Chapter Text

::  Episode I,  Chapter I  |  AHSOKA  ::

||  10 Anno Domino  :  9 BBY  ||

            Ahsoka dreamt of Mortis.

            After leaving the Order, after coming back only to face the Fall… Ahsoka had spent a year keeping herself rigidly closed off from the Force.

            After the events of Thabeska, after Raada… After finally, desperately, opening herself up again and allowing the Force to welcome her home, Ahsoka had realized that she was not meant to be disconnect or to live in isolation. Her people were a tribal species, her heart was one tied inexorably to those around her, and her duty, as nothing more or less than a person who was able to take a stand, was to help those who were not as fortunately situated as she could be.

            She’d become Fulcrum after Thabeska.

            And now, she dreamt of Mortis.

            She felt the fear of it all as if a very present terror.

            The ache of Forceburn from channeling the sheer amount of atmospheric residue that welled up in the core of Mortis like the inverse of a Dark Star, like generative balance to the all-consuming hunger of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy.

            The weight of her shame in impotence against the Son, her weakness against his poison.

            The Daughter had said it wasn’t his fault, that it had simply been eons too long of imbalance for him to remain sensible. It’s not selfishness, she’d explained, it’s sensation—investment instead of detachment, leading to compassion turned to fear turned to fury turned to hate… She’d said that destruction was not always evil, that sometimes things needed to break before they could be truly rebuilt.

            Or maybe she didn’t say any of that.

            Maybe Ahsoka’s own mind had made it up to try to make sense of the trauma.

            In the dream, it feels very present in the cutting glare of its immediacy.

            And yet, it also feels too echo-y and distant to be real.

            But in the way of dreams, such dissonance is negligible.

            And thus, it goes ignored.

            Under the sway of the Son’s venomous thrall, Ahsoka’s dreaming mind flits into the Void, the odd world between worlds that sits outside of Space and Time.

            She spies glimpses of the temple Gates that open doors unto the breach.

            Ahsoka strolls through dark places… through the dead halls of Moraband and Malachor, through the fires of Mustafar.

            She blinks and finds herself at the heart of Ashas Ree, at the joining of the Light and the Dark where the Jedi had tried to paint over a legacy of Dark.

            An icy breath amid the nostalgic snows of Illum.

            A mouthful of dust on Jedha.

            The creak of old bones and older books on Ossus.

            The hymns of Tython and Bogano and Zeffo.

            The echoes of far older songs, remnants and radiation from the First Making…

            Ahsoka drifts and dreams and doesn’t think to wonder.

            When she wakes, it’s always breathing hard and fighting phantoms. But she’s used to it by now, and with almost 10 years since she’d finally been permitted to step up from being an initiate to become a padawan, she had the training and practice to keep herself controlled.

            Mostly.

            She can bet her Force signature flares something awful for a heartbeat— not enough to attract the eyes of the Emperor’s Inquisitors, but certainly enough to have once made Obi-Wan arch a dubious and concerned eyebrow in her direction.

            Ahsoka doesn’t let herself think about Obi-Wan.

            She hasn’t felt him in the Force since before the Fall, before Order 66 broke the world.

            It’s nice to think he might not be dead, but she doesn’t want to search the Force for remnants of him in case she stumbles blindly into feeling the echoes of his death.

            She’s opened herself up to the Force a lot in the last few years, allowed her power to flow free and fold over itself as it matured—compounding over the years into something stronger than she’d ever believed she would be able to harness.

            It’s been a blessing to her efforts as Fulcrum.

            It’s been a torment as her newfound and ever-growing power tunes the core of her being directly into the heart of the hurt.

            Instead of lingering, instead of searching, Ahsoka wakes up hard and lets herself feel—but just enough to let it go. She jerks awake and then pulls herself to sitting, meditating to let the dream’s vestiges run their course—focusing herself on the new day and her present mission.

            It’s another day of scouting relatively unknown systems, looking for a potential hidey hole in which to build a Rebel base.

            The Bashtu System was mapped out ages before the Fall, when the then-Republic was looking for a secure-data site. It was dismissed in favor of Scarif and then promptly forgotten.

            It’s got an established Hyperlane though, one that Ahsoka has worked carefully to erase from all Republic records and Empire databases. As of three weeks ago, she should be the only one in the whole galaxy with a steady vector on this little corner of Mid Rim Wild Space.

            She’s 99% certain that one of Bashtu’s moons, one called Nenawat, will be the best place for her new base, but she’s still got the trio of moons at the far end of the system to investigate.

            One, Groh, she’s pretty sure holds a forgotten Jedi Temple.

            And Badal almost certainly holds a just-as-forgotten Sith Temple, by the vibe she’s feeling in the tremors of the Force. Both temples are putting out waves of uncorralled energy.

            It’s enough to disrupt all sorts of data streams (hence why Bastu was dismissed in favor of Scarif for the site of data back-up repository), but because both temples are present, one of the Light and one of the Dark, their energies mostly cancel each other out—enough to prevent Bashtu from drawing any radar attention, while still providing cover to disguise the energy signatures when a whole bunch of new sentients and tech-systems move in.

            Really, she’s only here to check out the third moon of the triad.

            Tura.

            It’s name apparently means ‘bravery’ in some long abandoned slant of language. It’d be a poetic place to cache a Rebel base if it proves to be suitable.

            The thing is, sometimes people name moons and planets after symbols and whimsies… And sometimes the names are warnings for what you need to venture there.

            Tura seems like a decent enough place, at first—and even second— glance.

            A bit jungle-y for Ahsoka’s tastes, but not swampy or gross.

            The only real problem is the lack of hanger-space. It would take a lot of doing to make even the closest to half-clear patches of jungle into something that could hide a working base.

            Nenawat’s dry stone cliffs with their deep hewn, windswept overhangs definitely suit her mission’s purposes far better.

            And yet, Ahsoka keeps exploring.

            Perhaps it’s because it’s been so long since she took a day to just bask in the wonder of the Universe and poke about its nooks and crannies like a youngling again, but this is the most relaxed she’s been since she first settled into the bone-deep understanding of what her place was meant to be in this Rebellion.

            She feels at peace here, calm.

            It takes her far too long to recognize that it’s more than just the calm of letting herself have a few hours to delight in exploration and let her mind slide into semi-meditation.

            She’s already halfway down a set of stairs she doesn’t consciously remember finding before she registers the stone beneath her feet. She’s already nearly at her unknown destination before it registers that she has a destination— let alone that she’s going in the right direction.

            The Force is a mysterious secret of reality, and Ahsoka has opened herself up to accepting unexpected guidance. She has enough experience, and Faith in herself, to know what gentle nudges to trust and what leading influences to question.

            The room she finds at the end of her unexpected quest is very Temple-esque.

            It’s a large space, open and airy and weighted with History. There’s a shaft of sunlight streaming in through a skylight, the path of the beam working its way across the floor along an intentional pattern of light and dark tiles— following a wild, river-like ribbon of gold towards a large stone slab that is probably an alter.

            There’s a relief carved into the tabletop, a depiction of a scene Ahsoka has seen other images and copies of before: a Martyr, stood between the opposing armies, being speared by the weapons of both sides and bleeding out as they desperately plead to end the fighting.

            The Martyr is sometimes a boy sometimes a girl, sometimes both situated back to back. They’re always young, always too young. Even when Ahsoka had been a Temple initiate, she’d felt the Martyr in this ancient scene seemed to be little more than a child.

            That sentiment had only gained deeper roots as Ahsoka herself had gotten older.

            She never reached a point where she felt she was definitively older than the Martyr, but with each year she felt less and less able to imagine taking on such a burden with the certainty of death looming as large as the uncertainty of making it matter.

            Even as Fulcrum, as a potential martyr in her own right, she can barely imagine facing the pressure of the Fate of the Universe all coming down to her for any reason.

            Ahsoka has the Rebels to carry Fate forward. It’s never been down to her to do anything so critical that someone else couldn’t eventually be subbed in if she went down.

            Her role in things was not at all like Anakin’s…

            After Mortis, Ahsoka had worried that the Martyr from the epigraphs was her master.

            Obi-Wan had too— though he’d had more cause than she’d ever realized to think so. The Council had believed Anakin was the Chosen One, destined to bring true balance to the Force.

            In some ways, they’d been right.

            And wasn’t that the very worst of it?

            Anakin Skywalker had died to save the Republic, and the people he’d loved. He’d done countless unspeakable things in pursuit of what had started as a noble goal.

            And… while the Force ached with what blood had been shed… Somehow, Anakin had brought about a new potential for balance. The pendulum was still swung far over to the Dark Side, but Ahsoka could sense a sort of hope building in its momentum that she hadn’t sensed even when the Force was overwhelmed with the corrupted weight of the Light.

            Anakin had died to save what he held dear.

            He’d sinned against creation, but he’d cleansed the rot from the Light’s core and in his awful wake Ahsoka could feel a brand new goodness growing.

            It gives her enough hope every day to keep going despite her weary soul.

            It’s long past too late for Anakin.

            Vader has nothing left in him of the human he had been. He has nothing left at all.

            So much like the Martyr…

            Ahsoka blinked back into the moment as her fingers brushed the altar’s surface, her mind fuzzy as she got caught up in fighting the fog of a meditative healing-trance she didn’t quite understand how or why she was suddenly slipping into.

            She doesn’t mean to touch it.

            She doesn’t mean to brush her hand across the heart of the figure bleeding gold as he strained to reach for something beyond the plane of the depiction’s rendering.

            She doesn’t mean to lean her weight into the contact as the sunlight swept over the scene and caused the gilt beneath her fingertips to warm like spilling blood.

            The figure on this altar looks so much like Anakin, like he’d been shot amid another hectic evac and was reaching towards her as he bled out while falling to his doom…

            Ahsoka hears the sobbing long before she feels it.

            In her confusion it takes her long moments to realize that the ache she felt clawing at her lungs and throat even connected to the echoes of the wails that she could hear.

            When she realizes it’s all coming from her, she lets herself fully feel it.

            She embraces the grief because she knows all too well what happened when it got pushed aside into the hidden corners of a soul. She excises it from herself, allows herself to own the feeling, and just as consciously allows herself to let it go.

            She couldn’t say how long she stays there.

            Or how she winds up curled atop the altar’s tabled plane.

            And she certainly couldn’t say how she gets a light sheet draped over her, tucked in around her shoulders like a loved one had tenderly attempted to keep her comfortable.

            Ahsoka can say, fully owning the admission, that she does not react well to her compounding layers of confusion…

            She bolts upright, flings herself off the table, and draws her lightsabers—dropping into an aggressive fighting stance with deadly ease as she seeks a target for her fear and fury.

            The room she’s in is not the room she’d left.

            Not the open space of the altar in the temple.

            It’s confined and close, lit by artificial means— glaring bright white against the daze of her sun-spotted retinas. She’s breathing heavy, panting through her mouth as her delicate nose is overwhelmed by the scents of sanitizer and antiseptic, of epoxy and plastoid and plexy...

            Her breath whistles through her clenched teeth with such force that she almost doesn’t hear the movement behind her.

            Almost.

            She swings towards it wildly— to be met by a green lightsaber and a startled, too-familiar face, as a voice that shreds her heartstrings says, “Woah there, Snips. Take it easy. You’re safe.”

            “Safe?”

            Ahsoka’s only distantly aware that her voice sounds strained to the point of hysteric.

            Just like she’s distantly aware— embarrassed even —that she’s watching all her training and experience fly right out the viewport, her mind observing the event like a third party as her spirit and her body go their separate ways in some sort of near-death experience.

            “Safe? You want me to believe I’m safe, you of all people?”

            A flash of too-well-pretended hurt crosses the shade of Anakin’s expression.

            “Of course, Ahsoka, you’re always safe with me,” he promises— sounding absurdly like he means it. “No matter what happened on Mortis or Zygerria or anywhere, I fight to protect. You know I do. You reminded me of that when I found that I was doubting myself. I’m sorry I didn’t do more to help you after the bombing, Ahsoka— you can’t possibly know how sorry I am. I will never let anything like that happen to you again, to you or anyone we care about.”

            He looks and sounds so stupidly sincere.

            His signature in the Force is such a bright flare of rightness and goodness and strength that Ahsoka begins to doubt her mind entirely. But a trick like this isn’t Vader’s style. He’s all straightforward and brutal efficiency now, the dregs of Anakin’s old artistic flare funneled into a cold reputation that makes whole swathes of foes capitulate the moment he appears.

            Vader isn’t doing this to her.

            But Sidious might be.

            That slimy old geezer has always been one for the long con, the slow torture of the mind until it gives into the pressure of decay. Sidious lets people, communities, whole star systems, even entire galactic republics all destroy themselves from pressure on the weaknesses within.

            “Where is your Master,” Ahsoka demands of the shade, using her full strength to push him away from her. She levels a saber at Anakin to keep him at bay and directs her attention outward to shout, “Where are you, you skeevy old bastard?”

            Sidious will kill her.

            She’s not strong enough to beat him, and if he’s here, he didn’t come alone.

            But Ahsoka is damn well gonna give him a fight if he means to take her down.

            She’s lived this long on very little but some honeyed whisperings of hope and the rage-cured rot-gut elixir of unadulterated spite. She can go a little longer on such high-octane fuel.

            “Ahsoka?”

            The shade of Anakin sounds… he sounds like Anakin, worried and uncertain and concerned and full of so much blatant care that he can hardly breathe.

            “How did you…? How are you doing this?”

            Ahsoka frowns, twitches her attention back to him— keeping threads of her awareness out for Sidious’s inky, insipid slime. Anakin’s expression is a wash of shock. He’s pinned against the wall, wrist bent at an unnatural angle (but not quite crushing enough to snap the struts of the mechno-arm beneath his glove, though the servos are screaming as they fight to keep hold of his lightsaber). His feet are a few inches off the floor.

            And he’s looking around the room like he can see the tendrils of her force awareness lashing out for Sidious. Maybe this construct of him can… She’d never tried to hide herself when she’d been caught in a tight corner like this…

            Usually, when a corner like this came up, hiding was already obsolete.

            Ahsoka and the shade of Anakin stare at each other for a long moment of nothingness.

            “If you’re looking for my Master,” Anakin coughs awkwardly, “Obi-Wan’s probably on the bridge with Admiral Yularen. Maybe we could go talk to him together? And maybe you could tell me about how you got to be so grown up and powerful in just the year we haven’t seen you?”

            “Year?”

            Ahsoka half deflates at that, confused to the point of not even being able to lash out.

            “Yeah, I can hardly believe it either, but it’s already been nearly a full standard cycle since you left the Order,” Anakin says, still forcing a semblance of cheer into his tone.

            Suspicious, but too confused to pin down a reasonable response, Ahsoka adjusts her grip on her sabers and grinds her teeth—bearing her fangs just a but more aggressively.

            Anakin looks down with a self-deprecating chuckle.

            “You know, when you disappeared, I wasn’t expecting you to vanish so thoroughly,” he mentions. “You got so much better at that so quickly, I shouldn’t be surprised with how much you’ve grown in a year. You’re a better teacher to you than I’ve ever been.”

            Ahsoka’s eyes narrow, but Anakin’s not looking at her.

            “I could hardly feel the training bond, some days I couldn’t even really tell that you were still alive… So, when I felt you scream down it, when you called for help because you were in trouble, I was incensed. I’m not proud of how useless I was in finding you. That was all Rex and Obi-Wan. I was basically just a gibbering mess of a human compass.”

            Again the mention of Obi-Wan, and now of Rex… Like this shade of Anakin simply knows they’re alive, like he’s seen them lately…

            Ahsoka can’t pretend to bear it. She just caves to the hurt and the hope and the desperate, disbelieving want for what she’s lost.

            Lightsabers drooping, Ahsoka sways dramatically.

            Her control over the Force wavers.

            Anakin breaks free and rushes over to catch her before she falls without even sheathing his saber. The blade retracts as he just drops it. Like it’s nothing.

            Like it’s nothing compared to her.

            “Hey, hey, hey,” Anakin croons. “You’re okay. We found you unconscious, but you don’t have any injuries. Kix checked you over twice before he’d even let Obi-Wan in the room.”

            Ahsoka doesn’t have any tears left. She feels bereft, somehow, like her whole soul cried itself out in that strange temple on Tura. But there’s a sort of calm in being so entirely empty.

            A vessel of the Force and Fate.

            “We don’t know what happened to you, Ahsoka,” Anakin sighs, helping her to sit up on the bed she’d flung herself out of when she’d woken up. He doesn’t let her go, even when she’s perfectly stable. Instead he sits down beside her, asking, “What did happen, Snips? Why were you so far out in the middle of nowhere?”

            Ahsoka almost gives into his soft tone.

            But then she stiffens.

            She pushes away from him. Staggers backward toward the door, backing away— hunched like a scared dog instead of a fierce Togruti predator.

            “No… You just want to know where the Rebels…”

            “Rebels? The Separatists had you?”

            There’s the edge she’s been expecting all along, the anger and the need to push… Sidious’s shade is a perfect copy of Anakin, even his every fault… If it were really him, Ahsoka might relent to his mothering, well-meant interrogations— might give up the secrets she’s charged herself with taking to her lonely grave.

            To him, and only him… She might’ve been convinced to spill.

            Ahsoka calls her lightsabers back to her hands and throws herself out the door, careening down the hallway beyond it totally blind.

            It’s empty as she staggers, on muscle memory alone, towards the aft fighter hanger— the hall lights low like the Resolute is on it’s simulated night cycle. She’s going at breakneck speed as Anakin’s shouts chase her more effectively than the rest of him— though she has no doubt he’ll be right behind her the moment she dares to slow down.

            She’s so focused on evading the figure behind her, on ducking down below the notice of the bright flare of Force that’s at her back, she doesn’t see the figure in front of her until she’s already slammed straight into it. Into him.

            “Easy there, Commander… I didn’t know you were awake already.”

            Rex.

            It’s Rex.

            Captain Rex, of the 501^st.

            But she can’t process her shock before there’s a hand reaching for her shoulder.

            Jesse.

            It’s godsdamn Jesse… of the kriffing 332^nd… Ahsoka hadn’t cut him down on the Tribunal, and she’d counted that as much a win, as anything that horrid day could ever be considered better than it could be worse, but if Jesse is here and alive and maybe Ahsoka has really cracked because Jesse is dead she buried him, left his helmet staged with honors…

            But if Jesse’s here…

            Jesse’s here, and Rex is on the ground and vulnerable.

            Ahsoka bears her teeth, all feral predator— sabers fallen from her quaking fingers and forgotten in the rush of panic-fear-confusion-NO.

            She launches at him, hands going for his throat.

            She thinks she screams at Rex to run.

            Thinks that maybe she sees his back disappear down the hall at a sprint.

            Thinks it strongly enough that when he’s gone the fight drains out of her and she all but flops into an empty puddle.

            Jesse chokes loudly for a long moment as she feels her world collapsing around her all over again. Whatever this is… she’s done with it.

            She’s done with all of it.

            “Go ahead,” she whispers, staring at his knees. “Do it. If you can hear me— if you even care anymore— it’s not your fault and I forgive you.”

            She waits, eyes falling closed as she hears his plastoid armor shift. As the sound of his blasters getting drawn booms through her montrals.

            But then the sound of the blasters skittering down the hall echoes and her eyes snap open. Jesse’s crouched down in front of her, eyes big and round and obviously worried.

            His hands are raised with his palms flat and up and open.

            “What’s all this now, Commander? It’s gonna be fine, Sir, we’ll see to that,” Jesse promises with all the confidence of good man with an army of brothers at his back. “I think Captain Rex went to find Kix, but can you tell me what’s happening? Are you seeing things or do you really not recognize us?”

            He sounds… pained.

            But not because she nearly strangled him.

            Because he’s hurting on behalf of her.

            “Jesse? You…” she wants, so badly, to leap into his arms and cry, but the hollow ache inside her wails that it’s not real (that it’s not fair) and instead she does what little she can to maybe help release his memory:

            “It’s okay. Jesse. You don’t have to fight it. I know you’ll make it quick. You can go ahead and kill me. If it ever comes to matter to you, I promise, I forgive you.”

            His hand is on her shoulder.

            “Uh, begging your pardon, Sir, but uh, respectfully, that’s not an order I can follow,” he tells her softly. “See, I really don’t want to be killing you now, Sir, and I’m sure the Cap would have my head for it. Let alone the General. So, how about we just sit here for a little, huh?”

            Ahsoka’s eyes go blurry, but she can’t tell if it’s with tears or just exhaustion.

            “Tell the others, won’t you? That I’m sorry and I forgive them all for everything…”

            She doesn’t hear the words of his reply, but she does hear the warmth of their soft rumble as her whole awareness fades into a comforting blackness.

            The last thing she hears is the shade of Anakin shouting her name.

Chapter Text

::  Episode I,  Chapter II  |  ANAKIN  ::

||  1013 Anno Republicae  :  19 BBY  ||

            Anakin is not panicking.

            He is a Skywalker, and a Jedi Knight, and a fully fledged adult, and the Chosen One…

            He doesn’t DO panic.

            Even when things are definitively Not Fine, Anakin Skywalker doesn’t panic. Like he’s not panicking right now. Even though things are very much Not Fine.

            Even though things are so thoroughly Not Fine that he can pretty confidently say that something is very, very, very Wrong.

            The Force is a tangle of angry snarls and knotted threads and he can’t find any calm within it, even if he could pretend to entertain the idea of sitting down to meditate.

            Obi-Wan is meditating for the both of them.

            His own personal calm is soothing the Force enough to let Anakin sense an accurate direction for them to fly in through the training bond.

            They’re in a small shuttle, the shadow of the Resolute looming on the outskirts of this forsaken system in the uncharted middle of nowhere.

            They’re looking for Ahsoka.

            It’s been almost a full year since she left the Jedi Order.

            They haven’t heard a whisper from her in months. She vanished, almost completely—more completely than Anakin had ever felt anyone vanish who hadn’t died— and that was that.

            She’d only taught herself that vanishing trick in interest playing jokes on him, Obi-Wan, and the command staff of the Resolute… She’d only tested the skill in a real, high-stakes scenario after she’d been accused of bombing the Jedi Temple (after the Council had thrown her out with yesterday’s trash to be run over by any passing speeder).

            But when she walked away from him on Coruscant after handing back her padawan braid… she’d slipped into the ether like she’d never lived at all.

            It’s been an itch that Anakin has refused to let himself scratch.

            It was her choice to be there and it should be equally her choice to stay away.

            He’s not supposed to be so attached to her that he needs to stalk her halfway across the galaxy to check in now and then.

            (He’s not supposed to be, but if no one was looking at his antics he’d probably spend an hour every day stalking her feeds to ensure she’s safe from harm and staying healthy…)

            Or not…

            Because even though he wants to check up, it’s her choice and that he can respect.

            (He’s had too few of his own choices to ever dream of taking away hers.)

            He’s been dealing with it.

            (Not very well, he can admit, but still, he has been dealing with it— bearing with it, rather. He’s just missed her, and he worries; and he doesn’t even think Ahsoka knows Padme’s pregnant and he wants to be the one to tell their pseudo-little-sister that amazing news…)

            And he’s been distracted from the worst of it by the escalating war.

            But then… but then, he’d felt Ahsoka scream through their training bond. He’d felt it so strongly that it had brought him to his knees. He’d felt it so strongly that Obi-Wan had felt it through their bond. Plo-Koon and Shaak Ti had confirmed that they’d felt something of it, too.

            Which means the feeling has more than enough behind it to warrant investigating.

            And Anakin is still half incensed from the pull of it, from the pain he feels flooding through it— pain he can’t isolate into specific injuries or anything solid that he might be able use his own power to soothe for her, sending down their bond to either comfort her or help cut off sensation from a grievous wound.

            All he feels is hurt and grief and terror and the physical weight of utter torment.

            It gets worse and worse as they move closer, but at least it means he’s got a solid lock on her and they won’t have to waste their time with searching a wide ream of space.

            Anakin’s got a lock on his padawan down to the millimeter.

            They let the shuttle hover above the tree line on a desperate spit of something intentionally constructed. They don’t take the stairs, or the door, or whatever is nearby to serve as a ‘proper’ entrance. Instead, they leap right in through a hole in the ceiling.

            He and Obi-Wan and Rex and Cody.

            Kix would be there, too (along with most of the 501^st and the 212^th), but someone— not Anakin, he wasn’t quite capable of using words— someone had convinced him to prep a private suite in the med bay for her…

            They find Ahsoka passed out on a stone slab— an altar.

            She’s unconscious, but Rex confirms she’s breathing despite how cold her body feels.

            From how tight the Captain’s voice sounds, Anakin knows he’s not the only one who thought she may have been a corpse. But between Anakin’s Force-enhanced senses, between his and Obi-Wan’s, and the helmet pulse readouts of the med-scans from clone’s helmets, it’s 100% definitively confirmed that she’s alive— albeit it very unwell.

            There’s not a mark on her of the torment Anakin’s been feeling.

            But, no. That’s not exactly true.

            There are scars on her. A lot of them.

            Old ones, by the look of it— but scars she definitely didn’t have a year ago.

            Anakin dismisses the fact that they look healed.

            This wouldn’t be the first temple they’ve been in that could mess with time and space and healing speeds. It doesn’t mean anything that the injuries have scarred over, he felt them.

            He felt her suffer through receiving them.

            And through something so much worse…

            Even if her body truly is healed… her mind must be extremely fragile, if not entirely shattered (but Ahsoka’s strong, so strong… she wouldn’t break, not before he could rescue her).

            Anakin scoops Ahsoka up into his arms. She’s limp and so cold, but she’s breathing and her heart is beating and Anakin will take it, because she’s alive and that’s all that matters.

            They get her back up to the Resolute without taking the time to check the place out.

            Whatever was here to hurt her isn’t showing itself now, and they’ll have time to come back for it once Ahsoka’s safe and warm and Anakin can think straight again.

            Anakin doesn’t think he blinks between setting eyes on Ahsoka on that wretched Altar and getting her laid out on an exam table for Kix.

            The medic shoos the others out, only lets Anakin stay because Anakin actually sits down (first time he’s stopped pacing in the 59 hours since first feeling Ahsoka’s scream).

            Kix checks the Togruta over twice. Finds nothing overtly, objectively wrong.

            Her temp is a little low, but not to the point of hypothermia.

            She’s a bit malnourished and significantly dehydrated, but more like she’s been too busy to stay healthy than like she’d been proactively deprived.

            Her most recent injury seems about a week old.

            Kix says it looks like a projectile of some sort; an arrow, maybe, or something even more brutish like a bullet.

            Anakin can’t even imagine what level of pirate or lowlife scum would stoop to using something as expensive and bluntly destructive as a slugthrower.

            Or what Ahsoka would be doing anywhere near such psychopaths.

            Anakin is so exhausted that he blinks and finds Obi-Wan has been admitted to the ward, with Rex and Cody standing by the door. Kix is in the midst of tucking a light blanket around her shoulders as he gives his prognosis to the others.

            They can’t do much but make her comfortable.

            And hope.

            The exam table they have her on isn’t the softest bed available, but it’s definitely the most private and Anakin’s executive order decides that privacy is the more important thing.

            Snips never did like letting the men (or anyone) see her expose any hint of weakness.

            The ship is heading into its night cycle.

            Obi-Wan goes to brief Admiral Yularen while Rex and Cody head out to give the men the news. The only reason Anakin isn’t kicked out to go get some sleep is that he willingly curls up to rest in the chair still perched at Ahsoka’s bedside.

            Kix elects to leave him be and Anakin reminds himself that he should really do something to show that man how much his good judgement is appreciated.

            Anakin falls asleep maybe an hour into his vigil.

            He’s awoken quite dramatically maybe three hours later.

            Ahsoka gasps back into being.

            Sucks down a heaving lungful of air like she’s been lost underwater half to drowning.

            Then she flings herself out of the bed, eyes wild and nerves clearly frazzled.

            She’s got her sabers drawn in a heartbeat and is crouched in a more aggressive stance than Anakin ever taught her how to use. He doesn’t even think it’s honestly a Jedi form.

            (But she’s not a Jedi anymore, she’s not limited to Jedi teachings.)

            Anakin unfolds himself and softly calls her name.

            The Togruta girl swings around wildly towards him— all attack without any pause to listen or evaluate. (Still in full-blown panic mode; he really can’t pretend to blame her.)

            Blocking her attack with his own saber is automatic, but not exactly easy.

            Her blow has far more weight behind it than he remembers.

            Still, Anakin holds his own— holds her back— and soothes, “Woah, there, Snips. Take it easy. You’re safe.”

            “Safe?”

            She sounds alarmingly close to what might be hysterics.

            “Safe? You want me to believe I’m safe, you of all people?”

            Anakin doesn’t understand the vehemence in her tone, can hardly fathom the venom.

            “Of course, Ahsoka, you’re always safe with me,” he promises— saying what he wishes he’d had the sense to say back when it could have changed something. “No matter what happened on Mortis or Zygerria or elsewhere, I fight to protect. You know I do. You reminded me of that when I found that I was doubting myself. I’m sorry I didn’t do more to help you after the bombing, Ahsoka— you can’t possibly know how sorry I am. I will never let anything like that happen to you again, to you or anyone we care about.”

            Ahsoka clearly wavers, torn by some consideration Anakin cannot begin to rationalize.

            “Where is your Master,” Ahsoka demands, still with such heated, biting venom.

            It just doesn’t make sense.

            Especially not when she’s talking about looking for Obi-Wan.

            Master Kenobi, of all people, had been a solid and consistent source of comfort to her… even after his decision to side with the Council over her expulsion from the Order.

            Anakin simply cannot understand.

            She leans into it when she tries to push him away from her, somehow manages to throw him clear across the room— manages to pin him to the wall. If his right wrist weren’t made of finely manufactured durasteel, his bones would be little more than dusty bits right now.

            Ahsoka levels a saber at Anakin to keep him under clear threat and directs her attention outward to shout, “Where are you, you skeevy old bastard?”

            “Ahsoka?”

            Anakin doesn’t know what’s happening, or why, but he can feel that Ahsoka is terrified and in a soul-deep kind of pain.

            He wants to help her so much it make his own lungs ache, but he doesn’t have a clue as to how he should even try.

            And this… this power she has now, enough to keep him pinned, enough to send visible waves of her consciousness careening outward to prevent any sneak attack… It’s all leagues above the level that she’d left at.

            It feels much more like he’s facing Shaak Ti, or Quinlan Vos, or even Mace Windu…

            Anakin’s brain stumbles over the incongruity, latches onto the confusion because it’s something solid that he understands how to ask about.

            “How did you…? How are you doing this?”

            Ahsoka frowns, twitches her attention back to him— animal-like and ferally predatory.

            Anakin’s whole being is still a wash of shock. He’s effectively pinned down, with his feet a few inches off the floor, and he’s not in any position to escape—if he even wanted to (he doesn’t).

            Ahsoka and Anakin stare at each other for a long moment of nothingness.

            “If you’re looking for my Master,” Anakin coughs awkwardly, “Obi-Wan’s probably on the bridge with Admiral Yularen. Maybe we could go talk to him together? And maybe you could tell me about how you got to be so grown up and powerful in just the year we haven’t seen you?”

            “Year?”

            Ahsoka half deflates at that, looking crushed for some reason.

            Like maybe she didn’t even realize it had been so long.

            Like maybe she’d intended to keep in touch and is being sucker-punched with the sudden awareness that it’s been far longer than she meant to be away.

            “Yeah, I can hardly believe it either, but it’s already been nearly a full standard cycle since you left the order,” Anakin says, still forcing a semblance of cheer into his tone.

            He’s hopeful in a way that hurts, but he doesn’t know what to do about it aside from working hard to pretend that everything about this whole thing is normal and relaxed.

            (It’s not; not at all, but they’re talking now so that has to be something…)

            Ahsoka adjusts her grip on her sabers and grinds her teeth— bearing her fangs with a bit more hostility. It’s a habit from when she’d been a tiny kit, according to Plo-Koon, an act of self-bolstering aggression because a predator can’t ever be stripped of all their weapons, not really.

            Anakin looks down with a self-deprecating chuckle, trying not to think about what must’ve happened to her to make her feel so desperate as all that.

            “You know, when you disappeared, I wasn’t expecting you to vanish so thoroughly,” he mentions. “You got so much better at that so quickly, I shouldn’t be surprised with how much you’ve grown in a year. You’re a better teacher to you than I’ve ever been.”

            Ahsoka’s Force signature contracts, but there’s confusion in the sense he’s getting through their fragile, thready bond. And relief that Anakin’s not looking at her.

            He keeps his eyes down as he continues.

            “I could hardly feel the training bond,” he admits, openly sharing the weakness of his shame to ease a path towards letting her reveal her own cracked shell. “Some days I couldn’t even really tell that you were still alive… So, when I felt you scream down it, when you called for help because you were in trouble, I was incensed. I’m not proud of how useless I was in finding you. That was all Rex and Obi-Wan. I was basically just a gibbering mess of a human compass.”

            Again there’s a powerful ripple of confusion in her Force signature, tied closely to the mentions of Obi-Wan and Rex… Confusion and a wall of something shielded.

            Anakin doesn’t dare to lift his eyes, doesn’t let his mental link so much as brush her iron-clad mental shielding. He simply waits and wills her to feel how much he means his words.

            And then, shockingly sudden, Ahsoka just caves.

            She lets the mental shields collapse to expose wave after wave of emotion. All the hurt and the hope and the desperate, disbelieving want for what she’s lost.

            Nothing concrete flickers through his touch on her mind, nothing he can identify at least.

            Lightsabers drooping, Ahsoka sways dramatically.

            Her control over the Force wavers and Anakin is freed.

            He rushes over to catch her before she falls without even sheathing his saber.

            He just lets it drop.

            This wouldn’t be the first time he’d lost it to the ship’s vents, after all.

            “Hey, hey, hey,” Anakin croons, relishing the foreign-familiar feel of having her held fast within his arms. “You’re okay. We found you unconscious, but you don’t have any injuries. Kix checked you over twice before he’d even let Obi-Wan in the room.”

            Ahsoka doesn’t respond. She just sags more fully against Anakin’s chest.

            “We don’t know what happened to you, Ahsoka,” Anakin sighs, helping her to sit up on the bed she’d flung herself out of when she’d woken up. He doesn’t let her go, even when she’s perfectly stable. Instead he sits down beside her, asking, “What did happen, Snips? Why were you so far out in the middle of nowhere?”

            The question, somehow, apparently turns out to be a bad idea.

            Ahsoka stiffens like she’s been electrocuted.

            Horror rips through her Force signature, horror and shame.

            She pushes away from him. Staggers backward toward the door, backing away— hunched over and clearly terrified. Of him.

            “No… You just want to know where the Rebels…”

            “Rebels? The Separatists had you?”

            There’s the edge he’s been holding back all this time, the anger.

            The mere idea that someone would dare to hurt his padawan is something he cannot— will not— abide in silence.

            Ahsoka’s still looking at him like she’s afraid.

            Like she’s in mourning and he’s the monster who made it happen.

            Anakin’s not sure how that makes him feel, but he knows it isn’t good.

            Worse yet, he doesn’t know what he could do to fix it— to help her understand that he’s not whatever nightmare mind-trick those Sep bastards tortured into her.

            Ahsoka calls her lightsabers back to her hands and throws herself out the door, careening down the hallway beyond it totally blind— it’s a miracle of Togruti agility and Force tuned reflexes that she doesn’t tangle up her limbs and break her neck.

            Anakin charges after her, shouting her name despite himself.

            He knows he’s not a comfort to her right now, but he can’t stop himself.

            He can manage to com Obi-Wan as he charges through the ship and towards the aft fighter-craft hanger. He can tell Obi-Wan is already worried by just how quickly he manages to pull up the camera feeds on the proper stretch of hallway to get eyes on Ahsoka.

            “She’s run into Rex and Jesse,” Obi-Wan narrates. “Rex, rather literally. Jesse’s leaned down to help them both up, but Ahsoka’s… She must be seeing things, might be hallucinating or confused… She— she’s attacked Jesse.”

            Anakin’s gasp tears at his throat.

            “He isn’t fighting back, and she’s… she’s released him, it looks like. I think she’s surrendered,” Obi-Wan continues. His voice doesn’t sound nearly as relaxed as his words imply.

            And from the wave of fear-panic-confusion-NO that’s still streaking through his training bond with Ahsoka, Anakin knows that something’s wrong.

            That certainty redoubles tenfold as resignation and relief wash in.

            The kind he knows from having felt a slave in his cohort committing suicide when he’d still been just a child and too young to even know what suicide was, let alone the Force.

            Anakin knows he’s getting close.

            He slows his pace so as not to startle her. Or whoever she’s with—Jesse, Anakin recalls.

            Rex comes careening around the corner at a sprint.

            “General! Something’s wrong with the Commander,” he reports, pleading clear in his tone as desperation to help Ahsoka makes even the great Captain Rex lose his head.

            He nods to Rex, grave and somber, and the Captain falls into step beside him.

            The make it to within sight of Ahsoka and Jesse on the floor in time to hear Ahsoka, with nothing but earnestness and mercy, say, “Go ahead… Do it. If you can hear me— if you even care anymore— it’s not your fault and I forgive you.”

            Everyone waits a beat, not daring to so much as breathe.

            Jesse spots Anakin and the Captain and gives a solemn nod.

            They have no choice but to trust him.

            And Anakin does, he trusts the men like he trusts his own arm—like he trusts in his own engineered arm, the one he built himself and knows how to fix with no messy biology getting gummed up and going haywire… He hates not being able to help Ahsoka himself, but the 501^st is the closest thing to an extension of himself he could ever imagine.

            Anakin can trust Jesse with his Padawan.

            He can.

            (The anxious riot in his gut has nothing to do with distrust. Not really…)

            Jesse draws his blasters and tosses them down the hall, sliding them far enough away that even this supped-up version of Ahsoka would have to concentrate to draw them back.

            She seems startled by the sound.

            Flinches, at it.

            Jesse crouches down in front of her. His hands are raised with his palms flat and up and open. “What’s all this now, Commander? It’s gonna be fine, Sir, we’ll see to that,” the clone promises with an army of brothers who all support their Commander at his back. “I think Captain Rex went to find Kix or the General, but can you tell me what’s happening? Are you seeing things or do you really not recognize us?”

            He sounds… pained.

            But not so much so that he’s lost his calm or credibility.

            It’s definitely more than Anakin could manage; probably more than Rex could, too.

            “Jesse? You…” She sounds so lost and hopeless as she lets her shoulders slump a little more and says, “It’s okay. Jesse. You don’t have to fight it. I know you’ll make it quick. You can go ahead and kill me. If it ever comes to matter to you, I promise, I forgive you.”

            The clone’s hand is on her shoulder.

            Anakin sees red… But that’s a him reaction, not a real reaction. Whatever Ahsoka thinks is happening… Jesse won’t—he doesn’t… he can’t possibly… Right?

            Anakin doesn’t breathe as Jesse shifts closer.

            “Uh, begging your pardon, Sir, but uh, respectfully, that’s not an order I can follow,” he tells her softly. “See, I really don’t want to be killing you now, Sir, and I’m sure the Cap would have my head for it. Let alone the General. So, how about we just sit here for a little, huh?”

            Ahsoka sways, like she did in the med bay only even more dramatically.

            “Tell the others, won’t you? That I’m sorry and I forgive them all for everything…”

            Anakin screams her name as she collapses.

            He gets her back to the med bay where Kix already has the bed prepped again and a hefty sedative to go with it. And two pairs of padded restraints (used mainly when there’s a victim undergoing seizures, Anakin thinks he recalls).

            Kix handcuffs Ahsoka to the rails of the bed.

            She looks a lot less comfortable than she did a few hours ago, but it makes everyone in the room feel a lot more secure.

            “Now. Could someone please tell me what the hell is happening?”

            “Sorry, Sir,” Kix reports, sounding as exhausted as Anakin feels— even with the surge of adrenalin still coursing through him. “I have no idea what’s wrong.”

            Anakin wheels on Jesse, though he is distantly aware that his manic glare isn’t exactly a  fair thing to make the poor soldier face right now. “What on earth was she talking about, Jesse? Why would she think you wanted to kill her?”

            Jesse looks bereft at the confirmation— like he’d seriously been hoping that Ahsoka hadn’t been asking him what it seemed like she’d been asking. “I dunno, Sir.”

            He has to know, though.

            Because Anakin’s presence scared her, but this clone made her feel ready and willing to die? To forgive him as she died— forgive him for killing her?

            But it’s not Jesse’s fault and Anakin knows that, he does… It’s just hard to swallow.

            For Jesse, too, it seems. He looks like he’s about ready to dissolve into a puddle of goo on the floor to be mopped up by a mouse droid and never paid attention to ever again.

            (Anakin makes an effort to ease back on his glaring. It doesn’t seem to help. And why should it? Jesse’s current distress is far less about Anakin being angry than it is about Ahsoka asking him to kill her…)

            “Ah, good, she’s resting,” Obi-Wan’s smooth voice says with an irritating brightness entirely wasted on the current occupants of the room.

            “She’s been knocked out with a hefty sedative, General Kenobi,” Kix reports. “I’d say she’s got about 9 hours before she next wakes up. A human twice her size would have 20.”

            “I thank you, Kix. She clearly needs the help to sleep,” Obi-Wan says, grateful and gentle and patient and endlessly calm.

            (Anakin very much wants to punch him, just then.)

            ((He doesn’t.))

            “Anakin, I pulled up the footage of what happened when Ahsoka woke up,” Obi-Wan says, shifting to address Anakin. He speaks gently, (so gently, handling Anakin with kid gloves, again), and asks, “Do you have any insights as to why she reacted so strongly?”

            “All I could feel from her was pain, Master,” Anakin confesses. “And confusion.”

            “Yes, well, perhaps it would be best if you were elsewhere when she next wakes,” Obi-Wan suggests, still so gentle and calm and damn near apologetic. “It would be good for you to get some sleep, as well, so that perhaps you’ll be better able to soothe her worries and help her navigate whatever mental terrors might be troubling her.”

            It’s not a suggestion.

            Kix is subtly moving towards his cart to snag another injection of sedative in case Anakin refuses… But he won’t. He won’t let Kix put him out for nearly a whole day when Ahsoka will be waking up in less than half that time.

            “I’ll stop by the mess hall first,” Anakin sighs. Then he stiffens, and states, “She seemed to be looking for you, Master. If you stay with her… will she...?”

            Obi-Wan hmms gravely, stroking his chin with a contemplative pause that only a few people (several of whom are in this room) could ever spot out as being deeply anxious.

            “We could— One of us, could stay with her, Generals,” Rex offers, because of course he would. Rex has always been among the very best of the men, the very best of anyone…

            But Anakin’s glare is back on Jesse.

            “She didn’t seem any more comforted by having a clone close at hand than she did at having me,” Anakin points out, perhaps a bit more sharply that he really meant to be.

            (If Ahsoka ever looks like that again, looks defeated and broken like that again, how she looked as she slumped in front of Jesse, asking him to kill her… Anakin will do any number of stupid, reckless, dangerous things to utterly destroy whoever might be behind her wearing it.)

            “All due respect, Generals, I think Captain Rex might not be a problem for her,” Jesse says, piping up despite Anakin’s still-looming glare.

            Rex blinks. As if the thought never occurred to him and is having trouble sticking now.

            “The Commander seemed to be trying to protect the Captain,” Jesse says, “From me.”

            “It’s probably best not to unpack the implications of that now, but I do see your point, Jesse, Captain Rex may indeed be our best option,” Obi-Wan comments.

            (Anakin can feel his Master side-eyeing him, poking gingerly at their bond to test his volatility and coax him to genuinely consider the idea.)

            And while Anakin doesn’t like it, he likes it better than any of the other options.

            “You don’t leave her side, Captain,” Anakin declares.

            “Not for a second, Sir,” Rex replies. “And I’ll have a beacon readied to ping you both as soon as she wakes up.”

            Anakin nods.

            “Perhaps you might want to grab a bite to eat first, Captain,” Obi-Wan suggests. “We have 9 hours, after all. Let Kix stay here for the first few of them, take a nap, get something nourishing in you… We want us all at our best for dear Ahsoka, don’t we?”

            (He’s side-eyeing Anakin again, but Anakin’s more calm now than he thought he could be— more of Obi-Wan’s meddling, sending all his calm composure down the bond— and now he’s simply far too tired to want to punch the man. Instead he rolls his eyes. It seems to placate his old Master.)

            But Rex is waiting for his approval.

            Obi-Wan may be a higher ranked General in the GAR, but Anakin is Rex’s General.

            And Rex wants to stay. It’s obvious he’d rather forgo food and sleep and any other creature comforts he has access to in order to better serve the Commander’s needs, but Obi-Wan makes a frustratingly good point.

            If Rex is the only one Ahsoka won’t try to kill or ask to kill her, then it’s a good idea for him to be as well-prepared to help her as they can reasonably make him.

            “Take a shower, too, Rex,” Anakin sighs. “Obi-Wan’s right. We do have the time, and it’s not doing Ahsoka any good to have you making yourself uncomfortable.”

            “Yes, Sir,” Rex replies, sounding about as miserable about it all as Anakin feels.

            “Ah, very good, then,” Obi-Wan says with an obnoxiously genuine cheer.

            He shoos Anakin and Jesse out of Ahsoka’s sick room with the air of a long suffering shepherd of foot-tall younglings.

            Anakin lets himself be shooed with the air of a man walking to his gallows.

            He leaves under duress, but he leaves.

            He may get food, (Obi-Wan likely stares at him until he eats it), and then he collapses into his bed— not entirely certain how he got there, but nearly comfortable none the less.

Chapter Text

::  Episode I,  Chapter III  |  REX  ::

||  1013 Anno Republicae  :  19 BBY  ||

            The day Jedi Commander Ahsoka Tano disappeared from the lives of the Vode was a horrible day for Rex, one of the worst of his life. She hadn’t died, which he was eternally grateful for, but she was still gone. Her absence was sudden and she was gone without a good bye.

            That fact stung far more than he thought it would.

            The sad faces of his brothers made the sting hit hard and deep, made it linger.

            His brothers looked to him for answers and Rex had none to give.

            And Rex… he wanted those answers too, for himself.

            He wanted to be sure that she was safe (not that she couldn’t take care of herself, but she was known to be nearly as reckless as her Master on occasion).

            And he wanted to know that she was eating and sleeping properly (she often forgot, even when those around her maintained rigid schedules she should’ve been able to take cues from).

            He just wanted to know she was alright…

            Rex had no right to claim any answers from her, obviously, not even half as much right as the Generals did (both of whom were also left without substantial explanation), but as her… as her friend and comrade… He would’ve hoped she might’ve at least said good bye.

            Still, he carries on.

            He’s a leader and his men need him.

            The year in which Ahsoka has been absent has been a struggle.

            The war is escalating. The generals are growing weary and worried and stressed in ways that Rex has never seen of them before.

            Ahsoka’s charm and endless cheer would’ve made the trails of the year much more manageable. And her absence certainly makes everything all the harder to bear.

            General Skywalker has assured them that he can still feel his ‘training bond’ with Ahsoka, explains it as a thread of Force interwoven with their individual lifeforces that connects them across impossible distances. He can’t read much in the bond (apparently he usually can get a sense for her mood and such things), but he can tell she’s alive.

            Skywalker seems to think that there IS a way to intentionally sever the bond without one or the other of them dying, and he thinks that her choice to suppress it (but not sever it) is a good sign. One that means she’s staying connected to them all and maybe even intends to return to them at some point.

            Rex doesn’t quite know when he stopped hoping that she might come back (if he ever really managed the feat)… But he does know that when General Skywalker is brought to his knees by the force of ‘Ahsoka screaming down the bond’, he is struck dumb by the blow of relief that she contacted them (sort of) when she was in trouble.

            That relief is quickly replaced by concern for what trouble she could’ve gotten into that would make her mind scream so dramatically that Skywalker (who lost his hand and walked it off, and has been in the center of more explosions than anyone could possibly count) is practically curled up on the ground in pain.

            It takes three hours for the Jedi Council to convene and eventually come to the conclusion that Skywalker’s connection to Ahsoka should be investigated (apparently Skywalker isn’t the only Jedi Master who felt Ahsoka scream, otherwise the meeting would’ve taken five times as long to come to a favorable consensus, by Kenobi’s estimate— if they did at all).

            It takes another 6 hours to deploy the Resolute with the full might of the 501^st and several companies of the 212^th.

            There’s an hour to clear Coruscant’s controlled orbit using the sub-light engines, and the longest 40 hour Hyperdrive burn Rex has ever suffered through.

            They wind up in a system that Sergeant Fox says is mostly uncharted but listed under the name ‘Bashtu’. Skywalker isolates Ahsoka’s Force signature coming from a moon called ‘Tura’.

            Three hours in a shuttle to the jungle-wrapped rock of the smallest moon orbiting Bashtu VII and Rex is nearly as incensed as Skywalker. It’s around that time that he realizes he hasn’t said a word since the Jedi Council convened.

            Immediately after making that observation, he realizes that no one but Skywalker and Kenobi have spoken in the last 10 hours at least, and even then, it was mostly Skywalker giving directions as he pinpointed Ahsoka’s location and Kenobi giving his former student quiet words of (mostly empty) comfort.

            All thoughts of that (or any) nature are dismissed immediately as he and Commander Cody use their jetpacks to follow the Generals as they jump blindly into a hole in what appears to be some sort of ceiling.

            Obi-Wan’s lightsaber is ignited before they touch down. He and Cody maintain a wary eye on the strange room’s perimeter as Skywalker approaches Ahsoka.

            Rex should be helping them, but his whole attention has been arrested by the sight of Ahsoka laid out on a table— no, an altar— like a sacrifice to some forgotten god.

            (She’s never told them what happened on Mortis, but Rex has pieced together more than enough of it from what Skywalker and Kenobi have said to know that this scene is one that will bring back deeply unpleasant memories for all three of them.)

            Skywalker sweeps Ahsoka into his arms and leaps back up into the shuttle above.

            Rex follows immediately, barely looking back to ensure that Cody and Kenobi have made it safely aboard behind him as he chases Skywalker into the shuttle’s small medical cove.

            Ahsoka gets laid out on a bench as Skywalker checks her over for obvious wounds. Rex lingers at the general’s shoulder as Cody and Kenobi pilot the shuttle back to the Resolute.

            The only thought in Rex’s head through the whole trip back to the Venator-Lite is that Ahsoka has matured in the year she’s been away. She looks like a woman in her prime, now.

            Strong and graceful and filled out in way that’s turned her teenage gangliness into a true warrior’s elegance. Even while she’s unconscious, Rex can tell that much.

            On the Resolute, Kix has already prepped a private suite. He barely lets anyone within the confines of the room as he checks the Commander over for any signs of injury.

            He finds nothing. Not even internally.

            Based on Skywalker’s expression of disbelief (rather than gratitude), Rex can guess that what pain the General’s been feeling means there’s something truly awful going on.

            Cody drags him out of the infirmary.

            If nothing else he has to brief the vode.

            They’re largely gathered together already, waiting in the mess hall (both the bulk of the 501^st and the full contingent of the 212^th). It’s crowded, but quiet—the men all waiting for news.

            “We have located and retrieved Commander Tano,” Cody begins, climbing up onto a table so that the whole gathering can have a chance to see him and assess his sense of the matter while he addresses them.

            There’s a rumble of relief, but tension lingers as they wait to hear her condition.

            Rex joins Cody on the tabletop. “She appears uninjured, but was unconscious when we retrieved her and has yet to wake up. Kix is taking care of her as we speak.”

            More sighs of relief this time, but the tension is still a vicious bite of anxiety.

            “We expect that she will require a lot of rest,” Cody continues. “Visitors are not permitted at present, under any circumstances.”

            This time the words are met with grumbles.

            “We will be posting a two man guard outside her door, in case Kix requires emergency support, and to ensure all staff and crew fully respect her visitor restriction,” Rex decrees and cheers go up in wake of the announcement, even as he adds, “The rotation will be decided as per regs. First watch is in a little less than 4 fours, when Kix and General Skywalker rotate out.”

            “Yes, Sir!”

            The chorus of heartened vode is soul-soothing.

            Cody and Rex clamber down from the table as some of their soldiers move off from the crush— dispersing into the Resolute to bring word to any clones who did not attend directly.

            Cody forces a few ration bars into Rex’s hands and coaxes him to force them down as he helps bear the barrage of questions they don’t have answers to.

            It takes over three hours for the questions to subside.

            Eventually, though, it’s just the core of Torrent Company left.

            “You really think she’ll be alright, Sir,” Fives asks, for at least the 20^th time.

            Rex sighs, and patiently repeats, “Kix seems to think so, but we have no way of really knowing until she wakes up.”

            Fives opens his mouth again, but Rex beats him to speaking. “I’m gonna grab one last update from Kix and then call it a night. Unless you would like to file all my paperwork for this incident, Fives, I suggest you turn in now.”

            Fives closes his mouth.

            He lingers another moment, but then he turns to head back to the barracks.

            Cody shoots Rex a look of approval and then pushes up to leave himself.

            Turning to the remainder of Torrent Company, Rex suggests they all follow suit. He catches Jesse’s eye, though, and says, “You’re up first for watch with Dogma. I’ll walk you down since he’s probably headed that way already and I really do want an update from Kix.”

            “Aye, sir,” Jesse returns, that same mix of tense but hopeful all the men are feeling.

            They’re about halfway up to the infirmary when a slight, color-bright figure careens around the corner. Rex has just enough time to recognize that it’s Ahsoka before she slams straight into him— knocking them both to the floor.

            "Easy there, Commander... I didn't know you were awake already."

            The look of utter shock and confusion in her eyes as she registers her Captain’s face is like a laser blast directly to Rex’s unarmored chest.

            The wound gets worse as she whispers his name like she doesn’t believe it’s him.

            His organs seem to liquify altogether as Jesse reaches to help her up and, instead of taking it with a smile or teasing him about cleaning up her messes, Ahsoka launches herself at him with a howl of fury— hands going for his throat.

            She screams at Rex to run, and run he does— if only to get Kix or Skywalker or someone to help. Rex doesn’t know what’s going on, but whatever’s happening is not Ahsoka’s fault.

            Rex has only made it a few corridors when he finds Skywalker sprinting towards him—clearly already aware of the situation’s downturn.

            “General! Something's wrong with the Commander,” Rex reports dutifully.

            The General gives him a grave nod of commiseration and motions for them to return to the where Rex left Ahsoka and Jesse without asking for details.

            They move slower than Rex wants to, but they do not need to startle her or stumble their way into escalating the conflict without meaning to.

            What they find as they edge back around the corner is almost worse that seeing her still viciously at Jesse’s throat.

            Ahsoka’s collapsed into a miserable, defeated heap.

            Jesse’s on his back, choking as he massages feeling back into his shuddering airways.

            Rex and Skywalker arrive just in time to hear Ahsoka plead, with nothing but earnestness and mercy in her voice, "Go ahead... Do it. If you can hear me— if you even care anymore— it's not your fault and I forgive you."

            Everyone waits a beat, not daring to so much as breathe.

            Jesse spots Anakin and the Captain and gives a solemn nod.

            They have no choice but to trust him.

            (Rex hates himself for thinking it. He trusts Jesse, he does.)

            The trooper draws his blasters and tosses them down the hall— likely well enough away that Ahsoka’s Force powers won’t be able to call them back into play.

            Ahsoka flinches at the sound.

            Jesse crouches down in front of her. His hands are raised with his palms flat and up and open. "What's all this now, Commander? It's gonna be fine, Sir, we'll see to that," the clone promises. Ahsoka’s vode as much as any of their brothers, she has to understand how serious such a promise between siblings is to them. "I think Captain Rex went to find Kix or the General, but can you tell me what's happening? Are you seeing things or do you really not recognize us?"

            He sounds pained, and a bit hoarse, but he’s far calmer than either Rex or Skywalker could likely manage… Certainly, he’s acting calmer than Rex could even pretend to be.

            "Jesse? You..." She sounds so lost and hopeless and… Rex doesn’t even know what.

            It simply does not compute for him.

            She lets her shoulders slump a little more and says, "It's okay. Jesse. You don't have to fight it. I know you'll make it quick. You can go ahead and kill me. If it ever comes to matter to you, I promise, I forgive you."

            All of Rex’s blood turns to jagged shards of ice in his veins.

            He’s pretty sure he’s stopped breathing.

            Jesse doesn’t want to Kill the Commander. Rex knows that much like he knows where his own hand is when reaching for his blaster.

            But Slick’s betrayal, and Pong Krell’s betrayal, and the powder keg of split loyalties and confused standings and no-win endgames coming up in this stupid, kriffing war…

            Rex hates himself for doubting Jesse for the heartbeat that he does.

            Ahsoka’s hurt, possibly hallucinating… She doesn’t know what she’s saying.

            And Jesse does not want to kill her. Not their sweet vod’ika.

            His hand moves up to her shoulder.

            He tries to make eye contact, but she’s obviously determined to avoid it.

            "Uh, begging your pardon, Sir, but uh, respectfully, that's not an order I can follow," he tells her softly. "See, I really don't want to be killing you now, Sir, and I'm sure the Cap would have my head for it. Let alone the General. So, how about we just sit here for a little, huh?"

            Ahsoka sways, listing dramatically.

            "Tell the others, won't you? That I'm sorry and I forgive them all for everything..."

            Skywalker screams her name as she collapses.

            Rex would too if he were able to pull any air into his lungs at all.

            The next few minutes pass in a blur.

            Rex blinks and he’s back in the med bay.

            Ahsoka’s back in bed, covered with that same thin sheet, but this time, her wrists are cuffed to the guard rails.

            "Now. Could someone please tell me what the hell is happening?"

            "Sorry, Sir," Kix reports, sounding exhausted and worried. “I have no idea what’s wrong.”

            Skywalker wheels on Jesse. "What on earth was she talking about, Jesse? Why would she think you wanted to kill her?"

            Jesse looks bereft at the pseudo-accusation— he likely knows Skywalker’s just upset, but it still must hurt to think the General could ever believe he’d want to hurt Ahsoka. "I dunno, Sir."

            Rex should speak up to defend his brother, because Jesse looks like he’s about to spew his chunder, but Rex can barely keep his feet beneath him.

            "Ah, good, she's resting," Kenobi's smooth voice says with his perpetually bright calm as he arrives at the door.

            "She's been knocked out with a hefty sedative, General Kenobi," Kix reports. "I'd say she's got about 9 hours before she next wakes up. A human twice her size would have 20."

            "I thank you, Kix. She clearly needs the help to sleep," Kenobi says, earnestly grateful.

            (Skywalker’s hands are fists at his side and Rex gets the distinct impression that he wants to punch the higher ranking general. Rex doesn’t think his reflexes are working well enough to intervene like he should if Skywalker decides to follow through…)

            "Anakin, I pulled up the footage of what happened when Ahsoka woke up," Kenobi says, shifting to address Skywalker. "Do you have any insights as to why she reacted so strongly?"

            "All I could feel from her was pain, Master," Skywalker confesses. "And confusion."

            "Yes, well, perhaps it would be best if you were elsewhere when she next wakes," Kenobi suggests, gentle and apologetic. "It would be good for you to get some sleep, as well, so that perhaps you'll be better able to soothe her worries and help her navigate whatever mental terrors might be troubling her."

            It's not a suggestion.

            It’s as calm and gentle as anything Kenobi ever says, but it’s a command that the vode will have to enforce if Skywalker refuses.

            (Rex isn’t sure if he can do that… Even for Skywalker’s own good… For Ahsoka’s wellbeing though, he might be able to pull himself together enough to help remove Skywalker…)

            "I'll stop by the mess hall first," Skywalker sighs, shoulders slumping as he accepts a temporary defeat. Then he stiffens, and states, "She seemed to be looking for you, Master. If you stay with her... will she...?"

            Rex has no idea why Ahsoka was looking for Kenobi, but by Skywalker’s expression he doesn’t think the reason she displayed could bode well.

            He’s as wary of leaving Kenobi with his Commander as he would be Skywalker, now.

            Obi-Wan hmms gravely, stroking his chin to cover his nervousness as contemplation.

            "We could— One of us, could stay with her, Generals," Rex stumbles into offering, because what else could he do? Ahsoka can’t be left alone, left to wake up in another possible panic only to find herself abandoned by her friends and restrained like a criminal (like the bombing on Coruscant all over again).

            Skywalker softens. Rex very carefully doesn’t analyze the general’s expression in search of any pity. It’s not that Rex needs to stay, personally, just one of the vode. Someone.

            She shouldn’t have to be alone because something’s gone wrong inside her head.

            She would never let anyone leave one of the men alone, after all.

            But Skywalker’s glare sweeps back to Jesse.

            "She didn't seem any more comforted by having a clone close at hand than she did at having me," the General points out.

            It’s reasonable.

            Rex doesn’t know what he’d do if he found out that leaving Ahsoka with one of his brothers had made her ask them again to kill her.

            It would be crushing.

            But it still, perhaps, may be better than letting her wake up alone.

            "All due respect, Generals, I think Captain Rex might not be a problem for her," Jesse says, piping up with the steel of genuine conviction in his voice.

            The sentiment strikes Rex as ridiculous; he’s Captain of the 501^st, sure, but he’s no one special. Any of the vode should be just as good as him at serving to protect their Commander.

            "The Commander seemed to be trying to protect the Captain," Jesse says, "From me."

            That’s why she attacked, then? She thought Jesse was going to hurt Rex? She must’ve only stayed on her feet as Jesse’s throat long enough for Rex to get away.

            It makes sense of why he and Skywalker found both Ahsoka and Jesse on the floor only a short moment later. But why had she believed Rex was in danger? From Jesse?

            Before Rex can get too lost in his thoughts, Kenobi clears his throat.

            "It's probably best not to unpack the implications of that now, but I do see your point, Jesse, Captain Rex may indeed be our best option," Kenobi comments.

            Skywalker accepts the suggestion with alarmingly little hesitation.

            "You don't leave her side, Captain," Skywalker declares.

            "Not for a second, Sir," Rex replies. "And I'll have a beacon readied to ping you both as soon as she wakes up."

            Skywalker nods.

            "Perhaps you might want to grab a bite to eat, first, Captain," Kenobi suggests. "We have 9 hours, after all. Let Kix stay here for the first few of them, take a nap, get something nourishing in you... We want us all at our best for dear Ahsoka, don't we?"

            It’s a comment pointed more at Skywalker than at Rex, but Rex still stiffens with a pained reluctance— hoping for a reason to countermand the order.

            His General doesn’t give him one.

            "Take a shower, too, Rex," Skywalker sighs. "Obi-Wan's right. We do have the time, and it's not doing Ahsoka any good to have you making yourself uncomfortable."

            "Yes, Sir," Rex replies, miserable.

            "Ah, very good, then," Obi-Wan says with genuine cheer— the force of his relief acting as a balm to soothe the worst sore of the others’ lingering worries.

            It’s not enough to make Rex feel like the next three hours make any sense, but it’s enough to get him through them. He swears Jesse to secrecy (what little could be maintained, at least, since a good number of the clones will soon be accessing the security cams as part of a non-invasive sort of nosy checking in), but then grabs more food and snags a few minutes in the peaceful comfort of the ‘fresher and then a brief, unsettled half-doze in his bunk.

            He doesn’t talk to anyone.

            The few vode who see him see something in his face that makes them leave a wide berth.

            When Rex finally gets back to the infirmary, Dogma and Jesse are posted outside—helmets on and in full guard.

            They promise they won’t let anyone disturb him or the Commander, and that they’ll be here to help if he needs them for anything— even just to fetch another blanket or a juice box.

            He salutes them wordlessly, already exhausted by the rigors of this duty despite his nap.

            He settles into a seat at Ahsoka’s bedside as Kix tells him there’s been no change in the Commander’s condition. He then says he’ll be asleep in his on-call room if Rex needs him and then promptly disappears— leaving Rex alone with the injured Togruta in the dim infirmary.

            Rex relaxes into the wait— his mind an endless loop of nearly incomprehensible worry.

            Less than four hours later, (it wasn’t even 8 Kix, nowhere close to 9; I thought you said it would be 9, she needs the sleep, Kix), Ahsoka bursts back into wakefulness.

            She does not react well to discovering that she’s been handcuffed, but her struggles are quiet and Rex gets to her bedside before she decided that getting free is worth breaking both her thumbs— something she seems entirely too quick to think of.

            “Easy, Commander, you’re safe,” he soothes, stepping into her sightline with his hands raised in surrender— not even allowing for the illusion that he might reach out to touch her.

            She may be in handcuffs, but she’s still his Commander and she’s the one who’s injured, so this is her show entirely. He won’t do anything without her say so.

            (Except for press the button on the alert beacon, he did that without her say so, but technically that was before she was entirely awake. Now, it’s her show.)

            “Rexster?”

            Ahsoka just sounds so tragically confused by seeing him here.

            “Aye, Commander,” Rex assures. “In the flesh.”

            She blinks, looking him over with such unbearable sadness in her eyes. Then she blinks again and frowns. “What happened to your beard?”

            “Beard, sir?”

            “The one you grew on Seelos after the Emperor phased the clones out of service?”

            There’s a lot to unpack with that and Rex doesn’t have a clue where to start.

            Ahsoka must sense his confusion, or see the building crease between his eyes, because she looks down at her cuffed wrists again and then around at her private suite.

            “What’s happening, Rex? Where are we? Where’s the Ghost crew?”

            “Who’s the ‘Ghost crew’, Commander?”

            Ahsoka hardens immediately, suspicion being moved between them like a wall.

            “What’s going on, Rex,” she demands, voice colder than Rex has ever imagined it could go. She sounds like more than a warrior, she sounds like a Senator with a sword.

            “You were hurt, Commander. We found you on Tura, in the Bashtu system,” Rex reports dutifully, falling into a perfect model of professionalism. “You were unconscious but appeared uninjured. We evac-ed you to the Resolute. You woke up, but you were confused and attacked the General and Jesse, so Kix had to sedate you.”

            None of Rex’s SitRep seems to make Ahsoka relax.

            In fact, it seems like it’s only made her more uneasy. She’s pulling at her cuffs again, clearly agitated, and her gaze is flitting frantically about the suite.

            “The Resolute went down,” Ahsoka declares. “In the Battle of Sullust, just before the Emperor took over.”

            “Emperor? Commander—Ahsoka, what’s going on? Please, tell me how I can help.”

            Ahsoka looks at him, gaze piercing and sad and so lost.

            She’s gnawing on her lip with hesitation.

            “If you don’t want to talk to me… Hawk should be outside with Boomer,” Rex suggests, adding frantically, “And Coric should be on-call by now. Or I can get the Generals—”

            “Rex,” Ahsoka says forcefully. “Which Generals? If it’s not Hera, no one should have any idea where I am, Rex. It’s safest for everyone if my contact with the Rebels is limited.”

            “What Rebels, Sir? The Seppies? Is that who had you? Rest assured, Sir, if there’s any of those bastards left on Tura, General Skywalker will take ‘em out,” Rex promises vehemently, thinking that he’d like to be right there with him.

            Ahsoka has gone perfectly still.

            She’s not breathing and her complexion is more ashen than Rex thought a Togruta could be. She’s pressed back against her pillows, arms straining in their cuffs, eyes wide with Terror.

            “Vader’s here?”

            “Who’s ‘Vader’ ?”

            Ahsoka’s mouth gapes open in stunned disbelief.

            Before either she or Rex can think of something to say in response to that, the door to the suite swishes open to reveal General Kenobi.

            Ahsoka’s head swipes around so fast Rex makes a note to have Corric check her neck muscles for strain from the whiplash. She chokes when she sees the General, but she refuses to so much as blink as she fights through hacking up a lung.

            “Good morning, Ahsoka,” Kenobi greets. “I’m sorry I seem to have startled you.”

            “Master Obi-Wan,” Ahsoka croaks out, sounding like she’s holding back tears (more like she’s hanging of the side of a building by her fingernails). “You’re alive.”

            “Yes, indeed, dear heart,” Kenobi confirms. “I do very much seem to be, despite all odds.”

            Ahsoka’s head droops as she sobs. Her whole torso is thrown forward towards the Jedi Master, wrists straining again at the cuffs— this time threatening to dislocate her shoulders.

            Jedi aren’t supposed to form attachments, but that’s kriffing bullshit if Rex has ever heard it and while Ahsoka’s not a Jedi (so it’s not alarming that she’s clearly attached to Kenobi), it’s just as obvious that he’s attached to her.

            Kenobi moves slowly to her bedside, broadcasting his movements.

            He pulls his arms from his robe’s sleeves in such a way to show that he’s unarmed beneath the soft brown folds. Ahsoka’s still straining towards him as he reaches cautiously towards her— ready to pull back at any sign of discomfort.

            The general folds Ahsoka up in his arms, giving her a hug that’s warm and tight and hides how hard she’s shaking. She nuzzles into it like doing so might save him from what ever horrible death she’d believed befell him.

            Rex doesn’t think she’d have reacted half the same if he’d been the one to offer up a hug— no matter that she was one of the most tactile people he had ever met.

            It’s different between a young woman and her teacher than it could ever be between a Commander and her subordinate. It shouldn’t bother him like it does, but Rex can’t seem to will the ache away. He feels like he’s intruding… And yet, he can’t summon up the will to leave.

            Eventually, Kenobi pulls away— though he keeps his hand on her shoulder as he Force-pulls another chair to her beside. “There now, dear heart, let’s see if we can sort a few things out, hmm? Perhaps not a full debrief, but enough to sooth the worst of our mutual confusion.”

            At this, finally, Rex manages to clear his throat.

            “I, uh, I can leave, Sirs, if you’d—”

            “NO!”

            Everyone blinks at her hysteric vehemence.

            (It’s deeply worrisome to Rex, even as it eases the anxiety that he does not deserve to be here— that she couldn’t possibly want him her to see her weaknesses so exposed…)

            “Well, you heard her, Captain,” Kenobi confirms, unflappable as always.

            “Right,” Rex replies, weight flopping gracelessly back into his chair.

            “Now then, lets start at the beginning, shall we?” Kenobi leads, “How about you start with what you were doing before all of this began? How did you arrive in the Bashtu system?”

            “I have a modified T-6 shuttle hidden on Tura,” Ahsoka answers easily.

            “Our scans haven’t picked anything to confirm it’s still where you left it,” Kenobi warns.

            Ahsoka cracks the first smile Rex has seen her wear in nearly two years.

            It’s the very smirk of co-conspiracy that made half the vode fall in love with their vod’ika to start with, the one that made them all adopt her as their very own. It’s a smirk that’s lead to dozens of terrible pranks over the years and been the bane of countless Separatist legions.

            That smirk makes something crack in Rex’s chest.

            “It’s very specially modified,” Ahsoka taunts.

            Kenobi nods, accepting the assertion without question. Between Ahsoka and Skywalker, the 501^st could write a 5 pound manual on how to make spectacularly ‘unconventional’ modifications to… well, just about anything with an engine.

            “But what are you doing so far out in wild space all on your own? Surely, you have someone with you, nearby? Someone you could’ve contacted when you got into trouble?”

            Ahsoka’s expression has returned to being guarded, but she’s not actively refusing to speak yet— she’s just waiting to gauge how she wants to respond. Rex has seen her look that calculated many times when working out a way to speak diplomatically as Senator Amidala would say. Ahsoka’s dead set on being careful for some reason.

            Like she doesn’t trust them.

            Little gods, that fleeting thought makes Rex want to swallow his swollen tongue.

            “Why are you here, Ahsoka,” Kenobi implores. “We only managed to find you because you screamed out into the Force. Why are you alone? Why did it take… whatever happened to you for you to call for help, and why such a fickle means?”

            Ahsoka’s still guarded, but her expression is now leaning more towards stony than towards carefully contemplative.

            “Ahsoka, you’re a grown woman and can make your own choices, I respect that— admire it, even, more deeply than you could ever know, but I cannot believe my Grandpadawan would ever fly out into wild space without letting someone know to check in with her,” Kenobi lays out.

            “I can’t, Master,” Ahsoka confesses quietly, staring at Kenobi with a desperate plea that he believe her. “I would tell you everything, but unless you’re already involved enough to know, I can’t. I want to… But I can’t be sure you’re not a construct cooked up by Sidious and I can’t…”

            “Hush, dear, I understand,” Kenobi assures. “I do. Well enough, at least. You don’t have to give me any details and we are not here to prosecute you, or your friends, for any illegal activities you may be involved with.”

            (What has the Commander gotten herself into? And how does Kenobi know about it?)

            “I can feel it, Ahsoka, I can,” Kenobi promises. “You’ve grown a lot since I last saw you, and you’ve become very adept at using the Force to help communicate your emotions. I can feel you, Ahsoka. I understand.”

            Relief floods Ahsoka’s face. A ripple so strong that Rex almost imagines that he feels it through the Force, or whatever, despite not bearing one iota of Force-sensitive DNA.

            “I do wonder if you’ll humor me for one more question, though?”

            When she nods, Kenobi asks solemnly, “From your perspective, in relation to our normal dating system since the founding of the Galactic Republic, what year is it?”

            Ahsoka frowns, but answers without hesitation, “1023.”

            And just like that, Rex’s grasp on the whole kriffing situation gets shot right out the airlock. Ahsoka’s mind believes they’re a full damn decade into the future. Apparently.

            Rex has no idea what they could possibly do about it.

Chapter Text

Episode II – a Presence in the Past

::  Episode II,  Chapter I  |  OBI-WAN  ::

||  1013 Anno Republicae  :  19 BBY  ||

            Obi-Wan formulates a theory almost immediately.

            It’s not a plausible theory. It’s not a theory that he particularly likes.

            It’s certainly not one that he’s prepared to share with anyone, most definitely not with his emotionally compromised former-Padawan.

            When Ahsoka’s scream across the Force brought her suddenly back into their lives, the ripples in the Force were far more broadly spread than Anakin could possibly sense (seeing as his nerves were being scoured to their bloody roots under the strain of bearing up her desperate, flailing surge of emotions ricocheting through their training bond).

            If Obi-Wan had been forced to commit an answer to a Council question on it, he would have had to say that the ripples felt like being back on Mortis.

            He contemplates that notion all through the trip out to the Bashtu system.

            None of the possible reasons for it are in any way pleasant.

            They find Ahsoka with ease, face no resistance in retrieving her.

            Obi-Wan only gets a brief glimpse at the temple they find her in, but it looks as old (or even older) than anything known to have been built by the Zeffo.

            Which only bodes yet more poorly…

            Obi-Wan doesn’t truly solidify his nebulous thoughts into a half cohesive theory until the first time Ahsoka wakes up.

            For hours afterwards, he pours over the footage of her jolting to awareness.

            Seeing Anakin is not a comfort to her. Seeing him, to her, is an act of war.

            In the moment, even without the advantage of looking back at the security cams, Obi-Wan is alerted to the fact that something’s wrong quite immediately. He feels her jolt to wakefulness, feels distant, heady ripples of her fear and focus, and shivers at the dismissive brush of her awareness in a pointed search for something.

            With the benefit of hindsight and a video record, Obi-Wan can recount that Ahsoka vacillates between wanting to let herself be calmed and desperately resisting the temptation of comfort. On the tape, she screams out for Anakin to call his Master, but as the waves of Ahsoka’s new power had pulsed through the whole of the Venator-Lite carrier class starship, it had been exceedingly clear that Obi-Wan’s signature is not the one she was searching for…

            That feeling of her stretching out into the Force had put Obi-Wan on high alert well before Anakin commed him. As soon as Anakin reached out with words that Ahsoka’s fled, Obi-Wan had the security footage brought up to help direct Anakin along her course.

            When she ran into Rex and Jesse (sending Rex sprawling to the floor), Obi-Wan almost allowed himself to believe that it will be alright.

            Ahsoka has always been close with the clones, closer than anyone else Obi-Wan knows of— she’s the only Jedi he knows of to be called ‘vod’ika’ by the men themselves. Even Plo Koon and Kal Skirata weren’t as close— they were Family, certainly, viewed as parents of a sort, but they weren’t ‘vode’… Parents only share DNA with their progeny, but Ahsoka shared their heart.

            The clones could potentially provide Ahsoka with a comfort that Anakin could not.

            Obi-Wan’s hope on that front was dashed when Ahsoka attacked Jesse.

            Even with replay at his fingertips, it’s almost impossible for Obi-Wan to believe it.

            She doesn’t just barrel into him with intent to evade or even to disable.

            Ahsoka leaps at him almost as if going for a kill.

            It’s so direly unlike her.

            But what is even more unlike their fiery young Togruta is the way that she surrenders.

            As soon as Rex is out of sight, Ahsoka capitulates.

            She releases Jesse and collapses to the floor.

            Defeated.

            Ahsoka Tano was not one to simply lay down and die, of that much, Obi-Wan was entirely certain.

            And yet… it seemed that, somehow, she was not only rolling over, but asking a trusted subordinate to kill her…

            Though.

            That’s not exactly correct.

            What Ahsoka is asking of Jesse, precisely, is that Jesse stop fighting.

            She’s not asking him to kill her, she’s giving him permission.

            Which, unfortunately, is no more illuminating than the other supposition— though, Obi-Wan must admit it’s certainly a balm to his nerves to know she’s not exactly suicidal.

            Why she believes – and she most certainly does believe what she’s saying, with a startlingly thorough sort of resigned conviction – that Jesse might be fighting against the urge to kill her is an entirely separate issue.

            Jesse clearly does not want to kill her, and he makes an admirable effort to convince her of it. Unfortunately, Ahsoka is in no condition to logically assess his words.

            Obi-Wan watches the security footage on a datapad as Ahsoka resists Jesse’s efforts and then proceeds to collapse, and rewatches it while he makes his way towards the suite reserved for Ahsoka in the infirmary. By the time he arrives, Anakin has her securely tucked away, made as comfortable as can be provided for while both her wrists are cuffed to the bed’s rails.

            Anakin’s in the middle of making this mess yet more fraught— not unexpectedly, after all, his naturally wild emotions had already been slipping the slim control of their limited leash before his Padawan began attacking her trusted subordinates.

            Brushing onto the scene as if nothing much is amiss, Obi-Wan asserts his presence as a force of calm composure. "Ah, good, she's resting."

            "She's been knocked out with a hefty sedative, General Kenobi," Kix reports. "I'd say she's got about 9 hours before she next wakes up. A human twice her size would have 20."

            "I thank you, Kix. She clearly needs the help to sleep," Obi-Wan says – expressing his own feelings of gratitude as well as that which Anakin surely feels beneath his current layer of deeply frustrated concern.

            "Anakin, I pulled up the footage of what happened when Ahsoka woke up," Obi-Wan says, shifting to address his former Padawan. He eyes Anakin carefully as he wonders, "Do you have any insights as to why she reacted so strongly?"

            "All I could feel from her was pain, Master," Anakin confesses, sounding profoundly despondent. "And confusion."

            "Yes, well, perhaps it would be best if you were elsewhere when she next wakes," Obi-Wan proposes. He tries to be gentle and apologetic, aware of how difficult this must be for Anakin, but equally aware that what takes priority must be what’s best for Ahsoka. "It would be good for you to get some sleep, as well, so that perhaps you'll be better able to soothe her worries and help her navigate whatever mental terrors might be troubling her."

            No one present imagines that his words a suggestion.

            He is the ranking General, at present. And he’s the only one detached enough from the emotional immediacy of this situation to consider it with any degree of clear mindedness.

            Even Anakin can see that much with very little arguing.

            (Almost too little, if Obi-Wan is honest. Bearing the brunt of Ahsoka’s currently magnified Force presence must have truly taken it out of him. And for someone of Anakin’s capacity to channel the Force… that is saying something quite significant…)

            "I'll stop by the mess hall first," Anakin sighs, shoulders slumping.

            Obi-Wan almost has him willing to step out the door entirely when a thought strikes him and he goes rigid, “She seemed to be looking for you, Master. If you stay with her... will she...?"

            While Obi-Wan was not actually planning to stay at Ahsoka’s bedside, he can sense immediately that Anakin (and likely the soldiers who serve under him) will not accept the idea of her being left alone. And while Obi-Wan does not believe that he is the so-called ‘Master’ of Anakin’s that Ahsoka was searching for, it’s clear that Anakin still believes he is.

            Obi-Wan hmms gravely, stroking his chin as he considers the options.

            "We could— One of us, could stay with her, Generals," Rex stumbles into offering.

            It’s the obvious plan, but with an equally obvious counterpoint.

            Anakin’s already back to scowling at poor Jesse.

            "She didn't seem any more comforted by having a clone close at hand than she did at having me," he points out.

            "All due respect, Generals, I think Captain Rex might not be a problem for her," Jesse says, piping up with the steel of genuine conviction in his voice.

            Obi-Wan tips his head, encouraging the soldier to explain.

            "The Commander seemed to be trying to protect the Captain," Jesse says, "From me."

            That was indeed what it looked like.

            It’s good to know that the observation had not been Obi-Wan’s slanted viewpoint alone.

            Though… it seems not to have occurred to either Captain Rex or Anakin.

            They are both quite obviously caught in unhelpful spirals of questioning thoughts.

            Obi-Wan clears his throat and comments pointedly with an arched glance around the room, “It's probably best not to unpack the implications of that now, but I do see your point, Jesse, Captain Rex may indeed be our best option.”

            This, at least, Anakin can see.

            He accepts the notion without further debate.

            "You don't leave her side, Captain," Anakin declares, the depth of his implicit trust in his Captain entirely clear in how allowing this is already such a leap of faith.

            "Not for a second, Sir," Rex replies. "And I'll have a beacon readied to ping you both as soon as she wakes up."

            Anakin nods, posture drooping with exhaustion and relief.

            "Perhaps you might want to grab a bite to eat, first, Captain," Obi-Wan suggests. "We have 9 hours, after all. Let Kix stay here for the first few of them, take a nap, get something nourishing in you... We want us all at our best for dear Ahsoka, don't we?"

            Perhaps the pressuring is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but little else would likely be convincing enough to pry Rex away from Ahsoka’s bedside now that he’s been tasked with her security.

            Obi-Wan eyes Anakin to back up his assertion, certain that Rex will not submit to leaving his charge unless the one who assigned him the task allows it.

            "Take a shower, too, Rex," Anakin sighs. "Obi-Wan's right. We do have the time, and it's not doing Ahsoka any good to have you making yourself uncomfortable."

            "Yes, Sir," Rex replies, miserable.

            "Ah, very good, then," Obi-Wan says with genuine cheer— whatever was going on with all of this, they seemed to finally have a portion of the situation under control. And if Anakin and Rex were rested when the next twist appeared, perhaps they could adjust accordingly without kicking up an even greater fuss.

            Obi-Wan trails Anakin to the mess hall. Side-eyes him into forcing down a few ration bars and then coaxes him back to his quarters.

            The last few hallways of the trip involve more propping up with the Force to keep Anakin on his feet than not— and Anakin’s so out of it with the building crash of exhaustion that he doesn’t even seem to notice Obi-Wan’s aid.

            Retiring to his own quarters, Obi-Wan spends the next six hours analyzing the security footage in exacting detail— meditating on the tiniest of details he is able to pick out.

            Meditation is not as restful as a good-night’s sleep, but— unlike Anakin— Obi-Wan had managed to sleep on the journey out to Bashtu. He’s not perfectly at ease and refreshed when the situation changes as Ahsoka reawakens, but he’s in a reasonable enough position.

            Certainly, he is still more adequately rested than Anakin— whose Force signature flares to life with wakefulness in the same nanosecond as Ahsoka’s.

            Anakin’s halfway stumbled from his quarters before Rex even manages to trigger the alert beacon and Obi-Wan watches his Padawan’s flailing attempt to awaken with indulgent fondness for a moment.

            “Anakin,” he cautions. “Ahsoka may now be awake, but you are still not able to visit without her without causing significant distress.”

            At the reminder, gloom crashes down over Anakin’s being.

            “I think it best that we allow Rex a chance to speak with her, though we may observe the security footage on a datapad from outside the infirmary,” Obi-Wan permits.

            Anakin nods glumly, but offers no protest.

            “And Anakin? If some issue does arise, I believe that I should step in to attempt to handle it. Without you,” Obi-Wan decrees.

            At this, Anakin tries to protest, but Obi-Wan raises a hand in refusal to entertain it.

            His former Padawan relents, his misery redoubling.

            Obi-Wan moves his hand to Anakin’s shoulder. “We will ensure that she makes it through this trial, Anakin, you must only have a little faith in all of us.”

            Faith was difficult for Anakin, for so many reasons, but he would never ever doubt in Obi-Wan’s care for him, nor in Ahsoka’s strength and resilience— at least, Obi-Wan hopes such a thing is true. He knows Anakin has felt doubt in his former Master, particularly after what happened with Ahsoka’s sham trial and the part Obi-Wan played in subjecting her to it, but he had understood why Obi-Wan had cause to believe his choices would help her.

            Even if they didn’t, in the end…

            Obi-Wan has worried about just how much of a wedge Anakin’s losing his Padawan has forced between the pair of them. And Anakin’s growing isolation, as Ahsoka walked away and as he began shutting out everyone around him (even Obi-Wan; even that blasted R2 unit of his)…

            It was enough to let doubt fester.

            So, asking for Faith here is… not a test, exactly, but more of a promise.

            An olive branch.

            If Anakin can trust him here, Obi-Wan will be certain that he hasn’t lost his brother yet—that there’s still plenty of hope left to repair what damage lingers in their old bond.

            And… Anakin wavers. He hesitates.

            But Obi-Wan exhibits no judgement towards him for it.

            Doubt is rational in the face of disappointment, particularly when being asked to nearly repeat the scenario in which the previous disappointments came.

            Ahsoka’s fate was in the Council’s hands once, in Obi-Wan’s hands. And now he’s asking Anakin to give her security over to him again.

            “Of course, Master,” Anakin says quietly— guilt over his hesitation and building worry mixing dully in his aura.

            “I have a theory, Anakin,” Obi-Wan reveals. “But I believe it will be easiest for her if I explain it to her alone. You, of course, may remain nearby and watching on the security feed.”

            The revelation of a working theory sparks a little blip of hope in Anakin.

            It’s enough to match the hope that Obi-Wan himself feels as his demonstration of trust.

            By this time, they’ve made it to the hallway outside the infirmary.

            Troopers Hawk and Boomer are standing guard in front of the door.

            They stiffen as their Generals approach.

            “It’s alright, men, Rex pinged us. We won’t be going into her suite, but we’d like to step into the infirmary proper so that we can observe the security footage without being too easily overheard,” Obi-Wan explains. The clones glance at each other, uncertain, so Obi-Wan moves to up the appeal and bribes directly, “You both may, of course, accompany us.”

            The suggestion works.

            The four of them are soon settled within the main infirmary, a datapad on a rolling implement tray between them.

            Ahsoka’s clearly distressed.

            She’s asking Rex for a SitRep with a sort of coldness in her voice Obi-Wan has never imagined could come from her.

            And her presence in the Force is walled off by shields of adamant. Her abilities are mature and well-honed, and her power is astronomical for one of her limited years.

            Rex acquiesces, but when he gets to insisting that she’s safe aboard the Resolute the slow lowering of her mental shields reverses course. Her presence in the Force feels more steely than ever, and now it’s ridged with sharp spikes that make Anakin wince as he unconsciously brushes up against them in instinctively attempting to soothe his Padawan.

            Anakin has power but his control is not yet quite refined enough to fully understand what her signature is doing— what it’s telling them about her circumstances.

            Of course, it’s not difficult to misread the nuances of a Force signature when what it seems to be indicating is so far beyond the pale… Even Obi-Wan has only been able to sense the particularly contours of her signature with any precision due to his willingness to entertain the strangest flights of fancy (being Anakin’s Master has certainly contributed to that skill).

            Anakin cannot comprehend what would put Ahsoka so on edge about being told she’s safe and sound aboard the Resolute.

            But Obi-Wan can.

            "The Resolute went down," Ahsoka declares, doing more to confirm Obi-Wan’s unlikely supposition. "In the Battle of Sullust, just before the Emperor took over."

            "Emperor? Commander— Ahsoka, what's going on? Please, tell me how I can help."

            The Captain sounds increasingly desperate, reacting viscerally to whatever nuances of he’s seeing on Ahsoka’s face from within arm’s reach of her.

            "If you don't want to talk to me... Hawk should be outside with Boomer," Rex suggests, adding frantically, "And Coric should be on-call by now. Or I can get the Generals—"

            "Rex," Ahsoka says forcefully, carefully managing to break through the Captain’s spiral towards losing his cool— a feat she has managed with an unconscionably seasoned professionalism. "Which Generals? If it's not Hera, no one should have any idea where I am, Rex. It's safest for everyone if my contact with the Rebels is limited."

            (Obi-Wan is sure he knows of no ‘General Hera’ in the GAR, but he suspects Anakin has missed that little detail in the face of what also distracts his Captain.)

            "What Rebels, Sir? The Seppies? Is that who had you? Rest assured, Sir, if there's any of those bastards left on Tura, General Skywalker will take 'em out," Rex promises vehemently, thoroughly missing the key point of order in her statement in favor of venting his pent-up waves of emotionality— bent on securing Ahsoka’s safety.

            Both Rex and Anakin are too focused on fleeting plans to destroy Tura’s supposed separatists to note how Ahsoka’s presence gone strangely cold.

            Not steely cold, but icy and alarmed— as if she’d had a bucket of chilled water dumped over her head but couldn’t risk reacting overtly.

            Her presence proceeds to shrink away into almost nothing— folding into itself to hide while maintaining her nigh impenetrable shields, as she whispers, “Vader’s here?”

            "Who's 'Vader' ?"

            Ahsoka's Force presence pauses, internal pressure conflating with a lack of outward impetus as her mouth gapes open in stunned disbelief.

            Things are about to take a dramatic turn for the worse, so Obi-Wan makes the executive decision to step in before the downturn comes.

            He moves quickly— because if Ahsoka isn’t about to decide that breaking both her thumbs to escape Rex’s custody is an acceptable outcome, he’ll leave Anakin unsupervised in the hanger with a brand new starship model— but calmly, and he steps into the suite with casual aplomb as if he was always intending to visit her and has not been sitting outside eavesdropping.

            Her head whips around so fast her neck must be crying out in pain.

            When her eyes focus on Obi-Wan, she chokes— but the coughing fit is not responsible for the way her eyes are suddenly brimming with tears.

            "Good morning, Ahsoka," Obi-Wan greets. "I'm sorry I seem to have startled you."

            "Master Obi-Wan," Ahsoka croaks out. "You're alive."

            "Yes, indeed, dear heart," Obi-Wan confirms with gentle sincerity. "I do very much seem to be, despite all odds."

            Ahsoka's head droops as she erupts into sobs. Her whole torso is thrown forward towards Obi-Wan, wrists straining at her cuffs— threatening to dislocate her shoulders.

            Obi-Wan moves slowly to her bedside, broadcasting his movements.

            He pulls his arms from his robe's sleeves in such a way to show that he's unarmed beneath the soft brown folds. Ahsoka's still straining towards him as he reaches cautiously towards her— ready to pull back at any sign of discomfort.

            Carefully, Obi-Wan folds Ahsoka up in his arms, giving her a hug that's warm and tight— grounding her through the shudders that wrack her slim frame. She nuzzles into the contact like doing so might save him from what ever horrible death she believes befell him.

            Eventually, Obi-Wan pulls away— though he keeps his hand on her shoulder as he Force-pulls another chair to her beside. "There now, dear heart, let's see if we can sort a few things out, hmm? Perhaps not a full debrief, but enough to sooth the worst of our mutual confusion."

            At this, Rex manages clears his throat anxiously.

            "I, uh, I can leave, Sirs, if you'd—"

            "NO!"

            Everyone blinks at her hysteric vehemence.

            Obi-Wan can feel the wrap of Force she’s stretched out to encircle the Captain— a precaution to restrain him if he elects not to remain of his own accord.

            It’s a worrisome degree of insistence, but she’s not yet at the point of actively restricting anyone’s ability to make free choices, so Obi-Wan elects to ignore it.

            For now.

            "Well, you heard her, Captain," Obi-Wan nudges encouragingly.

            "Right," Rex replies, weight flopping gracelessly back into his chair.

            "Now then, lets start at the beginning, shall we?" Obi-Wan leads, "How about you start with what you were doing before all of this began? How did you arrive in the Bashtu system?"

            "I have a modified T-6 shuttle hidden on Tura," Ahsoka answers easily.

            "Our scans haven't picked anything to confirm it's still where you left it," Obi-Wan cautions lightly, arching an eyebrow to invite her to comment.

            The levity works and Ahsoka cracks a smile— a smirk, really.

            "It's very specially modified," Ahsoka taunts.

            Obi-Wan nods, tabling the issue— though, he thinks it may need to be revisited, likely sooner rather than later.

            "But what are you doing so far out in wild space all on your own? Surely, you have someone with you, nearby? Someone you could've contacted when you got into trouble?"

            Ahsoka's expression has returned to being guarded, but she's not actively refusing to speak yet— she's just waiting to see what angle Obi-Wan is going to push.

            "Why are you here, Ahsoka," Obi-Wan implores. "We only managed to find you because you screamed out into the Force. Why are you alone? Why did it take... whatever happened to you for you to call for help, and why such a fickle means?"

            Ahsoka's still guarded, but her expression is now leaning more towards stony than towards carefully contemplative. Her resistance is building as Obi-Wan leans into asking about her reasoning and intended aims— decidedly suspicious that this ‘chat’ is an interrogation.

            "Ahsoka, you're a grown woman and can make your own choices, I respect that— admire it, even, more deeply than you could ever know, but I cannot believe my Grandpadawan would ever fly out into wild space without letting someone know to check in with her," Obi-Wan lays out, plying her with an openly emotional appeal he would never permit himself to make in less dire circumstances.

            "I can't, Master," Ahsoka confesses quietly, despondent in a way that’s utterly unmistakable, eyes wide with a desperate plea that he believe her. "I would tell you everything, but unless you're already involved enough to know, I can't. I want to... But I can't be sure you're not a construct cooked up by Sidious and I can't..."

            "Hush, dear, I understand," Obi-Wan assures, pushing calm into the Force. "I do. Well enough, at least. You don't have to give me any details and we are not here to prosecute you, or your friends, for any illegal activities you may be involved with."

            (Rex’s presence bubbles with unease as the assertion that Ahsoka may be involved with something illegal, but Obi-Wan can suppress the ripples of it so that Ahsoka is not disturbed.)

            "I can feel it, Ahsoka, I can," Obi-Wan promises, carefully hiding how difficult it is for him to modulate all three of their Force signatures at once (and sincerely hoping that Anakin has the good sense to exercise restraint in the face of what he’s surely feeling escape Obi-Wan’s grasp). "You've grown a lot since I last saw you, and you've become very adept at using the Force to help communicate your emotions. I can feel you, Ahsoka. I understand."

            Relief floods Ahsoka's being— a ripple so strong that Rex shivers from the feeling of it.

            Anakin must be pacing a hole in the infirmary floor.

            Either that, or Hawk and Boomer have physically restrained him (or possibly even stunned him).

            "I do wonder if you'll humor me for one more question, though?"

            It’s the only question— the only important question… If Obi-Wan is right, at least.

            When she nods, Kenobi asks solemnly, "From your perspective, in relation to our normal dating system since the founding of the Galactic Republic, what year is it?"

            Ahsoka frowns, but she answers without hesitation, "1023."

            “Ah, I see,” Obi-Wan sighs, allowing the confirmation to solidify his insane theory. “I know this may be difficult to believe for you, my dear, but that is not the date from our perspective. Can you give me a moment of faith to explain it more?”

            Ahsoka’s face is a blank, suspicious wall.

            She does not like this.

            But she does trust Obi-Wan.

            And Rex.

            She glances at him (and the gobsmacked expression of stunned confusion the Captain is still wearing, that his Force signature is radiating to match) before nodding to Obi-Wan.

            “From our perspective,” Obi-Wan begins cautiously, “The year is 1013. You’ve been absent from our lives for almost a year now, having left the Order immediately after your unfortunate trial for the Temple Bombing.”

            Ahsoka doesn’t even flinch at the reminder, the memory so long past to her that it can be discussed with dispassionate calm— as far more painful memories have apparently superseded the betrayal of her friend Barriss Offee and the harrowing events surrounding that betrayal.

            “We have no knowledge of what you’ve been doing in the last year, but a few days ago, we felt a significant disturbance in the Force,” Obi-Wan continues. “You had, seemingly without intent to, sent a wave of pain and fear down the training bond you share with Anakin— though myself, Master Shaak Ti, and Master Plo-Koon felt the reverberations as well. We came to investigate and found you unconscious in something of a Temple.”

            A subtle nod proves that Ahsoka is still listening and actively slotting her understanding of the story into new boxes based on what Obi-Wan is explaining— still giving his version of events a chance to make sense.

            “Ahsoka, I don’t quite know how to explain it, but you are not the young girl I farewelled from the Temple steps,” Obi-Wan admits. “I can feel your maturity, your strife. You’ve lived so much life in the time we’ve spent apart, I can’t imagine such being the result of just a year. And the things you’ve said… You are on board the Resolute, it hasn’t been destroyed. There is no Emperor. No General ‘Hera’ is serving in the Grand Army of the Republic. I am Anakin’s current Master, and I am still very much alive, my dear.”

            There’s a long moment of quiet.

            Then Ahsoka says, “Rex had a beard.”

            She says it like it’s a state secret, like she’s admitting treason and possibly worse…

            It could be a passcode.

            Or it could simply be a comment on what she perceives as a poor life-decision.

            As Obi-Wan has no frame of reference for what possibilities a passcode might unlock in this scenario, or how to respond with the correct key, he decides to treat it as the latter.

            Stroking his own beard thoughtfully, Obi-Wan muses, “Oh, I don’t know. I think our good Captain might look rather dashing with a beard.”

            The statement succeeds in making the corner Ahsoka’s mouth twitch up in a semblance of a smile— her presence in the Force relaxing back to something near neutral.

            “I don’t know what happened to you, Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan says gently. “But I would like to help, however I can. Is there anything you would like to ask me that might help you accept that I am no illusory construct, lying about the date to interrogate you?”

            Ahsoka hesitates.

            Then she asks, “Duchess Satine Kyrze?”

            “Deceased,” Obi-Wan confirms, allowing the waves of still-fresh grief to wash over him and be released out into the Force. “Killed by Darth Maul, on Mandalore.”

            “Did you see it happen?”

            Obi-Wan nods gravely. “She died in my arms. Bo’Katan… She said they tried to save her, that maybe she’d fallen into a coma and with time, good fortune, and the proper equipment she perhaps could be revived, but that was nearly a year ago and the Nite Owls are still in hiding while Mandalore bears up Maul’s personal blockade...”

            “I should be with her— Bo’, I mean,” Ahsoka states. “If I remember right… I should be with her by now… Or just about to join her.”

            “You joined the Nite Owls?”

            “Sort of,” Ahsoka corrected, tipping her head side to side as she  searched for a better means of explaining it. “Mandalore needed help. I needed some way to feel helpful. And there were rumors… If the Duchess had survived, it could’ve changed everything— and not just for Mandalore— so I decided to help. And when she contacted you at my suggestion, you allowed Anakin to send a few battalions of the 501^st to aid her with me as an outside advisor.”

            Obi-Wan arched an eyebrow, not daring to let hope take root.

            “The Siege… it didn’t go well,” Ahsoka confessed. “I fought Maul. We did manage to capture him, in the end, but the casualties were high and Mandalore was… Well, it wasn’t under Maul’s control, so… But I never did manage to find out if the rumors had any truth to them and after… well, After… everything was different. Even if she had survived, she wouldn’t have then.”

            Obi-Wan nodded slowly; his moment of terrified awe at Ahsoka’s calm recollection of facing Darth Maul, of besting Maul, serving to allow her to have space to face her own flashbacks before asking, “You rejoined the fighting?”

            “I had to.”

            “Did you?”

            “I’m not a Jedi, but I believe in some of what they st—,” Ahsoka cut herself off, a pulse of anguish following her aborted statement. “Once, the Jedi were the Keepers of the Peace. They were neutral. But the logical argument of safety versus freedom isn’t helped by neutrality. True compassion suffers when all sides are given equal weight. I had to help.”

            Of course she did, Obi-Wan thinks, her heart has always been so full of goodness— her soul, a bright spot in any darkness.

            Ahsoka had more to say and Obi-Wan remained patient to let her.

            “I honestly believe that Barriss was right, in some ways— not about what she did, but why she did it,” the young woman said, pained with the wisdom of hard-learned lessons beyond what anyone should have to bear. “The Order… lost itself, long before I left; decades, even— but I couldn’t really see that until I’d left. Even then I didn’t see… By the time I understood…”

            Anguish isn’t nearly strong enough a word for what floods out of Ahsoka as her words trail off and her head hangs heavy on her shoulders.

            Again, the pulse of emotion is so forceful that Obi-Wan thinks Rex may feel it.

            There’s a lot to unpack from what Ahsoka said there, but a piece of it links to something she said earlier— and all of it links together.

            “Ahsoka, why don’t you want to see Anakin? His presence was very distressing to you the first time you woke up,” Obi-Wan comments, controlling his fear at receiving confirmation of his nebulous supposition— and the even more elusive gossamer of hope behind it.

            “Anakin Skywalker is dead,” Ahsoka says coldly, void of either sincerity or doubt.

            Obi-Wan is probably the only Jedi alive that could’ve caught the lie inside it— and even as the Negotiator, he only managed the barest glimpse of it because he knew Ahsoka’s heart nearly as well as he knew Anakin’s or even his own.

            “Perhaps, if you really have come back to us from a far flung future, the Force may be granting you a chance to change that,” Obi-Wan suggests, ducking down to make eye contact.

            Ahsoka frowns, clearly having not yet considered the option as a possibility.

            (Why should it have occurred to her, when she could barely believe that this whole scenario wasn’t an elaborate mind-game meant to torture and interrogate her?)

            And she clearly catches the double meaning he inlays with the words— her aura spikes with a bolt of fear, quickly soothed by his lack of explication.

            He should address whatever happened to Anakin to make his dying seem so much more preferable to Ahsoka, but discussing it with Anakin outside the door is off the table.

            More than that, the flicker of hope he feels from her is nearly blinding— even weak and short-lived as the flare is. Which likely means there’s genuine potential in his suggestion.

            The potential to save Anakin. And to therefore spare Ahsoka some grief.

            “Anakin is very anxious to see you, if you think you could bear it,” Obi-Wan presses, he’s concerned this might be pushing her too far for the moment, but he has to try— for Anakin’s sake, and thereby everyone’s sanity. Just a moment together might confirm to both of them that what they fear is not what they’ll be facing as things here progress.

            Ahsoka, displaying grace and bravery beyond any expectations, nods.

            “Okay, Master.”

Chapter Text

::  Episode II,  Chapter II  |  ANAKIN  ::

||  1013 Anno Republicae  :  19 BBY  ||

            Anakin feels Ahsoka’s dreams.

            He can’t see them, can’t interpret them… but he feels them.

            She’s managed to find a way to keep her mental shields up, even while being sedated with enough drugs to drop a Bantha.

            (Whatever had happened to her to help her master that skill— to make it into something more like instinct— Anakin isn’t sure he’s prepared to hear the story behind it without pounding in some skulls about it.)

            Her dreams feel… cold.

            Slithery and slimy and oddly insubstantial.

            Right up until the end, when they turn hot and sharp and crystal clear.

            Anakin gets a few glimpses as Ahsoka bursts back over the edge of sleep into wakefulness. He sees flashes of the clones in agony, of Maul and Dooku and darkness, of one planet burning and another that seems to have dissolved into dust…

            And he sees a line of empty helmets, painted blue and orange, staked around the ruins of a Venator… he feels a creep of something poison through the Universe.

            The last glimpse he gets is of a world full of ash, the last thing he hears is what seems to be a modified air pump, the last thing he feels is a raging scream of his own pure terror.

            Anakin’s tumbled out of his bunk and is stumbling out the door from his quarters before he’s even fully opened up his eyes.

            He’s not sure if he hears Obi-Wan chuckle, or if his mind simply supplies it for the man in his absence, but it’s a strange comfort to him as he tumbles back against the outer hallway he runs his hand over his face half in exasperation and half to attempt dragging some sort of wakefulness into it.

            Then he truly does hear Obi-Wan— heaving a sigh.

            Anakin already has a dozen excuses bubbling up across his tongue, but Obi-Wan waves them all away with his (annoyingly infinite) customary patience.

            "Anakin," he cautions. "Ahsoka may now be awake, but you are still not able to visit without her without causing significant distress."

            At the reminder, gloom crashes down over Anakin.

            He’d… forgotten how she’d reacted the first time… (more like he was ignoring it out of existence in hopes that everyone else would forget, because then it wouldn’t be real).

            "I think it best that we allow Rex a chance to speak with her, though we may observe the security footage on a datapad from outside the infirmary," Obi-Wan permits.

            Anakin nods glumly, but he has no viable protest to offer.

            "And Anakin? If some issue does arise, I believe that I should step in to attempt to handle it. Without you," Obi-Wan decrees, giving Anakin no uncertain orders.

            He refuses to budge— halting their progress down the hall— until Anakin nods.

            Obi-Wan moves his hand to Anakin's shoulder. "We will ensure that she makes it through this trial, Anakin, you must only have a little Faith in all of us."

            It’s a struggle for him to leap into that belief with all his heart.

            He doesn’t quite understand why he feels such hesitance, or why Obi-Wan hasn’t chastised him on the subject (because Obi-Wan can most certainly feel it through their training bond)… And he’s not sure what to do about any of it.

            But… for the moment, he can focus on the problem in front of him.

            And he trusts Obi-Wan with Ahsoka’s safety nearly as much as he trusts Rex with it.

            "Of course, Master," Anakin says quietly.

            Immediately rewarding his paltry show of faith, Obi-Wan tells Anakin, "I have a theory, Anakin… But I believe it will be easiest for her if I explain it to her alone. You, of course, may remain nearby and watching on the security feed."

            The revelation sparks a tiny little blip of hope in Anakin.

            By this time, they've made it to the hallway outside the infirmary.

            Troopers Hawk and Boomer are standing guard in front of the door.

            They stiffen as their Generals approach.

            "It's alright, men, Rex pinged us. We won't be going into her suite, but we'd like to step into the infirmary proper so that we can observe the security footage without being too easily overheard," Obi-Wan explains. The clones glance at each other, uncertain, before Obi-Wan adds lightly, "You both may, of course, accompany us."

            The suggestion works, despite being an unforgivably blatant bribe.

            The clones have adopted her so thoroughly into their sense of selves that they’re more than willing to toss the regs manual right out the airlock for her.

            The four of them are soon settled within the main infirmary, a datapad propped up on a rolling implement tray between them.

            Ahsoka's clearly distressed.

            She's asking Rex for a SitRep with a sort of coldness in her voice that Anakin can recognize from the echoes in her dreams.

            Rex acquiesces, but when he gets to insisting that she's safe aboard the Resolute the slow lowering of her mental shields reverses course. Her presence in the Force feels more steely than ever, and now it's ridged with sharp spikes that make Anakin wince when he instinctively reaches out along their atrophied training bond to soothe her.

            "The Resolute went down," Ahsoka declares, baffling Anakin. A head injury explains a lot of confusion, but to think the ship they’re currently residing in has been reduced to scrap? "In the Battle of Sullust, just before the Emperor took over."

            "Emperor? Commander— Ahsoka, what's going on? Please, tell me how I can help."

            Rex is a good man, a great Captain… but even he is in over his head here.

            "If you don't want to talk to me... Hawk should be outside with Boomer," Rex suggests, adding frantically, "And Coric should be on-call by now. Or I can get the Generals—"

            Hope flares inside Anakin.

            It’s immediately dashed by Ahsoka’s firm interruption, “Rex. Which Generals?”

            (What kind of a question even is that? Which Generals? Who else would Rex be reporting to? Who else would be so steadfast at Ahsoka’s bedside?)

            “If it's not Hera,” Ahsoka goes on, still making zero sense, “No one should have any idea where I am, Rex. It's safest for everyone if my contact with the Rebels is limited."

            REBELS? The rebels had her? Does she mean the Separatists?

            That’s why Ahsoka is so utterly distraught…? (Anakin’s two inches away from burning the entire jungle moon of Tura down to bedrock.)

            Anakin and Rex seem to be of one mind as Rex promises decisively, “What Rebels, Sir? The Seppies? Is that who had you? Rest assured, Sir, if there's any of those bastards left on Tura, General Skywalker will take 'em out.”

            It’s only when Ahsoka speaks again— voice barely at a whisper— that Anakin notices how her Force presence has shrunk away to almost nothing.

            “Vader’s here?”

            "Who's 'Vader' ?"

            Ahsoka’s reaction to that is one Anakin feels immediately.

            She’s stunned. Her Force presence is a precipitous bubble of potential and bottled emotion on a leash it’s begun to slip.

            Things are about to take a dramatic turn for the worse, and if even Anakin can feel such a subtle nuance, Obi-Wan must already be keenly aware.

            Sure enough, before Anakin even draws breath to worry, Obi-Wan has abruptly stood up and is already moving into Ahsoka’s sick room.

            When Ahsoka’s eyes focus on Obi-Wan, she chokes— a wave of something like sorrow or grief mingled with relief ripples out from her (something Anakin could probably feel without the training bond to link them… without even being Force-sensitive at all, if the way Hawk and Boomer shiver is any indication).

            "Good morning, Ahsoka," Obi-Wan greets genially, as if nothing on a galactic scale is at all amiss here. "I'm sorry I seem to have startled you."

            "Master Obi-Wan," Ahsoka croaks out, breaking Anakin’s heart to pieces. But then she adds something that shoots ice down his spine:  "You're alive."

            "Yes, indeed, dear heart," Obi-Wan confirms, as if his world hasn’t just been blown apart as thoroughly as Anakin’s. "I do very much seem to be, despite all odds."

            Ahsoka's head droops as she erupts into sobs. Her whole torso is thrown forward towards Obi-Wan, wrists straining at her cuffs— threatening to dislocate her shoulders.

            Obi-Wan moves slow and cautious— so much so that watching him on the tiny screen of the datapad is excruciating – but eventually, he gets Ahsoka wrapped up into a tight hug.

            Anakin feels her shudder into it, her Force presence so strong and weighty that Anakin might not have been able to recognize it if he weren’t so particularly familiar with her.

            Anakin cannot sit still any longer, no matter how much he wants to watch.

            He begins to pace tight circles under the wary supervision of Boomer and Hawk— whose hands have already drifted towards their blasters. He’s fairly sure they’ll set their DCs to stun, so he doesn’t give their edginess too much mind (though he may make an attempt to keep his pacing a few beats slower than he’d prefer).

            "There now, dear heart,” Obi-Wan says eventually. “Let's see if we can sort a few things out, hmm? Perhaps not a full debrief, but enough to sooth the worst of our mutual confusion."

            At this, Rex clears his throat anxiously.

            "I, uh, I can leave, Sirs, if you'd—"

            "NO!"

            Anakin freezes at the force of her vehemence.

            Again, even the clones seem to feel the ripple she pushes out through the Force.

            "Well, you heard her, Captain," Obi-Wan nudges encouragingly.

            "Right," Rex replies.

            Anakin’s unflappable Captain of the 501^st sounds very thoroughly flapped.

            "Now then, let’s start at the beginning, shall we?" Obi-Wan leads, coaxing things to be back on track with the important part of the discussion. "How about you start with what you were doing before all of this began? How did you arrive in the Bashtu system?"

            "I have a modified T-6 shuttle hidden on Tura," Ahsoka answers easily.

            "Our scans haven't picked anything up to confirm it's still where you left it," Obi-Wan cautions archly, challenging her to prove him wrong.

            It works. Anakin can hear the smirk in her voice as she returns confidently, “It's very specially modified.”

            "But what are you doing so far out in wild space all on your own? Surely, you have someone with you, nearby? Someone you could've contacted when you got into trouble?"

            Ahsoka’s Force presence is still tucked behind those unfathomable walls.

            Anakin can’t read enough of her emotional state to know if that’s a positive sign, but he very strongly doubts it could be…

            Further compounding that supposition is Obi-Wan’s caution as he nudges, “Ahsoka, you're a grown woman and can make your own choices, I respect that— admire it, even, more deeply than you could ever know, but I cannot believe my Grandpadawan would ever fly out into wild space without letting someone know to check in with her.”

            It’s a surprisingly emotional appeal.

            And it most certainly does not bode well.

            There’s a stretch of tension in the atmosphere, an improperly secured airlock under pressure and about to blow.

            But then the tension melts away and Ahsoka retreats even further into herself.

            "I can't, Master," Ahsoka confesses quietly, despondent in a way that's utterly unmistakable, even without seeing her face. "I would tell you everything, but unless you're already involved enough to know, I can't. I want to... But I can't be sure you're not a construct cooked up by Sidious and I can't..."

            It’s a kind of truly desperate and strained that Anakin is all too familiar with— but not from his time in the Order. As a slave on Tatooine, he’d been witness to more than one frantic attempt to escape, and just as many yearnings to help cut off by conflicting desperations.

            "Hush, dear, I understand," Obi-Wan assures, pushing calm into the Force. (So effectively and with such control that he essentially cuts Anakin off from feeling the brunt of her pulsing presence) "I do. Well enough, at least. You don't have to give me any details and we are not here to prosecute you, or your friends, for any illegal activities you may be involved with."

            (Illegal activities are the least of Ahsoka’s concerns. They’ll never hand her over to the ‘authorities’ again, not on Anakin’s watch. And certainly not on the 501^st’s watch…)

            "I can feel it, Ahsoka, I can," Obi-Wan promises, exposing the degree to which he’s working to ensure that Anakin is cut off from the sensation of it all.

            Anakin is so wired up that he’s almost grateful that Hawk and Boomer have casually drawn their weapons (keeping them aimed low and unprimed, but as close to ready as possible).

            "You've grown a lot since I last saw you,” Obi-Wan insists, “You've become very adept at using the Force to help communicate your emotions. I can feel you, Ahsoka. I understand."

            Even Obi-Wan can’t hold back the wave of relief that ripples off her as she finally comes to accept the truth in his words.

            "I do wonder if you'll humor me for one more question, though?"

            Anakin can hardly believe that Obi-Wan wants to push this more.

            Now that Ahsoka’s calm, they should step back, let her rest— maybe (if they really have to, which yes they should, because Ahsoka deserves to have the best of care) they could revisit this trauma later (like, say, after he’s taken the 501^st on a quiet little field trip to exterminate every last Separatist on Tura…).

            But Obi-Wan is adamant.

            And, shockingly, Ahsoka seems willing.

            Obi-Wan asks solemnly, "From your perspective, in relation to our normal dating system since the founding of the Galactic Republic, what year is it?"

            Ahsoka answers without hesitation, "1023."

            And Anakin’s entire understanding of the situation gets sucked out the airlock.

            "Ah, I see," Obi-Wan sighs, absurdly sounding unsurprised. "I know this may be difficult to believe for you, my dear, but that is not the date from our perspective. Can you give me a moment of faith to explain it more?"

            (Anakin isn’t sure he could ever allow such, were he the one in Ahsoka’s position, but he has little doubt that her innate goodness and her trust in Obi-Wan will allow her the grace Anakin himself would fail to grant.)

            "From our perspective," Obi-Wan begins cautiously, "The year is 1013. You've been absent from our lives for almost a year now, having left the Order immediately after your unfortunate trial for the Temple Bombing."

            Ahsoka doesn't even flinch at the reminder, her Force presence remaining steady.

            (Anakin isn’t sure he wants to know why she seems to have so easily gotten past such a soul-deep betrayal from a once-dear friend.)

            "We have no knowledge of what you've been doing in the last year, but a few days ago, we felt a significant disturbance in the Force," Obi-Wan continues. "You had, seemingly without intent to, sent a wave of pain and fear down the training bond you share with Anakin— though myself, Master Shaak Ti, and Master Plo Koon felt the reverberations as well. We came to investigate and found you unconscious in something of a Temple."

            Obi-Wan pauses.

            Anakin assumes he’s working to ensure that his explanation is being absorbed.

            "Ahsoka, I don't quite know how to explain it, but you are not the young girl I farewelled from the Temple steps," Obi-Wan admits. "I can feel your maturity, your strife. You've lived so much life in the time we've spent apart, I can't imagine such being the result of just a year. And the things you've said... You are on board the Resolute, it has not been destroyed. There is no Emperor. No General 'Hera' is serving in the Grand Army of the Republic. I am Anakin's current Master, and I am still very much alive, my dear."

            There's a long moment of quiet.

            Then Ahsoka says, "Rex had a beard."

            It’s enough to make Hawk and Boomer snicker.

            "Oh, I don't know. I think our good Captain might look rather dashing with a beard."

            (Anakin can just imagine Obi-Wan stroking his own beard as he says it.)

            "I don't know what happened to you, Ahsoka," Obi-Wan says gently. "But I would like to help, however I can. Is there anything you would like to ask me that might help you accept that I am no illusory construct, lying about the date to interrogate you?"

            Ahsoka hesitates.

            Then she asks, "Duchess Satine Kyrze?"

            "Deceased," Obi-Wan confirms, allowing the waves of still-fresh grief to wash over him and be released out into the Force— momentarily losing his grip on the emotions he’s modulating from the others. "Killed by Darth Maul, on Mandalore."

            (Ahsoka’s presence flares at the mention of Darth Maul— Anakin remembers his face appearing in frequent flits within her dreams.)

            "Did you see it happen?"

            Obi-Wan replies gravely, "She died in my arms. Bo'Katan... She said they tried to save her, that maybe she'd fallen into a coma and with time, good fortune, and the proper equipment she perhaps could be revived, but that was nearly a year ago and the Nite Owls are still in hiding while Mandalore bears up Maul's personal blockade..."

            "I should be with her; Bo', I mean," Ahsoka states. "If I remember right... I should be with her by now... Or just about to join her."

            "You joined the Nite Owls?"

            "Sort of," Ahsoka hedges. "Mandalore needed help. I needed some way to feel helpful. And there were rumors... If the Duchess had survived, it could've changed everything— and not just for Mandalore— so I decided to help. And when she contacted you at my suggestion, you allowed Anakin to send a few battalions of the 501st to aid her with me as an outside advisor."

            (Anakin can feel Obi-Wan’s bubble of hope, no matter how he tries to suppress it.)

            “The Siege… it didn’t go well,” Ahsoka confessed. “I fought Maul. We did manage to capture him, in the end, but the casualties were high and Mandalore was… Well, it wasn’t under Maul’s control, at least… But I never did manage to find out if the rumors had any truth to them and after… well, After… everything was different. Even if she had survived at first, she wouldn’t have then.”

            Obi-Wan allows her a moment before asking, "You rejoined the fighting?"

            "I had to."

            "Did you?"

            "I'm not a Jedi, but I believe in some of what they st—," Ahsoka cuts herself off, a pulse of anguish following her aborted statement. "Once, the Jedi were the Keepers of the Peace. They were neutral. But the logical argument of safety versus freedom isn't helped by neutrality. True compassion suffers when all sides are given equal weight. I had to help."

            Of course she did.

            Ahsoka could never just sit by and let people suffer.

            (She’d even managed to rival Anakin’s record of rule-breaking-for-good-reasons...)

            "I honestly believe that Barriss was right,” Ahsoka continues, shocking Anakin even as she amends, “in some ways— not about what she did, but why she did it.

            She takes a deep breath to recenter herself before she goes on, pulling hard on the Force as Anakin leaps to breathe with her. "The Order... lost itself, long before I left; decades, even— but I couldn't really see that until I'd left. Even then I didn't see... By the time I understood..."

            Anguish isn't nearly strong enough a word for what floods out of Ahsoka then.

            (Anakin is brought nearly to his knees by it. Only a lucky step to collapse into a chair prevents him from kissing the infirmary floor.)

            "Ahsoka, why don't you want to see Anakin? His presence was very distressing to you the first time you woke up," Obi-Wan comments.

            "Anakin Skywalker is dead," Ahsoka says coldly, unrecognizable.

            (Strangely, hearing this doesn’t bother Anakin nearly as much as her confession that she’d believed Obi-Wan to be deceased.)

            "Perhaps, if you really have come back to us from a far flung future, the Force may be granting you a chance to change that," Obi-Wan suggests.

            (Because, apparently, that’s the theory they’re going with right now…)

            "Anakin is very anxious to see you, if you think you could bear it," Obi-Wan presses— so close to going too far that Anakin really hopes the man knows what he’s doing.

            He holds his breath to hear her response.

            And he’s on his feet the instant his brain processes her quiet, “Okay, Master.”

            But Hawk appears between him and the door to the suite, blaster raised and primed.

            Anakin can feel Boomer moving to flank him and he lifts his hands in surrender just before the door opens to let Obi-Wan step outside.

            Deflating entirely, Anakin doesn’t even know where to begin.

            (Time travel. He really should start with the ridiculous notion of time travel..)

            “Master..?”

            “Yes, Anakin, I truly think it would be good for the both of you to have a moment to calmly look each other over,” Obi-Wan confirms. “Just a short visit. You’re not to step closer to her than necessary once you’re in the suite; certainly, you ought to get no closer than Rex or I will be positioned. This is going to be very difficult for both of you and while I appreciate how hard this is, I implore you to make an effort at avoiding anything to antagonize the situation.”

            “Yes, Master,” Anakin replies, subdued— unable to even tell if Obi-Wan’s words are a joke or legitimate censure. (Probably the later, in something as critically important as this…)

            He follows Obi-Wan to the door, but Obi-Wan pauses before opening it (Hawk has stepped aside but hasn’t lowered his blaster).

            “Blasters down, boys,” he says in low tones, “Or at least keep yourselves angled out of sight from the bed. We don’t want her to think you’re taking aim at Rex for some reason.”

            “Respect, Sir,” Hawk says (voice so tense and drawn that respect is the last thing Anakin thinks could be heard in it), “But why haven’t you brought up her attacking Jesse here?”

            Obi-Wan gives a bracing smile, obviously seeking some way to explain it that won’t be too offensive to the men who have just as much cause to worry for her as Anakin does…

            “You can’t feel her,” Anakin explains, rescuing Obi-Wan from the unenviable role of news-breaker. “She’s afraid of you. And afraid for you. But she hates me… For all her snippiness and whining… I’ve never known her to really hate anything… and this… this kind of hate is…”

            “There’s a risk she may be on the edge of Falling,” Obi-Wan supplies. “This kind of hatred is what the Sith use to fuel their power. And Ahsoka is so much stronger than when we last saw her, it’s alarming.”

            Hawk straightens, lowering his blaster at last. “She won’t Fall.”

            (The unfiltered confidence and Faith these men have in them, in their Jedi has always baffled Anakin— has always awed him, more like, and terrified him, too… Because he can’t possibly deserve it… But, Ahsoka does, he thinks. He knows how hard she’s worked to truly earn it… And he thinks he trusts her with that, with the loyalty of his own soldiers, enough to admit without embarrassment that the 501^st are hers… Honestly, they go along with a good number of soldiers from other Legions as being more hers than anyone’s…)

            “I believe that too,” Obi-Wan assures, cautiously adding, “But I have never felt anyone so close to it. Even some of the Sith we’ve encountered had less vehemence. Ventress is practically a field of calmly burning daises some days. What Ahsoka feels for Anakin, at present, is best compared to a Venator-II plowing through a passenger lane on Coruscant at rush hour. It needs to be addressed, immediately.”

            Boomer grumbles something in Mando’a that Anakin’s not quite fluent enough to catch.

            “Rest assured,” Obi-Wan mentions, eyes tight at the corners as he elects to ignore whatever he caught of the Boomer’s complaint, “It is very likely she will bring up this very concern, sooner rather than later. She may be afraid of you for some reason, but she is still very much on your side, Troopers— she doesn’t want to hurt you.”

            With a derisive snort, Boomer huffs, “No, she just wants us to hurt her.”

            Anakin’s getting testy over the Trooper’s insubordination (even if it IS on behalf of Ahsoka and providing for her security) and it’s clear Obi-Wan is, too.

            (Anakin can almost hear his old Master saying that ‘No, that’s not exactly what she asked for when she fought with Jesse’ but the Jedi Master elects to let the matter drop for now.)

            “Just a little more patience, Trooper,” Obi-Wan decides to say. “We’ll soon be able to remedy all the sores in this situation.”

            Hawk and Boomer still don’t look happy, but they don’t voice any open resentment.

            Satisfied for the moment, Obi-Wan knocks so that Ahsoka isn’t surprised when the door whooshes open to admit them.

            Her Force presence is folded up into a tiny knot— her mind hidden behind impenetrable walls. If Anakin wasn’t looking right at her, he’d guess she was halfway across the galaxy for all of how present her signature feels.

            She’s staring at him with openly hostile suspicion.

            (He simply pretends she’s not.)

            “Heya, Snips… How’re you feeling?”

            “Like I got tossed around by a rancor for a month,” Ahsoka snipes— not quite playful, but less hostile than her stare (the stare he’s still ignoring).

            “You’ll be up and at’em in no time, I’m sure,” Anakin returns.

            (He almost mentions how she’ll be driving Kix nuts by noon, but bites his tongue before he lets the teasing slip. Because maybe he won’t be annoying Kix… Maybe she’ll be asking him to kill her, like she asked Jesse… Like Hawk and Boomer are afraid of facing…)

            ((She doesn’t say anything back, like she knows what he was thinking.))

            “Hey, Snips, uh, I wanted—” He shoots a shy glance at Obi-Wan, but decides that getting kicked out of the Order is probably not the worst thing that could happen right now and Ahsoka deserves to hear the news (so little news is good right now, after all). “Padme’s pregnant.”

            “I know,” Ahsoka returns, ice cracking just a little.

            It makes a bubble of warmth and joy and Light and family lift up inside his chest, (even if her little smile and her very concrete awareness means Obi-Wan’s ridiculous time travel theory is starting to make an unfortunate amount of sense).

            ((He decides to leap with it— the nightmares he’s been getting buzz in the back of his awareness, but he ignores them more forcefully than he’s ignoring Ahsoka’s frosty demeanor.))

            “Have you— I mean, are they… uh, good? Happy? Did you get to—,” Anakin flounders.

            Ahsoka gives nothing away.

            “I never saw them again after leaving Coruscant; I barely even saw you, save for meeting up before leaving for Mandalore with Tano Company.”

            (Tano Company. Honestly, Anakin’s not even surprised. Actually, he’s more surprised the men haven’t thought of it already…)

            ((He’s definitely not fixated on the Tano Company thing to avoid thinking about the nightmares of soot and sulfur and Padme’s screams as something goes wrong…))

            (((His wife, limp, lifeless and yet still bleeding; their child, born broken and too-still.)))

            “I’ve heard snippets though,” Ahsoka comforts, breaking through Anakin’s spiral with a tenderness that startles him.

            (She hates him. She does. He can still feel it simmering, even from behind those incredible mental walls she’s built… But she isn’t allowing that hate to rule her…)

            “A wiz-kid, fly-boy mechanic with an idiotic dreamer’s optimism, jumping up the ranks of the Rebellion like a fire cracker,” Ahsoka continues. “I’m a spy, you know. I hear things. Not all of them are awful. Most of what I spread across my networks is actually good news.”

            Anakin can’t help but frown.

            (Ahsoka shouldn’t have to be a soldier, let alone a spy.)

            ((And how can there be good news in a world where the Republic has fallen, and where he and Obi-Wan are likely dead, and there’s an evil Empire with a struggling Rebellion keeping the Galaxy still fighting in an apparently endless war?))

            “They… they, uh, talk about him they way they used to talk about you,” Ahsoka says.

            (But no, that’s bad; that’s too much pressure, too many people counting on him to be a hero when he just wants to run away… It’s not something he would ever want for his son.)

            ((He has a son… Who takes after the few good traits in him, and not just that goodness he must surely get from Padme.))

            “Of course,” Obi-Wan huffs, all warmth and fond amusement, “How could any child of Anakin Skywalker sit idly by when people need help? Especially, if he gets a chance to brag about it afterwards.”

            There… A real smile from Ahsoka.

            The first genuine smile Anakin has seen on her face in well over a year.

            (Even before the sham trial and the Temple Bombing… things were not alright for her.)

            Even as he’s the butt of this joke… He’d dive under a rock with a Gundark a thousand times over if it could reliably help Ahsoka remember how to smile.

            “Yeah, well, I’d like to see him in a pod-race,” Anakin half-gripes.

            Ahsoka opens her mouth, but closes it again with a undisguised hesitation.

            “Perhaps later they’ll be more time for such reminiscing,” Obi-Wan announces before her decision not to speak makes the atmosphere too awkward. “You are still a patient, after all, and you need your rest.”

            (No. Not yet. Anakin isn’t sure she’s okay, yet.)

            ((Ahsoka can’t be alone right now…))

            “We’ll, of course, allow Rex to remain with you, if you’d both like that, but I would have a word with the Captain, first,” Obi-Wan mentions.

            There’s only a beat of hesitation— unilateral from both Ahsoka and Rex— but Rex rises to his feet and Ahsoka lets him shuffle out without protest.

            “You need to stay with her, Rex,” Anakin says in low tones the moment the door closes.

            Obi-Wan seconds the declaration, “She needs someone with her and you’re the only one who hasn’t sparked a dramatic escalation in her instability. Even though she seemed happy to see me, I could barely help her modulate the emotions she was struggling with processing.”

            Captain Rex nods, and then— because he has really always been the only sensible one of the lot— asks, “Are we really going to go with ‘time travel’ as a theory?”

            “Do you have a better one?”
            Obi-Wan’s question is met with a defeated shrug.

            “Then for now, yes,” Obi-Wan insists. “I would like to investigate that Temple a bit more before we make any definitive conclusions— or any reports for the Council or Republic.”

            “I’ll be going with you,” Anakin declares.

            Obi-Wan sighs, but doesn’t try to dissuade him.

            Instead he turns to Rex.

            “I know it may be tempting, but please resist the urge to question what had her so upset at Jesse,” Obi-Wan requests.

            (Anakin thinks it’s an order Rex will try to follow, but his men are depending on him… And suddenly Anakin is only about halfway okay with leaving him with Ahsoka. She needs to rest. But she can’t be alone, and Rex may be convinced to put her well-being ahead of the men’s demand for immediate answers.)

            “Aye, Sir,” Rex says, sounding only very slightly bitter.

            (It’s enough, just barely, for Anakin to feel alright about leaving.)

            “You’ll keep her safe, Rex, while we find out what happened,” Anakin promises.

            Anakin then looks to Obi-Wan, who looks back bemused. “Well? Aren’t you going to run off ahead to prep the shuttle? I’d’ve thought you’d be gone the moment the door closed.”

            With a roll of his eyes, Anakin grumbles, “Whatever, Master. Let’s just go.”

Chapter Text

::  Episode II,  Chapter III  |  REX  ::

||  1013 Anno Republicae  :  19 BBY  ||

            Rex wonders if his brain is melting.

            Fives has been prattling on lately about some hollo-drama where that happened.

            The protagonist’s brain melts and drips out his ears and yet his body keeps trudging around as an empty, shambling shell of nonsense (that seemed bent on cannibalism, if Rex recalls the half-heard recap properly).

            But, regardless of the fact that Fives is not exactly the most reliable source of info  beyond the latest gossip (outside of a designated mission, at least; he IS an ARC Trooper for a kriffing good reason…), his ramblings, in this case, seem to have at least given Rex a frame of reference for the currently unfolding nonsense.

            The Commander thinks it’s the year 1023.

            And General Kenobi seems unsurprised by that belief.

            Rex is pretty well convinced his brain has melted. He doesn’t manage to formulate an articulate thought through any of Kenobi’s explanation of where they are within the year it actually is, or, by Kenobi’s words, the year it is ‘from their perspective’...

            Like the Commander’s perspective isn’t the result of some hard hit to the head.

            Like it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to expect for a Jedi to show up after a little over a year believing that it’s been a decade (and apparently a terrible decade, at that).

            The jetiise ARE pretty keffen weird, though, so maybe this is normal for them…

            (Rex really hopes that this is not normal…)

            The first coherent thought Rex has after Ahsoka declares that she thinks it’s 1023 comes after Kenobi’s explanation finishes and the room goes quiet.

            Ahsoka whispers, “Rex had a beard,” and Rex’s brain clicks back online to wonder why she seems so fixated on that point. (This is the second time she’s mentioned it in 20 minutes).

            Kenobi strokes his own beard and replies, “Oh, I don't know. I think our good Captain might look rather dashing with a beard."

            (Rex isn’t really sure that Kenobi’s sense of ‘dashing’ style should be considered a compliment regarding most practical situations…)

            ((But the Captain is quite sure that the way Kenobi’s comment makes Ahsoka crack a smile is a reward worth almost any ridicule.))

            There’s a quiet moment where the brief blip of levity folds back into a solemn tension.

            "I don't know what happened to you, Ahsoka," Kenobi says gently. "But I would like to help, however I can. Is there anything you would like to ask me that might help you accept that I am no illusory construct, lying about the date to interrogate you?"

            Ahsoka hesitates.

            Then she asks, "Duchess Satine Kyrze?"

            "Deceased," Kenobi confirms, "Killed by Darth Maul, on Mandalore."

            "Did you see it happen?"

            Kenobi replies gravely, "She died in my arms. Bo'Katan... She said they tried to save her, that maybe she'd fallen into a coma and with time, good fortune, and the proper equipment she perhaps could be revived, but that was nearly a year ago and the Nite Owls are still in hiding while Mandalore bears up Maul's personal blockade..."

            "I should be with her; Bo', I mean," Ahsoka states. "If I remember right... I should be with her by now... Or just about to join her."

            "You joined the Nite Owls?"

            "Sort of," Ahsoka hedges. "Mandalore needed help. I needed some way to feel helpful. And there were rumors... If the Duchess had survived, it could've changed everything— and not just for Mandalore— so I decided to help. And when she contacted you at my suggestion, you allowed Anakin to send a few battalions of the 501^st to aid her, with me as an outside advisor."

            “The Siege… it didn’t go well,” Ahsoka confessed. “I fought Maul. We did manage to capture him, in the end, but the casualties were high and Mandalore was… Well, it wasn’t under Maul’s control, so… But I never did manage to find out if the rumors had any truth to them and after… well, After… everything was different. Even if she had survived, she wouldn’t have then.”

            Kenobi allows her a moment before asking, "You rejoined the fighting?"

            "I had to."

            "Did you?"

            "I'm not a Jedi, but I believe in some of what they st—," Ahsoka cuts herself off. She takes a centering breath and then continues, "Once, the Jedi were the Keepers of the Peace. They were neutral. But the logical argument of safety versus freedom isn't helped by neutrality. True compassion suffers when all sides are given equal weight. I had to help."

            (Of course, she did. Ahsoka’s a true soldier, through and through. The vod’e adopted her as one of their own for a damn good reason, after all.)

            "I honestly believe that Barriss was right," Ahsoka continues, shocking Rex even as she amends, "in some ways— not about what she did, but why she did it.”

            She takes another deep breath before she goes on, "The Order... lost itself, long before I left; decades, even— but I couldn't really see that until I'd left. Even then I didn't see... By the time I understood..."

            Rex has seen grief.

            He’s seen anguish. He’s seen despair.

            He’s seen the look of soldiers who’d given everything they had and still lost even more than could be imagined.

            But he’s never seen someone look so destroyed as Ahsoka does when she trails off.

            His skin prickles with gooseflesh and he struggles to suppress a violent shiver.

            "Ahsoka, why don't you want to see Anakin? His presence was very distressing to you the first time you woke up," Kenobi comments.

            "Anakin Skywalker is dead," Ahsoka says coldly, unrecognizable.

            (She shouldn’t sound like that, not Ahsoka…)

            "Perhaps, if you really have come back to us from a far flung future, the Force may be granting you a chance to change that," Kenobi suggests.

            (Because, apparently, that's still the theory they're going to go with...)

            "Anakin is very anxious to see you, if you think you could bear it," Kenobi presses.

            Rex watches very carefully for any hint of distress in his Commander.

            He might be court martialed if he insists on escorting Kenobi out or if he refuses to admit Skywalker to the sick room, but if they’re bent on pushing the Commander too hard, it might be worth it. And he’d likely have Kix and Coric to back him up on validating the decision, so he likely would not be decommissioned even if is does get removed from command. (Regardless, though, it might be worth it anyway if it could spare Ahsoka more grief...)

            But Ahsoka nods.

            “Okay, Master.”

            “Just a moment, then, dear one,” Kenobi says, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder once more as he rises. He disappears out the door— making sure to seal it behind him.

            Ahsoka closes her eyes, like she’s listening carefully.

            (Probably a bad idea, even if her montrals can let her eavesdrop through the door.)

            As both a ploy to distract her and a genuine inquiry, Rex asks, “You really okay with seeing Skywalker, Sir?”

            Ahsoka doesn’t flinch at the name, but likely because she’d braced herself to hear it.

            “Not really, no,” Ahsoka admits. “But… Even Sidious couldn’t make a construct like this hold up for this long… I can still feel him. I felt him even while Master Obi-Wan was trying to keep everything in here dampened and isolated from the outside. That kind of power, of presence, isn’t something that can be faked so effectively for so long. I have to see him, Rex, to see if it really is him.”

            “And if it is?”

            “I have no idea,” Ahsoka huffs.

            Rex almost hesitates to ask, but, soldier to soldier, they need to get on the same page here, so he plows on, “And if he’s not?”

            Ahsoka shoots him a tight smile.

            “I’ll deal with it,” Ahsoka asserts. “I still won’t be able to tell you anything, in case you’re part of the construct, but in case you’re not… I’ll get you out of here, Rex. Just like we got out when things went bad on the Tribunal.”

            She would be reaching for him if her hands were free— leaning over to give his vambrace a tight squeeze of reassurance, symbolic of the vow she’s swearing.

            Rex wants to ask why.

            Why him? Why do they need to escape? Why not allow his brothers to help take the ship if she’s so worried about the Generals being corrupted by something?

            Unfortunately, he doesn’t manage to get his thoughts in order enough to articulate a rational-sounding question before the door opens again to readmit Kenobi— this time with Skywalker at his side.

            Ahsoka seems to shrink… Like the old jetii trick to become less noticeable in a crowd—but far more obviously in play when she’s shrinking away from plain sight in such a small room.

            The Generals notice it far more acutely than Rex ever could, and what they feel prompts them to share a look— which makes Rex fight the urge to stand up and adopt a guard position of parade rest. (To put himself bodily between Ahsoka and the threat she sees in Skywalker.)

            Kenobi returns to his seat, but Skywalker only steps inside far enough to let the door whoosh closed behind him. He shuffles his weight awkwardly foot to foot.

            (Reasonable, as Ahsoka’s glare towards him is openly hostile.)

            ((Rex is keeping his eyes on her, otherwise he might be glaring at Skywalker too…))

            "Heya, Snips... How're you feeling?"

            "Like I got tossed around by a rancor for a month," Ahsoka snipes— not quite playful, but still much less hostile than it could be.

            "You'll be up and at'em in no time, I'm sure," Skywalker returns.

            There’s a beat of awkward pause as Skywalker shifts his weight foot to foot again, like a shiny too unsure of his standing to speak up.

            "Hey, Snips, uh, I wanted—" He shoots a shy glance at Kenobi, but decides drop all his walls at once (because Ahsoka’s worth it, even Skywalker knows that). "Padme's pregnant."

            "I know," Ahsoka returns, ice cracking just a little.

            It’s a revelation that makes Rex smile, too.

            It’s great news, and in a time of such little good news, great news is a miracle.

            (Even if Skywalker’s open admission of it, in front of Kenobi, means that Rex now owes Cody a hefty sum of credits.)

            ((There  are gonna be itty-bitty Skywalkers running around! Oh, those little'uns are gonna give the vod’e absolute hell, but damn it all if they aren’t sure to be the most adorable little monsters any of them have ever seen…))

            (((There’s a sharp pang in Rex's chest, near his old scar from Saleucami… a pang Rex dutifully pretends could not possibly be interpreted as any kind of selfish longing for some taste of such domestic bliss to call his own.)))

            "Have you— I mean, are they... uh, good? Happy? Did you get to—," Skywalker flounders helplessly, anxious and eager for her answer.

            (Because, yeah, apparently they are still going with the time travel theory…)

            Ahsoka gives nothing away.

            Her face as blank as shiny’s armor.

            “I never saw them again after leaving Coruscant; I barely even saw you, save for meeting up before leaving for Mandalore with Tano Company.”

            (Tano Company. Good one. Best make sure the boys don’t hear that bit or he’ll have whole battalions painting their helmets orange overnight.)

            "I've heard snippets though," Ahsoka comforts, reaching out an olive branch.

            She’s still glaring, and it’s still very hostile, but this is proof enough that she’s willing to make an attempt to accept Skywalker’s overtures.

            "A wiz-kid, fly-boy mechanic with an idiotic dreamer's optimism, jumping up the ranks of the Rebellion like a fire cracker," Ahsoka continues. "I'm a spy, you know. I hear things. Not all of them are awful. Most of what I spread across my networks is actually good news."

            Skywalker's mouth pinches in a frown he obviously can’t prevent.

            "They... they, uh, talk about him the way they used to talk about you," Ahsoka says.

            Skywalker's frown twitches again, moving closer to a scowl.

            (War obviously isn’t the life he wants for his son; for how could any father-to-be think himself anything but a failure in hearing that his child has turned out as reckless and war-renowned as he has for his battlefront antics?)

            "Of course," Kenobi huffs, all warmth and fond amusement, "How could any child of Anakin Skywalker sit idly by when people need help? Especially, if he gets a chance to brag about it afterwards."

            As much as Rex knows Skywalker must be feeling like a failure, Kenobi’s right about how this child must surely be as prone to drama and heroics as his father…

            (And if the war still is on… There’s no way in any of the seven hells that a Skywalker wouldn’t find their way to the front lines to do something about it.)

            And Kenobi’s comment prompts a smile, a real smile, from Ahsoka.

            Which allows Skywalker to accept it with a semblance of grace.

            "Yeah, well, I'd like to see him in a pod-race," Skywalker half-gripes.

            Ahsoka opens her mouth for a quip, but closes it again with undisguised hesitation.

            "Perhaps later they'll be more time for such reminiscing," Kenobi announces before her active decision not to speak makes the atmosphere overly awkward. "You are still a patient, after all, and you need your rest."

            Rex doesn’t even register that Ahsoka’s gaze has turned worriedly towards him until Kenobi mentions, "We shall, of course, allow Rex to remain with you, if you'd both like that, but I would have a word with the Captain, first.”

            Rex shuffles awkwardly out after the Generals after a reassuring glance at Ahsoka.

            "You need to stay with her, Rex," Skywalker says in low tones as soon as the door closes.

            Kenobi seconds the declaration, "She needs someone with her and you're the only one who hasn't sparked a dramatic escalation in her instability. Even though she seemed happy to see me, I could barely help her modulate the emotions she was struggling with processing."

            Captain Rex nods and asks, "Are we really going to go with 'time travel' as a theory?"

            "Do you have a better one?"

            Kenobi's question is met with a defeated shrug.

            (Rex barely has a decent grasp of the damn jetiise to start with.)

            "Then for now, yes," Obi-Wan insists. "I would like to investigate that Temple a bit more before we make any definitive conclusions— or any reports for the Council or Republic."

            "I'll be going with you," Skywalker declares.

            Kenobi sighs, but doesn't try to dissuade him.

            (The man’s a General, after all, he knows there are some battles not worth fighting.)

            Instead Kenobi turns to Rex.

            "I know it may be tempting, but please resist the urge to question what had her so upset at Jesse," Kenobi requests.

            But.

            How could Rex possibly…?

            His brothers are all upset and deeply concerned. Their Commander is hurt— is asking them to hurt her… Surely, he can’t be expected to just let that sit in silence?

            (But she is distressed, and pushing her is likely not an option that would benefit her health in any way. And while Hawk and Boomer don’t look happy over Skywalker’s shoulder, they also aren’t making any open protest.)

            "Aye, Sir," Rex says, working very hard to sound only slightly bitter.

            "You'll keep her safe, Rex, while we find out what happened," Skywalker declares.

            (Rex isn’t sure if it’s a promise meant for him or something meant to reassure the General himself.)

            Skywalker looks to Kenobi, who is blatantly bemused. "Well? Aren't you going to run off ahead to prep the shuttle? I'd've thought you'd be gone the moment the door closed."

            With a roll of his eyes, Skywalker grumbles, "Whatever, Master. Let's just go."

            Seconds later, Rex is alone with Hawk and Boomer.

            They’re looking at him with wary, pointed expectation.

            (They deserve a debrief, even if he has nothing good to give them.)

            “We’ve been watching the Sec feed on a datapad; we’re up to speed, Captain,” Hawk informs him stiffly.

            “She’ll be alright, won’t she, Captain?”

            “Krek Boomer, you heard the Generals,” Rex huffs. “They’ll figure out what’s wrong.”

            “They think she’s close to Falling,” Boomer retorts, dropping his voice to a whisper.

            (Ahsoka probably still heard it, but Rex appreciates the effort.)

            “She won’t Fall,” Rex counters swiftly. “They’ll see they’re being keffen ridiculous to even consider it, soon enough. It’s our job to keep her safe and comfy until things get sorted. Now then, your watch shift is almost over, isn’t it? Who’s up next?”

            “Fives and Echo,” Hawk states.

            Rex gives himself a moment to hold in a sigh.

            “Why exactly are my ARC Troopers on baby-sit-a-door duty?”

            “There’s no regs against it,” Boomer supplies. “The rules say they can’t be forced to do it anymore, but there aren’t any rules to prevent them from giving themselves a shift on watch.”

            Of course not.

            (And Echo probably has a dozen citation or litigation records to defend it, too.)

            “Tell them to shove off until the next one, make some shinies take this turn. The Commander needs rest before we dare to subject her to those knuckleheads,” Rex huffs.

            When Hawk and Boomer hesitate, he adds, “Do you want Kix and Coric to ban anyone from visiting? ‘Cause they definitely will.”

            At Hawk and Boomer’s woe-hung expressions, Rex knows he’s won for the moment.

            “And tell them to bring snacks when they come— sealed packages, so she doesn’t even have to wonder if it’s poisoned,” Rex instructs.

            The pair nod.

            “We all know her favorites,” Hawk asserts.

            With that, Rex leaves his men to handle things outside.

            He returns to Ahsoka’s bedside to find her fretting with her cuffs again.

            (Even with the padding, they’ve got to be wearing sores into her skin by now.)

            “Sorry ‘bout all this, Commander,” Rex relays, sympathetic— but not in any way about to be convinced to remove the restraints.
            “I get it, Rexster,” she tells him. “Well, kinda.”

            She’s heaves a sigh that’s heavier than Rex can wrap his mind around.

            (She looks so much more mature, but until just now, she hadn’t quite looked older.)

            They share a quiet moment that’s neither comfortable nor fully tense.

            Then Ahsoka wonders, “I know Obi-Wan asked you not to, but are you really not gonna ask about… about what happened in the hall earlier?”

            “I figured you wouldn’t want to talk about it,” Rex admits.

            Ahsoka almost chuckles. “I don’t. But I still figured you’d ask. … for them.”

            “They’ll understand,” Rex replies, as confidently as he can.

            (He knows they will understand, but he also knows they’ll be very disappointed.)

            Ahsoka’s expression looks like his false-confidence wasn’t even a little convincing.

            “The vod’e owe you enough by now to give you a break, Commander,” Rex insists. “We’d never think you’d really turn against us. Even Jesse… He’s just worried about you. As long as we give them regular updates that you’re doing okay, they’ll be fine with waiting.”

            “I should apologize to him, I think… It’s all so hard to believe though… Even more than—than…” Ahsoka trails off and gives a shudder.
            “You’re vod’ika, Ahsoka,” Rex reminds her gently. “You don’t need to apologize. But, that you think you should and don’t want to will make the boys worry all the more.”

            Ahsoka stares searchingly at Rex, gaze darting and uncertain.

            “You don’t have to— to tell us, ever, little’un,” Rex leads hesitantly. “But you have to know that none of the vod’e would ever hurt you— would ever want to see you hurt.”

            “I know, Rex; I do,” she says, sounding sure and sad at once.

            “So, then why…?”

            Ahsoka cracks a smile and winks. “I knew you couldn’t resist, Rexster.”

            Rex lets himself feel defeated for a moment, but then he reiterates, “What happened with Jesse in the hall? Commander, you…”

            “It was never his fault, never any of their faults,” Ahsoka tells him. “Just a stroke of bad luck in a game rigged against us from the start. Don’t let the boys worry about it, huh, Rex?”

            “It’s gonna be pretty tricky to manage half that, but I’ll try, Sir,” Rex replies.

            Ahsoka nods, leaning back against her pillows as she starts to rapidly fade— her depleted energy riding out the last of its adrenaline high.

            “You rest up, now, Commander,” Rex soothes. “We’re all here for ya.”

            Ahsoka purrs something in a Togruti mumble and then promptly goes utterly limp as she tips over into full unconsciousness.

            Rex, meanwhile, gets comfy in his chair (or as comfy as he can), and settles in to wait…

Chapter Text

Episode III – Recoil Effect

::  Episode III,  Chapter I  |  ANAKIN  ::

||  1013 Anno Republicae  :  19 BBY  ||

            The walk to the shuttle bay is mercifully silent.

            (Obi-Wan knows he’s stewing, but his old Master also knows that sometimes, Anakin just needs to stew… To process things before he tries to talk about them.)

            His mind is still reeling from all of this, from losing Ahsoka to getting her back in so dramatic a manner… To feeling the hints of wrongness in her Force signature.

            Anakin cannot wrap his mind around it.

            Getting some sleep would probably help, but that will likely be elusive for a long while yet. He’s still absolutely buzzing with the sparks of rage and fear and fury at having his Padawan be so abused as she’s clearly been.

            Before anything like peace can be attainable for him, he needs to find out who (or what) is responsible for Ahsoka’s pain.

            Even meditation, and the near-sleep restorative calm it brings, will be impossible until he can satisfy this fixation. Until he can be sure that Ahsoka is safe and that whatever hurt her is either gone or brought to justice.

            Anakin’s mind is running itself in circles by the time they make it through the pre-flight checks and have the shuttle prepped for launch.

            Conscientious, and ever merciful, Obi-Wan waits all the way until after they’ve left the Resolute’s hanger en route for Tura’s surface before he says anything.

            “So, since everything is finally all out in the open, I suppose now’s a good time to offer my congratulations,” Obi-Wan comments dryly.

            Anakin keeps his gaze focused on the dials of his steering control panel.

            “Congratulations? For what?”

            “For your marriage, Anakin,” Obi-Wan replies, voice dripping with more than enough sass and exasperation to replace the eye-roll that Anakin’s gaze is avoiding. “And for your joyful anticipation of impending fatherhood.”

            Anakin keeps his eyes down.

            He adjusts a setting for the aft, portside thrusters that doesn’t need to be adjusted and toggles it back a second later.

            “You knew?”

            “Of course, I knew, Anakin.”

            He doesn’t make Anakin ask how.

            “You are many wonderful things, Anakin, but subtle is not one of them,” Obi-Wan points out, adding, “And Rex is perhaps the worst liar I have ever encountered.”

            Anakin winces.

            He chose Rex for his loyalty, not even considering his practical utility.

            (He doesn’t regret his choice, not at all. Rex deserves every ounce of Faith Anakin has left in his being. It’s why he’s currently willing to leave Ahsoka in his care.)

            “I hope you know I won’t reveal your secrets, Anakin,” Obi-Wan mentions lightly.

            “But the Council… Attachment is forbidden and I’ve been—”

            “Your relationship with the Council is too polarized for proper judgement to be rendered on the matter,” Obi-Wan asserts firmly. “And I’ve been in discussion with Master Jocasta Nu on the matter of texts in translation. I’ll be initiating an inquiry as to how to revise the Order’s guidelines on many matters as soon as the war is over, or at least calms. Once such concern is that ‘attachment’ may no longer be the best translation in Modern Basic for the concept of emotional over-investment that was forbidden by the old texts.”

            Shocked, Anakin looks over at Obi-Wan in the co-pilot’s chair with his mouth gaping open. Obi-Wan is focused on his scanners, looking entirely at ease with having dropped such a world-altering statement.

            “How do Yoda and Windu feel about that?”

            “They don’t know yet,” Obi-Wan lobs back.

            Anakin simply continues to gape at his old Master.

            “Yoda is an unassailably wise old Master with experience that cannot be ignored, but presumably, he also has awareness enough to know that age and inflexibility oft go hand in hand, and that a bough which refuses to bend in the wind will eventually break,” Obi-Wan explains. “Windu’s opinions may differ from mine, but the Council is a council for a reason.”

            “Other Councilors agree with you?”

            “I’ve not yet seen it necessary to demand their commitment to a side, but Shaak Ti, Plo Koon, Kit Fisto… They are all certain to be sympathetic,” Obi-Wan details. “Even Quinlan Vos, woe be it to me, might actually be an apt partner on this front.”

            It doesn’t make Anakin chuckle.

            (Nothing could accomplish that right now.)

            But it does make the ache in his chest loosen substantially.

            It makes a worry ease in Anakin that he hadn’t quite realized was pressing down on him quite as drastically as it had been.

            He still cannot breathe easy, but the feat is one now far easier to manage than before.

            Anakin doesn’t know how to respond to his old Master, whether to thank him or to continue asking questions or… something else entirely.

            Obi-Wan averts the need for him to respond in any way by hmm-ing over something he sees on his screen and tapping hard at the side of the scanner like percussion maintenance will genuinely affect its readings.

            “It seems that unless Ahsoka has learned how to make a shuttle truly invisible, she does not have any means of transport, certainly not anything sufficient to bring her out this far into wild space all on her own,” Obi-Wan explains.

            Anakin takes a centering breath and works to untangle all the threads of possibilities tied to what that observation means.

            “So, either she learned to teleport, has friends with a ride she hasn’t told us about, or… or something in the temple where we found her really did allow her to travel back in time— while her shuttle stayed in the year she came from,” Anakin lays out.

            With an approving nod, Obi-Win confirms, “Precisely. And as teleportation is beyond even Master Yoda’s capabilities…”

            “Ahsoka has always made friends easy, and she’d never betray their trust if she felt— for some reason— that telling us about their existence would endanger them,” Anakin mentions as he clings to the last thread of hope he has that this whole story might make sense soon.

            “Unfortunately, I believe her current means of protecting her friends is cutting herself almost entirely off from them,” Obi-Wan leverages. “She’s so lonely, Anakin. You must be able to feel it through your training bond.”

            “She shields too well against me,” Anakin admits. “All I feel from her is hate and fear and grief… I can hardly fathom it, and what I feel is only the bits that are extreme enough to leak  through her guards.”

            (Like right now, he can feel her consciousness bubbling away as exhaustion finally asserts itself over her will, over the blips of anxiety and agony… (and amusement?)...)

            “It’s not you she hates, you know, not really— not if my theory is correct,” Obi-Wan says, poking cautiously at their bond to test Anakin’s volatility on the subject.

            Bitterly, Anakin huffs, “Yeah, it’s just whatever I apparently become.”

            (Anakin knows he bears more rage than is fitting for a Jedi, but how could Ahsoka ever come to fear him? She, the little sister who has always known his weaknesses— who knows him better even than Padme in some ways— she would never turn against him unless he did something truly vile, something that no one could possibly forgive…)

            Obi-Wan is prevented from responding by the tasks of landing preparation.

            The shuttle cannot land directly above the temple where it hovered yesterday, and neither Anakin nor Obi-Wan want to risk the shuttle losing fuel while hovering if their venture into the temple goes long. They need to keep enough in reserve to ensure that they’ll be able to make it back to the Resolute without calling for aid.

            And instead of simply sending the shuttle back without them, it seems a good plan to keep the shuttle relay close to help boost their com signals.

            They settle down in a small— well, it’s not exactly a clearing, but there’s a break in the tree-cover big enough to squeeze the shuttle through.

            Their ‘landing pad’ isn’t level, but the ship shouldn’t be at too high a risk for rolling away while they’re gone. Obi-Wan makes a flippant comment about it at least being a gentle touchdown, if not still on par in other ways with Anakin’s usual ‘unconventional’ landing style.

            Anakin is still too caught up in wondering what horror he could have committed to have so ruined himself in Ahsoka’s eyes to think of quipping back.

            (He can feel Obi-Wan’s worry at his lack of engagement through their bond, a prickling sensation of concern being intentionally pushed aside to give Anakin as much space as he can.)

            ((Obi-Wan is so careful with him, like he’s a youngling in the middle of a fit, and Anakin hates it, but he also knows he needs it and he’s not sure that fact isn’t worse… ))

            As they begin to hike out towards the temple where they found Ahsoka, Obi-Wan seems to hesitate in starting the conversation they both know needs to happen, but eventually he summons up the fortitude to say quietly, “We don’t know what happened, Anakin.”

            “We know she hates me.”

            “And she thinks I’m dead,” Obi-Wan returns.

            Anakin grits his teeth against snapping that being ‘evil ’ is probably worse.

            “We should discuss what we do know of what she’s let slip,” Obi-Wan prompts.

            With a heavy sigh as he pushes a thick vine out of his way, Anakin submits to thinking seriously about what Obi-Wan wants him focused on.

            “I, apparently, have gone Darkside,” Anakin huffs, distancing himself as much as possible from the upwell of despair he feels at that notion.

            “Under the guidance of a Master who is not me,” Obi-Wan points out.

            “She mentioned looking for him, and from how she felt when she asked where he was, he’s someone she hates more than me,” Anakin realizes.

            Obi-Wan nods. “Perhaps this new Master killed me, and then acquired your allegiance by force or misdirection,” he suggests.

            It shouldn’t be a comfort, not really, but it still serves to soothe a few frazzled nerves.

            “ ‘Darth Sidious’, she said,” Anakin names him.

            “Yes, and this Sidious seems to be to blame for quite a lot of trouble,” Obi-Wan agrees, musing, “He must have something to do with what seems to have turned Ahsoka against the clones, as well. Her reaction to them is less… forceful than her reaction to you, but it is still quite troubling. She was ready to kill Jesse, I could feel it as far away as the bridge.”

            That she couldn’t bring herself to do it isn’t half as surprising as the fact she’d considered it for even a nanosecond. Even if they were actively trying to kill her… Anakin can hardly believe the rage he felt billowing out from her in the moment she had leapt at Jesse.

            “But she adores the men, and they adore her,” Anakin insists— pleading outright.

            With a placating hand on Anakin’s shoulder and a firm nod to show he agrees whole-heartedly with Anakin’s assessment, Obi-Wan muses, “Perhaps Sidious changed them… And perhaps in saving her, you killed them… I could see that causing a great rift between you, at least the start of one… One that could likely be exploited by a powerful Sith Lord.”

            “Maybe…”

            (Anakin’s not so sure of it.)

            ((But he would kill a hundred clones before he let one harm Ahsoka… But she, as displayed explicitly in her ill-fated escape attempt on the Resolute, would simply forgive them for needing to kill her…))

            (((And if how she reacted to Krell’s betrayal is any indication, Ahsoka would bear no sympathy for any Jedi who turned on his men— perhaps not even if, or maybe especially if, the ‘betrayal’ was only perceived as one…Loyalties would be in all kinds of question in that case.)))

            “But what could a Sith do to make the clones turn against Ahsoka? I’m of half a mind to say they would mutiny tomorrow if she asked it of them,” Obi-Wan comments, prying Anakin’s attention out of his own head.

            Anakin can’t imagine laughing at the moment, but there is a lightness in his chest at the thought of what lengths the men would go to for someone who has so clearly and genuinely earned their loyalty as Ahsoka. Rex would probably kiss his own blaster before he so much as let anyone doubt Ahsoka’s worthiness of his men’s unwavering regard.

            “Rex,” Anakin suddenly realizes. “She fought Jesse because she thought they were going to hurt Rex. Whatever she thinks turned them against her, also turned them against Rex.”

            Obi-Wan chuckles freely at that. “Of course, Anakin. I mean, I presume you’ve met your Captain, haven’t you? I daresay there’s not a power in all the Universe that could turn Rex and Ahsoka against each other. And as prone to self-sacrificing as the pair of them are, I should think any attempt to sway them to harm each other would simply backfire spectacularly.”

            With a confused frown, Anakin opens his mouth— only to close it as he looks over to find his old Master eyeing him with something like affectionate disbelief.

            “You think they are… attached?”

            “In a manner of speaking,” Obi-Wan replies noncommittally, still radiating a deep amusement at Anakin’s expense.

            Exasperated, Anakin rolls his eyes and asks, “In what manner of speaking?”

            “Platonic love is still love, after all,” Obi-Wan answers, clearly taking pity on his poor, unobservant former-Padawan. “As duty bound as they both are, with their hearts tied to higher causes, they may not have yet even considered how their relationship might shift should they chose to explore the option, but the potential is certainly there.”

            Anakin gapes openly at Obi-Wan, utterly blindsided.

            (Honestly, he’s not sure that Obi-Wan’s being entirely truthful about this.)

            ((Because it’s a really efficient way to distract Anakin from his other worries.))

            “While the clones are considerably more skilled at subtlety than you are, surely you cannot have missed the fact that a good number of the men have begun a betting pool on when the Captain will actually admit to his affections,” Obi-Wan teases.

            Anakin simply blinks, still too stunned to really process the implications of that.

            (And still half-convinced that Obi-Wan’s teasing is built on an untruth.)

            With a light tone of affront affected in his tone, Obi-Wan continues, “Honestly, Anakin. Your lack of observation skills regarding something right in front of you reflects poorly on me as a Master. Surely, I taught you better than this?”

            “I haven’t felt anything change in how they feel, not from either of them,” Anakin protests. “Ahsoka had that short-lived crush on the Bonterri kid and I could sense it easily, but I’ve felt nothing like that from either her or Rex.”

            “Affection like theirs doesn’t have to change, Anakin, it simply has to grow,” Obi-Wan asserts sagely— with a ring of experience in his voice, tinged with sadness.

            Which is when Anakin suddenly remembers Satine.

            (He doesn’t bring her up, but he knows he’s not quite good enough at controlling his Force signature to think his revelation is missed by his Master.)

            “Satine and I were dear friends for many years before I recognized it may be more,” Obi-Wan admits, tone light enough to almost hide the ache behind it. “We were both duty-bound to ignore it, but I am a romantic at heart and once I recognized what I felt it became quite difficult to maintain a friendship without yearning for more.”

            Anakin stays quiet.

            (He’s not sure what he could say to express his sympathies, and even if he had the words to do it, he’s pretty sure he’d bungle the attempt. Eloquence, like subtlety is not his strong suit.)
            “Ahsoka and Rex are… pragmatic, far more than you or I, and they have far less experience in life,” Obi-Wan points out.

            “You really don’t think they know?”

            With another warm chuckle, Obi-Wan contends, “Well, it would make an almost viable excuse out of why you, my dear Padawan, have failed to notice something so clear to others.”

            Anakin simply sighs.

            (This is a fight where he loses either way, as most arguments with Obi-Wan are…)

            He’s only caught in the flux of indecision for a moment.

            Before the atmosphere becomes awkward, Anakin stumbles over a root— one that proves to be strung across the bleak gap of a hole in the ground.

            It’s the opening of a staircase, a door into the temple where they found Ahsoka.

            “I think this is the place,” Anakin states, helping them both refocus on the present.

            They have a beloved comrade to save.

Chapter Text

::  Episode III,  Chapter II  |  OBI-WAN  ::

||  1013 Anno Republicae  :  19 BBY  ||

            Anakin is either much more trusting of Rex than Obi-Wan had anticipated, or he is far more disturbed by everything than he is letting on.

            His control over his own emotions has never been very good, but Obi-Wan has been trying to help him learn— even years after letting him go as a Padawan. It’s unfortunate that, just as Obi-Wan’s teachings were beginning to help him gain a properly nuanced control, the stressors Anakin needed to face redoubled and became further compounded by secrecy.

            Honestly, there is a third option…

            Anakin could simply be so overwhelmed by everything that he hasn’t yet processed enough to actually feel much of anything about it  yet.

            Obi-Wan knows that Anakin needs to stew for a bit— that he needs to take the time, not quite to meditate, but to turn the puzzle pieces around… so they’re all face up on the table and he has some idea of what he’s dealing with in trying to make a cohesive picture of it all.

            But… knowing that is only half the reason Obi-Wan stays quiet on the trek down to the Resolute’s shuttle bay.

            The other half of the reason is that Obi-Wan doesn’t quite know where to start.

            Ahsoka’s return to them, under such strange and particular circumstances, has brought a flood of things they need to talk about to the forefront of Obi-Wan’s mind.

            There is so much that needs to be discussed, but Anakin’s likely not resilient enough to get through all of what needs to be touched on. It takes a long moment, all the way through the preflight checks, for Obi-Wan to make a decision on a semblance of a Plan.

            As they leave the comforting shadow of the Resolute behind, Obi-Wan turns the coms down to register emergency pings only, and focuses his gaze on his scanner array.

            "So, since everything is finally all out in the open, I suppose now's a good time to offer my congratulations," Obi-Wan comments, dry enough to raze a desert.

            He bears a special fondness for his former Padawan, but he is not above goading the idiotic man who is his brother in the Force. Anakin is something of a walking disaster, after all.

            Obi-Wan feels Anakin stiffen beside him, feels him pull all of his attention inwards as he wraps the Force around him like a security blanket.

            "Congratulations? For what?"

            "For your marriage, Anakin," Obi-Wan replies, voice dripping with sarcasm. He rolls his eyes even though he knows that Anakin is studiously avoiding his gaze, like the absolute nuisance to himself he always is. "And for your joyful anticipation of impending fatherhood."

            "You knew?"

            "Of course, I knew, Anakin."

            He doesn't make Anakin ask how.

            "You are many wonderful things, Anakin, but subtle is not one of them," Obi-Wan points out, adding, "And Rex is perhaps the worst liar I have ever encountered."

            Anakin winces, his flinch redoubled as it reverberates through the Force.

            (Honestly, if Anakin and Rex weren’t some of the most skilled and competent men on the battlefield that Obi-Wan has ever encountered, he’s certain they both would have died of their own imbecilic tendencies years ago.)

            ((In fact, he is actually quite worried for what might happen to them after the war, when they no longer have battalions to lead and are forced to cope in a world where the normal rules of adult life actually apply…))

            (((He may or may not have begun inquires regarding how likely it is that the Jedi and the clone legionaries may retain a sort of partnership, strictly as a peace-keeping enterprise, long into the future as a sort of Outer Rim police force… Such a thing would not be merely for the sake of Rex and Anakin, but would surely benefit many Jedi and clones currently enjoying a close partnership— and it would certainly prove beneficial to the galaxy as a whole…)))

            "I hope you know I won't reveal your secrets, Anakin," Obi-Wan mentions lightly.

            (He knows that Anakin is not sure of that, which is why he kept the secret to start with, but what he doesn’t know is why exactly Anakin is so quick to doubt him on that front.)

            ((Obi-Wan knows he may not have been the most entirely honest friend to Anakin over the years, but he’d hoped that Anakin knew his friendship itself was in earnest.))

            "But the Council... Attachment is forbidden and I've been—"

            Obi-Wan may be on the Council, but he refuses to believe that Anakin might truly believe he would ever speak against Anakin’s character as a representative there.

            "Your relationship with the Council is too polarized for proper judgement to be rendered on the matter," Obi-Wan asserts firmly, stating the position he genuinely holds.

            Anakin has many flaws. He is impetuous and stubborn in a way that makes compromise with him extremely difficult, but he has spent his whole life fighting, tooth and nail, for the chance to make his own choices. Self-determination is something he’s never felt he truly has, so when his ability to chose is threatened he responds as if his very life is on the line— and the Council is a major source of direct threat to that autonomy.

            Most of Obi-Wan’s fellow Councilors simply do not understand.

            Most of the Jedi they work to corral have spent so long grappling with the struggle to make a decision that having the authority pulled away from them is a weight off their shoulders.

            (They don’t usually mean to rile Anakin so, but the pronounced distaste some Councilors have towards Anakin’s perceived potential has lead to more animosity than not in certain cases.)

            Pulling himself out of his head, away from his own regrets, Obi-Wan focuses on Anakin.

            "And I've been in discussion with Master Jocasta Nu on the matter of texts in translation,” Obi-Wan continues, keeping his voice light and calm and uninvested. “I'll be initiating an inquiry as to how to revise the Order's guidelines on many matters as soon as the war is over, or at least calms. Once such concern is that 'attachment' may no longer be the best translation in Modern Basic for the concept of emotional over-investment that was forbidden by the old texts."

            Anakin’s Force signature is a puddle of shocked goo.

            It’s like his brain has melted right out his ears for all the control he has.

            Struggling to wrap his tongue around a semblance of words, Anakin flounders. Eventually, he finds the means to croak, “How do Yoda and Windu feel about that?"

            "They don't know yet," Obi-Wan lobs back.

            Anakin simply continues to gape.

            He is not quite able to connect the dots before him.

            (Understandable, given how many shocking revelations he’s dealt with this rotation.)

            "Yoda is an unassailably wise old Master with experience that cannot be ignored, but presumably, he also has awareness enough to know that age and inflexibility oft go hand in hand, and that a bough which refuses to bend in the wind will eventually break," Obi-Wan explains. "Windu's opinions may differ from mine, but the Council is a council for a reason."

            "Other Councilors agree with you?"

            "I've not yet seen it necessary to demand their commitment to a side, but Shaak Ti, Plo Koon, Kit Fisto... They are all certain to be sympathetic," Obi-Wan details. "Even Quinlan Vos, woe be it to me, might actually be an apt partner on this front."

            (Oh, how disappointed Obi-Wan was in the Universe to realize that little tidbit.)

            ((Serves him right, though, for how long he waited for the Force to simply fix things for him without any of his effort aiding it.))

            Beside him, Anakin’s presence relaxes slightly.

            Anakin is still unable to articulate a response, but he isn’t required to as their shuttle makes its second pass over the area around the temple where they’d found Ahsoka.

            The shuttle’s scanners are picking up absolutely nothing metal in the area.

            Obi-Wan hmms and taps hard at the side of the scanner, hoping a bit of percussive maintenance will affect its readings. (It works well enough for Anakin, rather often after all…)

            "It seems that unless Ahsoka has learned how to make a shuttle truly invisible, she does not have any means of transport, certainly not anything sufficient to bring her out this far into wild space all on her own," Obi-Wan explains.

            Anakin takes a centering breath and focuses his mind towards solving the puzzle.

            "So, either she learned to teleport, has friends with a ride she hasn't told us about, or... or something in the temple where we found her really did allow her to travel back in time— while her shuttle stayed in the year she came from," Anakin lays out.

            With an approving nod, Obi-Win confirms, "Precisely. And as teleportation is beyond even Master Yoda's capabilities..."

            "Ahsoka has always made friends easy, and she'd never betray their trust if she felt— for some reason— that telling us about their existence would endanger them," Anakin mentions, clearly clinging to the hope that this story might make sense soon.

            (Obi-Wan gave up on hoping for things to make sense long ago—when he’d first accepted Anakin as his Padawan. Nothing around him ever seems to go as one might think it should…)

            "Unfortunately, I believe her current means of protecting her friends is cutting herself almost entirely off from them," Obi-Wan leverages gently. "She's so lonely, Anakin. You must be able to feel it through your training bond."

            "She shields too well against me," Anakin admits. "All I feel from her is hate and fear and grief... I can hardly fathom it, and what I feel is only the bits that are extreme enough to leak  through her guards."

            Obi-Wan can feel Anakin’s presence ripple as it reaches out towards his Padawan, checking to ensure that her current status is a genuinely restful sleep.

            She’s likely still quite anxious and unsettled, but all Obi-Wan can sense from this distance is the certain calm of slumber— and most of that awareness is second-hand through Anakin’s connection to her.

            (And Obi-Wan’s sense of her is largely overshadowed by the angst he feels from Anakin.)

            "It's not you she hates, you know, not really— not if my theory is correct," Obi-Wan says, poking cautiously at their bond to test Anakin's volatility on the subject.

            Bitterly, Anakin huffs, "Yeah, it's just whatever I apparently become."

            Obi-Wan is prevented from responding directly by the tasks of landing preparation.

            They haven’t really openly discussed that part yet, the idea of what must happen to Anakin in Ahsoka’s future… They probably need to, with how inevitable the conclusion has become in the hours since Ahsoka’s first return to consciousness.

            But perhaps they can wait a short moment more…

            They settle down in a small— well, it's not exactly a clearing, but there's a break in the tree-cover big enough to squeeze the shuttle through.

            Their 'landing pad' isn't level, but the ship shouldn't be at too high a risk for rolling away while they're gone. Obi-Wan makes a flippant comment about it at least being a gentle touchdown, if not still on par in other ways with Anakin's usual 'unconventional' landing style.

            (Anakin is barely listening. He’s still too caught up in wondering what he could have possibly done so wrong that Ahsoka turned against him.)

            ((Honestly, Obi-Wan is quite concerned about that, as well. Ahsoka has such a kind and forgiving nature, at heart. It’s buried underneath her snark and fire, but it is her truest self…))

            As they begin to hike out towards the temple where they found Ahsoka, Obi-Wan hesitates again in starting the part of this conversation they both know needs to happen, but eventually he says quietly, "We don't know what happened, Anakin."

            "We know she hates me."

            "And she thinks I'm dead," Obi-Wan returns.

            Anakin’s Force signature snaps close and tight around him, like he’s bit his tongue against a retort he knows would do nothing but inflame the situation.

            (Even with Anakin’s continuing lack of restraint, he has grown tremendously in regards to his understanding of tact and common decency.)

            "We should discuss what we do know of what she's let slip," Obi-Wan prompts.

            With a heavy sigh as he pushes a thick vine out of his way, Anakin huffs, “I, apparently, have gone Darkside.”

            The upwelling of despair Anakin feels at that is truly heartbreaking.

            "Under the guidance of a Master who is not me," Obi-Wan points out.

            "She mentioned looking for him, and from how she felt when she asked where he was, he's someone she hates more than me," Anakin says, tone light as he realizes the truth of it.

            Obi-Wan nods. "Perhaps this new Master killed me, acquired your allegiance by force or misdirection," he suggests.

            It isn’t much of a comfort, not really, but it still serves to soothe a few frazzled nerves.

            " 'Darth Sidious', she said," Anakin names him.

            "Yes, and this Sidious seems to be to blame for quite a lot of trouble," Obi-Wan agrees, musing, "He must have something to do with what seems to have turned Ahsoka against the clones, as well. Her reaction to them is less... forceful than her reaction to you, but it is still quite troubling. She was ready to kill Jesse, I could feel it as far away as the bridge."

            (It was such an unbelievable, alarming thing to feel from her… That she might want to kill anyone is a disconcerting thought, but that she’d be willing to harm a Clone? Unthinkable.)

            ((Even if she couldn’t bring herself to do it in the end… That she considered it at all…)

            "But she adores the men, and they adore her," Anakin insists, as certain as Obi-Wan.

            With a placating hand on Anakin's shoulder and a firm nod to show he agrees whole-heartedly with Anakin's assessment, Obi-Wan muses, "Perhaps Sidious changed them... And perhaps in saving her, you killed them... I could see that causing a great rift between you, at least the start of one... One that could likely be effectively exploited by a powerful Sith Lord."

            "Maybe..."

            Anakin obviously doubts it.

            Obi-Wan knows that the Clones were engineered to be resistant to the influence of the Force; they are not, however, immune to it.

            (A truly powerful Sith Lord could likely do a number on them…)

            ((And, as much as it pains Obi-Wan to accept that Anakin would easily kill any living being, especially his own men… He is not so blind as to imagine that Anakin would hesitate to kill any number of them, if they meant harm to Ahsoka.))

            (((It’s something she would never forgive him for, something that might make uncomfortably simple sense out of Ahsoka’s current sentiments.)))

            "But what could a Sith do to make the clones turn against Ahsoka? I'm of half a mind to say they would mutiny tomorrow if she asked it of them," Obi-Wan comments, prying Anakin's attention out of his own head, and leading him towards the next important point in this.

            A lightness bubbles up in Anakin’s signature at the thought of what lengths the men would go to for someone who has so genuinely earned their loyalty as Ahsoka clearly has.

            "Rex," Anakin suddenly realizes. "She fought Jesse because she thought they were going to hurt Rex. Whatever she thinks turned them against her, also turned them against Rex."

            Obi-Wan chuckles freely at that. "Of course, Anakin. I mean, I presume you've met your Captain, haven't you? I daresay there's not a power in all the Universe that could turn Rex and Ahsoka against each other. And as prone to self-sacrificing as the pair of them are, I should think any attempt to sway them to harm each other would simply backfire spectacularly."

            Turning to eye his former student as Anakin’s Force signature bobbles, Obi-Wan is unabashedly amused to find that Anakin is as gape-mouthed— boneless and wriggly as a Sarlacc in seawater… It’s frankly absurd.

            (Yet, it’s also just so like him.)

            ((Obi-Wan probably owes a dozen people a good number of credits at this point, Cody chief among them, but he’s far too amused to care just yet.))

            "You think they are... attached?"

            "In a manner of speaking," Obi-Wan replies noncommittally, still deeply amused.

            Exasperated, Anakin rolls his eyes and asks, "In what manner of speaking?"

            "Platonic love is still love, after all," Obi-Wan answers, taking pity on his poor, unfortunate, (ridiculously unobservant), former-Padawan. "As duty bound as they both are, with their hearts tied to higher causes, they may not have yet even considered how their relationship might shift should they chose to explore the option, but the potential is certainly there."

            (Anakin looks so much like a slapped Porg that Obi-Wan laments the lack of soldiers in their expedition company. The auto-record on Trooper helmets would be lovely to have along right now…)

            "While the clones are considerably more skilled at subtlety than you are, surely you cannot have missed the fact that a good number of the men have begun a betting pool on when the Captain will actually admit to his affections," Obi-Wan teases, unable to resist.

            (As a superior officer and a Jedi, Obi-Wan has absolutely not placed any bets himself.)

            ((Obviously, that’s what trusted Clone Commanders are for…))

            With a light tone of affront affected in his voice, Obi-Wan continues, "Honestly, Anakin. Your lack of observation skills in regards to something right in front of you reflects poorly on me as a Master. Surely, I taught you better than this?"

            "I haven't felt anything change in how they feel, not from either of them," Anakin protests weakly. "Ahsoka had that short-lived crush on the Bonterri kid and I could sense it, but I've felt nothing like that from either her or Rex."

            "Affection like theirs doesn't have to change, Anakin, it simply has to grow," Obi-Wan asserts sagely— tone tinged with the ache of sadness as they edge closer to what this conversation was more supposed to be about.

            Anakin’s Force presence flares with guilty alarm as the proper realization strikes him.

            "Satine and I were dear friends for many years before I recognized it may be more," Obi-Wan admits, tone as light as he can keep it. "We were both duty-bound to ignore it, but I am a romantic at heart and once I recognized what I felt, it became quite difficult to maintain a friendship without yearning for more."

            Anakin is even more a soul-deep believe in grand gestures than Obi-Wan is, and while he could never be called an elegant romantic, the sort of yearning he feels to be near the one he loves is a pain that resonates between them.

            (It is one of the few things that Obi-Wan and Anakin have so close in common.)

            ((It’s important to Obi-Wan that Anakin knows how he truly understands…))

            "Ahsoka and Rex are... pragmatic, far more so than you or I, and they have far less experience in life," Obi-Wan points out.

            "You really don't think they know?"

            With another warm chuckle, Obi-Wan contends, "Well, it would make an almost viable excuse out of why you, my dear Padawan, have failed to notice something so clear to others."

            Anakin simply sighs.

            (He’s getting much better at recognizing when Obi-Wan has him cornered in a debate.)

            Before the atmosphere becomes awkward, Anakin stumbles over a root— a twist of vegetation that proves to be strung across the bleak gap of an artificial hole in the ground.

            It's the opening of a staircase, a door into the temple where they found Ahsoka.

            "I think this is the place," Anakin states, helping them both refocus on the present.

            Uncovering what exactly happened here may be the key to helping Ahsoka recover from it— and may prove to be enough of a strange-happening in the Force to aid them all in putting a final end to this horrid war.

            (Hopefully, while averting the crisis points that led to the bleak circumstances of Ahsoka’s current vision of the future.)

            They don’t draw their lightsabers, but the itch of latent power in the temple’s thick stone walls makes Anakin’s hand wrap around his saber’s hilt.

            (Obi-Wan doesn’t follow suit only because he knows Anakin is quick enough on the draw to make up for it if they need their sabers, and it’s always a good plan to be able to start investigations off with at least pretense of neutrality.)

            ((That, and having his hands free means that Obi-Wan is able to poke cautiously at the inscriptions and petrographs they find as they journey deeper into the temple structure.))

            Obi-Wan’s prodding turns out to be useful as he manages to find the proper hidden panel to press in unlocking the route to the core sanctuary, the room with the sky light and the altar where they found Ahsoka.

            It’s a beautiful sanctuary, far older than anything else Obi-Wan has ever personally encountered. This place is at least contemporary with the founding of the Zeffo culture, if not definitively old enough to pre-date them.

            The petrographs carved and painted along the walls tell a story of some epoch that Obi-Wan is not familiar with, a history too long forgotten to make sense of.

            Certain details stick out as vaguely familiar.

            The Martyr depicted on the altar.

            The twin suns of a legend from the first rising of the Light and the Dark.

            The pulsing beams of radio-static and gamma rays paired with the unyielding weight of a dying star in the midst of consuming its planetary system.

            They are bits and pieces from some of the oldest Jedi legends.

            (None of which mention time travel, Obi-Wan recalls wryly…)

            ((But some of which do mention a world between worlds where Time, perhaps, is not a relevant dimension by which to measure presence or position.))

            And then he stumbles upon one he is both unfamiliar with and instantly recognizes.

            “Anakin, take a look,” Obi-Wan whispers— voice still echoing dramatically in the emptiness of the grand space. “Anakin.”

            It takes another repetition of his name for Anakin to pull himself out of his head as he stares at the altar where they found the limp figure of their dear Ahsoka. His fingers are hesitant to touch what looks from here to possibly be blood.

            (Not Ahsoka’s, surely. She was uninjured according to Kix, and the medic of the 501^st is not one to skimp on his examinations— certainly not when Ahsoka’s health is at stake.)

            “Anakin, look,” Obi-Wan says again, no longer able to keep his exasperation limited to whispers— no matter how sacred a space this may be, Obi-Wan is two inches away from smacking his dear former-Padawan several times upside the head…

            (If any Force gods or whatnot want to damn him for it, then They ought to have selected a less aggravating Chosen One to do Their work.)

            It takes Anakin a moment to pinpoint what Obi-Wan wants him to look at.

            When he does see it, his presence in the Force sings.

            There’s a bright pride and overflowing joy and a deeply vindicated satisfaction, flaring up at first. Because Ahsoka is the star of this panel, there’s no mistaking it. The markings on her face, the stripes on her montrals and lekku, and simply the way she holds herself with the bearing of a war hero— not just the stance of a soldier, but of a savior…

            But then there’s a fear that floods in, and a rage as he notices her wounds, and then a deep sorrow as he recognizes that her victory in this image is dying for a higher cause.

            There’s an epitaph below the petrograph.

            As far as Obi-Wan can read it, the message is an ode to the power of a focal point— to the manner in which a single lever with the right fulcrum can shift the entire fate of the Universe.

            The choices of one affect the futures of all, as the Jedi say.

            In the background are legions of soldiers— not quite distinct enough to tell if they’re clones or some rendering of other armies— depicted through a contrast of colors as clearly being from opposing sides of some great war.

            Or… formerly opposing sides, as it were… if the bowed heads and handshakes mean what they appear to and the conflict has reached it’s end.

            ((Could it be a sort of civil war, perhaps? Or is it merely a comment on all war as being fought by people who believe in what they’re fighting for…?))

            It appears that all their weapons have been raised above their heads— whether in celebration or protest is unclear.

            “Whatever war this is… Ahsoka’s actions seem to be what put a final end to it, her deeds appear to have been the crux of what won the day for the Light,” Obi-Wan says quietly, directing Anakin’s attention to the border of the petrograph.

            Ribbons of gold and blue and green decorate the edges, scattered through with words of relief and joy (mingled with grief, but in deaths being duly honored).

            Obi-Wan isn’t quite sure what all languages are being represented, but enough of the words are familiar to him that he can confidently tell Anakin, “She doesn’t make it all the way to the final battle before the war is won and true Peace can settle. It seems she fell some years before the end, but what she built— perhaps the spy network, she mentioned— that seems to have been the crux of what allowed some great evil to be vanquished.”

            “She’s smiling,” Anakin says somberly.

            “She is, indeed,” Obi-Wan agrees, looking across the hall to search for what the image of her might be looking at. There isn’t necessarily a comment in what the stone of her carved eyes is pointed towards, but Obi-Wan would be remiss not to consider the possibility.

            These petrographs were carved by people with tremendous forethought and a deep connection to the Force, after all.

            What he finds her looking at is a shadow.

            Little more than a black-caped figure is visible, twin spheres above his head— suns or moons, it can’t be told. The stark line of a lightsaber seems to be held in the figure’s hand, but it’s rendered in white to contrast the black of the cape rather than to show a particular alignment to either the Light or the Dark. There’s no color in the panel at all.

            There’s something very familiar about the way the saber is being held, more than just the passing recognition of a standard Jedi form.

            Obi-Wan is moving towards the panel he’d spotted, reaching out to see if a tactile investigation might prove more fruitful, when Anakin’s voice pipes up with worry:

            “Uh, Master?”

            “Yes, Anakin?”

            “Should these geometric line-things be… uh, glowing?”

            Pausing to look over at his former apprentice, Obi-Wan recalls, “They weren’t when we entered, so I would presume not.”

            Looking down, as Anakin is, Obi-Wan sees that the tiles around Anakin’s feet are lit up with a subtle white glow. Looking further down closer to home, Obi-Wan sees that the tiles around his feet are lit up as well.

            He takes a few quick steps out of the glowing spot.

            The shift seems to crack the tiles along their grouting and an eerily bright-green liquid bubbles up through the glowing gaps in the intricate geometric patterns.

            A moment later the light under the tiles moves to follow Obi-Wan’s path.

            The bubbling liquid hisses ominously and the acrid smell of it assaults Obi-Wan’s senses.

            “Oh, dear,” he muses. “I cannot think this bodes very well for us. Perhaps we ought to take a page out of Ahsoka’s book and get onto the altar before this room is flooded?”

            “Great plan, Master,” Anakin snarks, already halfway on the table. “What happens if the acid doesn’t recede?”

            “We call the shuttle to hover over the skylight and escape that way,” Obi-Wan states.

            “We can’t just leave! We need to find out what happened to Ahsoka!”

            Silencing Anakin’s protests, Obi-Wan coughs and surmises, “Perhaps the fumes made her pass out. Perhaps it isn’t time travel, but a very peculiar acid-induced Force-vision.”

            “But why is Ahsoka on that panel?” Anakin asks, even as he relents to pressing the beacon on his com command to call the shuttle to them as he too begins to choke on the thickening smog. “What the hell is this place?”

            “I don’t know, Anakin, but it will be much easier to investigate those questions if we do not suffocate here first,” Obi-Wan sasses.

            Unfortunately, the world begins to fade to black before he so much as draws another breath. They wouldn’t be able to escape through the skylight now even if their shuttle arrived this very second. It’s all they can do to remain half-standing.

            Obi-Wan retains just enough clarity to keep Anakin on the table as he collapses and then to fold himself up as well so they both remain aloft as consciousness fully fails him.

            He thinks they’ve activated their distress signal along with calling the shuttle, but a second more and he’s too far beyond the waking world to care.

Chapter Text

::  Episode III,  Chapter III  |  AHSOKA  ::

||  1013 Anno Republicae  :  19 BBY  ||

            Ahsoka wakes up less violently than she has in… well, almost a decade.

            The first niggle of her returning consciousness registers, she doesn’t fully awaken. She is warm and surrounded by the soft noise of a close-knit community. There’s anxiety in the flow of the Force around her, but not despair and there’s no soul-crushing fear, either.

            Ahsoka doesn’t quite realize that despair and fear and loss are sensations that she should be feeling in the Force, she’s not awake enough to remember.

            All she feels is warmth and love.

            And a touch of deeply rooted worry.

            It’s the worry that pulls her a bit closer to the surface of consciousness.

            She doesn’t like it when these people worry.

            Ahsoka knows these Force signatures, nearly as well as she knows her own limbs.

            When she was a Jedi, she called them her comrades. Perhaps even her friends.

            But she hasn’t been a Jedi in… in so long…

            Now, she would call them her Family.

            Or… would that be frowned upon as a step too far? Create a sense of split loyalties?

            No. They are her Family, as much as anyone ever could be. Even though they're mostly gone now... They ARE her Family.

            No matter who might disapprove of her conviction on that front, she will proudly bear the weight of scorn for them. Her brothers deserve that much from her, at the very least.

            And Ahsoka does not like to feel them be worried or sad. There is rarely anything in her power that can genuinely fix the root of their concerns, but she always has support to offer.

            She strains to be closer to them, wriggles in her… bed?

            It doesn’t quite bring her back to the surface of consciousness, but it connects her better to her senses— lets her brain process the data its receiving.

            There’s the sharp smell of antiseptic.

            The rough feel of synthetic cotton on her shoulders and lekku, and the softer feel of worked leather against the majority of her skin.

            The weight and hard edges of her armor feel absent, but the thought of it is only passing.

            Her main focus is on the low tones of hushed voices she hears.

            Their words are just barely intelligible through the reverberations in her montrals.

            “As I’ve said to everyone else who’s tried to check up on her, Ahsoka isn’t taking visitors right now. She has suffered a trauma and requires rest.”

            There’s a deep grumble of wordless malcontent.

            “She needs to know she’s not alone,” a voice protests quietly a moment later, tone heavy with the aching weight of a long-resisted but inevitable defeat.

            (That voice isn’t supposed to sound like that, not ever, Ahsoka thinks…)

            ((That voice is supposed to be all pranks and giddiness and fun… Even after— after the Citadel at Lola Sayu, when the lost so many lives… when they lost Ech—))

            There’s a sigh beyond the door.

            “I know it’s not easy to accept it, but we’re not really in a position to convince her of that right now,” the first voice, says— their old medic, Coric.

            (Coric came with them, with Tano Company, when she and Commander Rex shipped out to Mandalore, while Kix stayed behind… he’d probably been with Obi-Wan and Ana—)

            ((How could he? How could her Master do it, any of it? He was the one who fought so hard to convince Obi-Wan to let Ahsoka have a command again, to arrange it so Rex and Tano Company could aid Mandalore…))

            (((Had it been a trick all along? A way to let the clones get to her, so she’d get caught up in the Order that changed everything instead of escaping the chaos entirely while isolated with the Nite Owls on Mandalore?)))

            ((((Should she have joined Maul? Would it have been too late to change anything?))))

            “I know she’s… Scared of us, I guess,” says Fives— (it’s Fives! He’s alive! That has to mean there’s still time)— “But she has to know on some level that we’d never hurt her! Not us.”

            “I think she does,” Coric explains. “I think that’s why it hurt her so much… I think it’s why she wouldn’t hurt us despite being convinced we would hurt her or Rex.”

            The silence on the other side of the door is deafening.

            “I think she knows we’d never hurt her willingly, I think that’s why she told Jesse to say that she forgives us— all of us,” Coric continues.

            “You don’t think it’s something specific to Jesse?”

            “That’s why you have him sequestered in Crew Medical with the nat-borns, isn't it?” Then Coric admits softly. “I don’t think he did anything wrong, I think he was just the unlucky vod she ran into first… and I think it was made worse because he was with Rex when she found him.”

            “The others are a bit… bothered by her reaction to Jesse; they respect him enough to keep them from outright attacking him as dar’tome vod, but they are anxious enough to make it unpleasant for him in the barracks,” a new voice lays out— Echo, Ahsoka realizes…

            ( Echo is still alive! Echo is HERE, with the 501st; her brother is home...)

            A snicker under struggle to be restrained breaks the new tension in the atmosphere.

            “Well, maybe now we’ll finally be able to get the Captain and Commander to really admit to having a ‘special connection’,” Fives huffs— finally sounding a bit more like himself.

            “If you wanna bring that up with the Captain,” Coric sighs with a pained sort of overtaxed exasperation, “I will not be the one who patches you up afterwards.”

            “C’mon, how bad could it be? There’s obviously a lot of trust there, right? Way more trust than she’s got for just any old vod,” Fives presses. “The Captain might be a stick in the mud about a lot, but even he can’t fail to appreciate how unique a prize her trust is? Right?”

            “I will remember you fondly at your funeral, Fives,” Echo asserts.

            “And then never mention you again, thereafter,” Coric mutters under his breath.

            It almost makes Ahsoka laugh— does enough to jolt her closer to full wakefulness.

            (A stirring beside her, far closer to her than the conversation beyond the door, draws her attention— pulls her fully into regaining a focused consciousness)

            She struggles to stretch out sore muscles, still so tight from bearing so much strife and constant anxious tension. Her wriggling draws her attention back to her wrists— cuffed as they are to the rails of her current bed.

            “Ahsoka,” whispers the gentle voice beside her.

            Scrunching up her nose and blinking against the glare of lights— even though the room is clearly still in a night-cycle— Ahsoka pries her way into the waking world.

            “Heya, Rexster,” she coos, cracking a smile as she manages to make her eyes focus.

            “How’re you feeling, Commander?”

            “Tired, achy, like I’ve been stuck in bacta for a week,” Ahsoka says with a shrug. “You know, just the same old, same old.”

            Rex looks so conflicted at that, Ahsoka almost regrets her flippancy.

            Then he says, “How’s your stomach feeling? Think you might be able to keep something down? The boys dropped off a few snacks if you’re hungry.”

            Ashoka’s stomach takes the cue to growl like a 10 ton akul.

            She smiles, long since grown too practical to find the awkward gurgling embarrassing.

            “Yeah, Rex, I’m starving,” she chuckles. “What goodies have you got for me?”

            Rex chuckles too, never having been one to shame others for their bodily functions or to let awkwardness impede an operation. “We’ve got your favorites: uj cake and teriyaki nerf bites.”

            He presents the spread of contraband in its neat and colorful packaging like prize gemstones on a hawker’s table in Coruscant’s loftiest market stalls.

            Ahsoka points to a bright pink cube of sweet-berry uj cake, careful not to rattle her cuffs.

            Astute as he always is, even with her attempting not to draw attention to the problem, Rex notices her predicament immediately.

            His hand hovers helplessly over her restraints, mind frantically trying to negotiate a compromise that will keep Ahsoka contained while still giving her the freedom to eat.

            Before he can comes to the decision that he could maybe let one of Ahsoka’s hands go (a terrible plan, really; Ahsoka could wipe the floor with everyone here while still strapped down— and even when secured far more aggressively at that), she mentions, “I’ve gotten a lot better at controlling the Force, Rexster, just open it up for me.”

            Cautiously, he does so, and he warily watches as Ahsoka Force-lifts it to her mouth and takes a satisfying chomp out of the cake, with her sharp predator’s teeth allowing for a clean slice. Rex’s Force signature hums with a renewed wariness as his tactical skills reevaluate the landscape of the enclosed medical suite.

            He knows almost as well as Ahsoka does that the restraints holding her to the bed are more perfunctory than anything.

            And her acceptance of them is more a courtesy than not.

            It makes Rex unfathomably sad to realize, and Ahsoka hates feeling it from him.

            Finishing off her first uj cake in another over-sized bite, she says, “It’s okay, Rex. Really. I’m not going to hurt anyone, not if I don’t absolutely have to.”

            “What would make you ‘have to’, Commander?”

            “I dunno, Rex. I’m just as lost as you guys probably are,” she admits.

            Rex gives a slow nod, still mournful but calmer now about it— and hopeful.

            Testing the truce, Ahsoka points to a yellow-wrapped cube of uj cake.

            Rex unwraps it and lets Ahsoka float it up to within her chomping-range without any new waves of worry spilling out from him.

            The atmosphere isn’t quite easy, but it’s relaxed enough for Ahsoka to nudge Rex into eating with her. He protests, of course, but she knows he hasn’t eaten in nearly as long as she’s gone hungry and she makes him relent to nibbling himself by whining about the awkwardness  and guilt of eating all alone.

            Together, they make their way through enough contraband snacks to keep a whole battalion happy for a month.

            Ahsoka’s just swallowed her last bite of teriyaki nerf jerky when the door to the suite opens and admits Coric.

            (Ahsoka tries not to mentally grumble about being watched on the suite’s security feed—which she knows he did intentionally, because Coric’s timing is far too convenient for him to have been just happenstantially along, and if he’d walked in earlier, they all know she’d have felt too wary to bear eating.)

            “Good morning, Commander,” Coric says, only slightly stiff in his play-acting that everything is totally normal. “How are you feeling?”

            “I’ll be fine, Coric,” she assures as he checks over her vitals.

            “We know you will, Commander, we just want to make absolutely certain of it.”

            There’s a pause as Coric glances at Rex like he has an update to give and then glances at Ahsoka like it’s an update she shouldn’t hear in her excessively delicate state of patient-hood.

            “Go ahead, Coric. Whatever bad news you have can’t possibly be half as bad as hearing that an entire planet full of people I once knew got blown to dust by a new Imperial super-weapon,” Ahsoka points out.

            Alderaan had been a new low, a catastrophically enhanced scale of magnitude by which to measure grief and desperation. No loss could ever again come close to matching it.

            (Even the Order hadn’t made the Force weep with such senseless evil.)

            ((Eliminating the Jedi at least served a direct purpose in war… Destroying Alderaan was a stunt to prove it could be done, a tactic of Terror perpetrated against innocents…)

            Coric and Rex both frown, sympathy and deep sorrow mingling with worried confusion at her declaration. But then Coric concludes that news of Alderaan’s fate is indeed far worse than what he has to say and sighs, “the Generals haven’t reported in yet. They were supposed to resurface and at least ping the shuttle over an hour ago. There was an aborted signal from them that might’ve been a distress signal, but their emergency beacon didn’t go off. With Commander Cody in change of all us left up here, it means you should theoretically go check it out.”

            Rex only shows the gravity of his concern in the sudden tightness of his jaw.

            He easily dismisses Coric, though, asserting that he’ll deal with it shortly.

            From the anxiety in his Force signature, he has no legitimate intentions of leaving Ahsoka’s bedside— even as his worries triple over the unknown fate of the Jedi.

            “Domino Squad’s outside, Rex,” Ahsoka mentions quietly, jarring him out of his worried spiral of thoughts. “I feel them. They can keep me company while you go check out what’s up.”

            “Are you sure, Commander?”

            “Yeah. I promise, Rex. I won’t hurt them, I’ll stay right here,” Ahsoka promises.

            Rex still wavers. “But, sir… They won’t be too distressing for you to handle a meeting?”

            When Ahsoka nods, she tries to send him a sense of reassurance through the Force. She can play this cool and just roll with whatever nonsense is thrown her way. She can.

            Construct or not, seeing Fives again… Seeing Echo…

            That would be a gift beyond anything Ahsoka could’ve imagined asking for.

            (Perhaps it’s not an interrogation construct. Perhaps she’s simply dead. Perhaps this is the Force’s way of easing her into that fact…)

            ((Honestly, if this is being dead, she’s pretty certain she’s okay with it.))

            Rex seems hesitant, but the reassurance she nudged towards him has done its job well enough to let him assess the situation clearly. If he is needed elsewhere, he is needed.

            Ahsoka can stew here on her own for a while, just fine.

            She’d spent long hours in recovery all alone often enough before, after all.

            And she won’t even be alone, this time, she’ll be with more of her boys…

            “Fives, I know you’re listening,” Rex barks as he stands up and gives a stretch. He hasn’t even rolled his shoulders back into place before the errant ARC appears.

            “Yes, Captain,” he barks out of habit worn into him by rote, jerking his limbs in a precise salute. Then he pulls off his bucket and flashes a bright smile at Ahsoka.

            “G’morning, Commander,” he tells her solemnly.

            “It’s good to see you again, Fives,” she replies— too gravely to be casual, but honestly with a lighter heart than she’d ever thought she’d manage.

            “There’s uh, there’s someone else who wants to see you here, Commander,” Fives leads, his characteristic fortitude flagging with uncertainty. “It’s just… you weren’t here when we found him… So, I’m hoping he’ll be a bit of good news, ya know?”

            “You found Echo, with the Tecno Union,” Ahsoka states, throat tight.

            “You got that report?”

            She didn’t. Rex had told her. In the Future. After he'd met up with him and the Bad Batch on Bracca. And then she’d met the man himself again years later, still with Clone Force 99 while she was deeper into the early stages of building up her network as Fulcrum... But Ahsoka’s throat is too tight to explain any of that with reasonable clarity.

            Instead she nods.

            She knows the details of the report well enough, after all.

            No reason to make things harder on these boys than they already are.

            Fives turns cautiously to Rex, understanding the gravity of the situation enough that he’s actually asking permission, and he heaves a sigh when Rex nods.

            “Echo? C’mon in,” Fives calls. “The Commander wants to see you.”

            Ahsoka can’t stop her eyes from filling up with tears when she sees him.

            It had been a shock to find him with the Bad Batch at all, and he’d had a few years to come to terms himself with his new existence.

            The wounds are all a lot fresher here, some of his too-pale skin still raw and patchy red around the tragedy of his new hard-wiring. But he meets Ahsoka’s gaze head on and smiles and it’s still so much the same old Echo— the Echo who was beaten down but never broken (not ever really broken, not until long after the Order came out that shattered everything)— that Ahsoka sniffs and hiccups and finally starts to cry.

            Happy tears she tells them, lying through her sharp Togruti teeth, as they shuffle quickly to her bedside and pull her into a complicated hug.

            Eventually, Rex shuffles to the door.

            He hesitates at the threshold. “You’ll be alright for an hour?”

            “We’ll be just fine, Rex,” Ahsoka promises.

            He nods, trusting her judgement as entirely as he ever has, and lets the door whoosh shut behind him as he leaves to wrangle yet another new crisis of the indomitable 501^st.

            Ahsoka watches him leave with the same pang of anxiety she always feels when they separate for what might at any moment become the last time they see each other, but she buries her sorrow deep within her and focuses on enjoying whatever sorcery has let her reunite with Fives and Echo— for however long she can remain with them.

            “You’ll be alright here, Commander,” Fives promises.

            “I know, boys. You guys always manage to take great care of me,” she tells them with as much earnest warmth as she can muster.

            Fives and Echo settle in at her bedside and Ahsoka simply basks in the wonder of feeling their presence beside her— not as One with the Force, but physically beside her, a hand of theirs clasped tightly within each of hers.

            In some ways, it’s a hard moment to bear.

            But in other ways it’s good.

            And Ahsoka’s learned how to count her blessings and ensure that the looming bad she has to deal with never manages to drown out the true joy of experiencing something good.

Chapter Text

::  Episode III,  Chapter IV  |  FIVES  ::

||  1013 Anno Republicae  :  19 BBY  ||

            Fives, while generally the first to place a reckless bet, had long ago learned never to place a bet against himself. And as he had a sneaking suspicion that if he so much as thought the words ‘I told you so' he would be murdered on the spot by either his General or his Captain before he so much as drew breath to speak it (and which ever one of them didn't actively do the murdering part would surely be right there and ready to help the other cover it all up and shove his body out the nearest airlock).

            And yet, it's unbearably difficult to hold his tongue as their situation deteriorates…

            Because Fives knew that letting the Commander wander off all on her own into the depths of the Corrie Undercity was a Bad Idea^tm truly worthy of paying for the trademark.

            With how much trouble she could get into, even with the General at her side and with the whole of the 501^st watching her back, there was exactly zero chance that she could keep her nose clean without them all tagging along to help.

            Now, that's not to say the Commander can't take care of herself, it’s just that she so frequently puts herself at the very bottom of the priority list in favor of trying to take care of everyone else in the galaxy that she could hardly be expected to ever choose to avoid trouble.

            So, it's really no surprise to Fives that in the year that they spend fretting over their Commander without any concrete info on her doings or whereabouts, she's managed to get herself into some heavy kind of trouble. He advocated to make use of their connections to the Corrie Guard to check up on her, but both the General and the Captain were so adamantly against it that he couldn’t even ask Fox for a few private updates without getting an earful and being stuck on kitchen sanitation duty for a week.

            (Even with that looming threat, he’d tried to call in favors every two months or so…)

            ((But even the Guard lost track of Ahsoka when she wanted to vanish, even casually.))

            Without the 501^st checking up on her, of course the Commander got into trouble.

            And with a year of potential getting-into-trouble time occurring with free-rein at her disposal, of course she got into big trouble.

            Fives is not at all surprised that she’s found herself in a tight spot. He's not at all surprised that the first time they hear from her it's in the form of a distress signal. He's not even surprised that the distress signal they receive is both unconventional and overtly dire.

            When Commander Ahsoka Tano puts her mind to something, you can definitely bet that she won't be doing any part of it by halves.

            It's still pretty impressive that her long-awaited distress signal brings General Skywalker to his knees, and even more impressive that it apparently reverberates through the Force hard enough to make other Jedi feel it. (Fives totally owes her a belberry fizzypop for those epic dramatics; she'd definitely kicked the Jedi into a higher gear than he's ever managed, after all.)

            Still, Fives only rants to Echo about his tragedy of un-say-able ‘I told you so’s and only because he knows his batchmate will never rat him out to their superiors. Fives is being extremely polite and considerate in doing so as they rush through travel prep and then languish through 2 days of hyperspace travel, even though he knows he'll never be appreciated for it.

            When they finally get to the Bashtu system and when their Commander Collection Team heads out to start their search (a team composed only of General Skywalker, General Kenobi, Captain Rex, and Commander Cody), Fives’s patience is nearing its absolute limit.

            Fives knew it was a bad idea to just let the Commander go off on her own. He knew it was a bad idea not to check up on her. And he knew it was all going to come back to bite them in the shebs when things spiraled out of control.

            His Captain is a wreck. While technically still participating in all his Captain-ly duties, he’s clearly hanging on by a fraying thread and his semi-catatonic staring-at-walls thing is starting to spook the shinies.

            His General is even worse. Skywalker’s barely able to use actual words to respond to General Kenobi’s most banal inquiries. If the pair of them weren’t sequestered on the bridge or in Nav Control, even some of the not-so-shinies would be starting to freak out about the fact that their leadership tier seems to have spent a few months too long in their growth tanks…

            It’s been almost entirely up to Fives, Echo, and a couple of Lieutenants to keep the 501^st in line while their chain of command is floundering.

            Fortunately, finding Commander Tano only takes a few hours once they manage to reach the Bashtu System, and most of that is wrapped up in the shuttle trip between the Resolute and the surface of the moon known as Tura.

            The Commander is certainly a sight for sore eyes, even unconscious as she is when Skywalker returns cradling her limp form to his chest.

            She gets ferried into the med bay Fives that had badgered Kix into getting set up for her without so much as an announcement to the Admiral that the shuttle had returned. (Fives directs Vaughn to ping him with the formal alert.)

            Kix had wanted to join the Commander Collection Team, but having a freaked out medic rushing into a situation as potentially fraught as whatever could make Commander Tano call out an absolute-emergency distress signal couldn’t have ended well for any of them. It was Fives’s executive decision to keep their medic on-board the Resolute to get a full scale medical work-up prepped rather than sending him down to do a field check. When the team gets back, it’s also Fives’s decision to assert that privacy outweighs comfort for the Commander’s return, as she’d never liked admitting any sort of perceived ‘weakness’ in front of the men.

            Kix doesn’t kick Skywalker out of the med bay while he checks the Commander over because the General hasn’t slept in at least a week (and for the last year he’s only been sleeping sporadically and fitfully at best).

            Everyone else is kept away, though— even General Kenobi.

            Fives doesn’t even try to get into the bay in person.

            He simply uses his ARC Trooper credentials to access the private suite’s security feed on his data pad. He also pulls up the Commander’s medical chart so that he can get live-updates as Kix adds notes to the report from his new in-depth examination.

            Fives leaves Echo in charge of corralling the men while he checks in on their leaders (though he does privately ComChat his batch mate with relevant updates).

            Their beloved Commander appears to be mostly unharmed.

            She’s gained a touch weight since they last saw her, but not nearly enough in comparison to how much height she’s gained. Kix reckons she’s about 10~15 pounds underweight, a state exacerbated by the fact that her BMI is apparently dramatically skewed… She was always a bundle of lean muscle, but it seems that she’s now more muscle than literally anything else.

            (Togruti females, particularly of the Tribe Kagete variety, are generally supposed to have a much higher percentage of adipose tissue than humans, with even highly athletic warriors having at least 30% of their mass being composed of it. And yet their Commander is currently riding at about 19% fatty tissue— almost all of it packed into her montrals and lekku, with barely enough there to keep her from aural-imbalance hallucinations and hardly enough left over for the rest of her body to even remain nominally functional. Natural temperature regulation is the least of her concerns as a Jedi, but she still shouldn’t have to rely on her Force powers to keep herself from shivering in the chill of space-travel.)

            ((As a Togruta, she ought to have some of the most robust endothermic responses in the galaxy, but like this, she probably has to hibernate during most long distance Hyperspace burns… her core temp and her basic energy levels must be riding fumes and sheer spite to have a chance at regularly staving off absolute exhaustion.))

            (((The 501^st would never have let her get so skinny. Packing nerf jerky into every single soldier’s utility belt so they could always have a snack to proffer up to her had become standard procedure for even the most shinest of shinies years ago.)))

            She’s also severely dehydrated.

            (Which is no doubt contributing to the particularly excessive lack of healthy fatty tissue distribution, as her lekku are nearly shriveled to her shoulders, despite looking like they ought to have doubled in length based on the wrinkly stretch of the warped pattern in her stripes.)

            Additionally, she’s got a stark iron deficiency and some worrisomely low levels of vitamins D, B, and Q…

            According to Kix, however, it seems more like she’s been self-negligent than like she’s been a captive and actively deprived of what she needs.

            Her oldest injury is about a week old, but this would not be the first temple that they’d ever wandered into that could manipulate things like healing rates.

            The only part of it that has truly alarmed Kix in any way is that she’s picked up a lot of scarring since they last saw her; like she’s been getting injured twice as frequently as she did while on the war front, but hasn’t been getting patched up with half as much medical care.

            (There’s another ‘I told you so’ sitting on Fives’s tongue, another drop in the bucket for his ‘good kharma’ stockpile as he stays silent yet again…)

            The 501^st can’t do much for her.

            Until she wakes up, they can’t even tell if she’s in pain.

            (Skywalker seems to think she is, but Fives has never understood how the Force actually works to let him know things like that and the General’s not exactly the most reliable source of coherency at the moment, so Fives elects to reserve judgement.)

            He hauls himself out of his bunk to join Rex and Cody when they eventually show up to the mess hall where half the clones are squeezed in to anxiously await an update on the Commander’s condition.

            What Rex and Cody give them is just the barest bones of the story.

            And a decree that she’s not allowed to have any visitors.

            Most of the men force themselves to be content with that and shuffle off to update the rest of their brothers and see about getting some actual work done that they’ve all been ignoring.

            Torrent Company holds out though, pestering Rex and Cody with questions.

            Rex clearly wants to shoot them all after the first ten minutes, but Cody manages to keep him civil for nearly half an hour.

            "You really think she'll be alright, Sir," Fives asks, for at least the 20th time.

            If anyone has real insights as to that, it would be Rex— he’s seen her up close in this incident and he’s seen her recover from countless others. He also just knows her, far better than any of the rest of them ever could.

            Rex sighs and simply repeats, "Kix seems to think so, but we have no way of really knowing until she wakes up."

            Fives opens his mouth again, but Rex beats him to speaking. "I'm gonna grab one last update from Kix and then call it a night. Unless you would like to file all my paperwork for this incident, Fives, I suggest you turn in now."

            Fives closes his mouth.

            He lingers another moment, shooting an evaluative glance at Echo, but then he turns to head back to the barracks.

            He’s got his datapad to keep a close eye on their Commander, after all.

            It’ll just have to be enough.

            Five directs the men in Torrent Company to Echo for questions, but encourages them all to just hunker down for the time being.

            He then taps into their duty rotation schedule and edits it a bit so that he and Echo get slotted into the roster. He leaves a motion-ping set up in case something dramatic happens while he hits the sack and leaves his earpiece in while he kicks back.

            The ship goes into its night-cycle and the bulk of the men soon manage to find enough peace to sleep— if only fitfully.

            Even Fives manages to fitfully doze off.

            His rest is abruptly interrupted when the Commander wakes up.

            Fives’s data pad’s alert pings in his earpiece as the Commander’s awakening proves to be as  dramatic as any shiny suddenly waking from their first war-front night terror.

            The situation in the room goes back and forth for a moment, wavering between high-alert and almost-calm as the General and the Commander have a stilted conversation.

            But then it abruptly tips over into Problem territory as the Commander decides that something is terribly wrong with what she’s woken up to seeing. She tosses General Skywalker around like a rag doll and then bolts for the exit.

            Fives slips out of the Torrent barracks without alerting the rest of the men.

            He strongly suspects that adding any more elements to this equation will only complicate matters rather than do anything to calm the situation down, but he wants to be on hand to help manage the fallout.

            He’s proven right when the footage he’s following to watch the Commander’s flight towards freedom shows her running smack dab into the Captain (escorting Jesse to her door for his watch rotation, presumably).

            The Commander reacts to the Captain like she’s staring at a ghost… Which is not-heartening by the very best of estimates.

            Then she reacts to Jesse like she’s been cornered in an alley by a sleemo out for something truly rotten. She reacts to him like he’s already got a knife in her back and she’s got just a few heartbeats left before she’s dragged into her grave. Which is just so much worse.

            The Commander just about kills Jesse, savaging his throat with her bare hands like she’s truly desperate… And even so, she still doesn’t actually injure him— which they all know she ought to be effortlessly capable of doing.

            When Rex vanishes off-screen, likely to fetch Kix or one of the Generals, the Commander collapses— letting Jesse fall beside her, coughing up a storm.

            He manages to get her talking, miraculously succeeding in calming things down a bit.

            What happens next is… baffling, to say the least.

            The Commander seems to ask Jesse to kill her… Or rather, gives him permission to kill her— like the idea he could somehow possibly want to kill her is already a forgone conclusion.

            That could be a Problem.

            Not just because the idea of Jesse wanting to kill their Commander is problematic (and frankly ridiculous, to the point that the Commander’s conviction of it is deeply concerning), but because the idea of Jesse wanting to kill the Commander will not go over well with the vode…

            Kix seems to think so too, because the first thing he does in spotting Fives at the end of the hall once the Commander’s been sedated and rushed back to her temporary suite and things have calmed down again, is signal for Fives to stick around.

(He likely wants to  get alternate quarters set up for Jesse; Fives certainly does…)

            The Generals vanish to their quarters, Rex is tasked with getting himself in order before he is stationed at the Commander’s bedside, and Kix pulls Fives aside around the corner as Jesse and Dogma take up their watch.

            “You won’t be able to pry him away from his duties here before his shift’s up, but he cannot go back to the barracks after his rotation is over,” Kix comments. “We’ll be lucky if Dogma doesn’t try his hand at interrogating the poor vod.”

            Fives hates to ask, but he presses, “So you don’t think the Commander’s got any real reason to think something’s wrong regarding Jesse?”

            “No,” Kix responds easily. “Whatever’s wrong, it’s not specific to Jesse. Honestly, I think it’s more aligned with not-Rex.”

            Fives nods, mulling over what he’d seen on the security feed.

            The conclusion Kix has come to makes sense.

            Sort of.

            It doesn’t actually make sense of the situation, but it aligns with what factors they’ve managed to observe of her behavior.

            So, Fives heads up two floors in the Resolute to the nat-born soldiers’ area. He heads to their medical office and commandeers a private suite with an outlet to the hall. The nat-borns’ Chief Medical Officer isn’t happy about it, but she respects the 501^st’s Commander enough to make any accommodation necessary to ensure the Togruta’s security).

            Then Fives waits out the remainder of Jesse’s watch and intercepts him just before they’re relieved by Hawk and Boomer.

            Clearly, Hawk has used his Lieutenant’s credentials to at least get an overview of the Commander’s escape attempt because he shows up glaring daggers at Jesse from beneath his bucket, his posture tense and ready for action— begging for a fight.

            Dogma gets sent back to the barracks, and Fives keeps himself between Jesse and the new watch— instructing firmly that Kix’s instructions are to be followed to the letter and nobody is to set foot near the Commander until further notice.

            He doesn’t let Hawk so much as grunt an affirmative before he’s dragging Jesse off to his temporary new digs.

            “I know you’ve been through it with the Generals already, Jesse,” Fives says apologetically, “But I have to ask if there’s any reason you could think of to explain the Commander’s reaction to you in the hall.”

            Jesse’s about two more words from bursting out in tears as he says, “I don’t even understand what exactly happened in the hall.”

            “I don’t really think any of us do,” Fives sympathizes, giving the man a clap on the shoulder. “That does leave you in a tight spot, though. The boys want answers, and no one has anything solid to give them. So, you’re gonna sit tight up here until we figure some things out.”

            “Aye, Sir,” Jesse says, as miserable as anyone could expect.

            Fives doesn’t take it to heart.

            He leaves Jesse in his temporary quarters and heads back to his own— he shoots Echo a chain of updates on the evolving situation to disburse amongst the men as he sees fit.

            Fives then makes himself get as much rest as could ever be plausible.

            The next time the Commander wakes up, things get even more confusing.

            Fives honestly doesn’t track the whole conversation, neither the one she has with Rex, nor the one with Kenobi afterwards. He doesn’t even wholly understand what the brief chat with Skywalker exposes (though he does catch that Skywalker just admitted to being involved with Senator Amidala, in front of Kenobi no less, so there’s a lot of credits due to change hands in the near future (especially considering that Amidala’s apparently pregnant).)

            ((There’s gonna be little baby SKYWALKERS running around!))

            (((The Republic may crumble in a matter of weeks after those little buggers learn to walk, but the Seppies are downright doomed.)))

            And yet, the news of betting circles being entirely upended, and of new little nubbins of Skywalker spawn in incubation, doesn’t quite manage to distract Fives from the real bombshell of the moment: General Kenobi’s brilliant theory on what happened to their Commander is that she somehow managed to time travel her way across the karking galaxy

            Yep.

            Time travel.

            That is the theory that the illustrious and purportedly brilliant Jedi General Obi-Wan Kenobi believes is the most likely explanation for what rendered the Commander in this state…

            Fives isn’t sure if he’s just cracked or if he’s making a play at insanity simply to keep Skywalker dancing on his back-foot defensive…

            It’s not like Fives can do much about it.

            He submits to Rex’s decree that he and Echo push their watch another rotation— a good move considering that the Commander falls asleep within a few minutes of the Generals leaving her suite. The shinies Fives parks outside her door while she’s out cold won’t feel at all deprived by the fact that she’s unresponsive.

            He and Echo get a bit of rest, but mostly they confer over what details Echo got out of Hawk and Boomer when they returned from their watch.

            Apparently, the Generals are concerned about the Commander Falling.

            Like she’s about to turn dar’jettii or some poodoo like that sithspit.

            Fives is insulted on the Commander’s behalf.

            Obviously, Hawk and Boomer are too, but they’re also spooked.

            Apparently, the Commander is so much stronger in the jettiise’s mystical Force magic now that even the Force-insulated clones could feel some of what ripples in reality she caused.

            Fives and Echo wait until their re-scheduled watch to make any more intense overtures than simply watching the remote security feeds. They’re not known for being patient, but they’re both ARC Troopers and after Fives thought he’d lost Echo, only to get him back from the terrors of the Techno Union… Well, Fives can roll with just about any disaster.

            He manages to make himself get a bit of rest.

            Even so, he’s still exhausted when his chance on watch comes around, exhausted enough that his anxieties start to bleed through.

            He and Echo start out mostly following orders, staying inside the medical unit, but still keeping outside the suite without doing anything to disturb the occupants within.

            They watch carefully on their data pads as Rex coaxes the Commander to eat. And they keep watching as Coric updates the Captain on the fact that the Generals (who had zipped off to explore the temple where they’d found the Commander) haven’t checked in despite being scheduled to do so over an hour ago.

            It’s not too unusual, those jettiise are particularly reckless after all.

            But they didn’t take any clones with them when they went down, so Rex really has to check in with them personally— taking a manned shuttle down with immediate back-up poised to wait while he goes in to see what the problem is.

            Before he leaves, he gives Fives permission to enter.

            The ARC Trooper does so feeling more hesitant about it all that he has about anything since… well, since before he got Echo back.

            "Yes, Captain," he barks out of habit worn into him by rote, jerking his limbs in a precise salute. Then he pulls off his bucket and flashes a bright smile at the Commander.

            "G'morning, Commander," he tells her solemnly.

            She looks a bit older, but he’s not familiar enough with Togruta biology to be sure that she looks anything more than the year older she’s supposed to be. She’d shot up like a weed over their seasons together in the years since Christophsis, after all— gaining nearly an inch each time they went back to Coruscant for a few weeks of leave between campaigns.

            What’s most striking about her appearance isn’t how she looks at all.

            It’s how her eyes have changed.

            It’s how the weight in her gaze is now so grave, it’s impossible to ignore.

            She looks at Fives and smiles, more like she’s looking at a war hero like CT-99 than like she’s just reuniting with an old friend from the mid-ranks.

            "It's good to see you again, Fives," she replies— far too solemn to pass as casual.

            If time travel really is the explanation (and Fives is not saying that he believes it is or anything), then something terrible has clearly happened to him in the Commander’s timeline.

            (Though… if he’s reading her expression right, he must have managed to do something very gallant with his last ditch effort in the war, something worth being called a hero for…)

            Her attention makes him distinctly uncomfortable, and habit has him throwing Echo under the speeder before he starts to fidget.

            "There's uh, there's someone else who wants to see you here, Commander," Fives leads, his fortitude failing entirely. "It's just... you weren't here when we found him... So, I'm hoping he'll be a bit of good news, ya know?"

            He could be. He should be.

            But… Fives knows Echo looks a little rough after what those kriffing Techno bastards did to him… With his implants and his mangled hand and everything, seeing him might be an unpleasant shock instead of a bright spot.

            "You found Echo, with the Tecno Union," the Commander states, throat tight enough to let Fives hear the strain.

            "You got that report?"

            From the look in her eyes, he’d say no.

            From the look in her eyes, he’d say she knows…

            She understands what happened from a first hand encounter, not through any report.

            Her stilted nod and her utter lack of surprise at Echo’s appearance when he tentatively steps through the door tell Fives for certain that she’s not only aware of Echo’s altered state, but that she’s seen it and already has had time spent close with him to learn how to see past it.

            (Not that it would ever take her long, but still, even for her it should’ve taken longer than a heart beat to adjust. But this version of the Commander doesn’t even blink.)

            ((Well, she does start to cry… But she promises them that they’re happy tears.))

            Both Fives and Echo leap at her for hugs as soon as Rex leaves the suite and she returns them as best she can while her wrists are chained to her bed rails, nuzzling into the contact like the young Togruti woman they know and love.

            "You'll be alright here, Commander," Fives promises.

            "I know, boys. You guys always manage to take great care of me," she tells them.

            It sounds to Fives like she truly means every word of it, but he can’t help flashing back to how she reacted to Jesse… And so far only Jesse…

            But Jesse’s never actually fought Rex on anything before, not on anything real…

            Fives, meanwhile, has found himself genuinely vicious and at Rex’s throat more than once in recent years… More than often enough to make him belatedly worry that Ahsoka might see him as a threat to Rex’s well being.

            “You died,” the Commander says quietly after a long moment where Fives is too lost in his head to track the distending of the seconds. “That’s why it’s not like it was with Jesse.”

            “So, I never made it to whatever big event it was that made you… Well,” Fives gives a hapless shrug as he trails off, feeling both aghast (for buying into the time travel thing) and bereft (for having failed to make his life matter while staying alive to keep living it).

            “Sort of… You’re the one who figured it all out, you know,” the Commander tells him. “I don’t even really know how you did it, but… Whatever you did, whatever it cost you, it was your intel that let me save Rex when things went bad.”

            Fives wants to ask what went bad, and how exactly did things spin out that way, but he can tell it’s more than just a touchy subject. If he goes down that track, odds are they won’t have much more of a conversation before the stress makes her pass out again.

            And he owes it to his batch mate to let Echo ask a few questions, too.

            Echo’s been a lot quieter since he got back from the Techno Union, but the quiet he’s being now isn’t awkward or hesitant, it’s understanding.

            The kind of knowing that links people with similar traumas despite all manner of other differences making it seem implausible they’d pair up.

            But he still wants to know the answer to his unspoken question, which leaves Fives to actually voice it for him. “And Echo? Why’s he not sparking a reaction?”

            “He’s one of the Bad Batch,” the Commander states, almost cheerfully and definitely with a sizeable dash of pride. “They’re all a bit… different. It meant the Order didn’t go through right and they were able to get out when things went bad. The way Rex explained it after he found them, they were able to get out when things turned without being affected, and then they were able to remove the in— the influence before it managed to do any real harm.”

            Fives chuckles after a long moment trying to wrap his head around her explanation— after trying (and largely failing) to keep himself from going down any one of the numerous rabbit holes her explanation presented.

            “So, uh, side stepping just about all of that, how have you been, Commander?”

            “Awful, Fives, I’ve been absolutely awful,” the Commander admits with a tired grin.

            (He’s always been the only one she could be honest about that with, they’re always best mates when it comes to complaining about the rotten luck their lives seem built on.)

            “You look good though,” Fives teases.

            She arches a brow at him to refute his claim.

            (So, at least she knows she’s been taking terrible care of herself…)

            ((Though, on second thought, Fives isn’t really sure that’s actually any better.))

            “Why’d you save Rex, Commander,” Echo speaks up suddenly. “How’d you save Rex?”

            “Things went bad, Echo,” she tells him. “Things went really bad. Something happened to most of the clones, something… I can’t tell you what yet, not until I come up with a way to fix it without triggering it, but it’s something that took away their will. It took away their identities.”

            “Like the way you’re all worried this is just a construct?” Echo asks, already scrunching up like he knows that’s not the answer.

            “A bit, but a little more like when you were hooked up to the Techno Union’s machinery and being used to counter Rex’s battle plans like you were little more than a hard-drive with a pulse,” the Commander counters solemnly. “But it was more wide spread, and less debilitating; Sidious plugged into clones from a distance, warped their perception enough to convince them not to fight the Order and then basically moved their limbs without their real permission.”

            “Jesse was one of them?”

            “Jesse was one of them,” the Commander confirms, looking past Fives as she says it.

            Jesse was clearly one she’d had to deal with directly when it happened. One she’s likely had to hurt, or maybe even kill, to keep herself breathing.

            (Whatever she’d had to do, Fives is glad she did it. He knows Jesse would be, too.)

            She gives a sad smile like she knows what Five is thinking.

            ““Jesse was mine…” She goes one with measured, quiet words, “He was my Second on the ground while Rex led the wider operation. When the Order went through, he was left in charge of running the show on the Tribunal. It was his job to hunt down the Jedi and eliminate the one who’d tagged along to Mandalore with them.”

            (Fives’s heart absolutely breaks at how she looks as she says it— like she’s more sorry that such a burden had to fall to Jesse than that he suddenly betrayed her.)

            “But why would the dar’jettii’s command to kill the Jedi mean that our brothers would suddenly try to kill you, Sir? Didn’t you leave the Jedi Order?”

            The Commander smiles at Echo and nods.

            “Yeah, I left the Jedi. And that actually bought me a little time, made enough clones question the Order for them to require a reissue, specific to hunting me down, apparently,” the Commander asserts, her tone tightly pushed into sounding light-hearted. “I wasn’t the only priority target, but I was a primary one. I didn’t know why until I found out Vader—”

            She cuts herself off and lets her gaze fall to her knees.

            She’s not about to pretend she didn’t just stop in the middle of a sentence, but she’s also not about to answer any questions on it.

            “And the Generals, Sir?”

            Fives wonders if Echo knows what he’s doing with all this nudging, but if one trauma case feels that asking the other this kind of thing is okay, who is Fives to argue?

            “Obi-Wan was on Utapau. Cody managed… well, it wasn’t a loophole, but it gave some wiggle room to the follow-through in the proof-finding department,” the Commander insists, haltingly. “I don’t really know if he died there and became a Force-Ghost or if he actually got out alive and then died sometime later, the timeline of who was where in the last few days of the Republic were… chaotic… but I do know for certain that by the time Luke Skywalker showed up, he was gone… I saw him once, just briefly, in the Void… But it was enough to know.”

            Neither Fives nor Echo press for her to explain any of that.

            Nor do they ask after the fate of General Skywalker.

            (She would’ve volunteered that information if she was willing to share it.)

            ((And the fact that she’s not willing might not be bad news… If she’s still convinced this is a construct meant for interrogation, he could be alive and well and simply assumed dead in a way that would make her talking about how he survived problematic.))

            (((The only time she actually said he was dead was while General Kenobi was interrogating her after all, and Fives has never heard her sound more stilted or robotic than when she spat out ‘Anakin Skywalker is dead ’…)))

            They don’t have to linger on that awkwardness for very long, because before Fives has even managed to get himself out of his own head, things outside the Commander’s suite suddenly get very interesting.

            Noisy and interesting.

            The Commander is cuffed to her bed, and Echo still doesn’t do all that well with shouting and such drama, so it’s up to Fives to investigate.

            Beyond the door to the Commander’s suite, Fives discovers that Attie, Ridge, and Vaughn were apparently the ones chosen to be Rex’s back-up in the investigation of the Generals’ failure to report. They’re all in the med bay because each one had to haul in the unconscious body of one of their charges.

            Rex, Skywalker, and Kenobi are all out cold. Kix and Coric are frantically working to get them settled into medical beds and hooked up to life support and monitoring tech.

            Fives glances back at the suite he came from… the Commander is not gonna like this, but since she can probably feel it already, Fives thinks that it’s probably best to go back in and be upfront about all of it.

            They’ll need to see if any other clones could possible serve to keep her company because keeping her calm and distracted is probably gonna become a high priority mission if Rex doesn’t wake up here soon and Fives is pretty sure that he’s not gonna be able to manage the Commander’s care and somehow also keeping the 501^st in line.

            Commander Cody will be able to help with the second bit, but not if their Commander goes nuclear again…

            Fives casts one last look of sympathy at the medics and then braces himself to talk to Commander Tano about how things, as per their usual luck, have only gotten worse.

            All in all, she takes it rather well (at least, compared to how she’s reacted to other things since they’d first recovered her)…

Chapter Text

Episode IV – Unsubtle Alterations

::  Episode IV,  Chapter I  |  ANAKIN  ::

||  7 Anno Domino  :  12 BBY  ||

            Anakin wakes up on Tatooine.

            He knows it immediately.

            Between the twin suns that are just about to set, the awful grit of sand under his back (and beginning to sift gratingly into the folds of his clothes), and the simple smell of it… He knows immediately that he’s on Tatooine.

            How he got here, though? That he doesn’t know.

            Nor does he know how long he’s been here.

            Or where everyone else is.

            Or even what exactly he was doing before he blacked out.

            All he knows when he startles into wakefulness is that he’s on Tatooine and there is something wrong with the Force.

            He can’t quite pin down what the wrongness IS, exactly, but he knows with absolute certainty that this slimy, biting chill of dank emptiness he feels is not something he can take on alone— at least not without knowing more about it.

            Normally, he’d have no problem diving recklessly into a fight with seemingly insurmountable odds where his apparent power is outmatched exponentially.

            But normally, when he dives into things recklessly, he’s got the 501^st at his back and Obi-Wan at his side (and usually he even has Ahsoka at his heel)… With that kind of support, and the raw power that he’s able to wield, Anakin’s usually pretty justified in feeling invincible.

            And… this wrongness in the Force, the hollow ache…

            Anakin knows what it feels like to be hunted.

            It feels like this.

            Sitting up quickly, Anakin takes stock— because if something’s hunting him he needs to move (or at least be armed), and since he’s not restrained, whatever’s after him is either not around to notice that he’s awake or already knows it.

            He has his lightsaber.

            And his commlink, though that bit of tech is definitely damaged— almost beyond repair, even for Anakin’s skills. He’ll need a few hours with good light and a well-stocked work bench to have any hope of getting it up and running ever again. With the sun going down and no civilization in sight, it seems unlikely that fixing his commlink will be doable soon.

            Anakin doesn’t feel like he’s sustained any injuries, but his head is still too fuzzy to recall any of the circumstances leading up to the present moment.

            The last thing he remembers is getting Ahsoka back after a year without so much as hearing any rumors of how she’d been doing on her own.

            He doesn’t quite remember how they got her back, but that doesn’t really matter in light of the fact that they did get her back.

            Shaking his head a bit in a vain attempt to clear his senses of the permeating fog he feels, Anakin sets aside his worries and looks around. If Obi-Wan and Ahsoka are together, they’ll be working to find him, so really it’s only a matter of time before they manage to get this situation under control (though it will be irksome to put up with their teasing over his having to be rescued).

            Still, that means that all Anakin has to do is stay alive, keep mostly out of trouble, and wait for them to wrap up whatever crisis is keeping them away.

            (Admittedly, the ‘keep out of trouble’ point is going to be a difficult feat for Anakin to manage, but it’s not always his fault when trouble finds him… It just usually is…)

            He seems to be in a canyon, or on the edge of one.

            Likely out in the Jundland Wastes if he remembers correctly…

            At the very least, that means there’re Tuskan Raiders around to deal with, and probably Jawas, too. Sunset means that they’ll have the advantage (officially speaking— though with the Force feeling as strange as it does, he may not be able to pick up on any approaching presences).

            Obi-Wan would say that the most important thing, now that he knows where he is, what he has, and that he’s uninjured, would be to find some place he can hole up for a while— some place that’s defensible, preferably with a water source (and maybe something edible, though his belt does have a few ration bars tucked into it, Thank you, Kix).

            With his old Master’s voice is echoing in his head (prattling off a droning lecture on surveyorship and wilderness survival), Anakin attempts to gain his bearings. The impending sunset makes it a bit difficult, but he knows these canyons are honeycombed with old smugglers’ nests, so all he really needs is enough orienteering to find south (which is the side of rocks and such that smugglers tend to place markers on to stake claims among themselves, something about the angle of the sun either highlighting or hiding those marks, he vaguely remembers).

            It takes a bit more doing than he thought it would, but eventually Anakin does find an abandoned smuggler’s cache where he can get a few hours of rest. Normally, he wouldn’t need it and would focus on finding a way to Mos Eisley or maybe just somewhere with a salvageable speeder that could get him to Mos Eisley. (As awful as Tatooine is, this planet really needs more space ports, if only so that no one has to spend any more time here than absolutely necessary).

            But, right now?

            Anakin’s exhausted.

            It’s probably related to how he managed to wind up here, all alone, in the first place.

            Either way, he tucks himself into the back of the cave and gets settled. Using his emergency canteen filter like a straw to suck up a bit of water from the pool dug into the wall to catch the canyon’s trickles, Anakin makes sure he stays hydrated and takes his time nibbling his way though a ration bar. He’s got two more left after he’s finished with this one and he’s not sure how long they’ll have to last, but for the moment staying in top condition is the better option.

            There’s a few blankets left among the smugglers’ cast-offs so when Anakin’s done with his meal he manages to make himself relatively comfortable in his sort-of secure little nest.

            He’s not planning to stay even as long as until dawn, but he knows he’ll be dead to the world for a short while. He’d never mastered the art of sleeping lightly while on campaign, choosing instead to perfect the less well-endorsed technique of ‘don’t sleep at all until you basically collapse and then recover from it quickly’…

            Anakin’s just about at the ‘basically collapse’ limit.

            He could probably push through for another few hours, but then he’d just be dropping out of play as the suns rise instead of while night is settled, which would mean that he’d be more likely to be caught off guard by the smugglers’ early morning return.

            So, sleeping now is important.

            As is typical of how he gets after a long string of running himself ragged, Anakin drops off into unconsciousness almost instantly when he relaxes his guard.

            The sickly Force around him invades his dreams, permeating them with a sense of dread and discord… But there’s also a thin, gossamer thread of hope drifting in ether like spider silk on a cool breeze— maybe even the kind from Naboo’s Lake District.

            Once the idea of Naboo rears up in his mind, Anakin’s thoughts drift inevitably to Padme. His angel is out there, waiting for him to come home— so, of course, he will manage it eventually, no matter what the odds are against him.

            She’s probably not even worried.

            (She’s probably too busy to be worried.)

            ((The clones in the Corrie Guard should know better by now than to tell her about every time he gets himself in to trouble, so, maybe she doesn’t even know she ought to worry.))

            Just as Anakin’s mind ripples with the knowledge of how unlikely that scenario is, he sinks fully into a dream-world where the war is over and Padme doesn’t have to worry anymore.

            With an indulgent smile, she turns her head towards him on the veranda and says, “I’ll always worry, silly. With all the stunts you pull in that starfighter of yours day to day, even if you don’t decide to go into professional racing, I’ll have plenty of reason to worry.”

            She turns more fully towards him, twisting her body to face him— revealing a small child on her hip. Padme bounces the babe a bit and as the youngling babbles back at her, Padme coos sweetly, “We’ll both always worry, won’t we, Lukka?”

            The child is his.

            Anakin knows it instinctively.

            More than that, he knows that even if it weren’t his biologically— even if it wasn’t even Padme’s by birth— this child is theirs.

            Naturally begotten or found as an infant, and he loves it in a way he could’ve never imagined before experiencing it. What he feels for this child is more powerful even than what he feels for Padme.

            Anakin would rip down the universe for Padme, would watch countless worlds burn to keep her even marginally safer.

            But for this child?

            For this child, Anakin could suffer any kind of indignity or humiliation for half a chance at building something better than he’s ever dreamt of making possible before…

            (He thinks it would make Ahsoka smile to hear that… and he knows Obi-Wan might actually be proud of him for it.)

            Thinking of Obi-Wan, though…

            Anakin knows he’ll have to grovel, to beg his old Master’s forgiveness for keeping his marriage a secret, for electing to flout the teachings of the Jedi Order while hypocritically taking on a Padawan and accepting Jedi accolades and GAR promotions…

            For lying to Obi-Wan… Anakin will… Oh, Obi-Wan will be so disappointed in him.

            And the Master has every right to be.

            His old student likely doesn’t deserve forgiveness.

            Anakin would likely never be able to forgive Obi-Wan if their positions were reversed.

            (Well… for Obi-Wan… maybe, because it’s Obi-Wan…)

            ((But Anakin isn’t Obi-Wan and he doesn’t deserve the kind of Faith that Obi-Wan most certainly does.))

            (((But then again, Anakin isn’t Obi-Wan… and Obi-Wan is so much better than he is, better than any of them, really…)))

            Padme’s hand is suddenly laid against the side of Anakin’s face, tilting his head to look at her as the babe’s tiny hands reach out to grab at his robes.

            “What’s wrong, Ani,” Padme asks.

            He stares into Padme’s eyes and feels himself relax.

            “I don’t deserve you,” Anakin whispers, his gaze dropping to the blonde tufts of hair on their youngling’s head. “I don’t deserve any of this.”

            “Yes, you do, Anakin,” Padme insists softly.

            A low snort sounds behind them, plainly derisive, and Anakin whirls around to face the newcomer— though he doesn’t ignite the lightsaber he has automatically reached for.

            It’s Ahsoka.

            Not the little Snips he’d met on Christophsis, or even the seasoned Padawan he’d said goodbye to on Coruscant… This is the version of Ahsoka that they’d gotten back— out of that strange temple— the older, wiser, inscrutable version.

            Here, she’s not quite as inscrutable.

            Her arms are crossed and her brow is arched… But her derision isn’t entirely mean-spirited. It’s playful, even as her posture is wary.

            “You don’t deserve this, Anakin,” Ahsoka says simply. “You know it’s true. And that’s why you’ve stayed on the warfront for so long despite wanting to leave the Order. That’s why you’re always the first in and the last out. You don’t deserve this and you know it, and you feel so guilty about having it that you’re ruining yourself with trying to keep up appearances and find a way to make everybody happy. You’d rather die a hero than have to face the potential of seeing this all taken away from you— or risking that you’ll never get to have it at all.”

            Anakin can’t refute her claim.

            He’d never been able to win many arguments against her.

            She’s as much a student of Obi-Wan’s teachings as she ever was a student of Anakin’s.

            “The Universe doesn’t care what you deserve,” Padme asserts from behind Anakin, voice tolerant but firm. “Lots of people deserve lots of things. Grievous, Maul, Dooku… They deserve to rot, to die horribly. But they haven’t. And you’re a Jedi, so you shouldn’t be the one to extract that vengeance, but you want to be... I deserve a vacation. You deserve peace.”

            Anakin glances back towards Ahsoka, sure she’ll be ready with a counterpoint.

            But Padme isn’t finished, “The Universe doesn’t care what you deserve, Ani. All that matters is what you choose. I chose you. And now I have a husband who will choose me over everything but our child, who would want to stay with me rather than to save the galaxy, and even with your flaws, I am happy with my choice.”

            “The universe might not care, but the Force does,” Ahsoka states simply. “She is right though, that it comes down to choices. Our own individual choices. I’ve made mine. I’ve decided who I am and who I want to be. You’re running out of time to decide, Anakin. If you don’t make a choice it will be made for you. In order to chose, you need to sort out your priorities.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “You can’t try to be perfect; living up to everyone’s expectations only means that, at best, you’re lying to several of those closest to you,” Ahsoka lays out. “You have to decide who you want to be, especially when no one is looking at you with an idea of what you should be.”

            “You’ve been spending too much time with Obi-Wan, Snips,” Anakin attempts lamely.

            Ahsoka’s mouth twitches up with a smile.

            “I’ve been spending too much time alone in my head, stuck with a version of me I didn’t like,” Ahsoka counters. “I was a coward, After… I helped Rex find his feet, but as soon as we really figured out what was going on… I ran. I hid. I let people be hurt in front of me because I couldn’t risk it to stick my neck out to save them.”

            “There’s no shame in surviving,” Anakin tells her, fiercely grateful that she’d been able to live through whatever horror she’s gotten lost in remembering.

            “No, there isn’t,” Ahsoka agrees. “It’s okay if the only person you can save is yourself, there’s no shame in it. As long as you don't actively cause harm to others in the process, saving yourself is often all that could ever be asked of anyone. But I still don’t want to be the kind of person who would chose to let someone die when I could save them, even if I have to trade my safety for theirs. Accepting evil is to perpetuate it and I will not be made an accessory to an act of harming innocents.”

            Anakin cannot adequately express the swell of pride he feels for her in hearing that.

            By how her smile shifts, he thinks she can feel his emotions flooding down their bond.

            Then the smile slips away.

            “You ae going to have to make your choices soon, Anakin,” Ahsoka tells him with a sort of solemnity that he cannot rationalize. “Safety or freedom? Order or chaos? Forgiveness of any betrayal or Faith based on reciprocity?  The one for the many, or the sacrifice of love for the greater good? You have to choose what vision of ‘good’ you even want to believe in.”

            At a loss, Anakin huffs, “It seems you’ve also been spending a lot of time with Yoda. You were never this cryptic as a Padawan.”

            “I don’t mean to be cryptic,” Ahsoka hums in light-hearted apology. “But the world is a lot more complicated than I ever imagined as a Padawan. It’s hard to simplify some things. Especially when you don't have all the information.”

            “Don’t I know it,” Anakin sighs.

            A slow breeze ruffles their clothing, colder than it should be.

            The youngling gurgles behind Anakin’s back, disgruntled by the chill.

            “A storm is coming, Ani,” Padme whispers after a moment, the hand she has on his shoulder moving to point at dark clouds on the horizon. “We should go inside.”

            Anakin nods.

            He looks to Ahsoka, who’s staring at the storm as well.

            “Well, c’mon, Snips, you heard the Boss Lady,” Anakin tries.

            She’s not coming, though.

            Like before, like at the Jedi Temple back on Coruscant, she’s only here to say goodbye.

            “I’ve seen what happens when a storm hits,” Ahsoka says. “I’m not going to hide this time. I can help and there are people who need it.”

            “What if I need you?”

            “Safety or freedom,” Ahsoka warns, voice dipping low. “Order or chaos. If you try to keep me here… if you choose to stop me from making the choice I’ve decided on, I may choose to do something unpleasant to escape.”

            “ ‘Do or do not, there is no try’,” Anakin quotes.

            “It took me years to understand that one,” Ahsoka admits. “But I get it, now. It means that you’re committed to a decision. It means that if you ‘try’ to keep me here, and fail, you didn’t truly decide to commit to keeping me here. But if you succeed, it will be because you’ve subverted my will— because you’ve disregarded my choice to leave— and I will have to chose whether to submit to staying or to do what it takes to break free.”

            “You’ve never been one to just submit to anything,” Anakin accepts.

            Ahsoka tips her head, taking it as the compliment he means it to be. And also as the threat it truly is.

            “So, what does that mean for us, for all of us?”

            “You don’t get to decide for all of us, Anakin, unless you make that your choice,” Ahsoka lays out. “There’s enough blame to go around for everyone, but all you can do is choose what you, and you alone, will do next.”

            “And you, Ahsoka, what—”

            “You can’t be here.”

            The sudden voice, harsh with alarm and disbelief, isn’t Ahsoka.

            But it is familiar.

            It’s in the real world, not the dream one, and Anakin jerks away without really feeling the impact of the alarm in the voice because he’s fixated of the warm wash of the intimately familiar aura emanating from Anakin’s closest friend.

            “Obi-Wan,” he greets, pulling himself sloppily upright and flailing as he fights to free himself from the twisting tendrils of his borrowed blankets. “I knew you’d find me! My commlink’s busted again, but— uh, Obi-Wan?”

            His old Master isn’t standing nearly as close as he’d felt to Anakin. His hooded figure is at all the way back near the lip of the cave, the dim glow of the building sunrise behind him making his shape stand out dramatically but without revealing any detail.

            “You can’t be here,” Anakin’s old Master repeats, voice ragged in a way that Anakin cannot begin to rationalize.

            “Okay,” Anakin mumbles, lost but willing to roll with it. “So, let’s get out of here, then.”

            Obi-Wan’s presence in the Force recoils.

            It’s only then that Anakin notices how… limited his sense of the man seems. It’s Obi-Wan, so his essence is warm and familiar, but he can’t push more than a trickle of awareness down their training bond and if it were anyone but Obi-Wan, Anakin wouldn’t be able to feel any hint of emotion escaping from the man’s imposing mental shields.

            He feels a lot like Ahsoka did back on the Resolute when she first woke up after being rescued from Tura.

            He feels familiar, but in a way that’s strangely closed off and distant and cold.

            Suddenly wary, Anakin asks, “What’s going on, Obi-Wan?”

            Obi-Wan doesn’t respond immediately.

            When he does speak, it doesn’t seem like he really means to speak aloud.

            “You… you died,” he mumbles. “I left you and you… I know you’re hunting him, but you’ll never get him— not while I’m alive,” Obi-Wan promises, tone turning hard with icy resolve.

            Before Anakin can fully process any of that, the situation changes slightly.

            Anakin only senses the approach of the new-comer through Obi-Wan’s flaring awareness of him— through the wave of white-hot panic that spikes as the vague Force-presence turns into the sound of tiny footsteps slapping incautiously over dry stone. (Anakin’s never known Obi-Wan to panic… not even when Satine…)

            “Hiya, Ben,” a youngling calls from around the edge of the smugglers’ cache.

            Anakin can’t see him, but Obi-Wan certainly can and with one lingering glare at Anakin he turns to face the child.

            “What are you doing out here, young one?”

            There’s a familiar exasperation in Obi-Wan’s voice as he chastises the youngling, but there’s a sharper edge to it— a desperation and fear pressed up behind the gruff affection.

            “I had a really weird dream,” the child explains. “And when I woke up I felt… I dunno, a light, I guess. Can you even feel a light? Anyway, it was really bright and insistent— like the beep of a tracking beacon— so I followed it. Do you feel it, too?”

            “You’re not feeling anything, Lu—ttle one,” Obi-Wan huffs.

            Anakin frowns. He knows he’s something of a beacon in the Force.

            Kriff, sometimes Anakin’s mere presence in a city is enough to help draw out the latent abilities of Force-sensitive children who haven’t fully presented yet— sometimes he even prompts those with high-potential to present years before they normally would.

            Obi-Wan knows all this.

            He’s hassled Anakin more than a dozen times over it.

            So, why is he trying to wave this youngling off so aggressively?

            More than that, why is Obi-Wan so forcefully exerting his Force-presence to disguise the child’s own signature? Anakin didn’t realize it at first, but now he can tell that one of the reasons he can only feel the child through his bond with Obi-Wan is that the old Master is actively working to envelop both Anakin and the child to keep their presences isolated.

            Anakin is jarred back into the present’s immediacy by the child’s next question:

            “Why are you all the way out here, then?” he asks, with all the insight and insolence of someone far too bright for their current environment.

            (Anakin remembers what that felt like, when he was a youngling on this very kriffing planet and his mechanical genius was only given the barest sliver of an outlet because his kark-faced owner could profit off his potential…)

            ((Obi-Wan seems to recognize the similarity too, for the sigh he heaves is the same long-suffering one he’s mastered for when Anakin is being particularly frustrating towards him.))

            “I was out for a walk and thought I saw someone skulking about in here, like you,” Obi-Wan chides. “Does your Uncle know you’re here?”

            “Nope,” the child chips innocently. “So, did you find any skulker-ers?”

            “Aside from you?”

            “I’m not skulking! I said ‘hello’,” the child counters insistently.

            (Anakin thinks it’s a valid point.)

            ((Obi-Wan, apparently, does not.))

            “You ought to go home now, child,” Obi-Wan informs him.

            “But I wanna see who made the light! There’s someone in there, I can feel it,” the child whines, suddenly frantic with the need to know that Obi-Wan believes him.

            (Anakin remembers that feeling, that need to prove he’s not crazy or incompetent— to prove it to Obi-Wan, especially.)

            Obi-Wan draws breath— obviously to refute the claim that anyone’s inside the cave— and instead of letting himself be lied to, the child darts around him into the cave proper.

            “Luke, don’t—” Obi-Wan attempts— far too late to matter.

            Anakin’s locked eyes with the youngling. He’s got sandy blond hair in an awkward lop, bright blue eyes like the lakes of Naboo, and a crookedly triumphant smile of righteous victory.

            He looks to be maybe 6 or 7 standard cycles old and his presence strikes something deep in Anakin, like a blaster bolt to the lungs.

            “Back away, now, Luke,” Obi-Wan warns, stepping up to stand between them— one hand outstretched protectively, while the other is aimed at Anakin with unsubtle threat.

            His hood’s fallen and, in the newly florid light of the fully-risen dawn as it filters into the shadowy cave, Anakin can see that his old Master’s face looks far more weather-beaten than it should. His light hair is streaked with limp gray— enough to make his usually neat-trimmed beard look unkempt and scraggy.

            “Master, what’s—?”

            “ ‘Master’ ? Do you know this guy, Ben?” the child asks, blond head poking around the edge of Obi-Wan’s spread robes. “Hiya, mister! I’m Luke!”

            If things were normal, Obi-Wan would have his hand raised up to massage his temples by now— his fondness doing little against the migraine his exasperation is generating.

            But things are not normal, and Obi-Wan is still tense like he believes a fight is imminent.

            “Uh, hi, Luke,” Anakin replies with an awkward wave to match the child’s far more enthusiastic gesture. “I’m Anakin.”

            “Cool! That’s just like my father’s name,” Luke shouts, latching on with excitement to Obi-Wan’s robes. The kid glances up to see if Obi-Wan’s reacting to the apparent connection. “How do you know old Ben, here?”

            “Luke, this is Anakin Naberrie,” Obi-Wan says before Anakin can answer. “I used to be his teacher, but that was a very long time ago.”

            There’s an edge in his voice that Anakin doesn’t understand, almost as much as he doesn’t understand why Obi-Wan is— well, not lying, exactly… He is technically Anakin Naberrie, just like he’s still technically Anakin Skywalker. Since he married Padme, legally, his name is Anakin Naberrie-Skywalker, and on Tatooine, either surname can stand as a viable clan designation depending on the purposes of giving it, so it’s not a lie for Obi-Wan to tell this ‘Luke’ that his name is Anakin Naberrie… But Anakin cannot understand why he’d want to skirt the truth like that.

            “What’d’ya teach him,” Luke asks, again pulling Anakin back into the moment.

            “Many things, I’d hoped; among them how to be a warrior of justice,” Obi-Wan states, his usual dry tone still edged in something with a more vicious bite than chiding sarcasm.

            “I’m a Jedi Knight,” Anakin clarifies as the child looks up at Obi-Wan in confusion.

            Luke snorts. “Old Ben’s not a Jedi,” he asserts. “You’re not a warrior, right? Aunt Beru says you’re ‘barely even a wizard’.”

            “She’s right, mostly,” Obi-Wan placates. “But I was once something else, something more. I was an idealist, long ago… When I first met your Father, and when I trained Knight Naberrie… It was a very long time ago, however. I’m a very different person now.”

            “Did you know my father, Knight Naburry?”

            “Luke,” Obi-Wan insists. “You need to go home now, your Aunt and Uncle will be worried about you if you don’t show up for breakfast.”

            “Aw, but Ben! You and Uncle Owen are the only ones who ever knew my father and both of you don’t like talking about him,” Luke huffs petulantly.

            “He was a good man, your father, one of the greatest men I have ever had the privilege of meeting,” Obi-Wan says slowly, his gaze locked with Anakin’s. “But his loss is tied to the darkest days of my lifetime. Discussing him often brings up some deeply unpleasant memories. I’m sure the same is true of what Knight Naberrie remembers of him.”

            “But—”

            “Now, he may be willing to talk to you about your father, but he has just wrapped up a very long journey,” Obi-Wan states firmly. “He is tired and does not need you pestering him.”

            Luke releases a forceful, incoherent whine that communicates more than many whole languages can encapsulate.

            “Luke,” Obi-Wan chides sharply— and Anakin faces flashbacks of the Master sighing his name in just that same manner.

            Both Luke and Anakin wince automatically at the tone.

            “Go home, Luke,” Obi-Wan instructs.

            When Luke’s gaze darts over to Anakin one last time, Obi-Wan compromises enough to say, “Knight Naberrie will be staying with me for a while. Finish your chores and perhaps you can speak with him again this afternoon.”

            Anakin has enough experience to see how Obi-Wan’s words are both not actually a lie, and yet how they could convey on technicalities that he has no intention whatsoever of letting Anakin and Luke see each other ever again.

            “Fine,” Luke submits, kicking the dirt in frustration.

            “Take your uncle’s speeder straight back and do not slow down for anything,” Obi-Wan tells the youngling, keeping his gaze on Anakin as the child retreats.

            “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Luke grumbles as he moves out of sight.

            Obi-Wan and Anakin stare at each other in silence until well after the whir of the speeder’s engine vanishes into the rush of Tatooine’s perpetual winds through the canyon.

            “Obi-Wan… what’s—”

            Speaking up is a mistake on Anakin’s part.

            It spurs Obi-Wan to remember that he’s a flesh and blood person, whose name he just partly-lied about to a mysterious, Force-sensitive child that the Jedi Master has taken into his protection. It reminds Obi-Wan that he knows Anakin, and Anakin is (almost) always armed.

            Obi-Wan’s hand whips out and calls Anakin’s lightsaber to him without giving Anakin a chance to respond. (Why Obi-Wan seemingly doesn’t have his own lightsaber close at hand is something Anakin isn’t entirely sure he wants to know.)

            ((Especially as Obi-Wan ignites the saber while looking somehow both in peak form and awkwardly out of practice at once…))

            “Now, you will tell me how you came to be here and what you know of the child,” Obi-Wan lays out, voice so dangerous it nearly delves into Jedi compulsion techniques.

            Seeing Obi-Wan stand against him like this… If Anakin wasn’t already worried about how he’s clearly missing half the story here, he certainly is now.

            Frantically seeking a smidgeon of calm, Anakin sinks into the quiet eddies of the Force as he works to sort out what little he knows about what’s happening.

            ‘We’ll always worry, won’t be, Lukka?’

            ‘Cool! That’s just like my father!’

            ‘He was a good man… his loss is tied to the darkest days of my lifetime…’

            ‘Luke, go home.’

            ‘You died…’

            ‘I know you’re hunting him, but you’ll never get him— not while I’m alive…’

            ‘You can’t be here.’

            Aghast, Anakin swallows hard and looks frantically at Obi-Wan.

            “Luke… he’s— he’s mine, isn’t he?”

            “He will never be yours,” Obi-Wan counters, adjusting his grip on Anakin’s lightsaber.

            “Padme’s then,” Anakin relents, exactly as aware as Obi-Wan that he doesn’t deserve a treasure like that bright, sweet youngling to claim as his own.

            Obi-Wan’s expression is a hard, blank wall. But the mention of Padme makes him roll his jaw as his teeth grind together.

            “Luke was ripped from her womb in a half-destroyed shuttle while she lay dying in the aftermath of another of your fits of rage,” Obi-Wan near hisses at him, intending to wound Anakin with every word so wholly that he lowers his mental shields to allow Anakin to feel the ache of truth in them acutely.

            Anakin’s fists ball up, that very rage Obi-Wan is speaking of rising up in a vicious wave of need to prove his old Master false.

            He can’t though, and he knows it deep down.

            Just as certainly as he knows that Luke is his son.

            The Padme he left behind was barely six months pregnant. The child he just met is at least six standard cycles old.

            Just like how the Ahsoka he farewelled on Coruscant a year ago was just on the barest cusp of true adulthood, while the one he faced after being called to Tura was a seasoned warrior.

            If he hadn’t heard the theory from Obi-Wan first, he’d never have come up with it himself— not without a lot more inconsistencies to prompt him to consider it— but since he did hear it first from Obi-Wan… Anakin is almost entirely certain that time travel is in play here.

            He’s somehow been sucked 6 t0 8 standard cycles into his own future…

            Which means the truth in Obi-Wan’s words is Anakin’s own future truth.

            Remorse floods him, anguish and grief and fury at himself for something he hasn’t even done yet, not this version of him— but clearly he’s already capable of it, or he wouldn’t have been able to succumb to such a fate as this version of Obi-Wan knows he already has…

            “Obi-Wan… What have I done?”

            Anakin’s old Master is looking at him like he’s a wounded animal, as fit to strike out at any potential rescuer as he might a being that wished to do him more harm.

            They stare at each other in a fraught impasse for a long moment. Anakin can’t pretend to track the heartbeats that tick by.

            Then Obi-Wan retracts the blade of Anakin’s lightsaber. He straightens his stance away from being quite as obviously fight-ready, but he doesn’t offer to hand Anakin his weapon back.

            “It would seem we have much to discuss,” Obi-Wan states, folding his hands into the sleeves of his robe as he always used to when trying to hide his degree of anxiety.

            “Time travel,” Anakin breathes. “I’m pretty sure it’s time travel.”

            “I have indeed considered that option,” Obi-Wan replies archly.

            “I’d love to hear it if you have a better idea,” Anakin huffs breathlessly, going on-script in a pale shade of their usual sort of battlefield banter.

            Likewise, Obi-Wan says thinly, “Cosmic inspiration has yet to strike, but I’ll let you know if it does. In the meantime, I suggest we vacate this cache before its owner returns.”

            Anakin merely nods in silence and clambers to his feet.

            “I have a small residence near here, well-shielded from just about everything that might be scanning for either one of us,” Obi-Wan admits. “It will be safe enough. I hope.”

            Anakin manages to resist the snort he feels building in him, but he can’t stop his mouth from running as it huffs, “You’re a lot more pessimistic than I’ve ever thought you could be.”

            Obi-Wan pauses in his move to step out from the cave, looking back at Anakin like he has something significant to say. Whatever it is, he swallows the words and simply barks at Anakin to keep up as leads the way through the twisting canyon.

            As they walk, Anakin has to wonder if he’s the only one of them who feels like the walls around them serve as much to cage them as they do to shield them.

            Staring ahead at the hunched shape of Obi-Wan’s back, he has to wonder if that may actually be part of the point…

Chapter Text

::  Episode IV,  Chapter II  |  OBI-WAN  ::

||  7 Anno Domino  :  12 BBY  ||

            Obi-Wan wakes to the feeling of hard stone under his shoulder and the sense of being watched with acute interest.

            He can’t quite tell if that interest is truly malign or predatory, but he can tell that the person observing him has a tight ball of pain and fury wound around their heart.

            He can also tell that the person in question is very close, likely in the same small room.

            (Or maybe alcove? The Force senses Life far more accurately than it depicts walls…)

            Without opening his eyes, Obi-Wan stretches out with his senses— trying to gain a better sense of where he is before he alerts his observer to the fact that he’s awake.

            The room he’s in is indeed bigger than he first assumed. He seems to be tucked into a small niche along the curved wall bordering the wider area of the main space. There’re several dozen Lifesigns in the area, beyond those of himself and his observer, albeit none in their immediate vicinity. Most of them have the sort of martial calm of sentries on guard— though the soldiers don’t feel familiar to him, or even like they’re clones at all.

            Beyond the soldiers’ number, there are dimmer presences scattered about— normal citizens of the Republic, most likely, simply going about their usual routines.

            Obi-Wan cannot tell where he is and he cannot recall how he came to be here.

            And when he attempts to stretch out further with the Force, to look beyond the quiet peace of the small enclave where he’s currently poised, he can’t feel anything.

            There is something very wrong with the Force here.

            Something that is making it feel slippery and cold… and empty.

            There’s a dank bite in the Force’s undercurrent; a pervasive, sickly chill that feels both stale and dangerous at once… Like the rotting carcass of a long-dead animal poisoning a well.

            It also feels distinctly like there’s some dark shadow prowling through the dimness of it, a vicious, hunting specter that makes Obi-Wan flinch back and retreat behind the strongest mental shields that he can manage.

            As he does so, a discontented huff sounds from very close nearby.

            Cautiously, he cracks open an eye to get a glimpse of his surroundings.

            A single face fills his vision.

            There is a young girl— very young, she is perhaps 7 standard cycles old on a generous estimate— standing little over a foot from his face, eye-level with him and pouting with a particular expression of dissatisfied confusion that Obi-Wan finds unbearably familiar.

            Obi-Wan’s brain ceases to function for a moment.

            He’s off-line long enough that he can’t pin down the familiarity before the child speaks and draws what meager cognitive abilities he’s salvaged away from recollection as it fights to process her high-pitched words.

            “Are you dead?”

            With a cough to clear his throat, Obi-Wan promises, “Not yet, little one.”

            The youngling doesn’t look very convinced.

            “All the other shiny people I see are dead…” she explains, her frown deepening. “I’m not supposed to talk to them… or about them.”

            Cleary, she follows directions about as well as Anakin ever had…

            The thought of his Padawan’s younger days is more fond than it is frustrating and Obi-Wan manages to resist the urge to roll his eyes (but cannot quite resist cracking a smile) while he cautiously moves to sit up, slowly enough to avoid startling her.

            “You see a good number of, erm, ‘shiny people’, then, young one?”

            Her pout puckers, but then she says, “Not many, but Daddy says I shouldn’t talk to any of them… ‘specially not where normal people can see. Or tell anyone about them.”

            Well, at least she seems hung up on the fact that she’s actively breaking the rules she’s been given to follow. Anakin was never quite so fully aware he ever should be remorseful of such transgressions.

            (He always wrote the rules off as negligible by exploiting petty technicalities when they both well knew that he ought to have been adhering to the spirit of the instructions as much as to the letter of them... Honestly, he still does that, despite being a fully fledged Knight...)

            Anakin’s antics give Obi-Wan inspiration to ease this child’s worries, though, so he supposes that the Force had a well-intentioned plan for everything.

            “I’m sure it’s fine, my dear, after all I am a ‘shiny person’ so you aren’t telling me about anything that should be kept a secret,” he soothes. “And if you aren’t supposed to talk to me where others can see, how about we move closer to that statue and you can appear to others like you’re talking to the lovely lady it’s dedicated to?”

            Her expression screws up in a sort of consideration more careful and serious than any six year old ought to be forced into, but eventually she nods.

            She turns on her heel and marches with an almost military precision over to the kneeling stone set before the memorial’s dedication plaque. As Obi-Wan follows, he takes more time to look around him— he’d assumed it was a memorial simply because of the somber slant to the warm light, but now he sees that his guess had been correct.

            From the side of the circular, open-ceiling-ed space that he’d woken up on, it was impossible to tell to whom this memorial was devoted, but it was obvious that she was an entirely beloved figure. Her statue is twice as tall as any human and she stands a benevolent watch over a small but richly appointed garden that has been exceptionally well-cared for.

            The whole of the shrine-space is clean and the candles are fresh— likely kept perpetually alight, even those floating in the small pool at the statue’s feet.

            Obi-Wan moves around to the side of the statue where the youngling is waiting for him, glancing up to see the Lady’s face.

            It’s Senator Padme Amidala Naberrie.

            She looks beautiful and natural— depicted as a person rather than in the role of Senator or Queen, but holding symbolic vestments of both exalted positions.

            Obi-Wan is shocked to stillness, and when he manages to draw himself back to action, his move to join the youngling in kneeling before the statue is more of a half-controlled fall than any purposeful descent.

            The youngling is observing him closely, bright eyes narrowed with suspicion.

            “Did you know her?”

            “I do,” Obi-Wan confesses.

            “How?”

            Obi-Wan sighs. “She is someone I consider a dear friend, almost family.”

            He meets the youngling’s ever-more suspicious gaze with a sad smile.

            “That’s like what Daddy says about her.”

            Obi-Wan thinks that’s a likely sentiment of a great many people whose lives she had touched. She is— was a truly wonderful woman, a bright light in a galaxy plagued by darkness.

            “What’s your name, young one?” Obi-Wan asks after the moment passes.

            “Leia.”

            “Nice to meet you, Leia,” he replies. “I’m Obi-Wan.”

            She nods, but doesn’t return his pleasantries.

            “Now, Miss Leia,” Obi-Wan leads lightly. “Might you be able to tell me why you’re not supposed to interact, or be seen interacting, with ‘shiny people’?”

            He should be asking where they are, but the knot of angst he feels from her in the Force around the issue of the ‘shiny people’ is a more pressing matter… Particularly as the statue of Padme being so revered means that the odds of this being someplace on Naboo are very high.

            Leia hesitates.

            Her Force signature is confusing, a presence but muffled as if under deep, still water.

            She is likely quite sensitive to the Force.

            She is also likely to have invested considerable effort into suppressing that sensitivity.

            Perhaps her ‘shiny people’ are a part of that, either as a consequence or a cause of it.

            “Daddy says that being weird isn’t a problem, that being unique and individual is a good thing and that our differences should be celebrated,” she says, managing the sophisticated words with an ease that shows she’s heard this speech repeatedly (and likely repeated it to herself a great number of additional times on top of that). “But he also says we have to be careful… He says that the galaxy is full of mean people and some of those people don’t react well to people they think are weird. And shiny people and magic and ghosts are definitely weird…”

            “Perhaps they are, but your father is right that being odd is not a detriment,” Obi-Wan consoles instinctively. “Though it is important to ensure you remain safe. As much as I would like it to be otherwise, the Galaxy is indeed full of unkindness and danger.”

            To both warn her of the danger and to foster her spirit of independence, Leia’s father must be a wise man indeed. And not one to be so negligent as to leave his six year old daughter all alone in a dangerous public space… He must be nearby and he must be adequately convinced that this shrine complex is secure.

            The number of guards Obi-Wan can feel stationed around the exterior perimeter would seem to confirm that, but this is still clearly a public venue (whether very much of that ‘public’ is currently present in this particular room or not).

            At the very least, Obi-Wan can be sure that the time he has available to continue chatting with young Leia is certain to be limited. He needs to focus his questions carefully.

            “Leia, how can you be sure that the other ‘shiny people’ you’ve seen are dead?”

            “They told me, or one of them told me,” Leia replies.

            Obi-Wan nods sagely. “Ah, I see. And did this one particular shiny person happen to explain why exactly they all seem ‘shiny’ to your eyes? Is it due solely to their being deceased or may it perhaps be related to something else about them?”

            “Mr. Jin says it’s because they have a special vabri- vibrit— vibrating harmonial-ness—”

            “Vibrational harmony?” Obi-Wan supplies.

            Leia nods and presses on, “ ‘vibrational harmony’ with the universe. They got lots of mitochondrias that makes them shiny and magic.”

            “Midi-chlorians?”

            “Yeah. That,” Leia accepts. “Mr. Jin says I has them too. Which is why I can see the other shiny people. But he says I have to listen to him and Daddy and keep the vibrationals quiet so I’m not so shiny that the bad shinies can see me.”

            “He does, does he?”

            As best Obi-Wan can translate that, Leia is definitely Force-sensitive. And she’s been talking to what seems to be a Force ghost— likely about how to stay safe in a world where hunting Jedi is an Imperial pastime.

            Even without proper shields, per se, her presence feels exceedingly familiar.

            Like Ahsoka’s had when she’d woken up on the Resolute while babbling about the evils of the new Empire and leaping at the shadows of what strange versions of Obi-Wan and Anakin she had apparently thought to be long dead.

            Obi-Wan is now entirely certain that whatever happened to pull Ahsoka back in time has now pulled him forward through it. His memories of the circumstances of her recovery are still quite fuzzy, as are his recollections of his actions in investigating the Temple where they’d found her, but he recalls enough to be able to connect a few disturbing dots.

            And yet, at the same time, he fears he may be overreaching in his endeavor to connect Force-made coincidence when his mind leaps to the one person named ‘Jinn’  he knows of who might have discovered the secret to maintaining his Living Force identity while his body died.

            Unfortunately, Obi-Wan doesn’t get the opportunity to question after that possibility as the door behind them opens abruptly— with a force and urgency that indicates to Obi-Wan that Leia’s father has been alerted to his daughter’s conversational companion.

            Sure enough, the first words the man speaks are half-shouted from too far away to pretend they’re casual— though the tone is kept admirably even and free of anger.

            “Step away now, Leia. Come to me, love.’

            The voice is achingly familiar.

            As is the low tone of a concealed blaster being charged and primed to fire.

            Obi-Wan spreads his hands wide, pulling his sleeves up in the motion so his forearms are visible as his palms remain open in a signal of surrender.

            “Senator Bail Organa,” Obi-Wan says softly, moving cautiously to rise and face his dear old friend. “It has been too long. I believe there is much we must discuss of late.”

            Bail looks so much older than when Obi-Wan last saw him.

            He feels older, too— his Force signature is drawn and weary, but stalwart as ever.

            The Senator’s hand is still tucked beneath his robes, gripping tight to his primed blaster.

            Obi-Wan simply waits as Bail looks him over, eyes dark and haunted with a nameless kind of permeating grief.

            “How are you here, Obi-Wan,” Bail asks, voice at a whisper. “How are you…”

            “So young? If you’ll indulge me, Senator, I believe this conversation might best be had over a fortifying cup of tea,” Obi-Wan lays out.

            Bail pushes Leia slightly further behind him. “We’re not going anywhere.”

            Obi-Wan frowns, feeling out the spike of fear in Bail’s Force signature.

            “Ahsoka mentioned something about Inquisitors and interrogations that use complex mental manipulations to convince the subject that a trusted friend is after sensitive information,” Obi-Wan muses aloud— keenly noting another spike of fear from Bail at the mention of Ahsoka and the lack of one regarding interrogations.

            He must know that Ahsoka is still alive, then.

            And the sort of interrogation she fears must be far more common than could ever be conscionable... Of course, even based on what little he’d managed to glean from Ahsoka, beyond her wild terror, certainly indicated the galaxy had taken a sharply downward turn at some point.

            Anyone managing to survive the new regime clearly had to be careful.

            And Bail has a little girl to protect, a Force-sensitive little girl who’d been taught— not quite to fear her gifts, but to subsume it beneath all layers of awareness. Bail, kind and earnest and warmly embracing as he is, has chosen to teach his daughter to deny a vital part of her identity because doing so might just save her life.

            Bail could not be moved here by any means of persuasion.

            That he’s even willing to entertain the possibility of a conversation at all ought to be taken for the miracle it is.

            “I’m not sure how I came to be here, exactly, Senator,” Obi-Wan begins, capitulating to Bail’s demand for immediate answers as best he can. “All I know is that there’s a temple of some sort on the Tura moon in the Bashtu system. Several days ago— or many years, perhaps— Ahsoka’s Force-bond with Anakin lit up like she was in incredible pain. We found Ahsoka, unconscious, in that temple, but she was… not quite the fledgling Knight we’d last seen when she left the Jedi Order after the debacle of the Temple bombing. She was older, colder… different.”

            Bail’s gaze has gone flinty, but he’s still listening.

            “We managed to get her sequestered in our med bay on the Resolute, under the care of Kix and Corric of the 501^st and the guard of all her men— her brothers,” Obi-Wan went on, noting the spike of sorrow linked to the mention of the Resolute and the grief-stricken nostalgia at the mention of the clones. “With Ahsoka resting, Anakin and I went to investigate the temple where we’d found her. Anakin may have touched something… Or it might’ve been inevitable from simply setting foot inside the temple… But something happened, and I woke up here.”

            Bail draws in a long breath, slow and considering.

            “As far as I’m aware, it’s the year 1023 and I am missing my former Padawan while his former Padawan is laid up in hospital, inexplicably terrified of her own family,” Obi-wan ends.

            He waits for Bail’s verdict, silent and accepting of whatever his old friend decides.

            “I want to believe you, Obi-Wan, old friend,” Bail tells him, imploring him to understand.

            “I understand, Bail, I do,” Obi-Wan promises. “I can feel your yearning, and your trepidation. It must come as a shock to see me, at all… I understand that trust is impossible. I don’t begrudge it of you.”

            Bail pulses with palpable relief that Obi-Wan would’ve been able to feel in his bones even if he hadn’t spent the last two and a half decades nurturing his connection to the Force.

            “So what happens now, then?”

            Obi-Wan huffs a heavy sigh.

            “I don’t really know,” he admits. “I suppose I ought to find Anakin, assuming he was sent forward in time along with me. I’m not sure how to go about that, however. The Force is… turbulent. I can’t feel much beyond this room. It’s howling so fiercely that I can’t imagine that probing it deeply would be very safe.”

            Bail nods.

            “You said Ahsoka mentioned Inquisitors. Did she mention they’re all Force-users? That they’re actively seeking every one of the Galaxy’s Force-sensitives to convert or kill them?”

            “She did not.”

            As much as the revelation shocks him, and as fiercely as Obi-Wan doesn’t want to believe it without proof, Bail’s darkly grim expression is full of both sympathy and censure— warning him away from delving into the Living Force to find his missing family.

            “What happened to the Jedi, Bail,” Obi-Wan asks softly, bracing himself.

            “I don’t know, Obi-Wan,” Bail replies earnestly. “I don’t want to know. The story is that they betrayed the Republic. Maybe they did. Maybe it deserved to be betrayed… Or maybe they were the ones who woke up one day with a vibroblade in their backs.”

            “Who survived?”

            “No one.”

            “But Ahsoka said—”

            “Ahsoka survived the Purge, initially. She was hunted down by the Emperor’s new Left Hand,” Bail states, empty of emotion. “She’s gone, Obi-Wan. You died on Utapau— right at the beginning of the end.”

            “Yoda? Mace?”

            “Neither ever even managed to get off Coruscant, as far as I know.”

            “And Anakin?”

            “He’s dead, Obi-Wan; they’re all dead. Your student died on Mustafar, as far as the more reliable rumors have it. Not a small number of people wish it had happened much sooner,” Bail states, firm but not unkind. “He Fell, Obi-Wan.”

            Rocked more firmly by that assertion, by that confirmation of his own suspicions, than he thought he would be, Obi-Wan allows himself a moment to grieve.

            Then his gaze drifts away from the silent stars above to the youngling peeking out from around the legs of her father. Her eyes are big and brown and full of wonder, while her brows are pulled low over a suspicious pout. It’s an expression that Obi-Wan is intimately familiar with— having spent the better part of his whole life at this point talking sense into it.

            Anakin’s fiery passion for life and love and justice in the universe burns bright inside her.

            She looks so much like Padme that it’s a wonder Obi-Wan didn’t see it sooner.

            But she’s so much more Anakin’s in the ways Obi-Wan might recognize her; impetuous, righteous, earnest, and so aggressively kind.

            She’s looking at him now with a pained sort of sympathy, her fingers twined fiercely within the fabric of Bail’s robes. She wants to help Obi-Wan hurt less, but is powerless to do so and aches for it. As the purported 'Chosen One' of such unmatched power as Anakin, impotence had never been a tolerable state of existence for him. His daughter clearly shares that sense of undue burden.

            “I believe I am less surprised by that than I probably should be,” Obi-Wan sighs. “If the world was going to hell and Anakin had a choice to uphold a silly ideal or protect his family…”

            Bail looks at Obi-Wan with heartbreak in his eyes and steel in his frame.

            “Protecting one’s own family at the cost of the whole galaxy, Obi-Wan… It’s not the choice of a Jedi, of anyone who sees himself as a bastion of peace. I'm still not sure what happened exactly, but Padme is dead and so are many others. Even if he Fell to protect his Family, he failed. And instead of rescinding his decision, he slaughters countless innocents. He's killed children, Obi-Wan. How can you forgive that?”

            Obi-Wan draws his awareness into himself, thoughts cycling with meditative focus.

            “We spent his whole life telling him that he was destined to change things— we didn’t speak it in so many words, exactly, but the expectations were levied on his shoulders. We told him he had incredible power and then made him feel powerless, over and over. If he Fell and then failed... If he found an answer that could somehow make sense of such horror to him, even if it was a lie, even if it asked something of him that was obviously wrong... I'm not sure I can blame him for trying to believe in it.”

            Mostly, Obi-Wan's not sure he's really in any position to judge the boy for it, not when he's certain that he played a part in causing it.

            Even if the Jedi Council hadn’t actively chased Anakin into the arms of a Sith, they certainly hadn’t done nearly enough to keep him close.

            Bracing himself for something he could never really prepare for, Obi-Wan asks, “Is he really dead, Bail? He’s not one of the Emperor’s Inquisitors?”

            “Anakin Skywalker is dead, Obi-Wan,” Bail soothes, softening the hard edge in his voice as much as he seems able. “He died the same day that you did.”

            Obi-Wan feels out his friend, going so far as to gently probe his surface sincerity aside with a nudge of suggestions. All he finds beneath it is a well of grief.

            “And Padme?”

            “Collateral damage, you could say… Certainly, it was the final straw,” Bail explains. “Her death tipped the balance in a lot of things.”

            It would.

            Padme was a champion of hope and goodness in every corner of the galaxy.

            Combating the growing darkness was a losing battle with Padme in place to active aid the endeavor… without her, what sad things she left behind could never be expected to resist the impending collapse of sanity and common decency.

            “The Republic has truly fallen, then,” Obi-Wan admits to himself. “Are you still at all a Senator or has the Emperor done away entirely with such pretenses?”

            “I do what I can to protect innocents, but my present role is currently far more that of a hostage than of any true Senator in a position of genuine governing,” Bail confesses.

            Even through the heaviness of grief, Obi-Wan thinks he can sense a sliver of hope— of pride, even— but he doesn’t believe that commenting on his sense of it will do anything to endear him to his old friend. Mentioning that Obi-Wan hopes he has an active role in the rebellion Ahsoka had mentioned would certainly stir up worries of an interrogation again.

            Of course, nothing else Obi-Wan can think to ask is much better in terms of keeping Bail’s suspicions lowered.

            “What happened to us, Bail,” Obi-Wan sighs, allowing himself to feel the crushing weight of all that the galaxy has suffered. “Where did we go wrong? How did it all get so out of control?”

            Instead of making Bail’s walls slam back into place, Obi-Wan’s pained questions seem to poke at something thoughtful and nostalgic in Bail’s considerations.

            “I think the concept of ‘control’ is where things started to go sideways,” he confesses wryly. “If we hadn’t been so distracted by the idea of the Separatists as inherently opposed to the values of our common decency, perhaps we might’ve seen that, for many of them, the decision to secede from the Republic wasn’t motivated by villainy and that our ‘perfect union’ wasn’t quite so united or perfect as we believed it to be— as we forcibly declared that it should be…”

            Obi-Wan opens his mouth to speak against that assertion, but finds himself unable to actually say anything.

            So much had to be compromised for the sake of winning the war against the Separatists.

            That the Clones were essentially slaves, that the Hutts were allowed perks instead of censure, that the Zygerrian Empire was permitted space enough to return, that piracy was able to so flourish as resources were directed elsewhere, that a child of the Order had been treated with abject suspicion and then coerced into acting as little better than a pawn of the Council… That more than one child of the Order had faced such a grueling fate...

            Hundreds of thousands of tiny little concessions, each one allowing just the smallest slip of moral backsliding— a slow and creeping, unnoticeable decay.

            Ahsoka had been right.

            She’d said the Jedi Order had lost its way, perhaps decades before she’d understood it even as well as she had when she’d left. Her outside perspective had let her see the unvarnished truth of what had happened to the Order.

            While Obi-Wan had simply pretended to himself that he had not seen the cracks as well.

            The Fall of the Republic is not Obi-Wan’s fault. He’s not self-centered or self-aggrandizing enough to delude himself into taking personal responsibility for the collapse of a government that had, clearly, already been failing to adequately address the needs of an overwhelming number of its citizens.

            But the fact that he is not solely responsible for how things turned out does not in any way absolve him of guilt for the terror wrought by his willful ignorance of wrong-doing— of the shame and remorse he feels for having complied with orders he believed were wrong.

            He’d managed to foster a sense of free-thinking and independent goodness in Anakin, and facilitated his acting against Council wishes to go run off to be a hero— and done it well enough that Anakin had been able to teach Ahsoka how to be more…

            But how much of Anakin’s Fall had been due to Obi-Wan’s attempts to remain wholly loyal and unquestioning of the Council? How much worse had things turned out because Ahsoka wasn’t confident in the Order’s basic goodness and simple rationality enough to remain a Jedi and be granted the Knighthood she so entirely deserved? How many other, less well-positioned Jedi felt too cowed to speak up because Obi-Wan chose not to stand as an example and openly question the decisions he did not agree with?

            What might’ve become of the galaxy had he not been such a coward?

            The despair that washes over him is dizzying.

            It’s almost enough to dissociate him from his senses to the point that the movement around him goes unnoticed. He doesn’t truly notice anything has changed until he feels young Leia Skywalker slam her little body into his— her face squashed into his thigh as her arms tried to wrap around his legs in perhaps the fiercest hug Obi-Wan has ever experienced.

            Startled, Obi-Wan’s hand takes several long seconds to come to rest on Leia’s head.

            “Look forward, not back,” Leia huffs into the muffle of Obi-Wan’s robes. “Don’t forget the past, but focus on the future. Fulc’m says there’s always hope.”

            “ ‘Fulc’m?’ ” Obi-Wan repeats, perplexed.

            “Fulcrum is the core contact of anyone who might be dissatisfied with the current state of the galaxy,” Bail explains, clearly having taken Leia’s estimate of Obi-Wan as being genuine enough and good enough to be worthy of her reassurances as solid proof he’s trustworthy.

            “A spy, then?” Obi-Was asks, wondering if this ‘Fulcrum’ might be Ahsoka herself.

            “The spy,” Bail confirms, adding, “Fulcrum is to thank for most of what makes our enterprise a genuine Rebellion rather than a flagging resistance. We have plenty of reason to hope that we’ll have a real government in place, entirely ready to take over when we dismantle the Empire.”

            If Fulcrum is Ahsoka, herself, Obi-Wan couldn’t possibly be any more proud of her.

            Even if she is simply one face of many in the network, Obi-Wan knows she’s part of what is making a real difference in providing the galaxy with enough hope to hold onto.

            And ‘always hope’ is definitely a tagline that is right up Ahsoka’s alley.

            She has always been the very brightest of lights in the darkest of times.

            “Always hope,” Leia reaffirms.

            It’s as much an indictment as an affirmation.

            Hope isn’t simply there, it is actively cultivated within and shared with others.

            Obi-Wan isn’t sure what has drawn him into this future, nor does he have any idea of what might allow him to return to his own proper place in the timeline, but even if nothing more results of his presence here, Obi-Wan is glad to have glimpsed the fruits of his grandpadawan’s legacy. The galaxy may have lost the Jedi, but it is not entirely without powerful protectors.

            “Fulcrum is the one who convinced me, truly, that so long as there is still even just one person in the galaxy who is unwilling to let the Darkness win, there is reason to have Faith in the persistence of the Light,” Bail expounds, sympathetic to Obi-Wan’s struggle. “We simply have to do our part to work for our own salvation.”

            “I can certainly stand behind a sentiment like that,” Obi-Wan announces, feeling himself settle into the warm, weightless Truth of it.

            Bail nods, taking a deep breath to center himself and take one last moment to reconsider his chosen course before he says, “You cannot be seen here by anyone with any loyalty to the Empire, Obi-Wan. There aren’t many rumors that you aren’t dead, but the package you disappeared to protect cannot be risked by any renewal of interest in your possibly continuing existence. I cannot help you with much, but I should be able to smuggle you off of Alderaan.”

            “I appreciate your help,” Obi-Wan replies, glancing back at the statue of Padme with just a niggle of confusion.

            “She was a hero to just as many here as she was to those on Naboo, and in plenty of other systems throughout the galaxy,” Bail explains. “She is the only symbol of the Old Republic that cannot be crushed or discredited by the Emperor. And she is directly responsible for much of what sentiments and language has gone into formalizing our New Republic’s ideals.”

            “She has certainly always been a crusader for the greater good.”

            “You are one of the people she considered a genuine ally, someone else worthy of esteem and trust,” Bail insists, adding, “You are the one whom she entrusted with Leia, after all.”

            A chill runs down Obi-Wan’s spine.

            He knew that Anakin has been worried over something, that he’s been having Force-visions of Padme’s death— confessed to Obi-Wan in an exhausted stupor, and essentially dismissed by Obi-Wan in a last-ditch pretense of attempting to enforce the creed of ‘no attachments’… Obi-Wan had been keeping up appearances rather than trying to help his friend.

            “What happened,” Obi-Wan croaks.

            “I don’t know, friend,” Bail tells him. “You never spoke of it, not a word.”

            Obi-Wan nods solemnly, the crushing swirl of grief deferred rearing up again within him.

            A tiny fist punches his thigh.

            “Always hope,” Leia insists.

            “Of course, little one,” Obi-Wan concedes. “You are absolutely right.”

            Leia gives a self-satisfied nod and releases Obi-Wan’s legs.

            She then looks to her father and then towards the sanctuary door.

            “Yes darling, you’re right. We ought to head out,” Bail accepts, a tinge of anxiety to his Force signature. “Obi-Wan, you’ll need to put your hood up and keep out of sight. We’ll be traveling a pre-arranged route that you won’t be able to join us on, but you’ll be able to track us easily. I’ll have a word with our guards and we’ll leave a gap in security for you to board the shuttle— it won’t be a large opening, but it should be more than enough for a Jedi.”

            “Thank you, Bail. I understand the risks you’re taking to help me,” Obi-Wan says.

            With a sigh, Bail responds sadly, “You don’t, not fully. You cannot possibly understand the stakes here. But the risks aren’t important when it comes to helping a friend. If we are to consider ourselves the better option, we must endeavor to be better ourselves— to be worthy of our friends and allies in every way that we can possibly survive.”

            Solemnly, Obi-Wan nods and sinks into himself as he waits for Bail and Leia to get far enough away that he can follow at a surreptitious distance.

            He’s not entirely sure why he was brought here, but the Force is mysterious and who is he to question it?

            Whether he is meant to join the Rebellion in this time or he is meant to use what he witnesses here to aid those of his own time, Obi-Wan has work to do…

Chapter Text

::  Episode IV,  Chapter III  |  REX  ::

||  1012 Anno Republicae  :  20 BBY  ||

            Rex wakes up in a dusty cave.

            He knows that something is wrong immediately for a dozen different reasons, but the biggest red flag is that he’s alone.

            Seeking out a bit of privacy is one thing, but unless there’s an obvious reason to keep away from the prying eyes of nosy brothers, there’s almost zero chance that being alone is the result of anything good. Especially being alone while outside the protections of a base.

            Being alone in the barracks or on the Resolute is one thing.

            It wasn’t really being alone.

            Even if you were the only one in a room at any given time, there would doubtless be a hundred or so brothers within shouting distance— and the comforting hum of Life in all its noisy glory could seep in around any bubble of temporary isolation.

            But Rex wakes up alone in a cave.

            His helmet’s on the fritz and his com won’t connect.

            His HUD is less than helpful, but at least it’s partly working. It shows that there aren’t any other active GAR transponders within 50 clicks of his current location— a spit of rocky outcropping in the middle of a tall-grass sea in the Southern Hemisphere of Shili.

            The nearest town appears to be a half-day’s hike to the west.

            With nothing else to be done about it, Rex puts the rising sun at his back and starts to trek through the shoulder-high greenery.

            It’s slower going than he’d hoped for, being that even if he tired to carefully pick his way though the rushes, the grass grew too closely to entirely avoid getting tangled, and the tensile strength of the individual strands means that just tromping through like a Ylseian Reek in rut just lands him in a frustratingly unmanageable net. He falls flat on his face a few time before he figures out a good balance between trying to rip his way through and careful picking.

            By the time the sun hits its zenith, he’s only made it about two thirds of the way to the outpost in his sights and he’s starting to really feel the exertion.

            Clones are engineered to be more durable than nat-born humans, and to need fewer resources like food and water to survive, but all that did was let them survive. They might outstrip most forms of life in terms of adaptability and such, as simple humans, and they might be head and shoulders above what the average human could manage, but that was never gonna be enough to truly keep up with the Jedi— or to meet a honed predator on its home ground with an even chance of victory.

            By the time dusk is beginning to dapple the grassland in bright purples and golds, Rex has finished off the last gulp of water in his canteen and eaten through his 2^nd to last ration pack.

            The city, thankfully is just another hour away, by Rex’s best estimate of his current pace and energy reserves.

            He’s reasonably confident in his ability to make it there unscathed and then to find some means of transport out to the bigger city where it seems like Republic forces are gathered. It doesn’t seem like many Troopers are out there, but Rex’ll take a single squad of the 104^th over any number of locally sourced ‘security’ goons. Besides, at the very least, his brothers will be able to get him a relatively straight shot back home to the Resolute in short order.

            Rex needs to get back.

            He remembers just about everything prior to waking up— his engineered genetics allowing for a minimal of fuzziness in even magically-induced memory loss.

            He knows Ahsoka is in trouble.

            He knows that his General and General Kenobi are also in trouble.

            And he knows that he was able to do little more before falling unconscious himself than secure the Generals’ limp forms to his own tow line— which in turn had already been secured to his shuttle and the capable hands of Lieutenants Vaughn, Attie, and Denal.

            So.

            He is more than likely either on some sort of epic Force-induced field trip through time, or stuck in some sort of Force-induced fever-dream.

            Or maybe he’s just been zapped across the galaxy in physical form, rather than being sucked through time at all, because he’s not got one iota of Force-sensitive DNA in his body and the whole Force-magic nonsense just didn’t take properly to him like it did to the Commander and the Generals.

            Honestly, Rex is hoping for Door Number 3.

            It makes the most easy sense of everything.

            And while it’s inconvenient, and he’s certainly anxious to get home, he’s relatively confident that Cody could manage without him, especially with Fives and Echo in charge of ensuring the boys all feel confident that the Commander is safe and secure.

            (They’re both idiots, and they’re a pair of massive pains in Rex’s shebs, but they’re also some damn fine Troopers if he’s ever seen ‘em.)

            Rex is running through what he knows about his current operational parameters again as he stumbles into a little clearing of sorts. The sun has just set and the sweep of darkness is sudden as it falls across the gentle roll of Shili’s southern hills.

            He’s halfway across the clearing when he feels eyes on him.

            He’s not sure what tips him off.

            It’s just a vibe, a feeling of electric wrongness under his skin.

            Ahsoka has ensured that Rex’s intuition on that front is more finely tuned than just about any other Clone in the Command ranks.

            Her constant pranks on him and the rest of the 501^st have been some of the best training that his units have ever been put through. It’s why his boys have a measured 30% faster reaction time, and therefore a 15% higher survival rate, than any other unit in the GAR.

            Breathing shallowly, Rex shines an infrared light from his helmet and tracks a slow circle through the filters of his HUD as he examines his surroundings.

            And yep.

            There’s a bit of eyeshine, off to his left— pressed low to the ground and back so far in the weeds that he can barely tell the shape of what warm outline those eyes belong to.

            Whatever it is, it’s small.

            Now, that doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous by any measure, but it does mean that it’s less likely to be immediately fatal.

            It could honestly be nothing more exciting than a Lothcat.

            But Rex isn’t one to take chances.

            He pulls out his last ration pack and rips it open, keeping a close eye on the shape around the eyeshine in his HUD while keeping his body overtly turned away.

            He breaks off a corner of the ration and tosses it up in the air.

            He catches that first toss and repeats the action— catching it again.

            The third time, he ‘misses’ his catch— batting the bit of nutrient rich something over towards the edge of the clearing near the eyeshine.

            He sighs theatrically and breaks off another corner, starting to toss it up again. He keeps catching this one as he watches for whatever is stalking him to investigate the lump he lost.

            It doesn’t take long.

            A little arm snakes out before Rex has even made his second catch of the new piece.

            It’s a kid’s arm— probably not human, but definitely child.

            A young Togruta should not be this far out from their Family. They’re a tribal culture, a species of intense pack-bonds. Ahsoka has trouble eating alone because such instincts are so deeply ingrained in her existence.

            If Rex had ever been a bit worried for his own safety, he’s now deeply worried for the safety and wellbeing of this little kit out here all alone.

            It makes him reevaluate the strange little clearing.

            The grass here hasn’t just been randomly or happenstantially tramped down.

            It’s been arranged.

            There’s a bend of stalks that could even be construed as some sort of shelter.

            This isn’t just a random flat spot.

            This is a hideout.

            Whether it’s a part of the Mandalorian DNA, or whether it’s simply the result of being an older brother for so long, Rex feels an immediate need to take care of this child— to do enough to at least reunite them with a grown-up who can keep them safe while Rex makes his way back to his proper place in the GAR.

            Rex isn’t very good at this sort of cold-read, close-approach, but he’s watched the Generals and his Commander do it enough times that he’s got some decent parameters for how wrong things can go before he’s truly messed them up.

            He sits down in the center of the clearing, his back mostly towards the shadow of the child hiding beyond the perimeter.

            As soon as he sits down, the shadow creeps a bit closer— whether curious about his odd behavior, or furious at his continued invasion, Rex couldn’t begin to guess.

            With another theatrical sigh, Rex states aloud, “I sure wish I had a guide, and maybe even a translator. I have no idea how long it’ll take me to get to a big enough city to find a space port or if I’ll ever be able to find my brothers.”

            It’s not exactly a gamble.

            Common and Togruti are both taught to kits very early on, according to Ahsoka. And, statistically, the primary scam of youngling runaways is that of acting translator on a planet where no translation is really necessary.

            It’s very likely that Rex’s little friend speaks both fluently and would be able to see the potential benefit of making an approach to him.

            There’s a grumbled chittering behind him— the sort of throaty resignation that Ahsoka produces on the very rare occasion when she loses a game of hide and seek.

            “Fine. You know I’m here,” the child grumbles, distinctly female.

            She steps forward just far enough to count as being inside the clearing— posture tense and ready to bolt. But also leaned towards Rex with a cautiously intrigued curiosity.

            Rewarding the honesty, and making himself more relatable, Rex pulls off his helmet and shifts to mostly face his young shadow. He remains seated and doesn’t face her head-on to ensure that she feels she still has a distinct advantage over him despite his size and armor.

            “Hello, little ‘un,” he greets.

            She chirrups nervously back as he gives her a carefully closed-lip smile.

            (Human teeth may be comically blunt to her, but teeth are still teeth and any display of them could be taken as an insult or possibly even as a threat).

            “My name is Rex and I’m a little lost.”

            Rex is absolutely useless with judging ages for nat-borns, and even worse with non-human nat-borns. This youngling could be anywhere between 3 and 9 rotations old.

            He’s not even sure if there’s a significant distinction between the possibilities that should affect how he’d interact with the youngling or if the whole range is a similar enough to the cadet stage in a Clone’s development to make the difference between opposing ends of it negligible.

            “Soldier.”

            “Yep,” Rex confirms lightly. “I’m a soldier. Have you seen other soldiers before? Other people in armor like mine?”

            The youngling’s eyes flick down to the helmet in Rex’s lap, with its striking lines of bright blue paint.

            “Not quite like yours.”

            It makes a smile spring unbidden to Rex’s face.

            Ahsoka was always detail-oriented like that, so focused on the Clones as individuals that even they sometimes forgot they all shared the same face after spending a solid enough chunk of time around her.

            The moment of quiet stretches between them.

            Then Rex proffers up his ration bar. “Would you like something to eat?”

            The youngling scowls, apparently very aware that she’s being manipulated into approaching Rex. There’s also likely some measure of peevish annoyance in her that such a stupidly obvious manipulation is actually going to work.

            Ahsoka was always put out by such things when the boys coordinated to get her to submit to some time in the med bay or really anything even just self-care adjacent.

            Still, with a well-practiced bit of patience, Rex’s blatant bribery wins out over the youngling’s petulance and she creeps forward on all fours with her wary eyes fixed unblinkingly on Rex, her joints and vertebrae doing something that a human’s definitely couldn’t mimic to allow her to move forward with her head remaining wrenched back and perfectly level as she travels.

            Rex holds the ration bar out for her as far away as his arm can reach.

            She reaches for it from as far away as she can reach.

            But she doesn’t retreat once she’s grabbed hold of it.

            Instead, she drops into a tense seat right there and chomps down with no small measure of desperation for a meal. She must’ve been out here a while already to have gotten so hungry.

            However, asking how long she’s been here or why she’s so far out from town likely counts as prying to a skittish little youngling, so Rex’s hands are tied.

            Therefore, instead of asking anything, Rex simply lets her eat— observing her out of the corner of his eye as he pretends to fiddle with his busted helmet.

            She’s staring at him openly as she gnaws on the tough jerky-like fibers of the rations bar, clearly unimpressed with his attempt to be surreptitious about his peeking glances.

            “You know, you look very much like a friend of mine,” Rex comments, eyeing the underdeveloped markings around the young Togruta’s eyes.

            Rex allows his gaze to go soft and fond as he looks at the young Togruta. Worried as he is about his friend, he can’t help but muse about how utterly adorable a young Ahsoka would have been. Her pranks as a Padawan had been legendary; her exploits as a freshly decanted kit could only have been even more impressive.

            Though…

            Rex knows that Ahsoka’s early days weren’t entirely peaceful.

            She’d once confessed that most of the memories she has from the period before General Plo Koon had found her were tinged with a pervasive, gnawing fear.

            Ahsoka had always known she was special— ‘different’, by her words— and she’d always been able to sense the core intentions of those around her. Apparently, a surprising (and truly tragic) number of those around her had not had any kind of honorable intentions.

            For reasons that are still fairly murky to Rex, bounty hunters had been after Force-sensitive children and Ahsoka had been proactively targeted almost from the very day she first began to show her powers.

            “Friend?”

            The youngling’s voice pulls Rex out of his reverie and he cracks a warm smile at her.

            “Yes, a dear friend,” Rex informs his new little friend.

            She stares at him with an intensity and seriousness that seems well beyond her years.

            It sends an eerie shiver of awareness skittering down Rex’s spine.

            That measuring look is so much like Ahsoka’s.

            And her markings are more than just passingly similar.

            And with the mess left behind him in the bizarre temple on Tura… Rex can’t help but leap to the ridiculous notion that his ‘new’ friend is genuinely a younger version of his dear Commander, Ahsoka Tano.

            The youngling keeps her piercing stare on Rex for another long moment.

            Then she lets loose a light trill of sound that Rex can feel as a humming in his bones as much as he can hear it. He knows the sound is a pleased one, but if it has any more specific meaning, Ahsoka had never gotten around to teaching it to him.

            “Yes,” Ahsoka chirps, sidling suddenly closer until she can snuggle her way under his arm like a particularly cuddle-aggressive tooka. “Rex is friend.”

            Her confident assertion warms the very core of Rex’s soul.

            He doesn’t want to disturb this bubble of comfort she’s created for herself, so he simply lets her snuggle up to him as she finishes chowing down on his ration pack. He even lets himself take the liberty of placing his hand up between her montrals, using two of his fingers to brush firm stripes of affectionate touch from her forehead to the first splotch of blue that’s beginning to peak through on her the oblong bulge of her headtail.

            She starts actively purring under his ministrations almost immediately.

            Unfortunately, this little hideout of hers really is no place for a child. And with his own canteen empty, Rex doesn’t have any confidence they’ll have access to enough clean, fresh water to be able to comfortably survive the night.

            (And who knows how long this little maybe-Ahsoka has already gone without adequate hydration? Sure Padawan-Ahsoka could go for far longer than even a Clone could without water, and Adult-Ahsoka could probably go about 2 weeks without any serious problems, but this is a youngling. Surely, even if going without water for a day or two wouldn’t kill her, it must undoubtedly be doing something terrible to her development.)

            So, Rex has to prompt her into leaving her little sanctuary, despite how much he’d love to just let her curl up for a nap in his lap.

            “Are you still hungry, little ‘un?”

            She chirrups with consideration, blinking her big blue eyes up at him with guileless sweetness. Clearly, she knows with certainty that he won’t ask her to do anything that’s not in her best interest.

            “We go town?”

            “Yes, I think we should go into town,” Rex confirms.

            “Do we have to?”

            It sounds just like his Ahsoka when she whines.

            With a chuckle, he says, “Yeah, little ‘un, we do. We need food and water, and a ride out of here. As nice as your little hideout is, it’s not safe enough for you to stay here.”

            “Not safe,” Ahsoka repeats. She says it firmly, little fists coming to tap pointedly against his armored chest. “Not safe…”

            “What are you doing so far out here, anyway?” Rex asks, thinking that she might already be trying to tell him.

            She whines again, frustrated with his thick-headed grown-up lack of comprehension.

            “Town, not safe. Town has bad people,” she lays out. “Know I’m diff—”

            Little Ahsoka cuts herself off with a fearful side-eye in his direction.

            Rex simply smiles at her. “You’re special, aren’t you, Little ‘un? You know things about people that other people don’t. And you can move things without touching them, can’t you?”

            Her mouth puckers in a sharp little frown, but she nods.

            “And there’s people in town who don’t like that, aren’t there?”

            She nods again.

            “Are there people there who’ve tried to take you away?”

            This time her head bobs up and down rapidly and her big blue eyes fill with tears.

            “I don’t wanna go with them. They’re mean.”

            “You don’t have to go with them, little ‘Soka,” Rex soothes, tugging her close with an unbridled burst of protectiveness he knows she can feel through her Force-magicks. “You don’t have to go anywhere you don’t want to.”

            “Stay with you?”

            “Absolutely, if you want to stay with me, you can stay as long as you’d like,” Rex tells her, promise heavy in his words. He adds, “You know, I’m looking for my brothers and I bet they would love to meet you.”

            (If General Kenobi’s right, and this is some sort of time travel thing, and he’s really here with a youngling Ahsoka before the 104^th managed to find her… then the brothers he’s making his way towards will absolutely adore her, right from the first second they set eyes on her.)

            ((Commander Wolff was an over-protective nightmare when Ahsoka first joined the 501^st. He’d been known to com Rex 20 times in a day if any word reached the 104^th about so much as a missed check-in from her units, and his badgering for updates was utterly incessant if some engagement ever landed Ahsoka unstable in the med bay…))

            Ahsoka levels Rex with another measuring stare.

            But then she nods and chirps sweetly, “Okay. Town. Find brothers.”

            Rex thanks her for both trusting him and for being brave as he clambers to his feet. Ahsoka doesn’t even wait for his invitation to scramble up his body, using his armor’s joints as perfectly convenient hand-holds. She seats herself right on his shoulder, waits for him to put his helmet back on, and then secures herself by grabbing onto a slim notch in his visor where his binocs slot in. The only thing that makes this moment different from any other point where Ahsoka had used Rex or his Lieutenants to get a higher vantage of the battlefield is that this little spite of a young Ahsoka hardly weighs enough for her presence on his shoulder to be noticed.

            If Rex’s infrared sensors weren’t flaring off the charts, and if she weren’t chittering constant directions and random observations, he probably wouldn’t even know she was there.

            With his rest in Ahsoka’s hideout having been enough to restore his energy, and with his worries for Ahsoka’s lack of food and water running high, Rex takes the trek into town at a jog.

            Just less than an hour after setting off, Rex strolls into the center square of the little village. It’s definitely not the smallest town he’s been in, but it’s far closer to that end of the spectrum than not. He estimates the population to be around 200, max.

            Still, there’s a bustling night-market where Rex can purchase a basketful of delicious meat-kabobs and an enormous frothy drink made of water-ice, fruit, thick cream, and sugar.

            Ahsoka holds the food (and sets diligently to work on devouring all of it) while Rex navigates their way over to a speeder-stand. Rex keeps his head on a swivel (much to Tiny Tano’s delight) and keeps one hand firmly resting on his blaster— ready for anything in case the bounty hunters who’d been after Ahsoka before decide to try their luck again.

            His attentive caution proves mostly unnecessary, but he definitely spots a few ruffians who probably would have tried something had Rex been any less clearly marked as a veteran and highly decorated soldier.

            Regardless, Rex and Tiny Tano make it to a speeder-stand and manage to rent a ride without any significant trouble. And as soon as Rex has Ahsoka settled, she’s curled herself up and fallen fast asleep— clearly exhausted by however long she’s been keeping hypervigilant.

            (Somehow, it’s no less gratifying to Rex’s ego to witness that he’s earned this little Ahsoka’s trust enough to allow her to sleep comfortably in his presence than it is to be reminded on the battlefield that his Commander can sleep soundly under his watch.)

            It takes most of the night to get within com range of where the 104^th has a few squads based. As soon as he’s near enough, Rex seals his helmet to fully sound-proof and pings the fearsome Wolfpack’s perpetually grumpy Alpha.

            Wolff picks up right away.

            “What that seven hells, Rex. How are you on Shili? Where’s the rest of the 501^st?”

            “That’s a long story, Wolff, and I’d prefer to only have to tell it once,” Rex replies, voice soft despite his sound-proofing because he’s never been 100% convinced that Ahsoka truly can’t hear anything through his helmet’s high-tech sonic barrier.

            Grouchy, but not unfair, Wolff huffs, “Fine. But you have a lot of questions to answer and you aren’t gonna squiggle out of it.”

            “I know. Fair warning, though: I don’t actually have all the answers… I’m probably in the dark about half of what you wanna know,” Rex lays out.

            Wolff makes a sound of malcontent low in his throat.

            “Should I wake Nobel?”

            “Not for me. I do have a guest, though… Civilian, female; patient’s a Togruta youngling. No injuries, but she’s likely malnourished and dehydrated,” Rex reports clinically.

            “I’ll have Mortar scrounge up a hydro-pack with electrolytes and such to hold her over until we figure out exactly what she needs,” Wolff replies. He goes quiet for a beat— likely going off the comlink with Rex to direct-com the night-medic with prep instructions— and then asks, “How the hell did you wind up saddled with a youngling?”

            “It’s part of that long story, Wolff; you’re just gonna have to wait for it,” Rex chides good naturedly, a grin in his voice as he smiles at how quickly Wolff is gonna change his tune. “And, speaking of it, I’ll need you to get General Plo Koon up for the debrief.”

            “He’s probably up already,” Wolff grumbles. “Our General hasn’t been sleeping well at all since we touched down on this boring little rock. There’s no credible evidence at all of any Separatist activity, so my boys are going out of their minds with antsiness to move on, and yet the General’s sittin’ here, lookin’ just as anxious as if we were drifting behind enemy lines with our homing beacon on.”

            Another chagrined chuckle escapes Rex at Wolff’s clear worry.

            “I might actually have the solution for that,” Rex explains. “The civilian I’m escorting here, she’s only a civvie ‘cause she’s just barely been decanted. She’s Jetiise. She’s been living under threat for… a while, at least. And she’s powerful enough in Force hoo-doo to likely be causing ripples of distress for General Plo Koon to feel.”

            “Yeah. That would likely do it,” Wolff replies, sounding a bit less stressed already.

            “She’s worth worryin’ over,” Rex assures his older brother.

            Wolff huffs back, “Yeah? And how do you know that? The Force start whispering its secrets to you when the rest of us weren’t lookin’?”

            Rex just laughs.

            “I dare you to spend two minutes with this little ‘un and not think she’s somethin’ special, Wolff,” he challenges.

            “How far out are you?”

            “ ‘nother half hour, maybe,” Rex estimates conservatively.

            “Boost’s on perimeter patrol— you should be seeing him in about 10 minutes; I’ll have him ride your wing back into camp,” Wolff orchestrates, adding, “Will all these soldiers milling about be scary to your little Tiny Baby Jedi? I can clear them out if they’ll spook her.”

            “Nah, I think she’ll be just fine with them,” Rex asserts. “She understands who we are beneath the armor. And she can feel it if someone ever wants to hurt her, so she’ll know immediately that none of our brothers would ever mean her any harm.”

            “Alright then. I’ll get my General up and caffeinated, then. See you in 30.”

            “Oya, Wolff. Atiniir.”

            Rex signs off his coms and sighs into his helmet’s sound proofing. His life is so much more complicated than any Clone’s ought to be, but he wouldn’t trade places with anyone for any kind of bribe imaginable. He knows he makes a real difference and he could never give that up… The leaders he follows and whose objectives he facilitates are a tremendous force of Good in this universe. Even with Ahsoka out of the GAR, he knows she’s out there doing something great for the betterment of the Galaxy.

            There are just some days when he would maybe have liked to have someone else be the person responsible for answering all the Vode’s most pressing questions…

            Even so, he knows it’s all well worth it in the end.

Chapter Text

Episode V – With the Eldest, Lies Experience

::  Episode V,  Chapter I  |  AHSOKA  ::

||  1013 Anno Republicae  :  19 BBY  ||

            Ahsoka remembers the Void, that world between worlds where everything both made a little bit more sense, and simultaneously made absolutely zero sense at all…

            The thing she remembers most distinctly is the smell— or rather, the lack thereof.

            The Void was weird in her vision, but it was there and even the colorless unreality of it had enough visual markers to make it seem halfway rational.

            And there was always sound, whether drifting in as whispers from beyond the doorways that led back to the normal universe, or simply found within the rushing blood and shifting bone or muscle inside her own body.

            Touch was another one that was always present, even hyper-present as she suddenly became intimately aware of every single stitch in her clothing as it brushed against her skin.

            She’d never tried to eat in the Void, so if taste was absent it wasn’t a notable loss.

            But smell.

            Her lungs expanded only out of habit and only when she thought about how in reality she would be breathing. No air gets drawn into her lungs, no particles of scent drift on any breezes… Even the smells of her own body are absent, as there’s no air through which the scents can be conveyed or forces by which to convey them.

            Ahsoka can’t remember how she wound up back here, and she can’t remember what she was doing before… or even what she’d been trying to do before…

            She isn’t given time to sort through any of her half-remembered flashes of jumbled up context crumbs. The world between worlds is a riot of happenings— still empty and vast and hushed by a pervasive gravitas, but somehow overflowing with compressed details.

            All relevant, and distant, and poignant, and necessary.

            Ahsoka hears the echoes of a distraught young Anakin calling out to someone unseen.

                        ‘What if I need you?’

            She hears Anakin screaming for Padme, shouting for Ahsoka herself…

                        She hears the awful whine-click-hiss of the respirator keeping Vader half alive.

            She hears a bitter old version of a hard-hearted Obi-Wan telling a youngling to keep their distance and to just go home.

            She hears that broken version of Obi-Wan’s heart wring itself out.

            She hears his fear.

                        ‘You can’t be here’

                        ‘He will never be yours’

            And his grief.

                        ‘He was a good man, your father, one of the greatest men I have ever had the privilege of meeting’

            The jumbled, half-distorted bits of something not unlike a memory get swept away before Ahsoka can make any sense of them.

            She feels the shudder of explosions, tastes the acrid grit of smoke.

                        Anakin’s little girl diving in head first to save the galaxy, not a beat of pause.

            She hears laughter at wedding in the distant future.

                        Padme’s daughter tying her Fate to a hot-headed fly-boy with a good heart.

            The child of her dear friends learning how to rely on friends of her own, both gaining new allies and finding ways to re-inspire old ones.

                        ‘Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope...’

            Ahsoka feels the heat of twin suns and the ache of frustration leaching into the Force.

                        Padme’s little boy stepping up to support his family even as he bucks at the constraints of responsibility and sneaks off on his own to dream of what bigger things might be possible in a galaxy built to be better.

            She tastes salt on the wind and feels the warmth of brewing tea inside the cozy darkness of a well-insulated hut.

                        Anakin’s son taking a moment alone, the laughter of the children in his care and under his tutelage echoing in bright shrieks and playful peals beyond the thick stone walls.

            Those same walls, but decades later…

                        A girl sits in the damp chill, her fierce kindness and aggressive optimism building a connection to Anakin’s grandchild— helping the boy who’d been lost, who’d been tormented by the weight of Legacy slowly find his way back to the Light.

            Tunnels and war trenches and dark corners where hope isn't cultivated so much as it's carved, scraped into bedrock by bloody, broken fingernails.

                        Rebellions are built on Hope…

            Suddenly, she stands beside a younger Obi-Wan as he stares up at the cold marble face of a statue— an elegant rendering of Padme, but so inadequate as it fails to capture any of her true kindness, as it fails to depict her stunning ferocity as warmth.

                        ‘A very dear friend’

            Ahsoka can feel the waves of his grief bleeding out into the Force.

            She sees the tightness in the corners of his eyes, sees the flinch of muscle in his jaw.

                        ‘Where did we go wrong?’

            Her hand reaches out towards him of its own accord.

            It falls through Obi-Wan’s shoulder and lands on the curve of an armored back.

            Rex.

            His head is bowed over his knees, hands clasped in tight fists between them.

            He has a brother with him, to Ahsoka’s great relief.

            It’s Commander Wolff, of the 104^th— one of Rex’s closest Ori’vod, one of Ahsoka’s first friends.

            There’s a Jedi there too, Master Plo Koon.

            Ahsoka can feel the plastoid of Rex’s armor, but the edges of the scene look blurry. The words her dearest friend is speaking— some sort of situation report, it seems, on a mission gone very far sideways— sound like they’re being spoken underwater, and at a great distance.

            Rex looks devastated as she comes around to crouch in front of him.

            She puts her hands on either side of his face and tries to force him to look at her.

            And then she’s tumbling forward, back into the Void.

            Ahsoka lands on her feet, but sways wildly off-balance in the disorienting environment of the world between worlds. Gravity means less, but the bodily ingrained memory of it is still too much to just ignore.

            She manages not to fall again, but only just.

            There’s a bright green convor perched on the lintel of the doorway set before her.

            Morai blinks and then cheeps expectantly.

            The scene within the door is a dim-lit room, viewed at an odd angle.

            Ahsoka steels herself and steps inside.

            Before she’s fully crossed the threshold, her awareness jolts back into her body.

            Her eyes flick open to stare at the ceiling of the infirmary, barely visible in the dim blue glow of the ship’s night cycle.

            Her dream – or vision? – is still with her, the details just as sharp and fragmented as they’d been while she’d been asleep.

            She must have made a sound when she’d awoken, because mere seconds after regaining consciousness she finds that Fives is leaning over her with a warm grin.

            “Well, look at you, Commander,” he greets. “How’re you feeling on this fine slice of just past midnight in the middle of nowhere?”

            “I’m good, Fives,” she tells him, promising, “Better than I’ve been the last couple days.”

            Fives arches an eyebrow. “That would be much more comforting if a) I believed you, and b) the bar for accomplishing that weren’t set quite so low.”

            “Worth a try,” Ahsoka retorts, cracking a smile.

            She lets the moment settle into her bones, enjoying it for as long as she can before letting her smile fade as she asks, “How’re the others?”

            “The 501^st is doing well enough, staying professional and calm. They’re all pretty unhappy with the situation, obviously,” Fives reports blithely. “Rex and the Generals are still unconscious, but their vitals are all strong and steady.”

            “I think I might know how to help them,” Ahsoka ventures cautiously, trying not to stare down at the cuffs around her wrists in accusation.

            She knows why they tied her down like this.

            She would’ve done the same to any of them, if necessary.

            But she’s not out of control anymore… And with things going as starkly sideways as they are, she really shouldn’t just be sitting here like an invalid.

            There’s a heavy sigh beside her— one too serious to be from the Fives she remembers and yet too overly dramatic to be from anyone else.

            “I really shouldn’t let you go, you know,” he leads, already moving towards the latched drawer where they’ve stashed the key. “But the people who laid down that law should’ve thought of that before leaving me in charge, so really this is entirely on them.”

            “You’re in charge, huh?”

            “Well, with the Generals and the Captain taking naps and both medics out to lunch, and Commander Cody actually doing all of our jobs… Yep, that leaves in charge,” Fives asserts.

            As he unlocks her cuffs with a cheeky grin, Ahsoka asks, “And where’s Echo?”

            “I may have had to shove him in a closet to launch my little coup here, but I’m sure he’ll forgive me. It’s for the greater good after all,” Fives explains as Ahsoka rubs out her sore wrists.

            “Oh yeah, I’m sure he won’t be plotting any elaborate revenge on you or anything like that, he’s definitely just gonna walk it off,” Ahsoka teases.

            Fives offers her a hand and Ahsoka takes it gratefully, reveling in the warmth of his touch at least as much as she uses the hold to actually support her effort to stand.

            He holds his arm out, angled to keep supporting her as he helps her shuffle towards the door to her private suite.

            As he schwicks open the door, he casts a smile her way and then announces to those gathered in the main room of the med bay, “Commander on deck!”

            A cheer goes up for her immediately.

            There aren’t many troopers in the med bay, but there’s a pair of guards just inside the door and another at the foot of each of the three occupied beds, acting as aides to Echo who seems to be running the show in the absence of either Kix or Coric. (They've probably been forced to go rest. And with them absent... Ahsoka doesn't remember who else could possibly still be around to take over. Maybe Echo really IS their closest thing to a Medic on duty at the moment...)

            Her boys are so glad to see her— even to see her looking as weak as she knows she does.

            The sparkling starbursts of their absolute joy flood the Force around her, bolstering her strength, renewing her confidence, and distilling a potent resolve within her spirit.

            Echo’s standing by Rex’s shoulder; before he’d turned to salute her he must’ve been fiddling with the machines monitoring his brain activity.

            Ahsoka side-eyes Fives.

            “Nice closet,” she mentions snidely with a warm grin.

            Echo rolls his eyes, already far too used to being the butt of that particular joke to even pretend to care. “Good to see you up, Commander Tano,” he says.

            With a chuckle, Ahsoka huffs, “Well, I couldn’t miss all the fun, now could I? Even if it does seem like you’ve got everything handled without me.”

            Echo arches an eyebrow and pointedly eyes the three active patients in the med bay— the entire current leadership tier of the 501^st. “Yeah, we’re doing just great on our own,” he deadpans.

            There’s a pause, one that’s both expectant and yet somehow preemptively understanding. These men trust her, have placed their full faith in her leadership, they expect her to have a plan, to have an idea of how to fix things. And even with that levied against her, Ahsoka knows that they understand the unfixable. They’ll understand if she doesn’t have a plan to make things get back wholly on the rails.

            They will do whatever she asks of them.

            Even if she asks them to stand down and just wait.

            Even if it breaks their hearts to have her tell them that she can’t make any of it better.

            But she does have a hairbrained scheme that might help.

            They don’t ask her outright if she has a plan.

            They simply assume she at least has something.

            Slowly, still using Fives as both a crutch and a comfort to support her, Ahsoka makes her way across the room to perch unsteadily at the foot of Rex’s bed.

            With a fond, regretful sigh, she looks over his slack features– still smooth with youth and faith and optimism, despite already showing signs of a deeper weariness.

            “I think I can help them,” she states quietly, keeping her eyes down.

            There’s no overt reaction, no shuffling or heavy breaths, but Ahsoka still feels them respond as vindication and hope twine together and zing out across the Force.

            “Can I talk to Jesse, first?”

            And just like that, the lightness whooshes out from the room.

            “It’s not an order,” Ahsoka assures them. “If you all really are against it, I’ll submit to being outvoted. But you can all stay here for the meeting if you allow it to happen, blasters primed and everything. I owe him— I owe all of you, really— an apology.”

            “You don’t owe us anything, Sir,” Fives asserts.

            There’s a grumble from the background as someone, probably Vaughn, mutters that she owes Jesse less than nothing.

            There’s a quelling glare from Echo, but the Force still resonates with a few ripples of unspoken agreement from several of the other troopers.

            It makes her chest ache.

            She loves these boys. And they so clearly love her right back.

            None of what happened to any of them was any of their faults.

            They’d all just drawn the short straw in a game rigged from the outset.

            “I’m sorry for leaving,” Ahsoka blurts before she loses the nerve to open up that wound.

            Shock radiates out from her brothers.

            “I’m sorry for not saying goodbye,” she follows up. “I… I needed to leave. If I came to see you, if I even stopped to think about seeing you… I don’t think I could’ve left. I—”

            “Commander,” Echo interrupts forcefully. “We missed you. It hurt that you left. It hurt that you didn’t say goodbye or leave us with any explanations, it did. But you did what you needed to do. We’ve always trusted you to make hard calls, Ahsoka. None of us doubted for a second that your leaving was just another hard call.”

            “If it hadn’t been your choice to walk away, we all know there’s nothing in the this whole karking Galaxy that could’ve stopped you from coming back to us,” Fives seconds.

            It does make her feel better, somehow.

            It settles something deep inside her that she’d grown far too used to feeling broken to even recognize how viciously it pained her.

            “I’ll go snag Jesse,” Fives says.

            He gives Ahsoka’s shoulder a squeeze and then zips out the door.

            Appo shuffles closer, technically second in command now that Fives is gone and Echo is acting medic (outranking everyone when needed, but not actually in-Command on anything...)— but Appo's not quite familiar enough with Ahsoka for him to feel comfortable stepping into the Second's slot.

            After Denal died, Appo was the Legion’s Third. He’d always been Anakin’s Second when Rex split off to be Ahsoka’s. She knows and loves him as every bit her brother that any of the others are, but they had never built quite the same kind of casual rapport.

            He went with Anakin to the Jedi Temple; Commander Appo had been right there with the newly minted Darth Vader as the Temple was sacked in the execution of Order 66.

            Ahsoka didn’t know if he’d been cut down by a Jedi in the tail end of that attack or if he’d survived to be cut down sometime a bit later as Vader systematically hunted down any Jedi lucky enough to escape the initial slaughter. She wasn’t entirely sure it had been a Jedi, but it had certainly been a lightsaber. The sensation of her brothers being silenced forever by the weapon most accustomed to her own hands was one she’d developed a viciously distinct familiarity with.

            “Leadership suits you well, Appo,” Ahsoka praises warmly. “When Rex and Anakin finally get their acts together for long enough to promote Rex into my old spot, you really do deserve the Captaincy.”

            “I could only do my best, Sir,” he hedges, preening and proud, but still terribly shy, “If I were ever asked to step up.”

            “You do right by your men, and you’re good at finding the best possible solution when impossible problems present themselves,” Ahsoka affirms.

            Appo awkwardly shifts his weight between his feet at the praise.

            Before he can summon up the right words to demur and push the compliment aside, the med bay door schwicks open again to readmit Fives, with Jesse being hauled along forcibly in tow by Fives’s grip on his wrist.

            Jesse won’t fight his Ori’vod here, but it’s very clear that without the physical connection of Fives literally dragging him along, Jesse would’ve been more than happy to disobey his superior (and trusted older brother)’s direct orders, to take potentially drastic action to avoid this meeting.

            Fives drags Jesse to the middle of the med bay, points him at Ahsoka, and then steps back just far enough to make it seem like Jesse’s not actively under guard.

            (That illusion is not one his other brothers are inclined to share; Vaughn and Kano and Kicker have all openly drawn their weapons, and two others have their hands resting ‘casually’ on their unsecured holsters.)

            ((Really, the weapons should be aimed at Ahsoka, by her own assessment. She’s the real threat in this scenario. Jesse hadn’t actually tried to hurt her, and he wouldn’t be in a position that forced him to attempt hurting her for at least another few weeks. Meanwhile, she’d nearly choked the life out of him, despite all of her moral high-ground nonsense about accepting their deaths but never being the one to kill them…))

            Jesse won’t look at Ahsoka.

            Even when he snaps a belated salute as he realizes that he’s been presented to his Commander, Jesse looks up only as far as Ahsoka’s shins.

            “At ease, Jesse,” Ahsoka coaxes gently.

            Jesse moves into a stiff imitation of parade rest and keeps his eyes down.

            “Could you come here, please,” she asks in soft tones, adding, “I’d come to you, but I’m not sure I could make it that far without a stumble and with everyone so trigger happy right now, I think we should limit the quick, unexpected movement potential as much as possible.”

            Jesse inches closer, keeping his head still but clearly using the HUD inside his helmet to track the movements of the other clones in the room— the tension between them all ramping up with every inch closer Jesse gets.

            With a few more coaxing requests, Ahsoka gets Jesse to move within arm’s reach.

            She has to stand up to reach, but she can manage that on her own with just the support of Rex’s bed behind her.

            Her hands go to the sides of Jesse’s helmet.

            Slowly, she presses the disarm buttons and carefully releases the hidden catches to unseal the marvel of modern technology that all her brothers hide behind when they’re anxious.

            Lifting the helmet gingerly, and giving Jesse plenty of time to adjust and mentally steel himself, Ahsoka reveals his face.

            She sets the helmet on the bed behind her and places her hands on either side of Jesse’s taught expression. She doesn’t ask him to look at her in words. She simply strokes a comforting thumb over his cheekbones and waits him out.

            When Jesse eventually caves in and makes a fleeting bit of eye contact, Ahsoka smiles warmly at him— pushes love and reassurance into the Force towards him.

            (For all the clones think they’re resistant to Jedi tricks, and in practice they truly are, even they aren’t entirely above the influence of strong, pointed emotions. Especially positive ones. Ahsoka can’t control a clone’s mindset, but she can offer their very souls a comfort.)

            “I’m sorry, Jesse,” she tells him in a whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

            “It’s alright, Commander,” Jesse returns immediately, almost inaudible for how mumbled and low volume the words come out. “You thought I was a threat and you did what you had to in dealing with that threat.”

            “I did,” she owns. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t be sorry.”

            There’s a beat of silence in which the Force ripples with a wave of the clones’ rampant disagreement. They all consider her near-fratricide to be completely justified.

            “And regardless, I need you to understand that I never blamed you,” Ahsoka tells him earnestly. “The threat I believed you posed was never one you levied voluntarily. You were coerced into it. Along with a great many others. You all are resistant to mind-tricks, but you aren’t immune… and the Sith who wanted me dead is more powerful than anything you can possibly imagine. You didn’t stand a chance against what he did to you.”

            Overtly, very little changes in the room.

            But the tension settles down in slow, cautious increments as each clone comes around to accepting that Ahsoka’s assertion of Jesse’s blamelessness bears substantial merit.

            “You all deserve so much better than you’ve ever gotten, and I’m sorry that I didn’t realize it soon enough to do much of anything about it,” Ahsoka says.

            She shifts her eyes to meet Fives’s gaze. “If you find something wrong with the system, trust your gut. Trust your brothers. And don’t ever let yourself be convinced that you’re alone.”

            Fives is frowning as he accepts her warning with a nod.

            “Even those who are earnestly trying to do good can accidentally forward evil’s aims and the Jedi have lost themselves in the mire,” Ahsoka continues, finishing, “Also, Obi-Wan is entirely right about politicians: none of them are trustworthy right now, not even our friends really… they won’t keep anything quiet. They’ll attempt to collaborate and to bring the evil hidden in the shadows out into the open as a way of trying to make things better. All they can really do, though, is spring the trap. If you find something wrong, trust our Family first, just our Family… and even when you have to go up the chain of command, make sure that the Family is equipped to take action without outside Command approval. Spread the Intel, give everyone a chance and the tools to figure it out themselves. Make sure no goes it alone. Sol’yc aliit.”

            Family first.

            As grave as the pronouncement deserves, Fives nods again.

            Ahsoka doesn’t know if she’s given him enough to change things, or if she’s given him too much and will push him to act too rashly too soon…

            Honestly, she doesn’t know enough about the specifics of what happened to really have any means of guessing where the lines are that separate enough from too much or too little.

            Ahsoka lets herself feel the wave of grief that kicks up inside her at the thought of what her boys will soon be facing. She feels it, accepts its Truth as part of her, and then lets it go.

            “Now, I think I’ve got an idea for how to help our idiots in bed, here,” Ahsoka chirps in transition as she hands Jesse back his bucket and retakes her seat on Rex’s bed.

            “How can we help?”

            Ahsoka looks at Echo, smiling as she embraces his warm determination— a vibrant press of emotion mirrored in all of his brothers.

            “You can clear the room,” Ahsoka informs him, keeping her sadness at bay.

            This might be a new goodbye, but it’s a chance to see them at all that she could’ve never elsewise let herself imagine might be possible. As much as she doesn’t want to leave, seeing them at all has been a tremendous gift.

            And she owes it to them, and to her past-self, to do what she can to make things better.

            Anakin might not be on a path moving towards the Light, but no one deserves to be condemned for the horror that they might commit.

            Maybe she can still get through to him, or maybe she can help Obi-Wan get through to him… or maybe not. Even if she can do nothing, it would be unforgivable to simply not try. And likewise unforgivable to remove the dignity of his Choice by assuming he will make the wrong one...

            Echo stares her down, far too knowingly.

            But then he orders everyone who can walk to get their shebs out of his med bay.

            Fives doesn’t move, and Echo only takes a few steps so that he’s shoulder to shoulder with his batchmate. The others might not have picked up on it, but these ARCs both know that Ahsoka believes this might be a goodbye. Real and final.

            Ahsoka stares them down with the profound serenity of finally understanding Yoda’s unfortunately reductive platitudes on attachment.

            She loves her brothers. And they love her just as fiercely.

            They will miss her when she goes as she has missed them all these years.

            But that love, and the ache of loss it brings, isn’t something to fear and it hasn’t made either party at this farewell so fearful of it that they’ll step into the dark.

            There is a truly glorious freedom to be found in loving someone so wholly and honestly and thoroughly that whether they are with you or not is almost secondary.

            Ahsoka has to go.

            Fives and Echo have to stay.

            They understand each other well enough that there’s not even a thought between them to attempt staying together here.

            They can all let each other go.

            But not without one last hug since the Force has granted them the chance for it.

            Fives moves first, yanking Echo along behind, but releasing him before they get to Ahsoka. Fives has her lifted off her feet and wrapped securely in his arms— her own clinging tightly to his neck. Echo joins in before Fives releases her, squeezes them both tight, and then lingers as Fives slips out of the embrace to encapsulate Ahsoka in his own heartfelt hold.

            When Ashoka is set back on her feet, she feels better than she has in over a decade— despite the tears threatening to clog up her throat.

            “I’ll see you around, boys, one way or another,” she promises.

            “Sure thing, Commander,” Fives accepts. “We’ll be waiting for ya.”

            “Take care of yourself, Commander, and I’ll keep this idiot alive for you,” Echo says.

            With an admonishing grin, Ahsoka chides, “Take care of yourself, too, Echo. And take care of any new kih’vod who need you.”

            “We’ll do our best, Ahsoka,” Fives swears.

            “Aliit ori’shya tal’din,” Echo seconds.

            Family is more than blood.

            With that, Fives and Echo leave Ahsoka to the med bay.

            Not quite empty, and never really silent, the med bay presents its usual odd mix of hopefulness and heartbreak as memories flit by of patients who both won and lost in any number of incidents that became a struggle for survival.

            Ahsoka sighs and lets the melancholy of it go.

            She twists around and slides her whole body onto Rex’s bed, lying down beside him. One arm gets thrown over his chest so that she can rest her head on the pillow beside him while still having her hands on each side of his head.

            Ahsoka closes her eyes and gently presses her forehead to his.

            A few deep breaths and she’s dropping into meditation.

            Her mind is focused on the world between worlds and Rex’s current door within it.

            Morai cheeps and she looks up to see the convor perched on a lintel with her feathers puffed up with approval that Ahsoka had figured out what she needed to do here.

            Ahsoka smiles up at the colorful bird / mystic Force entity, and then steps through the doorway into the late afternoon sun of… of Shili.

            She’s at the edge of a Republic camp, not quite a GAR outpost, but a precursor to one.

            It’s not hard to find Rex.

            He’s seated on a cargo bin just off to the side of where the door Ahsoka stepped through had spat her out. Rex is sprawled out and as comfortable as Ahsoka’s ever seen him.

            “Heya, Rexster,” Ahsoka calls out from a safe distance to avoid startling him.

            He doesn’t jump to attention, but he doesn’t quite look happy to see her either.

            “Am I dead? Is that what’s happening here?”

            “Nope, you’re still as strong as ever— your body is, at least. And Kix has you hooked up to all the medical equipment he’s got on hand to make sure it stays that way,” Ahsoka informs him.

            Rex sighs and turns back to look at what had held his attention before Ahsoka appeared.

            It’s her.

            As a youngling, barely tall enough to measure halfway up Wolffe’s thigh— but precocious enough to have already established dominance and asserted her right to simply ride on the Commander’s strong, sturdy shoulders.

            Jedi Master Plo Koon is a full head and a half shorter than her from her favored position and he’s in the midst of explaining something to her with a playfully elaborate seriousness.

            “You’re an adorable little cadet, So’ika,” Rex teases. “A right precious little tyrant.”

            Chagrined, Ahsoka rocks back on her heels. “Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.”

            “Best vacation I’ve ever had,” Rex confirms.
            Then he pushes to his feet with a heavy weariness, balanced by his ever-present willingness to do whatever he can to help.

            “So, how do we do… this?”

            “Jedi osik,” Ahsoka purrs. “You don’t have to do much. Just hang on to my hand. You might feel a weird tug.”

            Rolling his eyes, Rex takes a firm grip on Ahsoka’s hands, muttering, “Yeah, because the ‘normal’ tugs you Jedi use to yank us all across the battlefield aren’t weird at all.”

            Ahsoka simply smiles and focuses on the world between worlds again.

            The door opens up behind her and she hauls Rex backwards with her as she gets pulled through. She blinks and they’re both standing in the middle of the usual colorless crossroads.

            Satisfied that her plan worked, she releases Rex’s hand and smiles at him.

            He’s looking around with a skeptical brow raised, but he’s not even a little frightened.

            Morai swoops down to land on Ahsoka’s shoulder, nuzzling up against her montral.

            “This pretty girl is Morai,” Ahsoka introduces. “She’ll guide you to the door that will take you back to where you’re supposed to be.”

            “Nah.”

            “Rex.”

            “Yes, Commander?”

            “You don’t belong here,” Ahsoka chides.

            With a cheeky grin, Rex retorts, “Neither do you. And since I’m pretty sure you’re going after the 501^st’s one remaining Jedi and that di’kut’s own Ori’vod, I think I’ll stick around to help with the actual rescue part of this rescue mission.”

            Ahsoka crosses her arms and scowls playfully at him, barely able to hold a pretense of the rebuke she ought to be giving him.

            “Fine, then,” she cedes eventually. “We’d better get moving then, I think we’ve got kind of a long walk in front of us.”

            They fall into an easy banter as they walk side by side through the illogical nothingness that serves to hold the rest of everything securely together.