Chapter Text
A chorus of off-key singing filled her apartment.
Anakin had stuck exactly twenty one candles in her cake, insisting it was tradition, and brought it (somehow without dropping it) into the living room where she was gathered with her neighbors and their girlfriends who had both quickly taken on the role of sister for her.
Three gifts were stacked on the coffee table. One from Anakin and Padme, one from Obi-Wan and Satine, and one carefully wrapped package from her boss, who insisted she get a gift when she admitted her birthday was coming. Wolffe was certainly the big brother type, seeing how closely he acted towards his employees, she’d quickly learned. Even if it was simply a coffee shop off the highway, the workplace was nice, and the people better.
The gifts were beautiful (more so than the cake, the one Anakin had bought, and he and his brother had tried writing on the night before). A few books from the older couple, Obi-Wan sneakily looking through her bookshelf to find her favorite genre, Anakin and Padme finding some particular scented candles they couldn’t pass up. Wolffe’s gift, probably with the help of his mother or sister, or somebody a little more attuned to the jewelry world, had given her a necklace. A dainty thing, with a small stone hanging from a silver chain. It was perfect, and she mentally reminded herself to thank him when she went into work tomorrow.
However, the gifts unwrapped, the cake eaten, and the wine (and other alcohol, acquired by Anakin) opened and swiftly emptied, there was little else keeping everyone from leaving.
This wasn’t what she imagined her twenty-first birthday would look like. In fact, she could say she was pleasantly surprised, if only for a moment.
Laughter, happy friends, a bottle of wine and cake. The five of them piled into her living room with dollar store birthday hats and gifts wrapped in newspaper. Ahsoka never had this... this warmth.
Home was always cold.
Cold glares, cold shoulders, cold shouting and cold leftovers for dinner. Home was never associated with warmth, as it could be now. It all fell apart so slow when she was a child. A father and a governess until she was sent away, and into the hands of an aunt who only cared enough to keep her fed.
Those homes were cold. Or maybe they were never homes, merely shelter. And they didn’t protect her from much.
This was warm.
A beat up sofa and an end table with rings carved into the wood. A tiny television. No carpet, and no curtains. Friends packed into the room like they were used to it. Laughter that wasn’t at her expense.
Words were harsh as a child. Controlled. She learned to bite her tongue because she couldn’t let herself slip up and pay for it. After her father came her aunt, and after her aunt came this apartment that could barely be paid for. There had been no laughter, no excitement, no joy in any of them because there were never people to share it with.
She didn’t know how much that hurt until she recognized joy’s absence. Until she saw what joy could do to a person and how it could move. Towering above her in all it’s magnitude, and creating an empty void when it left, where there didn’t used to be one. She didn’t feel the void because she’d never had it filled.
Ahsoka didn’t know if she was more grateful when she had it, or hurt when it left.
When the candles were blown out, the gifts opened, the cake half eaten and the door shut for the final time. When nothing kept the emptiness from swallowing her whole. The doubt. The grief. The regret at never really trying to fill her life with happiness because it never felt like an option.
So she sat on her floor and cried.
Maybe it was the alcohol, or perhaps the late hour, but she sat and cried, and grieved, and let her tears flow until no more would come and she left herself with the emptiness of being alone.
None of it felt real. None of it felt like it would stay.
And worse- what she did have, she felt like she didn’t deserve.
Some would say that she turned her life around, from abuse and unfamiliarity to family and friends huddled together and laughing; all she saw was a broken girl from a broken home in a broken world that didn’t get to be pieced back together.
The sky had long gone dark and the church bells struck one when her phone interrupted. A message from one Anakin ‘Skyguy’ Skywalker.
Hey Snips. Construction is keeping me awake, you?
She gave a watery chuckle as she listened to whatever crazy construction workers were still working this early.
Something like that , She replied. A few moments, of silence, of wondering, of empty thoughts that hit a dead end before they could spiral like the rest of them had.
I’m proud of you, kid. Happy birthday.
It wasn’t enough to stave off the bad thoughts forever. Really, it probably wouldn’t last long enough for her to make it into bed, but the comment brought a smile to her face; if only for a moment.
She came from a very broken, very painful world. And she was certain her life would keep distracting her with pain, old and new. But for now...
For now she knew that she was loved. Just a little. Just a birthday wish.
But it was genuine. And although her life had seen little more than tragedy and dark thoughts, this was home. It wasn’t perfect. It was cramped, it was beat up, it was painfully pieced together from scraps of old lives and everlasting trauma, but it was home.
And it was enough.