To Heal Poignancy ■ TECH - The Bad Batch ■

The Senator of Naboo Curse: The Eye of the Storm

Contentment was never meant to last for copious amounts of time. It wasn't how feelings — or the world, for that matter — worked. Peace only lasted for a while. Eventually, reality would have to set back in. To balance out contentment and peace, there was destruction and chaos.

The thing about Adla was that she knew she was never meant for a desk job. She, like many others, wanted to travel the galaxy. She wanted to experience everything the galaxy had to offer, from culture to terrain. It's what made her such a good and enthusiastic map maker. She understood there was a privilege in being able to accomplish such a dream.

Adla had two primary functions: to protect and to learn. There was only so much one could learn on one's home planet, so the expectation and need to venture out and consume anything new was a craving.

When she couldn't travel, though, she grew restless. She found adventure and experience in smaller avenues, such as collecting resources and materials for the rebellion, discovering information about private people and any of their secret locations, and arguing with dictators and other powerful people who then view her as an enemy.

Unfortunately for Adla, these avenues would all blow up in her face.

People eventually found her suspicious; they thought that she was a traitor. They realized she went against the flow of compliance, and they became angry and hateful. They prayed upon her downfall. They wished for a terrible tragedy to be bestowed.

Even when she noticed people shift their view of her, when they warned her to be careful, she continued to be true to herself. She continued to seek out those avenues. She continued to refuse to reform to be compliant. Her need for adventure and experience continued to grow. When would she stop? When would enough finally be enough? When she refused to back down, what happened then?

All of this, because someone forced her to stay behind a desk. Everything that happened in the past year was because Adla took her sister's place. People saw Padme as replaceable.

She saw Padme as a beam of light, a star in the cold of space – that hadn't changed. Padme was the sun for the rest of the galaxy. Padme was also herself at all times. She spoke her mind and commented on the injustices. In her absence, Adla tried to burn even a fraction of Padme's light, but she didn't think she was ever quite capable.

Then she met Tech. Tech knocked every star and sun out of space. He wasn't the sun of the galaxy, like Padme was. He was Adla's sun. She thought of herself then as his moon. She had told him as such. She wanted to revolve around the greatest he portrayed.

"In a different life, I believe I was a moon to your planet. I was meant to constantly watch you procure the most amazing things." They sat together peacefully in the Marauder. Adla watched as Tech worked and fiddled on some new project.

"I think you mean to say stabilize," Tech responded without looking up.

"What?" Adla tilted her head as her eyes drifted from his contraption to his side profile.

"A moon's purpose is to moderate and stabilize the terrain of the planet it circles so the planet can continue to remain inhabitable. I think that's what you do."

"I make you inhabitable?"

"You stabilize me." Her heart had swelled at the comment. "Your presence, personality, and actions stabilize what I feel for you." She had been called many things in her life, yet stabilizing had not been one of them. The Naberrie quite enjoyed his definition of stabilization.

The only issue was that moons could be pulled or pushed away by gravitational force. This was Adla's true predicament, and the gravitational force was her need for adventure and experience.