I was walking with my mother in the crowd that had gathered on the market.

The annual harvest market was organized every spring and every town had one. Our market was small, but that didn't stop every inhabitant of our town to try and get the best fresh fruits.

The weather was amazing today. The sun stood high in the sky and everyone was wearing colorful dresses. My mother had her straw hat on again. She clutched my hand tightly, not wanting to lose me here. In her other, she had a little basket which held our purchased products. So far, we had found some juicy pink grapes, yellow grapefruit and red banana's.

But my mother still wanted to find some delicious purple apples. When ripe, they had almost the same color as our hair.

I had asked her once why everyone on Atera had different hair and eye colors. She said they were the result of the mutations that gave us our powers. Children sometimes got the hair color from one of their parents, but not always. It was totally random.

I loved how different it made everyone look. Blue, green, yellow, red, pink. Everyone looked different but beautiful. The same applied to everyone's eyes. They were all sorts of different colors and they would normally match the hair, but every once in a while, a baby was born with different eyes than their hair.

I was not one of those lucky ones. I had my mother's purple color, a rare color. People say it originally belonged to the first mutant and first queen of Atera, but I never saw myself as royalty. I was just me, Aayala.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another one and a half years passed where I didn't see her again. You have to understand that HQ is a huge building. It was a whole city in itself. It took almost half an hour to cross the building from left to right so if you wanted to avoid people, you could.

A perfect place for me.

She was always on my mind however, even if I didn't see her. It was easy to ignore her lingering presence when I was working, but whenever I was alone, she would always pop back up. I didn't know how to react to my feelings, never having felt such strong ones for a person before. So I turned to what I knew best: anger.

I was angry at her for making me feel this way, for messing with my head. Somewhere I knew my anger towards her wasn't justifiable. It was just as much my fault as it was hers. I let her in, so maybe I was more angry with myself.

This is what went through my head whilst being alone, so I made sure I was never alone or always had some sort of distraction. I started drinking alcohol, something I normally never did. Not so much that I was drunk every night, just enough to take the edge off a little so I could sleep better. I took sleeping tabs every night too. However, I always woke up tired.

The other Commanders threw worried glances my way and I was asked a lot if I was feeling okay. I always answered that I was just tired and didn't sleep well. After a while, they stopped asking. I did my job perfectly, so they had no reason to doubt me.

I missed my parents more than ever, wanting someone to talk to about everything. I wanted some trustworthy advice from my father. He always knew the right words to say. But I couldn't talk with anyone about this. I didn't trust anyone and I knew they would report what I would tell them to the Intelligence. I would lose my job and that was the only thing keeping me going right now.

I had also tried reading to distract me. When I was younger, I would go through three books a week, minimum. I loved reading about worlds made up and people I would never meet. Adventures I would never go on and cities I would never see. I could lose myself completely in books for hours. However, I hadn't touched one in years, too busy with my job and too tired to read before bed. I wanted to get out of my head, so I bought a random book in the city and opened it up one night, ready to disappear.

But I couldn't concentrate, the words dancing before my eyes. I remember throwing it against the wall on the other side of my apartment. It landed with a little thud on the carpeted floor.

So basically, I was a mess. A big mess that just needed a little push to give in. Give in to whatever I was feeling and run to room S-407 to see her.

And so that little push finally came, about one and a half years after our little conversation in the hanger bay.

It was a day like any other. I had picked up more shifts at the offices and was working long days, so I knew everything that was going on. But I wasn't prepared for what I would walk into that morning.

Still rubbing the sleep from my eyes and making my way over to the offices with a coffee in my hand, I had a bad feeling in my stomach. Like something was wrong. My intuition proved to be right most of the time, so something must have happened while I was asleep. My short purple hair kept falling in my face and I pushed it behind my ears annoyed. I had cut my hair a couple of weeks ago, hoping it would indicate a new start. It was false hope of course. New hair wasn't going to change the way I felt.

I liked it though, my hair. It has always been as straight as could be, so it was always worn in a high ponytail. I just couldn't work with it. Now, it was short, a lob, just above my shoulders. I could still tie it in a tiny ponytail when on missions, but I just left it out otherwise. It felt like a shield from the outside world sometimes.

Walking into the office, the commotion told me my instincts were right. Something was wrong.

They were all standing around the big table in the middle of the room, looking at something I couldn't see. When I made my way over, I could pick up words like 'attack' and 'shot down'. Normally, these words were everyday talk, but now, they had an eerie sound to them.

Then I saw Yon standing at the head of the table. He had blood on his head and his suit was badly damaged. Something had happened on one of his missions. Something bad.

I was finally close enough to see the images on the table. They showed the heavily damaged ship and its flight plan, revealing exactly where it was shot down on its journey. Apparently, it crash-landed on another border planet of Hala, Chulmumia, and needed to be picked up by another Kree ship.

Such an accident wasn't unusual and normally I wouldn't really care, but dread filled my stomach when I realized who fell under Yon-Rogg's crew. Vers.

My heart started pounding in my chest and my hands were sweaty. I made my way over to Yon, tapping his shoulder and interrupting his talk. 'What?', he turned around irritated.

'Where is she?', I asked him demanding. I needed to know if she was on that ship.

'Who?', confused by my sudden change of topic.

'You know who. Where. is. she?' I feared his answer and my body seemed to know it already because I was shaking.

Finally, he seemed to get who I meant. 'Vers?'. When I didn't answer, he took my silence as a yes. 'She was on the ship. Got badly injured, she had to get a blood transfusion.'

I was already walking out the door when he said the word 'injured'. I wanted to cry. I left her alone and she almost died. I should have been there to protect her. She should have been under my command, not Yon's. I was so stupid. Why did I think that leaving her was going to be the best thing. I there and then decided that I was never going to leave her again.

I could not function normally without thinking about her. I finally realized it now: she had stolen my heart the minute I saw her and I was tired of fighting it. I was just torturing myself. I thought I had a chance of forgetting her, but I never did. The minute she walked into my training room, I had already lost.

So I finally let my guard down for her. I could almost hear my parents celebrating in heaven. I decided I didn't care about the risks of a relationship, I just wanted to finally be with her after nearly four years.

My mind was spinning and I didn't see anything, walking into a lot of people on my way to the hospital wing. The woman at the front desk looked like would pee her pants when she saw me. I mean, I did look like I was going to blow up the whole wing if I didn't see Vers fast.

'Vers. Where is she?', I demanded an answer. When the woman just stared at me, I gripped her collar and brought my face close to hers. 'The blonde woman who came in here a few hours ago, needed a blood transfusion. Where is she?'

'S-she was released about twenty minutes ago. She was completely fine, j-just tired', the woman stuttered in my face.

Not satisfied with her answer, I continued, 'Where did she go?'

'She said she wanted sleep.' So she went to her room. Finally, I knew where she was. And apparently, she was fine. But that didn't stop my heart from pounding and my hands from shaking. Releasing the woman, I mumbled a 'thank you' and turned around, running through the hallways to the Soldier's wing.

With every step, the hall seemed to get longer and longer and it felt like years had passed when I finally reached the elevator. Needing to see her so badly, I didn't even care about my fear of elevators. This was faster than the stairs.

Finally, the little ping told me it had reached the fourth floor. Making my way down the hall, I finally stood in front of door number seven.

I knocked on the door urgently. 'Coming!', her voice sounded from behind it. I had really missed her voice, it was like music to my ears.

The door slid open after a couple of seconds and there she stood. Tired and in what looked like her pajamas, but with still the same happy aura. I just took her in. Every feature and line in her face. From her hair to her eyes to her mouth.

'Aayala?', she sounded very surprised and shocked to see me here. But I guess that made sense, we hadn't seen each other for almost two years.

My heart was still pounding and I was shaking when I threw my arms around her, holding her as tight as I could.

She was fine. She was alive and she was fine.

She tensed at first, surprised by my sudden display of affection, but she quickly relaxed and put her own arms around me, holding me just as tight.

'You are shaking. What are you doing here?', she asked while holding me. When I couldn't answer without my voice breaking, she took a little step back so she could see my face. She still held my hands.

'Are those tears?', she asked, smiling. She was teasing me, like always. It was like nothing bad had ever happened between us and we were back in the training room.

'Shut up', I laughed at her. Wiping my tears away. 'I'm sorry', I said more serious.

'Aaya-', Vers started.

'No, let me say this, please', I interrupted her. I needed to say what I needed to say, quick, before I changed my mind and lost my nerve. When she nodded with a frown on her face, I threw the words out. 'I'm sorry for pushing you away. You need to understand that I didn't do that to hurt you, I wanted to protect myself and you. Mostly you. But I can't do it anymore. I am tired of fighting these feelings and trying to wash you away with alcohol. It doesn't work and to be fair, I don't want it to. I want to try this and let you in, but I am really scared. Please be gentle with me.'

I looked down at our hands when I rambled the words, too afraid to look her in the eyes and see the reaction on her face. When she didn't say anything, I finally dared to glance up and the look in her eyes told me everything I needed to know. Her brown eyes shined and looked at me lovingly, like I was her whole world.

'You think I am not afraid too? You are not alone in this Yala and you never will be again. Because now you are stuck with me and I am proven to not be easy to get rid of', referring to the accident she was in a few hours ago. I could not believe she was joking about that, but her huge smile was contagious and I couldn't help but laugh out loud.

'I love that smile', she said adoringly, which made me blush furiously, which in turn made her laugh. This woman will be the death of me.

My eyes flickered to her lips and when I realized they did, I quickly glanced away. But her eyes missed nothing and if her smile could get any bigger, it did. Having betrayed myself, she knew what I wanted to do, but was too scared to. So the decided to take action herself.

Taking a step closer to me so she stood so close I could see the yellow specs in her eyes, she stared at me for a second as if to calculate what I was feeling, before putting her hands on the sides of my face. I knew she was going to kiss me and the tension was killing me, so I put my hands on her waist, pulled her even closer to my body and closed the gap between our lips myself.

The feeling that went through my body when I felt her soft lips on mine was something I could never describe. It was like every nerve in my body was on fire and all I could feel was her. All the tension in my body disappeared under her touch, like she had finally set me free. My mind had never been this quiet and this loud at the same time.

I shivered when her hands went up into my hair and I could feel her smile against my lips at the reaction she got out of me. Oh I was going to get back at her for that. My hands tried to find the edge of her top and when they did, I slipped them under a little, putting them on her bare back. The sudden skin-on-skin contact surprised her. I felt her muscles tense and heard her make a surprised sound. Now it was my turn to feel triumphant.

If somebody were to walk through the hallway now and look into her room, we would have to explain a lot. But I didn't care in that moment. All I cared about was the wonderful woman I was kissing and the way she made me feel: extreme euphoria.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

A double update again, because I accidentally wrote three chapters yesterday. Oops. This quarantine is really killing me.

They finally kissed! I felt like this was the perfect way to show how deeply Aayala already cared for Vers.

Btw: both Vers and Aayala don't age anymore. We know that Vers stopped aging after her she got her powers, but how Aayala is immortal will be explained later.

Thanks for reading!

(2712 words)