Snips and Skyguy: Return of the One Shots

New

hello i am projecting my pain again

Ahsoka brushed her fingers against the carpet below her, eyes closed and legs crossed over the floor of her brand new room. She hadn't had a carpet in her old quarters. The floors had been made of cold, hard durasteel that made her feet tingle when she would tiptoe across it, trying to move silently in order to not wake the other younglings.

Not a youngling anymore, she reminded herself, letting out a shaky sigh as she attempted to release the twisted emotions in her chest into the Force. A padawan. What you've always wanted—what you've dreamt of since you knew what it meant.

She felt her fingers curl into the fibers of the rug, the soft material suddenly rough as it scratched against her skin. Unfamiliar.

Then why does it hurt so much.

The sentence rang clearly in her mind—not a question for sure. No, she was certain. The dizzying memories colliding in her head as she recalled specific things that she used to have, both the good and the bad, the nausea and the way that her stomach lurched every time that she found something new in her and Anakin's quarters...

A scratch through the paint on a wall was a memory. Someone else's memory.

She hissed as if she'd been drenched in steaming caf, feeling her head involuntarily snap to the side, as if she could shake the thoughts out of her head.

Why do I miss it? she wanted to scream. The endless hours of training, stressing, trying to impress someone—anyone. Trying to get to where I am right now. Why does it hurt?! Why don't I feel accomplished? Why do I kriffing miss it?! Why—

"Ahsoka?"

Anakin. Behind her.

Gentle hands on each of her shoulders, one soft and warm, the other hard and cool. The most tender, lightest squeeze from each of them had her blinking her eyes open slowly, suddenly realizing that her face was sticky with tears.

"Master," she replied with a shuddering breath, refusing to turn around and let him see that she was crying.

"It's a lot," he whispered. She felt the shift in the carpet as he knelt behind her, strong hands spreading over her shoulders to ground her. "It's a lot, so fast. But you're doing amazing."

She choked on her next breath, trying not to wish for the familiarity of young voices around her, for the exasperated tone of her clan's leader as she told them off for being too noisy.

It was, she noticed, the things that had bothered her the most that she now missed more than anything.

"I used to never sleep," Anakin continued softly from his position behind her. "I loved it here, but it wasn't home. Took me forever to accept that I wasn't going back."

"Exactly," she breathed back. "Exactly."

His arms folded over her chest and she sagged back into his warmth, allowing herself to be held while her lower lip trembled against her will.

Like a little youngling.

"I went through it too, Snips—the homesickness," Anakin said, tucking her head under his chin. "Nothing hurts quite like it."

She hummed in agreement, no longer able to force word out, and no longer trying to hide the sounds of her crying. Anakin Skywalker had felt this way too. He wouldn't judge her.

"I'll be here with you the whole time," he promised, "while we wait for it to get better, because it will, okay?"

She nodded, lifting her hand to wipe her nose on it.

"But for now, I... I don't want you to think so much like a Jedi," he said lowly. "I want you to let yourself feel."

"Pretty"—she sniffed—"unorthodox lesson."

She felt the soft laugh in his chest against her back.

"I've got a feeling that a lot of our lessons are going to be that way."

i moved into my new house and my heart just like *aches* to go back home. ive never moved in my life and im like physically homesick over it. anyone who's been through this before have any advice?? i just can't get myself to let go of like... everything i've ever known and it really fricken hurts