Chapter Text
Now that she was alone, Ahsoka took a good look at her room.
Lying on the other bed was a yellow Twi'lek girl of about the same age as Ahsoka, and she was having a violent night terror.
"NO! NO NO NO NO!" she screamed and thrashed in her sleep.
"I sure got a roomate from the bottom of the roommate barrel." Ahsoka muttered to herself as she slipped between the sheets of the bed. The mattress was lumpy and the springs were broken, the sheets were gray, and were probably not gray originally, covered in gray and brown stains, smelled musty, and were paper thin, despite the chill air.
Ahsoka looked around the room.
WELCOME TO WHERE TIME STANDS STILL. NO ONE LEAVES AND NO ONE EVER WILL. Someone had scrawled in charcoal on the cracked, gray stone wall beside her bed in a big arc.
She looked down to her side. A rat scurried under her bed.
She peered under her bed. In the thick sheets of dust that had gathered with the rat droppings, someone had written:
"They keep me locked up in this cage."
She looked to the wall on her side.
"Some are born mad, some achieve madness, and some have madness thrust upon them." someone had written in a tiny, delicate script at eye level.
She looked behind her. The hospital bed frame's white enamel was chipping away to reveal red rust underneath, there were iron bars over the windows, and two moons, both full, cast a sad, cold light, as if to sarcastically say, "welcome home!"
Ahsoka lay back on the flat, chunky pillow, pulled her thin blanket over her head, and tried to sleep.
"NO NO NO!" screamed her roomate.
She tried shoving the pillow and blanket over her head to block it out to no avail. She turned over. She turned over again. She was running on forty-eight hours of no sleep, was far away from anyone she knew, she had none of her posessions, not even her lightsabers, she had been poked and prodded and strip-searched, the place was filthy, and there was no way she could sleep with a screaming roommate. She had to get out. Now.
Maybe they should have sent Obi-Wan for this one. He has more experience in this than I do. Ahsoka got out of bed, barefooted and in her sickly blue hospital gown, went out of her room, down the hall, and began to pound and rattle on the door.
"This is a closed ward." an orderly in a gray uniform explained.
"I have to get out of here! NOW!" Ahsoka screamed and rattled on the doorknob.
"You're a danger to yourself and others." said A nurse in one of the long lavender-gray, high-collared dresses with a white apron and white cap with a black eight-pointed star on it.
"No I'm not! There's no way in Malachor you're making me stay here! This place is filthy and freezing! There's nothing wrong with me!" Ahsoka squawked and kicked the door.
"We have a feisty one, and I don't like the feisty ones." a burly orderly forcefully peeled Ahsoka's fingers from the doorknob.
More orderlies and nurses advanced on Ahsoka. They dragged her back to her room, lifted her onto the bed, and slid the bed out to the side. Ahsoka thrashed and struggled but the orderlies grasped her arms and legs and ankles and wrists and held her down.
An orderly produced a massive double-barreled syringe and flicked both twice.
"Which gluteal cheek do you want this in?"
"NEITHER!" Ahsoka screamed.
The orderly broke the two barrels of the syringe apart and handed the other one to the nurse on Ahsoka's left side.
Ahsoka struggled against the orderlies, but there were too many of them.
The orderly and the nurse jabbed the syringes into Ahsoka's shoulders at the same time, the liquid burning like acid in her shoulders and spreading through her body.
They started spreading the blanket over Ahsoka when a wave of exhaustion started to wash over her.
"Stop...that...that's good..." Ahsoka groaned as her senses faded into oblivion.