A Passion for Wonder (A Star Wars: The Bad Batch fanfiction)

Chapter 5: Twi'lek Kalikori

Some artifacts were somber and serious. Some artifacts were insane. In the Archium on Pabu, Phee Genoa remembered seeing the diary of some teenage princess fawning over a boy. It had read,

"It's not a date. It's not a date. It's not a date."

Again and again, like a broken loop. Amazing, how lovestruck men and women have been the same for millennia.

As Tech and herself roamed the sacred halls of the Archium, those words ran, looped, in her mind.

It's not a date. It's not a date. It's not a date.

Because it wasn't! The Archium was full of artifacts, windows of history that spanned cultures and millennia. Tech and Phee both shared a fascination for knowledge and wonder, hence it made complete sense that Phee, familiar with the Archium as she was, would give Tech a tour.

The two of them were thirty minutes into an intense study of as many artifacts as could fit the night they had free, and Tech was truly in his element. No human knowledge is limitless, but the information that he and Phee shared together felt boundless.

Everything she knew was just so intriguing.

She was intriguing.

Hours spent in the company of a person other than his brothers or Omega, especially with a woman who, he would admit, had a pleasing smile and enlightening laugh, would have likely made Tech feel uncomfortable and internally raring to be in solitude. But Phee was...

Well, she was Phee. A comfort to be around, who seemed to understand his desire for quiet and solitude and boundaries and celebrated the intellectual qualities of life that so many others shunned. The time of looking longingly at doors and measuring the passing of time until he could leave her had long passed.

(Quite frankly, it had passed within a scant few weeks of knowing her.)

Dare he say, he longed for her company.

He did not appreciate the light-hearted ribbing from his brothers, well-meaning as they might have been, as he had left the ship to join Phee at the Archium. Say what they would, this was not a date.

Merely a meeting between friends.

"Oh, so you two are friends?" Wrecker had winked at Tech as he dislighted the ship.

Tech had furrowed his eyebrows. "Of course we are."

Carefully holding a scroll entailing some technological advancement three thousand years ago, he asked Phee, "We are friends, right?"

Phee blinked at him from on the other side of the fragile parchment, and her lips melted into a smile. "You betcha, Brown Eyes."

He nodded, a pleased smile of his own gracing his features. Phee turned around, hiding a delighted grin, and her eyes landed on an artifact on display a few feet away.

"Oh, the kalikori!" She flitted to the side of a wood Twi'lek kalikori, laden with beads, its side tails, shaped like lekku, almost longer than the base. "This is one of my first liberations ever. I freed it when I was eighteen."

Tech took it from her hands. When before he had frozen at the touch of her fingers on his own gloved ones, now he barely paid it any mind. They were a part of the rest of her, natural and comforting. Her hands lightly rested on his for one, two, three seconds.

He did not mind.

(He more than did not mind.)

Tech analyzed the kalikori in his hands as Phee began to talk about kalikoris and the Twi'lek culture. About how a kalikori's worth was most often not in the materials from which it was crafted, but in the ancestry and love traced into its lekku.

Tech spoke when she paused. "This is made of Glee Anselm wood and is centuries old at least. It is very valuable."

Shaking her head and chuckling, Phee said, "I didn't get it for its worth in credits."

Tech turned towards her, blinked, and then nodded, as if perceiving some special message that was his to receive and hers to guess. He placed the kalikori back on its stand, exactly where it had stood before.

"There are artifacts that I collect because of their historical significance, because they are links to a past that the galaxy is forgetting."

Tech turned to Phee as she continued, the woman's eyes lost within the aged wood of the artifact before her.

"There are artifacts I collect because it shows us the lives lived ages ago, and that we truly are products of those who came before."

He really was entranced by her. Her words, her voice. Her face, the hands that glanced over his. Phee.

"And there are the artifacts that I collect because they tell of so much love that it would be a crime to leave them. And isn't that just fascinating?"
Phee turned her face towards Tech's, and their eyes met. She breathed out a little laugh. "I don't know where half of those words came from, honestly."

Tech shrugged, his eyes staying on hers. "They came from you, Phee Genoa." With all sincerity, he continued to state facts. "You make things that appear at first mundane and mediocre become interesting and captivating in my perceptions of them, and I have found that it is the way you see things that makes them wonders.

Phee desperately tried to tamper down the blush that was rushing to her cheeks, but her brain was unfortunately inoperative, basking in Tech's words. Tech's cheeks were dusted pink, and she found it absolutely adorable. It did not help her case at all. Her heartbeat pitter-pattered up and down her spine.

She laid her hand on Tech's shoulder, just for a second. "You're a very good friend, Brown Eyes."

Tech shifted his goggles, and then fixed his stare on her. "You have always been a good friend, Phee."

BONUS SCENE:

*Wrecker, Hunter, and Omega comming Echo as soon as Tech leaves*

Wrecker: bro he's going on a date.
Echo: Tech's going on a date???

Omega: Echo Echo Tech and Phee are going on a date and Tech doesn't even know.

Hunter: I don't think Phee knows either to be honest.

Echo: oh my gods this is so cute.

Hunter: yeah he even tried to do something about that gods-awful hairline while getting ready.

Wrecker: *swoons into a chair dramatically* our boy is growing up!!!!