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Trace doesn’t realize how bad she has it until she hears Ahsoka’s laugh.
It’s some dumb joke Trace cracks as they work on the speeder, about the destructo-droid they’d chased earlier that day. It catches Ahsoka off-guard as she’s searching for a wrench and she laughs , bright and unburdened for a moment before her hand goes to stifle it.
Trace knows she’s not wired the way machines are, but she hears herself go oh and thinks she’s as close to short-circuiting as humanly possible. She makes a resolve, almost absent-mindedly: Ahsoka will be gone in the morning, once her speeder is ready, but Trace has to make her laugh once more before she leaves.
She can picture the look Rafa would give her, if she were here. Somehow both teasing and warning.
Trace has known Ahsoka for the better part of a day, and she can count on one hand the number of things she really knows about her. One: Ahsoka knows her way around mechanics. Two: she can fight — like, really fight. Three: she has an older brother. Four: she’s from Topside. Five: she doesn’t like to talk about herself.
And well, as much as Trace likes to shit on the Jedi and the war and all the pointless posturing they do up there, she can’t think of why anyone would come to the shithole that is 1313 instead. So yeah, Ahsoka is pretty mysterious. Or, pretty and mysterious. But especially pretty.
Trace shakes the thought loose, tries to return her focus to — the bike. Right.
The thing really is a pile of trash. The fact that Ahsoka, who clearly knows a good machine from a bad one, even bought it shows how pressed she really is for credits. Trace cracks her knuckles; it’s a challenge, sure, but Trace has never backed down from one before.
“You never told me. How did you learn so much about machines, anyway?” Trace asks. “Did your brother teach you that stuff, too?”
At that, Ahsoka’s face shutters over, any remnants of her laughter dissolving. Trace instantly feels like taking the words back, but Ahsoka answers: “Yes, he did. He taught me almost all that I know.”
“About machines?”
“About everything,” Ahsoka says. There’s fondness in her voice, even as her frown deepens.
When she was younger, Trace used to believe in miracles. Rafa used to tell her stories before bed, with the covers pulled over their heads. She would give all the characters funny voices and poke Trace’s stomach at the scary parts, just to lighten the mood. Stories of heroes, of adventure, of magic that would fall into her arms if she just dreamed hard enough.
Now, Trace knows better.
Miracles don’t just happen. You have to work for them. You have to pay for them. There’s no such thing as making wishes on shooting stars, not down here — not in 1313, where you can’t even see the stars, let alone watch them fall.
Rafa learned that lesson before Trace did. Her sister doesn’t tell stories anymore; she tells truths. She tells it the way it is, the way it has to be.
They still have promises to keep to each other. Someday, we’re going to get out of here .
Rafa gets the money to keep them alive, and Trace gets to work. She learns to look at the repairs like they’re a puzzle to figure out, a code to break, a challenge to face: making a scrap ship into their escape vehicle. Making their dreams into reality.
When she heard Ahsoka’s bike crash into the mech pad, Trace’s first thought was that it was a falling star.
Which was stupid, for so many reasons. For one, stars don’t fall; it’s just meteorites entering the atmosphere of a planet, leaving streaks of fire as they come apart. And for another, if a star did fall onto Coruscant, it wouldn’t end up down here.
She went outside, introduced herself, invited Ahsoka into the hangar — for the credits, of course. Even though Ahsoka had already said that she couldn’t pay. Trace watched from her ship as Ahsoka took apart her piece-of-junk posing as a bike with the practiced hands of a mechanic.
Definitely not a falling star, Trace remembers thinking. A miracle would have brought more money. But even in the harsh light of the hangar, there was something about Ahsoka that seemed to glow.
Ahsoka wears her sadness like a cloak. Trace doesn’t know how to describe it, but it’s there — in her voice, her eyes, her posture. There are different kinds of sad, but this one is hard to pin down. Uncertainty, maybe. Loneliness, but not quite.
Here’s the thing: Trace only pretends to get people. She told Ahsoka, earlier that day, What’s to know? There are good people, and bad people...
But Trace isn’t stupid. She knows that’s just an easier way of thinking about it. Because Rafa is good people, and that means even if she does bad things, they’re for good reasons. Which makes them good things.
Everything’s easier in binary. There’s true, and there’s false. There’s good, and there’s bad. There’s she and Rafa, and there’s the rest of the galaxy. We can’t count on anyone, so we count on ourselves.
“Is there something bugging you?” Trace blurts out, before she can stop herself. “I mean, I know you’re new down here and all. But it seems like more than that.”
“What do you mean?” Ahsoka blinks at her. The wrench in her hands twirls nervously between her fingers.
“I dunno,” Trace says. “You just seem sad about something. You wanna talk about it?”
Ahsoka looks away; the wrench spins faster. “I don’t know if ‘sad’ is the right word. I think I’m just... homesick. But can you really be homesick, if the place you miss isn’t your home anymore?” She sounds like she’s talking more to herself than Trace. “I don’t even know if it’s the place I miss, or just the people. Or the feeling. The person I used to be.”
“I get that,” Trace says, almost surprised by how genuine her own words are. She’s thinking of herself and Rafa, under the covers and still dreaming about miracles. She’s thinking about how badly she wants that feeling of safety again, of family, of home . “It’s why I’m fixing up that ship.”
Ahsoka meets her eyes, and Trace feels a spark of understanding between them. “It’s just strange,” Ahsoka says. “For my whole life, I always knew exactly who I was supposed to be. Where I belonged. And now... it feels like I don’t belong anywhere.”
“You can stay here,” Trace says, before she can stop herself. She hurries to add: “I mean, until you get your shit figured out. I’ve got a couch you can crash on.”
Ahsoka’s brow furrows. “And how much will that cost me?”
“No charge,” Trace waves a hand. Ahsoka looks skeptical. “Hey, you totally saved my life today! That’s pretty much priceless, right? Consider us even.”
“You don’t have to repay me for that, Trace,” Ahsoka says.
“Then stay because I want you to,” Trace feels her face flush, but she keeps going. “I like you, and you know enough to help around the repair shop. Just stay until you’ve got somewhere else to go, at least. It’ll make me feel better.”
Ahsoka seems startled for a moment, and then, her face softens. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt if I stuck around a little while. For you.”
Trace grins, the words lighting something bright in her chest, and Ahsoka — smiles back. A genuine one, not heavy with homesickness but truly happy.
She doesn’t get Ahsoka to laugh again that night, but they have time now. And Trace has never been one to back down from a challenge.