#sabsoka

“I left to save everyone!” The nightmares were louder than usual, tonight. Ahsoka’s own mood was certainly not helping, not with the ghosts of the clones that should have been sitting around that table with her. When she listened closely, she could still hear Fives telling a joke with Jesse, though, the Mandalorian’s night troubles got in the way of her old friends and the accusations in dead eyes.

“Everything I did was for Family! For Mandalore!” Ahsoka pushed herself off of the bench, her long forgotten mug of caff left to fade away with her vode as she stepped towards the bunk room. The door slid open with a soft hiss to reveal Sabine’s twitching body, eyes clamped shut, sweat clinging to her brow, and lips moving in echoes of the words that sang out in the force so strongly.

Her hand reached out, the terrors shifting the closest her hand got to the clammy wrist tossed over the sheets. “You’ve done enough” Her fingers curled around the Mandalorian’s wrist, a slow, deep inhale leaving the Togruta as she listened. “Maybe you should tell her that,” “She isn’t the one who needs to hear it right now,”

“Sabine,” Ahsoka’s voice, like a lighthouse in a storm, reached out to Sabine. Golden eyes snapped open with a gasp, the younger woman moving to throe herself out of the bunk, though she was stopped by Ahsoka’s hand on her forehead, thankfully preventing their foreheads from colliding, or from Ahsoka’s own head getting bashed up against the bottom of her own bunk.

“ ‘soka,” Sabine’s voice was thick with sleep, confusion in her tone as her clammy hand reached, twisting from the loop of Ahsoka’s fingers to instead grasp at the older woman’s forearm, steadying herself against the stability offered.

“Are you alright?” Ahsoka knew the question was null, knew that Sabine wasn’t alright, and probably wouldn’t be, until they worked out whatever was going on with them. That until Ezra was home, she may never be alright again.

Her eyes slid shut as she processed her own feelings, when the turmoil rose up once more, the Mandalorian’s grip on her forearm would tighten, until eventually, her hand released entirely, falling softly back onto the bedsheets. “I’m fine,” Rubbing at her eyes, Sabine glanced around the cabin, peering past Ahsoka’s shoulder to view the table just in view. “Thought you said we needed rest for this one,”

Ahsoka’s lips pulled into a tight smile. “I was just saying goodnight,” Her back straightened as she ducked from under Sabine’s bunk and back into the crew quarters. Even with the door sliding shut, Ahsoka could feel her Padawan’s eyes on her as she moved about the cabin, dumping cold caff and washing the mug out before retracting the table. If she stayed to watch until each latch clicked into place, that was her business.

The pair did not speak again until long after Ahsoka had hauled herself up into her bunk and gotten as comfortable as she could be. Sabine’s restlessness truly was a drain on her own capabilities. “Sabine, you need to be quiet,” She called in as soft a voice as her mild annoyance could muster.

“I know, I know,” The Mandalorian grunted, growling at her pillow as if it had personally offended her as she rolled over for the hundredth time.

“Not with your body, young one, with your mind,” Ahsoka could feel Master Sinube speaking through her, could feel the ghost of her own irritation at the words spoken as she’d heard them decades ago.

“It’s not happening,” Sabine said once five minutes of jittery, charged silence had passed.

Shoving her covers to the side, Ahsoka dropped silently onto the cold floor of the bunk room. “Scooch over,” She ordered, sliding herself into the warm spot next to the Mandalorian once space was made. It was certainly cramped, though Ahsoka was fine dangling half off the bed once she was settled.

Already, there was a significant change in the output into the force from her force sensitive companion, their backs pressed together just enough that Sabine could feel the hear from the warm blooded Togruta.

This pattern would continue long past the edge that one would deem typical for a master and a padawan, at least, on the surface. Ahsoka knew that looking deeper into the relationships shared between the pairs across the timeline, she would find many who started to… feel.

Sabine’s feelings had not been subtle in the slightest, and Ahsoka had truly tried to dissuade them. Unfortunately, trying to throw the Mandalorian off the scent was more difficult than hunting Morgan Elsbeth in the first place.

Their routine turned from backs pressed together, to crammed tighter into the bed to stare at the glow in the dark star system Sabine had tacked to the top of the bunk, to the multicolor haired woman curled up entirely into Ahsoka’s side. When Sabine grew into the habit of curling a fist around Ahsoka’s lek, the Togruta had officially ran out of ideas or options.

She couldn’t deny that not being alone had been... better. She’d gotten more sleep than she had since the piles of clones she’d find herself dragged into, or even aboard Bo-Katan Kryze’s gauntlet, wrapped into the Mandalorian Princess’s sheets. Sidious’s voice, Pamde’s funeral, the Tribunal, they’d all stopped hanging over her like a thick, noxious cloud, the burdens had grown lighter to carry, with Sabine’s interference of her ‘brooding hour’.

Sabine started to mellow out more too, the nightmares were still there, but they hadn’t been bad, not as bad as the lightsaber marks that were still scorched into the other side of bunks across the small compartment. One set, made with a green saber and the reminder of a blue skinned man, the other, made with twin blades of white, with the ghost of a mechanical wheeze as her target.

Training was still rocky between the two women, one, whose feelings were so clear, and the other, who wanted to lock herself away and focus on the needs of the galaxy, dancing around each other in the game of push and pull. Sabine gave her all, but Ahsoka only offered so little of herself in turn, questions would be answered with pursed lips and vague answers, before the older force sensitive would disappear for the rest of the day.

“What’s really going on?” Sabine snapped as she stepped into the bunkroom the moment Ahsoka had finished dressing. A gloved finger found Ahsoka’s chest and pushed, until the cool durasteel of the wall was meeting her back and she was staring down at a very angry looking Mandalorian. “You keep avoiding me, and… and keeping things from me!”

Ahsoka’s hands stayed at her sides, her expression neutral as the Mandalorian ran through her list of accusations. “Perhaps one day, you may find the answer in your training,” Ahsoka offered vaguely.

There was a flash of anger and a warning in the force before the Mandalorian moved. Instead of a fist being thrown her way, pale fingers reached out to grab her chin. Sabine’s tone turned cold and condescending. “Listen, Master,”

Ahsoka did not wait to see how she planned on continuing. Her hand raised then to bat the hand off her chin before she was angling her head down. Apparently, Sabine had either felt her intentions in the force, or her tangent was leading to the same conclusion, their lips met halfway like a tsunami. Ahsoka was calm, slow, and calculating against the press of Sabine’s bullheadedness, her teeth scraping the older woman’s lower lip as her hand dropped to curl around Ahsoka’s Lek as if they were laying together in bed.

At the brush of Sabine’s fingers against her lek, the woman reached to press on her shoulder, lowering the Mandalorian from where she’d risen onto her tip toes. Sabine followed her instruction, for once, pulling away as she was guided.

The older woman’s hand rose to the side of Sabine’s cheek, watching as the red cheeked woman leaned into it. “I know that trust is hard for you to come by,”

“If you’re about to say-“Sabine was cut off by Ahsoka’s thumb pressing against her lip. There was a moment of slow deliberation and a furrow in her brows, before the Mandalorian parted her lips and took Ahsoka’s thumb between her lips.

Shutting her eyes and searching for control, Ahsoka found the strength she needed to continue in the Force. “You need to trust me, Sabine,” The flat of the woman’s tongue pressed against pad of her thumb, and she pressed down to keep the muscle from moving again. “If I’m keeping something from you, it is not yet safe for you to know. Or perhaps, I am merely waiting for you to strengthen your abilities to search for the answers yourself. Do you understand?”

Ahsoka pulled her thumb from reluctant lips, though she did still brush her thumb across the woman’s bottom lip, interested in the flat bridges of teeth exposed each time she moved. “Trust goes both ways, you know,” The woman’s words sounded off, what with not being able to press her lips together, but she s=understood the message.

“Then perhaps that is something we will need to work on together,” Her free hand moved to grasp the steadying hand the Mandalorian had placed against the wall at her side.

“You’re not going to make this one easy on me either, then?” Sabine’s head turned enough to allow Ahsoka’s hand to fall loosely to her side once more.