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The ship is too quiet.
Ahsoka has learned to live in quiet, but this quiet is wrong. It presses at her skin.
She sits on the floor of the tiny cargo bay, back against a crate, knees pulled up. The hyperdrive hums. The stars outside smear into lines. Her hands won’t stop shaking.
She stares at them like they belong to someone else. They’re scarred, calloused, ridged with lines from blades and blasters and the weight of too many bodies she couldn’t save.
“Ahsoka?”
Lux’s voice is soft from the doorway.
She doesn’t look up. “We’re supposed to be resting.”
“We’ve got hours before rendezvous.” He steps inside anyway. “You weren’t in your bunk.”
“I’m fine,” she says automatically.
He sits down beside her, close but not touching. “You’re sitting in the dark, talking to your hands.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“You also said the Separatist parliament would never work with a former senator from Onderon,” he says. “We’ve both been wrong before.”
His attempt at humor brushes past her like static. Her chest is too tight. The walls feel too close. She remembers other wallsc Temple halls lit by sun, clones laughing as they cleaned their helmets, Anakin’s grin, Obi-Wan’s raised brow—
Gone. All of it.
“Lux,” she says, and her voice sounds raw in her own ears, “do you ever wonder why you’re still here?”
He goes very still. “Sometimes.”
The words scrape up her throat before she can stop them. “Because I do. All the time.”
He turns to her. “Ahsoka—”
“Why me?” she snaps, and her head finally comes up. “Why is it always me?”
Lux’s eyes widen. He opens his mouth. She barrels on.
“First the clones. My men. My friends. They followed me into every impossible mission and then one day they just—” She cuts herself off, fingers curling into claws against her knees. “The Temple. Younglings. Masters. The Order that raised me.”
She drags in a breath, shaking. “Anakin.”
His name is a wound that never closed. It tears her open every time.
“I lost him twice,” she whispers. “Once when I walked away. Once when he fell. And I tell myself leaving saved me, but it didn’t save him and it didn’t save them and I’m so tired of pretending I’m okay with that.”
A sob bubbles up, strangled. She swallows it down and it hurts.
“Everywhere I go, people die,” she says. “This rebellion. I come in, I help, I leave, and then I hear later about purges and crackdowns and names I used to know being read off casualty lists.”
Tears blur her vision. She presses the heels of her palms into her eyes like she can crush them back in.
“Why me?” she chokes out. “Why am I always the one left behind? What did I do that the Force keeps taking everyone else and leaving me?”
For a moment there is only the thrum of the engines and her own ragged breathing.
Then Lux shifts closer. Very carefully, he places his hand over hers, prying her fingers away from her face. His touch is warm, steady.
“Ahsoka,” he says, and there’s a tremor in his voice like he’s right on the edge too. “I don’t have an answer that will make this fair. It isn’t. You didn’t do anything to deserve this.”
She laughs, a broken, ugly sound.
“But I know this much.” He swallows. “You are not some punishment the galaxy forgot to finish. You’re the reason people like me are still here at all.”
She tries to pull her hand back. He holds on.
“When Onderon needed help, you came,” he says. “When the people of Raada needed help, you stayed. Every time I’ve seen you, you’re throwing yourself between someone else and the blaster fire.”
“Didn’t save Anakin,” she whispers.
His grip tightens. “You were a Padawan in a war none of you asked for. You were a teenager the Council failed and the Order betrayed. You were his friend. You were not his keeper.”
Her vision swims. She stares at him like she’s seeing him for the first time.
“You ask ‘why me?’” Lux says, voice low. “All I can tell you is… I’m glad it was you. Because if it hadn’t been, I’d be dead. My planet would be under a different boot. There are cells across the galaxy that only exist because you passed through and lit the spark.”
She shakes her head. “That doesn’t bring them back.”
“No,” he says. “It doesn’t.”
He shifts again, closer still, until their shoulders touch. “But you’re not alone. Not anymore. Not if I can help it.”
She snorts weakly. “You can’t promise that.”
“Yes,” he says, and there is steel in it. “I can. I’m not a clone bred for war or a Jedi bound to an Order that would rather die than bend. I’m just Lux Bonteri. And I am telling you: I will never leave you behind. Not on a mission. Not in this fight. Not in whatever comes after.”
Something in her chest crumples at the words. She leans into him before she knows she’s doing it. He wraps an arm around her shoulders, careful of her lekku, pulling her in like he’s anchoring both of them.
For the first time in a long time, Ahsoka lets herself shake apart. She sobs into his shirt, fingers fisting in the fabric, all the names she never said out loud pouring out as wordless sound.
Lux holds on. He doesn’t tell her to be strong. He doesn’t tell her it’s okay. He just stays.
Later, when the worst of it has passed and she’s left hollow and exhausted, she lifts her head.
“You really mean it?” she asks, voice rough. “You’re not going to disappear on me too?”
He meets her gaze, eyes bright. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
She looks at him for a long, long moment.
“Okay,” she says at last, so quietly he almost doesn’t hear it. “Then… stay.”
His arm tightens around her in answer.