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Chapter Text

Rex had very strong feelings about General Yoda.

If it was off the record and he couldn't be sent to reconditioning on account of mutiny- he would probably say that, if given the chance, he would very much like to kick the little troll in his wrinkly, green face.

It was nothing personal.

No, wait... On reevaluating the meaning of the word 'personal', this was definitely personal. Rex had a visceral, personal vendetta against the leader of the Jedi.

...Not for his own sake.

It was personal, yes. But not about him personally- was he overusing that word? No, no. He wasn't, it was fine.

But... He was getting off track. Rex's issue with General Yoda had to do with his Jetiise.

The problem was this: Rex's General did not want a Padawan. From his understanding, the man had not taken one on for just over two decades. He was uncertain of why, only that was the way that things were. Frankly, he didn't care why. Rex didn't care much about his General at all. He used to. At the very start of the war. When he'd been naive, and the General had still seemed like a good person. When he was younger- no, not younger, not really, it had only been a few months but nothing was the same anymore-

Whatever. It didn't matter.

The bigger problem was this: General Yoda was an evil, conniving little womp-rat. General Jinn did not want a Padawan, and Yoda decided to use the war as an excuse to say that he didn't have a choice in the matter and now they were all suffering for it.

So, for Ahsoka's sake, Rex was furious with General Yoda. As a Jetii, his little Commander wasn't allowed to hate much of anything, but that was alright. Rex had plenty of anger kicking around in there to cover the both of them.

Don't get him wrong, it wasn't that Rex didn't want Ahsoka to be assigned as his CO- he did. She was a good kid, really.

It was just that he felt bad for her.

He'd watched the way the other Generals acted with their own Padawans on the very, very rare occasions that the 501st and 212th had crossed paths with other battalions. Rex had hidden curious glances in the broad visor of his helmet, and he'd observed. 

There was General Billaba with Commander Dume from the 181st- and she was sure to check on him throughout a fight, and she ran worried hands over him after one to look for injuries, and leaned in to wrap him into a tight, teary hug whenever she didn't find any. It really wasn't any wonder, though- Billaba was General Windu's former Padawan, and for all that the High General commanded distance, he was someone firmly grounded in the idea of doing what was right. He must have passed that on.

There was General Tapal with Commander Kestis from the 13th- and he would always be sure that his Padawan was never far from his side when the blaster bolts started flying, and he trained him with a steady hand when they weren't, and he would offer gentle praises and calm corrections all the while. Rex had only met him once, and he wasn't supposed to, at that. But he seemed to be a decent sort of person.

Even with General Unduli and Commander Offee, as distant as their relationship was- she would clap a hand on the girl's shoulder after a battle, and she'd sit with her for meditation, and, once, Rex had caught her standing silent vigil by her bedside- when the girl was far too gone in her injuries and the sedatives she'd been given to even know that her master was there.

And General Unduli- she was the one who'd tracked down Rex's General to have a talk with him about Ahsoka. That was the reason why the 501st and 212th had since been unofficially isolated. She'd nearly ended the Padawanship, then and there.

It really showed the truth of the matter. A Master loved and protected their Padawan as if they were their own blood. Their own child. The training bond was sacred- something written in the history of the Jetiise across generations.

That sort of bond between Master and Apprentice... It was... Not like that with Rex's Jetiise.

From his understanding, a Jetii's lineage- them, and their Master, and their Padawan, all the way down and up the line- was a family. The Jetiise had cut themselves off from their blood relatives, so they sought connection there. It was an unconventional sort of family, sure, but Rex could understand it without any issue. He, after all, had several million brothers to keep track of, and that was hardly a normal family by natborn standards, either.

But... That was the thing. If a Jetii's lineage was their family, then General Jinn was a father who had never wanted a child. Nor was he the type who could force himself to pretend otherwise.

And, so, all Rex could do was watch in quiet anger and pity and sadness as his alverd'ika struggled to keep up with the other Padawan-Commanders her age, unfamiliar with their Force tricks and 'saber moves as she was. He listened to her cry as she failed to release her fear and pain because she didn't know how. He kept her company when she mediated, alone, on a mat in the Resolute's training room.

He wished that she had a Master who would watch out for her. He wished that General Yoda would give up and leave well enough alone.

He wished that he could do more for her, but he was only one clone. Not even a Commander, let alone a CC unit. None of them held any power- and, of the few that had something- Fox and Cody came to mind- he was certainly not one of them.

Rex did a lot of wishing- but there wasn't anything that he could do. There was nothing that he could change.

...Well, at least there was one area where she had a leg up on the other Jetiise. One thing that he could help her with.

Rex kept one hand on Ahsoka's shoulder and the other on her back, crouched low enough that he could murmur advice into her montrals and make small corrections if need be. More importantly- he was tucked behind her because he wasn't an idiot and he didn't want to die.

Her blaster skills really were improving.

Even if the only models that they had on hand weren't meant for smaller hands with a Togruta's vestigial claws, she was good at it. She'd found some way past triggers that stretched too far away for comfort and grips so narrow that the tips of her nails scratched at her palms. 

This time, when the practice bolt shot true and struck the center of the target, Rex could only feel proud.

If there was one good thing to come out of Ahsoka's disconnect with her people and her reliance on the 501st, it was that they had infected her with the disease known as common fucking sense.

Rex was pretty sure that the first time she'd asked their quartermaster- Fritz- about Jedi Commander armor, the poor vod had wept.

Most Jetiise were stubborn about that sort of thing. A lot of them wore none, like their own General, who complained that it got in the way of his fighting style. Some wore bits and pieces. Very, very few agreed to wear the full set, paltry as it was already. He'd give some allowance to General Plo Koon, though. He was pretty sure that he'd forgone the gorget because of anatomy more than stupidity and he couldn't begrudge him that. He'd been decent to Ahsoka, too. Or, at least she spoke of him fondly- words soaked in regret and grief born of separation rather than death or disgrace.

It certainly gave him less to worry about. Even if Jetiise armor didn't come with a helmet or a proper breastplate, it was still something. His Commander was a reckless little brat, and knowing she had something to protect her- just a little bit, well, that was just good for his blood pressure.

Whatever the armor was supposed to do, it wasn't enough, evidently, considering that he'd left his Jetiise alone for five fucking days and his General was half-having a panic attack in the hallway outside the medbay.

The General generally did not interact with his Padawan much. Hauling her skinny ass to the medbay, letting her sink her claws into his forearm while Kix picked shrapnel out of her back, doing his paperwork in an uncomfortable visitor's chair when she slept on through the glorious haze of painkillers- that was Rex's job, most of the time. Or one of the ARCs, if he was too busy- they were almost as close with her as he was.

Not the General. He couldn't even remember the last time his two Jetiise had a full conversation. There was a reason why Ahsoka was unofficially-assigned to the 501st and the General spent most of his time with the 212th, even though they were technically COs of both. Some consequence of a mathematical error early in the war that had played out disastrously.

But, all the same, there he was. General Jinn clutched his head and muttered to himself, pacing himself sick outside of the 501st's medbay.

Rex gave him a long look, but when the General didn't acknowledge him, he stepped past him and scooted himself into the medbay. The beds were mostly empty, only two were occupied. One, in the corner, by a shiny, who- if Rex recalled correctly- had gotten his arm cut open in an accident trying to modify his helmet. And, sitting upright in the first bed by the door, was Ahsoka.

She, frankly, looked like shit- like someone had run her over with a speeder, perhaps several times- but Rex had seen her at ten times worse, ten times over. It was hardly anything that he could ever imagine the General getting so upset over. She seemed to be fine. Alert, answering Kix's questions, in one piece- it was more than Rex could ask for, if he was being honest. Ahsoka was exhuasting.

"Rex!" Ahsoka noticed him first. Whether it was with the Force, or from her sharper senses, he didn't know. It was hard to tell the difference, most of the time- the two tended to blend together, and Rex had neither, so he had no way of knowing where one ended and the other began. She gave him a tired smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"Am I allowed to sit in, Kix?" Rex pulled off his helmet and tucked it under his arm. The medic paused from glaring down at a datapad and looked... Relieved?

"So long as you don't get my patient worked up." Kix set the tablet down on a table a bit too hard. "It's just a physical, General's orders."

"He looked pretty... Messed up, out there." Rex pulled a chair over to Ahsoka's bedside. He extended a forearm for her to grasp- his usual way of helping her calm down in the medbay- but she paused halfway- tense.

Ahsoka let out a small, rumbling growl of discomfort from somewhere deep in her throat and chest.

"...Something happened, when we were on our way back from the retreat. I can't- I don't remember any of it. But it was... Strange. I got the impression I might've been knocked unconscious? I remember... Waking up somewhere other than the ship." She shuddered and prodded at the place where the IV drip went into her arm. "He probably got spooked, or something. Like I said, I don't remember it. You'd have to ask him."

"I'll talk to him later." Rex shrugged and cuffed her on the shoulder. She gave him another toothy little half-smile. It still didn't reach her eyes- those were wide and watery with confusion, disorientation, and pain.

...Maybe he would ask the General about it, later. When the man had calmed down a little. He'd seen his General stare death straight in the kriffing face- back before Ahsoka was sent to them and the battalions split and he hadn't spoken to Cody since- he was getting off track... Anyway, he'd never, never seen him crack... and he was practically having a full-blown mental breakdown out there- all over a Padawan that he didn't want.

Rex never got around to that, though. He'd live to regret it. Many years later- he'd wonder if things could have been different, if he'd just gotten over himself and talked to the man who he hated.

Over the year she'd spent with them, it seemed that Ahsoka gradually became more... Comfortable. In her nature.

His alverd'ika wasn't human, simple as that. She was a Togruta. She had needs and characteristics and aspects of her biology that were completely alien to him. Pun unintended. Rex could distinctly remember her first month on standard rations- how she'd been faint and weak and sickly, long enough for Kix to get concerned- before her body adjusted into what Rex really, really hoped wasn't some form of carnivorous starvation mode. Even now, whenever she was on leave or there was a break in the fighting, she'd slip away from the men to go find herself something real to eat. Something that had the protein and fats and iron that she needed to stay healthy.

That was only one half of it, though. Ahsoka's kind ate meat, exclusively, and they were apex predators. That meant that they had to be different from humans in order to thrive. There was more to it than montrals and lekku- the parts of her that nobody could miss.

He'd known that Ahsoka had claws and fangs, just from proximity and the fact that the vode were programmed to be observant. He knew that her internal organs were different because of the xenobiology textbook he'd pilfered for Kix from the Jetiise the first the time that they'd been on Coruscant after they'd gotten her. Her rib cage was more cartilage than bone, sacrificing protection for flexibility- and it shielded larger lungs and a larger heart. She had multiple stomachs and no intestines. Her liver and kidneys were bigger. She had no appendix or pancreas. She also had a very different reproductive system, but Rex had only read the summary of that chapter. He barely understood human reproduction, and it wasn't like he needed to know. He'd had a lot of Talks with Ahsoka about safety and health and responsibility- but he'd gladly leave that one to Kix.

He had only really skimmed the book, though, before he passed it off to the medics. So some things came as a surprise.

Vocalizations, mostly.

The first time he'd heard Ahsoka hiss, she'd been sparring with Echo and he'd had a brief moment of panic that a pipe had burst and was releasing deadly gas into the ship before he realized where the sound was coming from. The first time she'd growled in front of him was much less dramatic. They'd been at some kind of bullshit conference on some Mid Rim shithole and someone had made a comment that, even with a vod's sharper senses, he couldn't hear, but Ahsoka had- and her previously friendly grip on his shoulder had tightened to near-pain as she growled into his ear, restraining herself from lashing out at the crowd. She did plenty of both, nowadays. Snarled too. There were plenty of opportunities for angry sounds on a battlefield.

Hearing her purr, though. That was a start. He knew that Togrutas were a highly social species, and she likely would've grown up cuddled up to her family and friends, if she wasn't a Jetii. Purring, from Rex's rather subpar understanding of it, was a way of communicating contentment and comfort but only in the presence of the people who they, well and truly, unconsciously- instinctively, even- regarded as their family.

So, when Ahsoka was asleep, pressed up against his side, and he started to feel more than hear her rumble- well that was a shock.

They'd just come off of a fight and were in hyperspace, on their way to a rendezvous point for resupply. Ahsoka was starting to crash after her adrenaline wore off. She was a bit like a baby, honestly, in the way that it was nigh impossible to get her to sleep, so it had become an unspoken rule of the 501st not to wake her unless necessary and Rex wasn't about to break it.

That's how he ended up where he was, going cross-eyed at the reports in his hands, pinned in place by a tired teenager.

Such was life.

And then she'd started to purr. 

Rex could've easily mistaken it for the trembling of a ship in take-off, if they weren't in hyperspace. And if it wasn't irregular- up and down with short breaks in between, a ship would've been steady. And-

Well. It was something.

Rex peered down at his Commander, tucked securely against his side, her head pillowed against his shoulder. She was tiny, really. It was easy to forget it, sometimes, with how eagerly she'd launch herself at droids and Seppies, her green 'saber twirling through the air. But that was just it. Ahsoka was newly fifteen, and that meant that she was just barely seven-and-a-half by vod standards, and Rex didn't know much about natborns and their development but he was pretty sure that they weren't supposed to be that small.

And they sure as the fucking Sith Hells weren't supposed to be on a battlefield. Let alone without the person supposed to protect them. He knew that much, at least. Rex didn't know a lot about natborn society- but he knew that.

...It wasn't like there was much he could do about it, though.

All he could do, for now, was hold his alverd'ika against his side and beg the ka'ra and the Force and whoever- whatever- else was willing to listen that she would survive long enough to grow up.

Rex knew that it couldn't last. Something had to break.

You couldn't just dump a child on a battlefield and expect them to thrive. You couldn't cut them off from the support that their peers got and have them come out fine on the other side. Even if there hadn't been a war- it never could've been good for her.

Something had to break. Rex had hoped that it would be the General's resolve, or Yoda's stubbornness. That General Jinn would finally accept her and the battalions would be together again- and he did miss Cody, he'd love Ahsoka and she'd love him. Either that, or Yoda would give up- and Rex might never see her again, but he could rest easy knowing that she was safe with General Plo Koon and Wolffe.

Something had to break, and it was Ahsoka.

There was a planet and a battle, and- as was customary, at this point- the 501st and the 212th were neatly divided in their duties. This time, the ground invasion was their job, and Cody and his brothers handled aerial combat. 

This would've been fine. It should've been. They'd done this hundreds of times, easily. The 501st was used to having a General only officially. Ahsoka was used to not having a Master to watch her back. 

This time, though, there was a Sith on the field.

There was not supposed to be. Whenever there were reports of Dooku or Ventress, it was the 501st who shot through the smoky sky while the 212th trudged through the mud. That was the one line that General Jinn seemed incapable of crossing.

But Intel had failed them- because there was a Sith on the field, Force-damning shit. The air was filled with kicked up dust, enough that he couldn't make out the details, but that didn't block the special kind of agonized scream a brother let out when he was cut down by a lightsaber. And, even through it, he could see the glow of a single, blood-red blade slicing through the air and brothers alike without prejudice. One 'saber. Dooku, then.

Rex didn't know which would have been worse. He'd heard that Ventress was more sadistic- but Dooku- he was cold. He didn't like to play with his food, unlike his Apprentice. If you had to face Ventress, she would make you suffer, but you might make it out alive. With Dooku, you'd never stand a chance.

The 501st had never faced a Sith before. One was never allowed within reach of Ahsoka. And, since the 501st was Ahsoka's legion, where she went, they followed.

To put it simply, they had no idea what to do and they were beyond kriffed.

During his training, it had always been assumed that if there was a Sith on the battlefield that the Jetii would handle it. But what were they supposed to do when all they had was a mostly-untrained Padawan? Sharper with the blaster Rex had taught her how to use than the green 'saber she clutched in one trembling, white-knuckled hand? What was she meant to do about a Sith?

Not just any Sith. A Master of his Order, a former Master of the Jedi Order. The leader of the Separatists.

It wasn't like they had any other choice but to retreat. They, at least, had a good place for it. The entire planet was made up of rocks and crags- so they took a cliff overlooking a veritable sea of stones jutting up high into the air like rows of teeth. That way, the droids couldn't surround them. That way, they could only approach the fleeing troops on one side. It made it easy to provide covering fire.

The transports barely even touched the ground before they were fully boarded and taking off again. Some of them didn't even get that far, vode hopping up and stepping back to make more room for the next passenger, sending down a rain of blaster bolts onto whoever tried to pursue them.

That, of course, didn't work for all of their enemies.

Rex had always been grateful for the way that Ahsoka could fend off blasts with her lightsaber. He was decidedly less grateful when a shiny died right next to him from a reflected shot that came from one of his own vode's blasters.

His Commander stiffened next to him, her pale eyes blown wide with fear as she peered down at the Sith below. Dooku was close- too close. Rex couldn't see his face, but he could see his silhouette, and with the dust he couldn't even make out the nose of the gunship. That meant that he was nearly on top of them. They had to take off now or they'd all-

Ahsoka leapt off of the transport.

"Commander!" Rex's tone was more like an order than anything else, despite the girl technically being higher in rank than him. To anyone familiar with picking out emotions from the vocoders that quashed them, there was an undercurrent of horror, so maybe he'd just forgotten himself. "Get back here, now!"

She didn't respond, like she couldn't even hear him, instead slamming her lightsaber down against the Sith's with a snarl, a shower of green and red sparks illuminating their faces in the dust. Only briefly- and then they were out of range, and Rex could barely see them at all.

That was the problem with his Commander, really. Ahsoka was reckless, especially when it came to trying to protect her troopers. This led to the current problem- she struggled in sparring matches with her peers, and she was trying to fight a Sith Lord.

Everything happened too quickly for Rex to track it, Jedi-quick. The dust in the air didn't help either. All he could see was the flash of lights moving the slightest bit to the side, then the red one pushing, and then all he could hear was Ahsoka's shriek as she fell down, down, down.

The battle ended with a Separatist retreat, thanks to the 212th, and, when the vode took the time to assess the wounded and tally the dead, Rex, armed with a lamp attached to his helmet and a jetpack, went down into the field of rocks alone.

He'd been fighting for too long, maybe that was it. Maybe Kamino had made him well aware of the fact that a clone could never have something nice for long. Either way, he knew what he'd find.

One of the columns- or was it a stalagmite? It didn't matter, not now. Rex didn't know if anything would ever matter again- was painted a shining red. There was no sign of a body, but Rex was prepared for that possibility.

There had never been any bodies for his batchmates, either. They had been incinerated- having nothing to bury didn't make them any less dead. Ahsoka was the same way. He didn't feel surprise, he didn't feel disbelief. That had always been his life, after all. Rex lost, and lost, and lost again- he never, ever got to keep someone who he loved.

That didn't stop him, though, when he finally took the cracked little lightsaber into his hand- stained in blood a brighter red than a human's- from removing his helmet and weeping.

Chapter Text

Rex clutched Ahsoka's lightsaber in one hand- cracked down the middle from the fall, it's crystal shattered and irreparable- and, with the other, he sucker-punched his General in the face. Assaulting your superior officer was definitely a decommission-worthy offense, but to be frank, Rex couldn't really bring himself to care in that moment.

General Jinn cringed back, his hand flying to his nose to stem the flow of blood that was already starting to dribble down his chin. But when he looked back down at Rex, there wasn't any condemnation. No disappointment, no anger. Not even a spark of shock. Only resignation, maybe even sorrow.

"You're angry, and you have a right to be." His General's voice was muffled by the hand over his mouth. Strained by the damage to his nose. Dampened by blood. He was talking very quietly. If it wasn't for a vod's superior hearing, Rex might have had to strain to hear him. "And I'm not going to apologize, because I don't have a right to your forgiveness."

...That... Wasn't the response that he was expecting.

General Jinn turned, putting his back to Rex and moving to leave. But he paused when he was only a few steps away.

"For what it's worth, Captain." His General's voice was barely above a whisper, and Rex really did have to strain then- "...I'm sorry for your loss, and I understand your pain."

Then his General was gone, and Rex was left standing alone in the tattered remains of a battlefield.

Distantly- he felt grief. In the forefront, he felt nothing at all. The silent insistence of youhaveajobtodo was familiar, almost comforting. Almost welcome. It was easy to let it swallow him whole.

Rex had Fritz get him a hook for Ahsoka's lightsaber. One that he could clip on his belt. It really was far, far too damaged to ever work again- more mangled metal than anything else, the crystal barely even held in place. Even if it was still operable, he'd hardly know how to use it. But... Maybe he was feeling sentimental, or something. And that definitely wasn't a good thing for a clone, but that didn't really matter to him. Not anymore.

It felt good, in some way, to keep a piece of his alverd'ika with him. Especially since they had never found the body- there would be no Jetii funeral pyre or entombment in the Temple for his Commander, oh no. Instead, she merely joined the thousands of his brothers whose corpses were left to lie where they fell, forever. Eternally reunited with the dead who they did find- burnt to nothing and strewn over Kamino.

It felt... Poetic, in a way. Towards the end, Ahsoka had started to seem more vod than Jetii: sparring with the ARCs, sitting cross-legged on a barracks cot while trading battle stories with veterans in front of starstruck shinies, cursing in Mando'a whenever something went wrong- and Rex had quite the talk with Fives about that one, for teaching her bad habits. It was only fitting that she'd die as they died. That she'd be buried as they were- which was, to say, not- and to be mourned as they were mourned, with little more than a name and memories to know her by.

At least he had what was left of her 'saber, his vode often had nothing like that. 

Still, though- Ahsoka had only been fifteen. He couldn't imagine sending someone that young to die- and she'd been younger when she first took to the battlefield. Shit, there were Padawan-Commanders younger than her still. What were the Jetiise thinking? 

...Maybe they weren't thinking, actually. Considering that they hadn't even debated pulling back their youngest from the front lines after one of them had died- they seemed perfectly content to leave their children right where they were. In the line of fire.

Damn it, Rex needed to do something else before this line of thinking became treasonous. Maybe Kix needed some medical-dodger collected?

He'd gotten a lot of practice, after all. A year of hunting down Ahsoka to haul her to the medbay- a year of climbing into vents and wriggling into maintenance shafts. He had practically become a professional at tracking her down- and he doubted that the shinies would ever be anywhere near as capable of hiding. He'd have no problem rounding them up.

It brought up uncomfortable memories- of course it did. That whatusedtobewhatoncewaswhydidithavetochange- but grief was a familiar creature, a familiar friend. A familiar weight, settling on his shoulders.

He could handle it. He was fine. He had all-but-run the 501st and minded Ahsoka for a year, he could deal with this.

Rex was the Captain of the 501st, and that meant that he was used to shit hitting the fan, and shit going down, and shit going sideways. That was the nature of their battalion. Some shinies thought they must've been cursed, somehow, for the absolute level of nonsense that they managed to get themselves into.

Things went poorly for everyone, yes. Bad things happened to all the legions, sure. But for the 501st- things went weird.

Rex didn't know how to describe it. Just. Weird. It was weird. Things were weird.

Weird in the way that things never, ever went according to plan but they still had the lowest casualty rate in the entire GAR. Weird in how, lately, things happened that he and his vode were happy to write off as Force osik- but if he took a glance at his General, he'd only see the man's aged face drawn tight in concern.

Weird in how he'd begun to dream.

He wasn't alone in that- he'd gotten dozens of reports from Kix about 501st troopers waking up still-tired, drained from their minds wandering beyond themselves. He ignored all of them.

Clones weren't meant to remember their dreams. Rex didn't pretend to understand the how of it, only that it was something that they didn't do. It was, supposedly, to prevent nightmares. That was... Fine. Probably one of the less invasive alterations that the Republic had used on their super-soldiers, really. But, when it came down to it, dreams were a defect.

Rex already had one too many defects. He could not afford to tell Kix.

...Even if they were a bit... Strange.

It probably would have been good to talk to someone about it. A year ago, he might've gone to the General. For all that he'd failed Ahsoka- for all that he might as well have been the one to kill her himself- Rex shut down that train of thought quickly.

...For all that he'd failed Ahsoka, he was a good General. A good tactician, a good leader. More than that, he was someone who his soldiers could confide in without any of the fears of reconditioning that they'd grown up with. It was the first time that he found himself able to give reports without having to speak around his pounding, near-failing heart.

But Rex couldn't bring himself to talk to him anymore. Not about anything. Whenever he had a report that the General needed to see, he did it through Cody- an in-between that Rex was continually grateful for and one that General Jinn quietly accepted. And that was about the war. Let alone something as personal as this. Every time that Rex looked at his General, all he could see was his newly acquired crooked nose- and all he could think about was if he could've hurt him worse if he'd hit him harder.

So- since he couldn't have anything end up in a medical report from Kix, and he couldn't talk to the General, and he couldn't burden any of the vode under his command with this, and Cody still was looking at him like he'd break into pieces at any moment, and Ahsoka was gone-

He dealt with the dreams alone.

The others had said that all they'd done in their dreams was wander various hallways until they woke up. Rex, uh well...

...Well his dreams started like that?

They usually went much more in the direction of-

Rex couldn't recognize where he was, now, but he could recognize Separatist architecture, in all its gun-metal grey glory. He'd opened his eyes in what must have been the docking bay- a small one, without a single ship or vulture droid to be seen.

That wasn't new. Wherever he went when he dreamed, everything was always empty.

He didn't have his armor or blasters and he wasn't in his blacks or formal grays. That wasn't new, either.

The dreams were lucid, and at least he had that going for him. He chose where his feet took him, out of the hangar and into the halls. They were narrow. If he'd had to lead an attack on this base, three vode couldn't have stood shoulder-to-shoulder. 

He checked every room, because that was procedure, even if none of this was real. He found no droids or people and any displays hung silent and dark no matter what he did to them. It was the same as before.

Eventually, he turned a corner, and paused.

There was a trail of blood on the floor, one that he'd nearly stepped in. It snaked away from his boots and down, down the rest of the way. Around a bend- and gone, disappearing into the twisted guts of the base.

He had seen this before, too.

In any other circumstances, that much blood might've made him feel dread- it would have meant that someone was hurt and hurt badly. But he knew better- it was too bright, made to carry too much oxygen, to be from one of his brothers. The only person who he'd ever seen bleed that color was Ahsoka, and she was dead.

Being dead meant that nobody could hurt her anymore. It was the one good thing to come out of it.

So- that was why he didn't feel any dread. At least that was the rational reason why. He didn't have that sort of explanation for why his heart sped up, not with fear but-

Anticipation.

Rex followed the blood trail.

It got wider as he let it lead him deeper and deeper into the belly of the Separatist base. There was more of it, until it wasn't a smudge like before, like an injured soldier limping along, but until it splattered the entire floor. Until his fine boots squelched through it rather than clicking on metal. Until it started to stretch angry, red fingers up on the walls. Until drops of it found their way to the ceiling, and until the rooms were painted a sickly orange as the lamps overhead had to filter through it. Until he could almost see his reflection in the shine of it, or, at least the way that something he wore reflected what little light came through- glittering in the slick depths.

He was struck with the idea that if he touched it, his hand could sink in. It would disappear, and then he would too- drunk down by the viscera.

Rex ignored the impulse and continued on.

He knew what he was going to see at the end, because he had dreamed of this before.

He turned the corner, when there was so much blood around him that he couldn't see even a hint of the base's gray walls, and he found himself staring straight into something that could only be described as a yawning chasm of the Sith Hells.

The walls had given way to a mass of pulsing organs. The ceiling and floor, too. Hearts fluttered in plain sight and lungs heaved. He could make out digestive tracts- intestines and stomachs and whatever else was connected to them- pulsing with whatever it was that a living hallway could possibly be digesting.

Probably people like Rex- people who felt inclined to touch the walls, and didn't have enough good sense not to.

There were wings. Feathers slick with blood, a small, hooked horn breaking off from each curved apex. Bones showed through the flesh, near the base where they should've connected to a body and instead sprouted from the walls like bristles of hair.

One was near the edge, it trembled, almost shivered. Rex froze. The dreams, they normally ended here, when he saw what laid in front of him. When he shrieked and stumbled backwards until his back hit the wall. 

He'd had enough of this not to react like that, anymore. But the dreams ended soon after, anyways.

He extended his hand to the wing and smoothed his fingers down its surface. It was hot and sticky, like he was expecting. It stilled when he touched it, pausing, then, instead of drawing him in to tear him to pieces, it relaxed, going lax and letting itself stretch down until the tips of its feathers touched a beating heart.

And then that was the end of it.

Rex, before that moment, staring at his reflection in the 'fresher mirror, had been happy to imagine that maybe he'd taken a hit on the head, or breathed in some kind of fucked up gas, or was manifesting his grief in some kind of weird, awful way.

Now, though, he could only feel hysterically grateful that his quarters had a private 'fresher as he watched bloodied water swirl around, around, around the basin of the sink before it disappeared down the drain, and all that was left was the phantom sensation of something slick on his palm.

Maybe the weirdest part of Rex's dreams, in the end, was that as horrifying as they were- he never woke up afraid.

It was after a long, hard campaign that he got the comm from Fox.

Rex had always been close with that batch of CCs- Cody, Fox, Ponds, Bly, and Wolffe. So he knew Fox well. And it was exactly the kind of thing that he'd expect from him.

Holocall when you get the chance, it's about your Jedi.

Quick, to-the-point, vague Fox.

No wonder he'd been assigned to the Guard. Those traits were no doubt in short supply and high demand, planetside. Civvies probably liked that kind of discretion, not that Rex would really know. He tried to avoid natborns when he could.

Rex was busy half-running his battalion, but that kind of message probably took precedence, didn't it? So much for trying to make a dent in his paperwork.

"What's the General done now?"

Fox was silent for a moment. He was wearing his helmet, like he did most of the time, so Rex couldn't read his expression. Not that he really could, anyway. Fox was by far the least expressive vod that he had ever known.

"...Who said we were talking about your General?"

Rex felt his heart stop. Briefly. He nearly dropped the comm before it started beating again.

"Excuse me?"

Fox sighed, audibly.

"This scavenging family came by the Guard Headquarters. You wouldn't believe who they said they found when they were digging through battle scrap."

Rex wasn't able to reply, because Rex suddenly felt like someone had taken his lungs in a vice and squeezed all the air out of him. He'd heard of Sith doing that before, on the battlefield. Choking the breath out of someone.

Fox gave up on waiting for him to respond and continued.

"...Figured you'd want to know, before the Jetiise made an official statement. Rescind the KIA ruling, and all that. Bureaucracy. Bleh."

Out of everything that he could've been thinking right then, something nudged its way to the front of Rex's brain.

"...You said they dropped her off at the Headquarters?"

"They did." Fox paused. "...We called down some Jedi to bring her back to their Temple, of course, but they dropped her off here. I would've had her comm you herself, but she's been unconscious. She only woke up about ten minutes before the Jedi Healers got here."

"Do you think-" Rex's mouth felt dry. They'd tried to keep Ahsoka's... Situation out of the public eye. That was the last thing that they needed, the last bit of trouble that they couldn't afford. It would be a mess for everyone involved, most of all Ahsoka herself, if the press caught wind of the fact that a Padawan had been dumped on a legion and left to fend for herself.

"No." Fox cut him off, picking up on his meaning. "Not that, at least. They didn't seem to be big fans of the Jedi, didn't know she was one, they said, until they saw her face on the holonews when she was declared dead. They assumed she was a fellow scrapper who'd taken a fall, tried to nurse her on their own, then wanted to wash their hands of the entire situation once they realized their mistake. Didn't want to run into any other Jedi, period, so they came to us instead."

"That's almost worse." Rex said, even if the bitterness in his gut abated a bit. "Don't know how I feel about my Commander being in the hands of people who don't like her kind."

"Well, they turned her over to us instead of spacing her, so that's a win." Fox's dry tone made Rex bark out a wet laugh. "Want to keep talking? Or need a moment to process?"

"I'd like to think for a moment." For all that he'd made the offer, it didn't seem like Fox wanted to, anyway. Rex realized what had tipped him off quickly- it was too quiet. Even in Fox's semi-private office, there remained an undercurrent of footsteps and the muffled voices of brothers. Now, it was silent. Where, exactly, was he? What had Rex's comm taken him away from? "Thanks for telling me this, Fox, you didn't have to."

"It's no problem. I know how much the pipsqueak means to you."

It was a startling tender comment from a man like Fox, and his vod seemed to realize it too, with how quickly he corrected it.

"Tell her, when you see her, that this needs to be the last and only time she's dumped at our HQ, okay? Don't let her follow your ARC's footsteps, because if anyone else joins them I'm going to have to get the 501st your own drunk tank."

There was an undercurrent of something else, there. Something urgent to do with Ahsoka being in the Headquarters in general. But Fox didn't wait for a reply to his comment or give any clarification, disconnecting the call with a fizz of static.

Rex, slowly, ever so slowly, set down his comm and put his head in his hands.

He cried again, then, in the privacy of the Resolute's General's quarters, because even after Ahsoka was gone Jinn rarely stepped foot on and never stayed on the ship. Maybe it was the guilt keeping him away, now- the shame surrounding the death of a child that he had- apparently not- caused. Had anyone even told the General? Rex was certain that Fox had messaged him of his own accord, and Kix had long-since replaced his emergency comm number on Ahsoka's medical files with Rex's. 

The angry, vindictive part of Rex told him that General Jinn didn't have a right to know. Rex told that part of him to shut the fuck up, because he had more important things to deal with.

When the anger cleared out, something else took its place. Anxiety unfurled in his guts like a living thing, like the wings in his dreams, dripping blood and extending to their greatest length when he paused to run his fingers over them.

Something. His hindbrain hissed, the most deep, instinctual part of himself, the thing that had kept the ancient ancestor of all humans alive- all natborns, at least, and by extension Rex since Prime did count. It had remained dormant and useless his entire life- sleeping through every battle and struggle to survive. It had coiled itself tight until it struck him now: Something isn't right.

When Rex dreamed, he woke up feeling comforted.

Rex had Ahsoka's lightsaber sent back to the Temple. He was informed two weeks later that it was, in fact, broken beyond repair, like he'd known. But they still didn't give it back to him. The pricks.

...Speaking of Jetiise being pricks and his alverd'ika.

They hadn't gotten any warning beforehand, probably because someone gave the heads-up to Jinn and he hadn't passed it on.

...Actually, no. If General Jinn had known, the 212th and 501st probably would have found someone, somewhere urgently in need of their help and the 104th would've just had to take their place in the blockade. And, hey, why not have her stay with them for a while-

No. Definitely not. Rex would reluctantly give his General the benefit of the doubt, here. General Yoda had probably slipped her on a regular supply ship without actually telling anybody.

Rex hadn't even been in the hangar, neck-deep in paperwork. Force, there was so much paperwork. It seemed to have quadrupled in Ahsoka's absence. His quarters weren't far from the hangar, so he could clearly hear someone scream.

Rex had already been halfway to the source when he realized that it hadn't been a noise of terror- mostly because there weren't any klaxons blaring- and holstered his blasters. That didn't stop the troopers in the hangar from being loud, though- loud enough that he couldn't tell what they were saying and he couldn't tell how many of them there were. A constant, head-aching drone of noise.

Ugh. He was not getting any work done, not with the troopers acting like a bunch of shinies drinking caf for the first time.

He didn't get a chance to yell at them, because when he got there, the crowd loosened up just enough for him to see Ahsoka successfully tackle Echo and bring him to the ground, her arms wrapped around his neck in a chokehold. He could only stand there, dumbfounded.

She didn't look like she'd taken a near-fatal plunge off of a cliff and spent months in recovery. She looked the way that she did the last time that he'd seen her spar with Echo, when she'd broken her nose and he'd gotten a black eye and they both grinned and laughed all the way to the medbay- at least until Kix had gotten ahold of them. They hadn't been laughing, then.

Something about this couldn't be right, could it?

Rex had excelled at simulations and lessons as a cadet, and now, he had plenty of field experience. He knew how much the human body could take. How different were the Jetiise that they could live through that kind of fall, even a half-trained Padawan? How different were Togrutas that one could survive something like that, even a malnourished teenager?

The rest of the 501st was celebrating, but Rex was not, because the rest of the 501st hadn't gone looking for her. They hadn't seen how far the drop was. They hadn't seen the blood.

It left a sick-feeling pit in his stomach. He should've wept- thanked the Force or whoever- whatever- else had heeded his prayers for Ahsoka's life. But...

Something about this was wrong.

Even when Ahsoka finally spotted him in the crowd, and her eyes lit up, and she wrapped her skinny arms around his neck in a hug, and he pulled her close in return, that feeling didn't go away.

In that moment Rex was certain of one thing, and one thing only:

Something wasn't right with his Commander.

"So?" Ahsoka stood in the small corner of the Resolute's training room that she'd commandeered for her Jetii things. It was outfitted only with training mats, clear of the equipment, weapon racks, and targets that the troopers used to keep in shape between battles. Nobody had the heart to move anything into the space while she was... Gone... So now it easily resumed its old purpose. "What do you think?"

With that, she activated her lightsabers- 'sabers, because she had two of them now- and they immediately lit up her smirking face. They were pale gold, the color of sparks from the droids that she cleaved in half. The color of her pupils when she was in the dark, with her Togruta night vision. The color of green and red blades clashing in the dust before-

"You look like one of those Temple guards." Fives' comment pulled him back into reality.

"Some say 'saber colors represent something about a person." Ahsoka said, twirling them in her hands, the way that he liked to do with his blasters. Had the blades always cut so close to her body, when she did that? "Nobody can really agree on what, though. Some say yellow stands for a great change- like, internally- and that's why the guards use it. 'Cause they cough up their individuality."

"What would you say they mean for you, then?"

Ahsoka shrugged and deactivated them. "I don't know if I believe in that symbolism stuff, honestly. It's just superstition, the sort of thing Crèchemasters tell kids to keep them entertained. I just know my crystals were gold when I pulled them out of Ilum."

"Huh." Fives stepped up to take a look at the hilts. Ahsoka had already shown them to Rex, earlier, so he knew what they were like. They had a bit of a curve to them and they were a matte grey color, something that wouldn't reflect any light on a quieter mission. If Ahsoka was anything, she was smart, and he had to appreciate the forethought in that. It made him feel proud.

"Can cut down twice as many clankers, now." Ahsoka said, her fanged mouth pulling into a grin.

"Can't wait to see it." Rex leaned to rub her between the montrals, the same way he might've ruffled a cadet's hair. He gave a smile at the resulting indignant shriek and allowed himself, however briefly, to calm.

He told himself that the strong grip on his wrist as she batted him away was perfectly acceptable for someone who'd spent months in recovery. He told himself that, what she bared her teeth in mock-viciousness, that her fangs looked the same as always.

After all, who was he kidding? This was Ahsoka. There was nothing wrong with her. Maybe he'd just finally cracked- that would've explained the dreams, at least.

The dreams stopped, around then.

He could forget about it, over time. The unease. 

Ahsoka was okay, and that was all that mattered, right?

It was almost like nothing had even happened, because nothing changed. The planets continued their orbits, his General continued to ignore his Commander, Ahsoka continued to terrorize poor, innocent shinies by dropping down onto their heads from the vents.

They were deep in hyperspace when he was first forced to confront the fact that Ahsoka had changed. That something was wrong.

Ahsoka was awake when the rest of the ship wasn't, because she was most of the time these days, more than before- after all, the vode couldn't remember their night terrors, but their Jetiise sure could- and Rex was too, because he'd been up trying to sort out some kind of inane conflict between the shinies that he still didn't fully understand, and now it was too late to bother.

Ahsoka sat at his side in an empty mess hall, her pupils wide and reflecting the dim light from the reduced lamps overhead. They didn't eat or even do much talking, just happy to clean their weapons in silence- Rex, his blasters, and Ahsoka, her new 'sabers.

"What do you think you'll do? After the war I mean."

Rex was torn from his line of thinking by Ahsoka finally starting a conversation, his hands stilling on his blasters. And, well... How could he answer that? 

He set the cleaning rag down.

"Ahsoka... I don't know. I don't know if I'll live to see it."

"You're one of the best fighters in the GAR, Rex. I'm sure you'll last that long." Ahsoka's lightsabers were already clean. If they hadn't been dulled, they would’ve reflected almost as much light as her eyes, but she kept wiping and rubbing at them.

"That's... Not what I meant."

"What do you mean, then?" She looked up at him then, her massive, curious eyes wide.

"Ahsoka, there isn't a place for my brothers and I outside of the war." His mouth went dry, and he had to swallow and look away before he could continue. "We'll probably be sent back to Kamino, or we'll be- well, decommissioned. For de-militarization."

This was something that Rex had always been aware of. Something that he'd never needed to come to terms with, because it was an inherent fact of his life.

...He really hadn't wanted to have this conversation with Ahsoka, though. Ever. He had, delusionally and selfishly, hoped that either the war would never end, or he'd die before he ever had to tell her.

Ahsoka didn't say anything in reply for a moment, and then a second, and them several. When he looked back, she looked like-

She looked like a different person, her pupils contracted to slits despite the low light until she only had two thin lines bisecting her eyes. She was an expressive kid- especially for a Jetii- but now? It wasn't exactly the serene disinterest of a proper Master of the Order. She looked cold, and stiff, like a statue made of ice. Her hands had frozen over her lightsabers, and, as he watched, they slowly curled around them until she was clutching them white-knuckled.

"I won't let that happen, Rex." When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet and without the casual tone that it had before.

"Sir- Ahsoka." Rex reached forwards and put his hand on her elbow. She didn't react. An ice statue, indeed. "You're just one Padawan, I doubt you can get the entirety of the Republic to listen to you."

Force- it seemed the Republic hardly listened to the Chancellor. On the increasingly rare occasion that Rex saw Fox, that was a common complaint. Rex didn't have the stomach for politics, and even less of one for galactic leaders, so he wasn't entirely certain of what was going on there, only that Fox agreed with Chancellor Amidala often, and, seemingly, other politicians never did.

Some kid like Ahsoka? The Republic liked the Order less and less every day, and she was a child. Rex adored her, but she'd never be able to convince them of anything.

"I'm not going to allow that to happen." She repeated herself. Rex was- uncomfortably aware, then, of her fangs. He'd never really paid them any mind before- willfully, lately- But now, in some kind of trick of the light, they seemed... Longer, sharper, like there were more of them. Less like the near-human mouths of General Ti and all the other Togrutas he'd met- an admittedly short list- and more like the massiffs that the Guard used to track terrorists and bounty hunters through the underbelly of Coruscant.

A trick of the light, that was all it could be. A trick of the light on his stubborn, naive alverd'ika. So, what? Alright, she had changed. Alright, there was something wrong, but... Mentally, or... Emotionally. Ahsoka had certainly developed a temper, a bit of denial and a vague threat of potential violence would fit in well with that. And... Ahsoka was still Ahsoka. He'd always care about her, even if he couldn't get her to face reality.

"Whatever you say, Commander." Rex turned back to his blasters. Ahsoka didn't say anything, then- and after a moment she got up and left, abandoning Rex to his thoughts.

They were explicitly told to stay away from Mandalore.

In the twenty-odd years since the end of their civil war, they'd nearly returned to the height of their power. The only difference was that, now, they were reclusive. Instead of invading other sectors, they were happy to build up the most deadly army in the galaxy and sit on it.

Or, they were for now. Which was why they were supposed to avoid potentially provoking them, at all costs.

Unfortunately, they'd taken a harsh beating in the Outer Rim, and his General was not known for always having the best and brightest ideas. So, instead of waiting for help from whatever legion was nearby and available, he decided that the best place to make repairs was none other than the Mandalorian sector.

Was he watching history in the making? The inciting incident to a powerful empire joining the Separatist cause and grinding the Republic to dust? Perhaps.

...Okay, probably. They weren't dead, yet, though. That had to count for something.

The woman who was yelling at them now, though, well- she was pissed. She didn't seem to mind that General Jinn was noticeably taller than her, in fact, she seemed to be completely unaware of it. She yelled at him until her face was almost as red as her hair, clutching her bright blue helmet under her arm. He didn't pity Cody, standing awkwardly off to the General's side.

Rex could only stare from a wary, semi-safe distance. Beside him, Ahsoka was dead-still, also suitably nervous. If this had been an ordinary battlefield or a venator, he'd have soothed her. He could've tucked her under his arm, or squeezed her shoulder, or whispered quiet words of encouragement. That wasn't an option, here. Not in front of so many outsiders. For now, Ahsoka standing with the 501st looked like a Master trying to keep her out of the verbal line of fire. It was better if things stayed that way.

He was still looking at his alverd'ika when she grew stiffer, a feat that was nearly impossible. Her spine turned into a thing of durasteel while her eyes snapped to something over Rex's shoulder- it completed absorbed her attention, like the potential onset of a war happening in front of them was nothing of note.

Her face was cold. Like that night on the Resolute that he tried not to think about. It made ice go down his back. It made his throat seize. When he turned to look and see whatever it was that had captured his Commander's ire, he didn't feel any better.

There was another Mandalorian in the hangar, one that hadn't been there before. She was tall and dressed in armor and a flight suit so black that it made her look less like a normal person and more like a vaguely-human-shaped hole punched into the hull of a ship. She hadn't removed her helmet. It was only because of the way that the visor reflected light and the matte paint didn't that he could tell that she was looking right at him.

Or- rather. Right past him.

He swallowed.

Rex took a step to put more of himself between the newcomer and Ahsoka. Just a little bit.

"Bo-Katan." The stranger looked away- the cool glint of her visor angling towards the quarreling Generals. "What have I told you about threatening guests?"

Her voice was strange- it had a way of carrying, of echoing in the large military hangar despite the number of people in it. But it seemed quiet. And she spoke in a way that Rex had never heard anyone talk like before- each word measured like scoops of rations and carefully dispensed. Slowly and deliberately, but without pause.

At once, mid-insult, the angry woman in blue armor- Bo-Katan, then- stopped talking and turned on her heel to face the newcomer. When the stranger didn't speak again, Rex could see the Mandalorian General's jaw flex.

"I'm sorry if I have been aggressive." She grated out after a moment. "I don't take well to foreign armies landing on our planet."

"Guests, Bo-Katan." The woman in black tilted her helmet to the side, eyeing the 212th troopers with the General. "They may remain for now, until they've made repairs to their ships. As requested."

Up until then, with all the insults, and jabs, and... Language he'd rather not have Ahsoka pick up... He'd gotten the impression that Bo-Katan was a stubborn, ornery person. Not the type to budge on anything, ever.

This was not the case with the newcomer.

"...I'll see to it that we have someone come down and look at the ships." Bo-Katan said, and, with what was likely more of an excuse than anything else, the woman slid her helmet back on her head and made her escape from the hangar.

"I apologize for my sister's behavior." The stranger said, turning to General Jinn. Huh. That made some... Vague fraction of sense. Even Rex's most bad-tempered brothers came into line when Kix was involved. Family was like that. Someone could threaten and jab and fight all they wanted, there was always some vod or another who they were willing to come down for.

"Thank you... For your hospitality." The General said, slowly.

Rex was observant in the way that only someone who'd been designed that way could be. Rex was attuned to his Jetiise in the way that only someone made to serve under them could be. If he wasn't, then he probably wouldn't have noticed the way that the General's eyes hovered a fraction of a moment longer on the stranger's waist as he looked her up at down- assessing her. The way that his words were colored just a bit more unnerved than uncertain. Jetiise were subtle like that.

...At least Jedi that weren't Ahsoka were subtle like that. Rex didn't know if she knew the meaning of the word subtle.

It took Rex a moment to catch it. With them being halfway across a truly massive hanger- bigger than anything that the Republic had to offer, that was certain- so it was hard to see. There was a glitter of metal on the stranger's belt that was lighter and shinier than her armor. One that wasn't shaped like a blaster. A weapon that Rex had become very well acquainted with over the past year and a half.

"I'm Mand'alor Kryze." The woman said, thoughtlessly pressing a hand to the hilt of her lightsaber, as if she was checking that it was still there, before dropping her arm loose to her side once more. "It's my pleasure to welcome you to our home. We haven't had visitors like you in a... Very long time."

The Mandalorians, for isolationists, made for shockingly excellent hosts.

Rex was familiar with hospitality. Particularly, that of grateful citizens. As one of the COs of a legion, he had more experience than the average trooper. So he probably had a better metric than most of his vode.

On one end of the spectrum, there had been the city that had all-but-forcefully made the legion participate in their harvest festival after they'd fended off would-be Seppie invaders. That ended with Rex having to extradite Fives from a small army of very eager children who'd laid so many flower garlands over him that he could hardly move. On the other end, there was the time that they'd had to deal with nobles that had nothing but disdain for Rex's vode and outright disgust for a non-human teenage girl who they thought had ideas above her station. That ended with Rex having to extradite Ahsoka's teeth from someone's arm. Most of them, though, were somewhere in between, and tended to end with the troopers of the 501st passing around whatever vegetables and grains had found their way to their alverd'ika's plate so they could get a taste of real food.

This was nothing like that.

Rex didn't think anyone had treated him with this much respect in his life.

...Okay, maybe that was a low bar.

He watched from a safe distance as his vode mingled with Mandalorians, trading drinks and war stories around fire pits with their helmets between their knees- laughing and drunk, the lot of them. Barring Ahsoka, who, thankfully, his brothers were in agreement with him was too young to drink. She sat between Fives and Echo, gesturing as she said something to her captive audience.

"You must be incredibly proud of her." Someone said over his shoulder, quiet and muffled by a vocoder, unlike the rest of the Mandalorians.

That voice- slow, steady, strange.

He turned.

In the darkness of night, her armor seemed to disappear into thin air, besides the metallic shine of her lightsaber and the small, grey diamond painted onto her chest that he could only see now, close up.

Firelight reflected off of the Mand'alor's visor, pointing her gaze firmly not at Rex, but at the group closest to the center, where Mandalorian ori'ramikade brushed knees with clone ARCs and their Commander.

"I'm sorry?" Rex managed to get out, once he realized he'd been silent for too long.

"Your Commander. The Padawan." The Mand'alor paused. By the fire, Ahsoka gave a flourish that probably indicated more of a blaster than a lightsaber. Rex cringed. "I'm not a fool, Captain."

"I am... proud of her." Rex said.

"You have a right to be." The Mand'alor paused again. This time, she was silent for a while. Long enough for it to become incredibly uncomfortable. "I am... Grateful to have been able to catch a clone Commanding Officer alone."

"Mand'alor?" Well, that sure was a normal comment to make. Rex itched for his blaster pistols, but he had a feeling that drawing a weapon on a galactic leader was a bad idea.

"If you and your brothers find need of it-" The Mand'alor started- Kryze? Wasn't her name Kryze? "-they will find... Further hospitality here. We are not known to be particular friends of the Separatist Alliance... Nor the Republic."

That... Definitely wasn't what Rex was expecting her to say. Kryze seemed to be doing a lot of that- not doing what he thought she would.

The offer was thinly veiled enough to be obvious. One that oozed treasondeserterbadsoldier in the back of his mind. Rex pushed that down.

"Mand'alor, er, sir? I don't..." 

She said nothing for a moment. "I don't rescind it."

"That- thank you. I can't-"

"I don't need repayment, Captain." The Mand'alor was turning away again, stepping back into the shadows that she'd crawled out of. "It's only common decency, and if we are the only ones willing to extend it, then so be it."

Like she hadn't been there in the first place, like Rex had imagined the conversation, she was gone.

Everything came crashing down only two months after they left Mandalore.

As things tended to do when everything was exploding around them.

It happened way too many times for Rex's liking.

Smoke choked the sky, making him grateful for his helmet- he could hear Ahsoka let out the occasional wheezing cough- and the air itself seemed unbearably hot, like it was trying to steam them all alive. Fire lapped at the edges of the battlefield, feeding on the brush and fuel and the dead alike.

All in all, a normal Taungsday, for the 501st. 

Rex couldn't see much of anything, even with his helmet's lamp, which... Well it was a bit too much like a certain dusty rock planet, for his liking. Making sure to stick near Ahsoka- her golden blades the only thing that he could clearly make out in the dark and the smoke- helped to make his stomach feel a bit less sour.

It was only because he was so close to her that he saw what happened.

The fire had spread to a nearby, empty tank. In the haze, he couldn't even tell if it was Seppie or one of theirs. At some point, its motors or wheels had been disabled, making its occupants join the fray on foot.

As it turned out, giant vehicles and fire were not a good combination.

Ahsoka must have realized that something was wrong first.

His alverd'ika suddenly snapped upright, her 'sabers lowering. It was too dark, too smoky to see her face. But he could hear the terror in her voice all the same.

"Rex!" 

Rex didn't have much experience with how the Force felt. He'd only ever had the one brush with a Sith, and Ahsoka didn't use it often, much less so on her troopers. So he was entirely unprepared for how easily she was able to throw him backwards and out of the blast range. He was left scrambling to keep his footing in the mud, staring at the glow of golden lightsabers in the smoke and the way that one extended forwards from the hand still stretched out towards him.

A calm before the storm.

And then it broke.

The tank exploded in a ball of fire, one that Ahsoka wasn't completely out of range of, and the only reason that it hadn't swallowed her whole was because the blast had already sent her flying. The actual boom of the explosion was a brief sound, loud but short, and because of that he could hear perfectly well when Ahsoka's body struck a rock with a sickening crack!

He was at her side before he even realized that he'd moved, hands shaking.

Her right side, the one that had struck the stone- was mangled. Her arm seemed to have two too many joints and her leg wasn't much better off, her ribcage half caved-in. He couldn't even bear to look at the other side, the way that burns wrapped around her torso and neck and swallowed up a whole chunk of her face- eye and all- was enough.

Could the Force, or the Ka'ra, or whatever other powers that be really be that cruel? Cruel enough to deliver his vod'ika back from certain death only to kill her so terribly, in front of him?

Rex knew better than to mourn or grieve or curse fate on a battlefield- there was a time and place for that, and this wasn't one of them. He was better than that. He was a good soldier. He really was. His Commander had died for him, and he wouldn't squander her sacrifice by throwing his life away like an idiot. So, instead of screaming or weeping like he wanted to do, he activated his comm and lifted it to request a corpse evac.

"̵̲͆ ̴̩̐D̷̝̊ ̷̱̚Do̷̺̍ ̶̎͜on̶͍͐t ̶̪͝'̶̻̚ ̸͉̚ṭ̷̃ ̶̠̊.̷̻̅ ̶̍͜"̸͔̿

Five skeletal fingers- all bone and a bit of tendon and muscle, the skin burnt away- seized his wrist and pulled it down, silencing the comm. He tugged and she didn't let go. He didn't think he could have broken free if he tried. The grip was stronger than any cuffs he'd ever worn.

"̸̼̚ ̴̥̊NǸ̸̹o ̸̳̇o̷͇͒ ̷̱͌.̴̰̎ ̵̳̃"̸̖͒

Ahsoka- that couldn't be his Ahsoka, there was no way. No mortal being's chest should still be heaving, struggling to take in air when half of it was crushed, no person should be able to stare up at him, unwavering, with one focused, blue eye. And her voice- grinding, crackling, making his ears ring and his molars hurt- filling his head with cotton and blurring his vision.

"Please don't." She rasped, her voice much closer to what he was used to, but still nowhere near, because now she sounded too small, and quiet, and impossibly scared in a way that Ahsoka never was.

"Don't call anyone, Rex. You can't." She didn't let go. Rex thought he could hear his plastoid creak. "They can't- they can't see this."

"See what?" He didn't know why he asked.

He didn't think he wanted to know.

The-Ahsoka-that-was-not-his-Ahsoka let out a hysterical, hoarse little laugh.

"I-I don't know what's happened to me, Rex. I don't know why I'm like this." She sounded weak, but not physically, despite her wounds. Her voice trembled and maybe, just maybe there was a tear in the eye that she still had. "But- but I know what it's done to me."

She loosened her grip on his wrist, then let go and wrapped her burnt arm around her stomach with a grimace. She took a few panting breaths. He could see blood on her tongue and in the back of her mouth- internal bleeding, surely- but she showed no sign of wooziness as she looked him in the eyes.

"Rex." There was fear, there. Real, desperate fear. "...Rex, I don't think I can die."

Chapter Text

Rex could only stare at the bloody, limp not-a-corpse in front of him.

Ahsoka- if it even was, still, Ahsoka- made a faintly strangled noise.

"Rex..." She tried to speak, then had to take a break to make a series of wheezing, choking noises into the dirt. Rex found his hand settling on her upper back before he could think. It was instinct. Muscle memory. It wasn't until he felt the heat- the radiating fire of her burns cutting through his glove- that he'd realized what he'd done. With one particularly awful cough, something bloody slipped out of her throat and splattered onto the ground. 

He tried not to look twice at it.

"Hurts pretty bad, Rex." Her good eye squeezed shut.

"...I'd imagine it would." He tried to inject sarcasm into his words, an attempt at humor, trying to break this awful, awful nightmare into something more recognizable.

He thought about that morning, of Ahsoka and Hardcase getting into a tussle over which ration flavor was the best, and wondered how he possibly could have gotten here.

She gave him a humorless laugh anyway. One that must have hurt. Her fangs, stained with her own blood, flashed orange-ish in her mouth.

Any moment now- any moment, and he'd wake up.

"I'm scared, Rex." She admitted. "Jedi aren't supposed to be scared, but I'm so scared. I don't know what's happening to me. I don't understand it. I've never- I've never even heard of something like this before. I've been ruined so badly and I don't even know why. And I don't remember what happened after Dooku pushed me off that cliff, too, but I know something did and I'm so, so scared of... Of all this. Of what it's made me into, what I don't remember, what might happen, what I might do."

His mouth felt dry. It felt like when he'd been on Tatooine, briefly, and accidentally taken in a mouthful of sand.

This was all a bad dream. Another one of his strange, blood-soaked nightmares.

Wasn't it?

"I think I'd be awfully scared in your position too, Commander."

Ahsoka made a chest-deep whining noise. It wasn't a sound he was familiar with, in all the research he'd tried to do of Togruta vocalizations. "...Gotta make it worth it though, don't I?"

"Excuse me?"

Ahsoka tried to reply, but couldn't, as she doubled over with another hissed whine. With a crunch, the broken side of her ribcage snapped back into place, like someone had pushed it back out from the inside.

She sat there, half slumped and half coiled, panting, for a minute before she could answer him.

"Worth it."

Rex flinched, or maybe froze, his arm drawing back.

His glove was soaked with blood. He'd touched the side that had been burned, not the one that had been crushed- but it was bloody. With all the smoke and the long, jagged shadows, it was hard to see- but he could just barely make it out. Cauterized wounds had opened up and begun weeping bright, shining ichor.

"Gotta make it worth it cause if I can't die- Rex if I can't die I can keep you safe. Keep you all safe." Her voice was so, so quiet that he didn't know how he could hear her. It was a whisper above the sounds of crackling fire and blasters in the distance. "The Seppies, the Sith, the Senate- I can stop all of them, if I really try. Doesn't matter how scared I am, if I can do it, that makes it worth it. Doesn't it?"

Her eye opened, no longer focused like when she'd grabbed his arm, but faintly foggy.

"I promised you something, Rex. I did." She had to grit her teeth to get the words out- as they both watched when, once by one, each twisted break in her arm snapped back into place. "I'm not just a Padawan, not anymore. I can- I can do it. I just have to- have to be strong enough to do what I gotta do."

Rex slowly, like he was comforting a wounded animal, returned his hand to her back and rubbed his thumb in soothing circles. She'd always liked that, before, whenever she'd have a panic attack or a nightmare, it always helped to calm her down.

Force, what was he doing? This was definitely, without a doubt, something that he was supposed to report.

...But who would he even report it to? Rex didn't even have the General's comm number. It was just saved onto the holos in the conference room, like every other CO that didn't lead the 501st. And what would they do, then? What would happen to Ahsoka, after he'd begged the universe to keep her alive? Wasn't it, really, just doing as he'd asked in the most twisted, wretched way possible?

Had his prayers been answered? Had- had whatever listened given up on keeping her safe, knowing that her circumstances would make it impossible, but instead made sure it well, and truly, didn't matter?

It only occurred to him, then, that Ahsoka was looking at him with one woozy, expectant eye. Waiting for a reaction.

"And what would you have to do?"

"Dunno." She shuddered. "Don't like to think about it, but I'll do it, when it comes."

There was silence between them. Or, at least as silent as they could get on a battlefield.

In the end, Ahsoka was back on her feet for the final charge, and Rex never breathed a word of what he saw.

"Hey, Captain, what happened to your vambrace?"

Rex was stopped in the halls by, of all people, Fritz.

...Or maybe that shouldn't be too surprising. There was a reason why he was their quartermaster, and that was because the bastard was almost preternaturally attuned to the status of everyone else's gear.

"What about it?" Rex peered down at his own arm, eyes narrowed. It was hard to see what he was talking about, since he had just stepped back onto the Resolute and his armor was still covered in a thick layer of battle grime, but there it was.

Running diagonally across his forearm, there was a set of four evenly spaced, parallel cuts in his armor. They were shallow, very shallow, but still deep enough that they'd been able to score through the paint and scratch small indents into the plastoid beneath.

"I, uh- ...I have no idea, actually."

It was a good thing that Rex was a good liar. He'd had a lot of practice, trying to keep the media and Seppies from sticking their noses into 501st business. Into where they didn't belong.

"Could I see?" It would be suspicious for Rex to turn down his quartermaster- downright strange- he had no reason to after all. Or at least he shouldn't. So all he could do was nod and tug off the vambrace. Fritz took it from him and peered down at it, smoothing a gloved thumb over the damage. "...Seems only superficial. Cosmetic. Probably no real structural damage."

"That's... good." When Fritz handed it back to him, Rex clutched at it so hard that it hurt where the edges dug into his gloved hand.

The dried blood- Ahsoka's blood- that had soaked into it had dried, pasting it onto his skin.

"Funny looking marks, though." Fritz continued, oblivious to Rex's discomfort. He was glad for his helmet, because he was fairly certain that it was showing on his face. "Looks almost like... I dunno, talons, or something. Thought there was no fauna on that planet?"

"Yeah, none." Rex slid the vambrace back on, mindlessly rubbing at the scratches. "Must've just gotten cut weird, or something."

Fritz shrugged. "I guess. As much trouble we get into, I'm sure at least some member of our legion was bound to get dinged up funny eventually. Like, statistically speaking." 

"Of course, statistically."

Fritz hummed, his brow furrowed in thought. It took him a bit to remember that Rex was still standing in front of him. That was another reason why Fritz was quartermaster. Ever since an accidental head injury in his final test on Kamino, he had the tendency to zone out, and that would've gotten him killed on the field.

Rex hoped that it would make him forget this conversation.

"Well, back to whatever it was you were doing, Captain. I believe we both have a lot of work to do." Fritz tipped an imaginary helmet at him- his was probably in his workshop, he loved to tinker with the damn thing- and sauntered off.

"Of course, I hope I won't be needing your help again soon!"

"I hope so too, Captain!" Fritz shouted back over his shoulder, and Rex must've imagined the way that the man looked a bit concerned.

The problem was, Rex was a good liar- to outsiders too interested in the personal business of the 501st and its COs. His brothers knew him better. And Fritz did not forget.

"Hey."

Ahsoka was sitting alone, wiping down her 'sabers. She had tucked herself into what must have been one of the Resolute's smallest nooks and crannies. When Rex squeezed in with her, it became immediately cramped.

She wouldn't meet his eyes.

"...Hi." 

Rex examined her face for a moment: the way that her montrals curved higher and longer than when they'd met, how the patterns on her face had extended, how she'd lost the soft baby chub around her cheeks.

His wish had been granted, he supposed. She really did live long enough for him to see her grow up.

"So." Rex shifted his weight awkwardly. He'd only been here for a few seconds and he could already feel his legs cramp up as they were forced into a position that was impossible to maintain- not that they had anywhere else to go, as their knees were already brushing. "How are you doing?"

Ahsoka's eyes flicked up to him. Both of them bright and wide and anxious blue. There wasn't even a scar.

"Fine, I guess." She let her lightsabers fall into her lap. "You?"

He didn't lie.

"A bit lonely." He admitted. "I missed hanging out with you."

She looked away from him again, becoming very fixated on one of the pipes in the corner. Rex could feel one just like it digging into his back. Force, how had she even found this spot?

"...I could never really be mad at you, I guess." Rex said, quietly. Enough that any human, natborn or vod, couldn't have heard him, even if they were right beside him. Ahsoka could, with her sensitive Togruta hearing. "I was mad, I guess. But not at you. Just... Angry."

"I don't think I could be either." She had to speak louder than he was, for his benefit. "Mad at you. I mean."

"I guess we're on the same page, then."

They didn't speak for a moment. Rex's back ached from the pipes digging into him and he felt a muscle twitch in his leg. The usual din of a ship's bowels was the only sound, louder than even their breathing.

"You're my favorite person in the galaxy, you know that, right?" Ahsoka leaned forwards until her forehead touched his shoulder. He could feel her whisper into his armor as much as he could hear it.

He wrapped his arms around her. Like he had so many times before. Like he had when she'd come back from her fall. Like he had when she was newly his Commander and had awful, terrible night terrors.

He hadn't done that in a while, he realized. It wasn't even just because of the yawning distance that had formed between them- he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her sleep, at all. And maybe he was the fool for not noticing that, because they both knew she wasn't trained enough to release exhaustion into the Force. And that night in the mess too- because sitting here now, in a place just as dark, he remembered that Togrutas were not a slit-eyed species, but she'd looked at him with quiet, righteous anger and needle pupils all the same. He'd gotten distracted by the struggle of a conversation that he'd never wanted to have, and he hadn't noticed the failure in her biology.

He pressed his hand into her back, into a mirror of where her rib cage had been crunched in. 

Even with all that blood, and the terrible sounds of her bones snapping back into place, and the unnatural strength that had bound him- she was still his responsibility, wasn't she? For all her quirks.

"Well, you're my favorite monstrosity." He felt her laugh into his shoulder, and he felt her chest shaking with it under his hands, and he let himself laugh too.

Maybe, just maybe, things could be okay, again.

"I got you something." 

Ahsoka had her hands folded behind her back, her face pulled into a characteristic cheeky smile. She looked like trouble. Rex was getting too old for her brand of trouble, too fast.

"What is it?"

Ahsoka's grin widened, if that was even possible, and she shoved whatever it was into his hands. He looked down to see... Well, he didn't know what he was expecting to see, but it certainly wasn't anything as innocuous as a tin of mints. They weren't even new. They weren't even like-new- the paint had peeled away from one of the corners.

"Open it." Ahsoka was bouncing on her heels. There was a bit more of the overexcited alverd'ika he knew so well. He hadn't noticed, before, but she'd been so withdrawn after she'd fought Dooku. It seemed that she'd started to properly come back to herself. Rex couldn't even imagine denying her.

Inside, there weren't any mints or hard candies like he was expecting. Instead, there was a tiny stack of cut paper fastened loosely to the top half of the tin and a very small paint palette that had been fused into the bottom, complete with a sponge beside it and a tiny brush that rolled loosely about. 

"What?" Rex picked up the brush. It was just big enough that it had to be set down diagonally in the tin and couldn't fit any other way, but it still felt comically small in his hands.

"They're watercolors." Ahsoka explained, bounding forwards to point at them. She rambled, like a child. "I noticed how much you like customizing your armor or scratching stuff in dirt and I wanted to get you something and I saw this and figured it'd be easier to keep around than anything bigger."

Rex bit his lip, looking down at the tiny tin in his hands. It seemed almost fragile, like he was cradling an egg in his hands. He gingerly set the brush back and closed it.

"...I don't know what to say."

"Then don't." Ahsoka clapped him on the shoulder, like he was a shiny and he wasn't nearly a head taller than her. "Happy belated Life Day."

Rex should've refused. He was fairly certain that there were no protocols for a situation like this, because the Kaminoans had never thought of it, but he was also fairly certain that they didn't want him accepting gifts.

But his alverd'ika was grinning at him, fangs and all, and- well. It was hardly like the 501st had much oversight, anyway.

As it turned out, Ahsoka being immortal did not take the edge out of the terror he felt when she was in danger.

There were worse things than death. He knew that. She could be captured, or maimed in a way that she couldn't bounce back from, or she could not-die in front of another Jedi and then they'd find out.

This time, thankfully, it was nothing like that. She'd just taken a bit of a tumble, and was...

Well, she was unconscious. Which Rex took to mean was bad, because she hadn't even passed out in the explosion a while back. 

Still. Sitting by his Commander's bedside was something he'd gotten familiar with, in the time before she'd changed. He hadn't had to do it after, at all, but it wasn't something difficult to go back to. Especially since he didn't have to worry about her survival.

Ahsoka's chest rose and fell with the aid of a ventilator, the mask over her mouth and nose being one that Kix had to specially order to fit her smaller face, although that unfortunately didn't stop it from seeing just as much use as the clone-issue. She really was trouble.

Rex took the opportunity to get some paperwork done. Bleh. Paperwork. He hated the stuff. And with Ahsoka down for the count, he had to carry her load of it, too. At least he had something to occupy himself with while waiting for her to wake up. Not enough, as it turned out, as he quickly found his eyelids drooping and his holopad slipping from his hands.

When Rex opened his eyes again, he wasn't in the Resolute's medbay. He was in its hangar, and he was alone.

He rubbed at the back of his neck, even though he didn't feel any of the characteristic stiffness of falling asleep in a medbay chair. What he did find, though, was that his fingertips ran over his bare skin, not the soft fabric of his blacks.

Oh, it was one of these again.

...He'd never dreamed of being in a Republic ship before, though.

At least he knew his way around, even if his only company was the ringing of his heels against the floor- and why was it that he always dreamed of those ridiculous fancy boots, anyway- he didn't have have to wander aimlessly.

The mess hall was exactly how he'd expected it- a ghost town, despite the fact that, in the waking world, it never would've been empty. So was the brig, without the prisoner that Ahsoka had gotten tossed off of a bridge to capture. So was the public 'fresher, where he stopped to peer at his reflection.

He hadn't actually had the chance to see what he looked like, whenever this happened. Before, he'd only been in Seppie ships or prisons, and Force if he knew where they kept their mirrors.

He was dressed in all grey, but not the same shade as a vod's formal uniform- this was a touch warmer, and just a bit darker. It was a simple getup, spacer's clothes, but a bit fancier, maybe. The kind of thing a Captain of a small ship might wear. Any practicality it might've had, though, was massively off-set by the fact that his dream-world had seen fit to line it with sparkling golden embroidery. It was ridiculous.

For fuck's sake. If this was a lucid dream, why couldn't he decide what he wore, anyway? After he was finished tugging at the sleeves and fidgeting with the pinned collar, he left the 'fresher and continued on.

His quarters were empty, too. And so were Ahsoka's, except for the dirty laundry that he was absolutely certain he'd told her to take care of days ago. Gross.

He'd been on his way to check the medbay, anyway, when he came across the trail of blood. It was inevitable, really. He knew how these dreams went. But... Maybe it was a whim, or maybe the sickly feeling of something wrong in his gut tugging him forwards, but he found himself staring straight ahead, consciously ignoring it, walking towards the medbay on his own.

He felt his heart pound when the blood started to trail up to the walls anyway.

By the time he reached the doors to the medbay, he already knew what was lying ahead of him. It wasn't just the way that the entire hall had been painted in glossy, sticky red. He could feel it, almost. There was some sort of strange tension in the air, like static, that made his hair stand on end.

The door slid open, unimpeded by the blood that should've gunked up its mechanisms. But, then again, this was a dream. Things weren't always realistic.

The cot that Ahsoka was inhabiting in the waking world was covered in a mass of trembling, bloody wings. Each one snapped open and shut, or flexed, or simply stayed coiled close around whatever soft, delicate center it was trying to protect. This was more contained that he'd seen before. Before, entire rooms and hallways had been easily consumed by oozing organs and entrails. Now, it only took up a cot and the space immediately around it.

The wings, though. They trembled with what might have been fear, the same way they had before he'd touched one for the first time. Maybe with discomfort too, or even pain, from how they were drawn up tight like bowstrings, until they beat against each other and vied for space.

"Hello?" He stepped into the room as he spoke and, at once, the wings all went still.

"Hello?"

As soon as he'd repeated himself, the ground buckled from underneath him. It tipped, tilted, then disappeared, leaving him in a free fall. 

Rex had fallen from plenty of things before. Obstacle courses as a cadet, down the spinning hallways of a damaged ship, off of a cliff. The fall had never been serious, and if it was, there had always someone there to catch him. Either a brother with a jet pack, or Ahsoka with her brows drawn tight with focus and and an extended hand. Rex had fallen from plenty of places, but he'd never really hit the ground.

One moment, he was hurtling through darkness so black that he couldn't even see his hands in front of him, like space without the stars, and the next he came to a sudden, jarring halt.

He panted, one hand clutching at the armor on his chest. There was light coming in through his eyelids, and he could hear the quiet beeping of medical equipment.

"Alright, over there, Captain?"

Rex cracked open one eye. Kix was staring at him. The rest of the medbay was silent, patients asleep or sedated, medics already retired to their bunks. Kix was the only one left up- hovering over Ahsoka's cot.

"Fine." It took effort to get the word out, with how dry his throat felt.

"If you say so." Kix looked back down at his patient, and Rex followed after a moment. Ahsoka still wasn't quite sleeping- only knocked unconscious, but she didn't look peaceful. Her brow was creased, her fingers clenched into the cot until her little, vestigial claws were able to carve runs into the fabric. 

It took him a moment to realize what Kix was staring so, so silently at.

Ahsoka wasn't his only patient, after all. And her status had been deemed stable enough to prioritize the worse injured. Now, hovering over her limp body, Rex watched as Kix's eyes flickered between her arms where cuts and burns had been, to the unopened packages of bacta gel and bandages on the table beside her. The skin was unbroken, only a few smudges of blood and grit remaining. The only wounds a few faint, reddish bruises.

"Kix?"

Kix's eyes snapped up at him. Then he looked away, looking at nothing.

"Let's... Pretend neither of us saw this." Kix's voice was quiet, barely even a whisper, as he glanced nervously at the slumbering bodies in the cots around them.

"...Agreed."

Kix slowly picked up the bacta gel and the roll of bandages, cradling them like he was afraid for someone to see them, then left for the storage room, disappearing into the second door in the medbay, the one that didn't lead into the hall. 

Rex looked back down at the cot.

Ahsoka hadn't calmed, looking still tense. He slowly placed a hand on the curve of one of her montrals, rubbing it up and down. After all this time, the feeling of tough, leathery skin stretched tight over something hard and hollow wasn't strange anymore. It was just... Ahsoka. His alverd'ika- the same as her fangs and the patterns on her face and the little claws on her fingers. The, uh- the other stuff would take some getting use to, though.

Ahsoka didn't calm, like she used to when he soothed her the same way during a night terror. In fact, she seemed to get worse, her claws sinking deeper still into the cot's sheets and her face drawing into a proper grimace. He flinched back like he'd been burned.

Rex watched the rise and fall of her chest and listened to Kix quietly returning from the storage room, sans medicine, to take the visitor's seat he'd pulled over to her bedside sometime while Rex was asleep.

Neither of them said anything. After all, what was there to say?

Ahsoka was a lot of things. She was fast, and strong, and very brave- Rex was proud to have had a hand in helping her become who she was, in shaping that. Even if she had grown into something a bit... Strange, she was the anxious, abandoned Padawan no longer and Rex was so, so damn proud.

...Or, at least she had dropped the 'anxious' bit and tacked on 'disgruntled'. 

...Or, okay. Maybe 'disgruntled' was being a bit too generous. Ahsoka was pissed.

It wasn't often that the 501st and 212th had to pretend that they were under the same COs in more than name only. Normal operating procedure was acting, blissfully, as if they had no more connections than any other legions in the GAR. Unfortunately, to the Senate, that was not the case and, on occasion, they were given direct orders to fight the same battles.

Ahsoka was a nightmare on the field- she always had been, but after her Incident she'd only gotten worse. She threw caution to the wind and threw herself at her enemies with wild abandon.

He didn't care if she couldn't die, watching her try to climb a flying ship was still going to raise his blood pressure.

At least she'd made the jump.

At least she hadn't tried to take him with her this time.

"Could we get someone with a jet pack over here?" Rex said, into his comm. He didn't look away as Ahsoka sunk her lightsabers into one of the ship's twin engines.

"Why, what's going on?" His visor supplied that it was Echo who replied. Rex suppressed a snort.

"Take a wild guess."

There was a muffled curse. The ship must've gained enough altitude for Echo to see it. Then, a strained: "Cuun Jetii?" 

"Cuun Jetii." Rex confirmed, even though it wasn't much of a question. There wasn't anyone else reckless enough to pull something like that- okay, maybe Hardcase. But he was with the others, and- as far as Rex knew- he didn't know how to use lightsabers. So that would've ruled him out.

"...I'll have someone over to catch her. Out."

Rex turned his comm off and re-activated his helmet's external speaker, side-eyeing the General next to him. Jinn looked strangely wan, his skin nearly the color of the greyed streaks in his hair. 

"You don't seem too concerned." General Jinn said, after a moment.

"This isn't the first time she's done something like this. This isn't the first time this week." Because, just a few days ago, before they'd been sent to Kiros, Ahsoka had, in fact, jumped off of a ledge and tried to fight a vulture droid in the air.

He couldn't help but wonder if Cody, or Wolffe, or Bly, or Gree ever had to deal with this kind of crap. Fox certainly didn't. Lucky bastard. All he had to deal with were politicians. He had trouble imagining Chancellor Amidala trying to climb the exterior of a flying ship, or wrestling a droid, or anything of the other things Ahsoka subjected him to.

Something in the General's expression was really getting on Rex's nerves.

If anything came out of this- he really just hoped that it would be spending some more time with Cody.

As it turned out, they didn't end up needing the jet pack. Ahsoka, thank the fucking Force, managed to unsteadily land the ship back where it had taken off. Only a moment later, she was shoving D'Nar down the ramp and looking awfully proud of herself, despite her newly acquired bloody nose.

"Commander." He tried to pack as much reprimand into his tone as he could.

Ahsoka just peered up at him, one hand still clamped tight over the prisoner's shoulder, and gave him a cheeky smile. One that showed off how the blood from her nose had dripped onto her teeth.

Rex audibly sighed then stepped back so a few vode could take D'Nar off Ahsoka's hands and cuff him. There was a shine to Ahsoka's black gloves, under the Jetiise armor, and they sat strangely close and slick to her skin. Blood, then. And not all of it was the prisoner's.

"How hard did you punch him?" The gloves of Ahsoka's blacks were made of the same stuff as his own. It was tough. Cody had struck droids and his knuckles hadn't split.

Force, he was thinking about Cody a lot. He'd gotten good at not thinking about him, since that tended to lead to missing him. The rapid proximity of a shared battlefield had destroyed any progress. That wasn't a good thing. After today, he probably wouldn't see him again for another month, or longer.

"He knocked my 'sabers out of my hands, what else was I supposed to do?"

"...Ahem."

He swiveled to face the General, jaw clicking shut before he could retort.

"Did you get anything out of him when you were in atmo?" 

Rex didn't need the force to feel the tension bleeding off of his alverd'ika, but when she spoke, there was no trace of it. Only calm. The way a Jetii should be.

"Yes. Zygerria." Ahsoka adjusted her stance, standing up straighter and tucking her hands behind her back like a shiny speaking to an officer for the first time.

"Slavers. That's the last thing this galaxy needs." The General frowned, turned away for a moment to stare off into space, then looked back at them. "We should make a report to the Council, they'll want to hear about this."

"Of course." Ahsoka replied, her voice still almost sickly sweet. "Maybe we should see if he shares anything else under interrogation, first?"

"No, no. They'll want to know right away."

He could faintly hear Ahsoka growl as the General turned away- no doubt, she'd be griping about proper procedure for the next forever- but, once again, she was able to quash it. "I was only with him for, what, ten minutes? He didn't lie, but he didn't exactly tell me anything that we needed to know."

He didn't even give her a verbal response to that, just quietly waving her away. And if Ahsoka's growls took on a lower timber- had a bit more of a rattle, like the Resolute's purring engines, or the shifting ground of a landslide- well, then that was between Rex, the Force, and the other dozen vode that were with them.

"No, absolutely not." 

Rex wasn't that good at reading the expressions of natborns that weren't Ahsoka, and worse when the features were blurred together by a holo, but General Windu still looked impressively unamused.

"With all due respect, Jinn, you're not going to get out of this one."

"With all due respect-" Rex's pseudo-General had to take a moment to cool his tone. "-I will."

Rex had been running a few seconds late to the meeting, because they needed to find the only nook of the ship where nobody would find them to question why Kix was wrapping the Commander's cuts and scrapes, but not treating them. By the time they'd finished, it was too late for them to make it on time.

The Jedi were too distracted to notice, thanks to the rapidly escalating argument in the command room. Cody gave them a single, distressed look. But it wasn't one of surprise, or anything, just... Anguished, familiar resignation.

Okay, maybe none of his brothers had to deal with a Jetii that vaulted off of high surfaces or occasionally regrew some flesh, but it certainly seemed Cody and Ponds weren't too well off, either. So, there. At least Ahsoka didn't try to fight the other Jetiise. 

...Or at least she hadn't yet. If she got any ideas from this, he'd kill both Generals. He didn't care if it was treason, dealing with an Ahsoka that was even bite-ier than she already was would be a nightmare compared to a bit of homicide.

"You've spent far too long allowing your grief to justify neglecting-"

"Obi-Wan has nothing to do with this." The General cut him off. He was almost quieter than before, and that was almost worse.

"Then what is this? What else could it be?"

"This is me refusing to bring a teenaged Padawan undercover in a slaver's den, Mace." 

Rex had to suppress the urge to look around and see if Commanders Offee or Kestis or Dume had materialized before it, almost embarrassingly late, dawned on him who they were talking about.

Who else could it be? But maybe he wasn't that much of an idiot, because Ahsoka had the same, genuinely startled look in her wide, blue eyes.

"Do you know what I think of that?" General Jinn continued. "I'd like to know who's idea it was, because we need to have words."

General Windu visibly clenched his jaw.

"...I think you and I both know."

Chapter Text

Tup was... The beginning of the end. Of what, Rex didn't know. He just... He began something.

A trooper killing a Jedi was unheard of. They'd had traitors before, like Slick. But murder? It was unthinkable. It made him queasy to think that if it wasn't for Ahsoka's Situation that she would've been the one that the Jetiise had to bury. He wasn't as concerned about General Jinn, though. Which maybe was a bit... Flippant... of him? Considering that he could die. But Rex didn't care.

Ahsoka, however, was taking her newfound immortality in stride as she solemnly went about ignoring any personal safety whatsoever.

Rex was pretty glad that he'd been sent out of the room, because he did not want to hear her argument with Nala Se.

The way Nala Se acted about Rex and his brothers, combined with Ahsoka's attitude- yeah, he had an idea of how it was probably going. And they were already both in bad moods. Nobody particularly wanted to see or hear that. He had a good idea of how it ended, though, judging by the fact that Ahsoka left the room looking puffed-up with pride like some kind of exotic bird.

"Commander?"

"I argued that, since I'm his CO, I get to take a look at him before they do anything." She said, tugging at the fingertips of her gloves, where he knew they had the tendency to catch on her claws whenever she clenched her fists too much.

"And that really worked?" Fives asked, sounding dubious.

Ahsoka glanced down the hallway and gave him a strained, fanged grin that was in equal parts awkward and vicious. "I might've told her Master Jinn told me to?"

Rex crossed his arms over his chest. "And if they actually ask him?"

Ahsoka waved him off. "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it. We just need a chance to look at Tup, right?"

Oh Force fucking damn them, they were all going to die. Or, Ahsoka wouldn't. Ahsoka would get her brains blown out then have to explain how they squished back together. Maybe he didn't want to be alive to deal with that crap, actually.

Ahsoka leaned over Tup's unconscious body, her face drawn into a grimace that he'd never seen her wear before-

Or, no. He had seen that before, hadn't he? That night in the mess. Force, it was hard to believe that was a year ago.

"Something's wrong." She said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Something is terribly wrong." And, well, that was stating the obvious, but he got the impression that wasn't what she was alluding to.

The brightness of Kamino was starting to give him a headache after so long away. Or, at least it made it worse. He probably was due one from all the stress anyway.

Ahsoka was a fiend when she wanted to get something, really. She'd always been stubborn, yes, but she'd gotten worse. He couldn't help but wonder where he fucked her up enough to make her that bad. Rex had only been able to sigh and make sure to follow her, because they were often surrounded by strangers and he couldn't trust her to keep her Situation a secret for long. She was bad at hiding it, too used to the way that the 501st waved off some of her more unusual behavior.

Now, stuck on fucking Kamino with a trooper that had murdered a Jedi, and only Ahsoka and Fives for company, he thought he might be about to go mad. He hoped Echo was having a good time looking after the troops. Rex sure wasn't having a good time.

Ahsoka brushed a gloved hand over Tup's temple, frowning. Her eyes were half-closed, like he'd seen on other Jetiise when they were especially focused on some Force osik. Her training in matters of the Force, however, was subpar. She drew her hand back with a growl when whatever she was doing failed. Nobody said anything for what seemed like an eternity.

"There is something. What tipped me off, really, that Tup wasn't just another traitor." Ahsoka said, not looking up.

"He isn't?"

Ahsoka glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, just the slightest shift of her pupils, before she returned to the task at hand.

"No, he isn't." She combed a clawed hand through Tup's hair, in a way that may have been soothing if he was awake to feel it. "You see- you've probably heard this before- each one of you has a unique presence in the Force, as all people do. If I was blindfolded and there was a random trooper in the same room as me, I could tell you who it was in a heartbeat. When- when whatever happened back there happened- that disappeared. What made Tup Tup is gone. I can still sense him, and he still feels like a sentient, but- not like anyone I've ever met. Everyone has these little hints and impressions about them, even infants, really, he just- he's a blank slate. Like nobody's home. Almost like he's braindead."

"And you've never heard of something like this before?" It was Fives' turn to speak, Rex couldn't think of what to say.

Ahsoka shook her head. "Well, I mean. I'm hardly an expert in Jedi matters, but I think something like this would've at least been mentioned in youngling classes."

"So you can tell General Ti! Right?" Fives continued, growing hopeful then edging into excited. "And she and the Council can get this cleared up?"

Ahsoka didn't share the enthusiasm. "They don't... The Jedi don't trust my opinion much these days. There's too much I don't understand. She'll dismiss me, most likely." She drew her hands back so she could curl them into fists.  "We're running out of time. I can't let them kill one of ours. I don't-"

Ahsoka's eyes narrowed, deep in thought, then narrowed more as she came to a decision. "I might have something." Her tone was uncharacteristically flat. It made ice drip down his spine. When neither of them replied, she continued. "Watch the door, don't let anybody in."

She moved to sit on the edge of Tup's medical cot, then scooted closer until she could settle his head into her lap. As any trooper might, when trying to soothe a particularly distressed shiny. He was one to her, wasn't he? They'd been at war for a while, Ahsoka with them for most of it. Tup was newer, he hadn't been there for any of her awkward stages, he'd only ever known her as a strong, supportive figure to lean on.

Gingerly, like she was more afraid of accidentally hurting him than she was of him hurting her, she placed one hand on each side of his face and bowed her head down until she could stare down at him unblinkingly.

All at once, the gravity in the room changed. It had already been tense, emotionally, but this was something else, it felt like someone had taken an invisible, heavy blanket and thrown it over all of them. The pressure wasn't enough to make it hard to breathe, but it was impossible to ignore. Force osik, then.

"I couldn't sense the cause before, but if I-"

Ahsoka cut herself off, shuddering. 

The pressure grew. Rex watched as her pupils contracted, then warped, splitting into slits. A line of blood dripped down her chin from her mouth.

"Uh, Commander-"

"I'm fine, Fives. Don't worry about me." It sounded like she was speaking directly into his ear. He suppressed the urge to flinch from the noise, but couldn't hide his shudder when he saw how- impossible to miss or mistake in the bright lights of Kamino- her teeth had lengthened, sharpened. From an ordinary, predatory series of points and shears into thirty-some fangs. They were all bloody.

Fives didn't say anything else.

"There, there's something there." She tapped two fingers onto his temple. "I don't know what it is, but it doesn't feel like a human brain."

"A tumor?" Fives perked up- that had been what he insisted on, after all. Rex had to begrudgingly admit that maybe he was starring to agree with him, even if a Fives vindicated was a Fives that could be insufferable.

"No." Ahsoka twitched. "Tumors- they're disorderly, right? Or they're supposed to be. Uncontrolled cell growth. This is... It's organized, neat."

"Can you do anything about it?"

Ahsoka closed her eyes, and when she opened them she looked up from Tup to glance at both of them in turn.

"Maybe. I can try." She shifted in discomfort. "I- uh- I apologize if this gets a little messy."

The lights flickered and didn't stop, flashing off and on and off again. There was a deep, ugly sound, one Rex was uncomfortably familiar with- the sound of flesh tearing. Not of someone being stabbed, or beaten, but closer, maybe, to ripped flimsi. It was something he heard all the time, if a trooper in the field was killed or maimed particularly gruesomely.

The lights went out again, and when they came back on four massive, bloody figures jutted out from his alverd'ika's back and struggled to contain themselves in the room. They were the wings from his dreams. Bloodied feathery things, with horns on their apexes and bones showing through torn skin along their arched backs, each easily twice as long as he was tall. One set had to curl impossibly tight against Ahsoka's back, the other two reaching up and ducking back down just short of the ceiling, curved inside the entire front half of the room.

"Holy shit." Fives said what they were both thinking.

"I still can't-" Ahsoka snarled, her bloody teeth gleaming. "Fuck." 

"Language." He responded on instinct.

"Not funny." Ahsoka didn't cover her fangs again, keeping them bared in the kind of poorly restrained anger than the Jedi would scoff at. "I can do this- I can-"

There was the sound of tearing flesh again, as the room was once more plunged into darkness, but Rex didn't have a chance to see the carnage this time, not before Ahsoka let out a small shriek of victory and the lights finally, blissfully, turned back on and stayed on. Whatever all that had been- it was gone now. Rex must've missed when something happened with her hands, because they were painted in the uncannily bright blood of a Togruta when she combed them through Tup's hair one final time.

"Cut the sedatives, I want to see how he's doing." She climbed off the table, taking care to lift the trooper's head up and set it back down gently. Rex hurried to do it, if only so he could have something to do.

"What was all that?" Fives sounded shocked, but not horrified. Not even a little bit. His hands trembled and his eyes were wide- but not with fear. Awe, maybe.

"I couldn't find anything before, so I loosened up my shields enough to apply a bit of... Er, extra strength. Yeah, let's call it that." He could hear Ahsoka pad over to one of the sinks that lined the walls of Tup's private medical room. The water turned on.

"I've never heard of a Jedi doing something like that before."

"It's not a Jedi thing. Or a Sith thing, for that matter. So I'd really appreciate it if this... Stayed out of any reports." Her tone was genuine, quiet. A nervous breath, hissed between clenched teeth.

It took Fives a while to reply. Rex stayed invested in hovering over Tup's cot, willfully. Tup was something he was relatively capable of handling, right now. The fact that a rogue Jedi-killer was the easier option? It really said something about how Rex's life was going.

"...What about... What you found, then?"

Ahsoka growled at that, exchanging pleading-for-silence for the anger that he'd seen earlier. "I've never seen anything like that before. It was... Unnatural."

"Kind of like what you just pulled?"

"Well, no. It's not the same kind of unnatural." 

The water turned off. Rex still didn't turn around, watching and waiting for the trooper to wake up.

Ahsoka continued. "Whatever it was, I destroyed it with the Force, crushed it. That's why it was so hard to get at- I couldn't risk damaging anything else, so I don't know what we'd get out of trying to extract it now." 

"That's it, then? This is all over."

"I'd say, 'no', actually." Ahsoka's words were dark with anger. "This is Kamino we're talking about, they'll probably try to kill him anyway."

"And we can't let that happen."

"No, we can't."

Something in the back of Rex's mind, blessedly, clicked and he spun on his heel.

"I know somewhere we could take him." They both turned to face him. Fives looked almost overjoyed, Ahsoka- uncharacteristically hard to read.

"Really?" Fives really, genuinely smiled. Fuck, when did he miss the cranky bastard going soft for shinies? "Where?"

"A while back I met someone on an isolated planet, a farmer. We can trust him." Rex left out the fact that the reason why Rex could trust Cut to hide Tup was that he himself was a deserter, he did intend to keep his secret, after all.

Force fucking damn him, it seemed all he did these days was keep secrets.

"Then you get him off this dustball- er- waterball-" Ahsoka recognized his hesitance to share more, nodding her head in his direction. "-while Fives and I fudge some paperwork and droid memories. They need to actually think he's dead. We can say it was a stroke, maybe? And that a cleaning droid malfunctioned and incinerated him instead of leaving him for an autopsy."

"You two have everything under control over here?" 

"I've always wanted to steal Nala Se's datapad." Fives noted wistfully, and oh- there was the Fives he was used to. The one that ended up in Fox's drunk tank every time they were on leave, not the one that got weepy over a shiny.

"We'll be off, then." He peered down at Tup. The shiny twitched. It made some of the bright blood streaking his hair start to bead and run down his face. "...How am I supposed to get him out of here?"

Fives grinned again, wolfishly, and eyed the medical droid in the corner of the room that Ahsoka had insisted on temporarily shutting down. "I might have an idea." 

Everything went to the Sith Hells when he returned to the Resolute. It was funny. When he'd stepped out of the shuttle and into the hangar, he'd still been thinking about how overjoyed the kids were when they found out their uncle would be staying with them. Tup was still unsteady on his feet from the days of sedation, so Cut had to chase them off with promises of a game later in the day so he could have a chance to rest.

He'd been standing there, stupidly wondering about a bunch of idiot kids- and maybe the way Tup had looked at him when he woke up, saying that he'd had the strangest dream before touching the part of his hair that had been stained with blood and going silent before vomiting in a bucket because the shuttle didn't have a 'fresher and sobbing about what he'd done and refusing to speak to him- when Ahsoka all-but tackled him from the side. Her teeth clicked shut against his pauldron. She growled, and he was left stumbling from the sudden extra weight.

"Ahsoka!" He was barely able to keep himself from falling over. "Force dammit, we're not sparring right now."

Ahsoka growled at him again, then spoke, very quietly. "We need to talk. Are there cameras in your quarters? Microphones?"

"Uh, no?" It took him a moment to remember that- most of the rooms on a destroyer were bugged, to make sure nobody had the opportunity to discuss treason. But General's and Commander's quarters tended to garner a bit more privacy. The Commander's quarters- Ahsoka's- though, still had microphones built into the walls. His rooms- which, in another life with much more responsible adults, would've belonged to General Jinn- were quite possibly the only place on the entirety of the Resolute to be clear.

"Good, great. Let's go now." She hooked a hand tight around his elbow and not-so-subtly yanked on him.

"What's gotten into you?" He tried to pull free, but she didn't let go. She didn't even try to look at him pleadingly- her eyes were all ice, in that moment.

"Important stuff, come on."

Rex had planned everything so he could dock when the Resolute had its graveyard shift- the fewest possible witnesses to see him returning from helping a traitor to the Republic escape- but even the few guards in the hangar were starting to swivel their bucketed heads in their direction, eyeing the confrontation between their COs.

It was exceedingly rare for Ahsoka and Rex to fight- enough, that surely everyone in the 501st would know that they'd had an argument immediately after he returned to the Resolute at ridiculous hours. Thus, someone would figure out eventually that something had happened. That he'd fooled around with things he shouldn't have.

"Fine, fine." She only let him go when he belligerently agreed. "I was going there anyway. Force, I need a nap."

As they walked in awkward silence towards Rex's quarters, it struck him how... Stiff. Ahsoka was. She had the tendency to straighten up and set her shoulders a bit when she was upset- something he knew for a fact she'd picked up from him and his vode. Now, though, she seemed almost unnaturally rigid, like a work from an artist that had only ever painted fruit.

Rex tentatively put a hand on her elbow and, to his surprise, she actually flinched away.

"Sorry, I-uh." He immediately folded both of his arms over his helmet, cradled in his arms. "I didn't think about how all this could've made you nervous."

"It's not that, Rex." She said, not meeting his eyes, even a little bit. Ahsoka stared straight ahead. "I could never be afraid of you. It's... I don't want to talk about it."

"Is it what you wanted me to meet you about?" He asked, quietly enough that any microphones built into the walls couldn't pick it up.

"No." He watched as she slowly clenched a hand into a fist- hard enough that the plastoid on the back of her hand audibly creaked- then released it. "I don't want to talk about it."

"...Okay." He looked away from her when it was obvious that she wouldn't budge. She'd come to him about it, eventually. He was sure of that. The two of them kept a lot of secrets, yes, but they kept them together. There was no need to press her.

They continued the rest of the walk without talking again- the only sounds being their breathing and the familiar, deep, ringing sounds of plastoid boots on metal. Ahsoka's footsteps were quieter, of course, nearly inaudible, even to his advanced clone hearing. They just barely clicked on the ground, like a massiff's claws. He was never quite sure how much of that was a Togruta thing or a Jetii thing or just an Ahsoka thing, being almost silent despite wearing armor. He didn't spend enough time around other Togrutas or Jetiise to figure that one out.

"We're here." Ahsoka said, finally breaking whatever ice had formed between them as they stopped at the threshold of Rex's quarters. She still wasn't looking at him, though. His vod'ika took a deep, slow breath before she reached for the door controls. "Let's get this over with."

Ahsoka was a half-step behind him, letting him go in first. He was so exhausted from carting Tup around, and his two near-fights with Ahsoka, that it wasn't until he'd already set his helmet down on his table that he realized they weren't alone. Which was pretty... Impressive, really. Considering that Fives was sitting at the same table. He did a double-take upon seeing him. Then another upon realizing he was bald.

"Welcome back, Captain." Fives said, with a little two-finger salute. "How was your vacation?"

Rex rubbed the bridge of his nose and suppressed the urge to groan. "You know how it was."

"Just trying to break the tension." Fives said, holding up his hands in front of him harmlessly.

Ahsoka wordlessly closed the door behind her. Rex could hear it beep as it locked.

"We found something." She said, quickly, like she was afraid that she couldn't get the words out in time- as soon the door was sealed to her satisfaction. "I know I said we were just covering for Tup, but... Well, Fives got suspicious and then he got me suspicious and we already had Nala Se's datapad..."

"You snooped?" Rex asked, crossing his arms.

"I mean, yeah?" Fives said, setting something down on the table. He must've been holding it the entire time. Rex peered down at it.

"What is this? A microscope slide?"

"I wish." Fives said, leaning forwards over the table to jab a finger down at it. "That- is what a medical droid took out of my head."

"You two did brain surgery?" Rex stared at him, dumbfounded.

"No, the droid did. And we got a brain scan first." Ahsoka said, leaving her post by the door so she could join them in hovering over it. Her voice was dryer than a desert planet. "What a coincidence that we found a strange mass in Fives in the same exact spot I found one in Tup."

"I thought it was strange, how they were acting about him. They seemed... More desperate than they'd usually be over something like faulty product." Fives spat out the words as if they tasted foul. They probably did. "I was right. While we were trying to cover up Tup's escape, we realized that they had been doing a coverup of their own."

"...So what is this, then?" Rex carefully picked up the slide.

"A control chip." Ahsoka snarled with venom. She didn't clarify when Rex looked up at her, too busy burning holes into the table with her eyes.

"The Kaminoans called them 'Inhibitor chips'." Fives said, instead. "Officially, it curbs unnecessary aggression, but Ahsoka sliced some secure databases- each one is uploaded with hundreds of orders that we're forced to follow if activated. Including one that declares the Jedi to be traitors and demands their immediate executions."

"General Tiplar." Rex felt his heart sink and stomach roil at the same time. "-Tup."

"I did destroy it." Ahsoka said, still glaring at Rex's table like it was somehow responsible for this. "Tup's. So there's no way of digging it up now. No way of knowing if it malfunctioned or-"

"...Someone activated it." Rex's heart felt like it was busy dissolving itself, with how it hurt from how hard it was pounding.

"Exactly." Ahsoka ducked her head down until she was bent at the knees and her upper body nearly parallel to the floor. Her fingers clutched at the table as she slowly rested the tips of her montrals on its edge. She looked... He didn't know how she looked. With everything- every fucked up weird thing that had come into their lives she'd always stood tall and grin-grimaced through it. Now she was... More defeated.

In the back of his mind- a small corner not yet swallowed up by his own dread- he noted that he didn't like that look on her.

"There's one in all of us." Fives' voice was hushed, even though there was no way to tap into the room. "Every. Single. One. Even the tubies."

"But they can be removed." Rex turned to him. "Yours was removed."

"We'll get them out. Every last one." Fives swore. "It'll take a long time, I'm sure, but we can do it."

Ahsoka hissed from somewhere under the table and straightened back up, the kind of Padawan-Commander fit for Republic propaganda once again.

"We'll need to start with the medics, so they can help with others, then work our way down the chain of command. The last thing we need is an ARC running around trying to kill people." She said, tracing imaginary plans on the table. The thought of that was disarming- Rex knew what his troopers were capable of, and the idea of his best getting the way Tup had been- all single-minded and dead-eyed- they would succeed at whatever they were being made to do. Rex was certain of that.

"How can we alert the other legions?" Rex asked.

"The same way we told you." Ahsoka said- still not meeting his eyes, even after she'd told him... What was up with her? "We can't let this get out, not to anyone that's not one of your brothers. Not even to the other Jedi."

"Why not? I'm sure they wouldn't take too kindly to their troopers being wired to murder them against their will."

Ahsoka dug her claws into Rex's table, leaving faint scratches as she let out a proper, wordless snarl. The guttural kind, from deep down in her chest. When she replied, there was real, genuine hate in her words. Enough that she almost struggled to get them out.

"There was a Jedi involved. In the coverup. Someone ordering the Kaminoans to kill Tup. They were using an alias so we have no way of knowing who it was but it's enough. Someone. Knew. Maybe several someones, and that's just one of them. Maybe one of them even ordered Tup to fire on the Jedi in the first place. We can't trust anyone. We're on our own."

He put a hand on her shoulder, because Rex might not know much about the Jedi- and certainly nowhere near as much as any other CO who served directly under one- but he knew enough to understand that hate was bad. Ahsoka was too busy vibrating in rage to draw away, this time, and after a moment her temper cooled and she leaned into the touch.

"...So we can't tell anyone, then?" Rex looked across at Fives, who gave him a grave nod.

"We can tell Kix. And the other medics. And whoever we're about to cut one out of. And Wolffe, or whoever else we see next." Ahsoka said, her voice still tight, but noticeably less... Er... Well. Sithlike. There was no putting that delicately. "Who knows, maybe they'll put us on leave after this and we can spill it Fox first."

Oh fucking dammit. Another secret. This time it was a conspiracy. Was that a step up? Or... A step down? Was scaling bad shit ascending or descending? Rex wasn't sure. It certainly was something though.

The de-chipping process was a gradual one, but they were nothing if not a well-oiled machine. It was simple enough to falsify casualty numbers to get the supplies they needed. The medics did go first, then Rex, then Hardcase and Echo and all the other ARCs- down and along, like they'd planned.

The 501st didn't work with other legions often. Rex didn't know if that had started with the Senate assuming they could work with the 212th or more Yoda meddling-  but these days it was more of a choice. They liked to avoid Jedi. So Fox did end up being the first one they told, but they still got word around, slowly. Quietly. And Fox spread it to others. Rex had no way of knowing who else been alerted, other than the vode they'd told themselves, because they'd all agreed not to share who else they'd told in case someone got found out. He could only hope that knowledge had gotten to enough of his brothers.

It was almost... Strange, really. How much they had to proceed 'business-as-usual', despite the fact that medics were proclaiming troopers with twisted ankles to have broken legs so that they could have an excuse to hold them for a few days, and despite the fact that tension had settled onto the ship like an angry spirit, and despite the steadily growing number of troopers in their legion who had shaved their hair down for the procedure- Force, some of the medics and ARCs had already grown it back- but they still had to play at everything being normal. The war didn't stop, and they couldn't afford to let anything slow down, lest someone realized something was wrong.

Business as usual, in every way. They fought. They trained and sparred when they weren't fighting. They went out for drinks when on leave. They fluffed their ranks out with shinies, when they needed to. They provided escorts and protection when ordered. The troopers tried to haggle with civilians- trading this and that for a few luxuries- whenever they had to refuel. They sent in requests for resupplies, asking for the usual stocks of weapons and rations and the like.

So, when they'd taken up a garrison around a small mining planet, Ahsoka decided to have Fritz order her a new set of armor. She'd needed it done plenty of times before- as her shoulders filled out or she sprouted up too much and the greaves didn't fit right anymore. This time was hardly any different. Eventually, over the course of the last month or so, the joints had started to fall short and rub up against her limbs and some parts- especially the gorget- sat too tight and high.

Rex had paid very little mind to Ahsoka ordering new armor. It was just one of the quiet, expected functions of a group of soldiers. Something Fritz- the glorious, nitpicky bastard- had pointed out could spell out something wrong to anyone involved in the supply chain if they neglected to deal with.

Business as usual. In every possible way. Except for everyone wondering if they were committing a coup or preventing one. That was a problem for another day. And probably above his pay grade. Fox dealt with politics, so that could be a Fox problem.

"Hey, Rex." Ahsoka tapped his shoulder, pulling him out of his thoughts and the piles of usual paperwork that came with the sort-of-break that a garrison tended to be- signing off on orders from Fritz and the medbay and carefully parsing through the occasional, rare care package from civilians. "Fritz told me my new set came in. Let's get some caf while I grab it before you go cross-eyed."

"I'm not 'going cross-eyed'." Rex snarked back, but still got up and scooped his helmet off of his desk.

"You are!" She said, almost sing-song as she slugged him in the arm.

"Brat."

"Have you been sleeping enough?" She leaned up against his shoulder for a moment, clutching at his pauldron and glaring into his eyes. "You look exhausted."

"I-uh. I've just been keeping an eye on the proceedings." He said, putting a hand on the back of his neck. "That's all."

"I'll take that off your hands, if you don't mind. We can hardly have you dead on your feet if the Seppies ever move on the mines."

"Thank you." He almost said 'you need rest too', but caught himself. Ahsoka hadn't slept once since she fell off that cliff. She hadn't needed to. Honestly, she'd spent over a year with them without retiring to her bunk, but... Well. Sometimes she did act so normal it was easy to forget about the time she sprouted wings.

Venators were not small ships, and the Officer's quarters were built nearly on the opposite side of it compared to Fritz's office. On a ship other than the Resolute, the area would've been inhabited mostly by natborns- a General and maybe a Padawan-Commander and Admirals and Captains. Here, though, the 212th and 501st shared a set of officers, and the 212th got stuck with all but Ahsoka. So, instead, they were occupied by some of Rex's other vode. Squad leaders and a few notable ARCs. A few rooms left open in case they ever had to fulfill the ever-exciting duty of picking up some stranded idiot Jedi.

Quinlan Vos had been the weirdest one. If not because of the fact that he wasn't a General, or that he stole Fives' moonshine for himself, then probably because he'd made no secret about his plans to poach Ahsoka from General Jinn. He'd given up after a week when he couldn't find the hiding spot she used to avoid him.

Rex never told Vos that it was a gap between pipes above the reactor. But he didn't exactly feel bad, because nobody else did either. It was the one she used at the beginning of the war whenever she tried to escape Kix, and she'd ended up slipping on her own blood and falling directly on top of Hardcase. Who had also been avoiding the medbay. So everyone knew about it, because everyone had heard Kix screaming at them.

Fun times. He wasn't sure if he meant that sarcastically or literally. An Ahsoka that refused to have her wounds treated was easier to handle than an Ahsoka who couldn't. At least it was mostly Kix's job to help her hide that part, not his.

But the fact of the matter was, besides Ahsoka, they really didn't have anyone who wasn't a clone onboard, and that meant that the lines between what was for natborn Officers and what was for Troopers and what was for Clone Officers and what was for the vode who handled clerical or navigational or communication matters really started to blur. Everyone just... Was. In their sparse downtime, you would have no problem finding new shinies painting their armor next to their mechanics eating lunch next to Fives trying to teach Ahsoka sabacc. He was... Quite under the impression other legions weren't like that.

That was fine. It suited them fine. Not one person batted an eye as Ahsoka paused on their walk to Fritz's office to headbutt Hardcase. Even the shinies they'd just picked up a week ago were used to it.

Ahsoka was grinning to herself about something said outside of Rex's earshot by the time they got to the little nook beside their storage rooms that Fritz called home, a clawed hand pressed up against her mouth to muffle a laugh. The door opened faster than any others did on the ship- because Fritz was a tinkerer and nobody cared to write him up- so they could step in without having to wait for even a second.

"Commander! I was wondering when you'd get down here." Fritz hurried to shove his datapad onto his desk and stand up, almost knocking over his chair in the process.

"I've been busy, came as soon as I could." Ahsoka drifted over to the wall, peering up at Fritz's collection of probably-contraband: scavenged droid parts and civilian radios and more things he couldn't recognize. It was probably a good thing that Yoda's meddling kept anyone from ever giving the Resolute an inspection. They would all be screwed for how much shit they let Fritz get away with.

"I'm sure." Fritz stepped onto his chair so he could take a large box from the shelf above his work station. Probably a bad idea, because it had wheels- which was also against regulations, because the damn thing was liable to go flying and hit someone if the ship ever had to turn quickly.

...Sometimes Rex couldn't help but wonder if Fritz ever kept anything illegal illegal. He would not be surprised.

Fritz stepped off of his chair, box proudly in arm, without any mishaps.

"Here it is." He said, holding it out in offering. Ahsoka turned and smiled.

"Oh, thanks!" Ahsoka turned and smiled, accepting her new armor set from him and settling it beneath an arm. "I owe you one."

Well, that was a bit weird. Before, Fritz had always made Ahsoka go digging in the shipping boxes from their deliveries. Fritz always did that with everyone. Was that even the original package? Most of their resupply was in sturdy plastoid boxes, stamped with the Republic's symbol on every side. That wasn't. It a sole, smaller box with loose-fitting lid. The kind you didn't need Fritz' tools to open.

Fritz was looking down at her expectantly. "Aren't you going to open it?"

Okay, yeah. That wasn't normal. Rex really hoped that wasn't a bomb and Fritz wasn't about to kill them. Force knew he had them. Ahsoka looked less suspicious, she just quirked a white brow at him and shifted the box into both arms so she could flip off the lid. Rex couldn't see into the box, but he could see Ahsoka freeze.

Oh fuck, was it a bomb?

"...Fritz, I-"

"I've been talking to some of the others about this for a while." Fritz cut her off. "...None of us really knew how to bring it up, though. So... And we couldn't tell the Captain, cause he's a snitch and he would've told you and that would've ruined the surprise-"

Ahsoka carefully dropped the box on Fritz's desk and reached up to yank him down into a hug. Rex leaned past them to peer into the box.

It did, in fact, contain Ahsoka's armor and not a bomb. It was a pretty standard Jedi Commander set- with all the pieces, thankfully, none of that 'I don't need to protect my vital organs' nonsense that had infested the other Jetiise. If anything, it was probably closer to what other Jedi wore than her original set had been, because that had been for a version of Ahsoka that was a third of his size. She'd grown since then. It was an utterly unremarkable set of molded plastoid, all except for one thing:

Fritz had painted it.

Royal, 501st blue. A way to silently tell the other legions that she was theirs in a way that natborns wouldn't see- or, in a way that most wouldn't, considering that Ahsoka's crying into Fritz's shoulder meant she knew exactly what it meant. That she was one of them. That they'd accepted her.

And- a more quiet thing, too. For only the 501st to understand- that they'd accepted all of her: in the painted fangs in a wreath around the throat of the gorget, and in the shapes of feather stretched out across the parts that covered her chest and back and arms. In the same way that any Jetiise or senators or civilians would only think the blue made her match the rest of them, the other legions would only think of the bite of an angry Togruta and the fleetness of a Jetii.

It was, really, the private declaration that she was vod, Jetii and natborn and bloody and undying and all.

The GAR conducted leave differently from any other military organization in the history of ever.

That was not an exaggeration.

Normally, leave would've looked like a single soldier getting a break from the front lines to visit their family. The 501st went on leave together, all at once, while the Resolute was refueled and seeing routine maintenance over Coruscant.

Rex wasn't one for drinking- he had appearances he had to keep- so he spent most of his leave at the Guard's headquarters, and Ahsoka stuck with him instead of going to the Temple- throwing balls of flimsi at Fox whenever he returned from his duties with the Chancellor. That was the leave routine they'd settled into. It was the one they'd used for the past two and a half years.

Until Fives and Echo decided to show up.

"No. Absolutely not." Fox only took one look at them and immediately scowled. He even ignored the little ball of flimsi that hit his arm and rolled over his table. "You two, leave."

"We haven't even done anything!" Fives whined. Fox's expression didn't change.

"You will. Go." He pointed at the door. "Out."

"We just wanted to talk to the Commander." Echo stepped in and was forced to physically grab his brother before Fives could say something insulting.

Fox quirked a single brow at them. "Really?"

"Really." Echo sounded sincere. Fox glanced back at where Rex and Ahsoka had been sitting- Rex had been pretending to work on paperwork in the hopes that Ahsoka would get bored without attention and leave Fox alone- and glared at her as she sheepishly lowered her raised arm and dropped the ball she'd been holding, letting it fall to the table.

"Alright." Ahsoka stood in one, fluid movement, smoothing out her tabard with her hands. "You two need something?"

"Well, we don't need something." Fives crossed the room to clap Ahsoka on the shoulder. "You turned seventeen two weeks ago, right?"

"Yea, why?"

"Happy Birthday." Fox interjected, dry.

"Well-" Fives waved him off. "Seventeen is the Coruscanti age of majority and-"

"You are not taking the Commander to a club." Rex gave up on pretending that he wasn't watching them and set down his datapad.

"It's just 79's, Rex, it's not like I'm setting her loose at a rave." Fives waved him off with a dismissive hand. "Besides, all the normal kids Ahsoka's age go out partying and drinking, it's good for her. Developmentally."

Rex crossed his arms. "Absolutely not."

"Come on! Echo and I will be with her the whole time, and I'm sure some of the others will be there too." Fives was wheedling now. Actual, all-out wheedling. Like a cadet and not a grown ARC begging to take his charge to a bar.

"Because you two are such a good influence. I'm sure Fox can attest to that one."

Everyone glanced over at the man in question. It was impossible to read Fox's expression, even with his helmet off. That probably had more to do with the fact that he was filing mission reports after tailing Chancellor Amidala for sixteen hours, though, than anything else. With that kind of routine, it was a miracle the man hadn't crumbled yet.

"...Why not." Fox looked back at his computer. "She is an adult. And if she leaves with you people I don't have to deal with her."

"Unless they all get thrown in your drunk tank."

"And face your wrath?" Fox didn't look up from his work. "Maybe they'll actually behave themselves, with that hanging over their heads."

"C'mon Rex." Ahsoka hadn't said anything the entire time, dead silent next to Fives. Now she turned to him, all pleading tooka-eyes. It made her look younger. It made her look her age. "Even Fox agrees."

"I just want you out of the HQ."

"See, he agrees."

Rex sighed and looked down, rubbing his forehead. "Fine, fine. Ahsoka, if you get drunk, I'm going to kill all three of you."

"I won't, promise!" Ahsoka darted forwards to drag him into a crushing hug, physically yanking him out of his chair. "Thanks!"

"Yeah, yeah." Rex rubbed the back of his neck and tried not to look her in the face, lest her beaming made him cave even more. "And stay out of trouble- I know you. Don't start fights, don't join fights, don't finish them. We're on leave, that means no fighting."

"Of course!" He could hear Ahsoka giggle at something Fives said to her as she hauled him towards the door. "I'll be good, I swear it!"

"Sure."

The door shut behind them, cutting off their laughter. Fox slowly, ever so slowly, leaned back in his chair to stare at him.

"You." He said, pointing at Rex. "Are pathetic."

Rex threw Ahsoka's abandoned ball of flimsi at him.

It seemed that troopers died faster than they were trained.

The 501st didn't have to request new troops often. They lost a fraction of the number of soldiers that other legions did- they were the best of the best, in that way. They were efficient, they had good success rates, they managed to be above average in terms of damage to civilian infrastructure and non-combatant casualties- but that was where they really shined through.

Still... Once in a while, they did need shinies.

"Rex, they're babies." Ahsoka's hiss was disapproving, her arms crossed over her chest. She almost seemed to glare at the fresh troops, and they could feel her scrutiny. Rex gave her a pat on the back before she spooked them too much. The last thing the poor bastards needed was to think they'd been handed off to a CO that hated them. "How old are they?"

"...Graduation was just pushed down to eight." He said, slowly. "There weren't going to be enough vode with the nine-year-olds to replenish casualties."

Ahsoka snarled. "They're not even old enough to go to 79's next time we get leave. If the other Jedi are that bad at keeping their troopers alive maybe someone needs to launch an investigation."

"Maybe someone should. And I don't think anyone checks at 79's. I thought you knew that?"

"Hm." Ahsoka still looked unimpressed, but she uncrossed her arms and her eyes softened. "I want them placed in the more secure spots for our next engagement. They're too shiny, probably haven't been through enough simulations."

"Sure thing, Commander." He stepped forwards to punch her gently in the arm. Ahsoka didn't look back at him. She hadn't looked away from the shinies the entire time-gathered together in an awkward clump in the middle of the hangar. Their pure-white armor stood out in a sea of blue. "Why don't we go down there and introduce ourselves?"

Ahsoka sighed and Rex could watch as she pushed down her anger, schooling her face to put on one of her fanged, winning Ahsoka-grins. She squeezed his elbow once before strolling forwards. She had all her usual spunk and fire- on the surface. He knew her well enough to see the tension in her back and the extra viciousness in her smile. She wasn't mad at the shinies- Rex didn't think she was capable of it- but at the other Jedi, maybe. The Kaminoans definitely.

And Rex- well. He knew Jedi weren't supposed to get angry. But... What could he do about it? It wasn't like he could bring up his concerns to the General. It wasn't like any other Jetiise stuck around long enough to notice for themselves. It wasn't like Ahsoka was much of a Jedi, anyway.

All he could do was try to ignore it and tuck his helmet under his arm as he hurried to join her.

The 501st was on Coruscant again when it was attacked. Because of course they were. That was exactly their luck.

Rex wouldn't be lying if he said he didn't want to cry. Why they couldn't have- oh, he didn't know- literally any General at all was beyond him. Either way, there they were. Ahsoka, Rex, Fox, and the rest of their respective troops- all that there was between the heart of the Republic and certain doom.

He would say that he wasn't being paid enough for this, if only he was paid.

Chancellor Amidala, on the other hand, seemed remarkably put together from the moment they burst into her office. Her face was carefully blank, betraying nothing as she moved to stand from her desk. Fox still kept both hands on his blasters, but, thankfully, didn't shoot them dead for their unannounced intrusion.

"I've been having the building evacuated since the first ships came into orbit." She said, stepping out from behind the desk and moving towards the middle of her office. "The people in this room should be all that's left of the Senate and its Guards."

"And you?" Ahsoka hadn't drawn her 'sabers yet, so she was free to flex her hands worriedly as she spoke, glancing around the room.

"I was waiting until the others left." The Chancellor said, smooth. "And I've been making updates over the PSA system to make sure the civilians get somewhere safe. It's not like we've had drills for this."

"We probably should've." Ahsoka growled, moving to look out the window. "They're everywhere, out there. I wouldn't be surprised if they've already breached the building. There were certainly quite a few on our tail when Torrent got here."

"Hm." The Chancellor's face was still carefully blank. "I wonder how they got to Coruscant, anyway?"

"Nothing good for us, however they managed it."

Chancellor Amidala didn't respond, but she dipped her head, seemingly lost in thought.

"How should we move forward, Chancellor?" Fox said, breaking the silence- or, as silent as it could get with the sound of explosions outside the massive Chancellor's suite windows.

"Are there any other Jedi on-planet?" She asked, turning towards his alverd'ika.

"Only the crèchemasters and healers, nobody cleared for combat." Ahsoka said, stepping away from the window with a deep frown. "No other troopers either, just the 501st and the Coruscant Guard. We've sent out a distress beacon, but there's no telling when they could get here."

"We're on our own, then." The Chancellor said- and, well. She slowly, almost mechanically, cracked her knuckles. It seemed alien on her. With all her fanciness- the fancy words and fancy outfits and fancy makeup.

"At least until we get backup, yes."

"Well, we shouldn't stay up here." The Chancellor said, finally. "All the windows- I don't think any of us would like getting blown to bits by a vulture droid. We might have more luck deeper in the building, if we stay here at all."

It was... Perhaps more insightful than he was expecting? He knew that the Chancellor had plenty of experience as a leader, and she'd always been smart enough whenever the decision was her's to make. But in that moment, she seemed significantly more like a military commander than the political official that she was.

"Of course, Chancellor." Ahsoka said, dipping her head. Rex could catch her giving Fox a very pointed glance, just for a moment- because technically Chancellor Amidala held no official military rank within the GAR. It was a wordless question, asking if he trusted her judgement enough to let her stay in control, or if they should take charge, as Commanders. Fox nodded, and she looked away. "...I'll take the rear, if you don't mind."

"None at all, Padawan-Commander." The Chancellor said, still calm as she moved towards the elevator door that they'd just come through. "...At times like these I can't help but wonder what genius architect only built one way in and out of the Chancellor's suite."

They- they being the Chancellor, Ahsoka, Rex, Fox, and what few core members of the Guard and Torrent were with them- actually managed to make it down from the office and halfway deeper into the building before they ran into trouble. A miracle, if only Rex believed in them.

Trouble started with the familiar sound of marching droids, somewhere down a hall. The Chancellor stopped, and then, only then, did her expression change. Her face split into a grimace, and then she bared her teeth. The woman reached inside one of her massive, voluminous sleeves and, of all things, pulled out a blaster.

"Chancellor." Fox sounded more annoyed than anything else. "I thought we talked about the blaster."

"Commander. Yes, and it looks like I was right. Pays to be prepared." She then proceeded to immediately shoot the first droid to step down the hallway in the head. She paused for a moment, after. "You know, I thought that they would've updated them in the past ten years."

Oh, fuck, not battle banter.  

"You would've." Fox agreed, actually agreed- since when the fuck did Fox agree with people- and didn't move to cover her the way a good bodyguard probably should've, leaving her open to keep shooting. 

Rex heard one of Ahsoka's battle-shrieks somewhere behind him. The sound of blasterfire abated. Just for a moment.

"We're clear over here! For now!" Ahsoka called over. "We should evacuate while we have the chance!"

"And let them take the Senate building?" Rex couldn't tell who it was that replied. He couldn't afford to pay attention to that. Ahsoka's front might've opened up, but their's hadn't. They were just starting to get the brunt of it.

"I'd rather they didn't take the Chancellor!"

"Enough." Ah, that was the Fox he was used to. He left no room for argument. "No bickering. The Senate isn't defensible. We'll fall back to the Headquarters."

"Sounds like a good plan." The Chancellor didn't even seem out of breath. Not a hair out of place, too. "Under, Commander?"

Fox thought for a moment. He jerkily nodded. "Follow my lead."

Fox's lead took them into the belly of the Senate building. They actually didn't run into anywhere near as much trouble as Rex would've expected from a capital invasion. That was in large part thanks to the Supreme Chancellor herself. She seemed to know every nook and cranny of the dome. Including, as it turned out, servants' passages. They hadn't been cleaned in about as long as they hadn't been in use. Which was, to say, over a thousand years.

Rex had never seen so many rats in his life. The things he did for the Republic.

The tunnels beneath the Senate dome, at least, were marginally cleaner. Still more than slightly rat-infested, but not actively in danger of giving them all fifteen different diseases.

"These used to be evacuation tunnels, up until, say... A hundred years ago? One-fifty?" Chancellor Amidala said, sticking close to Fox so she could mooch off the light from his helmet's lamp. "They stopped using them around then. You won't find them on any plans today. I think people forgot about them."

"But not you?" Ahsoka was by Rex and the rest of the 501st. Still, she didn't have to speak up much for the Chancellor to hear her. It echoed something fierce in the tunnels.

"It pays to be prepared." The Chancellor said, repeating herself from before.

Ahsoka tilted her head in curiosity. It took her a moment to reply. "I haven't met any politicians as... well prepared as you."

"The Republic appointed me to this position because I led a people in wartime, and because I negotiated peace, in the end." Chancellor Amidala said, unusually frank. "They forgot, I think, that it wasn't a very fair war. There was no place for me to sit back and give orders. Not like there is now."

Silence stretched on. Ahsoka awkwardly tried to fill the gap. "...I'm sorry."

"There's nothing to be done about it now." The Chancellor paused then shook her head. "The old access points were sealed when these were abandoned. We'll need to take the sewers."

Fives groaned, but Ahsoka elbowed him in the stomach to shut him up.

"Right away, Chancellor." Rex said, awkwardly. She didn't seem to mind, giving a shallow nod in their direction.

Nobody liked sewers- but as it turned out, the sewers of a planet that was all-city turned out to be uniquely disgusting. Maybes Fives was right to whine. He could only imagine how it must've smelled- he gave big props to the Chancellor for not vomiting- and he could only pity Ahsoka with how bad it must've been, with her sharper senses. He'd never been more glad for his bucket in his life.

Rex could only manage to be happy that nobody fell in.

"It should open up ahead." That was Fox that spoke, not the Chancellor. How many times had the Guard gone tramping through sewers for him to know them so well? Poor bastards. "Not the ladders and covers you see on other planets. It'll look like a big door in the ceiling."

"I see it." Ahsoka blinked up at something outside of his headlamp's range. "How do we get up?"

"Well." Fox said, blunt. "That depends. Either this is one of the dozen manholes on the entire planet that hasn't had its walkway corrode, or we'll need to find another way up."

"Padawan-Commander, do you think you could use the Force to lift us out?" The Chancellor butted in.

"Oh- sure." Ahsoka glanced back and away from the door- Rex could see it now. It really was big. About as long as a speeder and three times as wide. Her eyes glittered in the dark as she glared up at it.

"Believe it or not, this is not my first time wandering through sewers with a Jedi." The Chancellor added, almost casually. Fox turned to face her.

"That's one story you've neglected to share."

"I have, because it's gross." She replied.

"Fair enough."

Ahsoka snorted at their conversation and lifted both hands, fingers splayed out. Her eyes narrowed in concentration. Rex could hear the groaning of old metal.

"You weren't lying about the rust." Ahsoka said, through gritted teeth. "It's so welded shut I can hardly feel the difference between it and the wall."

"Can you open it?" Chancellor Amidala asked.

"Hold on-" There was an ear-splitting screech, and then a loud bang as the door was finally thrown open. Rex could see where the edges were warped from Ahsoka's pressure, she'd damaged it far more than the rust did. She took a moment to pant, lowering her arms, before she crouched and lunged, leaping out of the hole with the kind of grace that only a Jedi could manage. He could only hear her, not see her. "It's clear, but I don't think it will be for long!"

"Thank you, Padawan-Commander." The Chancellor said, sounding genuinely warm. "If you don't mind?"

Ahsoka did not often use the Force on other living things, so the process of hauling them all the surface was painfully long. She was slow with lifting them up into the air, slower with setting them back down. Rex was the last to go, his back to the manhole and his hands on his blasters, making sure they weren't about to find trouble before they could all return to the surface. With the way his day had been going, he half-expected to have to fight some kind of rat king. But he didn't. He ended up being able to join the others without issue.

Rex could see the Guard's headquarters from here, even through all the other tall buildings around it and the fact that they were several layers down. Fox had chosen a spot that opened up into a painfully narrow alleyway, enough so that nobody could stand shoulder to shoulder. Enough, at least, that they had some cover. He couldn't see anyone nearby. He didn't think he'd ever seen Coruscant this empty.

That probably had something to do with the explosions in the distance.

"It looks like the HQ has held." Fox said, tilting his helmet up towards the building in question.

"No telling for how much longer." Ahsoka said, voice dark. "We still don't have reinforcements."

"We should get moving. It's probably not the best idea to stay exposed in the open like this." The Chancellor interjected and- as if she'd spoken into being- a seppie ship slipped into view from above one of the surrounding buildings and immediately stopped. Hovered as a pair of searchlights stuck on their small group. "Oh, fuck."

Rex didn't have the time to marvel at the Chancellor cursing, because he could recognize that ship. Any member of the GAR could, with good reason. It didn't go to land, because it didn't need to. And it didn't release any clankers, because it didn't carry them. Instead, the door to the holding berth slid open. It felt like it took longer than it was supposed to- probably because as soon as it had a massive shape dropped and landed in the open street in front of them with a metallic clank.

So. This was going to be how Rex died. Going out defending the Chancellor from General Grievous. At least it was a somewhat honorable way to go.

Ahsoka's lightsabers snapped to life with a hiss.

"Go." Her voice was that awful kind of flat.

"Comm-"

"That's an order, Rex." She cut him off. "Get out of here."

General Grievous let out a wheezy, rough laugh. "This is all that the Jedi have to offer me? A Padawan?"

She didn't respond to him, holding her 'sabers like a shield made of golden, spitting plasma. "I said to get out of here." Rex got the idea, he took two steps back, keeping his blaster trained on the massive General.

"I look forwards to adding a matching set of lightsabers to my collection." Grievous said, like an actual fucking fictional supervillain, as he ignited his own blades.

Ahsoka looked away from them to glare him in the eyes. Rex kept moving backwards. He'd been fighting too long to turn his back on an enemy that wasn't otherwise busy. He had to wait until they really started to fight. She stopped ignoring the droid General then. Her voice all snarl and venom and the night in the mess hall and blackouts on Kamino.

"I don't die easy."

In the end, it was semantics to decide whether the war ended with the Battle of Coruscant or with the signing of a ceasefire. It didn't matter. With Grievous dead and Dooku captured thanks to the timely arrival of General Jinn, the Separatists hastily agreed to peace.

In the end, the public and the GAR's reaction to the death of the Separatist Supreme Martial Commander was split. To the people of the galaxy, it was laughable that he'd been defeated by 'a mere Padawan'. To the 501st, he'd been defeated by their Padawan, and they'd never let their vode forget that. Sometimes it seemed like they were starting to annoy them, with all the boasting they did, but Rex didn't tell his troops off. He didn't when they'd scoop Ahsoka, shrieking in indignation, into their arms, either. It was a token complaint. She could've landed any of them flat on their asses if she actually wanted to. They all knew that. She didn't even bitch about it unless she was actively in the air.

Not like how she would openly hiss about obnoxious crowds in the streets and the awkward tension that had consumed the Temple- now that the kid they'd left behind was being honored as a war hero. Screw them. Especially if it meant his vod'ika found herself with them more often than not.

It was surreal, the end of the war. Rex found himself invited to the Chancellor's speech about stepping down- to give up her emergency powers and the seat at once- after she announced whatever executive order she'd been vaguely alluding to for the past two months.

It was downright weird for the 501st to have been awkwardly shuttled to the front of the crowd, alongside their 212th brothers and the Guard -something about honoring their contributions? He was so used to being the Captain of the awkward legion. One born from a fucking math error then further swept under the rug as the relationship between Generals Yoda and Jinn deteriorated to the Sith hells. Now there they were, at the forefront of the galaxy. Seated with the same honors as gathered Senators. Rex found himself tugging at the collar of his greys with discomfort.

"This decision has been a long time coming." The Chancellor started, after staring at the gathered crowd for what must've been multiple, whole, minutes. Force knew what she'd been thinking. Force knew she didn't act like any politician. "Before I begin, I would like to request that I receive no accolades for this. I don't consider this to be something that was a hard decision. I don't consider it to be a grand gesture. I consider it to be a bare necessity."

The crowd murmured- the Senators, the other vode, the reporters, the civilians- all of them. Not Rex though. He could only be silent. Ahsoka was a line of quiet, stiff tension at his side. That probably had a lot to do with the fact that she was also next to her Master, though.

"...There has been much suffering across the galaxy. Untold death. Untold pain." Chancellor Amidala continued. "This will be my final action as your Chancellor, before I return to Naboo, and allow for the Separatist and Republic Senates to complete their deliberation without my influence. This, I hope, will be the first of many steps to a brighter, happier future for the galaxy and its denizens. All of its denizens."

Even this close, and even with her dramatic makeup, the Chancellor was still on a balcony, so he couldn't see her expression. He could see on the screens though: a small, discrete smile. A genuine one. None of that politician shit.

"I, the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, call upon the power bestowed upon me by the Senate and the people." The Chancellor paused one final time, eyes sweeping over the crowd. "From this moment forward, every clone produced under the contract between the Republic, the Jedi, and Kamino shall be released from service and immediately granted the same freedoms that myself and any other citizen can expect. It is the least I can offer for what they have given us all."

For a few seconds, there was none of the muttering from before. It the massive crowds of thousands of people, Rex could've heard a pin drop. And then it exploded. There was screaming, cheering, gasps and a few jeers- Rex couldn't even tell them apart, it was just a mass of sound.

Ahsoka rocketed into his side with enough strength to make him stumble, only kept from falling because he bumped into Fives. Her arms wrapped around his neck in a vice tight enough that it hurt, threatening to choke him. He hugged her back, tried to give his vod'ika every inch of grip that she was giving him. It was only because her sleeve was wet that he realized he was crying.

Her forehead pressed up against his in keldabe and he squeezed his eyes shut. He clung to her- with all the fierce affection of a brother, with the sudden wrench of grief for all the vode who never got to dream of this. For the ones crushed on the battlefield, those slaughtered as prisoners, for his batchmates who never got to leave Kamino. He clung, he clung, he clung.

This was everything that he'd never thought he'd get. There was a weight on his shoulders that he'd lived with his entire life that was gone, just in a few words. He could vaguely hear the screaming crowd- the celebrating vode, the shouting reporters, the gasping Senators- had the Chancellor not told them that she was doing this?- over the roar of blood in his ears and the pounding of his own heart.

"We won." Ahsoka sobbed- actually sobbed. He'd only ever seen her really cry once, the first night after the General had left her with them. And he heard her say the words that she'd never uttered a single time, even after she limped exhausted into the HQ, covered in blood that wasn't her's and the oil that powered droids. "We actually won."

"We did." He said, quietly. And all he could do, with all the cries of joy and indignation and shock and awe was thank the Force for letting him make it this far.

Chapter Text

"Hey, Rex." Fox was bowed over his old work computer- still his work computer, Rex supposed. Just because the war was over didn't mean he was done- the poor bastard had been the one saddled with handling the logistics of moving every trooper and cadet and tubie to the small, uninhabited moon the former Chancellor had included in her final executive act. Rex could've sworn, though, that he'd said he was taking a break five minutes ago. "Come here."

"Hm?" Rex looked up from the painting he'd been working on- one of the watercolors Ahsoka had given him- it was of the Senate dome on the last day of the GAR. He'd intended to give it to Amidala as a thank-you gift, but she seemed to have dropped off the face of the galaxy. Force knew where she'd gone.

Well, Fox probably knew where she'd gone. But he wasn't going to tell anyone.

"Come here." Fox said, again, leaning back in his chair. "Are you on the holonet?"

"You are?" Rex carefully set the brush down inside the tin.

"I mean. I had to check it occasionally during the war. For security stuff." Fox said, pushing his chair backwards to make room for him. "Look what's trending."

Rex was not expecting much from the holonet. Fox didn't seem too concerned, so he didn't think it could be important, but-

"The fuck?"

Someone in the crowd had taken a picture of the Commander hugging him during the former Chancellor's address. It was good quality- he could see every detail down to their tears and Ahsoka's claws digging into his neck. They must've gone through the trouble of cropping out General Jinn, though. Rex was certain that he was close enough to have gotten caught in it.

"Rex, you're famous. You see that?" Fox pointed to an incomprehensible jumble of letters, numbers, and symbols beneath the image. "This picture is the most liked post on this entire holonet site in the past 24 hours. And it's not just this site."

"Fox, why?" Rex turned to look at him. His brother was smirking.

"Because you two idiots have accidentally produced the most effective piece of Republic propaganda in the last three years." Fox tapped on the screen. "The entirety of the Republic's PR team is foaming at the mouth right now."

Rex was at a loss for words. "...But why?"

"From what I can tell, people think it's 'heartwarming', or whatever. Bleh." Fox wrinkled his nose as he scrolled through the comments. "Some Jedi-kid and the trooper she fought alongside tearfully embracing at the end of the war? They're seeing that and they think it's just charming. They're civilians, they don't know the ugly bits. They don't know that we weren't expecting something like this. They don't question why a child was on the battlefield. They don't know why you two are so close. Frankly, they probably don't even care. They just see it as a symbol."

"A symbol." Rex echoed.

"That's what I said." Fox, thankfully, closed out of the tab. "They see it as a sign that peace is on its way. Nothing more, really."

Rex didn't know what to say. It took him a few seconds to even get close. "Why did you want to tell me about this?"

"Like I said, Rex. You're famous." Fox leaned so far back in his chair that it was a minor miracle he didn't tip over. "Figured you should have a heads up before you have to deal with the paparazzi."

"...Thanks?"

"You're welcome." Fox said, breezily waving him off. "Now shoo, I don't have much time left for my break."

The 501st was one of the last legions to be moved to their new residence. It was called Ket-9, officially, but Rex had overheard some of his brothers calling it vode'yaim. Home of the vode. That was probably a better name. Ket-9, from his understanding, had come from some Naboo explorer centuries ago who'd seen fit to name the entire star system after his beloved pet tooka.

Rex would never understand natborns and names.

"This is it, then." Beside him, Ahsoka's voice was uncharacteristically quiet. It came out as more of a whisper.

Rex paused for a long time before he replied. "It is."

Rex took a glance over at her. Her face was calm- lax, even, as she stared out across the Coruscanti skyline. He could understand why. Many people waxed poetic about the beauty of the upper levels where the Temple resided- but he'd always found it gaudy. At night, though- at night the city-planet at the heart of the Republic was stunning. It glittered like the opals that adorned the clothes and jewelry of the senators and galactic leaders than had come to discuss peace.

Ahsoka took a deep, shuddering breath. When she let it out, though, it was still.

"You can still change your mind." Rex said, quietly. Privately. He'd learned his lesson about being too affectionate with his vod'ika after the holonews debacle. They were both thoroughly sick of the spotlight.  "I won't be mad."

"No." Ahsoka's response was immediate. "This is what I need to do."

When she turned to look at him properly, Rex couldn't help but be reminded of a conversation very much like this one, three whole years ago. Ahsoka had been newly assigned to General Jinn, and denied in the same breath. He'd caught her crying, alone, in the hangar. They'd sat together for over an hour, watching the stars in hyperspace go by. She'd grown, since then. Probably not as much as she should've, though, if Kix's rants were anything to go by.

"Besides." She said, with a hint of that familiar, fanged smile. "It was a bit of a long time coming."

And it was- it really was. This moment had been coming since that day in the hangar that she'd just reminded him of. Sometimes it crawled along and sometimes it moved in leaps and bounds, but it was here all the same. Rex put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. She leaned into it, as always, then moved to bump up against him.

Her tone was teasing when she spoke next. "Come on, let's go make sure Hardcase hasn't set the mess on fire."

Ket-9 was...

Well. It was breathable.

He could certainly see why they were the first to properly inhabit it. His opinion of former Chancellor Amidala might be changing. Not that Fox was around to answer for her- fuck knew where he ran off to.

...He was probably with her, actually. Rex couldn't bring himself to care much about whatever she was getting up to. Probably... Gardening. Or whatever it was ex-politicians did. Why she needed Fox? He had no clue.

Half of it was rugged, but perfectly normal. High altitudes- all mountains and a few steppes and tundras. Too cold for his blood. But he couldn't afford to be picky about that sort of thing. They had a planet- or a moon, technically- and it wasn't Kamino, and that was enough. What he could complain about, though, was the giant crater on the other side of the planet that spewed boiling acid every standard hour.

They stood, cluttered on the tall ridges that surrounded the affected planes- a sort of natural observation deck. Over the centuries, the acid had worn down the surrounding landscape and left tall, sturdy walls of stone around the crater. It was enough to keep them high and dry, but during an eruption, the spray could easily down any ship directly above it.

"Well." Ahsoka spoke up, slowly. "At least it's in a hole?"

Rex snorted and peered out across the crater. It massive- hot acid as far as the eye could see. It shined gold like the grain crops that the soil under their feet wasn't fit to grow. It really did take up half the damn moon, didn't it? Or at least it nearly did. 40% seemed like a much smaller number when it was being spoken aloud, versus actually seeing it.

Ahsoka growled in the way a human might've sighed, crossing her arms as she glared down into the crater. "...Well."

"...It sure is something." Rex agreed. It bubbled and foamed like the hot springs on the ice planet they'd had to hold a garrison on for two weeks. It was probably a much worse way for a trooper to warm up, though.

"That's a word for it." Ahsoka squatted down to pick up a pebble from the rocks under their feet. She tossed it underhanded into the crater. It bobbed on the roiling surface for just a moment before it was swallowed up. " 'Hotter than the Resolute's engines at full throttle."

"Well, maybe then it is a good thing that it's in a hole." Rex had to suppress a shudder at that. The 501st had never had an incident with their ion cannons, but he'd heard one too many horror stories about someone turning one on while a vod was nearby- or, worse, inside. They were lucky if they needed a trip to the bacta tanks. Sometimes, all they'd been able to do was have maintenance scrape off whatever was left with a broom. "I don't want to be anywhere near it."

"Understandable." Ahsoka clapped a hand on his shoulder. Her eyes lingered on the crater, though, and it was impossible to tell what she was thinking. "Let's try not to fall in, shall we?"

They could hardly live in their ships- especially with all the cadets and newly-decanted tubies they had with them. There wasn't room for them. They did what they could: melting down whatever they were least likely to need- the tanks were the first to go, too clumsy to cross the rugged terrain of Ket-9- and mining the mountains for stone and sand and grit. The dormitories for the little ones came first, then the quarters for those who'd volunteered to look after them, then for the Guard and Kamino Security and all the vode who'd been permanently assigned to bases or lookouts instead of legions. The 501st didn't see their new home until they were four months into peacetime.

Ket-9's quarters had been built strategically- snug down on the sides of mountains, facing valleys, where they'd be protected from storms and flooding and where they could have equal access to freshwater and quarries and the woods. They were only half-orderly in their construction: orderly, because the legions stayed together, and disorderly, because they couldn't be organized into blocks like on Coruscant, they had to build organically, as the mountains did.

Boxy, grey cabins stretched across the side of the mountain, hundreds, because it was five to a cabin, like batches. For those who lost batchmates, they found others to fill the empty bunks.

He could hear Ahsoka chirping- her version of whistling- the tune of a song from the contraband radio they'd had rigged in the Resolute's rec room while she helped haul boxes into their cabin. He could hear Fives and Echo laughing as Hardcase struggled to follow along with the lyrics. The bunks were the same stuff as in the ships, yanked out and shuttled down to the moon. Rex smoothed over the sheets with his hands as he folded them and gently sat them down on each bunk.

Rex couldn't have seen them, even if he hadn't been facing the wall. The bunk rooms didn't have doors- because they couldn't spare the electronics or hinges for them yet- but the doorway was snug back in the corner, diagonal from the entrance to give them a modicum of privacy. The 'fresher had a door, at least. So they let that be across from the entrance. They were the only two rooms built off the main one, with one low-built sitting area by the entrance and a tall table with metal stools near the bunk room. It was simple. Less furnished than his old General's Quarters had been. But they were home, home in a way he'd never had before.

Rex sat down on the bunk he'd already claimed for himself, on the bottom, so his late nights wouldn't make him wake up his brothers when he climbed the rickety ladder. He let himself lean back and close his eyes, breathing in deep through his nose- smelling the damp, cold, earthy air of the mountains as the breeze sluggishly wound its way into the propped-open entrance.

It was nothing like Coruscant, despite all its metal and duracrete. It was nothing like Kamino, despite all its flat, colorless walls and rigid organization. It was nothing like the venators, despite all the grayscale and the sounds of his vode's laughter as they scrambled over the awkward, uneven terrain between their cabins.

Home. He'd never had one before. Maybe he could get used to it.

Ahsoka was the only natborn to go with them to Ket-9. Nobody asked why she was there, because they all knew already. The vode's rumor network was truly something to behold. By the end of the war, every single trooper in the GAR had long-since known about the situation with General Jinn, and a good chunk had heard about how they'd gotten her armor painted, officially folded her in.

So, no, nobody asked her why she was there. That didn't mean she didn't have a frequent entourage of people asking her other questions.

Lots of them could've been answered by any member of the 501st, just from proximity: 'how do your montrals work'  and 'can you really bite through someone's neck'. They were hollow and could pick up sound vibrations like eardrums, and yes, she could. Easy.

Lots of them, though... Were the kind of question the 501st didn't know, because they knew better than to pry. Ahsoka was weird, and that was a fact of their lives. They knew that, but they also knew that half the time she didn't know how or why she was the way she was, and the other half of the time she thought it was safer for them to keep it to herself.

"Did you really kill General Grievous?" Rex didn't know the trooper that was speaking- the 501st had worked with others so rarely he hardly knew anyone at all- but the green paint on his armor matched the 41st. It took him a moment to tell, though. Firelight didn't do wonders for being able to tell the difference between colors.

"I guess." Ahsoka shrugged, awkward, and took a sip from her cup of someone's atrocious moonshine. She'd never been a boaster, and his Commander had been especially funny about her duel with Grievous. She'd always found a way to redirect the conversation to some other part of the battle of Coruscant. Rex could read between the lines. He knew that she couldn't match Grievous in a game of 'sabers, so he knew she must've done an Ahsoka-thing.

"So." The trooper leaned forwards to brace his elbows against his knees. "How'd you get him?"

Alright. That was probably a bit too close. He could see Ahsoka a large swig from her glass, half-draining it in one go. Evasive, maybe? Trying to avoid having to answer for as long as possible?

She didn't have to, though, and Rex didn't even get the chance the cross the semi-flat patch of land that they'd taken as a 'city square' to play mediator.

"Hey, Commander!" Jesse, sitting on the ground at a neighboring fire pit leaned back and gestured for her, grinning. "Could you come here for a second?"

"You need something?" Ahsoka was quick to get up and join him, curling up at his side. Her face didn't betray anything, Ahsoka was too good for that, but she bumped a shoulder up against his in silent appreciation.

"They don't believe me about Mandalore, mind backing me up?"

Ahsoka snorted, and took another sip from her drink. A smaller one. "...I want to preface this by saying it was not my idea."

As much as they would've liked to, they didn't have any time to relax. The vode didn't have much in the way of credits- and without credits, they couldn't buy livestock to graze on the shrubby grasses of Ket-9- the only form of agriculture they could manage, with how shot the soil was- they couldn't buy medicine in case someone was injured or fell ill, they couldn't buy the fuel they needed to keep their homes heated when Ket-9's winter came.

So. They had to find work. They scrapped old military equipment to sell the melted down raw materials. They were in the process of starting a refueling station. And, for those among them still willing and wanting to touch a blaster- because many weren't- they had bounty hunters.

He shouldn't have been surprised that Ahsoka signed on for that. She'd always been a bit addicted to adrenaline, and she had a knack for finding trouble. Rex didn't think she was even capable of calming down. That didn't stop him from worrying, though. He didn't know if he'd ever stop worrying about her. No matter what, some part of him would always see some part of her as that small, frightened girl on Christophsis.

Even if she wasn't really, anymore. She was only a few inches shy of their heights now, and she wore her spacer's clothes and carried her blasters like she hadn't been donning robes and lightsabers just a few months prior. She looked... Well, comfortable, really, as she sat on the beaten stool by the small, cramped 'kitchen' and tightened her handwraps with her teeth.

"Is something wrong?" Ahsoka looked up from her work, letting her arms fall loose to her sides.

Rex couldn't make himself meet her eyes, still staring down at what he'd been working on- another painting, again. He'd taken to selling them outside the scrapyard. Some of the customers liked the novelty.

"Rex?"

"I just... Worry. You know me." There was no point in lying to her. Ahsoka knew him too well, and even if she didn't she could probably sense it.

He heard the chair scrape against the concrete floor as she hopped off. A moment later- because their cabin was very small- she was already at his side. Ahsoka bowed down to brush her forehead up against his.

"I'm not going anywhere. We'll be back before you know it. And-" She smiled, not one of her usual smirks, but something softer and maybe a bit hopeful. "-we'll have some credits with us."

"I'm sure." He said, reaching up to clasp a hand over her shoulder. "Just... Stay safe. Don't get yourself into... Extra trouble."

She was silent for a few seconds. "I'll make sure to keep my head down, Rex. Nobody needs to know what we know."

"Thank you." He let her go, letting his arm fall loose to his side. She drew back just an inch so she could tap their foreheads together again before she stood up straight. "And make sure to keep Fives and Echo in line. Not every authority will be as forgiving as Fox has been."

Ahsoka covered a laugh with one of her clawed hands. "I look forwards to pulling them out of their bar fights."

Rex tried to give her a stern look, but that only made her laugh harder. Eventually, he gave in, and let out a single, dry snort. "I think they spent more time in the drunk tanks than in 79's itself."

"Sounds plausible." Ahsoka said, still grinning with all her teeth. She glanced across the room, like she was trying to commit to to memory before she left... Almost like she didn't know when she'd be back.

"Hey." Rex said, leaning closer to her. "You will be back soon, right?"

"As soon as we have enough credits to make it worth it." She said, vaguely. Too vaguely, for his liking. "We're all good shots, I'm sure we'll get what we need."

"...Ahsoka." His tone wasn't scolding. It didn't feel right. She wasn't the kid who was his responsibility anymore. She was an adult, capable of making her own decisions. Even if they were bad ones.

She cringed all the same, face tightening with guilt. "...We don't know how long it will take. Some of the bounty hunters that come through here- we've spoken to them. It can be a while before we'll build up a good rapport."

"...You'll come back eventually, though, right?"

"Of course." Her response was immediate. "Of course. I'll always come back."

Silence stretched out between them.

"...Keep Hardcase out of trouble for me, okay? Don't let him try any tricks over the crater." Ahsoka broke it, awkwardly. "He's said he wants to."

"I'll make sure to keep an eye on him." Rex huffed and looked down, glancing at his hands. Some of the paints had started to dry out again, they did that quickly. He'd need more water.

"Thanks, Rex." Ahsoka shifted quietly next to him, then took a step back to circle around to the door. "I'll be seeing you?"

Rex looked up slowly, almost reluctantly. Maybe more than slightly. He didn't want to see his vod'ika for the last time before he wouldn't get to again for Force knew how long. But he did, all the same. He'd regret it more if he didn't.

She smiled at him, just as nervous and fanged and awkward as she'd been three whole years ago. Even if she didn't really need his permission or support anymore. Even if she'd grown.

"I'll see you soon, Commander." He promised, and he meant it. He hoped she did too.

Ahsoka, Fives, and Echo did come back. At first on occasion, then more frequently as they had an easier time finding better jobs. She wasn't wrong- their skills translated very well to bounty hunting. The other troopers who'd taken it up, too. It was enough to finally go and buy the blasted little govaths Hound had been going on about. Rex thought they were mean creatures. They frequently tried to bite people. Hound swore up and down that they were worth it, though. Something about wool?

Whatever. Rex didn't know much of anything about animals, so he'd leave that up to the people that did. All he knew was that travelers found them charming and paid well for paintings of them.

Rex was only half-paying attention to his latest painting of the govaths. In the corner of his eye, he watched Ahsoka be swarmed by cadets.

He was happy for them. When they were older, they would only remember sparring as being what it was for them now- fun. Ahsoka was purr-growling, tussling in the cleared circles of dirt that had long since been set aside for training. There was none of the usual bite in her fighting- not that he was expecting it, but she didn't even treat it the way she did spars with the ARCs. He could remember her sinking her teeth into people's gloves and joints, or wrapping her arms around their necks in a choke-hold, or knocking them hard to the ground, and that was when she was feeling friendly. There was none of that, now. He didn't know she could be that gentle. He told Kix this- who was supposed to be supervising the govath fields in case they decided to bite one of their minders.

"I think it's a physiological thing." He hummed, after a moment. "I found a few mentions of it in that holobook you got me. It's common among predatory species. Their responses to fighting are much more complex than a human's."

"Is that so?" Rex hummed and added a few blades of shiny, green-black grass to the foreground.

"In a real battle, she'd release mostly adrenaline. Sparring releases less, alongside a cocktail of positive feedback hormones. In a play-fight, which I think this might be, it's all those other chemicals. Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, a few others."

"..I'm going to pretend I know what any of that means."

"Fair enough." Someone let out a shout of pain from somewhere in the fields, and Kix sighed. "Duty calls. Be seeing you, Rex."

Rex took a glance over his shoulder as Ahsoka let a cadet half her size knock her to the ground, then turned back to his painting before they could notice him watching them.

Rex didn't pay much mind to the crater, most of the time. It was a part of life on Ket-9 that he could go entire days without thinking about. It wasn't an active threat by any means, all it did was restrict travel.

Generally, people only brought up the crater in one of two circumstances: landing protocols, and accidents. So, when someone called a meeting between the highest-ranking member of each legion on-moon, Rex could make an assumption. When a frazzled-looking engineer from Kamino Security came in, that assumption worsened.

Great. Someone actually fell in the damn crater. How were they supposed to get them out?

But then the engineer, helmet clamped under his arm so tight it looked like it might crack, looked up at them all- the whole hundreds of troopers gathered, Rex the only non-Commander among them- and grinned.

"We found something, in the crater." The brother started, shuffling from foot to foot. "Some of the others and I- we realized it didn't behave much like any acid pit we'd ever seen, you know?"

Rex heard someone murmur something about how he probably hadn't seen much of anything, not being part of an active legion, but it was drowned out by slow, quiet agreements and affirmations from those of them that had seen acid on missions. Rex kept his mouth shut, because he hadn't. The closest he'd come were the hot springs. And those, generally, couldn't dissolve people.

The engineer waited for everyone to die down. Then somehow, miraculously, smiled wider. "We got a sample from the crater walls in between eruptions. It isn't acid. It's molten metal."

He paused again, as if waiting for more mumbling from the crowds, but got nothing, so he continued. "And not just any metals. Titanium, neutronium, zersium, and gold, mostly. With trace quantities of others. Precious metals." The vod awkwardly tried to fold his hands behind his back, despite holding his helmet. "It can be harvested."

The crowd broke out into murmuring again. Rex couldn't blame them. That was... Well. The crater was massive, massive and deep. There was no telling how much of it was actually in there. Credits were always something scarce, on Ket-9, if this engineer was right- if he was right they'd never have to worry about that again. They already had contacts willing to buy materials from recycled weaponry, it wouldn't be hard to make the jump.

...Ket-9 had been discovered by a Naboo explorer, hadn't it? Had the former Chancellor known what was on the moon before she gave it to them? Rex wouldn't be surprised if she had. She really was the gift that kept on giving, if he only knew where she was so he could thank her. But she was smart, the former Chancellor, if she didn't want to be found, she wouldn't be. He just hoped she'd decide to turn up eventually.

Exactly three months after they'd finished constructing the observation deck over the crater, four months since they'd built the harvesting equipment, and fourteen months since the GAR was dissolved, it all came crashing down.

Rex was not one of the troopers that followed the holonews, but he'd still gathered in Ket-9's city square, along with every other brother on the moon, to watch the announcement of the treaty between the Republic and the Separatists. It was the end of an era, the official one. They hadn't been at war for a year and a half, but that had just been a ceasefire. This was supposed to be the real deal.

Someone had gone through the trouble of cracking open moonshine that didn't taste like it had come from the Resolute's toilets. It still burnt like hell, though. Rex wished that someone could've had the idea to water it down, but his cabin was too far away to go do it himself. He didn't want to miss anything.

Rex's vode were laughing, joking. It was hard to pick out the voices of the reporters on the giant holo-screen someone had rigged to the side of a warehouse. Not that what they were saying was particularly important- they'd learn the terms of the agreement the same time the rest of them did. They were just discussing the last four years. The war. Peace. The former Chancellor, and the new one- Mas Amedda. Rex wasn't familiar with politics, but he was quite under the impression that the Coruscant Guard didn't see him in the same light as his predecessor, and he trusted their judgement.

The reporter currently on screen- an orange-ish twi'lek woman- either heard something that the microphones didn't catch, or someone said something through her earpiece, because she straightened up with an eager smile.

"We have confirmation that Chancellor Amedda is about to address the Republic." She said. It took a moment for Rex's brothers to quiet down, the square filled with sounds of hushing and quiet muttering. "...He will be sending his message using the same system as emergency wartime PSAs- from his office. When he does, all holo-screens will sync and transmit it.

The gathered vode became only marginally quieter when, about a minute later, he did. Rex couldn't help but feel that this was... Strange? Chancellor Amidala had announced both the ceasefire and the end of the GAR publicly, on a balcony outside the Senate building. She'd been smiling happily for both- for all the galaxy to see. Chancellor Amedda was smiling too, but something about it felt slimy. Maybe this was the standard operating procedure for politicians? Rex doubted she'd been the norm.

"Loyal citizens of the Republic...And of the Separatists." Amedda said, staring straight into the camera. "This treaty has been a long time coming, the culmination of over a year of talks between the two parties of this conflict. I am pleased to announce the official end of this war, and I am honored to be the one to shepherd in a new era of peace and mutual prosperity."

"In order to usher in this better, brighter future-" Amedda continued. "-We have dedicated ourselves to the process of demilitarization, to reduce armaments to a level only suited for combating the uptick of crime and piracy that occurred during the war."

"Who's 'we'?" One of Rex's brothers- someone in 212th paint- butted in during a short break in the Chancellor's speech. "Last I checked, the Republic doesn't have anything to demilitarize."

Something in those words made Rex's stomach curdle. Maybe he had the tendency to assume the worst- and he did. He assumed the worst because that was what had kept the 501st alive and whole over three years of wartime. But... He wasn't often wrong, either.

Chancellor Amidala. He remembered, uneasily. Really always was the odd one out.

He'd spent enough time with the Guard to know how most politicians thought about them. Most didn't think they were sentient- let alone people. They thought they were no better than- and no different from- the Separatists' own droid army.

"My predecessor could not have anticipated these agreements." The Chancellor said, slowly. Like he was choosing his words carefully. "She made the decision to merely dissolve the army, and send the clones created for it into... Storage."

An awful silence fell over the crowd. A terrible, twisted mirror of how quiet everyone was when Amidala announced that they were going to be cut loose. Rex felt his blood turn to ice, colder than the peaks of Ket-9's many mountains.

"We will be collecting the units for decommissioning, in accordance with this new treaty." Amedda said, and, oh, there it was.

Rex was right. He often was, about his instincts. And these had been his instincts the entire time, hadn't they? He'd always known better, they were lucky they'd had a year. He couldn't even say he was surprised. He could feel dread, though. It settled heavy in his guts, hot like the molten metal in their crater. He couldn't hear much else of the announcement, thanks to the outbreak of his brothers shouting and the roar of blood in his ears.

Peace was supposed to mean the end of their fighting. He'd always known better, in a way. There was none of that, for them. Peace would only be the start of it.

The vode who weren't on Ket-9 came scrambling back quickly, after that. Or as quickly as they could. Travel was being restricted, in a lot of cases- from what the brothers off-moon said, the Senate's decision had been beyond unpopular, and civilians had been making themselves into nuisances for the Republic.

Rex could only feel faintly grateful for them. Their riots were a double-edged sword, both distracting them enough so that they couldn't be exterminated immediately, and causing enough trouble that it was taking forever for his vode to get home.

Fox- wherever the fuck he'd run off to in the last year- was the first to return. Most of their bounty hunters had followed shortly after. Ahsoka, Fives, and Echo were among the ones that hadn't.

That meant that Rex once again was the highest-ranking member of the 501st available, and he had to sit and cast votes for how they were going to proceed. They'd done this before- more times than he could count. Deciding what order to build the new barracks and cabins in, where to place the crater's harvesters, where to put the govaths... This was different, though, of course. There was a tension in the room- a weight pressing down on them that had never been there before.

"We can't take this lying down." That was Wolffe, stepping forwards to shout at the rest of them. It made him uncomfortable, now, just how much they'd based the meeting hall off of the Senate. It was so similar- with their pods stacked up and around each other. Less tech, though. None of the floating and moving, no microphones, no holos. They all had to scream over each other to be heard. "We fought for less for so long, we can't give up now!"

"With what equipment?" Then- Gree, Rex was pretty sure that was Gree. He was too far away to see clearly. "We've scrapped everything."

"We'll find a way!" Wolffe yelled back. Rex was too far away from him to see his face clearly, but he could imagine the scar on his face being twisted with rage. "What else are you suggesting we do?"

"I'm not saying we should let them kill us. I'm just saying that we need to have a plan."

"We don't have time to sit here and plan! Not when they could already be on their way!"

This was the same argument that they'd had for the past three days. Sometimes the parties involved varied- but it was the same. Always the same. Rex had been sitting in silence for all of it. They didn't have time for this. If they couldn't waste time planning, they certainly couldn't with this.

"Maybe the Jedi will interfere?" Rex didn't know who that was- someone he couldn't see, someone seated above him.

"And if they don't?" Rex didn't realize he'd spoken out until eyes were already on him. He gritted his teeth. Of course, of all the times he'd contributed to a discussion, this was the time he'd been heard loud and clear. He stood from his seat and moved to clutch the railing at the edge of the 501st's pod. "We can't rely on their help. If we expect it and they're a no-show, we're doomed."

"Why wouldn't they?" Wolffe, again. Rex still couldn't see him. The foot he'd moved forwards hardly did enough to close the gap, but he sounded no less angry. "It's hardly in their code to just let things like this happen."

"It was hardly in their code for them to become Generals, either. But here we are." Rex snapped back. He kept the other half of what he wanted to say to himself. He'd watched his vod'ika's falling out with the Order. These Commanders hadn't- they had no idea how much of the idealism around Jedi was just idealism. Rex liked to think he knew better. He wouldn't be trusting any Master any time soon.

"That was different! We all know that was different!"

"How is it really-"

Rex didn't get to finish his thought, his voice was drowned out by what seemed to be the entire room talking at once. With its hundreds of occupants, it was impossible to hear himself think. Some of them had to have been actually discussing something, but everyone else was just yelling for the others to be quiet.

"Ships just came out of hyperspace!" There was no way of knowing who'd spoken, but Rex felt his stomach drop all the same.

If they ended up dying after spending three days arguing in circles instead of preparing for an attack, Rex was going to haunt everyone. But as he tugged on his helmet and hurried through the crush of crowds clearing out of the meeting hall, he peered up at the massive warships above them, and paused.

The Republic didn't have warships anymore. And this looked nothing like either of the navies he'd seen before. They were sleeker, sharper. There was none of the slate-grey and blue or red paint he'd gotten used to. These were chrome, shiny enough that they reflected light in a way that could've blinded him if he wasn't wearing his helmet. Most of them were silver, but a few had color- red, gold, green. Only one was blue, hanging dead-still next to a ship that didn't glitter under Ket-9's sun. It was painted so dark that it was nearly formless, a black void that blotted out their pale sky and sucked in the shine of every ship around it.

The Mand'alor was every bit as unsettling as Rex remembered her to be. It seemed he wasn't alone in feeling this way, considering that this was the first and only time he'd actually heard the meeting hall fall completely silent.

He tracked the shine of her visor as she scanned the room and told himself that he was imagining it when it seemed she paused on him for a moment longer than the others.

"...Your highness." Force thank fucking Fox for knowing what to say to galactic leaders. "We were not expecting a visit from you."

"I apologize for not alerting you to our arrival. Our communicators are on a separate network from the rest of the galaxy's." Kryze said, her voice incredibly even. "Mandalore has learned of the... Terms of the recent treaty between the Republic and Separatist Alliance."

Rex was grateful to know her eyes were off of him, since Fox was on the opposite side of the room. He felt like his skin was crawling. He wanted nothing more than to put on his helmet, but he didn't want to be the only vod in the room to have kept it on. So he didn't.

"You have?" Fox asked, carefully neutral in the way that had to be learned.

She nodded- maybe she nodded? It was hard to tell, even if she hadn't been standing so far away on the circular floor of the hall. "We have found them to be... Incorrigible."

That didn't illicit the kind of muttering a comment from anyone else would have. Nobody seemed to want to risk interrupting the Mand'alor. Fox must've felt the same way, because he waited a few beats before speaking again. "Are you extending us your assistance?"

"In a way." The Mand'alor said, tilting her head to the side. "Mandalore wishes to continue to remain neutral in galactic affairs. Our last conflict with the Republic resulted in the destruction of our capital."

"Then what are you offering?"

The Mand'alor took another moment to look the room over. She was the only Mandalorian in the room, refusing guards in a gesture of goodwill. How confident was she that she didn't need them? Even Chancellor Amidala hadn't gone anywhere without Fox. When she replied, her tone was just as cool and collected as it had been since the moment her boots had touched the hard-packed, cold dirt of their moon. "We will be happy to welcome Ket-9 and its occupants as members of the Mandalorian sector and her people, should you all be willing. The threat of conflict with us alone should be enough to deter any... Aggression."

It... Maybe it was true? They had been under strict orders to not even cross the border into the Mandalorian sector for a reason. They were dangerous. They were an army that could've crushed either or both sides of the war with ease. The ships in orbit of their moon were proof enough of that.

"And in return?" Fox said, quiet in a way that never would've been heard in the hall under any other circumstances.

"It is merely common decency, Commander." The Mand'alor said. The use of a title made Rex shudder. He could only hope that Kryze had made an assumption, because there was no way she could've known who Fox was. "It is my understanding that you have children among your numbers, correct?"

"...Correct." Fox's voice betrayed his discomfort. The same discomfort they were all feeling, no doubt. Rex felt like he could've been sick.

"The protection of children is a core tenet of our people." Kryze said, heedless of Fox's tone. "Those among our ranks, and those not. To allow such a travesty is as good as to destroy our armor."

The reassurance that she wasn't about to steal the cadets did something to ease Rex's nerves, but he could still feel his heart pounding. It must've done something for Fox too, his voice slightly calmer. Slightly. "Is that all?"

"Ket-9 will be expected to pay taxes, but I doubt they'll be much higher than what you would pay to the Republic." Kryze said, nonchalant. "The process of integration would be left up to the individual, and could take as long- or only go as far- as the individual wants."

...It was. An unimaginably good deal. If someone had told Rex yesterday that their salvation would literally come from the sky, he probably would've laughed at them. If they insisted, he probably would've sent them to Kix for a psych eval... It was too good to be true, really. There was no way that this was all there was to it. Especially with a woman as... Unsettling as Mand'alor Kryze. But what other options did they have?

"...Thank you, your highness." Fox said, slowly.

"It's just Mand'alor, Commander."

"...Right." Fox shifted backwards, lifting his hands off of the railing of his pod. "Thank you, Mand'alor. My brothers and I will vote on how we will respond to your proposal tomorrow morning."

"We will remain in orbit of Ket-9 until we receive a response, to provide protection." She said. And, once again, Kryze looked over them again. Rex really didn't think that he was imagining it this time when the reflected light of the visor stayed pointed in his direction. "Best of luck to you all, in whatever you choose."

The last thing Rex had been expecting was for them to not have a chance to vote on the Mand'alor's proposal.

It wasn't because they were attacked- because who in their right mind would wage war with Mandalore? It wasn't because she took it back, because Kryze was standing right beside him when they got the news. Still as the dead- her helmet tilted up in the direction of Ket-9's one and only holo-screen- dull and difficult to see with its dim lights in the dark.

It was the same twi'lek reporter from before. The same channel they'd stayed tuned to ever since they heard about the treaty because she was one of the citizens who'd publicly disavowed the Senate's decision. She looked terrfied, now, nothing like her initial excitement over the signing and nothing like the anger of the past three days. She was having difficulty looking into the camera, her eyes flicking around the room. Her lekku trembled, even when she didn't.

"We're receiving reports from the Senate dome." She said, voice even in the way that meant she was trying very hard not to sound afraid. "It- it appears that there's been a..."

She lifted her hand to her face, then dropped it in an aborted gesture. "I'm sorry. We've received reports from the Senate dome indicating... Mass casualties. The number of dead are currently unknown, but- we have reason to believe that it is high. The Coruscant Security Force has breached the building and is searching for survivors and the perpetrators. We will update you as soon as we receive-"

Rex didn't hear the rest of it. Not even because of noise, this time. His vode and the scattered Mandalorians were equally quiet. No, instead he felt the city square dip out from underneath him. The reporter's voice sounded like he was underwater.

An iron-clad grip seized his shoulder before he could actually collapse to the ground, but he was still left trying to blink stars out of his eyes and feeling the moon spin around him. He swallowed vomit before he could embarrass himself further by getting sick.

"You should go sit down, Captain." Kryze said, smooth and equally as unaffected by the news as she was by the fact that she was holding him upright.

"I'm fine." He gritted out. Force, he couldn't go fainting like a maiden in one of the terrible holodramas Echo loved.

Echo, who was off-moon because-

Ahsoka.

Ahsoka and her promise to him. Ahsoka and her scalding, un-Jedi-like hatred for anyone who threatened the lives of her brothers. Ahsoka, who he hadn't heard a word from since the treaty was signed.

Oh, Force. There was no way out of it, was there? The Ahsoka that teased Fives and wrestled cadets was the same Ahsoka as the one who had killed Grievous, and who'd come back from an incident with an unharmed squad of shinies who shouldn't have survived it and blood on her robes. He'd never thought she'd go this far- but maybe he should've known better.

Kryze betrayed nothing about what she thought of his crisis, eyeing him through her visor. She just stayed stock-still, watching him rather than the holo-screen, as the galaxy burned down around him.