Chapter Text
They trudge through the desert, dragging their feet through the cooling sand. Rex tries not to let it trip him up, but they’re running out of water and he’s tired. They should take a break soon and nap while they can. Thankfully, Tatooine’s suns aren’t in the sky during nighttime and that gives them several hours of cooler temperatures in which it’s easier to travel.
Unfortunately, the dark also makes it harder to navigate, even with the help of their HUDs.
“Rex, are you absolutely sure about this?” Wolffe asks. It’s not the first time he’s asked this, and if Rex is being honest with himself, he’s starting to get a little tired of it. Of course, he understands Wolffe’s hesitance. Wolffe went through a lot within the Empire, and he remembers what it was he and his men did to General Koon.
Rex understands why this particular venture wouldn’t be quite up Wolffe’s alley.
“Yes, ori’vod,” Rex sighs and continues walking through the seemingly endless sands. “Besides, Fulcrum’s right. We need to be in contact with the general. We’re the only ones she trusts to find him.”
Wolffe grumbles but doesn’t argue.
Gregor is oddly quiet.
They walk for hours yet, despite how they’ve already been walking for what felt like a lifetime. The desert has a way of altering time that Rex isn’t exactly a fan of.
The coordinates Ahsoka was able to provide them with aren’t specific. They’re a general location. They indicate an area in which they might find their quarry. It’s not comforting, exactly, knowing that they may trek all the way out there just to find nothing but sand and maybe some rocks. But Rex hopes - feels in his bones - that they’ll find him.
After all, Rex has missed him.
They pass a dark moisture farm. The family that lives there must be asleep this late at night. Had it been the daytime, Rex might have stopped, asked what they know about an old hermit living alone out in the desert. But it isn’t, and the general’s covered his tracks well. If a Jedi doesn’t want to be found, they won’t be.
So they continue past and as they do, something whispers in Rex’s mind that they’ll be back. He shakes that away like all the other whispers that have told him things over the years. It’s not important right now.
“What if we don’t find him?”
Rex takes a breath that stops the snippy response he almost gave.
“Then we keep looking.”
Admittedly, this would be easier with a speeder of some sort. But they don’t have one, so they keep walking and wishing the coordinates were closer than they are.
Like all things, it doesn’t last forever. They find themselves walking through a ravine. The floor is all soft, shifting sand, but the walls are jagged rock. There are holes and pits that might be caves and might be nothing in the rockface. It’s dark, and that doesn’t bode well for them. Anything could be in those hiding places. Anyone could be watching them, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Turns out, there is.
The coordinates are getting closer and closer, which is a relief. It’s not early enough yet for the suns to come back, but Rex knows they’re only a few hours out from dawn. If nothing else, the rocks should provide some shelter from the sun and its heat.
Gregor accidentally trips and falls over with a clamor. Rex winces at the sound that echoes through the canyon. Gregor rights himself easily with his brothers’ help.
“Hope no one heard that,” he mutters, almost sheepish.
Wolffe rolls his eyes.
“Unlikely.”
“Unlikely, indeed,” a new voice says from behind them.
All three clones whip around, their blasters up and ready to fire.
A figure stands behind them, hidden in a long brown robe with a deep, billowy hood. Rex isn’t sure how long the person’s been there, or if he’s been following them, but he’s suddenly both ashamed and angry he hadn’t realized.
“Who are you?” he demands of the stranger. He keeps his sights trained on the being, just in case the situation turns hostile.
“I could ask you the same question, my dear,” the person says.
The voice is familiar, and Rex’s heart fills to bursting at the sound of it. It’s a little rougher than he remembers, but still fluid and kindly in the way it always had been. The thick Coruscanti accent gives him away.
Rex lowers his blaster slowly, hoping he’s not wrong or going mad.
“Obi-Wan?”
The man reaches up and pulls his hood back. Underneath, his auburn hair has started going white, not just at his temples but all over. His beard still has some streaks of color, but it mostly matches his hair. In the dark, Rex can’t quite make out the man’s eyes, but he can see his face well enough by the light of the moon.
Obi-Wan smiles at him, though there’s something sad in the expression.
“Hello, Rex,” the Jedi greets softly. “Though, I haven’t gone by Obi-Wan in some time.”
Rex drops his blaster back into its holster, then closes the distance between himself and his husband. They embrace almost as if they’d never been parted. There are tears in Rex’s eyes that he can’t will away or keep from falling down his cheeks.
It’s been so long and he’s missed his riduur so much.
“Ni ceta, ner ka’rta,” Rex apologies through a croaky voice.
“Nu gar’nari, cyare,” Obi-Wan responds. He says it into Rex’s shoulder, where the collar of his shirt is exposed from under the no-longer-white plastoid. “None of this is your fault.”
Rex doesn’t quite believe that, knowing what he knows about the chips. About Fives. He doesn’t know, even after all this time of sitting and thinking about it, what he could have done better. What he could have changed. But that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t something.
He accepts what Obi-Wan says anyway. He’s just happy to have his partner back.
“Ni kar’tayli.”
Obi-Wan leans back slightly. Rex just catches the glint of tears in the man’s eyes before he closes his own. Obi-Wan leans upwards and pulls Rex’s head down at the same time to meet him.
A soft kiss is pressed to Rex’s forehead, gentle and lovely. It takes everything Rex has not to break down in tears at the affection.
“Darasuum bal ratiin,” Obi-Wan promises.
Forever and always.
Then Obi-Wan sniffles and nuzzles back into Rex’s neck, resuming their hug.
“Promise you won’t leave again?” he asks, quietly and only for Rex’s ears.
The former captain squeezes his husband. If he has it his way, he’ll never let this man go again.
“I’m not going anywhere. I swear.”
They stand there in the cool night air of Tatooine’s desert, wrapped up in a hug, for longer than they’d care to admit. They’re both crying, and they both have things to tell one another - stories to recount and missions to explain and years to fill one another in on. Wolffe and Gregor are still standing behind them, waiting patiently for all that neither are particularly patient.
None of that matters. Rex finally has the love of his life back, and that’s enough.