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She was awoken by scared voices. And being awoken by scared voices was something Ahsoka could confidently say she’d never done, and never wanted to do. But here she was. She didn’t know the time, didn’t care, as the sun wasn’t up and she had school that day, so if it weren’t for Obi-Wan’s insistence she would certainly have ignored him.
“Come on Ahsoka,” He spoke, no longer soft. “You need to get up.”
“I’m moving,” She grumbled.
“Faster.”
But Obi-Wan wasn’t supposed to be there. He sometimes stayed on the sofa if it got late and they were watching a movie, or if it started snowing and the roads were kind of hard to drive on, but he had work the next day. He wouldn’t do that, never did. And the way he spoke, something about the way his voice shook, made her realize that Obi-Wan was scared . And he didn’t get scared.
“Where are we going?” Ahsoka threw on a sweatshirt from the foot of her bed and barely stopped to think about leaving the house in galaxy leggings and a paint-covered t-shirt. Her brother didn’t answer. He only grabbed Anakin’s arm as they passed him in the hallway, rushing to the front door of the apartment. Then it hit her. “Where’s Qui-Gon?”
Anakin didn’t stop. Obi-Wan turned to face her, only motioning for her to get her shoes on. The cold air bit her exposed ankles as they walked towards the car, Obi-Wan’s sedan, only recognizable when he unlocked it and the lights blinked.
Ahsoka buckled. Everyone was silent. It scared her more than she’d like to admit. No one was giving her answers, every second that went by in the eerie darkness and echoing silence made her more and more sure that something was wrong-
“Ahsoka, there was an accident.”
Obi-Wan didn’t look at her. The car sped onto the highway.
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EKGs and sterile walls haunted her nightmares for weeks.
She could see his mangled body and hear the muddled words of nurses bustling around her, pushing her to the side because of that one, stupid, ever lasting tone that split her ears and made her want to cry because she knew exactly what it meant.
She woke up in tears and Obi-Wan was always there. She didn’t realize until years later that it was because he couldn't sleep either.
She wanted to go to school that day but Obi-Wan wouldn’t let her, even though she was sure it was the only thing that would make her feel normal again. She wanted to go and ignore everything, ignore death, ignore life, because it was easier for her to fathom forgetting than to remember every time she looked around the apartment what was missing.
But instead she laid in bed and begged herself to forget.
(She didn’t.)
Obi-Wan told her about the CPS and the paperwork and the words legal guardian echoed through her mind in a way she wished she could forget. Just like everything, nowadays. Ahsoka tried to let them pass through her thoughts and just move on, sleep the day away and anxiously wait for the next day to come so she could just go back to something normal.
Obi-Wan tried to make her eat, at first. Same with Anakin. Neither complied. Dinner was forgotten and she thought Obi-Wan was a hypocrite for making them eat but refusing food himself.
She liked that word. Qui-Gon taught it to her. She used it all the time and now it just ached, like everything did. Every thought ached because none of them were hers. All of them were Qui-Gon’s. Because she didn’t think she could be Ahsoka without Qui-Gon attached to her identity.
Obi-Wan dropped her off at school the next day. She shouldered her backpack and wished the weird ache in her chest would go away and the tightness behind her eyes would cease, because she didn’t want to feel like this. She hated it. Hated the way it made her feel weak when she wasn’t . She never was.
The teacher placed a hand on her shoulder and gave her a look that suggested he knew everything she didn’t want him to know.
She was supposed to do a presentation that day, one she’d done on leatherback turtles that she’d spent two whole weeks researching, and was excited to present to the class, but Mr. Plo said she could do it another day. The rest of the class did them yesterday.
Yesterday, when she was crying and aching and praying to whatever would listen that everything was fake and she’d wake up to Qui-Gon greeting her.
But she was awoken by Obi-Wan. Breakfast wasn’t cooking downstairs. Qui-Gon’s car wasn’t outside, and Obi-Wan’s was in place of it. Obi was sleeping in Qui-Gon’s bed instead of his own, in his own apartment, two blocks down where she would sometimes walk to when no one was home and she’d done all her homework.
He was there because Qui-Gon wasn’t.
It was the only thing she could think of throughout the day.
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He’d told her, before dropping her off at school, that she’d have to walk home. It was only a few minutes from home, and she’d done it before, but somehow it felt so much more daunting this time around.
The feeling didn’t dissipate when she left school that day.
(That was another word Qui-Gon taught her. He said his concern for her didn’t dissipate as she got older. She’d only laughed.)
Ahsoka tried to focus on her shoes scuffing the pavement as she walked. She kicked a pebble with her toe, crunched a long-dead leaf under the rubber soul, focused on not tripping instead of tying her shoelaces. But the mesh was beginning to tear after one too many games of kickball during recess, and she remembered telling Qui-Gon about it a week ago.
“We’ll go on Friday,” He’d said.
Well, it was Friday.
And Ahsoka knew her shoes would just have to hold out a few more weeks.
She didn’t realize she was going the wrong direction until she was in an alleyway somewhere between Main and Birch street.
She stared at her shoes.
And before she had time to think about it, Ahsoka screamed.
She screamed, and cried, because he was dead . She listened to the incessant beeping a day before, and watched Obi-Wan take her to school instead of him, and saw as everything changed right in front of her and there was nothing she could do.
She was powerless. So she screamed her throat dry. Because it felt better than the aching that had settled in her chest two nights before and couldn’t get rid of. It was easier to ignore it and sob on the ground, on the dirty, cold ground, a week before Christmas, than to listen to the beeping that echoed in her head and accept that he was dead.
Ahsoka didn’t know it had been so long until she heard Obi call her name and strong arms wrapped around her. Familiar arms.
She didn’t stop crying.
Not as he picked her up, not as he shushed her and carried her to the backseat of his car, not as he buckled her in or drove her home or set her on the sofa to settle down.
Obi-Wan didn’t let go.
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Ahsoka didn’t remember the funeral. She remembered Obi-Wan pulling a black blouse and blue jeans from her drawers and putting them on her bed, she remembered seeing Anakin pass her in the halls and not spare her a look, of which she was used to, but she didn’t remember the funeral after it happened.
The church was filled with people she was sure she was supposed to know. People from his work, friends she’d probably seen laughing together on her sofa, and a pastor she didn’t recognize making a speech about a man he didn’t even know.
If the car ride there was silent, the ride back was somehow worse.
Nobody said anything. Ahsoka didn’t cry, because she’d done her crying, and she was stronger than this. Qui-Gon always told her that. Told her that she was stronger than even she knew.
She didn’t feel it, but she lived it, and she supposed that was proof enough.
Ahsoka didn’t look at the time, but she retreated to her bedroom and fell onto her bed, tired but fully unable to sleep. She didn’t know someone could be mentally tired until that point, until she fell on her bed and needed to sleep even though she didn’t think she was tired at all.
Obi-Wan would tell her later that not being sleepy didn’t mean she couldn’t be tired. He laid a hand on her cheek and said it so gently. “Your heart can be tired, too,” He spoke softly. “And that’s okay. It’s been through a lot.”
And then it made sense.
She didn’t remember the funeral, because she didn’t have any room for more grief. For more feelings. Because her heart was so tired it couldn’t bear the weight.
“How do I make it work again?” She asked, so softly, so painfully, Obi-Wan looked like he might cry.
His smile looked more like a grimace. “Let it rest. Feel everything you need to feel. And when it’s too much, you come to me, and I’ll try and help you make it better.” He brushed a tear from her face, ignoring his own (always did, always would). “Sounds good?”
Ahsoka nodded. “And when your heart is tired you can come to me too.”
She said it with so much confidence, and her brother looked so… genuine, she almost believed Obi was telling the truth when he nodded, and kissed her softly on the forehead, and pulled the blankets over her shoulders.
Her heart was tired. She let it rest.
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For the first time in years, Christmas morning meant nothing.
Christmas was just a date, and even though Obi-Wan said he’d come to her when his heart was tired, she watched him as he burnt himself out in the days leading up to it, just so he might distract himself. He gave her a gift, and pulled one out of the closet that he wrapped with shaking hands, just so she could see what Qui-Gon got her.
The books she unwrapped at ten a.m. that morning hid under her bed until her heart wasn’t tired.
(The books stayed under her bed for weeks. And when they came out, she read every word like it was keeping her alive. Because that was all she had left, and she refused to let Qui-Gon slip away, even if all she had left of him were two Nancy Drew books with scribbled writing that read to my little detective on the inside cover.)
Anakin didn’t get her a gift. She’d gotten used to it. Some people said they hated their siblings, because they got into fights, and some stole their stuff or hurt them or some other problem, but that wasn’t Anakin.
She just didn’t notice Anakin, and he didn’t her. Didn’t care. So she wasn’t surprised when he didn’t come out of his room that morning. It didn’t mean it didn’t sting just slightly.
(She got used to it. It didn’t stop stinging- but she got used to it.)
Obi-Wan tried so hard to bury it all. The same feelings she was having were plaguing him, and he tried to make Christmas happen, but couldn’t. Not when Christmas was just another day filled with grief and some false hope that everything would fall away for just one day.
(Plaguing- Qui-Gon taught her the word when the flu went through the house. It made her laugh and all she could think about was the black plague. She learned about it in school mere weeks before they were all afflicted.)
So she unwrapped her books and art supplies, and chewed idly on the chocolate dropped in a stocking. Everything ached.
She got used to it.