Shin Hati from Ahsoka ✰ Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein by Margaret Atwood & Belovéd by Yves Olade ✰ reminder that T*RFs can fuck off, only interact if you love trans & nb women ♡
Warnings: Major Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Loss, The Dark Side Of The Force, Force Ghosts, Force Ghost Baylan Skoll, Jedi Funerals, Minor Injury, Shin Hati Needs a Hug, Shin Hati Gets a Hug, Protective Sabine Wren, Supportive Sabine Wren, Protective Ahsoka Tano, Supportive Ahsoka Tano, Huyang is Just There, Baylan Skoll Is A Good Dad, Shin Hati Centric
Notes: I... cried a lot writing this. anyways the idea was sabine undoing the padawan braid for Shin after Baylan.. . .
Summary: “Chase your moon, Shin. Don’t let her go,”. Their feet moved of their own accord, startling herself and Sabine as she moved forward. Each stride was long, painful, really. “What happens when we find Thrawn?” She had asked so foolishly, as if the answer has not revealed itself in many different ways. “Power.” Where was the power in this, Master? Who am I when I’m not at your side?
Word Count: 1,996
AO3 Links: Fic & Collection
Shin’s lips were pressed into a thin line as she watched the body on the pyre. He looked peaceful, at the very least; calmer than they’d seen him in the last weeks of his life.
Their body leaned forward, Sabine’s hand on their wrist the only thing that stopped her from getting too close to the fire with her Master. Ahsoka stood on her other side, the Togruta staring at the Jedi Knight in front of them as the fires took him.
They should be feeling something, right? Baylan had raised her, had taught her everything she knew- and yet, there was nothing. No guidance from the force, nothing but a vast emptiness they did not have the word to describe.
Shin moved before she could catch up with her mind, reaching into the fires to grab the hot lightsaber from the stone. The fires burned her hands, but the force thrummed for the first time since she’d felt the killing blow go through him.
“Shin!” Sabine shouted, reaching to tug them back from the table, the saber fell into the dirt, despite the heat, it seemed practically untouched by the fires, unlike their hand, where her glove had caught fire. The Mandalorian tugged it off as Ahsoka approached. “Di’kut! You could have hurt yourself!” There was an unnatural worry in her tone, one that Shin brushed off easily as their hand was turned in Sabine’s, skin red and disturbed from the heat.
Shin did not move until the embers had gone cold, fingers chilly where they were wrapped in Sabine’s hands. She had to give props to the other woman, she stayed quiet and only moved enough to stop Shin from moving for the pyre again when their body would start to dip.
Ahsoka’s hand on her shoulder was enough to have Shin jumping and calling her Master’s saber from the ground, back to her hands. She killed him, they should strike her down for everything she took from them. “Don’t lose yourself to this feeling, Padawan. No one is ever truly gone,”
“Shin,” Sabine was calling her, fingers pulling at their white knuckled grip around his saber, the crystal inside thrummed with the calming energy he always had about him.
Ahsoka reached out once more, palm towards the sky, keeping eye contact with the… Padawan? Until they were placing the hilt in her hand. “The other one, too, please,” Her own saber joined her Master’s in the woman’s hand with less hesitance. “Sabine, yours as well.”
With furrowed brows, Sabine nodded and removed Ezra’s saber from her hip, joining with Baylan and Shin’s. “Huyang?” The droid approached with a tilted head, servos clicking as as the hilts were handed off. “Keep these safe for us, it is unwise for any of us to have them right now,” After the three sabers were stored neatly in the droid, the Togruta unclipped her own and passed them off.
Getting Shin to leave the tables side was hard work, their feet were firmly planted and they stubbornly refused to budge as Sabine attempted to coax them away.
“These are your first steps, Hati.”
Sabine was giving up on getting Shin back onto the T-6. “I’ll be out in a few, see if you change your mind-”
“Chase your moon, Shin. Don’t let her go,”
Their feet moved of their own accord, startling herself and Sabine as she moved forward. Each stride was long, painful, really. “What happens when we find Thrawn?” She had asked so foolishly, as if the answer has not revealed itself in many different ways. “Power.”
Where was the power in this, Master? Who am I when I’m not at your side?
Their weight dropped heavily into the bench the moment they were past the door, eyes fixing on a point in the table, a small scratch that caught the light at her angle.
Was there a power strong enough to bring him back? The force… the force said there was, somewhere. Ahsoka knew, didn’t she? The ghost of Mortis, that is what her Master had said. The Padawan that fell to the closest thing to the physical embodiment of the force, and was revived. If she could get her to show them the source of that power-
“What’s done is done. It has already been written, it cannot be changed,”
Their fingers found the braid Baylan had so caringly rebraided for her just days before, the small green gems held in place with hair that he had helped bleach and- Shin wasn’t a padawan anymore. Who was she?
Sabine’s weight settled onto the tough cushion beside her. Her fingers were gentle as they removed Shin’s fingers from the braid she’d been tugging on. Their eyes met, a hesitant understanding passing between them.
Sabine’s eyes didn’t leave theirs as her fingers smoothed over the braid. The bands snapped quietly as they were twisted. There was a gentle clack of the gems being set on the table, and the reassuring feeling of the braid in her hair was slowly unwound.
“What do you need?” Sabine’s voice was gentle as her fingers brushed through the loose strands, longer than the rest of their hair, slightly frayed from the years spent growing it out.
Biting back the anger that threatened to pass their lips, Shin Kept her gaze on the beauty mark near the Mandalorian’s nose. “Tell me…” A pause, a deep breath. “Tell me what to do,” They blinked, lips pressing into a thin line, daring a glance at warm brown eyes full of too much understanding.
“Let’s go get ready for bed, and we can figure out where to go from there.”
She would have preferred to know the plan further than the night, but Sabine was giving her something, and that was more than the nothingness inside.
Going through the motions was familiar enough, survival. They could do that, they could do that no problem. How long has it been since she’d been left with the only option of just trying to Survive? Surely not since Baylan, he taught her how to live… the irony.
There must have been a point in the shower when she’d zoned a little too far, when the overwhelming grief slipped past crumbling barriers- Sabine was in the ‘fresher with them, didn’t they lock the door? Still, Shin appreciated the arms that wrapped around her more than they knew how to articulate. Standing on her own felt… impossible, without him.
“Ner dal Kurs’kaded,” Sabine muttered into soaked blonde hair, helping her clean up before the water was shut off. There were more words spoken softly, in languages she’d only had a base knowledge on, though she could assume they were repetitive of the too kind, too sympathetic words in Mando’a.
The shirt pulled over their head was warm, it smelled… not like home, never like home; home died with a white saber through his chest, home was set aflame on the pyre. But something close, close enough that they sank into the smell of leather, warm bark, and something like a berry, though she could never place the origin.
The Mandalorian’s hand on their back was comforting as they were guided to the bunk room. It was dark, though Shin could immediately pick up on the unnatural blue glow of the Togruta’s eyes as they slipped in. No one spoke as Shin slipped into their spot, letting Sabine curl around them in the familiarity they needed more than anything.
Morning came with more confusion, a lingering weight of not real, didn’t happen sitting over them like a cloud, the fog deep in her bones in the silence of the sleeping shuttle.
The grass outside was cold and wet with morning dew, though they didn’t have much energy to change or to care about the damp socks and pants of Sabine’s pants. They knelt beside the pyre that had long gone cold, eyes sliding closed as they tried to find the peace to meditate.
“Lady Hati-” The droid startled her, the force was playing tricks on her, nothing was going right! Staring blankly at the droid, she watched as Baylan and their own saber were removed from the compartments and extended towards her. “These may help,”
She snatched them from his metal grip, offering her best glare at Huyang’s retreat until she was sure she was alone.
Their own crystal was quiet when she reached out for it, as if the kyber inside was mourning the loss of its mentor as well, Kyber of the same vein, loyal to the people who wielded it…
Baylan’s crystal still felt like him, though that was wrong, because the kyber was alive. Calm, serene, love, and acceptance rolled out in waves into her shaking hands. The sabers were pressed into the stone as she resumed her wannabe meditative position. Forehead against the stone, fingers curling around the hilts, and eyes sliding shut, she could almost feel his arms around her. “Who am I without you, Master?” Her voice was soft, a whisper to the void; she never expected the void to answer back, of course.
A weight settled against Shin’s shoulder, “Don’t look, Shin,” He called, and she listened, always listened. “Who do you want to be?”
“We never got that far,”
“We did, Shin. Remember,”
“Stormtroopers, Inquisitors, Rebels. How many of them choose their own path, Padawan?”
“None of them.”
“They are destined to these paths, to what the galaxy has in store for them. But you, Shin… You can see these paths, see how they shaped each of them, how they shaped our galaxy. Look at these pirates-” The memory of Baylan moved to the pirate Shin had just ended. “They prey on those they believe are lesser, weaker, less deserving, than themselves, because they have not seen the paths. There is no glory in causing harm, but if we must…” There had been children on the ship. Shin couldn’t remember what Baylan had done with them, but this wasn’t her memory. Coordinates had been given away, someone he could trust, a hidden path. They were safe, from the pirates, from the empire, from it all-
“Who do you want to be, Shin?”
“I want to do what’s right, Master.” I want to do what you raised me to do. I want to make you proud-
“You already have, Shin,”
The force bristled through the remains of her braid, she caught the blue tinged tint of a comforting hand. “Follow your moon, follow your feelings, but be mindful, look to the paths often, so long as you are alive, you have a choice.”
Silence was thick in their dry throat, her fingernails dug into the soft grip around his saber. “The Mandalorian’s blade?”
Of course, he knew about the vibroblade they had swiped from Sabine’s armor before coming outside, even without being part of the cosmic force, he would have known.
There was a warm, comforting presence on her hands, her eyes stayed shut as the blade was guided to her hair. The remains of the braid sliced easily when the blade pressed against them. White-blonde strands fell onto the pyre, and the blade was set between the sabers.
“I never knew myself, how this would go. We are no Jedi.”
Ahsoka’s footsteps grew louder, drawing the attention of the wolves. “You don’t rise as a Jedi Knight,” Her voice was calm, eyes stuck on the ghostly form of her master as she stepped into the bubble. Her attention left Baylan, to the wide eyed blonde against the stone. Her hand rested on their shoulder, the other reaching for their hand. “You rise as yourself. Are you ready?”
Shin did not notice the warm smile or the fading form of her Master as she took Ahsoka’s hand, accepting her help in standing. It was still hard, the weight still pressed down on her, but it was easier, manageable. Maybe… maybe she could do with just being ‘Shin, chaser of the moon.’
I know we all love the “there was only one bed” trope, but consider: “there are many rooms and many beds, but I’m staying here in this one with you anyways (for completely legitimate reasons and not because I like you)”
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