Chapter Text
Anakin has emergency credits on hand, but Republic currency is going to be difficult to offload to anyone who’s actually staying on planet. He has some peggats, a just in case measure he never fully outgrew, and one he is grateful for now. He saves the peggats for later, and drags Ahsoka Soka to the spaceport to find a more appropriate set of clothing for her. A few of the traders here do take credits, as they spend enough time going back and forth that they generally need both currencies in their coinpurse. It won’t work for everything, but fabrics and food and water are in supply here.
Soka complains, even whines a little, but he knows it’s mostly the heat and the dawning grief that they are slowly coming to terms with as a group. He lets her have a little bratting for her own good, as a teenager in a horrible situation. He still makes her get better clothing. Togruta are just as sensitive to solar radiation and the associated risk of cancer as humans.
“Ugh, I look like Obi-Wan,” she asserts.
“Not all beige is Obi-Wan,” Anakin tells her. He passes over the haggled price to the trader. He’s lucky in that his money is worth more now than it would be in a decade and a half, so everything certainly feels cheaper. Still more than he’s comfortable with, but it’s the cost of doing business. “You can wear your burgundy as a base layer, and the belt.”
“I don’t like beige,” Soka says. “It clashes with my markings.”
“Cheaper than white, and it reflects the sun better than dark colors,” Anakin reminds her, far from the first time. “I’m getting some too, you know.”
She sticks her tongue out at him.
It’s not just the color that she objects to, but that’s a safer point of contention than the loose and flowing shape of these clothes, or the fairly rough weave. It’s smoother than most of what can be purchased locally, unless one has far more funds than Anakin is willing to expend before he can secure a building and his family’s freedom; it’s also more expensive than the slave fabrics, but he can push the budget a tiny bit here on the Republic credits side. It’ll soften with a few washings, anyway, and the main concern he’s got is for temperature regulation and blocking the sun.
The shape… he doesn’t want her targeted for kidnapping. If she fights them off, she risks getting noticed by Gardulla and Jabba. If she doesn’t fight them off, Anakin will probably kill someone to get her back.
Shmi could probably talk him out of it. Rex might not bother.
At any rate, kidnappings are bad. Wear the shapeless dresses. Anakin got some for himself and the rest of them, too.
“What’s next?” Soka asks.
“Water,” he tells her. “Buying it from off-planet isn’t always easy for locals, but it’s the best option for using our remaining credits without losing most of it to currency exchange fees. Some food if we find it cheap, but water is probably still going to give us the most clang for our credits.”
Soka makes a face. Anakin ignores it.
They shop around, each carrying more and more products without a floating carrier for it. They get looks, of course, but nobody is too willing to ask why they’re not having difficulty with such weight. Too many options, and half of them are deadly to the asker.
Anakin’s comm rings. He picks up.
“Hey, General,” Rex’s too-easy voice greets, “tell me, how much trouble would I get if I shot someone?”
--
Someone had tried to pick Rex’s pocket. Unlike most people, Rex had noticed. Like some people, he had grabbed the offending hand, stared the person down, and waited for them to scurry off scared. Like most people, he’d not intended for it to get physical.
Anakin finds Rex kneeling on someone’s back with a blaster to their skull. He doesn’t recognize the individual, but it’s been some fifteen years since this day, and if they’d died tomorrow, it would have been just as long since he’d seen them. There’s a bit of a crowd around, though most of the onlookers are just locals doing their thing and glancing over every little bit to make sure they’re ready to duck if things go pear-shaped.
“Nice day, General,” Rex says. “Bit of a problem.”
“I can see that,” Anakin says. “What’s the situation?”
“Every time I tried to get up and let him run off to the skughole he crawled out of, he tries to pull a weapon on me,” Rex says. That explains the blades and blasters laying just out of arm’s reach. “Stopped trying to let him leave about when I called. Not sure who I’d piss off if I did damage with a stunner, so I figured I’d ask you.”
“Uh-huh,” Anakin says. “Well, depends on who they work for. Hey sleemo, are you one of Gardulla’s? Jabba’s?”
The rodian bares his teeth and tries to snarl. It’s not very intimidating.
“You on something?” Anakin prods. “Can’t imagine why else you’d try fighting a Mandalorian that already kicked your ass.”
“Get karked.”
Anakin snorts. “Nice. Soka, watch the stuff a moment?”
He puts his portion of the spoils down and walks over, putting his heel on the man’s back and gesturing for Rex to stand. The captain does, keeping his blaster trained on the man’s head, and steps back a few paces.
“I’m going to let you stand up,” Anakin says, calm and clear, and aware of the growing number of eyes on their dilemma, “and you are going to leave, because my friend here still has his blaster aimed at you. He’s been very nice, you see, in that he hasn’t shot you, and you are going to thank him by getting the kriff out of here. Got it?”
The Rodian twists and tries to spit on Anakin’s other leg. It doesn’t reach, but only because Anakin misdirected it with the Force.
“Right,” Anakin says, “Plan Besh.”
He grabs a pair of the cuffs he’s always got in case he finally, finally manages to get Ventress, and puts them on the little criminal. He hauls the man to his feet. “Time to go!”
He isn’t sure what the situation is, but he has a hunch and follows it.
(There are only so many reasons someone would try to pickpocket a Mandalorian, then try to fight him, and then try to goad them into killing him.)
(Anakin would feel bad about this, but really, the man had the chance to walk away so many times.)
The rodian struggles, more and more, as they get nearer the betting office.
Rex has started carrying Anakin’s portion of the goods. Unlike Soka, he does not have, or need, the Force to help carry it.
“I’m guessing this one owes something to the bookie?” Anakin asks, shaking the rodian a little in front of the twi’lek at the counter.
The twi’lek pops some gum and looks the captured thief up and down. “Yep. The boss idn’t put out a bounty on him yet, though, the sum isn’t that much.”
“He tried robbing my associate,” Anakin says, “and then refused to get away when we offered the option unless we shot him. I figured… well. Probably had something to do with gambling debts.”
“Always does,” the twi’lek sighs. Anakin notes the little earrings, gunmetal plated in flaking fake gold, and the leather armor, and decides freeman, but not particularly wealthy or poor. As close to middle class as Tatooine gets, in the cities. Probably not a slaver, but not enslaved either. Just surviving, in a job that is mostly numbers and credits. The twi’lek lifts the flip-up counter separating him from the little lobby, and activates an energy shield behind them to block off the workspace from anyone who might get funny ideas about stealing from their employer. Burlier than he first seemed, the twi’lek grabs the rodian and throws him over one shoulder to haul off to whatever holding cells they have.
“Er, can I have my cuffs back?” Anakin asks.
The twi’lek pauses, thinks, and says, “give me two minutes.”
Anakin gets his cuffs back.
--
Soka knows something is wrong with Skyguy and his ‘sister,’ but she doesn’t really have the right to pry. It’s private family stuff, for all that she’s part of the family now, and she can tell when she’s being excluded on purpose.
Rex isn’t a great liar. He can trick the kid, sure, but Soka’s too old for that.
“Like this,” she says, walking little Ani through the stretches she learned as a crècheling. She thinks she could probably teach him to meditate, but probably Skyguy wants to do that himself. Stretching is easier to teach a kid anyway, because it gets them moving, and there’s nothing a little kid likes as much as the chance to get all that energy out.
A wave of something dark comes from the second floor, and she winces. Not her business. Not her business.
She thinks it was guilt. Betrayal? Something complicated. There’s only so much most Jedi can get from the Force about emotion, and she’s not that good at it. Even when she has a force bond with the person in question, it’s just… too vague.
It’s like if someone asked her to pinpoint a chord she heard. She can tell them it’s low or high, maybe hum one of the notes back if it lasted long enough to remember, but matching it to a different instrument or to a symbol on a page? Not so much. With the Force and emotion, she can get if it’s fear or anger or sadness, as the three biggest ‘buckets’ of negative emotions, but anything more specific is a bust. Positive emotions are larger buckets, like joy or fondness, and then there’s the murky middle area where things like lust and determination lurk, which are sometimes so vague that she just knows that the emotion is strong but not what it is. Negative emotions are psychologically cold, and positive emotions are warm, and the middle space is just… Very There.
She once heard that humans can’t ‘feel wet,’ just temperature and texture. She thinks maybe it’s like that.
Soka knows it’s a bad emotion, and that it’s at least a little bit fear and anger. Beyond that is beyond her.
“I can’t reach,” Ani complains, and she snaps her focus back to him.
“Neither can Rex,” Soka teases, hoping the kid didn’t notice the nature of her distraction.
Rex, who is on the floor with them, rolls his eyes. He definitely can’t wrap his hand around the bottom of his foot and touch his nose to his leg without bending a knee, but as he likes to remind Soka, he doesn’t need to. Very few people need to.
Anakin jokes that she doesn’t have bones, but really, it’s just that she’s a teenager, and spent a very long time keeping herself in good shape in order to fight and dance in the Jedi tradition.
She adjusts herself and little Ani tries to copy. Rex does his own version, and nudges the kid to copy him instead of Soka, since it could pull something to mimic her too much.
A door upstairs creaks open and shut again. Steps pass them by, someone leaving through the front door without even stopping in.
Given the mass of the person in her hindbrain, she’s given to guess it was Skyguy.
“Soka?” Little Ani asks.
Ah, he noticed. “It’s nothing. Your uncle just stepped out to do something, I think.”
“Do what?”
Soka shrugs. “No idea. I know him pretty well, but I can’t read his mind, you know.”
Ani sticks his tongue out at her. She pretends to reach for it to pinch, and he jerks back with a giggle.
Lucky he didn’t bite himself. Whoops.
Something chilly is coming from upstairs. Not quite cold, and much more subdued than Skyguy, but still… if she had hair, it would be standing on end.
Whatever it is that Anakin talked to his sister-mom about, it made her upset, too.
Rex meets her eyes, but doesn’t ask. Soka really hopes she won’t have to mediate whatever this is.
She misses Master Kenobi, and Master Koon. She needs a real adult, and right now, she doesn’t think Master Skywalker counts.
--
Rex isn’t too surprised when Miss Shmi comes down, looking troubled and even like she’s been crying recently—though that part is a bit concerning, since she doesn’t seem the type to tear up much—and asks to speak with him in the hall.
“I hate to ask this of you, but I’m worried about Anakin, after…”
“He stormed off?” Rex guesses. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“No,” Shmi says, “but he said I probably needed some time to think, and he wanted to clear his head. He told me some things that… I wouldn’t like to discuss, not without digesting it, but I don’t know where he went and I’m worried he might do something impulsive. He seems reckless, and I don’t know this Anakin well enough to predict him.”
Rex doesn’t think anyone knows General Skywalker well enough to predict him. “I’ll see if I can find him, ma’am. If you want to discuss it with someone, the General said he wouldn’t stop me from asking.”
“I’ll see with him first,” Shmi says. “Thank you for looking for him.”
“Not at all a problem,” Rex tells her. “The kids should probably be getting to bed anyway, yeah?”
She smiles weakly, but nods. It’s a bit of an exaggeration, at least in regards to Soka, because sixteen is a far cry from six, but Rex doubts there’ll be too much pushback.
He dons his helmet and heads on out.
--
Rex finds Anakin in quick order. He does not approach. He waits for whatever this is to be over.
The Trandoshan in Skywalker’s headlock—large, female, and covered in battlescars—writhes and snarls under the much smaller Jedi. There’s a small crowd around, some silent and others jeering, and Skywalker is the cold kind of calm as he orders her to forfeit.
It takes a little too long. It doesn’t seem anyone on Tatooine is all that fond of bowing to the order to give in, even someone like the bounty hunter in front of him, who Rex wants to guess is ‘freeborn,’ maybe even from off-planet. When she finally does give in, the General lets her up almost immediately, and holds out a hand.
Three peggats fall into his hand, the trandoshan cursing him out. He seems unimpressed, and turns to the rest. “Anyone else want a go?”
Rex coughs, the way General Kenobi did when he wanted to politely get the attention of a room.
“Oh, the Mando wants a turn,” someone cackles.
“Your sister’s worried,” Rex says aloud, and the rising murmur changes tone. “Want to share what you’re doing?”
“Picking fights with anyone willing to risk the cash,” Anakin says. He’s a little scuffed, but Rex doubts there’s more than a bruise or two on him. “We need lodging, and soon.”
“And you decided to fight for it?” Rex asks.
Anakin shrugs, stretching out his neck and ambling closer. “It’s a fast return. And I’m good at it.”
“You’re good at other things.”
“Doesn’t feel like it,” Anakin scoffs, low enough that maybe nobody heard him, but it’s hardly a sure thing.
Rex frowns, for all that nobody can see it. “Let’s find somewhere private?”
“I can probably squeeze a few more coins out of these idiots without too much trouble,” Anakin argues.
Rex puts a hand on his General’s shoulder, and tries to remind himself that they are ostensibly equals now. “Let’s go, Anakin.”
“Rex—”
“Your sister’s worried,” Rex repeats from earlier. “You wanna fight, do it another day.”
The small crowd is getting smaller, a few wandering off as they decide there won’t be any more fights, and others getting a little louder to try and drag another fight out of Anakin. A few call for Rex himself.
Anakin’s face goes through a few expressions, only half of which Rex can really read, and then he starts walking past Rex.
Fucks’ sake.
He rolls his shoulders, turns on his heel, and follows.
--
The suns are setting, low enough for the shadows to cover most everything, and the heat to leech slowly from the earth and air into nothingness. Rex’s suit can do a lot, but when he takes his helmet off for a heart-to-heart like this, it’s still hellish.
He grew up on a water planet. Tatooine is the opposite of Kamino and he’s not inclined to disagree with General Skywalker about how bad this ‘ball of dust’ is.
“Before the war,” Anakin says, “I was tasked with guarding Senator Amidala. We went to Naboo to hide her at her family’s estate, and I was… distracted.”
The silence looms.
“By flirting with her?” Rex guesses.
“That too,” Anakin mutters. “I had these… dreams. Visions.”
Every word seems torn from him. It looks, and sounds, painful.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Rex says.
“I do,” Anakin insists, “because—because if my mom—if Shmi’s opinion is… if you think differently about it, then maybe I’m not wrong. Maybe I’m not… I’m not a monster.”
Rex’s mouth twists. “She called you that?”
“No,” Anakin says, “but she might as well have. The horror she projected was…”
He trails off again.
Okay.
Well, fuck it. Rex has followed this man into danger more times than he can count, and it’s not like he hasn’t seen some dodgy behavior. Whatever. “Tell me, then.”
Rex is silent, as the General goes over the story. Dreams and visions. Flying to Tatooine. Finding his stepfamily, and finding out just what happened. Finding his mother, half-dead of torture.
“She died in my arms,” Anakin tells him, voice raw and rough and eating from the inside. “And the Dark… I was so angry.”
“You fell,” Rex says.
“Not for long,” Anakin says. “But long enough.”
Rex waits.
“I killed them. All of them. Not just the men, but the women and children, too.”[1]
Rex’s mind catches on the sexism for a moment, and then he dismisses it. There are bigger concerns about this whole situation.
His General has killed children.
Not just incidentally, as the collateral damage of a war where they don’t always manage to evacuate people before buildings start coming down. Not just as a failure to arrive in time, like when the Seppies had carpet bombed villages on Ryloth, and the Jedi couldn’t stop them. Not something forced while undercover, or as a slave child with no other option.
Anakin Skywalker, as an adult, had killed children for nothing but petty revenge.
“You killed children,” Rex repeats.
Anakin is quiet. The silence lasts eons. Rex watches him. Anakin does not meet his eyes, merely staring at the horizon with eyelashes dotted by half-shed tears.
The rays of these setting suns would make the man beautiful, if not for what Rex has just learned about him.
“I did,” Anakin finally says.
Rex understands why he didn’t want Ahsoka to know.
“I am not going to call you a monster,” Rex says, “but what you did is monstrous. I don’t think you’ll be able to convince almost anyone otherwise.”
“The chancellor said he understood. Padmé said—”
“Palpatine lied,” Rex cuts him off, because he’s never quite liked the man anyway, and he’s spent a few days coming to terms with not being in his chain of command anymore, “and my guess would be that Senator Amidala cared more for calming you than for making you face your actions.”
“You don’t understand, they—”
“I don’t have to,” Rex interrupts. He can’t let this build. He can’t—he can’t be Kenobi or Yoda or Secura or Amidala, but he’ll have to do. “I just need to understand your sister.”
It’s the right phrase to make Anakin stop.
Rex waits. And waits. And waits.
“I’m not a monster,” Anakin says. It’s quiet, breathy, and very much like he’s trying to convince himself, rather than Rex.
There isn’t a good answer. Rex does his best. “You’ll have to prove it.”
[1] Non-Tuskens on Tatooine are presented with an inaccurate gender dichotomy. While they have a reproductive system similar to many other binary sexed species, they presentation to the outer world does not reflect those biological functions. Rather, Tuskens are outwardly only distinguishable as Warrior and Non-Warrior. By and large, Tatooine locals have taken to referring to the warrior group as the men, and the non-warriors as the women, reflecting general galactic norms, though those norms are not applicable to the Tuskens as a group.
One of the most nitpicky little things about AotC for me is the fact that Anakin says "not just the men, but the women and children too" because it's a very Real World Gender Thing for a guy who grew up surrounded by women who could kick his ass.
So I came up with my own explanation.
(Yes I know there are much, much bigger problems with him in that moment but this one is so small and stupid and I hate it.)