𝐒 𝐓 𝐀 𝐑 𝐖 𝐀 𝐑 𝐒 | 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐬 + 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐬

weighted words hurt more than loaded fists (if you know how to use them)

It is the summer of being fourteen that Rex Fett first meets Ahsoka Tano. (She is the most impossible person he's ever met.)

It all starts in the sweltering heat of July, when smashing bottles and heavy hands are more raucous than the unapologetic song of a broken air conditioner to harmonize; when the black of bruises is more familiar than the tan of skin, and being trapped in a house that is not a home is far too much to take, and so searing heat that melts pavement and chars skin is welcomed to alleviate the type of harsh words that burn more brutally than the scalding sun ever could.

He finds himself sitting on the curb of the road, nothing but an aching eye (blooming and blistering every shade of repulsive color to imagine except the one it's supposed to be) and a feeling not unlike that of being stepped on and chewed up settled in his chest like sediment forever forgotten at the bottom of a murky lake for company, until the heralded pale blue of worn pavement is broken by the entrance of a pair of canvas shoes with untied laces, and he looks up to meet eyes bluer than summer's prided sky and an expression that immediately has him straightening, her gaze more calculating than pencils that scratch uninterrupted at papers in search of answers.

He raises his eyebrows at her. She stares right back, gaze piercing, a spool of thread slipping pointedly though the impossibly small hole of a needle, arms crossed and a wild look about her that screams to the fact that normality has a different definition with her; hair loose and held barely at bay in his rough estimate of what is supposed to be a braid, she looks as though the only thing she searches for is fun, but all she finds is trouble.

(Rex thinks that if the only thing she's good at finding is the path to flashing police lights and an adrenaline high strong enough to drown out lectures and groundings, then it really shouldn't be a surprise that she's found him.)

"You're new."

Rex raises his eyebrows. He doesn't know who this girl is.

"What do you want?"

Her arms uncross, and the hand, chipped nail polish to compliment tan skin, that is stuck into his face is more surprising than the first bruise and the last punch that has frequented his first few days in this hellhole of a house.

"Let's go."

Rex stares at her. Calculating eyes and vivacious appearance that should be a viscous contrast but fit together so easily, and all he can think about is the metaphor he never truly understood from his wasted time in English class; the one of a serpent lurking beneath a flower, and the metonymy of Lady Macbeth has never quite made more sense than it does now.

"Go where?"

She huffs, and the loose hairs surrounding her face like a halo ruffle in the artificial breeze. The roll of her eyes is something to envy, he thinks; he wonders if she can see the back of her skull at this point.

"It's summer," she says, which doesn't answer his question at all.

But still, strange girls are much better than hard hands and intoxicated breath, and he'd rather not meet the serpent that lurks beneath chipped nail polish and vivid blue eyes, that hides under a small frame belied by a mammoth attitude.

And so he doesn't know who she is, but he takes her hand anyway.

(As it turns out, she is Ahsoka Tano, and she is his best friend from that point on.)

Ahsoka Tano, Rex Fett thinks (even after all these years later), is the most impossible person he's ever met.

Starry nights under broken streetlights that are more pathetic than the air conditioner (that still isn't fixed), and the increasing frequency of hard hands and intoxicated breath that stings from both smell and words to go along with it are what constitute his summers. Street races ending in the cool familiarity of flashing lights a vivid red and blue, and cracked concrete to catch knees and palms when the realization he's needed new shoes hits him as hard as the asphalt that jars his bones; music of a laugh that's not meant for anyone else but rings out for the world to hear, and arms thrown over shoulders, the feeling of the plastic laces hugging tight to a leather ball, and as it turns out, tackle football on a concrete street just so happens to be a bad idea, but they did this last summer, and the one before that, so it goes on, and at least this time the discolored skin is a shared thing born from freedom and fun and a choice instead of not.