Chapter Text
“The only thing that matters is what happens on the little hump out in the middle of the field.”
-Earl Weaver
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Ahsoka hadn’t been able to sleep at all.
The hotel bed was too soft, the Coruscant traffic outside her window too loud. Nothing like Bandomeer, where she’d been toiling away in AAA for the last four months. There’s no traffic in Bandomeer, ever. Just corn and minor league baseball.
And, at least for now, one fewer relief pitcher.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Her right arm is starting to heat up with every rep. If she hadn’t already been wide awake despite the fact that it’s barely six AM, she’s definitely awake now. In late July, there’s plenty of light this early, so finally she’d given in and walked to the ballpark. When she can’t sit still, there’s nowhere she’d rather be than out in the bullpen, even an unfamiliar one. And towel drills, an exercise where she runs through her pitching motion with the end of a towel in her hand instead of a ball, have always been her comfort zone. A lot of guys hate them because they’re boring and repetitive. But Ahsoka’s never been one of those guys, in more ways than one.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Ahsoka’s lost count of reps – she’s going by how her arm feels. Which is – good. Strong. Rested. Ready to pitch.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Her arm is ready, although there’s obviously there’s no guarantee she’ll pitch today. That’s the thing about being a reliever: she can be called up to the big leagues, but the manager still has to decide to use her in a game. There’s no telling when, or if, that will happen.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Her breath comes more heavily as she pushes her body harder, pushes that thought out of her head. The mights and maybes and whens. What matters is being ready. What matters is one more rep, one more pitch, one more out. Her arm is ready, Ahsoka is ready, and she knows it.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
The folding chair she’s currently hitting repeatedly with a towel looks pretty worse for the wear, though.
Sweat running down her back despite the cool morning air, Ahsoka stops, finally, settles both her feet on the ground and stills.
The sun is warm on her skin, and she tilts her face upward into it. Outside the bullpen walls, the stands rise around her on all sides, empty and silent. In the hush she can imagine a sense of anticipation, as if the empty ballpark itself is waiting. For her? Maybe not. But she’s been waiting a long time. For this place, this chance, this day.
She’s ready.
A plastic thud from behind her shatters the illusion. Ahsoka whirls, stomach in her throat, ponytailed braids flying.
“Sorry! Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” The stranger, a brown-skinned blond man in workout clothes, is standing next to a bucket of baseballs and a gear bag. “I’m Rex Fett. I’m the bullpen catcher. I came in while you were doing your drills, I thought you heard me.”
“Oh. Hi. Um, I’m Ahsoka Tano. New call-up,” she adds lamely. As if that’s not completely obvious.
Fett’s face crinkles into a smile. “I know. Nice to meet you.” He walks toward her, slowly, as if she might startle, and offers a hand for her to shake. “You’re here early. Most ballplayers are allergic to mornings.” He glances at the towel and the chair. “And towel drills.”
Ahsoka shakes his hand, trying to resist getting defensive. “I wanted to get some work in before the place filled up.” Or before I completely lost it waiting in my hotel room. “Nice to meet you, Fett.”
“You’d better call me Rex,” he tells her, stepping back and picking up his bag. “My twin brother works here too, in player development. You’ll probably meet him soon. It gets confusing.” Rummaging around in his gear bag, Rex eventually pulls out a glove. “I was gonna hit the weight room before I knew anyone else was here. Any of my other relievers come in this early, though, they’re looking for a throwing partner. You wanna play catch?”
Long toss with Rex winds up being the best part of Ahsoka’s first day. She goes through the requisite media orientation with the Knights’ head of PR, Depa Billaba, before she even sees the inside of the clubhouse. Most mid-season callups, Ahsoka knows, get the abbreviated version from some harried staffer who just wants to make sure they won’t post their dick on Twitter. But naturally, Ahsoka’s arrival merits special treatment.
Depa seems all right. Ahsoka knows in the vague sense that she would’ve handled Obi-Wan Kenobi’s public coming-out last season. So she must be good at her job, because at least watching from the minors, it seems that went about as smoothly as it could have. But the whole PR schtick rankles, not because Ahsoka is opposed to publicity or fans – athletes are public figures and all, she knows what she signed up for – but because of the way every publication she’s ever been profiled by is so focused on how she’s the first, or worse still, the only. Every time she hears the word, she thinks back on her friends from the Coruscant girls’ baseball team. She knows dozens of girls and young women who play the game, often against other girls, sometimes against boys. And they play as well anyone, sometimes better. If anyone thinks she’s the only, they’re looking in the wrong places. And yet that’s inevitably what she hears. It makes Ahsoka want to hurl.
Still, she swallows her bile and nods in all the right places, and promises on pain of dismemberment that she doesn’t have any secret social media accounts (as if she has the time). After PR, she has to work her way through an endless process of meeting with someone from payroll, someone who coordinates player housing, someone from uniforms and laundry, someone who wants to know if she has any dietary restrictions. There’s a brief meeting with Mace Windu, the manager, who claps her on the shoulder and tells her to come to him for anything she needs (she will not), and another with Padmé Amidala, the GM, who squeezes her hand and tells her to come to her for anything she needs (she will not).
Finally, finally, she’s released into the clubhouse.
It’s a few hours to game time. So there are other players around, in the middle of various workouts and routines and video game tournaments, but it’s not too crowded. Ahsoka decides now is a good time to find her locker, before everyone is half-dressed and she has to navigate the awkward waters of how much time to spend in her private “women’s changing room” before the guys on the team eventually get used to her.
The lockers, really more like big wooden hutches with rods and compartments for clothing and gear, are organized the same way as most stadium she’s played in, though of course here they’re a thousand times nicer. But that means she finds hers easily enough, last in a cluster of lockers with other relievers’ names on them. She recognizes a few. Bonteri was in Bandomeer with her for a while, and she and Saw Gerrera had sweated through spring training in Onderon together the year before. Others are less familiar – Chun, Sleazebaggano – and wow, his name makes almost a complete circle, arching across the back of his jerseys she can see hanging. But she’s sure she’ll get to know everyone soon. The thing about relievers, for better or for worse, is that they have an awful lot of time to sit out in the bullpen and gossip.
Trying not to stare too openly at her own name on her locker or on her jerseys, a total rookie move if she ever saw one, Ahsoka takes in the rest of the locker room instead. As she would expect, it’s arranged more or less by a combo of seniority and position on the field. Clubbies and batboys and players meander in and out, all seemingly absorbed in one task or other. Over in front of a locker with his name on it, Ahsoka recognizes Kanan Jarrus oiling his first baseman’s glove. Then there’s what looks to be half the starting rotation in one corner, Quinlan Vos and Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. Vos and Skywalker are arguing about pitch tunneling across Kenobi in between them, and if Ahsoka didn’t know better, she’d think Kenobi looked bored.
She wonders why they’re arguing, since it’s a normal enough topic. Skywalker, in particular, is always on Fangraphs because he’s tinkering with some part or another of his delivery. But she knows better than to go walking up to the biggest names on the team and start a conversation. Every team’s hierarchy works a little differently, but that’s pretty much a constant anywhere.
Thankfully, that’s Lux Bonteri walks in.
“Ahsoka!” he exclaims, and wow, it’s so good to hear a familiar voice. Ahsoka actually has to blink a couple of times.
“Bonteri! Hi!” She reaches out to give him the requisite bro-hug, and instead can only go along for the ride as he wraps his arms around her and lifts her up off her feet.
It would probably work better if Ahsoka weren’t a solid few inches taller than he is, but Lux manages to set her down fairly gracefully. Ahsoka lets out a laugh in spite of herself, stepping back and reaching behind her head to straighten her hairband.
“I was so excited when I heard they called you up!”
Ahsoka grins sheepishly. “Bet you weren’t as excited as I was.”
Lux laughs. “No, probably not. I remember what it felt like for me, though.”
“Oh, you remember?” Ahsoka knocks her shoulder into his. “You started the season in Bandomeer! Is it that hard for you to remember back to your call-up two months ago?”
“Hey!” Lux tries to dodge her, but there’s a chair in the way, which he bumps into instead. “I’ll have you know they brought me up for a cup of coffee when rosters expanded last year!”
“Oh, so you’re practically a veteran now – ”
“I am to you!”
Ahsoka’s opening her mouth to retort when a much deeper voice cuts across the locker room.
“Hey, rook!”
Ahsoka and Lux freeze. Ahsoka turns, slowly, to look at the source of the voice. Quinlan Vos is staring right at her.
Rookies might not talk to veterans, but they sure as hell answer when they’re called. And it’s pretty clear who he’s calling.
“Um. Yes?” Ahsoka tries not to squeak.
“Come over here.”
Glancing anxiously at Lux, who looks as confused as she feels, Ahsoka walks – not too fast, but not exactly slowly – across the room to where Vos is standing with Skywalker and Kenobi.
Skywalker’s eyebrows are drawn together in a deep V that Ahsoka can’t imagine is good. Kenobi, still in the middle, looks as though he’s keeping his expression carefully blank. Ahsoka tries to focus on just Vos, who’s still staring at her.
“Tano, right?”
“Yes, um, that’s me.” She’s guessing the players have also gotten some sort of PR briefing today: how not to fuck up being the team with the first-ever woman player. Hopefully that’s the only reason Vos knows her name.
“You throw a cutter, right?”
Or not. “Uh, yes.” So much for all the PR training, her own voice sounds about twelve years old in her ears. Ahsoka tries again. “Yes, I throw a cutter.”
“You know,” Vos says conversationally. “Anakin, here. He throws a cutter, too.”
Ahsoka knows. She also knows that Skywalker is starting tonight, and is notoriously temperamental on the nights that he starts. She keeps her mouth shut.
“Last time Anakin went out and threw his cutter,” Vos continues, tone as airy as if he were discussing the weather, “he didn’t fool anyone with it, and he got shelled. Why do you think that was?”
“Quinlan.” It comes from Kenobi, soft and practically a murmur, but firm.
“No, I want to know if the rookie knows.” Kenobi opens his mouth again, but Quinlan beats him to it. “Yes, I know, she has a name. Tano. Why do you think Anakin’s cutter wasn’t working for him five days ago?”
Ahsoka looks from Vos to Kenobi to Skywalker, who is standing very, very still. She tries to hedge. “I wasn’t watching, we were on the road – ”
“You don’t need to watch. I bet you can guess. Why wasn’t his cutter working last time out?”
“I’m not sure – ”
“No, I think you can figure it out – ”
“Quinlan, that’s enough – ” Kenobi again, louder this time –
“Let the rookie talk, Obi-Wan – ”
“Quinlan, let it go – ”
“I really didn’t see any of that game – ”
“I don’t need,” Skywalker bellows, “to be told how to throw my signature pitch, by a member of the Bandomeer Sky Bandits!”
With one last glare at Ahsoka, he stalks off.
Vos rolls his eyes theatrically, huffs, and disappears in the opposite direction.
The locker room is suddenly very, very quiet.
For a few long seconds, Ahsoka is frozen, not sure if she can feel her feet. She’s left face to face with Obi-Wan Kenobi as he looks from one side to the other, as if unsure who he should go after. Finally, he turns to her.
“I am sorry about them. I promise they’re friends, most of the time, and Quinlan doesn’t mean any harm.”
“He’s got a funny way of showing it,” Ahsoka mumbles before she can stop herself.
“Yes, well.” Kenobi’s face twists into a funny half-frown. “He got lit up last night, too, so he’s in a foul mood, today and has apparently decided that taunting Anakin on a day he starts will make him look reasonable by comparison. But he was out of line, and I am sorry.” He looks from side to side again, then appears to come to some sort of decision. “I’ll go find him and make him apologize once he’s calmed down. And don’t worry about Anakin. It’s got nothing to do with you, and he won’t hold it against you. He’s probably already forgotten and gone off to do his pre-start meditation routine with Rex.”
“You don’t have to – ” Ahsoka starts automatically, because the last thing she needs is Kenobi making Vos apologize like she’s some aggrieved little kid and he’s the teacher disciplining the bully. But her mouth jumps out ahead of her brain. “Wait, Rex Fett, the bullpen catcher?”
“Oh, you’ve met him already?” Kenobi seems pleased, or at least looks like he’s frowning less. “He more or less keeps the whole pitching staff in line. I’m sure you’ll find him helpful as you’re adjusting to the majors.”
“Yeah, he seems great,” Ahsoka says, because he does. “He said I’ll probably meet his brother who works here, too?”
“Ah – yes.” Kenobi suddenly goes pink. “His brother Cody works in player development. He also happens to be my fiancé.”
“Oh!” Oh. So that’s why Rex had looked so familiar. Ahsoka can suddenly picture the photos – Kenobi had proposed to his partner at the All-Star Game a few weeks ago and had made tons of headlines. “Congratulations!” she adds awkwardly, hoping she sounds sincere and un-homophobic. Since, she reminds herself, Obi-Wan Kenobi has absolutely no reason to know she’s also queer.
“Er, thank you.” Blush still noticeable, Kenobi sighs. “I should go find Quinlan before he terrorizes anyone else. I really am sorry. I’ll see you later.”
“See you later,” Ahsoka echoes as he walks out.
When he’s gone, Lux Bonteri lets out a low whistle. Ahsoka resists the urge to sink down onto the floor where she’s standing.
“Well,” Lux ventures. “I think that could’ve gone worse.”
Ahsoka stares at him. “How?”
Lux wavers. “There… could’ve been reporters in here? And there weren’t?”
Okay, she’ll give him that.