This was running through my head last night when I turned on my iPod to sleep and it occurred to me how many people have gotten onto me about how much I love noise 'cause I never want it to be silent, and 'how can you sleep with all that noise' and I'm like 'it's not noise… I hate noise'. Well, with some of my thoughts on Ahsoka, I could see her hating silence too… so, this happened. Aurora-verse, though it makes no real difference either way. Oh, and by the way if anyone wants to give me prompt titles they'd like to see an Ansoka drabble/story written on, let me know in a review and I'll give it a shot. Inspiration never hurts. XD
Rhythm
Ahsoka liked noise. When Anakin claimed this of her, though, she denied it – said no, she actually didn't like noise, it was often annoying – but he found it difficult to come to any other conclusion. Everywhere she went there had to be sound, some sort of background noise: music playing or an engine running or talking or she'd be tapping her foot or drumming a melody with her fingers or humming. Even when she was meditating she wanted music or sound, even if it was just the muffled hum of an engine or air-cooler or some such thing. She didn't like silence, so he could only figure she must like noise.
It got annoying sometimes. There were times when he just didn't want to talk, when he wanted the quiet during a spaceflight or a trek across a planet from place to place, and she didn't like it. So she would talk at him, and when she finally gave in to his stoic silence or figured out by his grunted responses that he wasn't in the mood to chat, she'd start humming. Or drumming her fingers. Or tapping her foot against the floor. She could never allow actual silence; he didn't know why.
He'd spent a good amount of time merely trying to block out the noises, but once he finally got irritated enough to snap at her when she'd been humming a random melody during a long flight home from a difficult mission. "Could you stop that already; I can't think with you making all that noise!" The young Togruta had looked startled and hurt and fallen silent, fidgeting but staying obediently quiet. For a few minutes it had been a relief, then it had become a bit awkward, and within about fifteen minutes he grudgingly wanted the noise back, but he couldn't exactly ask her to start up humming again and stubborn pride kept him from starting up a conversation to fill the quiet. As much as it was irking him, it was getting to her too; he wasn't sure why silence made her seem so depressed, get so nervous. By the time they'd landed she'd looked so dejected and seemed so jittery that he'd determined then and there not to snap at her for liking noise again.
Really, Ahsoka's humming was rather nice, and she had a good ear for rhythm and melody when she drummed; Anakin decided he actually liked the ways she would fill the silence.
It was the same when she slept, he found out. While she denied his claim that she liked noise when she slept even more vehemently than that she liked noise in general – "I can't sleep when it's noisy; it drives me nuts! I don't know what you're talking about." – it could never be silent when she slept. Here was where she most loved music, and something was always playing; she liked to slip a small player under her pillow or place it beside the bed and let the music fill her ears until she drifted off. In the absence of music, air-coolers worked, or even just getting a chamber near enough to the engine rooms that she could hear the hum, but if it was silent, she seemed unable to sleep.
Anakin, on the other hand, didn't like noise when he slept. So on the few occasions when a small ship made them share quarters, it was always terms for conflict. After her music kept him awake all night once, he refused to deal with it again; it went as far as him hiding her music player – which, at the time, hadn't felt like as immature an act as it did later – which kept her up all night trying to find it, unable to sleep in the quiet. They'd finally reached a compromise in the form of an old-fashioned air-fan that made a moderately quiet rhythmic humming sound, enough to allow her to fall asleep but not so much that he couldn't sleep – or so she reasoned. He still didn't like it.
The first night he'd irritably 'dealt with it' and dozed, sure that every time he woke he had the noise of the machine to blame. The second night he came up with a plan – he waited until Ahsoka fell asleep, then turned the fan off and settled down himself, sure that he'd found the perfect solution. It might have worked if Ahsoka hadn't awoke an hour later with a yelp that had jolted him awake; she was momentarily panicked and frantic, and best he could tell had had quite a nightmare, though he never did find out what about. He'd awkwardly tried to comfort her with words and a hand on her shoulder, and almost sheepishly turned the fan back on before she could discover he'd turned it off. Comforting was not his strong suit, and he wasn't sure how well he did; eventually she'd relaxed enough to lie back down but he knew she didn't sleep any more for the rest of the night – he knew, because he'd stayed up with her, feeling a bit guilty for reasons he couldn't explain and wanting to make sure she didn't freak out again. The third night he left the fan alone and they'd both slept without much difficulty.
The fan wasn't really that loud and the sound was rhythmic enough to keep it from being as bad as he'd first thought; Anakin decided maybe it did make it a bit easier to fall asleep with it running – and maybe even soft music wasn't so unbearable.
Anakin thought Ahsoka liked noise. But it wasn't really the noise she liked – in fact, she was telling the truth, noise did annoy her. When alarms would blare she would be the first to wince and cover her ears; high-pitched squeals made her head hurt; and even too many voices blending together in talking became disorienting and irksome. Anything too loud or with a high pitch echoed in her montrals unpleasantly; bangs and crashes made her jump, and incessant noise was just so irritating. And she could never sleep with noise going on; the slightest sound could awaken her if it wasn't what she'd fallen asleep to, from alarm bells to voices outside the door and most anything in between.
No, he eventually realized, she didn't like noise. She liked rhythm. Music, drumming, the cycle of a fan or the hum of an engine. Noise was distracting; rhythm was soothing. Why she hated silence Anakin didn't know and wasn't sure how to ask, but she loved rhythm – and he shouldn't have been surprised; after all, she moved with rhythm, fought with it, found it in the Force. She was a rhythmic person, really.
So he discovered that background noise wasn't as distracting as he'd thought, and while he didn't understand her aversion to complete silence he decided not to question it. And when he picked up a small music player to have Artoo hang onto for him so he could play it on long flights or those walks when he didn't feel like talking, Ahsoka smiled widely up at him, and he decided that this was a good enough compromise, and maybe he could learn to like all this music she was so fond of – eventually.