as if waiting for a high-five. My inner nerd was practically vibrating. This was so much cooler than any YouTube teardown video.
"You fix them all by yourself?" I asked, letting my voice fill with what was, to be fair, a completely genuine sense of awe.
"Most of the ti," she said with a tired sigh. "Pays the bills. Barely."
Then it hit . A yawn. Not a polite little kid yawn, but a massive, jaw-cracking, full-body event that I couldn't suppress. It was like all the adrenaline, fear, and sheer weirdness of the last twenty-four hours had suddenly decided to cash in their chips, leaving my brain bankrupt.
Oops. So much for being the mysterious, tragic orphan. Now I was just the sleepy, tragic orphan.
Vasha's expression softened into a knowing smile. "Looks like soone's running on empty."
She walked over to the sofa—my sofa, I guess—and grabbed the neatly folded thermal blanket. She shook it out, the fabric making a soft whump in the quiet room. "The couch isn't the grandest bed in the galaxy, but it beats a crate in a market square."
She fluffed up one of the lumpy cushions and placed it at one end. "Here you go. Get so sleep."
Well, if you say so...
I crawled onto the couch, which slled faintly of her—that clean, floral soap scent mixed with a hint of machine oil. The blanket she draped over was scratchy but incredibly warm.
As she turned to dim the main lights, leaving only a single small lamp glowing by her workbench, my brain, the absolute traitor, decided this was the perfect mont to whisper, Hey. Hey, Alex. A very attractive blue alien lady is literally tucking you into bed. How about that.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Shut up, brain. You are seven. Behave.
I curled into a ball under the blanket, listening to the new sounds of my temporary ho. The low, omnipresent hum of the building's life support systems. The distant, mournful whine of a speeder passing many floors below. The soft clinking as Vasha tidied up a few tools on her bench.
It was all so strange. So unbelievably, ridiculously strange. I was an orphan on a planet I'd only seen in cartoons, being cared for by a woman with head-tails. My grand plan had sohow… worked. It felt less like a cunning manipulation and more like I'd tripped, fallen into a river, and miraculously washed up on a comfortable shore.
It was weird. It was precarious. But it was safe.
And for tonight, that was more than enough.
___
We have passed 15k words, woohoo! sad news, I thought ranking updated on monday, but it updated right today T _T
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