𝐒 𝐓 𝐀 𝐑 𝐖 𝐀 𝐑 𝐒 | 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐬 + 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐬

it's not good grief (but it's better)

She'd never quite gotten the hang of fixing speeder engines.

It's the first thing he thinks when he sees her, coated montrals to toes in engine grease and surrounded by a jungle of mangled parts.

He tries not to wince at the way the socket wrench in her hand slips, and how she curses at the slick of oil that now coats her front from the burst lining.

He thinks he wants to laugh; maybe before, he would have. He doesn't now. (And when did he start thinking in terms of before and after ? Grief is an odd thing, he thinks; but how does he mourn someone who isn't dead?)

The grimy light of the Coruscanti Underworld filters listlessly through broken streetlights, flickering neon signs, and the fluorescent overheads of the repair shop whose garage-like doors are opened wide to the filthy streets of level 1319.

His boots cross silently from broken gravel and cracked duracrete to the smooth stone floor of the shop, littered with spare parts and failed projects; he shouldn't be surprised that this is where he's found her, that this is where she's found herself.

She's changed, since he's last seen her. Lekku longer and montrals taller; clothing looser than he's ever seen it, the pair of overalls dwarfing her frame. He doesn't know why he's surprised; it's not like she's a ghost, forever trapped in the eternity of an astral plane.

(But when did she get so old ? When did she, the fourteen-year-old child who has always managed to ceaselessly ignite every single nerve in his short temper within a matter of minutes, when did she grow up?)

But he knows when. He knows the exact month, day, and hour, the exact second when. (The thought of her silhouette against the paleness of the Temple's staircase still makes his stomach twist sickeningly.)

The slight tensing of her hands, elbow deep in engine grease and dirty machinery, tells him everything he needs to know.

(And really, she should have known he would come to find her at some point; she should be expecting this.)

"You got taller."

His voice is as gravelly as the cracked duracrete outside. He can't quite bring himself to call her by the name that sits intrinsically in the front of his mind and on the tip of his tongue on and off the battlefield. What once was sweet is now sour on his lips, and ' Snips ' just doesn't feel quite right anymore; not like this. He doesn't quite think he can call her ' Ahsoka ' now, either, and so he leaves his sentence at that; fitting, how it feels as incomplete without her in its sequence as he does.

He'd heard a long time ago that people died twice: once with the absence of their corporal body, and again with the waning of their name; he doesn't want to lose her just yet, so he lets it sit in the back of his mouth and in the front of his mind, a bitter reminder that burns sickly sweet, all he has left. A bird poised for flight on the edge of his lips; trapped with the ignorance of not knowing how to fly just yet. He doesn't want to lose her; (didn't want to lose her). He will hold on as long as he can.

( She's not dead , some part of him screams; this just feels too much like mourning.)

Slowly, carefully, with a dexterity ingrained in her fluid and graceful motions, but never quite used with tact when off the battlefield, her hands inch away from the tangle of parts.

He's not quite ready (but then, he is the one who's sought her out), but she's turning, and he has to be ready now, when her eyes, as blue as he remembers, though not quite as youthful as he'd hoped, meet his.