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It doesn’t take a genius to know space is cold. It is vast and endless, filled with hot gas that does nothing to affect the frigid cold keeping the stars and planets contained as they explode or revolve.
And Ahsoka Tano knows the cold. Has trekked through the icy caves of Ilum, listened to the shrieking echoes of the ice as it infested her montrals with not only it’s sound but it’s frost.
Ahsoka had felt the frigid gust of space’s vacuum when Cad Bane had nearly thrown her and Anakin out of the airlock, and yet the closest she’s gotten to the true extent of it’s deathly chill was when she invited the chill into the infected frigate to kill the worms burrowing through her friends heads.
That was as close to it’s unthinkable cold, and as close as she ever actually wanted to get, but she doesn't have a choice.
The experiences don't compare, it is so much worse as she is thrown out of the docking bay. Whereas before with the air steadily pumping in at a vaguely accelerated rate she’d been able to keep up.
She can’t now, as the chill comes at her all at once. It assaults her senses, stealing the breath from her lungs before it could come out in any misty puffs. While burning her skin and montrals with a layer of ice.
The girl is careful to keep her eyes closed, knowing if they were to open they’d need to be removed from her head, and pulls out into the force with her last few seconds of consciousness to bring herself back into the port.
A ship flying away right over her head, her assailant escaping which will surely upset her master and the council, but she doesn’t care. Can’t care as she heaves, breaking her lungs free from their frozen grip and loses consciousness right there and then.
Her comm is buzzing on her wrist though she can’t answer, can’t even shiver. Togruta weren't meant for the unrelenting chill of space, rarely any creatures were and as the girl coughs up icicles and blood that had formed at the back of her throat, she barely even rouses.
Slowly but surely the frost on her skin melts away, leaving the normal orange almost clay like pigment darker, a pained red that seemed more fitting for Master Shaak Ti’s violet than her blue.
Her lekku and montrals on the other hand, if one were to touch them so soon they might just fall off. One could say the same for her fingers.
Thankfully her prone form is not known to anyone, giving her small body enough time to dethaw, even though it’s a challenge in the sterile docking bay.
If she’d been outside any longer she would have died, and as far as she knew she’d been out in that empty wintry dark for at least twenty long seconds.
Her determination and stubbornness is the only reason she’d managed to pull herself from it’s embrace. Not many have been as lucky, it’s precisely the reason why every once and a while if one weren’t in hyper space they’d come across a floating body.
One more often than not that would break into a billion fractals when debris, asteroids, or sometimes if a pilot wasn’t paying attention, a ship would knock into them.
Many were careful of that, it being something they were informed about when learning to fly. Especially because it wasn’t pleasant cleaning up the chunks from the ship’s viewports because they would stick, and if they weren’t removed carefully the transparisteel would often crack.
When she cracks her eyes open, water drips along her waterline, stemming from her defrosted eyelashes.
Her muscles feel seconds away from falling off as she curls into a defensive position, tentatively wrapping her hands around her montrals before slowly dragging her shaking hands down to the bottoms of her front lekku.
Her back lekku that had frozen to her back pulled, some blood falling when she moved, it no longer stuck together but it was warming up slower than the rest of her.
She thought she knew what cold was, she had been wrong. Her space walk terrifying her and invigorating her all the same as she finally began to shiver.
There’s no other word for it than sublime. Ethereal even. Quite literally she had touched the stars, nearly returned to stay as one of them.
It’s conflicting as she stares out into the cosmos, sluggishly after a second of thought, regaining her purpose. The togruta pulls her comm up close, in case her hearing was shot.
There wasn’t any noise in the hanger at the moment and she was pretty sure she hadn’t gone deaf. A human or another being with their ears not encased as hers were within thick flesh probably wouldn’t have been so lucky.
“Skyguy?” her teeth are chattering audibly, tongue like dried out putty in her mouth.
His voice comes back immediately, terribly worried, “Snips report, what happened? Where are you?”
It takes her almost a minute to fully process the questions, let alone their answers and she truly tries to respond quickly, not wanting to drag his concern out.
“Hanger,” she manages, unable to provide a number because she hadn’t seen it while she’d been chasing the bastard. More concerned with deflecting his bolts and making sure not to fall too far behind.
It’s less than enough, but it’s just so hard. She needs just another minute to gather her bearings, to prepare for the bout of anger he is bound to let out when she explains what the bastard had done.
“I don’t know which one,” the girl admits softly, bashfully but even across their bond which is much more prominent now (Anakin pulling it to the forefront for the both of them) it strangely begins to warm her up in some way.
Her features felt more solid and less like they were going to break off if she was going to do so much as rub her nose.
“That’s okay, Snips. I’ll find you,” she doesn’t doubt it, his conviction strong in his vocal cords, and she has more than enough experience to know he isn’t lying. He would find her.
“You’re cold,” he summarizes bluntly, only a hint of question of tongue. Wondering how she managed to be infested with such chill and discomfort.
“He threw me out the hanger,” she returned just as bluntly, albeit with more chattering teeth and disdain. Not even embarrassed any longer, more upset the bastard had managed to get the drop on her to do such a thing.
“Out of the hanger,” that’s Obi-Wan’s accented voice, repeating her words if he can’t quite believe them. His potential scrutiny and her exhaustion make her want to cry suddenly, the embarrassment crashing back over her.
No one would blame her, not after she shared a kiss with the frigid unrelenting yonder. She was allowed to be upset, and it’d be miraculous if she wasn’t a little or a lot a bit out of it after that experience.
“I’m sorry he got away,” and with that she does sniffle and then let out an upset sob, still trembling. Ahsoka has never cried in front of them, not even around them, and hearing it over the comm for the first time must be hell for them but she can’t stop so she cries harder.
Her body hurts, she’s conflicted, and feels like a failure. It’s a lot all at once, her near death experience more real than the ones in the past.
Why that is she doesn’t know, but she still feels cold. Inside and out even as she comes back into something resembling an acceptable temperature. The togruta aches to submerge herself in bacta, at least it’s liquid form would feel different than the empty and suffocating air (lack of) that had held her before.
Corporeal where that titluating expanse was not. And at least the bacta would be lukewarm, not blistering her skin, in fact it would be healing her blisters.
She’s lucky her body hadn’t cracked, or her skin hadn’t broken off. It’s still something to treasure that her organs, especially her lungs, haven't shrivelled and dropped off listlessly into the cavity of her torso.
“Not to worry little one, I have that handled,” Her grandmaster returns, Anakin’s voice following:
“I’m on the way Ahsoka, hold tight,”
The girl nods, feeling a little more assured as she hugs to herself. Her shivers feel like shocks, nerves pinching almost painfully as she curls up tighter in hopes of alleviating it.
Cramped limbs begging her either to stretch out carefully if only for a moment, and warning if she continued to pull her legs even tighter to her chest she may just explode into a great many pieces.
Anakin’s steps come through then, pounding so painfully in her montrals that she shivers, pinching her nerves when she instinctively curls tighter to protect herself.
She knows he won’t harm her, but while locked in a recovery position and terrified, any steps at all breaking her solace aren’t welcome even if it’s her master coming to save her.
His hand is a millimeter away from her shoulder when she accidentally uses too much force to stop him with the force, knowing his heat and her lack of wouldn’t bode well.
He only moves a foot back, hurt in that he’s a tactile person, and she at the moment can’t be touched. He’d surely rush her temperature rising which could send her into shock and maybe even stop her heart, so he stills.
Taking a second to compose himself before rounding around to her front and kneeling.
“A medevac is on the way,” he informs gently, offering his support with a not so convincing smile, very gently running his fingertips over her headdress since he couldn’t touch her elsewhere.
Those had frozen to her skin too much like her back lek, although those had melted to free her slowly, no blood raining or even brought forth unlike her back.
“Space is cold,” she tells him quietly, the insides of her lips trying to stick to her gums and teeth. Her lips were already naturally dark in shade, but she’s willing to bet they're blue.
She could try and check by looking down towards her nose, but her eyes are still a little too dry for her liking even after her cry causing her to close them. That and the action of trying to peak at her lips would make her look dumb, and she’d already made a fool out of herself today.
“You have to stay awake for me okay?” Anakin warns, and she nods. Not tired like one would think.
“I know, my eyes are just irritated,” she shoots back, and her tone is enough to let him know she won’t be dropping off to sleep until the adrenaline wore off, and it’s certainly not done with her yet.
They descend into silence then, the only sound being Anakin’s teeth rubbing together as he no doubt thinks of a suitable punishment for the bastard. Even though with her he is adamant again and again revenge is not the Jedi way.
Just another example of holding your student to a higher standard than you hold yourself. A teaching he probably took from Master Obi-Wan, Anakin although clever wasn’t wise enough to come up with that by himself.
Intelligence and Wisdom were not one in the same, not always at least.
“It’s colder than you think,” she bursts in at the sound of hurried footsteps.
Her master chuckles lightly, more of a huff from his chest and nods although she can’t see it, just knows he did it from the swish of the air caused by his hair.
“More so than Ilum?”
She’d scoff and roll her eyes if she could, “Like Ilum and Hoth had a kid they didn’t love,”
He laughs more genuinely at that, as does one of the medics loading her up although they try to hide it with a cough. She doesn’t know if she should bring up that it was even worse than that, and there was no true way to describe it other than experiencing it themselves.
But unlike the child of those two frosted planets, of space and it’s vast entirety. Ahsoka knows she is loved as the barest hint of her master's fingertips brush over the base of her montrals when they run over her headdress, her upcoming stay in the bacta tank calling to her.