Senator Padme had a meeting with the new queen of Naboo, and Anakin was acting bodyguard while in the conference. Sol was the one to keep watch of the perimeter and give updates through the commlink if anything was out of the ordinary. But when there didn't seem to be any suspicious activity, Sol gave into her desire to look at the scenery of the city.
Bathing in the sun rays, Sol took slow steps through the garden of the palace. With a large water fountain in the middle, grass was cut to perfection and butterflies and bees made their way through the native flowers. Hedges lined the sides of the garden and allowed some privacy from the traditional buildings that would otherwise see whoever tried to enjoy its beauty.
Sol wished she could take off her poncho and be in some thin clothes to feel the warm sunlight on her skin.Coruscant's city was too tall to see the sun in most parts, and sunburn was never a fear for any inhabitants. But on Naboo, Sol's skin yearned for its first licks of sunrays.
She let out a hum of content, even going as far as to close her eyes as she angled her face to the sky. It was euphoric, and she forgot about the memories she had been dwelling over from her childhood. They hurt to think about, and it was something that she usually used meditation to block from her mind. Master Yoda had trained her to let the Force bathe things in light and turn them into skills to make you stronger and one with the Force. But it seemed that all Sol really needed, was the sun.
But she was disturbed. A flicker in the Force made Sol open her eyes and turn to her right, where the hedges lined the garden. Squinting from the sunlight that her eyes weren't used to, Sol looked in the hedges that were tall and still from the lack of wind. A rustle disturbed the branches near the top of one hendge, and leaves dropped in clusters to the perfect grass below. A red light beamed from within and Sol was sure that something was watching her.
Taking her lightsaber from her belt, she lowered into a crouch. She then leapt into the air, the Force giving her a push to jump higher than normal. As she reached where the red light beamed, her lightsaber ignited and sliced through the hedge in a clean sweep. But the blade didn't cut through the red light as its origin shot out of the hedge before it could meet its end.
Sol landed on the ground in a crouch and watched as a droid flew overhead. It flew at such speed that Sol could only gather that it was dark grey and in the shape of a box. On the droid's back, were white blasters to give it jet power, and it sent it flying away from the palace and somewhere in the city. There was no way she would be able to catch it, but she could find whoever it belonged to. It might be working with whoever is out to murder Senator Padme.
'Hey!'
She halted in the leap she was about to take and looked to her right. Anakin descended the steps from the palace and into the garden, his pace quick and his lower-class poncho waving behind him. Through the squint he gave her, Sol could see that he wasn't in the greatest of moods.
'What did you do to that hedge? Queen Jamillia won't be pleased,' Anakin pointed at the top of the hedge Sol had sliced with her lightsaber. A bundle of leaves and branches sat on the grass in a heap, its original body now shorter than the others with a perfectly straight line as its head.
'There was a surveillance droid watching me in there,' Sol said as she gestured to the hedge. 'It flew off. I was going to follow it.'
'It might have been the palace's. And besides, you'll never catch a surveillance droid if it doesn't want to be caught,' Anakin informed. Sol rolled her eyes and glanced behind him, before looking back up at him when she saw he was alone.
'Where's the senator?'
'In the palace. She wanted to be alone with the queen for a moment.'
'Isn't that a little risky?'
'It was her orders,' he shrugged. 'Artoo is with her. Besides, she made it perfectly clear in the meeting that we're her bodyguards and she runs the show.'
'Did your ego get the better of you again?' Sol said with a tone of mocking. Anakin glared at her through his squint before his eyes travelled to her lightsaber. It sat in her hand still ignited and despite the sunlight, Anakin noticed that it wasn't actually the blue he had first thought it was.
'Is your saber cyan?'
Sol blinked and looked down at her weapon's beam. As it hummed, she eyed it and eyed Anakin wearingly. It would be in his character to make some joke about how her lightsaber was not green nor blue, but she dared to nod her head. She sheathed it and the hum of it's beam paused, leaving the sounds of birds and faint rush of waterfalls to fill the air once more.
'You know that cyan is a mixture of blue and green, right?' Anakin finally put his palm over his eyes to shade them and look down at Sol properly.
'Yes, I know how colour theory works,' she retorted, and he let out a scoff.
'You know, not everything I say is an attack,' he said with a matter-of-fact tone. 'I was going to say that a cyan lightsaber means that you're skilled in combat and have a deep connection with the Force.'
For once, Sol didn't know something that Anakin did.
'Oh,' she let out and pulled up her weapon's handle to study it. She remembered obtaining her kyber crystal off Ilum. It was a challenge to find the crystal that was meant for her and for her only, but when she used the Force to assemble her lightsaber and have the crystal imbedded, it was all worth it. It had always been more towards the aqua colour than blue, but she never took much notice. But now that Anakin pointed it out, it was drastically different. She hadn't seen many Jedi with sabers that weren't blue or green.
'Look...' Anakin spoke again, and Sol looked to him, seeing that he was kicking his feet and avoiding her eyeline. 'I just wanted to say that... I'm sorry if I upset you. Back on the starfreighter, I mean. I didn't know you were... you know...'
Did Anakin Skywalker just apologise without being forced to? Or was Master Kenobi somewhere controlling him to do so?
'I was actually going to tell you that... I was a...'
Anakin struggled to let the words fall off his tongue. The turmoil in his mind was probably clouding his presence in the Force, but he hoped that Sol wasn't paying attention to that. In fact, her whole attention was on him. He saw how she looked up at him, the sun having gone behind a cloud and allowing the two to ease their squints for a moment. Having her attention solely on him in the beautiful garden on the beautiful planet made his insides churn again, but he forced that down to deal with one challenging thought at a time.
'I was a slave... back on Tatooine.'
'O-Oh.'
Sol had said only said two things in the past few minutes and they had been the same meaningless word twice repeated. But this one was from pure surprise and shock. Never had she thought that Anakin would have such a secret, much less tell her about it. In the space of a few days, Sol learnt that Anakin Skywalker was arrogant, egotistical, rude to his Master, sensitive about his mother, and was once a slave on Tatooine.
She felt silly for acting the way she did on the starfreighter. Yes, she was orphaned and left to fend for herself on the lower levels of Coruscant, but she wasn't on an outer-rim planet as a slave. And she never left anyone or anything behind. She never felt the loss of something when she came to the Jedi Order. She gained something; confidence, skill, a Master, and peace with the Force. But Anakin left a mother he could never see again on a planet he could never go back to.
'I was sold as a child with my mother,' Anakin continued, his face contorted with memories. 'I fixed droids. That was until Obi-wan came with Senator Padme and Master Qui-Gonn. They set me free, but not my mother. I dream about her, but they're never nice dreams.'
'Anakin... I'm so sorry-'
'Don't be,' he cut her and whipped his gaze to her's. 'I don't need you seeing me differently knowing this. But I wanted you to know... that I don't see you differently knowing what I know about you.'
'That's... sweet.'
A huff of a laugh blew out of Anakin's nose. The new perspectives had changed the way the two Padawans saw each other. And now that Anakin had made it even, they stood in silence in the palace's garden. Sol had forgotten about the surveillance droid that scurried out of the hedge, but would remember to notify the council when she next found R2.
'Thank you. For telling me that, I mean,' Sol said. 'It means a lot, Ani.'
'Again, with the Ani thing,' Anakin sighed and put a handout in a 'stop' motion to prove his point. 'I'm nineteen, not nine.'
'That means you can't call me Solaris, then.'
'But 'I like it',' Anakin did a Padme impression with a mockingly high voice and Sol huffed, feeling the usual irritation she did whenever Anakin irked her.
'Well, Ani is staying, then. Let's find the senator before Queen Jamillia sees my gardening work.'