Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When the sun rises on Reaping Day, Ahsoka Skywalker is, unsurprisingly, not in her room.

At least, she’s not in her current room, the one she shares with Rey (because little Rey still can’t sleep if she’s alone) in Obi-Wan’s big house in Victor’s Village. Instead, she’s sitting on her heels in front of the small fireplace in the ramshackle old three-room (bedroom, bathroom, kitchen-living room) house she’d called home until she was thirteen years old, sipping at a thermos of hot tea.

Obi-Wan had been awake when she’d trooped down the stairs, the tea kettle on (as usual), the water inside still boiling; he’d nodded an acknowledgement at her as she filled her thermos but hadn’t said a word.

They’re probably the only two people (although who knows about Qui-Gon Jinn, the only other Victor, all alone in his huge house) up this early on Reaping Day--it’s a holiday, after all. Reaping’s not until two pm. Most people try to sleep in. Obi-Wan has nightmares that keep him up most nights, but Ahsoka?

Well, Ahsoka just likes the woods.

It’s a tradition, by now, she’s done it every Reaping since Rey got so sick and Obi-Wan finally convinced Anakin to move into the big Victor’s house: she spends the morning quiet and alone in her old house with her tea (Anakin and Rey drink coffee, that nasty brown stuff; she’d tried it once, but it’s just gross and bitter) and remembers her mother.

(It gets harder every year to remember.)

After today, only two more Reapings, and then she’ll be free. No more Reaping, no more fear--at least, not until Rey turns twelve, and then the whole cycle begins again. (They’ll make sure Rey knows how to protect herself long before then--Anakin has already carved her a little staff and started teaching her how to use it. Which is technically illegal, but neither Ahsoka nor Anakin particularly care about that, especially not when it comes to protecting their little sister.)

Ahsoka sits until the fire burns to ash and her tea is gone, and then she sighs and pushes herself to her feet, stretches out the kinks in her muscles and bounces on her toes until the sleep-tingles are gone, and then she makes for the trees. She won’t spend long out here today, just gathering some fresh food to supplement all the dried and processed and boxed shit Obi-Wan gets from the Capitol. None of it’s as good as the stuff they can get (even legally!) from the woods.

District Seven is large, sprawling, most of the cities (if they can even be called that) scattered half-in, half-out of the woods they make their living off of. The fence is far off, and gathering is legal because there’s no way to stop it, unlike in some of the other Districts (or so she’s heard). There’s lots of game in the woods too, but no one’s allowed to hunt that. Hunting requires weapons, and weapons aren’t something the Districts are allowed to have. (If you could arm the Districts, you’d have an uprising on your hands, and the Capitol doesn’t want that.)

But Ahsoka isn’t going to hunt, at least not today, on Reaping Day, so she won’t be breaking the law. For today.

It’s summer, and the berry brambles are full of ripe blackberries ready to be picked; Ahsoka fills a sack with them and snacks on them as she does, smiling to herself. Maybe Obi-Wan will make a cobbler tonight with the blackberries. It’s been a while since they’ve had cobbler. Or dessert. Or anything that takes a lot of effort to make. Obi-Wan always gets more and more withdrawn as Reaping Day approaches. (She hadn’t known how to tell when she was young. Now she knows. She sees it in Anakin’s eyes, because every year she’s closer to safety is another year Rey is closer to danger, and neither option is good.)

She stays out in the woods until almost noon, and then she heads back to the house she now calls home and steps inside, sets the bag of blackberries and wild greens on the counter for Rey to clean, toes off her boots and smiles at the young woman coming down the stairs.

“Ahsoka!” Padme Amidala, Anakin’s fiancee-of-sorts (everyone knows it’s just a matter of time, time and Anakin getting up the balls to ask), smiles widely. Her hair is already done up in an intricate braid and she’s dressed for Reaping in a pretty golden-yellow dress she’d sewn herself. “There’s water in the tub, and if you hurry it should still be warm. I’ll supervise Rey and make sure she doesn’t burn the house down.”

“Thanks, Padme,” Ahsoka says with a little laugh, gives her soon-to-be sister-in-law another smile, steps past and heads up the stairs for the bathroom. The joke about the hot water is just that, these days: a joke. In the old house, there wasn’t hot water unless they’d boiled it themselves. Obi-Wan’s house has hot water in the taps, and it works almost all the time. Still, she hurries, looking forward to soaking out the aches in her muscles.

There’s still steam coming off the clearly recently-drawn bath, and Ahsoka grins in anticipation, lets the dirty denim pants and sturdy shirt fall to the floor and climbs inside the tub, tugging her hair out of the tangled braid it’s in as she goes. Soaks for a while, because the heat feels good and she’s tired from being up before dawn, and then she sighs and dunks her head under water, shakes out her hair. Surfaces, rubs shampoo into her scalp and into the long coppery-red strands (turned brown by dampness), goes under again to rinse it all out.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

It takes three times before she’s satisfied (and she keeps the steady rhythm of necessary thoughts going in her head, to keep herself from fixating on what’s going to happen), and then she sighs and climbs out, opens the drain and grabs a towel and dries herself off.

Ahsoka wraps the towel around herself and crosses the hallway into her room, drags on clean socks and underwear. Goes over to the closet, because it’s Reaping Day, which means nice clothes that you only wear once a year. Which means a dress.

Ahsoka is not particularly fond of dresses, but it’s Reaping Day.

The dress she’s wearing today is a dark blue sleeveless thing with white piping trim on the sides, a folded-down collar and a knee-length skirt, and short little brown boots Padme had found for cheap. They’re low quality, but since she only wears them once a year (if that often), it’s not so much of a problem. She pulls the dress on over her head, jams her feet reluctantly into the boots, leaves the towel on the floor for now and grabs a hair brush and some pins, heads down the stairs.

Padme leaves Rey standing on a stool at the kitchen counter, Obi-Wan next to her, comes over and nods at one of the stools. Ahsoka sits down and sets the pins and hairbands and the brush on the counter and then turns her back to Padme. Padme is good at hair, far better than Ahsoka’s ever been (she can barely manage to braid her own hair back enough to keep it out of her face).

It’s while Padme’s in the middle of braiding her hair up that the door opens and Anakin walks in, his sky-blue eyes distant. Finally back from his wander around the city, then. He stops by Padme to give her a kiss over Ahsoka’s head, bends down to press another kiss to Ahsoka’s forehead. “Hey, Snips,” he says, with a forced sort of smile. “You look nice.”

Ahsoka rolls her eyes. “You don’t.”

“Thanks,” he says, peeved. “I get the hint, I’m going, wow.”

She snorts, and then Padme tugs on her hair lightly, an admonishment to hold still, and she stills herself again and looks straight ahead.

Lunch is a quiet affair, a salad made from the greens and some of the blackberries and some chicken from the Capitol; the five of them eat quickly, and then it’s all just standing up and doing last minute checks on outfits--Rey’s little fabric sash she’s knotted over her plain tan tunic to make it look nicer has come undone, and Padme (the wardrobe genius she is) grabs a hairpin and works her magic, fixes it in just a few seconds. Anakin’s light blue shirt is a bit wrinkled, but at least it’s tucked into his slacks, and he has a belt on, and his wavy brown hair is somewhat tamed, so at least he’s put some effort in.

And of course Obi-Wan looks well put-together. He has to, as one of only two Victors for District Seven; he and Qui-Gon Jinn, the neighbor (and Obi-Wan’s Mentor in his Games; the two of them are still close even now, years later), are the stars of the show.

Well, other than the tributes, that is.

Rey is too young, being only six years old; Anakin is twenty-one now, and too old. It is only Ahsoka herself, sixteen, with twelve entries to her name, who is in danger.

But she thinks they won’t have too much to worry about, really. It’s just another Reaping. She’s survived this many just fine, no issue at all.

There’s no reason to believe this one won’t be the same.

~~~

In District Two, Reaping Day is supposed to be the most exciting days of the year - and for many people, it really is just that. A day to dress up and head to your city center and watch your peers vie for a chance to take part in the Hunger Games, and once the day’s done, most of the citizens who are old enough (and who are not bidding their children good-bye) go to public houses for something to eat or drink (although in a city of Peacekeepers there is little, if any, drunkenness).

Sometimes Rex isn’t sure if that excitement is genuine or if they’ve all just been pretending for so long they’ve forgotten it is pretend. On Reaping Day, though, he has to play the game like everyone else - or at least, he does once he’s out on the streets, waiting for the names to be called. At home, at the kitchen table with Cody, they honor Reaping Day the same way they have every year since Cody was fourteen and Rex was thirteen: they sit still, and they barely talk, and they drink coffee.

There’s really no danger of either of their names being called and their having to stay tributes. There is almost always at least one volunteer - Rex doesn’t understand why. Maybe that’s part of the pretending too, part of the game.

He has no desire whatsoever to win the Games, to end up in the Victor’s Village with the other former victors, the men and women the rest of his District claim to revere but who are all somehow not-right.

“Your last year in the Reaping,” Rex says, to his older brother, curling both hands around his mug of coffee.

“Yeah.” Cody’s already half through his coffee. Rex thinks Cody got more sleep than him, but not much. Rex had ended up pacing, most of last night. “And then I finish training and get an assignment.”

“Way to be a downer,” Rex huffs. He and Cody were both picked for Peacekeeper training at a young age - their father, Jango Fett, had been Head Peacekeeper in District Twelve for a long time, had good marks, until he was killed in an accident, so it made sense for both his sons to follow that same path.

The positive to that (if there is one) is that both of them have had some training already, both official and “illegal” (you’re not supposed to train for the Games, but they’re District Two, they’re Careers - it’s in the name).

“Come on, Rex, we’ve talked about it. Surprised you aren’t used to the idea by now.” His big brother half-grins, raps his knuckles on his mug. Cody’s already in his Reaping Day clothes, button-up brown shirt and some slacks.

Rex doesn’t want to get ready to go. He never does. But their Reaping is early - District One has already begun broadcasting and they’re next, because the Capitol’s favorite Districts are always first.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Rex says, wryly, pushing himself out of his chair and gesturing with his mug, careless (almost spills coffee, shit). “I should be used to the idea of my stupid big brother getting assigned to another District so I can’t see him anymore.”

“Well, if I get Reaped,” Cody grumbles. “That won’t be a problem.”

“It’s your last year, Cody,” Rex sighs, takes too fast a sip of coffee and chokes when it burns his throat. “Don’t say that, you’ll jinx it.”

“What are you, twelve?”

Rex waves dismissively with his free hand, already walking towards the stairs.

They won’t have hot, or even warm water this morning - they have running water, most times, but unless you’re a Victor or the mayor, you can’t count on hot water, especially on festival days or, of course, Reaping Day. When the entire District wants to look their best.

Sure enough, the water is freezing, so Rex doesn’t bother with really washing up, just his face and hair (which doesn’t take much washing anyway, he keeps it so short; Cody tells him it’s wasted effort but Rex doesn’t like his hair longer) and arms. He’d had the same Reaping Day clothes up until he was fifteen, when he had his first growth spurt and started putting on muscle; that means extra expense that year, and last year, and again this year so he looks nice for the Reaping.

It’s a party, after all.

He tugs on his slacks, socks, an undershirt, and buttons on the blue shirt that’s just a bit too small and uncomfortable (but better than wasting money on something new), stuffs his feet into the definitely too small brown “leather” shoes and winces his way back downstairs.

Forgets his coffee in his room, but he doesn’t want to go back and get it.

Cody’s started pacing, which means it’s, at most, fifteen minutes till they have to leave - he checks their clock and he was close, they have thirteen.

He could go back and get his coffee, but Cody’s anxious and he doesn’t want to try to stomach any more (not that he’s anxious, because he’s a Career, so yay him, he’s very excited). “Do you have to do this every year?” he asks, following Cody with his eyes. This is a regular enough thing that Cody has literally worn a smooth, discolored patch in the floor between the sink and the table.

“Do you have to ask that every year?” Cody rubs his forehead, the curled scar around his eye that he tells people he got training.

It’s actually from Rex trying to fix something in their kitchen and dropping a cabinet on Cody’s head. Neither of them are good at fixing things - nobody has taught them and they have nowhere to learn.

“Yeah,” Rex shrugs. “It’s tradition now, dumbass.” Good luck, maybe. You get to believing in luck, after a while.

The odds being in your favor and all that shit.

Cody rolls his eyes. “I bought that spicy bread you like, yesterday,” he says. Cody does not understand Rex’s preference for this kind of bread they get from District Four every once in a while - it’s just spicy enough to make your nose run, light, probably goes great with fish. They don’t get fish here a lot, though. But there a few months out of the year when good products from the other Districts come in, and Rex gets his spicy bread and Cody gets a kind of fruit from District Seven that they can’t grow here.

“Great,” Rex says, checks the clock again. Six minutes. “Looking forward to that.”

“Can’t see why. It’s weird.” Cody stops pacing, tugs on the heel of his shoe.

“Shut up.”

Cody picks up his mug again like he forgot it was empty, then gives Rex a look and he hurries upstairs, grabs his own mug and eyes the contents distastefully. Not worth the effort.

Brings it back down the sink, sets it inside carefully, yanks irritably on his sleeves and then looks out the door. Three minutes.

Might as well go.

“May the odds be ever in your favor,” he says to Cody, sardonically, and his brother sighs, pushes him a bit out the door.

“Shut up, Rex.”

He and Cody have gone this long without their names being called. This is Cody’s last Reaping and his second-to-last. Their names have never been called, and there have never failed to be volunteers.

There’s no reason to believe this year won’t be the same.

~~~

Ahsoka leaves her family behind when they make it to the square, shuffles into a clump of sixteen-year-olds and lets them funnel her into the check-in area. Holds her arm out so they can take her blood (ugh, needles, why), and then follows that same clump into the partitioned-off area. Obi-Wan is up on the stage already, in his chair, next to Qui-Gon; on Obi-Wan’s other side, is District Seven’s tall, blonde, ice-eyed escort, Satine Kryze.

Satine is… interesting, Ahsoka has decided. She acts like the typical Capitol idiot, but Ahsoka’s seen a lot of idiots before, and Satine doesn’t have the right eyes for it. Most people wouldn’t notice it, but Padme and Obi-Wan have taught Ahsoka a lot of things over the years, so she’s not stupid.

Anyway, not that that matters.

At two pm precisely, the Mayor steps up, starts reading the same old, same old speech, the history of Panem and the Games and blah, blah, blah; Ahsoka finds Anakin through the crowd (tries to ignore how anxious he looks) and makes a face at him, rolling her eyes and snorting. He grins back, though it’s subdued, and she keeps eye contact with him the whole way through the speech. It helps with the butterflies determinedly trying to claw their way out of her stomach and up her throat.

And then Satine stands up and strides smooth and easy over to the podium, even in her tall heels and long purple and blue dress, and smiles, says in a cheery (fake) voice, “Happy Hunger Games, and may the odds be ever in your favor!” She talks for a minute or two longer--Ahsoka doesn’t pay attention to the words, they’re mostly the same every year, a little pre-scripted speech the tall blonde probably didn’t even write herself, and then-- “Ladies first!”

So. It’s time.

Ahsoka offers Anakin another ghost of a smile and turns her focus to the huge glass ball with its thousands of little paper slips. Her name is only on twelve of them--she’ll be fine. Safe. The odds are in her favor.

Satine grabs a slip out, returns to the podium, unfolds it. The crowd is dead silent as she reads it to herself, once, and then looks up, swallowing a tiny bit, and then she smiles brightly (but not warm, it’s a cold brilliance, no real emotion to it) and says, clearly, “Ahsoka Skywalker.”

No.

No.

That has to be--that can’t be right, that’s not--no, no, not her, there has to be some mistake--her heart is pounding and she can’t get in a full breath and she shakes her head, swallowing hard, and there’s a hand on her arm, holding her steady. Please, no.

She has to--go.

They’re clearing a path for her, and Ahsoka takes a shaky breath, pushes all the terror and panic and this can’t be happening down, down, down where it can’t hurt her. Where it can’t--make her look weak, because hell but she has to look strong, because this is all about how the public sees her now. Damn it all.

She swallows hard, shoves her shoulders back and straightens her spine into steel and walks steadily forward, out of the crowd, and--

“No!” It’s a raw, wretched scream, torn from a little throat. “No, no, you can’t leave, ‘Soka please don’t leave,” and Rey barrels out from the crowd somewhere and latches onto Ahsoka’s arm and no, no, there are tears in her eyes and she will not let them fall.

“Rey,” Ahsoka says, quietly, “let go.”

“No!” And the Peacekeepers are stepping closer, and please, she needs to go, now, or they’ll make her and she’s so small they’ll crush her (and Ahsoka remembers pain searing across her back and screaming), and--

“Up you go, little jabberjay,” Anakin says, suddenly, appearing from practically thin air to scoop Rey up into his arms, despite her struggle. He’s so pale and terrified but he meets Ahsoka’s eyes and nods, once, steady. “Better hurry, Snips.”

Shit.

She swallows back the tears that are threatening to fall and turns to face the stage again, swallowing hard (again) and climbing the steps as calm and steady as could be. This is a first impression, she has to look--strong, she has to be calm, steady, oh hell. She manages to step up onto the stage without freezing or melting or anything, at least (she’s too pale and shaky and this can’t be happening), and Obi-Wan puts a hand on her shoulder, support and reassurance, and she nods at him, shaky.

There’s--Satine’s been talking again, but Ahsoka doesn’t really listen until the escort is announcing the second name: “Lux Bonteri.” Damn it, why him?

Of course it’s him, the skinny dark-haired kid with the stupid crush who won’t leave her alone. For a time (and she forces herself to focus on this, because it is better than tears) she’d thought he might be interesting, but no.

And then there’s a handshake that passes by in a blur, and they’re being escorted to the Justice Building for the goodbyes, and none of this seems real.

She, Ahsoka Skywalker, is now a tribute in the Seventy-Fourth Annual Hunger Games.

It’s like all her worst nightmares come true.

~~~

District Two doesn’t just deck out its citizens for Reaping Day - as Rex and Cody join the line of other teenagers snaking into the city center, he looks up at the flashy Capitol banners they’ve hung up along the road and contains a bitter smile. Rex watches the broadcasts, and excepting One and sometimes Five, most other Districts don’t bother with all this showiness.

But of course, they do, with their extra camera crews and extra eager tributes and, in truth, extra money.

Their district is huge - the odds are in everyone’s favor because the odds of being chosen are slim, and the odds of being chosen and there being no volunteers to take your place are slimmer.

So really, Rex has nothing to worry about.

He’s not worried. Can’t afford to be.

The line to get into the city center is slow, but eventually Rex steps up, says his name, “Rex Fett,” has his blood taken, strides over to stand with the huge cluster of other seventeen-year-olds. The stage is decorated even more elaborately this year - their city center was made for this, really, and their stage is massive. This year, someone decided to set the bowls of names on miniature columns with gold leaf or something on the bases.

All the past victors sit up on the stage, although only two of them will be mentors this year: Talzin Frangawl, an older woman with long, straight auburn hair and a severe face; and Dooku Serenno, a distinguished older gentleman that the entire District hated (although of course, no one would say as much). Between them, and not looking happy about it, is their District’s escort, Hondo Ohnaka. He’s entertaining, at least, although nothing about the Reaping really stays entertaining.

It’s better than thinking about the Games.

Once everyone’s lined up and settled in, their mayor (a man who has always seemed bitter he’s only almost a Capitol citizen) gets up, goes to the overly-stylized podium, and begins droning about the history of Panem, of the Games, why they have to reflect on all of this and be grateful to the Capitol. Rex always finds this part hard, because then he looks at the set faces around him, at the bowls full of names, nine of which are his, and the mentors, and thinks but what if I was called and no one volunteered.

It happens, sometimes, that no one volunteers. If the tribute has a good chance of winning, if they’re strong, if everyone’s frozen or just too scared.

But his name isn’t getting called, and even if it was, the odds would say someone would volunteer.

So he’s better off not thinking about it.

They read the list of past victors, which is long, and then Hondo eases out of his chair and swaggers over to the two bowls of paper, his long coat twisting in a stiff breeze that Rex can’t feel down here among the other boys.

It’s stifling. Between his tight collar and the heat of all the people, breathing is hard.

“You know the drill, ladies and gents,” he says, smiling and winking. “You girls go first.” He drops his hand into the bowl, pulls a name out, names someone Rex doesn’t know. Rex glances over at Cody and shrugs; maybe he should pay more attention, but she’ll be volunteered for anyway and he doesn’t have much District pride, watching the Games.

Hondo raises an eyebrow, says “And do I have any volunteers?” with three girls making their way straight to the stage. With multiple volunteers, they usually pick by last name, alphabetical.

Or, sometimes, Hondo just picks whoever he finds the most entertaining.

The girl tribute ends up being a slim but muscular girl named Asajj Ventress, because Hondo claimed she gave him a very interesting dirty look. Capitol people don’t make any sense to Rex.

“Anyway, you boys.” Hondo flaps his hand, wanders over to that bowl, and Rex knows it’s probably not going to be him, knows he’ll probably never see the inside of the arena, but still. Still his stomach tightens and his throat goes dry and he has to clench his fists and turn himself to the stone his District mines.

“Okay,” Hondo squints at the paper like he can’t read it, holds up a finger.

Not him. It’ll be fine. In his District, the name called doesn’t even matter, and he’s definitely not going to volunteer.

“Cody Fett.”

Shit. A surge of panic gnaws up his throat before he can stop it, and he looks for Cody’s eyes, catches them, and Cody is pale, but he smiles just a little and nods.

It’s going to be fine, just like everyone else, he’ll get a volunteer and- and- Rex swallows and stands still, watches his brother shift his shoulders back and go still and push through the other boys to walk up to the stage, climb the stairs, and damn it, he looks so small up there, somehow.

Even when their dad was alive, Rex didn’t really have anyone but Cody.

But it’s going to be fine.

Hondo makes that same knowing face, shrugs, gestures at the lot of them. “Do I have any volunteers for you boys?”

Rex can hear his own heartbeat in his ears, rushing and loud and distorting things, and he waits for movement toward the stage that means volunteers, but- but he sees none, no one is moving, and Cody is stone-faced and sturdy next to Hondo and there should be volunteers, there are always volunteers, why isn’t anyone moving? They’re all so eager to get into the goddamn Games, why aren’t they now?

Rex has always had Cody, and Cody has always had Rex.

Nobody’s volunteering and Hondo looks like he’s planning to move on, his eyebrows inching up his head in surprise.

“Going once,” he calls, jovially, and Rex looks up at Cody, sees his brother looking right at him, glaring really, and Cody shakes his head just the slightest bit.

“Going twice, this year, boys, really?”

He can’t just stand here and let Cody go, Cody’s got to know that, he can’t. He’d rather… rather…

Don’t think about it.

He quickly shoves through his row of peers, to the narrow gap between the people where he can march up to the stage (and not look at Cody because he knows, knows his brother is hating him for this).

He takes the steps up to the stage and Hondo shoos away Cody, grabs Rex by the elbow (shit, he wishes he wouldn’t), and tugs him to stand where he’s supposed to. “Cutting it a little close there,” Hondo says. “What’s your name?”

“Rex Fett.” He finds Cody, halfway back to his group, and Cody shakes his head and looks away, but Rex doesn’t care. Doesn’t. He did this for Cody. So he holds perfect posture and stares out at nothing until Hondo makes him shake Asajj’s hand, and then they’re being ushered into the cool Justice Building and Rex twists his hands together, just a little.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. He and Cody were supposed to go home.

Instead, he’s his District’s tribute in the 74th Annual Hunger Games.

Well, he’s going to win, then. He has to.

~~~

The room is small and plush, something like velvet on the seat of the couch Ahsoka sits down on to wait for her goodbyes.

One hour, and then she might not ever see them again--

No, don’t think that way.

The door opens, the Peacekeeper on the outside determinedly not looking, and then four figures spill through: Rey comes first, scrambles up onto the couch and into Ahsoka’s lap, sobbing, and then Anakin, sitting down on one side and tugging Ahsoka bodily against his chest, and finally Padme, who sits down by Anakin and drapes an arm around his shoulders. Ahsoka curls tight around Rey’s tiny little frame and buries her face in Anakin’s shoulder and tries not to shudder. Tries not to cry, because there will be cameras at the train station and she cannot appear weak.

“I’m so sorry, Snips,” Anakin says finally, and Ahsoka shakes her head, hard.

“Don’t apologize, Skyguy. You just--focus on keeping this little one alive, and I’ll worry about me, okay?” She’s proud of how little her voice shakes, really. “You taught me how to handle myself. I’ve got a better chance than most of our District would.”

“Promise?” Rey whispers, twines her skinny little arms around Ahsoka’s waist, and hell, she can’t deny that.

“Promise,” Ahsoka says, smiles a little. “I promise you--all of you--that I’m gonna go into the arena, and I’m gonna win, and I’m gonna come back. Alright?”

“Alright,” Rey whimpers, hides her face. Takes a few hiccuping breaths and nods.

Ahsoka looks over at Anakin. “Alright?”

He swallows hard, says, raspy, “Alright, sis.”

“I have faith in you,” Padme says, without prompting, and Ahsoka nods.

“Great,” she chokes out, takes a shaky breath. “Now that we’ve got that over with, can we just--sit until they come and take you guys away?”

And so they do.

The hour passes too fast, and it seems like it’s only been seconds before the Peacekeepers arrive; Padme stands smooth and fluid and easy, and Anakin scoots Ahsoka off his lap and stands too, though his eyes are wide and wild again and he looks panicked, but Rey refuses, crying hard and loud, now. It takes Anakin picking her up and pulling her away (again) to get her to let go, and Ahsoka can barely hold back the tears (not now, not now, stay strong). She stands up and nods at the Peacekeepers as they come to escort her to the car--she’s never been in a car before, and the one they’re in is fast and smooth and silent, the engine a low purr at the edge of hearing, a faint vibration in the seats.

The trip feels like it’s over with in a blink of an eye, and then Ahsoka is standing (and the cameras are thick like flies on a dead carcass in the height of summer) on the train station and waiting a minute for their ravenous lenses to gulp down her image, and then she’s finally, finally allowed to escape onto the train and into a private room and onto a bed (softer and more plush, with thicker blankets, than anything she’s ever slept on in her life).

And then, and only then, does she allow herself to cry.

~~~

The Peacekeeper who lets Cody in to see Rex is one they know, a woman named Shay. Rex only knows this because he recognizes her voice.

Cody comes in in his Reaping clothes, alone, and Rex balks at his expression but determinedly locks himself off to even Cody.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Cody snarls, shoving his shoulder so Rex has to take a hasty step back to keep from stumbling. “I had it handled, Rex. I could win the Games, why would you go and-”

“Yeah, so I was supposed to sit there and let it go, Cody? I couldn't have done that. I'm just as strong as you, I could win too.” Rex grabs Cody's shoulder, holds his gaze, and Cody shakes his head at him. “Hell, I promise, Cody.”

“Don't you dare-”

“I promise I'm gonna win these damn Games and come back, and we'll live in one of those stupid houses in Victor’s Village, and I can say I told you so for the rest of my life.”

Cody’s still shaking his head, but there's something cracking in his eyes and face, so Rex pulls him into a hug, tight as he can, buries his face in Cody's shoulder. “I can do this, you know I could win for real,” he says, half trying to convince himself.

“Yeah,” Cody says, “Yeah, I know. Hell, Rex, why did you have to do that?” He sounds tired instead of angry, now, and Rex sighs.

“Because I couldn't just let it happen, Cody, I'd- rather it was me than you.

“Well, I'd rather it was me,” Cody snaps.

They have an hour, and Rex knows there will be no one else coming to see him so they sit on one of the couches and try to just talk. They talk about their dad, and Cody tries to give him advice for the arena, and Rex makes fun of him for trying to play mentor.

They neither of them cry. They know better.

Then Shay opens the door again, and there are two more Peacekeepers with her, and it's time to go and suddenly Cody looks just a bit frantic. “Rex, you promised,” he growls,

“Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna- I'll win,” he says, and Cody nods and turns and walks out without prompting, and Rex goes with the Peacekeepers.

He's silent and stone on the car ride to the train, harder still as he steps onto the train, because the cameras are recording and he needs to look strong, like a winner. Because he can win, if he plays the Game the right way.

The train and his room are luxurious, but he doesn't care - he finds clothes in the drawers and tugs something on that's better than his Reaping clothes and sits on the edge of the bed.

And does not move, does not think, except that he is going to win the Games.

~~~

Ahsoka lets herself cry for a while, then she takes a deep breath and decides no more. The train ride is short, and they’ll be in the Capitol by morning, and there will be more cameras, so. No more tears.

She pushes herself off the bed, strips off the lovely blue dress and goes through the dresser drawers, finds a pair of leggings and a brown tunic, pulls those on, peels her socks off her feet and goes barefoot on the plush carpet. Stops in the bathroom to splash water on her face, trying to erase the marks of tears, and then she pads out into the hallway, finds the dining room.

Lux isn’t there, but Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, and Satine are; they’re in the middle of a conversation when Ahsoka walks in, and she surprises a look of actual warmth on Satine’s face. They all three smile at her.

“Eat what you’d like,” Qui-Gon says calmly, gesturing at the loaded table. “We’ll watch the other Reapings after dinner.”

Thankfully, none of them comment on the tearstains Ahsoka’s sure are still on her face.

She eats quickly, even though the rich food is more amazing than anything she’s ever tasted before--Lux still hasn’t shown up by the time she’s done, and Obi-Wan shrugs and says, “We’ll leave the food out for him.”

They do, and then they file into the room with a thick, squishy couch (and Ahsoka drops down to sit next to Obi-Wan), and Qui-Gon turns the TV on. The Reapings for all twelve Districts will play now--a chance to see all the other tributes in an environment they haven’t prepared for. She’ll need to pay close attention, pick out the competitors, the ones she’ll have to worry about if she’s going to win.

There’s Panem’s seal and national anthem, and then the black screen shifts to District One’s Reaping. They’re Careers, she’ll have to watch out for these ones anyway-- and based on the pair that end up on the stage, she’s a bit worried. The boy tribute’s name is Savage, of all things, seems ridiculously appropriate for the huge, muscled brute who looks like he’s got a lot of brawn and no brains to go with it. The girl’s name she doesn’t catch, but she’s slim and deadly-looking, like a good sword blade.

District Two comes onscreen, and before the first girl tribute is even called there’s another knot of them making their way to the stage to volunteer--the girl the escort settles on has a weird name, V-something, Ventress maybe? and has that same look about her as the District One girl. And then they call the boy’s name, and he climbs the stage, and--Ahsoka’s expecting a rush of volunteers but there isn’t one, which is a surprise. This is a Career District, isn’t everyone desperate to get into the arena?

Except then there is a volunteer.

And she can tell, immediately, the boy who volunteers is the original tribute’s brother.

The camera zooms in on their faces, of course, which are similar enough they almost look like twins, except for the volunteer (they give his name as Rex Fett, and she thinks he is one to watch, calm and silent and collected) has blond hair instead of brown and his brother (still as stone on the stage) has a scar curling around one eye. The brother stumps down the stairs and disappears back into the crowd, and the camera focuses in on the handshake, which affords Ahsoka a nice view of this Rex’s clear strength (must be a Peacekeeper in training, then), but he’s not a brute like Savage from District One. No, there’s a cool light of intelligence in his amber eyes, and that makes him dangerous.

She’ll have to watch him.

There are only a few other tributes that really stand out: a tiny twelve-year-old boy from District Four, a clever-looking boy from Five who is quick to climb the stage and stands proud and tall and a quiet, meditative girl (also from Five) who moves slow and deliberate, a hulking man (he’s too huge to be called a boy anymore, must be eighteen, she’d think) from Eleven who hugs the tiny little crying girl from his District. The rest of them, names and numbers, flash by--most of them are crying, or near it, and aren’t really going to be competition, she thinks.

There’s her own Reaping, of course, and she watches it almost curiously, the way Satine calls her name, the way there’s a moment of silence before she (her red hair making her too-easy to find in the crowd) pushes her way out.

And Rey screams, the desperation so so clear in her voice, a little tiny whirlwind shoving through the crowd to come clinging to Ahsoka’s side, and the camera comes in close as Anakin steps out of the crowd himself to scoop her up and nod.

Ahsoka’s gratified to see she looks… wide-eyed, worried, but calm. Not hysterical like the girl tribute from Nine, just accepting. And strong. Head high and spine straight, focused.

If she was the other tributes, Ahsoka thinks, she’d want to keep an eye on herself. Which is, in a way, almost more dangerous than being easily dismissed.

They’ll start talking strategy in the morning, Obi-Wan tells her, after the Reapings are over. For now, she should sleep. That’s easier said than done, but Ahsoka stands and makes her way back to her room anyway. Tomorrow, she’ll be meeting all those tributes herself--or at least she’ll be seeing them in person.

She’s going to need to look her sharpest.

~~~

Rex gives himself a few minutes of quiet before going to find the mentors; he wanders for a bit before finding what’s apparently a dining car - he’s only seen this much food in one place before in shops, and this is all the stuff they only get a few times a year. He doesn’t spend much time staring at it, because Dooku and Talzin and Asajj are all seated at the table, and Dooku gives him a cold, unimpressed look.

“Ah, our other volunteer finally arrives.” Rex ignores him, goes and sits down and reaches for the nearest thing that looks good, realizes it’s his favorite spicy bread that he was supposed to be eating with Cody by now, and pulls his hand back, crosses his arms. Strangely, he’s suddenly nearer to crying than he’s been this whole time, and he quickly tries to contain all that because Dooku is still talking to him and he needs the mentors to think he can win. “You were certainly slow in coming forward,” Dooku says, and Rex races to find an answer for that before deciding maybe silence is best, so he just shrugs.

They don’t end up discussing much, except that Dooku informs them that they are not their friends, and they will support the tribute who appears to be most capable of winning. Talzin doesn’t talk much, except to occasionally correct Dooku, which he apparently hates.

Rex decides Asajj Ventress herself is dangerous - he wasn’t acquainted with her, but she has a calculating eye and a sharp kind of grace that tells him she knows what she’s doing.

But so does he.

They all go to watch the Reapings together, once it’s late enough that they’ll all be on, and Rex settles into an armchair (a really comfy armchair) by himself to watch, figure out his competition.

District One has two competitors this year, older kids, one a boy who’s massive, definitely taller and stronger than Rex, one a whip-thin girl with sharp eyes. His own Reaping, he’s proud to see he doesn’t look like he cares, unhurried and calm as he walks to the stage to take Cody’s place. No one will find a weakness there, certainly, may not even understand he volunteered to save Cody. They’ll laugh and say you couldn’t let your brother have all the glory and that’s what he’ll say it was, too.

This year there are some strong-looking kids, even among the ones who panic and cry - the hardest one is a tiny, tiny twelve-year-old boy from District Four in a too-large blue jacket. Nobody applauds when he stands on the stage, because with these little kids, everyone knows it isn’t fair.

District Five’s tributes are smart-looking, both of them, although both look anxious. Everyone is scared, Rex is sure, even the ones who, like him, manage to stay calm.

He learns a few names, the names of the other Careers (in an ordinary year, the boy from District Four would be a Career - but this boy is too small and frightened) who he’ll be expected to ally with, a few others he thinks are a threat.

Like the girl tribute from District Seven. Her name is called, Ahsoka Skywalker, apparently, and she’s a slim, muscled girl with bright red hair making her way towards the stage. She doesn’t make it very far before a little girl, not nearly old enough for the Reaping herself, bursts out of the crowd of people to grab her arm. Rex is surprised to see that the girl, Ahsoka, doesn’t flinch, just tells the child to let go until a man with long hair comes and takes the kid away.

Her family, he guesses. It would be easier if she didn’t have a family.

She is calm and quiet (but not stony, not quite, she has wide, darting blue eyes and she’s too graceful and walks too fast to be stone) when she climbs onto the stage, shakes hands with the scrawny boy from her District (and Rex notes that one of their mentors put a hand on her shoulder, almost comforting, and that he had not done that for the boy, so that’s interesting). Yes, she definitely looks strong, he thinks, and she’s no Career but he will have to keep an eye on her.

(It would be easier if he had not seen her family.)

Talzin informs them that tomorrow, they will plan their approaches - for now they can sleep. Rex goes back to his room and lays down on the bed, doesn’t bother getting under the blankets, and curls in on himself. Lets himself cry, just a little, because he wants to be home, with Cody, eating their favorite foods and drinking coffee because they survived another year. He didn’t want to be here, he doesn’t want to make alliances with the other Careers, doesn’t want to try to play the game right.

He sniffles about that for a few minutes, and then he’s done feeling sorry for himself. And he curls up tighter on top of the covers and goes to sleep.

Chapter Text

The train pulls into the station at the Capitol in the middle of the morning, after the strategy talk over breakfast has devolved into Ahsoka throwing bread rolls at Obi-Wan and him being sassy back while Lux hides behind his cup of hot chocolate (something thick and rich and creamy and sweet, way better than coffee, not quite as good as a good cup of tea but close) and Qui-Gon shakes his head, amused.

Satine isn’t so amused, but then again, she’s the one who keeps picking up the bread rolls that Obi-Wan doesn’t catch, which is a tedious job.

Ahsoka had woken up early to pull her hair out of its elaborate braid and take a hot shower (what an amazing thing, hot showers), and she’d twisted her hair back into a plainer braid, simple weaving, which means it’ll probably still be wet by the time she goes to bed tonight. Oh well. She’d pulled on the leggings and tunic from yesterday again, and then with a sigh had shoved her feet back into those dumb brown fake-leather short boots.

They aren’t the most comfortable of shoes, but they’ll work.

Now, as the train coasts to a halt, Ahsoka pushes herself to her feet, grabbing one last bread roll to tear pieces off of as they go (maybe they’ve had enough to eat, since Obi-Wan took her and her brother and sister in, but old habits die hard), follows Qui-Gon down the hallway, Obi-Wan beside her and Lux just behind her.

“Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan says, patiently, as they approach the door leading to the platform, “you can’t just throw bread at people. They’ll think you’re a savage.”

She snorts, rolls her eyes at him, pops a piece of bread into her mouth. “Maybe I am.”

Qui-Gon steps out onto the platform, and Obi-Wan follows him, turns back over his shoulder to say, “I have helped raise you for the past several years, Ahsoka Skywalker, and I can say you definitely are a savage.”

She follows him out, rolling her eyes, pretending boredom, though she can’t help a sassy smirk. “What can I say? It runs in the family,” and she takes another bite of her bread.

Looks around, because they’re standing in the middle of the Capitol, and for a moment all she can see are colors.

Vivid and vibrant and too much, and she tries to keep herself from making a face because shit, cameras, she was sassing her mentor on camera, that’s probably a dumb move. Lux is behind her smiling and waving, she thinks, but why the hell would she want to smile and wave at the Capitol? They’re all idiots who are only cheering because they think she’s going to die in some dramatic, vicious way in a week’s time. Idiots.

She rolls her eyes and sighs, annoyed, looks around for something besides eye-scalding colors, and her eyes catch on the platform a little ways to the left. Another tribute train is stopped there and there’s a cluster of people on the platform. Her eyes shift from the girl--oh, it’s the District Two tributes, she recognizes the girl as the one with the weird first name she can’t remember, something Ventress, rolls her eyes overdramatically at the girl’s facial expression. She looks like she’s trying to be calculating and intent and intimidating, but to Ahsoka, Ventress just looks like she swallowed something whole and can’t breathe around it.

And then she sees the other tribute, the one she’d marked as probably the biggest competition, strong and muscular and too intelligent by half, the one who’d volunteered for his brother, and up close he’s--much more impressive, she has to admit. She wishes he wasn’t so impressive. And that black shirt makes his golden eyes and tan skin stand out--well.

Shit.

~~~

They don’t get as much strategy worked out that morning as Dooku had clearly hoped, although Rex personally thinks they did alright - Dooku had wanted to play him as a brutally effective sadist, and Rex had frankly refused to cooperate with that plan. He’s not going to pretend to enjoy this, he’s not going to be cruel, even if it would get him a few more sponsors. He thinks he can kill, if he has to. He doesn’t think he can hurt.

Dooku was pissed about his stubbornness, he thinks, but Talzin suggested (and Dooku reluctantly agreed) that he be the confident, skilled winner. Dooku says they’ll make him seem like everyone’s best, smartest bet to win, and he’ll take that.

He’ll get sponsors, that way, if not as many as the interesting tributes.

Their train arrives at the Capitol after lunch (and Rex tries to be unimpressed by the Capitol, but can’t quite manage it - the city is huge, and glittering, and he doesn’t know a lot about architecture but he can still tell it’s genius, some of it), comes to a perfectly smooth stop at a platform, and Rex follows his mentors and Asajj to the doors of their car, can see camera crews and small crowds waiting around the platform.

Hondo claps him on the back, cheerfully, and Rex tenses, twists to scowl at him without thinking about it. Hondo apparently finds that hilarious, because the dark-skinned escort laughs, gestures forward. “I have a feeling you’re going to give us quite a show,” he says, and Rex shrugs, steps out into the bright light of a Capitol afternoon.

He pulls a sort of half-smirk, half-smile out of somewhere and plasters it on his face so he can make eye contact with a couple cameras, is more interested in the other platform where another train is pulling in. He tries to keep pretending he’s paying attention to the cameras and the interested Capitol, but he watches someone he thinks is a District Seven victor (he won the last Quarter Quell, if Rex remembers right) step off the train, then confirms this is the District Seven team when the the second mentor and the girl tribute step out of the train, the girl holding a piece of bread (picking pieces off it occasionally) and in a strangely good mood, apparently, because she’s smirking at the younger of her two mentors.

What she’s got to be cheerful about, Rex isn’t sure.

She takes a look around her, then scowls, and it’s almost funny, the switch in expressions. Rex looks away a second to force a smile at a cameraman who’s definitely too close to him, and when he looks back in her direction he finds her staring at his platform, although not him, he thinks, rolling her eyes so hard he half expects them to fall out. Between that and her wet hair and freckles, she almost makes him want to laugh. Except for how damn casual she’s being about all this.

Then she looks at him, he can tell, thinks she’s taking a measure of him, and he catches her eyes and smiles, icy. He expects she’s a threat, probably, but she does not intimidate him.

She cocks her head a little to one side, raises an eyebrow at him, and Rex snorts and turns away, back to his wonderful team. He just needs to make the right impression on the Capitol, right now - he’ll worry about the other tributes later.

~~~

The prep team is composed of three Capitol people with accents so odd Ahsoka can barely understand them, chatting constantly the entire time they prepare her for her stylist. She spends the entire rest of the morning with them, listening to the background chatter and considering her first impressions of the District Two tributes. Mainly the boy, Rex Fett. The girl, whatever Ventress, she’s… Ahsoka doesn’t know how she expects anyone to take her seriously when she’s trying that hard to look intimidating.

Ahsoka herself certainly isn’t intimidated.

Her stylist is a dark-skinned man named Lando Calrissian, and the first thing he tells her is that the Capitol expects to see a wild thing, and thus he’s done research on the fairytales of District Seven culture and designed an outfit to go along with that.

“I see you have some nasty scars on your back,” he hums over lunch, and Ahsoka tenses, gives him a look. He raises his hands quickly, palms out. “That’s good, they’ll add to the mystery!”

She’d been fourteen. Out gathering (thankfully not hunting, that day) in one of the meadows when the Peacekeepers caught up to her, grabbed her. She’d fought back, instinctive, broken a nose, and they’d whipped her some twenty-something times, she thinks. Anakin hadn’t ever wanted to give more than the bare minimum of details, and Obi-Wan had said scarcely more. (She’d passed out somewhere around ten, hadn’t regained consciousness for almost a day.)

But she’s not going to tell Lando Calrissian of the Capitol about that. He’d probably say she deserved it.

So she huffs and goes quiet and lets him do his thing, whatever the hell that is, and then he leaves and she’s stuck with the stupid prep team again. This time, they’re poking and prodding at her face and her hair, and she hears them saying something about fangs (what the hell is with Capitol fashion, anyway?) before one of them, a tall man (she thinks) with bright blue hair trills, “You won’t feel a thing! And you’ll only be asleep long enough for us to complete the alteration!”

Qui-Gon’s voice echoes in her mind, at that: let them do their job, Ahsoka, they know what they’re doing. So she grits her teeth and clenches her hands into fists and nods, lets them inject (damn needles again) the sedative-whatever it is, and hopes it won’t be anything too drastic.

Ahsoka wakes up to find that the prep team has finished filing her incisors into fangs of all things (but wild thing, Lando had said, so…) and that they’re currently working on some kind of face paint. “Close your eyes and hold still, dear, or this will be much harder,” one of them says in their high-pitched voices, and she huffs and does what they’re telling her to do.

Reluctantly.

After that ordeal is over, it’s time for her hair: they pull it out of the tangled attempt at a braid, brush through it until it’s completely unknotted, blowdry it, and begin to work.

Then Lando comes in with a slim, iridescent green dress in his arms (and of-freaking- course she has to wear another damn dress), helps her step into it and zips up the side, holds her hand (like she needs him to, thanks a lot Lando) as she steps into the short black boots (which are infinitely cuter and more comfortable than the ones Padme had helped her find for Reaping Day). He has the prep team hold her hair up while he snaps an asymmetrical black cape around her neck, and then he settles something light onto her hair and says, “Voila,” gesturing at the full-length mirror with a flourish.

Ahsoka steps forward and for a second she can only stare.

What she’d assumed to be a headdress of some sort is actually a delicate silver-glass circlet of little lights, dancing and flowing like fireflies and casting an almost-ethereal shimmer across her hair, which is pulled back from her face in two thin braids but otherwise down. There’s a hint of glimmering emerald-green eyeliner bordering her eyes, making them almost luminous, and the white makeup resembles the war paint the fae who live deep in the forest wear to battle--at least, in the old stories. The ones that are mostly told mouth-to-ear now, because there aren’t very many books left who record them.

When she smiles, cold and sawtooth-sharp, she can see the glinting edges of her new fangs.

“What do you think of my genius?” Lando asks, and Ahsoka twists, noticing the way the cape, with its uneven edge, reveals her mass of silvery scars (which the open-backed dress does nothing to hide) when she moves.

She looks away from the mirror and meets Lando’s eyes and smiles again in answer.

It’s perfect.

~~~

Rex used to think Hondo was flamboyant, with the gold pieces and gems he twists into his too-long dreads and his huge, dramatic coats.

He’s beginning to think that when he said Capitol people are crazy, before, he had no idea just how crazy. His prep team is terrifying - they all have brightly colored colored hair, skin even, overdramatic makeup, trilling accents, and they talk at him the entire time they’re prepping him for his stylist (an invasive experience, too vulnerable, it makes him nearly nauseous with anxiety). He just tries to stop listening, tries to tune them and their hands and various tools and brushes out into background noise.

That means thinking about other things, and of course all he can really think about is the Games, and Cody. District Two’s stylist team gets good results, he’s seen, which will hopefully help his image. Hopefully. He just has to be strong, he has to not care, he has to win. But there are twenty-three other teens to fight, and half of them are at least some threat, and that’s not even mentioning mutts and the terrain and the twists that the Gamemakers always add. Why would he promise, why would he do that, he doesn’t know if he can do this-

He can’t think like that, so he stops trying to block out the prep team and just makes himself deal with them poking and prodding until he actually meets his stylist, a tall, slim woman named Sabe.

Who is not nearly as bad as the prep team, he decides, although her whole face is painted white except for bright red eyeliner and lipstick, her hair twisted up into a dramatic braided thing with beads and such twisted in. If she wasn’t so quiet and careful, he'd be half scared of her. She tells him that she’s going to work with District Two as the home of the Peacekeepers, since he was going to be one and Asajj is that type, too, and Rex nods. He can work with that. Won’t be the worst thing.

So after an anxious lunch, there’s more work with the prep team, makeup (he hates them messing around his face, but it’s easier when Sabe is doing it herself), a tattoo (not permanent, at least “not yet” one of his prep team says) on his shoulder, and then some time to himself before they dress him up.

It’s probably a good outfit, if he cared and if he wasn’t so sick of his prep team. Although he has to question why they think the gold eyeliner’s a good idea. He likes the boots, though - they’re comfortable, fit his feet just right, somehow, dark brown leather almost up to the bottoms of his knees. Less comfortable, but oddly reassuring, are the pieces of scale-like plating over his shoulders and back and chest and forearms; he’s sure it’s supposed to be like body armor, but stylized, and although it’s nearly entirely dissimilar to his dad’s Peacekeeper gear, it still reminds him of the rare occasion when Jango came home for a few weeks at a time, when he was small.

He’s not sure he likes all of it, the too-stiff dark blue shirt and gold edges of the plating and the make-up in general, but he thinks it makes him looks strong, immovable, so. So he nods at Sabe, finds himself almost looking forward to the parade because at least then he’s away from the bright lights and the prep team and his own thoughts.

~~~

Ahsoka manages a smile at Lux, when he meets her and Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon at the elevator to go down to the staging area for the parade; he smiles widely in return and tries to say something, probably a compliment, but she looks away before he can. She can’t let this ridiculous crush of his go on any longer--they’re enemies, now. Rivals. Not allies, not friends, and she certainly doesn’t like him like that.

But it’s just a simple fact of life now that the only people she can trust are herself, Obi-Wan (for all the obvious reasons), and Qui-Gon (because he’s a mentor and a good man and he’d helped with Rey when Ahsoka’d been whipped), and maybe Satine (because Obi-Wan trusts her). She’s lucky, really, to have a part of her family here with her--most of the other tributes don’t get that.

She has someone she can really, truly trust.

The elevator zips down in silence, and then they step out into the stables at the bottom of the Remake Center, filled with chariots and teams of horses and grooms running around making last-second adjustments.

“We’re a bit early,” Obi-Wan comments lightly, looking around--there are only a few pairs of tributes waiting by their chariots. “That’s good, my year we were almost late.”

“That wouldn’t happen to be because of your literal tree costume, would it?” Ahsoka asks, raising an eyebrow, and Obi-Wan makes a face. The stables are quiet, right now, and their chatter echoes a bit, but she doesn’t care enough to lower her voice to a hush. It’s not like they’re telling secrets, after all. “Anakin told me all about that. In graphic detail.”

Obi-Wan huffs out a sigh, shaking his head. “Why do I put up with you?” he asks, and she’s pretty sure it’s supposed to be rhetorical, but she answers him anyway.

“Hell if I know,” she says, dramatically. “You’re the one who was all like Anakin, I swear on my life if you continue letting your pride keep you and your sisters starving to death inside that hovel…” and she trails off, rolling her eyes.

Qui-Gon snorts.

“If I’d known that making that offer would mean I’d have to suffer through my best friend’s little sister teasing me about having to wear a tree, I wouldn’t have made it,” Obi-Wan says back.

She rolls her eyes hard enough it almost hurts, spins around and flicks her cape at him, ignores Lando’s horrified squawk of protest. “You’re just jealous because I’ve got a cape,” she says smugly, crossing her arms. “While all you got was a big leafy headdress.”

Obi-Wan groans, and she laughs, long and bright and clear.

“Just wait until I tell Anakin about this,” she continues. “The great Obi-Wan Kenobi, jealous of a cape.”

“I am not jealous!”

He is totally jealous.

Ahsoka rolls her eyes again, twirls back around, light, smiling to herself, and her eyes happen to land on--on the District Two tribute. Rex. Who has overheard that entire conversation.

Damn it all.

~~~

Rex’s team are all talking very seriously about strategy, all except him and Hondo. Hondo is lounging against their chariot with something alcoholic in his hand, and Rex is half-leaning against one of their horses, absentmindedly rubbing his fingers against the animal's neck like he could borrow some of its strength.

It's a little early yet, but some of the other tributes are slowly filtering into the stables. The stylists have all done good this year, so far.

None better, it turns out, than District Seven’s.

Their tributes are two shimmering figures in green and light and silver, like the dragonfly Rex had seen just once in his own District. The girl, Ahsoka (her last name's Skywalker, he thinks, and for a moment that's fitting), has flittering lights in her long red hair and a flowing, clinging cape and dress, and paint on her face in white and blue lines that looks dashed on in a hurry but in all likelihood was not.

She and her coppery-haired mentor are having a very animated, sassy conversation, and because the stable is fairly quiet and echoey, Rex can hear nearly all of it. He decides that they are friends, have been friends, and for a moment feels something almost like envy, because he cannot trust his mentors. Not unless he's proving himself to be the strongest bet they have.

He wishes he couldn't hear them, soon enough, though, because they're talking about her life, about a brother and a sister and where she'd lived and her brother being her mentor’s best friend.

This would be easier if she didn't have a family. And hair the color of new copper wire. And freckles dotting her shoulders and face and neck that match the sparkling lights in her hair.

If he wants to win, he needs her dead.

And it's hard to think about that in abstract terms, for a moment.

And then she laughs (and how can anyone laugh, when they're a tribute), and spins, and he catches a brief glimpse of her back, criss-crossing with raised pale pink scars that come, he knows, from a whip, and he goes still.

When he was very small, maybe seven, his dad had been home once and trying to have his morning coffee, and Rex had been fascinated by the callouses on the palms of his hands, had asked why are your hands so rough, Papa? His dad had not really answered him, had just closed his hands into fists and looked searchingly at Rex and told him, sometimes you will have to do things you hate in order to keep the peace, Rex. You have to remember to find something to make it bearable.

Rex knows all the offenses that can earn a citizen a whipping, he knows the laws and bylaws for most of the districts backwards and forwards. Whippings are not particularly uncommon. But Ahsoka is young, and small, and they are not new scars, so she would have gotten the lash when she was younger and smaller.

And sure, Rex knows that anyone old enough for the Reaping is old enough that lawbreaking is rewarded with strategic use of force (that's what the laws call it, what Cody says they tell him it is in training, now), but it's harder seeing it.

And it's harder, then, to be stone when Ahsoka is suddenly facing him, meeting his eyes. But he holds her gaze, because strong, and Career, and confident. The things he needs to be.

She doesn't appear impressed with him, which is alright. He'd rather she underestimated him, because then he can-

Never mind.

For just a minute longer he keeps his eyes locked on her blue ones, and then her stylist comes fussing around her shoulders, adjusting her cape, and she flinches, and Rex turns away a little and goes back to petting the horse, feeling dangerously weary.

The other tributes are filing in, which means it's almost time to go, and he tries to watch them, too, to find who's strong and who's weak and who he has to watch, but it's tiring, and he just wants to get this over with, now.

This one night out of many others to come.

~~~

Everything moves very fast after Lando breaks the odd staredown of sorts between her and Rex--Ahsoka can’t decide if she’s annoyed, because she was somewhat curious what would’ve happened, or grateful, because she didn’t want to be the one to look away first.

Also, about two seconds after meeting Rex’s eyes, she’d realized he was probably staring at the lashmarks on her back, and damn it all but she hates it when people do that. When they bully her and talk down at her, just because she got caught breaking the rules. Damn Peacekeepers.

He’s probably like all the rest of them, she decides, turning away and climbing into her chariot with a sneer. A killing machine (because the Careers always are) without a heart, effortlessly cruel and careless with how easily they cause pain. Efficient and effective and proud of that.

She decides that she hates him.

Ahsoka refuses to look over at him and his stupid eyes with that stupid gold eyeliner, refuses to pander to the superiority she’s sure he feels. Careers always do, and so do Peacekeepers, and he’s both, so.

So she hates him, and he thinks he’s better than her, and now he’s overheard far too much about her personal life and he’s seen her scars and that’s a weakness she’s revealed to him, and she knows Peacekeepers. Once they find a weakness they poke and prod at it. It’s all a game to them.

A game. Just a game. All the cruelty, all the laughter, all of this-- the cheering and the costumes and the chariots--it’s all for fun.

She hates them all.

The parade goes by quickly, thankfully; Ahsoka stands poised and alternates between cold little smiles and fierce glares at the crowd, which they seem to love, cheering so loudly she wants to clap her hands over her ears.

She doesn’t, though. That’d be admitting to weakness, and she’s done enough of that tonight.

The chariots file in around the City Circle, the music stops, and President Palpatine himself steps forward to give a welcome in his gravelly voice. Ahsoka watches the big screens placed strategically around--the darker it gets, the more the cameras focus in on her, she realizes, her and her crown of fairy lights. The silver light reflects off the paint on her face and makes it shimmer, makes her truly look like one of the old fae queens in the stories, the kind that lure young men in to their deaths.

She shivers, just a little, and resolves not to look at the screen anymore.

It feels like forever, but finally the president is done and the chariots make one last lap around the City Circle before disappearing into the bottom floor of the Training Center. And Lando and Satine and Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are all there, with the prep teams, babbling enthusiastically in that dumb accent she can’t understand; Ahsoka doesn’t let them help her off the chariot, instead jumps down and lands lightly on the balls of her feet. She doesn’t want them touching her any more than necessary.

The elevator that goes up to the living quarters for the tributes is small, and the tributes themselves are shoved in a few at a time to be whisked up to the floor that corresponds with their District, Satine explains in a brisk tone, gently herding Ahsoka and Lux both over to the elevator. There’s room for her with them, but not for Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, apparently. “They’ll meet you on floor seven,” she says, in that falsely-bright voice, and then the elevator door is closing and Ahsoka looks over to see she and Lux and Satine are stuck in the elevator with the District Two escort and Rex freaking Fett.

Why.

Ahsoka makes a point of not looking at him for a moment, aggressively pulling her cape off her shoulders and folding it over her arms before stabbing a finger into the button for her level, deliberately stepping in front of Rex to do so, and then she whirls to face him, suddenly. (Ignores the way Lux looks very confused and unsure and the escort is chuckling.) “Don’t look at me like that,” she snaps, glaring. “Like you’re better than me, just because you’re a Career and a Peacekeeper trainee and because I got caught breaking the rules.”

She crosses her arms and leans not at all casually back against the wall, doesn’t take her eyes off his.

~~~
Rex ignores Hondo laughing (and flashing gold teeth - Hondo is still over-the-top, even though it turns he is not so ridiculous as many of the Capitol’s citizens) in favor of frowning slightly at Ahsoka, taken aback at her addressing him, and with so much venom.

He knows how the other Districts feel about the Careers. Hell, he doesn’t like Careers much and he is one. Still, it feels odd, having both things thrown in his face like he should be ashamed of them. He’s not. They’re just facts of his life, like it’s a fact that his dad is dead or that his kitchen is falling apart.

She says he thinks he’s better than her, but clearly the opposite is true.

She thinks she's his better, because she isn't the Capitol's pet, isn't beholden to them like his District is, because she didn't have to train as soon as she turned twelve to be a Capitol enforcer and a competitor in the Games. Because she can probably trust her neighbors and peers. Because she never grew up to find that the callouses on her father’s hands were from handling whips and she’s never had to hear her brother say he's learning things about punishment in training and she's never been told that she'll have to find a way to bear committing atrocities. Those things do not make her better than him. More fortunate, perhaps, but nothing else.

“Out of the two of us,” he says dryly, lips twisting in a bitter smirk, “I’m not the one acting superior.”

Hondo laughs even harder, slings his arm around Rex’s shoulders (shit, he hates that, so much), and winks at Ahsoka just as the elevator stops on his level. “That was very entertaining, kiddos,” he says delightedly, “But I’m afraid you’ll have to save the rest of that argument for the Games. Come on, Rex Fett, leave the nice girl alone. You’re supposed to be resting, not flirting.”

Why the hell can’t Hondo leave him alone? Rex ignores the looks Ahsoka and her team are giving him and Hondo, marches out of the elevator with his arms crossed to find his room. He walks fast so he can get away from Hondo, thinks maybe he’ll take a shower, and find something soft to wear, and try to sleep.

Tomorrow, they begin training, and Rex will have to face all the kids he has to kill. So maybe it’s better to pretend otherwise, for now.

~~~

Satine silently glares at Ahsoka through her false smile, the entire rest of the ride up to their floor. Ahsoka studiously ignores her, and also ignores the confused looks Lux is giving her. He opens his mouth once, and she’s not sure what he’s about to say but she knows she doesn’t want to know, so she gives him the kind of glare that could melt steel until he subsides and stares at the floor again.

Good. She’s not in the mood.

She waits in the small seating area at the end of the hall for the rest of the team to get up, and then they go to dinner--which is a subdued affair. The prep teams and Lando carry most of the chatter, with Obi-Wan and Satine both being diplomatically polite (and Satine seems far less like the frilly Capitol woman, right now)--Ahsoka only talks when she has to, ignores the repeated efforts made to draw her into the conversation.

Out of the two of us, I’m not the one acting superior.

How dare he.

He’s the one who’s the Capitol’s lapdog, that whole damn District is, rolling over and showing its belly just to get a few extra scratches and some treats. Pathetic.

She hates them. All of them.

“I’m going to bed,” she announces, suddenly, standing up and leaving the table without waiting for someone to respond. There’s the sound of a chair scraping back and footsteps, but Ahsoka doesn’t stop until a hand settles onto her shoulder.

“Ahsoka.”

She turns, sighing, to look up at Obi-Wan. “Goodnight, Obi-Wan,” she says, quietly, gives him a quick hug. “I’m just tired. And I miss Skyguy, and Rey.”

“I know,” he says, though he’s giving her that look, the one that means I don’t believe a word of what you just said. “Training starts at eight tomorrow morning, so make sure you give yourself time to eat first.”

“I will,” she says, rolls her eyes a little. “Thank you, mother.”

He grins, hugs her again, and then pulls back and heads back for the dining room. Ahsoka smiles at his retreating back, sighs, pushes open the door.

The room is huge, bigger than the entire little house she was born in; she stares for a minute and then sighs, shakes herself, goes over to the closet. It’s programmable and she finds a pair of soft, fuzzy, warm pants and a t-shirt, tugs off the green dress and the boots and the stupid glowy crown and and pulls the pajamas on.

Brushes her teeth, but leaves the braids in her hair, and washes off the makeup and curls up on the bed, underneath the warm, cozy blankets.

She misses her family. So much.

Ahsoka tosses and turns for a few hours, but she can’t seem to sleep--everything is too much and she hurts, somewhere deep inside her chest, and her throat feels tight and hot and aching, but--

She can’t cry, not here, not when it feels like there’s someone invisible watching her every move.

The bedroom feels stifling, suddenly, trapping her within its four walls, and she grits her teeth and stands, grabs the fuzziest, warmest blanket off the bed and wraps it around her shoulders and makes for the elevator. There’s a roof, she remembers, the elevator will take you up there and there’s a garden (Obi-Wan had told her, once, when she’d asked what it was like), and she thinks that will be safe. They can’t watch her, if she’s there.

So she holds herself together through sheer force of will until she makes it up among the flowers and wind chimes, and then she drops down to sit cross-legged and huddles into her blanket and finally, finally she lets everything go.

~~~

Rex sleeps. Some. He doesn’t bother going to talk to his mentors, even though that’s not smart of him - just goes and finds soft pants and a shirt to wear and goes to sleep.

For maybe two hours.

Then he wakes up again, and his room is dark and doesn’t smell like home, and he doesn’t feel like home, and there’s nothing safe here and all he wants is something, anything he trusts. He wants Cody, and his dumb hard mattress, and to not be stone all the time.

He finds he’s choking on his own exhaustion, and homesickness, and something like fear, so he scrambles out of bed and pads out of his room, not really sure at all where he’s going until he’s gotten into the elevator and leaned back against the cool glass. If he just- goes outside, maybe he’ll be able to breathe again.

He takes the elevator up to the roof, steps outside into the cool night air and a stiff, whistling wind, stares out at the Capitol that is so not home, and with a small noise he heads toward the rooftop garden. He can just sit, for just a little while, and it will be okay.

All he wants is Cody, his only family, but all he has is a team of people he can’t trust and expected allies he thinks he’ll hate and he has to kill people, how’s he supposed to kill a girl who had fireflies in her hair and made fun of her own mentor? And there’s that tiny kid, from Four, and the almost-as-small girl from Eleven, and the smart-looking girl from Five.

He’s not sure he can, but he promised Cody he would.

You have to find something that makes it bearable.

He finds somewhere to sit, swallows and scrubs at his face. Hears a soft, sad noise, like something wounded, and he’s curious enough to contain his exhaustion and loneliness and get up to find the source of the sound. It doesn’t take much looking, but as soon as he finds it he hurries a short distance away and sits again, shaking his head almost angrily.

It’s the damn District Seven girl again, sitting on the ground with a blanket, wrapped up in it except for her head and knees poking out, and she’s been crying, might still be.

That doesn’t help his sense of loneliness, any, or his panicked feeling that he cannot kill these kids, so he settles back down on the ground, tries to pretend she is not here and he’s by himself for once.

He promised. He promised he’d win, so he has to. So it’s non-negotiable. So he doesn’t care.

But for a few minutes, he does care, too much. Wishes Cody’s name hadn’t been called, wishes (somewhere shameful, small) that he hadn’t volunteered, wishes he could just be home. He didn’t want to be in the Games and he still doesn’t, and he doesn’t think he’s ever felt so alone in his entire life.

~~~

Ahsoka doesn’t bother to look up at the footsteps when they come near--she’s not really that quiet, though she’s trying to not be loud at least--and since they stop and then recede almost immediately, she doesn’t bother to move, just keeps crying soft into her knees.

Except something is nagging at her, some instinct, and she lifts her head from her knees and scrubs at her face in vain, trying to erase some of the marks of tears. The footsteps had sounded familiar, their rhythm, though she’s not sure why, and something hissing and afraid is whispering danger, danger, and she frowns and pushes herself to her feet, tightening her blanket around her shoulders.

Steps around a corner and freezes, because shit.

It’s the Peacekeeper, the one in training, Rex from District Two, and shit shit shit he wants the garden. He’s not looking at her, but she still quickly drops her eyes anyway, because oh hell, swallows hard and rushes out a choppy, half-afraid, “I’m sorry for intruding,” and quickly starts off towards the elevator. She’ll have to go back to her room, probably, that’s where she’s supposed to be anyway.

It’s Peacekeeper’s privilege. If they want something, they should have it. It’s just safer that way. For everyone.

Ahsoka takes the elevator back down to her floor and hurries back into her room, curls herself up tight in her bed and tries not to think, and finally, finally, sleep comes.

~~~

It doesn’t make sense, when Ahsoka apologizes to him for something, for intruding apparently (he almost wants to say you were here first, what the hell), but Rex doesn’t bother to acknowledge it, because he is struggling to breathe evenly and he doesn’t want her to know he’s weak; this is already too much. So he listens to her light footsteps hurrying away, and once he’s sure she’s gone, he drops his head against his knees and cries quietly, thinks that bleeds away some of the exhaustion and anxiety. For now. He cannot afford any more failings like these, not as they get closer and closer to the Games. Tomorrow is training, and he has to start making allies, so there is no more- no more space for-

For missing home, oh hell, he misses- He just wants home, wants Cody, wants safety and someone who understands, the only person that has never let him down, not once. His dad let him down, a lot of times, until he did the worst thing of all and died, but Cody? Cody is always there.

But now Rex is alone, entirely, and that warrants more tears, the louder kind that stick in his nose and throat. The breeze helps, dries his tears some and drags his voice off into nowhere so maybe he almost isn’t crying. He tries his hardest to just control it, but in the end he has to let the crying run its course, subside into hiccups and a runny nose, and then he wipes his eyes and nose on his sleeve and gets up, wanders back into the Training Center, takes the elevator back down to his level, and goes to his room. He curls back up on his too nice bed, too drained to think much about anything, and goes to sleep again.

Chapter Text

Training starts the next morning.

Ahsoka gets up and spends a little while playing with all the different buttons and settings the shower has before getting dried off and going over to the closet. There’s a uniform waiting inside, black pants and a short-sleeved polo with grey and maroon; she pulls it on, not really caring what it looks like, braids her hair back as neatly as she can, jams her feet into the boots (which fit so well, are comfortable and lightweight and flexible) and makes for the dining room.

Breakfast is set out, and she serves herself a plate and eats. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon come in after a few minutes, talking under their breath; another few minutes past that, Lux comes in, looking like he barely slept. They make some polite small talk, but stay mostly quiet while they eat.

“Remember,” Qui-Gon says, after both Ahsoka and Lux have finished eating, “try to avoid standing out. Save the things you’re best at for your private sessions with the Gamemakers.”

Right, that’s a smart strategy, and not too difficult either; she can hold to that.

That just means not touching the swords until her private session. It won’t be a problem, she thinks.

Satine comes to take them down to the training rooms. The elevator makes Ahsoka think of the roof the night before, of the Peacekeeper from Two sitting on the ground in much the same way she’d been. Was he crying? He’d volunteered for his brother, she remembers. Maybe he was.

The idea of a Peacekeeper crying is so strange she can’t quite wrap her mind around it, and then it’s time to focus, anyway. The tributes are all standing in a rough circle around the head trainer, who starts giving instructions as soon as all the tributes arrive; Ahsoka listens with half an ear, looking around her curiously at all the different stations, and--oh.

Oh.

Over on one wall, glittering steel catches her eye--rows and rows of swords, nice ones, so much better than the low-quality long knives and the single sword they’d been able to get their hands on. Obi-Wan had taught Anakin, first, after his Games--said that there’s almost always swords, and if you can use one and use it well, you will almost always be able to defend yourself. Anakin had passed the skills and the knowledge on, practicing with sticks and knives and anything they could find.

The head trainer releases them after one last warning to remember that fighting with the other tributes is forbidden, and there are trainers at each station to engage with, and Ahsoka makes straight for the wall of swords, trails her eyes over the different blade lengths and styles, picks one that she likes the look of and twirls it back and forth in her hand.

The balance is so much better than anything she’s ever held before. A blade should feel like an extension of your arm when it’s balanced right, but you also should be able to fight with an unbalanced blade, in case the event rises where you are ill-prepared or fighting with low-quality weapons. But it’s not quite right, and so she puts it back, pulls another one off the wall, tests it too.

“I see you’re familiar with swords,” someone says, startling her, and she looks over to see the trainer smiling. “Find one that you like and I’ll spar with you.”

For a moment, she hesitates, considering Qui-Gon’s instructions to be unimpressive, but--she’s not that impressive, really, and besides, swords. So she grins and nods, sifts through the different blades until she picks one up and twirls it and knows it feels right.

“Ready?”

She nods, settles onto the balls of her feet, and waits.

The trainer pulls out his own sword, says, “We’ll duel to disarming. Nice reverse grip, that’s not something you see every day.”

Ahsoka grins wider, because he thinks that’ll give him an advantage. But he’s wrong. She knows how to use it.

Thankfully, the vast training room isn’t quiet, because otherwise the clang of metal on metal would be deafening, she thinks as she brings the sword across her body to parry. She presses forward, a feint here, cutting there, and pays close attention to the trainer’s weaknesses. He seems to be confident in a certainty that she won’t be able to disarm him--oh, right, because of the reverse grip the most common disarming maneuvers won’t work. Well, the joke’s on him.

She ducks under his blade and scythes out her own at his leg, gets a touch on the underside of his knee, rolls away and back up to her feet, and only the trainer’s quick instincts has him spinning to face her, instead of her staring at his unprotected back.

He’s good, she decides, as he engages her again, but she’s better.

When she feints, he expects her to follow through with a strike to the opposite side, where his guard is lower, and that’s something she can use. He thinks she cannot disarm him, at least not easily, so he’s not guarding himself against that.

She can use that, too.

Ahsoka smiles, fierce, and then feints at the trainer’s right side. In the split second he moves to counter it, she flicks her wrist and reverses her grip on her sword hilt, and before he can react she steps up in close and twists his sword out of his hand in the very first disarming tactic she’d ever learned.

“Well, then,” the trainer says, with a bright smile, “that was quite well-done.”

It’s only then that she realizes the room has gone mostly silent and that people were watching her.

Shit, Obi-Wan’s going to be so annoyed.

“Whenever you want a rematch, you can come back,” he adds, and she nods, a bit dumbly, forces herself to walk over to the wall and set the sword back in its place.

She can’t be here anymore.

It’s physically painful to unclench her fingers from around the hilt, but she does it anyway, slow and reluctant, and then she takes a deep, careful breath and moves on. Maybe she’ll go to the knot-tying station next, it doesn’t look popular and snares are always useful.

~~~

Rex likes the training uniform, he decides: dark, breathable material that fits just right, and another comfortable pair of boots. It's better than training clothes in Two, where you pick something off a rack and the nearest size of boots to your own and make it work.

This uniform was literally made for him, and it feels nice. Familiar, this: going to train, making himself be calm and stone.

Half the tributes are uncertain, hesitating, as they gather in the middle of the training room, shuffling but trying, he thinks, to look strong. The other half are more confident. Ahsoka Skywalker included. And of course, the other Careers.

Rex does not look at the two twelve-year-olds.

The trainer informs them all that fighting is not permitted until the Games, and advises them to focus on learning survival skills, which makes both District One tributes scoff, although Rex can tell that Asajj, like him, is planning to listen.

He can fight just fine. It's other things that he's most worried about, warmth and shelter and food and water. Still, when the trainer leaves them be, he goes to the knives first, for the familiarity, lifts one long knife off a rack and tests the edge with a sigh. He's good with guns, but guns are too tame for the arena, so there are never any of those. He's good with knives though too.

While he's twisting the knife in his hand, casual, he hears the loud clang of metal on metal and twists around to see a trainer and Ahsoka facing off with swords, and he can tell, instantly, that she's done this before. Damnit. In the seconds before they engage in earnest, he takes in the curve of her muscular shoulders and upper arms with their smattering of light freckles, the stance she holds on long, toned legs, and the glint of a smile in her blue eyes, and oh. Shit.

And then she attacks the trainer in a flash of red and silver, and Rex can't help but watch.

To scope out his competition, of course.

She's fluid and fast and utterly fierce, and when she smiles (she's doing a lot of that), fangs gleam where they most likely filed them for her for the parade last night.

Rex watches her keep out-maneuvering the trainer and decides he is not going to engage her head-on if he can help it. How she got so good, he isn't sure, but whatever the case-

She disarms the trainer with a lightning-fast move and a wide, challenging smile, and Rex nods to himself.

He will let someone else deal with her, in the arena.

He sets back the knife he's been holding idle in his fingers and heads for the station where he can learn to start a fire, because he doesn't really know how and he needs to. Tries not to think too much about freckles and blue eyes, especially since they belong to his competition, and someone who hates him, someone he has to kill. (Someone who cried on the roof, like he had.)

He spends most of the morning at that station until he understands the basics, can start a flame nine times out of ten with a little concentration, and then it's time for lunch - they go to a separate lunch room with tables and so much food, and although the rest of the Careers sit together and Rex should join them, he just finds himself his own spot (gets fried chicken and, after a moment's thought, some of the spicy bread from District Four) and sits down, drinks water and picks at his food and tries to project a vibe of do not bother me.

It does not entirely work, because Ahsoka Skywalker comes and drops into a seat across from him and to his left, damn her, and Rex glares down at his bread and tries to ignore her.

~~~

At first, Ahsoka decides to sit near Rex because she’s petty and she wants to annoy him.

But seeing him brings back, again, the memories of the night before, of her taking too long to realize he was there (did he cry?) and to leave, and she sighs, leans her left elbow on the table and drops her head into her hand, pokes her fork into some stew she’d arbitrarily grabbed, twists it around her plate. She’s not used to having this much food available to her, and it’s almost overwhelming.

She should apologize.

She’s never liked apologizing, for the most part, because she is proud and stubborn, but--so. “I’m sorry about last night,” she says, steady and calm and quiet, not looking up from her plate.

“Why?” he asks, and she darts a glance at him, because seriously? But he’s not looking at her, just picking at some bread on his plate.

She shrugs one shoulder, looks back down at her plate again. “Peacekeepers’ privilege,” and she’s trying to sound bored, but there’s just a hint of a tremor in her voice when she continues. “If you want it, you get it.” A pause, and she reaches for something biting to say. “Or have you not gotten far enough in your training to know about that yet?”

Rex scowls, she notes when she looks back up at him, takes a bite of his lunch with more force than is strictly necessary. He doesn’t say a word, though, and she sighs, looks down again. Damn it, if he’d just respond she could find something to be angry about, and anger is so much easier than the vulnerability.

“It’s true,” she says, suddenly, feeling oddly defensive, like he’s judging her in his silence. Judging her for--she’s not sure what, for giving things up so easily? Who knows. “They can make anything out to be a whipping-worth offense, you know. So of course we have to give things up to them, it’s safer.” A pause. “To you, I mean, because you’re one of them. You have the self-carriage.” Enough defense, find something to snap about, be sharp, a sharp sword is the best offense and defense. “I always wondered if they picked you guys for your cruelty or what, because it certainly seems like every single Peacekeeper I’ve ever seen gets off on the fear they cause.”

She grits her teeth and forces herself to eat a couple bites. “I’d say something about your future as one, but,” and she looks up at him again, “you aren’t going to win, so. You could, you’ve got the strength and the sponsors and I think the intelligence, but unfortunately, I have to win this, so.”

~~~

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Rex growls, nearly squashing his piece of bread between his fingers. He doesn't care what she thinks, what any of them think. He just wants to win and get home to Cody.

He knows how some (most) Peacekeepers choose to cope with their jobs  it's the the easiest way, in a sense: they find enjoyment in it, too much.

But he knows his dad never did, and his brother won't, and if he were still going to be one he wouldn't.

Does she think he wanted to be a Peacekeeper?

Not that he cares. About any of it.

She scowls and jabs her plate with her fork, and he thinks he catches her muttering, “I wish” before she goes back to eating.

He looks down at his bread again, sets it down. He doesn't want any more of it. Why the hell did she have to come sit here? “What do you want?” he sighs, after a moment, pinching the bridge of his nose. “If you just came over here to insult me, you better just go the hell away.” He doesn't want to deal with her.

“I came to apologize, and I did that,” she says brusquely, “So now what I want is to eat my lunch.” She tilts her head to one side, smirks. “What do you want?”

“For you to leave me alone,” he mutters, finishing his fried chicken and pushing his plate a little away, the bread unfinished. “Since I clearly disgust you so much, I'm surprised I don't spoil your appetite.”

She rolls her eyes. “We went hungry for too many years for that to happen,” she says, sarcastic.

He isn't sure what to say to that, so he half-smiles, dry as dust, and says, “Lucky you.”

She looks distant for a second, sighs, “Lucky us,” then refocuses, smiles and points at his leftover bread (his favorite, but tastes too much like home), and says, “Are you gonna eat that? There's no reason to waste it.”

He hesitates, then pushes the plate jerkily in her direction and rests his forearms on the table. “It's good,” he says, matter-of-fact. “Spicy.”

~~~

Ahsoka smiles a little, reaches out and takes the bread from his plate, sniffs it curiously. “I’ve never seen bread like this before,” she says, absently, tearing a small piece off and tasting it. It’s a bit spicy, which is good, they don’t get spicy food much in Seven. “Can see why you like it though.”

She studies Rex for a moment, frowning, and then she says, abruptly, “He was your brother, wasn’t he. The one you volunteered for, with the scar? You guys look almost exactly alike.”

“We have the same last name, work it out,” he growls, and she rolls her eyes.

“First of all, I didn’t hear his name called. Secondly,” and then she stops herself, shakes her head. Eats another bite of bread, tearing off a bigger piece to swipe through the leftover sauce on her plate. “I have a brother too. So I was just wondering.”

He nods, crosses his arms. “I know, I saw.”

Right. “He’s an idiot,” she says, fondly. “He’d be less of an idiot if mom’d been around to smack some sense into him--” and she cuts off, shakes her head quickly. Why the hell did she let that last sentence slip out? “--never mind. Did you volunteer to save your brother?”

He goes stiff so fast it has to hurt, stares down at the table and says, cool, “No. Volunteered to get into the Games.”

Somehow, she doesn’t quite believe that. And she’s not sure why. He’s a Peacekeeper trainee, it should fit, but… he was crying on the rooftop. Ahsoka sighs, looks down at the bread, her appetite suddenly gone. “I have a sister too,” she mumbles, tears off another piece with a long, slow exhale. “She’d like this stuff.” Rey really would. She’ll have to try to bring some of it home with her after she wins.

If she wins.

No. When she wins. Because she promised. She doesn’t have a choice.

She’s going to win these stupid damn Games, even if she has to kill everyone in this room by herself to do it.

~~~

The second and third days of training are just as uneventful as the first, if not more so - Rex gets good at starting fires and learns to purify water and identify at least some poisonous plants, and on the second day he shows off some, throwing knives, and eats lunch with the other Careers both days, like he's supposed to. He doesn't like any of them, although Asajj isn't too bad, and the District Four girl is funny. Too strong, though.

The day after the third day of training is the day for their private audiences with the Gamemakers, and after that are their interviews, so the evening after their last day of training, Rex sits down over dinner with Sabe, Hondo, Talzin, and Dooku (the mentors plan to talk to Asajj later, apparently, to keep them separate).

“You're proficient with blades, is that correct?” Dooku asks, taking dainty bites of a grey-brown, viscous soup that Rex is scared to try.

“Knives, yeah,” he answers. “I can throw them or fight with them.”

“You will score at least an eight, if you want to be worth my time,” Dooku says.

“If you don’t score high, we cannot sell you as a winner,” Talzin says, an explanation of sorts. Rex gets the impression she doesn't like him, but she gives more straightforward advice than Dooku does. “It will be best if you're fast as well as skilled - you have to get their attention, and wasting time getting set up and playing around will not serve you.”

Rex nods and takes a sip of his fizzy, orangey drink. “How do I do that?”

“Impress them,” Dooku says coldly. “You are perfectly capable of figured this out, Fett.”

“Maybe,” he says, sharper than he means to, “But if I don't I could die, so why don't you give me some real help, for once?”

“You'll make your own way, boy,” Dooku says, deep and dismissive. “Our help is for in the arena, if you've earned it.”

Talzin just looks coldly at him, and although Rex thinks Hondo and Sabe look disapproving, they don't say anything to help.

How's Rex supposed to earn their help if he doesn't know what to do? All he knows is that he has to be a winner, has to be strong, but how? Then what?

“Well, what about the interview?” he asks, impatiently, curling his hands into fists on the table. “How do I play that?”

“I'm going to make sure they all know you know what you're doing,” Sabe says, smoothly, almost smiles at him, and Rex half smiles back. “I'm going for professional, put-together - I have a few ideas.”

“You know what you need to do,” Talzin says, voice rasping a bit, frosty. She drinks a lot of tea and doesn't eat much. “You have to show you're strong, and skilled - the best on that stage. Be aloof.”

That's the most concrete advice they've given him in that regard, and it still doesn't help.

The rest of dinner is tense, mostly shitty advice and Talzin and Dooku snapping at each other while Hondo eggs both of them on. Rex escapes as soon as he can, out into the hall, only for someone to come after him, catch his shoulder, and without thinking he whips around, smacks the hand away, finds it belongs to Hondo and yanks his arms back to his sides.

“What do you want?” he snaps.

“Your mentors aren't exactly… helpful, are they?” Hondo says, with an almost commiserating smile.

“No,” Rex says, scowling. “What about it?”

Hondo crosses his arms, waves one hand lightly. “They're wrong. Nobody likes a stone-cold winner, Rex Fett, they're boring. Sure, sure, be that, it'll be good. But you've got to be charming, too!” Hondo reaches out and whacks Rex in the chest with the back of his hand. “Sabe’s working too hard on making you look good to waste it on being a grumpy ass.”

Rex blinks. “What do you know?”

Hondo sighs, gestures at himself. “You don't like me, do you?”

“No…” Rex answers, carefully.

“But don't you have to admit there's something intriguing about me?” the escort says, with a glinting smile, putting his hand on his chest, and Rex scowls because he wants to say no, but the truth is, Hondo has always been just as interesting as he is infuriating.

“I guess,” he mumbles.

“So you see, boy,” Hondo says, winking. “Try being a little charming. We'll all like you better for it.” He swaggers off, very self-satisfied, and Rex has to (very reluctantly) admit that Hondo may have a point.

Whether he can actually be charming remains to be seen.

~~~

“You what?”

Ahsoka stares at Qui-Gon, aghast, shakes her head hard. How could he-- ask that? Doesn’t he know what--well, okay, he probably does know, but still. How could he?

“We would like to know,” Qui-Gon repeats, “if we can use Lux’s crush on you as an angle. It would benefit both of you--”

“No.” Ahsoka shakes her head, hard. “Absolutely not. No way.” What the hell does he think he’s talking about?

“Alright,” Obi-Wan says, mildly. “We’ll have to come up with another angle for your interview. You know, I really wish you would’ve listened for once and not gone after the swords right away during training.”

Ahsoka shrugs, looks down at her soup. “I didn’t think it would be that impressive?”

She doesn’t have to look up to know Obi-Wan’s giving her a look. “Ahsoka,” he says, patiently, “you disarmed the trainer without him getting a single touch on you.”

He has a point, but still. She shrugs one shoulder, dunks a piece of that spicy bread she’d discovered into the soup and takes a bite, chews thoughtfully, considering.

“For your private session, you should try to score in the middle of the pack,” Qui-Gon says.

For some reason, that doesn’t quite make sense. “If I already stand out, no one’s gonna believe a lower score,” she says, rolling her eyes, “so what’s the point?”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Obi-Wan says smoothly.

Ahsoka grumbles, takes another bite of soup-soaked bread. “I hate that excuse.”

“It’s not an excuse, Ahsoka.”

“It’s definitely an excuse.”

“Fine then,” Obi-Wan says, lightly. “Do things your own way and see how far you get. Ahsoka, I’m trying to keep you alive so that your brother doesn’t kill me.”

She huffs, drops the bread into the bowl of soup and stands up with a sigh, says, “Fine. But I don’t like any of this.”

They know that, she knows. And she knows they’re right, of course they are, they’re so much more knowledgeable about this kind of strategy than she is, but still.

That doesn’t mean she has to like it.

~~~

Today, lunch doesn’t really mean eating. It means sitting tense at a table and waiting for the Gamemakers to call you in for a private training session. Rex sits at the Career table, tries to tune out their talk (which is mostly bragging, barely-managed arguments, and thin-as-glass complements), and fiddles with his fork. He knows he’s good at fighting, and he knows he needs to show it. He just doesn’t know how. And anytime he tries to tell himself to let it go and just figure it out as he goes, he’s reminded, vicious, that he needs a good score. He needs to impress his mentors or they won’t help him, and he needs to impress the Capitol, and the other Careers.

Because he promised Cody he’d win.

Ahsoka is staring into space, had only gotten a little food for lunch (some of the spicy bread and some vegetables), and Rex finds himself oddly gratified that she seems as nervous as he feels. He knows what she’ll be doing in her session, is sure she’ll get a good score. Between her appearance in the parade and her obvious skill and the high score she’s sure to get (Rex has seen the Capitol announcers have branded her “the wild girl from District Seven”), she’s one of the favorites, and she’ll get lots of sponsors.

She is, as Hondo would put it, intriguing. And intriguing gets you sponsors.

Rex thinks perhaps he should be asking Hondo for advice, not his mentors.

They call in the boy from District One, then Asajj, and all too soon it’s his turn.

Impress them, Dooku says. And whatever Hondo says, Rex can’t charm the Gamemakers. Which just means he needs to do some good knifework and get it the hell over with.

Talzin said not to waste time setting things up, not to make them wait, because he needed their attention. Well, he thinks he can get it.

He forces himself to stand smooth and easy, ignoring the comments from the District Four girl at his table, and pushes all his anxiety down as tight as he can. He’s good at this, he’s been learning since even before he was old enough for the Reaping, and he knows his aim is the best of all the Peacekeeper trainees, so it’s just a matter of showing them.

He strides into the room, where the Gamemakers sit on a balcony watching, as they have been this whole time, and he doesn’t pause or acknowledge them, just paces to the knives, selects a small throwing knife, hefts it once, twice, for the balance, and twists, flicks it across the room to slash into one of the lights on the walls with a shower of sparks.

The conversations in the balcony go quieter for a second, and he picks up two more identical throwing knives and takes out two more lights at the same time, barely moving, and hell it’s good to have weapons in his hands. He should show he’s good at hand to hand with them, too, but he’s not really sure how, but don’t think about it. Just grab a few more throwing knives and a long, wicked one and pace to the center of the training room, where there’s some practice dummies. Leftover set-up from Asajj apparently. He throws two knives near simultaneously, to hit two different targets dead center, switches to the long knife fast and decapitates a training dummy.

Speed is good. Speed and skill together are better.

He’s not sure if they’re supposed to dismiss him, but he doesn’t wait. Just goes. Wishes he could take a knife with him.

If that doesn’t get him a good score (don’t think like that), it wasn’t for want of trying.

Maybe he shouldn’t have broken three light fixtures. Oh well.

He’s done his best, and it will be enough. Has to be.

~~~

By the time they finally call Ahsoka in for her session with the Gamemakers, she still doesn’t really know what she’s going to do; score in the middle of the pack, Qui-Gon says, but how? What’s she supposed to do?

She walks into the training room and knows she has to start doing something interesting in about ten seconds or she’ll lose what little attention she’s garnered by her entrance. And she still doesn’t know what to do, and her eyes catch on the rows of swords on the wall again, and middle of the pack, but she needs to do something, so.

Swords it is.

She crosses the room and grabs the sword she’d used when sparring with the trainer off the wall, crosses back out to the center of the room, and shifts through a few of the more complicated, showmanshippy moves she knows, switching her grip back and forth in the way that had so impressed the trainer and beheading a couple dummies as she goes. She salutes the Gamemakers with the sword, after, which gets a laugh and some smattered applause, returns to the wall and hangs her sword back up again.

What else could she have done?

How is she supposed to impress them, all by herself, with no one and nothing to work off of? Not that she really wants to impress them, per se, but… but she has to, in a way.

She doesn’t want them to be impressed by her. They’re bloodthirsty and sadistic and they have all this luxury, when back at home children starve to death in the streets. They have the technology to cut down the trees safely, but instead workers (like Anakin) have to risk old equipment and dangerous landscapes to cut down trees and hope they don’t get crushed or have a mechanical failure or--or any one of the thousands of things that could go wrong. The Capitol could have saved her mother, when Rey was born. Didn’t.

So she hates them, and she wishes she wasn’t here, and she doesn’t want their good opinions of her.

But if she’s going to win, to get home to Rey and Anakin, she has to have them.

So.

“Thank you for your time,” she grits out through clenched teeth, glaring, and then she spins on her heel and storms away. Maybe if she was braver, she could just--defy them openly, regardless of the consequences--except promise Rey had begged and she had and so.

So the consequences are too much and she has to bite her tongue and hold herself together and not snap, no matter how much she wants to.

~~~

Rex scores better than Dooku needed him to. It earns him a nod, when they see it, a sort-of smile. Hondo gushes, irritatingly, over both his and Asajj’s scores. Rex scores higher than Asajj, and that is good. A nine is good.

Ahsoka Skywalker scores an eight. Not surprising. Although he wishes she hadn’t scored so well.

He can’t help but sober, get weary, at the two twelve-year-olds: the District Four boy (Rex had hoped to avoid learning his name, but it’s Miik) scores only a three, and the District Eleven girl, Katoonie, scores a five.

The District One girl, Aurra Sing, gets a ten, which is concerning. Even though she’s an ally of his, now.

Sabe and his prep team get started on him that evening, already, so by the time he goes to bed he’s worn out and anxious and shaky. He doesn’t sleep much, but he pretends he doesn’t care.

And the next morning is something resembling a talk about strategy - apparently Asajj’s angle is snarky and dangerous, which Rex thinks fits. He ignores most of what Dooku and Talzin have to say to him, thinking about needed to seem strong and confident and skilled, but more interesting than that. He doesn’t know how he’ll do it, but Hondo winks at him, and there’s a certain amount of carelessness and arrogance that Hondo always projects that maybe Rex can borrow a bit of. He’s not sure.

The interviews are not long, three minutes exactly, but the point seems to be to dig up as much about each tribute as possible in that short time - it’s when Caesar Flickerman asks them all personal questions, as if they’re close, and they’re meant to answer honestly, but it’s all about appearances, in these interviews. Who are you - and how will it get you sponsors?

Sabe does almost all of his makeup herself, this time, careful, and apparently that once again includes gold eyeliner. He doesn’t like that part, but he trusts her judgement and he thinks he likes how careful she always is. She combs his hair, too, although he doesn’t see the point since it’s so short, and then they’re getting him into a soft grey shirt, and a black suit with thin, subtle gold embroidery on the cuffs and lapels, and Sabe adjusts the whole ensemble a few times before giving him a pair of black shoes that look like they should be uncomfortable but which fit just right.

“Thanks,” he tells her, although he isn’t sure for what; for not invading his space as much as the prep team, maybe, or for being quiet and careful, or maybe just for the designs themselves, for helping him fit the part he’s trying to play.

She smiles at him a little, and then she and the prep team take him out to join the rest of their group, all styled with just as much care as he is, Hondo wearing at least four brand new rings, each the size of a District and probably worth as much as two Districts, Asajj in a lot of leather and red and purple.

He doesn’t know what he’s going to do for his interview, how he’s going to spin this, but he’s got to do this right. Like everything else. Because of his promise.

~~~

Ahsoka scores an eight, the same as the Career girl, Ventress.

She’s pleased with that.

Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, not so much.

After a rather aggrieved conversation about that (and they’re much more pleased with Lux’s six, although she doesn’t think Lux so much tried for a low score), Ahsoka goes to bed and pretends she sleeps for more than an hour or two. She looks tired the next day, but at least the makeup will hide that.

She hadn’t thought she’d be grateful for makeup.

The entire day is spent prepping her for her interview; the morning she spends with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon again, going over her angle (the Capitol is calling her a wild thing, the wild girl from Seven, so apparently she’s supposed to play up the slightly more refined edge of that, whatever the hell that means), and the afternoon belongs to Lando and the prep team.

There’s some kind of powder that adds just a faint shimmer to her skin, and makeup to hide the dark circles and make her freckles almost glow; her hair is twisted back from her face and woven with metallic silver ribbon, and then Lando brings in a longer, dark green dress and helps her into it. There’s faint silver accents along the front of it and a short silver cape (surprise) that hangs off her shoulders, from the thin mesh sleeves. A pair of low-slung heels help the length of the dress so it’s not unmanageable, and then Lando himself is tracing a curling, vine-like pattern on her eyelids and out to the sides with a glittery emerald-green eyeliner.

Lux’s outfit, as she finds out when they meet in front of the elevator, ready to be whisked down to the holding area behind the stage, where they’ll mingle with the other tributes (oh, joy) until it’s time for the interviews to start, has been designed to complement her own perfectly: he’s in a simple charcoal-grey suit with dark green accents. He looks quiet and professional, a sharp contrast to her--whatever this whole style is.

Wild fae queen, she wants to call it.

(There are so many worse things she could be wearing right now.)

She still has no idea how exactly she’s supposed to play her interview, but… she can worry about that when they get there. For now, one thing at a time.

~~~

It’s difficult for Rex not to pick at the embroidered cuffs of his suit, while they all wait backstage; the production crew are going to seat them soon, he thinks, but for the moment, tributes and their teams are all awkwardly fidgeting in place, not talking much. Hondo is pestering Asajj, which means he’s leaving Rex alone - and as has begun to be too common, Rex automatically searches out Ahsoka.

She’s easy to find, again, shimmering red and silver and green, and it’s apparent that her stylist has chosen to make her shine, all the time, because her makeup and clothes are shimmery, but somehow there’s something still so natural about her. The freckles, maybe, or the scars - her shoulders are bare, and he can see both a hint of the scarring and hundreds of the freckles. The dress shows off her figure just right, sleek and flowy and dark green.

He hates it. Hates that she looks like something magical. Hates that her mentors are clearly being supportive while his have left him to fend for himself.

They’re all eventually shuffled onto the stage, and Rex has to sit by Asajj, and as always, he has to go early.

Caesar Flickerman has been the interviewer an announcer during the Games since well before Rex can remember, which makes him seem ageless, nearly - that and the Capitol surgeries, Rex assumes. He asks Asajj why she volunteered and Asajj says “For the prestige.”

Then it’s Rex’s turn, and he gets out of his seat, walks over to Caesar, and he still doesn’t know what he’s going to do so he pulls a wry smile from nowhere and shakes Caesar’s proffered hand.

“Rex Fett,” Caesar says genially, sitting down, and Rex sits too. “District Two. You volunteered, of course.”

“Of course,” Rex repeats, light, and Caesar chuckles.

He puts his hands together and leans forward, very earnest, and says, “But your case was a little unusual, wasn't it? You volunteered for your brother. What was going through your mind, in that moment?”

That he couldn't let Cody be in the Games. That he wouldn't stand by and let his brother die. Rex should answer something stony, simple, but Hondo tells him to be interesting and nothing is interesting like a question not properly answered, so, “Figured he got enough attention as it was, so he didn't need to be in the Games,” he says, “And I knew I could win. So I volunteered.” There's just a bitter enough edge to his voice that some of them will still wonder if that's the real reason, but he hasn't shown any weakness.

Caesar laughs, heartily. “There's that District Two confidence. Now, Rex, I have to ask - I ask everyone,” he says, conspiratorially, and Rex keeps his expression unimpressed, “What is your favorite thing about the Capitol?”

In truth, Rex thinks he hates everything here, and the people most of all. So he says, “Honestly, Caesar, I just like how nice the knives are. I trained with some good ones.”

Caesar and the crowd all laugh and “ooh” a little at that. “Are you good with those?” Caesar asks him, winking, and Rec goes serious, stony, certain.

“The best,” he growls, and there's more dramatic sounds of interest from the crowd.

“If that's true, I bet you'll give us a good show,” Caesar says, and Rex smirks a little in answer.

“I plan on winning, so I hope that's a good enough show for you, Caesar.”

“Should be,” Caesar laughs, and the buzzer goes off for the end of his three minutes, and Rex stands up in the midst of applause, smooth and calm, and makes himself stone as he walks back to his seat. He avoids looking at Ahsoka - she's distracting.

He hopes he did the right thing - he thinks so. It felt alright.

Dooku and Talzin will be angry, but he doesn't care (well, he does, but he doesn't yet).

~~~

Ahsoka watches the tributes as they arrive backstage, evaluating them again now that she knows their scores. There’s the monster from One, of course, Savage, who looks like he could probably pick her up and throw her halfway across City Circle without blinking; she’s worried about all the Careers, really, but especially the girl from One. She scored a ten, and she’s slim and rawly dangerous and that’s not good.

She doesn’t let herself look at the two twelve-year-olds. (The girl from Eleven has little leaves and beads braided into her hair. She looks too much like Rey in all the worst ways.)

It’s while she’s searching for someone else to look at that her eyes land on Rex Fett.

His stylist has him in black and gold again, and she swallows, because the suit is just formfitting enough that it highlights his muscles and his skin is bronzed and warm and his eyes, accented by that damn gold eyeliner again, are intense and burning as they look over his competition.

She can’t look at him, either.

A moment later, the production team hustles them all out into their seats, and Ahsoka settles into her seat, the District Six boy on one side and Lux on the other, and watches.

Savage is a dumb brute, really. They try to play him as a bit smarter, but he spends the entire interview laughing with Caesar about how easy the other Districts are to kill and how there better be a mace in the Cornucopia for him. He reminds her exactly of half the Peacekeepers back home, and she has to resist the urge to punch him in his stupid, massive, meaty face.

The girl from One, Aurra Sing, who scored a ten, isn’t much better--she’s smart, and her intelligence is a honed blade in her hand. Ventress (and Ahsoka finally learns her first name, Asajj apparently) is much the same.

Rex Fett is all wry smiles and dry words, and she swallows hard, because it’s not enough for him to be smart, and powerful, and handsome (wait a second), he has to be-- charming, in a weird way, too? It’s not fair, he’s supposed to be an asshole. This would all be so much easier if he was an asshole.

The pair from three are quiet and nervous. Nothing very interesting there.

The girl from Four is a typical Career, but the small boy is--not. At all. And Ahsoka forces herself not to watch, not to look, but she can still hear his voice.

When Caesar asks him, encouragingly, what his favorite part about the Capitol is, the boy (his name is Miik) says, “Everything is so bright and colorful,” and the crowd lets out an aw loud enough it drowns out Caesar’s answer, at first.

The girl from Five is stoic, doesn’t talk a lot.

The boy from Five, though, he’s clever and witty and making jokes with Caesar and the crowd. He scored a seven on his session, and she thinks maybe that was on purpose, too.

District Six goes.

And then it’s her turn, and Ahsoka’s standing and making her way across the stage to sit on a stool across from Caesar, shakes his hand. “Ahsoka Skywalker,” he says, light and casual. “The announcers have been calling you the wild girl from District Seven ever since that debut of yours. What do you think about that?”

Ahsoka shrugs, deliberately casual, says, “As far as nicknames go, it’s not the worst one I’ve ever had.” The crowd laughs and she smiles at them, sharp.

Caesar laughs too, heartily, says, “I think we’ll spare our audience the details on that one, shall we?” She nods and the crowd cheers, and he moves on. “So, Ahsoka, what’s your favorite thing about the Capitol thus far?”

Ahsoka snorts, gestures at where Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are sitting. “Finally getting to see where Obi-Wan sneaks off to every year,” she says, utterly casual.

“Ah, yes, our beloved Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Caesar says, smiling more gently now. “You live with him, isn’t that right?”

She does not want to talk about any of this. “Yeah,” she says, nodding. “He’s my brother’s best friend.”

“And I believe we met your brother in the Reaping,” Caesar says, not quite a question. She nods anyway. “And your little sister. What did they say to you after?”

It’s none of their business. “They asked me to promise to win,” she says, quiet and low and furious.

“And did you?”

Ahsoka looks at him and says, deadly serious, “Yeah. And if I have to kill all twenty-three of my competitors myself to keep that promise, I will.”

Before anyone can react to that, the timer goes off, and Caesar pulls a smile from somewhere and says, “Well, best of luck to you, Ahsoka Skywalker,” and she stands and returns to her seat.

Hopefully, that was enough.

~~~

Rex can mostly just see the side of Ahsoka's face, during her interview, and her long braid and the freckles on the back of her neck and shoulders, but he can see her on the massive screens around the stage, gone fierce and defensive when Caesar asks about her family. He wonders, for a moment, if it was ever really a strategy, playing her as something wild and dangerous, or if she just is that.

“They asked me to promise to win,” she tells Caesar, and although Caesar has to ask whether she promised, Rex doesn't need to hear her answer.

I promise I'm gonna win these damn Games and come back.

So he understands, when she says she'd kill to keep her promise. The thing is, so will he. Because Cody, whatever he’d tried to pretend, needs Rex because he doesn't have anyone else, either.

And Rex is marginally better at home maintenance than he is, so Cody can't fix their kitchen by himself.

Rex still finds himself hoping someone else kills Ahsoka, because he's finding it increasingly hard to think about doing it himself. It's not that he likes her, it's not that she's been at all kind to him (because she's been nothing but disdainful), it's just that she's too human, now. And she promised.

And Rex finds he doesn't want to be the one to make her break that promise.

Chapter Text

Ahsoka stands in the sitting room with her arms wrapped tight around Obi-Wan’s waist and tries not to cry.

“You’ll do great,” he promises, soothing. “Your interview was excellent and we’ve played the angles. You’ll have sponsors. You know you have the skills to win.”

“I know,” she says. She has to. But--

“Now is not the time to be worrying about what-ifs,” Obi-Wan says, as though he knows what’s going through her head.

She sighs, pulls back, nods at him. Looks to Qui-Gon, who is very grave as he says, “Remember, don’t get caught up in the Bloodbath. You aren’t strong enough for that.”

She knows.

The rest of the goodbyes go quickly, and Ahsoka even gets a hug from Satine before she heads off to her room for the night, to try and sleep. They have to leave at dawn, so she needs to try and sleep early--she has to be well-rested, in the arena. She’ll need that edge.

She doesn’t think she’s going to be able to fall asleep, at first, but somehow she does. Wakes up to a cold, misty city outside her window, eerie almost, and she shuffles into the shower, messes with the settings until she’s happy with them.

Lando comes to the room a few minutes later, takes her to the elevator, and they ride up to the roof in silence. There’s a hovercraft waiting for them, and when she climbs onto the ladder it freezes her in place until a woman in white comes over with a needle (great, more needles) and says, “This is just a tracker.”

The injection takes only seconds, and then the ladder releases her, thankfully. The injection site still aches, though.

There’s a breakfast laid out, and she eats what she can, sitting by the windows and sipping tea and trying not to think until the view blacks out and it’s time to go down into the catacombs beneath the arena.

Time passes.

Ahsoka dresses in the uniform set out, the brown pants and green shirt and jacket and boots, sips water and paces. Back and forth, back and forth.

“Sit down, Ahsoka,” Lando says suddenly, pulling something from his pocket--oh. A string of beads. Her beads, the blue and white ones Padme had braided into her hair on the morning of the Reaping (it feels like ages ago, now). “They’re your token, right?”

She nods. Sits down, carefully, lets Lando braid her hair back and carefully braid the strand of beads into a tiny braid at her right temple. They make a faint clacking noise when she runs her fingers over them.

It’s comforting.

And then she goes back to pacing, until it’s time to step into the launch tube, a glass cylinder enclosing her from the outside world. She gives Lando a hug, quick, whispers a quiet “Thank you” to him as she pulls back and steps onto the plate. Lando smiles, puts a finger dramatically under his chin and lifts it up, and Ahsoka imitates him, pushing her shoulders back and taking a deep breath.

She needs supplies and weapons and to get away from the bloodbath before it gets too heated.

She can do this.

There’s darkness, thick and choking, all around her while the plate rises, and then daylight dazzling her eyes, making it hard to see, just the smell of home and a cool breeze to tell her there’s a forest nearby.

And then she hears it.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, let the Seventy-Fourth annual Hunger Games begin!”

~~~

Dooku is pissed at Rex, and if it weren't for the edge of grudging respect in his tone, Rex would be panicking, thinking his mentors have chosen not to help him after all.

“They like you,” Talzin says, coldly. “You made a good choice. You should go straight to the Bloodbath, tomorrow, and get allies. The more of them you kill at the Bloodbath, the better chance you have.”

Rex nods. He knows. Every time he thinks about it he wants to be sick, so he hasn't been thinking about it.

“You need weapons, but get supplies, too,” Dooku says, still almost reluctant. “If you have time.”

They seem done, then, although Talzin talks to Asajj for a bit longer. Hondo gestures for Rex to walk with him a short distance away, doesn't touch him for once. “You owe me one,” he says, jovially, and Rex is pretty sure he's only half-serious. “I told you, be interesting. I'm looking forward to watching you.”

Rex thinks that's meant to be a complement, although since it means Hondo is looking forward to watching him kill or be killed, it just sounds suddenly threatening. “Thanks,” he says, dryly.

“Anytime,” Hondo answers, smiling, and Rex tries to smile back before escaping the sitting room to go to his room, where he falls asleep almost immediately, escapes everything for just a while.

Waking up is harder than falling asleep - he wakes up slowly, feeling sick, and it’s earlier even than he has to be awake, so he paces for a long time. Takes a shower, wanders to the dining room of their quarters and finds himself some coffee. His stomach is so unsettled he almost can’t drink it, but just- He can pretend this is just Reaping Day, can pretend it’s all going to be fine, if he just pushes through it.

That’s a lie, and the idea that he can just do this? Who is he kidding, he’s never- He threw up when he learned his dad had whipped people in the Districts, and he cried himself to sleep some nights after combat training - how’s he supposed to kill people?

And what if he gets killed instead and he can’t make it home to Cody and Cody just has to go work in another District, and Rex promising only makes it hurt him more when he’s dead?

Sabe has to come find him in the sitting room, huddled on the couch, and, careful as always, she tells him to come with her, to the Training Center elevator and up to the roof, where they get onto a ladder (which freezes him dead still, somehow, and he wants to be sick even more but he can’t) and are lifted into a hovercraft, and some woman injects him (which hurts, and makes him want to run) with what is apparently a tracking device. Then it’s sitting and waiting, with Sabe, until they’re close to the arena. The hovercraft windows all go dark, so he can get no glimpse of the arena, he assumes, and then he and Sabe are lowered into the spaces below the arena (catacombs, and Launch Rooms for each tribute).

It’s nice, that Sabe is just quiet and steady beside him - it balances out the nausea and horror, and she doesn’t touch him and doesn’t make him talk, just shows him the clothes he has to wear (tan pants, green shirt, long black jacket that Sabe tells him will hold in body heat well), then sits next to him while he waits. He wants to pace, almost gets up to go be sick, but he just drinks water and sits still instead.

“Rex,” Sabe tells him, a moment or two before he has to get on the platform that’s supposed to take him up to the arena. “You be careful with yourself.”

He thinks she’s seen him more anxious than any of the rest of them did, and maybe that’s why she’s so careful. She knows too much, probably, but he doesn’t find that he minds that. Not if it’s her. He nods, tugs on the sleeve of his jacket.

She puts a hand on his arm, then, gentle, and frowns at him, just a little. For a moment, the red and white makeup almost makes her look fierce. “You are not what they think you are, Rex Fett. I think you should find a way to show them that.”

Rex frowns at her, shrugs. “I just want to win,” he answers, quietly.

“I know.”

He gets up, walks over to the platform and steps onto it, and as the glass cylinder closes and the plate starts to rise, Sabe nods to him, almost challenging, and he nods back. He’s not sure if he’s just made another promise he can’t keep.

Everything is dark and still for just a few stifling moments, with just a sense of movement, and then light blinds him for a moment (he has sixty seconds once they announce it and then the Bloodbath, oh god) and he feels a breeze, takes in green and a sparkle of water and the gold Cornucopia through squinted eyes, and almost doesn’t understand, when he hears it.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, let the Seventy-Fourth annual Hunger Games begin!”

~~~

The sixty seconds seems to be simultaneously an eternity and a blink all at once, stretching out into endlessness but over before Ahsoka can really even breathe. She remembers her instructions and knows she should stick to the fringes, but--

But in the mouth of the Cornucopia there’s a sword, slim and just the right length, and it looks like it was made for her, and she wants it.

So, when the gong sounds, she sprints for it.

She makes it to the Cornucopia at almost the same time as several other tributes, the Careers of course, and notably Savage from District One; there’s a massive spiked mace that she knows is just for him and she’s careful not to look too directly at him, not to make eye contact as he swings the mace and sends the hysterical girl from Nine flying. She doesn’t want to be a target.

The sword has a sheath with it, one that’s designed to slide onto her belt, and she grabs it too, tucks it between her belt and the waistband of her pants. That’ll hold it well enough, for now. She does the same thing with a medium-length hunting knife, and she clutches a throwing dagger in her free hand, vaults off the pile of supplies. She just needs a backpack, something she can carry easily--

There’s a blur in her peripheral vision and she’s ducking almost before it even registers.

Savage’s mace goes flying over her head and spinning around, and shit, this is not how she wanted to engage him. She backs away, quickly (and he gets distracted by the boy from Six, which is good), and spins to run and--

Rex is there. Right there, blocking her path, holding a bloody knife, and oh hell, he could kill her now, right now (and there are screams as Savage dispatches the boy from Six, finally), or at the least hold her up so Savage can get to her.

He’s a Peacekeeper, and a Career. It’s what she expects.

He holds her eyes for half a second and then turns away, silently, and she doesn’t understand but she doesn’t dare question it, just runs for the forest and safety.

She climbs a tree not far inside the edge of the woods, takes a few minutes to organize her weapons and breathe and make plans. She needs supplies, that’s important, but by the end of the Bloodbath the Careers will have most of them. She can’t go back into the thick of things right now or Savage will kill her, and if he doesn’t, one of the others will.

But tonight, their guard will be down. They won’t expect someone to try to steal from the Cornucopia right out from under their noses. They’re cocky.

Well, then.

She’ll make that cockiness their undoing.

~~~

It turns out that killing people is easy. That's the worst part of it. Aside from a near-crippling wave of nausea the first time (when he cuts the throat of the girl from Eight), there is nothing inherently difficult about any of this. He wishes, in a way, that it was harder.

But in the chaos of blood and screaming and trying to get what he needs, there's no space for weakness.

Stay alive.

He just needs to stay alive.

He twists around at one point, in all of it, looking for the next threat, and the girl from Seven is backing away from Savage and she's not paying any attention to him and her new sword is lowered and in the split second she takes to turn towards him, he knows he could kill her.

And, in the same breath, that he will not. Because he cannot be so cold as that, when they've spoken, and she promised.

So when Ahsoka meets his eyes and he sees the flash of panic in them, he just grips his knife tighter and turns away, gets out of reach of her sword because he doesn't expect her to be as weak as he is.

Retreats into the Cornucopia where he doesn't have to fight, where he can exchange his hastily snatched knife for two long blades and a backpack and then a belt with some half-dozen well-balanced throwing knives. Tries to ignore the sounds from outside the Cornucopia, and ignore the girl from District Four, who's also in the Cornucopia grabbing supplies.

He's killed four kids. He at least refuses to lose count of that.

He lets himself be sick about that, just for now, before he has to regroup with the other Careers and pretend he doesn't care.

~~~

Ahsoka perches in her tree and watches as little of the actual killing as she can until she hears the cannons go off, marking the dead and the end of the Bloodbath. Ten of them. Then she peers through the leaves from her vantage point, watches as the Careers drag the bodies a ways from the Cornucopia so a hovercraft can come down and get them, start picking through the supplies and setting up camp.

She notices Rex Fett stuffing supplies into his backpack and slinging it over his shoulders, and she nods to herself. Good.

She has a plan.

Night falls, the anthem plays, the faces of the dead tributes are projected into the sky. And Ahsoka slips from limb to limb in the trees, watching and waiting, biding her time.

They put Savage on watch. Good, he’s a brute and easy to avoid. She marks his pattern, how long he’s out of sight on the far side of the Cornucopia, waits some more. Rex is laying down with his back to her, going to sleep.

She waits. And waits. And waits.

Waits until everything has gone still and silent, waits for Savage to start his path around the back side of the Cornucopia, where he’ll spend longer than he spends on this side (because of the lake, she thinks), and then she slips out of the trees with her hood up and sprints silently to within a few feet of Rex’s back. Creeps the rest of the way to him.

Then she drops down to one knee, pulls out her small dagger and slices through the strap of the backpack closest to the ground. Sees the instant he jolts awake, and lightly, easily, touches her dagger to his throat. She doesn’t speak, because she doesn’t want anyone to hear, but when he looks back at her she presses the pointer finger of her left hand to her lips briefly before casually tugging the backpack off his other arm, keeping her knife pushed against his neck.

He holds so, so still. Good. She wouldn’t want her knife to slip.

(He could have killed her and he didn’t. It would’ve been not only the smart thing to do, but the best thing for his alliance. And it would’ve been the proper Career thing. So why didn’t he?)

He has a belt of nice throwing knives, too, and she could use more weapons, so she carefully unbuckles it and tugs it away from him, keeping her knife in position. She knows the instant she pulls back he’ll probably try to kill her, or alert his allies, so… she has to be very careful.

As soon as she works the backpack off his arm and gets the knife belt away from him, she whispers, very quietly, “Thanks for the supplies,” and then she slips the backpack over her shoulder and the knife belt over her arm, standing up and pulling her knife back all in the same fluid motion and darts for the trees, and safety.

~~~

Someone’s trying to steal his backpack, and it jerks Rex awake with a rush of panic that freezes icy when he shoves himself just a bit off the ground and is met with the sharp edge of a blade at his throat.

Shit, shit, shit.

He shifts, careful, turns to look and see who's about to kill him, and it's Ahsoka Skywalker, one hand on his backpack, and she lifts that hand to her lips a moment to gesture for him to be quiet.

Yeah, not really a problem.

Damnit, he should have taken more precautions, but he didn't and now he's going to die.

There's an idea of owing, of repaying what's owed, in all the Districts (he thinks). By that token, she wouldn't kill him now. But he holds very, very still and quiet and expects the opposite, because she's made it clear exactly what she thinks of him, and she has her own promise to keep.

He adjusts his arm so she can tug his backpack free, gritting his teeth, and damn it she takes his knives too, and she says “Thanks for the supplies” and gets ready to go, and he braces himself and-

And she just leaps to her feet and runs.

Shit.

With all his damned stuff.

He freezes for a second, because how stupid is he, he needs that back, he's not dead (big one, that), and then he shoves himself to his feet (quiet, so he doesn't disturb anyone, because he'll look so weak, damnit) and takes off after her.

She disappears into the treeline, and Rex slows a bit as he follows, stays as concealed and quiet as he can manage while keeping her in sight, because this could be a trap, and even if it's not, he's not familiar with forests where she is, and if she doesn't know he's behind her, he doesn't want to give her a chance to figure it out and use the terrain against him.

He needs those knives and supplies back, to survive, and he needs to keep his allies from realizing that they'd been stolen from him. By the comparatively small Ahsoka Skywalker.

They're only friends till they catch a weakness in someone, and he will not be the first of their alliance to die.

Hell, maybe he should have just killed her when he had a chance.

~~~

At first, Ahsoka thinks she got away with her little theft.

She shoves her small dagger into the top of the backpack as she runs, trying to free her hands; doesn’t glance back over her shoulder until she’s a ways into the trees.

And oh.

Shit.

Rex is chasing after her, and he looks determined, and also very pissed off, and she thinks he’s probably in better shape in terms of how long can you run for than she is, so she needs to lose him and she needs to do it now.

Because now, they no longer owe each other.

And she knows he’s not going to leave her alive a second time.

So she picks a tree at random, leaps up into the branches and clings to the trunk, slips her way around to one side, intending to jump to the next tree--

But aw, shit, she didn’t pick a good tree, she doesn’t know if she can make the distance and with Rex on the ground she doesn’t have the choice to fail. But maybe--

Rex is below the tree, now, one knife out. Shit, shit, shit. Ahsoka swears under her breath, which is apparently his cue to make fun of her or--whatever.

“You wanna give me my stuff back now?” he asks.

She makes her way back to the trunk, drops down to sit on the branch, buckling the knife belt around the branch in front of her for the moment and pulling the backpack around where she can rifle through it. “Finders, keepers,” she says, casual, humming to herself. “There’s some good stuff in here.”

She’s hungry.

She’s used to being hungry, but still. Having food is nice. So she pulls out a couple pieces of dried fruit and munches on them, leaning back against the trunk, her legs dangling over the edge of the branch, and waits.

~~~

Aw, hell, come on, that's his food. Rex scowls, turns his knife in his fingers, and says to her, “Yeah, I know there's good stuff in there, that's why I had it.” And she's just sitting on a branch, swinging her legs, and eating his food. And not even doing anything with his knives. What the hell, why does he have to deal with this?

Ah, right, because he was an idiot and let himself sleep with Savage Oppress on watch and expected him to catch anyone if they tried anything. What was he thinking?

She digs around in his backpack for a moment, then pulls out a packet of some kind, and tosses it down at him; he catches it in one hand and it's a package of beef jerky. What the hell? “There. Feel better now?” she calls, rolling her eyes.

“Not particularly,” he says, dryly (but sets the jerky down and resolves to keep it anyway). “I don't know if anyone's bothered to tell you, but there are laws against stealing.”

Her eyes go very hard, and she says sharply, “Yeah. I know.” Then she pauses, and smiles a little, more like she’s showing him her filed teeth than anything else, and adds, “But there aren’t any rules in the Games, so I guess you can’t lock me in a stocks this time.”

Rex decides it would not be particularly wise to mention that stealing from a Peacekeeper warrants a whipping in every District except Two, where stealing from anybody means a whipping and stealing from a Peacekeeper is imprisonment. Besides, he doesn’t like to think about any of that for very long, so. “Oh well, guess I’ll just have to kill you.”

She grins down at him, raising an eyebrow, and says, “You could try. If you can reach me.”

Ah yes, that. Rex peers at his knife blade for a second. “Or I could just wait for you to get tired and give up and come down here.”

“I’m pretty comfortable,” she says, lightly, “And I can stay up here as long as I need to, Rex Fett.”

He snorts. “I hope you have a plan for not falling out of the tree when you eventually have to fall asleep.” There was one year when a tribute from Seven scored a nine and then died falling out of a tree in her sleep. It hadn’t been funny exactly, but it had been… ironic.

Ahsoka smirks at him and pats her waist, says, “I can’t fall out if I’m tied down,” and it takes him a moment to realize she’s gesturing to her belt, and a moment longer to understand she’s going to belt herself to the tree. Well, props for ingenuity, he guesses.

He doesn’t expect her to be stupid enough to sleep with him down here - at least, not until she can’t help it. Because he can’t climb trees well enough to go after her, but if she was asleep, then he might risk it.

“No, I suppose you can’t,” he says, smiling just a little, and settling himself wide-footed (and careful of his surroundings, not just her) where if she tries to make a break for it he can catch her.

Tries not to think, because then- then- Never mind.

~~~

Ahsoka pulls out her knife, snaps off a small twig from a nearby branch, starts whittling at it absentmindedly, not looking at Rex. “So your interview was pretty impressive,” she says, casual, scraping the bark off her stick in an easy rhythm. “Where’d you pull the personality from?”

“Believe it or not,” he says, deadpan, “I had one of those already. I just had to dust it off a little.”

She holds back a snort of laughter with an effort, though the rhythm of her whittling hitches for a second. Can’t quite hide her amusement when she says, rolling her eyes, “Your mentors don’t seem to have any, so it couldn’t’ve been them who encouraged you.”

“What makes you think I needed encouragement?” he asks, and she lifts her eyes from her knife blade, meets his golden gaze.

(It is not fair that he has such pretty eyes, she decides.)

“Oh, I dunno,” she says, watching him as she blows the wood shavings off her stick, “maybe it’s the fact that you more closely resembled the product of your District’s quarries than an actual flesh-and-blood human being ninety-nine percent of the time I saw you.”

“You aren’t exactly the warmest person, why the hell would I have a personality around you?” Rex grins, and it’s almost sarcastic. “Now the Capitol people, they really make a guy feel at home.”

“Of course they do,” she says back, snap-quick, “you’re District Two, you’re practically their lapdogs anyway.”

He smiles crookedly, looks down. “Oh yeah, lucky us,” he says, quietly, and she sighs.

Antagonizing him is only going to end up in her getting killed. But if she can try to be--cordial, maybe… maybe there’s an end to this. That doesn’t involve her dying and breaking her promise so early on. So.

His comment reminds her of something he’d said, back on the first day of training, and she huffs out a breath and says, “You said we were lucky for being hungry,” she says, abruptly, and then sighs. “Truth is, when I was thirteen Obi-Wan managed to convince Anakin to leave our old house and come stay with him. Anakin didn’t want to accept charity, but… We haven’t been hungry since then. But--the stuff you learn when you’re starving, those habits don’t go away so easily. That’s not the point, though.”

She sighs, adjusts herself so she can flop down on her back on the branch, staring up at the sky, tucking her knife back in her belt for now. “Anyway, what I was trying to say is that I guess I really shouldn’t make those kinds of comments about--not having enough, because it’s been a few years since we’ve had to worry about it.”

~~~

Rex does not particularly understand why she just said any of this to him. Or why she’s lying calmly on the branch like he’s not down here with a knife. So he makes a noncommittal noise of understanding and shifts his weight to his left foot, unsure if he’s supposed to agree, or say it’s fine she said that, or what.

Not that he cares. Since they’re enemies.

It’s just, if he pays attention to conversation, he can stop thinking about all the blood. And how his knife felt digging into- never mind.

Ahsoka swings one leg back and forth over his head, the other up on the branch to balance her. “So how’d your brother get his scar?”

What the hell. Why does she care?

Also, should he answer? And with what version of the story? Cody would kill him if he told the real version to the entirety of Panem, and he is going for a certain image here so admitting that he dropped a cabinet on Cody won’t exactly make him look dangerous.

“I’ll tell you how my brother got his scar,” Ahsoka adds, like it’s a big, impressive secret he should know, and damnit but he wants to laugh. “The real version.”

Rex rubs his head with his free hand, glancing around at the dark woods, just in case. “A cabinet fell on his head. About a year ago. The kitchen in our house is kind of a mess and so- the cabinet fell on him.” No need to mention it was his fault. Or that he was trying to fix it all at the time. Cody cussed him out for like five minutes.

Ahsoka laughs at that, unsurprisingly. Rex is sure that Cody is pissed at him, but Cody can yell at him about it when he gets home. “Anakin and I used to play games when we were kids,” she informs him, and oh, alright, it’s story time then. “He’d be the prince in distress and I’d have to rescue him. One time he fell out of the tree he was ‘trapped’ in and cut his face on a rock.”

“You didn’t do such a good job rescuing him,” Rex says. Resists the urge to make a joke about her being a princess in distress since he’s trapped her in a tree.

“Well, he was being an idiot so I told him I wasn’t gonna rescue him,” Ahsoka says, as if that were the most natural thing in the world - which it is. You don’t help your brother if they’re being stupid, that’s basic stuff. “He was trying to show off for Padme.”

Rex decides he’d better not ask who or what Padme is. He already feels like he knows too much about Ahsoka’s life, and he doesn’t want to know more. “Well, if he was being an idiot, then…” he says, shrugging and nodding sagely. He tests the edge of his knife again, twists the hilt in his fingers.

~~~

Ahsoka doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, just sighs and stares up at the stars, humming a bit. It’s been maybe five minutes of quiet  when Rex says, abruptly, sounding a bit strained, “So you’re a wild girl, huh.”

He sounds almost casual.

“So they tell me,” she agrees, shifting to look down at him. He’s fiddling with his knife, and she rolls her eyes, looks back up again. “Didn’t you see the fangs?”

“I did,” he says, steadily. “Real impressive.”

“They are pretty cool,” she hums. “The fae queens have them in all our stories--I think that’s where Lando got the idea.”

“The what queens?” he asks, and she grins, shifts to look down at him.

“They’re in all our stories,” she repeats, smiling. “They live deep in the forest and dance and sing and lure people in to their deaths. Kinda creepy, actually. You don’t want to eat their food, or you’ll get trapped.”

“Like mockingjays,” he says. “Kind of.”

“I like mockingjays,” she says back, looking around the trees curiously. “They sing with me sometimes, it’s fun. I wonder if there are any in the arena?”

“I’m not sure they would be,” he says, sounding amused. “They’re kind of embarrassing for certain people.”

Ahsoka smirks down at him, raises an eyebrow, and says, “That’s half of why I like them.”

“Of course it is,” he says, and she snorts a laugh.

“I didn’t think you’d have them in Two,” she says, considering. “But then again, I don’t even know what the geography is like down there, so…” and she shrugs one shoulder, swings her leg back and forth a bit.

“We don’t have many,” says Rex. “Some migrated, I guess, though--they live pretty well in the cities.”

“There’s a lot in Seven,” she tells him, thoughtful. “We like them--they’ll warn us, when a tree isn’t safe, or if something’s wrong. Helps reduce the number of accidents.” She sighs, shrugs a little, staring off into the middle distance for a moment. There are still too many deaths, even with the mockingjays.

~~~

Seven is the lumber and woodworking district, so it stands to reason, Rex supposes, that they have both accidents and a lot of mockingjays. “You see a lot of accidents?” he asks, more to keep the conversation going than anything, because he cannot be alone in the quiet and the dark with his thoughts.

Her voice floats down to him, soft. “Yeah. My dad was killed in one, when I was ten. Right before Rey was born.”

Rey. Her sister, probably? “My dad was killed in an accident,” he says, gruffly, not quite meaning to. It’s just, he was, and he’s gone now too, so. “In Twelve. There was a mine explosion and he got hurt real bad. Couldn’t get him treated in time.”

She sighs, and shrugs slightly. “Sorry. I know how that works. Same kind of shit is why my mom died.” With that, she lays back down, props one arm under her head.

Rex nods to himself. “Sorry,” he returns. Happens sometimes, in their world. He imagines more in other Districts than his own. Even Peacekeepers can’t get to emergency medical treatment near fast enough, especially way out in Twelve, so Rex never got his dad back, just a letter to the head of his dad’s division in the city, and that had been the person who notified Rex and Cody, a square-jawed, deep-voiced man who came to their door and said, “Your father’s been killed. You’ll get compensation,” and left.

She shrugs again, careless. “It happens,” she says, almost shaky, definitely tired.

“Yeah.” Rex grips his knife handle, tight, and considers cleaning it against his pant leg except he’s done that so many times now. “Didn’t ever know my mother. She’s dead somewhere.” His dad had only told them about her once, when they were little. About a woman in Three with bright eyes and curly hair.

Rex killed the girl tribute from Three today.

“Almost…” Ahsoka sounds small. “That almost seems like it’d be easier. Not knowing them. That way it doesn’t hurt when they die.”

“Probably.” Rex shrugs. “I was little. I knew I was supposed to be upset, but,” he shrugs.

So much for seeming strong.

“I’m sorry.” Ahsoka is quiet for a long while, long enough that Rex begins to see blood staining the grass and dirt again, a girl’s pained face when he stabbed her in the gut, and he shudders, tries so hard to push it away. Then she speaks, and he hates that he’s relieved. “So your brother raised you, too?”

Rex laughs despite himself. “No. I raised myself.” More like, he and Cody raised each other. But he can’t say that, because then they’ll all know that he volunteered for his brother.

“Anakin was fifteen,” she says. “I was ten, Rey was a newborn.” Hell. What a family they must have made. Ahsoka shrugs, as if she knows what he’s thinking. “He was the closest thing to an adult we knew. So he raised us, for a while.”

Rex remembers she’d told him that she moved in with the victor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, when she was thirteen, and he almost remembers overhearing her teasing him, saying that she and her siblings had been starving to death before.

He and Cody had never starved, although he’d only been thirteen and Cody fourteen. They just clung to the small pension they were owed because of their dad dying in duty, and eventually they both found ways to make extra. Cody gathered information, around the city, for a few years, and Rex had done odd jobs for some of the richer people.

“Seems like it all turned out alright,” Rex says, wryly. Despite the obvious problem of her being a tribute now.

“Of course it did,” she says, ironic, and Rex snorts. “Sorry Anakin, but that’s mostly because Obi-Wan kept him from doing the craziest things he thought up.”

“What kinda crazy things?” Rex asks, chuckling. If he just doesn’t think.

“Well, there was this one time Rey tried to convince him that we needed a pet cougar,” Ahsoka tells him, and Rex laughs. Hard. There are a few (just a few now, he’s only seen one) cougars in his District, and the concept of a small child asking for one as a pet is highly entertaining. “In her defense,” Ahsoka continues, with a tone that says maybe she’s smiling, “she was four, and they’re fuzzy, and she wanted a cat. Anakin just thought it’d be a great story.”

Is she… saying that… her brother really considered trying to get a pet cougar?

“Obi-Wan said ‘not in my house,’” she says, and Rex laughs again, a little disbelieving. Tries to be more quiet this time. She eases herself up on an elbow and grins down at him. “I told you he had some crazy ideas.”

“I can tell,” he says. Everything is so dark. He can almost pretend he’s not talking to anyone, except he can still sort of see Ahsoka, in the light of a pale half moon.

~~~

By the time dawn comes, they’ve been talking fairly steadily for a few hours, about a whole host of different subjects; Ahsoka has shifted, is laying on her stomach with her head resting on her arm, the other arm dangling off the branch, idly swinging back and forth.

She looks up at the sky, though that requires shifting awkwardly to do so without falling off her branch, hums a bit, casual, looks back down at Rex. At some point during the night he’d sat down, but now as the sky is streaked with reaching fingers of pale purple and rose and gold he pushes himself back to his feet again.

“Are you gonna kill me if I come down?” she asks, casual, not moving from her position. It’s not the most comfortable, and she’s a bit sore, but she’s spent longer in worse places and positions.

“I don’t know,” he says, equally casual. “Are you going to give me my stuff back?”

She tilts her head to one side, considering. “You can have the knives if you aren’t gonna kill me with them,” she decides. “I can’t really use them super well anyway, not for throwing. My aim’s shit. But I need the supplies, that’s why I stole them in the first place. Stupid Savage drove me off the Cornucopia before I could get any.”

“You’re not really in a position to be bossing me around.” Damn it, she’d hoped he wouldn’t mention that. “I need those supplies too.”

“You’re a Career,” Ahsoka says, for once not venomous, just matter-of-fact. “You’ve got the whole damn Cornucopia.”

He crosses his arms. “You think I want to rely on my allies for basic necessities? I won’t win on blind trust.”

Fair, she supposes, so she nods a bit. “And you have no idea how to survive in the woods, of course. Edible plants, how to set snares, et cetera. I noticed there’s some wire in here,” and she pokes a thumb at the backpack on her back. “I know how to set snares. We could… I dunno, share.”

He just looks at her, for a minute, and she watches him back, steady. “What did you have in mind?”

She considers, cautious. How to word this--she’s never been very good at this sort of thing, but it’s time to learn, and fast. “We… each have skills that could be beneficial to the other,” she says, slow, careful. “I already know you’re a better fighter than I am, but this,” and she gestures widely at their surroundings, “is my home. And from what you’ve told me of Two, I don’t think much of this is familiar to you.” She hesitates, then pushes herself to sit up, slips the backpack off her shoulder, weighing her options. “Or you can go back to your friends and try to explain where you’ve been all night and have to guard your back against four knives instead of one.”

“That’s still exchanging four allies for one,” he says, equally careful. “You think you’re good enough at this to make it worth it?”

“I didn’t score an eight in my private session with the Gamemakers because of my looks,” she says, wry. “I know what I’m doing, and I also know that the next time I meet the rest of your allies, I can kill Savage. I’ve seen how he fights. He relies on brute strength, which is all well and good, but it doesn’t work so good if he can’t hit me,” and she shrugs. “You’ve seen me fight. You doubt my skills?” and she raises an eyebrow, still so very cautious.

~~~

Rex shifts his grip on his knife, weighing his options. He does not trust his current allies, least of all Aurra Sing or, realistically, Asajj. They’re both smart. Aurra scored a ten. He vanished in the middle of the night because a small District girl stole his supplies and weapons. He’s not sure they’d take well to that, even if he reappeared with his things and didn’t explain.

But Ahsoka has made it clear she hates him. And he’s not sure if all the talking they did means she’s changed her mind or if it was a ploy, and he told her: blind trust is not how he’s going to win this. But she has his stuff.

And he… doesn’t want to kill her. Whatever she thinks of him, he doesn’t want to have to kill her, not when she has a family and she… he just doesn’t want to kill her.

“It’s not your fighting skills I’m worried about,” he says, chuckling wryly. “All those things you said, snares and finding edible plants- are you actually good at that?”

She rolls her eyes at him like he’s said something stupid. “We were starving. The forest was the only way we survived. Yes, I’m good at that, or I’d be dead.”

Rex tilts his head to one side, shrugging. “Yeah, makes sense.” He’s not sure he can trust her. But… he thinks, maybe, he at least trusts her more than he trusts the other Careers. And she’s right, easier to defend against just her than all four of his current allies. And he knows they don’t know anything about woodcraft, except maybe Tiplee, the girl from Four - she seems more practical.

“It’s up to you,” she says, nonchalantly. Then she hesitates, looks at him a moment, and then throws his backpack down in front of him. He bends, fast, and grabs it, slings it over his shoulder with a small, relieved sigh.

She needs his supplies and she gave them back.

Well, he supposes if she attacks him when they’re walking through the woods together, at least he’ll have more of a fighting chance than if the Careers turn on him. So.

“Alright, Ahsoka Skywalker,” he says, taking a few steps back and lowering his knife. “I guess I can share. It’s a big backpack.”

She grabs his knife belt and hops lightly down out of the tree, passes him his weapons back (finally, took her long enough), and he takes them from her, hoping he hasn’t made a mistake.

Chapter Text

Once Rex (her ally, now, she hopes she hasn’t made a mistake with all this) takes his knives back (and she hadn’t wanted to do that), Ahsoka huffs out a breath, stretches out muscles tight and tense from spending the night in a tree. “First thing we need to do is find a water source,” she says, stretching her spine with a relieved sigh. “Water runs downhill, so if we head down into this valley and follow the game trails, we should find something soon enough.”

She looks around, curious, and Rex says, lightly, “Why can’t we just circle around towards the lake?”

She raises an eyebrow. “You want to be that close when the Careers go hunting? There’s an entire arena, Rex, we should put some space between us and them or we’ll be found too quickly.” She resumes eyeing the foliage, nodding to herself, takes a few light steps forward and sure enough, there’s a game trail. “Come on, we can follow this.”

“Fair enough,” he says, grumbling, and he follows after her.

The game trail isn’t very visible, and several times Ahsoka has to stop and search for a minute before she picks it up again; there’s not a lot of undergrowth in this part of the woods, which makes it harder to track.

Still. She survived for years by being able to do this, by having sharp eyes, so.

It’s close to noon by the time she finds the pond, small and lush and green, what looks like a natural spring in the ground pooling in a small divot of land, and she smiles, satisfied. “We can stay here, for a bit,” she tells Rex, dropping to her knees by a clump of leafy greens she recognizes and plucking the leaves off the plants one by one, humming a bit to herself. “If you want. Might as well though, I can set some snares around here, show you how if you want, we should be able to catch something here. It’s a good spot.”

~~~

“Yeah, haven’t seen signs of anyone,” Rex says, carefully. He wants to learn the snares too, although he’s afraid it won’t be easy to do well enough that he won’t need her anymore. Maybe. He’s a good learner.

He doesn’t really want to sit down, but he does anyway, sheaths his long knife but draws a throwing knife so he feels prepared, and so he has something to fiddle with. He flips it over and under his fingers a moment, then digs into his backpack for his two water bottles. He figured having more water was wiser, and they’re both full from the lake.

Reluctantly, he passes over one of the water bottles, taps her on the shoulder with it. “Here,” he says. “Got this back at the lake.”

She doesn’t take it right away, which confuses him - she just looks at his face, for a moment, holds his eyes, then says, “Is it purified?” as she finally accepts it from him.

“Obviously,” he huffs. “I’m not stupid.”

She grins a little, looking over the pond, and says, “That’s debatable.”

“I’m not the one who got trapped in a tree all night,” Rex retorts, dryly, taking a sip of his water.

“No, but you are the one who got all his shit stolen right out from underneath him.”

She’s apparently very pleased with that accomplishment. And alright, so he had been a little stupid. Still, screw her. He humphs a little and doesn’t answer, and she chuckles and drinks some of her water.

He’s tired.

“So just how much of my food did you eat?” he says, peering into the backpack and going through the contents. It doesn’t look like she ate too much, of course - if they can’t get more for some reason, this is all he has, and he’s still peeved that she just munched on some fruit for what seemed to be no other reason than to show him she could.

“Just some fruit,” she says, somewhat grumpily. “I’m not an idiot and I know how to ration. There’s enough in there for over a week for just me, if I rationed it right.” She shrugs, and he frowns. “You gotta remember, there was a couple years where we were starving. I don’t waste food.”

Rex wants to get defensive and say me neither, but there’s no point in that, so he just shrugs. “Fine. That’ll be good.” He and Cody did alright rationing, after his dad died, but it’s been a long time since he’s had to and he thinks it was never as bad for them as it was for her.

“We need a strategy,” he says, automatically lowering his voice. “We can’t just wander around aimlessly - you promised you were gonna win, right? So we gotta make an effort.” Never mind that if anyone’s going to win, it’s going to be him. But he will not tell her about his own promise.

~~~

“I’ve been thinking about that, actually,” Ahsoka says, takes another, longer drink of her water. (Despite the fact that they are now, technically, allies, she really hadn’t expected Rex to actually share his supplies with her. Saying she’d been surprised when he offered her his extra water bottle would be… an understatement.) She doesn’t make any mention of her promise, ignores the fact that he’d brought it up, just sighs. “We need a better knowledge of our terrain. If we know the area, we can set traps for the other tributes.”

She pauses a moment, pulls out the medium-length knife she’d grabbed and tests the edge, absently. “I’ve also been thinking about the Careers. The easiest way to disable them would be to take our their supplies, right? Can any of them survive well on their own?”

“I don’t know,” he says, and she tilts her head, looks up from her knife to meet his eyes again. “Asajj--from my District. She did some of the more practical stations in training. And the Tiplee girl, from Four, she seems like she might know things. I don’t know, though.”

Ahsoka nods, considering. “If we could lure them away from the Cornucopia, we could take whatever we wanted and then burn the rest. No point in giving them easy access, and it’d cause some chaos for them, too. They’re overconfident. It’s a weapon. Having their own hoard used against them, destroyed--that’ll rattle them.”

“Could work,” he says. “We might not even have to risk ourselves luring them away--I think they’ll want to go out and hunt today.”

She considers this, for a moment. Shakes her head. “If we were going to do it today, we shouldn’t have come this far. They’ll probably hunt tomorrow, too--and if not, I have a couple ideas for how to lure them out. It’d mean splitting up, though.” She has a feeling if you give the Careers an easy-looking target, like someone lighting a fire during the middle of the day, they’ll jump on it right away. “But we need to set snares now, or we won’t be likely to have anything by dinner.”

“Sounds good,” he says, and she pushes herself to her feet, clips the water bottle to her belt and returns her knife.

“I’ll need the wire.”

He pulls it out from the backpack, hands her a coil, and she smiles lightly, follows a few different game trails. Shows him how to spot the signs, where animals go, how to use small saplings and bushes to set the snare to pull the animal up off the ground after its been caught.

She sets a few, then leads him to another good spot and says, “You should try one.”

~~~

Rex does not expect to do very well, but still, he takes the wire from Ahsoka and eyes the spot she's picked, where he thinks it looks like it would be best to set the snare. Wonders if they could do this to catch a person with any success - maybe not with their limited resources. He does his best to imitate what she taught him, keeping half an eye on her and half an eye on the green woods.

He's never actually been in a forest, not a real one. There are some small scatterings of trees in Two, but his district is cities and quarries and some mountains, although not much of those close to him. So this is new, and if it were any other situation he thinks he’d love it. None of it is controlled, it's just all varying green and dark and chaotic, sunlight filtering through leaves and needles to splash against the ground and Ahsoka’s copper hair. There's a strand of blue and white beads in her hair, he realizes - has been this whole time, he just hadn't exactly been paying attention before.

“So what are the beads for?” he asks, nonchalant, twisting his wire around the sapling he’s bent towards the ground.

“They're my token,” she says, quietly. “From Padme.”

Last night, Rex had ended up asking who Padme was, since she seemed to feature in several of Ahsoka's stories. Apparently she's her brother's girlfriend. And “a fashion wizard on a low budget,” whatever that means.

“Oh,” he says, nodding. He doesn't have a token. He and Cody don't do a lot of gifts - hell, Rex doesn't think most tributes from One and Two bring tokens. He usually forgets they can. Still, for a moment he wishes he had something from Cody.

He works on setting the snare as delicately as he can manage, neat and precise at least, although it isn't anywhere near as good as Ahsoka’s work.

“Do you have a token?” Ahsoka asks him, and he shakes his head.

“No. I don't think anyone was exactly thinking about that when I volunteered, and what would I do with one anyway?” And he doesn't need or want tokens because he's a Career. He wanted to be here. He has to make sure they know that. That he can win. This is a strategy.

He was too weak last night. He hopes that will somehow play in his favor but for now it's just one more reason to second-guess himself, to not have to think.

He finishes his snare, steps back and looks at it critically.

“That's not bad for a first attempt,” Ahsoka tells him, although she's smiling a little so he probably made some stupid mistake. She doesn't elaborate on that, though, just adjusts his work a little, shrugs, and they move on.

Ahsoka sets one more snare, then they circle back around to the pond, and Rex sits down and drinks more of his water. They've seen no one, and there have been no cannons, which isn't very surprising on this first full day. The problem is that when there are no deaths, unless something else very interesting is happening, the audience gets bored. And the Capitol can't have that, so they work very hard to keep it interesting.

Of course, if his former allies have woken up to find him gone with no signs of a struggle, it's entirely possible they're being hunted right now. Which definitely would not be boring.

~~~

A few hours pass in relative quiet, with little back-and-forth of conversation--until, as Ahsoka’s pushing herself to her feet to go check the snares (it’s almost evening now, the sky getting darker and rich colors spreading over the edge of the horizon), she hears a rustling sound.

She cocks her head to one side, careful, holds up a hand  The sound’s coming from near the first snare--Ahsoka frees her sword in its sheath, hand locked around the hilt, creeps towards it, notes Rex climbing careful and silent to his feet and pulling out one of his own long knives. It could be the Careers, but Ahsoka doesn’t think it is--they’d be quieter sneaking up, and wouldn’t stay hidden for long.

The girl from Six is crouched over the snare, trying to pull a rabbit free (nice, so the snares are working); as soon as she realizes Ahsoka’s there (and Ahsoka exchanges her sword for the longer of her knives, it’ll be easier for this) she jumps to her feet and tries to run.

But Ahsoka’s faster.

She takes two quick steps, grabs the girl’s arm, brings her knife up, and slashes it across her throat before she can think.

Lets the girl’s body drop.

The cannon sounds.

Don’t think.

(It’s too easy, she thinks; there should be more resistance than that. It should be harder to cut a person’s throat than a deer’s. But the knife slipped across so smooth and fast and then there was blood and--)

She can’t think, because if she thinks, she’ll be sick. And she has to be strong.

So she takes a deep breath, wipes the knife blade off on the grass, returns it to her belt, and then crouches down by the snare and carefully pulls the rabbit free. Her hands aren’t quite steady, but she hopes the cameras won’t pick up on that.

She turns, gives Rex a tight smile that she knows doesn’t reach her eyes, says, “We should check the rest of the snares.”

“Yeah, we better,” he says, flatly, and she can’t hold his gaze for some reason. “I can carry that.”

So she hands him the rabbit, after a half-second of consideration, and makes her way to the rest of the snares. One of them caught a groosling, but the others are still empty-- “We should leave them, check again in the morning. It hasn’t been very long, after all,” she says, after checking the last one. “We’ll need to cook the meat, especially the rabbit. Eating it raw is a bad idea, you can get really sick. I think if we’re careful and we build it a little ways from our camp, we can make a fire--dusk should help conceal the smoke, and as long as we smother it before dark it won’t be a beacon.”

~~~

Rex watches Ahsoka carefully as he answers, “Yeah, sounds good,” - he doesn't know what he expects, and she's just killed a person. He doesn't know if she'd killed someone yet but he remembers he wanted to be sick when he did and he can't afford her showing that kind of weakness if their alliance wants to look formidable. He takes the groosling from her, notes her hands are shaking just as she turns away and crouches down to collect tinder and kindling for the fire. He holds their game and is quiet, doesn't really know what else to do.

He wonders if she found it easy to kill, too, or if there's just something wrong with him.

They work together (although it’s mostly her) to build a small fire near their camp, but not too close to the pond - if they draw anyone towards them, they don’t want to give away that exact spot and the water source it provides, because maybe without food they can last, but not without water. While she cleans both animals, to keep himself from feeling useless, Rex sharpens some sticks to use as spits, of sorts.

He’s alright with not talking - as long as his hands are busy, as long as they’re working on something, he’s not thinking too much. He supposes there will be a lot of that, just determinedly not thinking. Until… until he either wins or dies.

He finishes his own bottle of water and refills it from the pond, adds iodine from the kit in his backpack, and sets it aside. Tells Ahsoka she should try to finish hers so she’s hydrated and so they can refill her bottle too.

When both animals are finished cooking, they both eat some (not too much, because Ahsoka doesn’t even have to tell Rex that they should ration this), and Rex digs lines and letters into the soft dirt at his feet with one of his knives. The rough shape of a Cornucopia, some concentric rings, the number seventy-four.

“I’m surprised there weren’t more cannons today,” he says. “Makes me think the Careers were coming after us, because there’s no way they stayed in camp all day.” Not with the Games new and their energy fresh and the alliance still secure. And him having abandoned them in the middle of the night. He’s glad he’s not with them anymore, if he’s honest - the idea of deliberately hunting people down to kill, he doesn’t know if he could have done it.

“Yeah, we better not stay here tomorrow,” Ahsoka says. “We can find other water sources, but keeping moving is the best way to stay ahead of them.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Rex says, wryly, half-smiling. “Maybe we can circle around in the direction of the lake some.” There will be more tributes there, but more water, and he’d seen the woods around the lake were thicker, had more undergrowth. Maybe not great for him, but now that his ally is a girl from District Seven… they could use that to hide, she would know what was edible there, and they’d always be able to keep track of their water source.

~~~

Ahsoka gulps down the rest of her water with a sigh, refills the bottle and adds iodine drops to it, considering. “If we could get back around near the lake, we could scout out the Career’s camp and see about taking out their supplies,” she agrees.

“It’s a plan, then,” he says, wipes his knife off on his pants.

The sky goes dark, then, the anthem plays. The face of the dead girl from Six shows, and Ahsoka swallows and looks down, sighs some. “Which watch do you want?” she asks, offhandedly, digging in the backpack for the sleeping bag she’d noticed. “And how do we want to split the sleeping bag, since there’s only one?”

“I’ll watch for a couple hours and you can have the sleeping bag,” he says lightly, and she narrows her eyes a moment.

She doesn’t trust him.

She’s not sure how many he killed, in the Bloodbath, but his knife had been stained red when she’d run into him and she’s not naive enough to believe he won’t kill her when he gets the chance.

Still, she unrolls the sleeping back anyway and scoots herself inside, careful, laying down with her back to him. That way she can pretend to be asleep and she’ll know if he moves. Of course, the instant she lays down she’s all-too-aware of her exhaustion-- it’s been at least a week since she had a good night’s sleep, and she’d barely slept the night before the Games began, and obviously hadn’t slept at all last night. But she doesn’t trust him. If she falls asleep, he’ll probably kill her, and she knows she won’t wake up fast enough, with quick enough reflexes, to do anything about it.

So she can’t sleep.

But she’s so tired.

~~~

He has to kill her.

He knows that. If he wants to salvage any of this, make himself look like the confident Career killer he needs to be, if he wants to win, he needs to kill her now. He can, if he waits for her to fall asleep. If he’s quiet.

Sure, he doesn’t want to, but when has that mattered here anyway? He didn’t want to be here in the first place, so it doesn’t matter what he wants. He made a promise, and if he’s going to keep it, she’ll have to die sooner or later. Why kid himself. He’s sitting on the ground, back against a tree for the security, and he twists his long knife over and over in his hands, because he has to do this. That’s how these Games work, and if he can’t just deal with it then he’s going to get killed because he’s soft.

Whatever Sabe said, he can’t afford to not be exactly what everyone expects, because then he loses sponsors, loses the efforts of his mentors (if he ever had them).

He has to win, because he promised. And he doesn’t want to not go home. And that’s something he can manage: he can win, he knows it. If he can just… manage the killing part. It’s too easy now. He thinks it will get easier, if he can kill her.

He’s not sure that’s a good thing, but it might be necessary.

She seems to be asleep now, although he’s not quite sure. The sleeping bag is made to be able to fit someone bigger than her, so it’s like she’s been swallowed whole, just her head and one hand poking out the top. He can sort of see the token strand of beads from her District. The reason he thinks she’s asleep is the soft wheezing almost-snore of her breath.

And it is this girl, with her red hair and freckles and family, that he has to kill to win. So.

It’s not fair, but then nothing in their world is. So.

He shifts his grip on his knife, pushes himself to his feet, stands still a minute. She’s got one hand tucked under her head, is definitely asleep.

He feels sick, but it doesn’t matter how he feels, he just needs to do this. So.

So, then, where does that leave him, if he has to go home knowing he murdered her? And took her away from all her family when she promised, and he knows she did? When she trusted him, when she’s asleep, when they were allies? What does that make him?

That shouldn’t matter, it’s just… what else does he have, if he doesn’t have himself, if he is something the Capitol made him, more than he already is? Then what? Because he knows he can’t do this. Not if he wants to be able to live with himself again. Not if he wants to be anything more than a Capitol toy. So.

So damn her, and damn all of it, but he jams his knife back into its sheath on his belt and sits back down, wraps his arms around himself in the chilly air and stares at her wavy hair so he can remember.

Find a way to show them, Sabe said. Well, he didn’t want to, but here he is. And for better or worse, he’s not the icy killer he needed to be, so. He’ll just have to find some other way to win.

~~~

She’s snapped awake by a hand on her shoulder.

Shit, shit, shit.

Ahsoka jerks halfway upright, her small knife out (she’d fallen asleep with it clutched in her hand--she’d fallen asleep, hell), twisting to try and--

“Hey, it’s your watch,” Rex says calmly, and she just--stares, for a second, half-gaping, before she shakes herself and (reluctantly, it’s not very warm out) climbs out of the sleeping bag.

“Surprised you didn’t kill me,” she says, mildly, not looking at him as she pushes herself to her feet and stretches, steps over to take his place at the tree.

“Yeah, isn’t the world a wonderful place,” he says, sarcastic, standing and making his way over to the sleeping bag.

She can’t help a snort, drawing her sword as she sits down, resting it across her knees. Doesn’t say anything, though, and he just crawls into the sleeping bag and lays down.

She thinks he’s asleep, soon after--his breaths are slow and regular, and he looks calm and relaxed (ish), but she’s not sure, there’s no way to tell.

She could kill him, she supposes. In his sleep. It’d be the smart thing to do, except that she can’t take on the Careers by herself. And she owes him again, for not killing her. And--

And it’d been too easy to slit the girl from Six’s throat.

So she won’t kill him, not now, not tonight, at least. She owes him and her hands are already bloody and she doesn’t want to, she finds.

(It’s almost easy to forget he’s a Career, too, that he’s a Peacekeeper in training.)

The night is still and quiet; Ahsoka watches for a while, until there’s a breath of wind that carries an all-too-familiar smell to her nose, one that she almost, almost dismisses except it means danger and they’re in a forest and--

Smoke.

Ahsoka stands, slow and careful, looking around her--at first she can’t see anything, but the smell just keeps getting stronger, and that’s bad, that’s dangerous, and she starts to slowly cross over to where Rex is sleeping when she sees it.

It’s small, still growing, they must be near the spawn point, because that’s not natural, she knows what it’s supposed to look like, but-- flames. A wall, growing steadily in height and length, and she crosses the remaining space between her and Rex in a single leap and shakes his shoulder hard, says, “Rex, get up now!”

He shoves her away as he snaps awake (and she knows he’s registered her as a threat but she can’t help it), stumbling out of the bag and to his feet, and she ignores him, grabs at the sleeping bag and fumbles it into the backpack, slings that over one shoulder and shouts, “Run!”

He turns to look behind him, and she forces herself to wait, poised on the balls of her feet, until he spins back around. And then she takes off through the trees, following behind deer and other animals, away from the smoke and the wall of fire that’s now reached an unnatural height and is chasing them.

Everything narrows down to the flames burning through the trees all around her, branches crashing to the ground in a puff of smoke and ash, and embers fly past her face and she’s choking and coughing on the searing air in her lungs. The heat is almost unbearable, but the smoke is worse, stinging her eyes and making her lungs tight and hot and scalding, and shit shit shit. The backpack bangs against her back and that aches, but she pushes it aside, focuses on hurdling burning branches and staying just ahead of the main body of the fire and not dying.

A massive limb falls right in front of her, too close for her to dive out of the way.

Ahsoka takes a risk and leaps, hoping she’ll be able to clear it, but it’s too close and her shin catches on it (and pain screams through her lower leg, shit) and unbalances her and she crashes to the ground in a tangle of limbs and pain and she’s too slow, too slow, the smoke makes everything heavy and thick and she can’t quite think and her leg is--it hurts, hurts, and Rex keeps on running just like he should, like a good Career, like a good tribute, and she rolls onto her back and tugs her boot out from underneath the branch but the fire is too close and she knows that she’s about to die.

The girl from the forest District killed by a forest fire.

How ironic.

~~~

Rex has never seen so much fire and smoke in his life and he's certainly never felt anything like this, acrid burning in his lungs and heat from all directions like a desert and the danger of falling tree limbs, knowing if he slows down or makes a wrong turn or loses his balance then he's lost. He can’t run but he can’t stop, and he can’t breathe but he does, coughing and choking and dry as stone until he realizes he looks to one side and she’s not there, oh shit, no- He twists around, partly stops, and he sees her on the ground and oh hell, the fire is so close and he needs to run but first he needs to get her.

And instinct and reason and everything else is screaming when he runs towards the fire but she’s struggling to get up and she won’t be fast enough, so as she pulls her leg away from a burning, fallen tree limb, he grabs her around the shoulders and knees, doesn’t pay attention to the weight, and turns again so the heat scorches his back and runs. Stumbling, maybe, and panicked and he doesn’t know where he’s going, but he’s going to get them out of here because they promised.

She grabs his shoulder, and for a second he thinks he’s dropping her and she’s trying to hold on, but then he focuses through a haze of tears and she’s shaking him, and she looks alright enough so he sets her down mid stride and pushes himself faster, and she’s next to him and he keeps checking so he doesn’t lose track of her again.

They run, or they try, but hell, Rex can’t breathe anymore; his chest catches up short and he keeps coughing and he’s hot and sick and dizzy and stumbling, and then suddenly Ahsoka’s tugging on his arm, dragging him sideways and no, they can’t stop because if they do that then the fire catches them and he didn’t rush back into the flames to grab her just to have her get them both killed, thanks-

And his back is against something hard and warm and Ahsoka’s snapping, “Rex, look,” and he coughs a few times, registers that for some reason the threat isn’t so immediate, so with a monumental effort he shakes his head and blinks away stinging tears, vision blurring, and relaxes tense muscles. Or at least, he does for a moment before twisting away from Ahsoka to cough so hard he thinks he’s going to shred his throat, nearly throws up except he doesn’t let himself.

Shit. Oh shit.

“I hope that fire wasn’t our fault,” he croaks, because if they left their little cookfire hot and it nearly killed them - hell, what a disaster that would be.

~~~

Ahsoka can’t breathe.

She chokes in short, sharp breaths in between coughs, bends more over her knees and tries to steady her breathing as best as she can. Doesn’t try to stop the coughs, because she has to get rid of the smoke in her lungs, she has to--shit, ah, shit. Her chest burns and her eyes are stinging and she thinks she’s crying from the smoke and it’s almost enough to drown out the pain in her leg, but not quite. She pulls her knife out, cuts away the burned fabric of her pant leg, tries not to look at how brilliantly red and blistering the flesh is. She’ll focus on that later.

“Don’t be dumb,” she rasps, when the coughing subsides enough she can manage to speak; she sits back, dropping off her knees to lean against the rock, pulls out her water bottle and takes a sip, rolling the water around her mouth and then swallowing it. It helps soothe her raw throat, a little. “That’s a little present from the Gamemakers, I’m sure. I’ve,” and she has to pause to cough again, “I’ve seen a natural forest fire once, started from a lightning strike. This was more like a controlled burn. Except.” She breathes, closes her eyes, takes another drink, careful. “Flames were too tall, advanced too fast and too uniform to be natural.”

Opens her eyes again and forces herself to look around. She’s a little less affected by the smoke than Rex is, by virtue of being a bit--okay, a lot--shorter than he is, and knowing how to deal with all this, so she needs to take stock of their surroundings. Large rocks, the trees sparser and more spread out. She has no idea where they are or where the lake is or how to get back.

“You need to drink a little water,” she says, careful, closing her eyes again, still panting, drenched in sweat and exhausted beyond belief. “It’ll--help.”

He reaches one arm out for the backpack where it sits between them, slowly digs through it to pull his water bottle out, takes a few small sips. He’s not in very good shape, right now, too dazed. But they can’t stay here, they’re still breathing in smoke and they need to get further away, preferably find another water source so she can soak her leg and maybe reduce the swelling some.

“One minute,” she tells him, soft. “Then we--move. Smoke’s still too thick.” As though to illustrate her words, she finds herself coughing again, hard enough she’s almost vomiting from it, and it drains the energy out of her and she leans heavy into the rock and tries to breathe.

Rex nods, making a grimacing, displeased face, and she counts the seconds, forces her breathing to follow a pattern until she’s somewhat steady.

One minute.

“Alright,” she says, tiredly, takes one last drink from her water bottle and then takes Rex’s from him (checks to make sure it’s tightly sealed) and puts it in the backpack, slips it over her shoulders, stands. Everything whirls and she sways for a moment, dizzy, and then she grits her teeth and reaches down, offers him a hand. He takes it, and she helps him to his feet, and they take two steps away from the rock when there’s a hissing noise and a fireball slams into the ground right where they were just sitting.

Shit.

Ahsoka takes off, tugs on Rex’s hand until he starts moving, then lets go. There’s another hiss and she drops to the ground as the fireball soars over her head, and then it’s somehow twisting to her feet and pressing forward, zigzagging and ducking and diving but always forward, forward, away from the smoke and the flames and this whole booby-trapped area.

Until finally, finally, there are no more hisses.

Ahsoka stands frozen, panting, as much of her weight off her burned leg as she can, her head cocked, listening for the telltale sound of another fireball releasing, but there’s nothing, just the sharp panting of her breaths and her heart thundering in her ears.

The smoke is too thick, and they need water.

So.

Rex doubles over, suddenly, and she has to turn away and try not to listen because she does not want to start retching, herself. She can’t quite breathe right and there’s smoke swirling around everywhere, making it hard to see, and the firelight’s been replaced with slowly-strengthening daylight.

“C’mon,” she says, her voice a scratch in her throat, as soon as Rex is done, and then she starts making her slow way onwards, away from the flames.

~~~

Rex just wants to sit down and put his head between his knees until he can breathe again and everything doesn’t smell and taste like smoke. He bit his tongue at some point and there’s a bitter taste in the back of his throat, but he makes himself follow Ahsoka, wiping his face on his jacket sleeve, still heaving for a normal rhythm to his breathing.

There’s still fire, but it isn’t quite coming anymore, and there’s still smoke but Rex can at least breathe a little more, so they don’t run now, and he doesn’t pay much attention to where they’re going except to follow Ahsoka. He has the sense to leave a hand on the hilt of one of his knives, but whether he’d really be able to use it is doubtful.

They walk until they top a small rise and there’s a little clear pool spread out in front of them, sparkling just a little under all the smoke, and by unspoken agreement they both pick up the pace to a half-run, and Rex stumbles straight into the water up to his knees and scoops up water in his hands, splashes it icy over his face and arms.

Shit.

Ahsoka drops her jacket and his backpack on the ground by the pool, toes off her boots clumsily (nearly falling over), and wades into the pool next to him. And promptly tips over backwards, arms out, and dunks herself completely under the water.

Well, he understands. Almost wants to do the same thing himself. Finds himself grinning a little until she surfaces, shaking her head and slicking water off her face, and then she scrambles out of the pool and flops onto its banks and lies spread-eagle. And barefoot. And panting.

Rex can’t help but laugh at her, and she rolls her eyes, waves a hand. “Try it,” she says. “It’s nice.”

Rex doesn’t quite follow her example, but he does duck his whole head underwater for a second so he can scrub at his face and hair and let the cool liquid soothe his stinging skin and eyes. Then he straightens, gets a breath, and wades back to dry land, where he pulls off his now-soaking boots and socks and lays them out, then sticks his legs back into the pool.

Shit.

He’s not dead. So that’s good.

But the Gamemakers were playing with them. So that’s not good. And probably means something else is coming - or someone else.

But whatever. He needs a minute before he thinks about that.

Ahsoka has closed her eyes and is being quiet, her breathing at least even, despite being heavy. Rex coughs lightly, looks her over briefly, and his eyes catch on the raw burn on her shin.

“Ahsoka,” he says, reaching for his backpack because he doesn’t really remember what supplies he had as far as first aid was concerned, “How does your leg feel?”

She doesn’t open her eyes, just lazily holds up a hand and gestures very emphatically thumbs down. “Bad,” she says, grumpily. “How d’you think?”

Rex snorts and finds a roll of bandages (which smell like smoke but look clean, anyway) and a large needle with a short coil of stiff thread. So, not much there. Better than nothing. Not quite right for this kind of burn, he thinks. “You better keep that in the water, I think,” he rasps, gulps more of the water in his bottle, which is warm and unpleasant after the feel of the water in the pool. Oh well. It still helps his throat some.

“Mhm.” Ahsoka sounds even more exhausted than he feels. Which makes sense probably. “You should drink from the spring, it’ll help bring your body temp down.”

“Is it safe?” Rex would definitely rather drink that cold water than this stuff.

“Yep.”

He leans forward over his legs, dumping the water in his bottle out on his head (why waste it), and refills it in the pool. It feels even better to drink, fresh and cold and not totally insipid.

Hell.

Well, he supposes that could have been worse.

~~~

Ahsoka lays sprawled out on the ground for a few minutes, then she huffs out a tired sigh and sits up again, scoots herself so she can soak her burned leg in the spring. Because that really is a smart idea. She’s just-- tired, and while dunking herself underwater had felt good, she doesn’t think she’s totally clear of the smoke-induced fog in her thoughts.

Hell, she’s tired.

“Thanks,” she says, finally, splashing some water over her face, using what’s left of the fire-heated water in her bottle to clean off her arms before refilling it. “I owe you one.”

“No,” he says, shrugging and drinking some of his water.

She blinks. What the hell? “You saved my life,” she says, slowly, a bit like he’s being an idiot, because honestly, what the hell. “So yeah, I owe you.”

“No, it’s okay.”

Well, then. Did the smoke addle his brains or something? She sighs, grabs the backpack and pulls out a piece of groosling--it’ll go bad faster than the rabbit--for herself, chucks another one at him. He catches it in one hand. “Why’d you do it?”

“We’re allies, right? So I couldn’t let you just die,” he says, tired, and shrugs again. “Besides, you had my backpack.”

She sighs, flops back on the ground, though she leaves her leg in the water, nibbles at the groosling. “It’s not a very Career-ish thing to do. You could’ve gone back to them and be all like hey guys guess who I knocked off and they probably would’ve accepted you right back. Especially Savage, he’s too stupid to know anything.”

“Yeah, don’t remind me,” he says, casually, a bit of a teasing warning in his voice. “I might change my mind.”

Ahsoka arches her eyebrows at him, rolling her eyes. “I’d like to see you try,” she says, vaguely threatening, and then closes her eyes and lets out a long breath. “Damn smoke.”

“Agreed,” he says, his clothes rustling a bit as he shifts--she keeps her eyes closed, sighs.

“I wonder if they’ve had their fill of making us run like rabbits yet,” she mumbles, annoyed, flops one hand over to rub at her eyes. “Must be someone else nearby, if they’ve stopped firing at us.”

“Would you stop trying to jinx everything?” he asks, grumbling.

She cracks open one eye to stare at him, sulkily. “I am not jinxing it. If we get attacked it’s not my fault.”

“No, it definitely would be.”

Ahsoka glares harder, tries to come up with a comeback, and, failing that, flips him off with a gesture she’d picked up from Anakin. Which just makes him chuckle at her.

She pulls her leg out of the water after a while, to let it dry, even though it aches so much worse now, puts on her sock and boot on her dry foot. She needs to be ready to go in case someone comes.

The sunbeams swirl thick and almost tangible through the smoke, skitter golden over his skin, his hair, his eyes, making him almost glow in the dim light; she studies his profile for a few minutes, leaning over her knees (which she’s pulled up to her chest), noting the sharp angles of his cheekbones and his jawline, the way his eyelashes curl against his skin, and--and she’s been looking at him for too long. So. She makes herself turn away, stare out over the pond, and she sighs and sits and waits.

~~~

Rex isn’t sure he should find it so funny how grumpy Ahsoka’s being - they did both just almost die, she’s allowed to be grumpy. It’s just, she’s… Well, at the moment, she’s got her nose all scrunched up while she flips him off, and it’s bunched all her freckles together at the bridge of her nose so it looks like there’s more of them there than there actually are. Also, do her arms and legs normally look so freakishly long or is just because she’s sprawled out on the ground at the moment? She humphs a little, after a moment, and sits up to haul her leg out of the water, and her hair is a mess of wavy wisps of orange and red, glinting in the sun almost like it caught on fire.

Which actually would have been very bad, but anyway.

She pulls her shoe and sock back on, and Rex remembers he needs to see if his are at all dry. The socks are, the boots, not so much, but he puts them back on nonetheless, because really they’ll have to be ready to move soon. Especially if Ahsoka is right and they’ve been herded towards other tributes.

She’s more serious, too, when he looks back over at her - staring at the little pool (which really sparkles, now that the smoke has cleared a little) eyes in shadow, and he hopes she understood he meant it, when he said she didn’t owe him.

Owing people is only safe if you trust them. And sure, maybe he wouldn’t use a favor against her, but she doesn’t know that. And she should have no reason to trust him. And he doesn’t like people owing him, or owing anyone himself, anyway.

So none of that, not today. He didn’t save her to get anything out of it. Hell, he’s not actually sure why he did. It just happened. And it was stupid, because you don’t do things like that. Especially not in the arena. Risk yourself to get someone out of a hopeless situation. You can’t afford to.

But here he is. And he doesn’t really understand.

~~~

Ahsoka has put both her boots back on and is completely ready to go (even though she’s not entirely sure they’ll be bothering to look for a new camp for tonight, now that it’s evening and they have a water source here) by the time she hears the footsteps.

She and Rex both push themselves to their feet at the same time, he pulling his knives and she drawing her sword, and she whirls around to see the Careers (all of them, Savage and the girl from One, Aurra, and Asajj Ventress and Tiplee from Four) emerging from the trees, weapons out at the ready.

“So this is where you got off to,” Ventress sneers. “The little wildling from Seven.”

“You were all a little slow for my taste,” Rex says, and Ahsoka snorts at how insulted all three girls look.

Savage just roars a bit, lifting his mace and taking a few steps forward, and Ahsoka snorts. “You’ll make fun of him for allying with a wild thing,” she says, archly, “but you allied with a beast.”

Savage snarls, and she shrugs a bit, as though to say see what I mean?

“Alright, fair enough,” Ventress says wryly.

Ahsoka smirks a bit, says, “You’ve got him on a nice leash, though, I assume,” which is apparently enough for Savage to lunge at her, fast, faster than she’d expected him to be, swinging his mace.

Well, then.

Ahsoka jumps back from the first swing, ducks under the second, and rolls past him and to her feet (and ow, her leg hurts), holding her sword defensively, jumping to one side as he brings the mace flying down to slam into the dirt. She has to somehow get close enough to injure or kill (preferably kill) him without letting him touch her, because he’s bigger and stronger and he knows it and that’s how he fights.

He’s handy with the mace, forcing her to duck and dodge and stay on the defensive, but she’s faster and smarter and so when she sees the opening she lunges for it, pulls out her dagger and slides between his legs while he has the mace over his head, brings both blades up to slash at his knees.

He howls and falls, and she leaps to her feet, tucks the knife back in her belt and steps around to face him; he snarls and balls up a fist, punches her hard in the stomach, knocking the wind from her lungs, and she staggers and instinctively whips the hilt of her sword across his face, dazing him a little. Struggles to breathe, stepping closer, ready to slash her sword across his throat.

“Wait,” he says, suddenly pleading, “I don’t want to die--”

She cuts him off, because she can’t let herself listen to him. “Neither do I,” she says, harsh and unforgiving (and shit, hell, she doesn’t--she can’t--), and then she jerks her sword up and across his neck and blood bubbles up and he falls, like a puppet with his strings cut.

She doesn’t even need the cannon to know he’s gone.

~~~

Ahsoka and Savage fighting means Rex is left to fend off Aurra Sing and Asajj and Tiplee on his own, and Tiplee has a short spear, so as they all rush him, Rex sheaths one knife fast and draws a throwing knife, whips it at Tiplee, the blade sinking true in between her ribs where he’d aimed it. He narrowly manages to duck under a swing from Asajj (she and Aurra both use swords, like Ahsoka) and it throws him off balance, and he has to catch himself on the ground, right himself and flick his other knife back out as fast as he can and scramble back away from both of them.

He could go for Tiplee’s spear, it would give him better reach - as it is, he can only twist fast out of the way of a thrust from Aurra, using his knives to shove the blade away for extra space, and Asajj has cut around almost behind him and he has to catch the guard of her sword on his knife blade, duck in close and fast so he can bring his other weapon up and drive in - she shifts just enough that it catches her shoulder instead of her chest, and Asajj hisses in pain, pulls herself off his knife and away and hell, Aurra is nearly behind him so he has to run towards where Ahsoka and Savage are fighting, still, and regroup.

They are both too good, because they’ve been training too, and his reach isn’t long enough. He takes a risk, leaves Ahsoka and Savage’s fight behind him so Aurra and Asajj can’t cut behind him, even though a stray blow from either of the two behind him could cripple him.

“You’re not bad,” Asajj says, smirking, raspier than usual - he suspects some of the smoke got to them too.

He smiles tightly. “And you’re bleeding.”

Asajj smirks wider, but Aurra launches herself at him with a snarl, and Rex has to twist hard to one side and then barely catches her shift the angle of the blade, slaps the flat of his knife against her sword just in time to keep her from running him through, gets a wide slash on his arm instead but he doesn’t care because his other knife is still free and Aurra’s right side is unguarded so he lunges at her and gouges his weapon into her hip.

She shrieks and he stumbles to his feet and nearly falls into Ahsoka, who’s apparently just come up next to him, and her sword is up and the cut on his arm is not good but it’s not crippling at all so he lifts his own knives, meets Asajj’s eyes.

“If it’s okay with you, I’m sticking with her,” he says.

“By all means,” she answers, and then glances at Aurra, who’s staggering and swearing, and her own shoulder. And then, before Rex and Ahsoka can move on them, both girls whip around and run for it.

Rex turns, quickly, just to be sure, and finds Savage lying on the ground, blood pooling around his head. Well, good, he supposes. He wanders over to Tiplee’s body, flexes his fingers a moment before forcing himself to pull his throwing knife out of her chest, wipe her blood off on his pants. She wasn’t so bad, was funny- But he can’t let himself think about that right now.

She has a small package in her pocket; he opens it, finds a small piece of fabric with something stitched on it - a design, seashells and wave-like shapes. Her District’s token, he supposes. That’s almost enough to make him sick, but instead he bows his head and folds it carefully back up and slides it into his pocket.

He turns around to look at Ahsoka, her face and string of beads stained with soot, and some blood, and nods.

They have to get out of the way of the bodies so they can be retrieved.

That’s one more he’s killed. Five now.

Chapter Text

Ahsoka follows Rex in limping back to their pool, standing back so the hovercraft can pick up the bodies: the girl from Four, Tiplee, and Savage. She’s just starting to sit down when a silver parachute comes floating through the air down to her--her first gift from a sponsor? She catches it, unscrews the lid of the small vial, sniffs at it curiously.

It smells like medicine.

Hesitantly, she dips the tip of one finger in, spreads a bit over her leg, and-- shit, that feels good, and she lets out a sigh, looks up at the sky, and says, overdramatically, “I love you, Obi-Wan.” And then she drops to sit down, starts rubbing the ointment over her leg, careful.

“What is that?” Rex asks, bemused, and she snorts.

“Burn cream, of some kind. Medicinal,” she says, lightly. “Must’ve cost an arm and a leg.” Everything does, in the Games.

She finishes rubbing a thin layer into the burn on her leg, looks over at Rex, says, “You need any?”

“No,” he says. “Thanks, though.”

She nods, tucks it away in the backpack as he digs inside, looking for something, probably whatever first aid supplies he’s got that he could use for the cut on his arm. She’s reaching for another piece of groosling, a package of dried fruit, when he shifts just a little and the back of his hand brushes against hers. She swallows, pulls away quickly, tugging out the things she needs.

Tries not to notice that--

No.

“You gonna be okay?” she asks, nodding at his arm, pulling back and taking a bite of meat. There’s blood on his arms and she thinks--knows--it’s not entirely his own.

There’s blood on hers, too. Not a lot, just some that spurted out when she cut the tendons in Savage’s knees, as easy as she’d skinned the rabbit and the groosling last night.

I don’t want to die.

Shit.

~~~

“Yeah,” Rex says, pulling his roll of bandages out of the backpack and using as little of the length as he can get away with to wrap up his bleeding arm. “It’s not that serious.”

“Alright.” Ahsoka is more picking at her food than eating. Rex puts away the bandages that are left and sets his hands on the ground at his sides, presses hard, digs his fingers into the dirt and mud so he can’t see them. “You should eat something. We probably best just camp here tonight.”

He shrugs. He’d throw up anything he tried to choke down right now.

Because of the smoke maybe.

“Sounds good,” he says. Sleep sounds good.

“Maybe we should share the sleeping bag,” she suggests, casual. “It’s been cold.”

Yeah, it’s been cold. But no, he can’t do that. “I’d rather not.”

“I won’t kill you in your sleep, y’know,” she says, with a shrug, and he digs his fingers further into the dirt and nods.

“Yeah, I figured, since you woke me up instead of letting me get burnt to a crisp.”

“Of course I woke you up,” she huffs, taking a tiny bite of her groosling. “So if that’s what you’re worried about, it’s fine. Promise.” She smiles, but it’s crooked and a little bitter.

Hell. He doesn’t feel good. Needs to just not. Do this. “Yeah I know.” His hands are shaking even though they’re so flat against the ground. “I’d just rather not.”

She shrugs. “Your loss.”

Not so much.

“You want first watch?”

“No.” He says it too fast, by mistake, spread-eagles his fingers and shakes his head. “Sorry, kinda just, tired.” He needs to go to sleep. Maybe laying down will help with the nausea.

~~~

“Alright, fair enough,” Ahsoka says, although she’s tired suddenly, wants nothing more to curl up in a ball and forget everything. “You didn’t get much sleep last night, think I was only watching for a couple hours before the fire came up.”

Rex doesn’t say anything, just pulls the sleeping bag out and crawls inside it, lays down and closes his eyes. Ahsoka finds a position a couple feet away, where she can put her back to a tree, draws her sword and sets it down by her hand, tilts her head back against the rough bark and waits and watches, quiet.

Soon enough the sky gets dark enough that the anthem plays, and the faces of the dead are splayed across the sky: Savage, Tiplee. No others today.

But two Careers dead, that’s a big event. And she killed the biggest one.

She tries not to wonder about what they think of her, at home. For allying with a Career, of all people. Tries not to think about Rey seeing updates during the day at school, about Anakin obsessively watching the Games. He must be so scared. She’s already almost died--what, twice? at the Cornucopia and again in the fire?--twice now, and both times the only reason she’s survived is because of a Career. She’d been so close to breaking her promise.

And she’d meant the promise she made, to Anakin and Padme and Rey; and she’d meant it when she told Caesar that if she had to kill all twenty-three of them herself she would.

But she hadn’t expected it to be so easy.

(Her knife slips through the girl from Six’s throat and there’s hardly any resistance, and if there is just a flick of her wrist and it’s gone. She severs the tendons in Savage’s knees and he howls and says he doesn’t want to die and she knows, she knows, she knows, but it’s kill or be killed and she promised so--)

She can’t think.

If she thinks she’ll lose control, and she can’t do that right now, she doesn’t trust Rex enough and the cameras are always watching, so she sits and whittles at a small stick until she’s exhausted enough she’s having trouble focusing and it feels like it’s been half the night, and then she pushes herself to her feet and crosses the step or two between her and Rex and drops onto a knee, nudges his shoulder light and pulls her hand back. Says, roughly, “Your watch.”

“Okay,” he says, climbs out of the bag. He doesn’t look or sound like he slept, but that’s not her business. Neither is the fact that he almost looks like he has tears in his eyes. So she pretends not to notice and climbs inside the sleeping bag, pulls her dagger out and clutches it tight in her right fist, curls up small and tucks one hand beneath her cheek and closes her eyes and blocks out the rest of the world.

She’s tired.

She doesn’t want to think.

~~~

Rex tries his best but he can’t sleep, at all. He almost dozes, a couple times, but he can’t because then his control slips. Then he almost can’t lay still, can’t keep tense and careful as the wire in a snare, then his breaths are shaky and heat stings his eyes.

He just wants to sleep so he’s not here, for a bit, so maybe he’ll dream of home or just nothing at all. But he can’t. So. He wraps both arms around his stomach and stares into the just-variated patterns of the woods in the dark and waits. For a long time. With all the faces printed in the dark like they were projected on the sky and he doesn’t want to see them.

They are all so scared.

He’s got hot tears in his eyes by the time he feels Ahsoka come up behind him, touch his shoulder. “Your watch.”

“Okay.” He curls his hands up tight and climbs out of the sleeping bag. Goes over to sit down. So much for sleeping. He thinks about wrapping a hand around his knife but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to do that, he doesn’t want to be here, he wants to be home. Not having done any of this. He wants to not be a murderer, wants to not know what it feels like to have another person’s blood on your skin.

You have to find something that makes it bearable.

He doesn’t know, because he promised, but it’s too hard, and he can’t, he can’t win, not like this, not if he has to be this, so. So. He thinks Ahsoka’s asleep, she won't know. And who’s watching right now anyway? If he looks week, it will only be to some people. So he wraps his arms around his knees and musters up the voice to start singing.

Very quiet. And not very good, he thinks, too raspy and low. But there was a song his dad sang when he was so little, slow and simple, and it’s the only one he knows. Because District Two doesn’t really have music. It’s a song from Three, because Rex thinks his dad learned it from his mom. He’s not sure. But he likes it, and he sings it at home to help sometimes, so.

He sits in the dark, keeping watch, and sings to himself because it makes it just a little better. Because he can almost pretend he's home instead of here. He imagines Cody is singing along.

~~~

Ahsoka is not asleep when Rex starts--starts singing, some kind of lullaby, she thinks, old and sweet and sad. She wants to be, because she is tired, and she can’t stop thinking, but--she can’t stop thinking.

But Rex is singing.

And her mother used to sing her to sleep, when she was small and had nightmares, there’s a sweet and soft voice, vaguely remembered, singing an old lullaby she barely remembers the tune to, low and lyrical. And she misses her mother. And misses Anakin, who can’t sing but who can hum, and who has always been there when she needed him, when she was scared or sad, she could always crawl into his arms (even when she didn’t really fit in his lap anymore) and he’d hug her close and promise everything would be okay and hum the old songs to her. She--she wants them, wants her family, wants little Rey who picks up new songs faster than anyone and has a voice even better than Ahsoka’s is, wants her brother, wants Padme who knows all the right words. She wants to not have blood on her hands and she wants to not know how it feels to cut a girl’s throat and she wants--she wants to not know the look in a boy’s eyes when he realizes he’s about to die and she--

No, no, no, no, she can’t.

Rex is still singing, so soft. He has a decent voice.

She doesn’t know the words, but--the tune is easy to pick up, like most lullabies are, repetitive, and so it’s easy for her to piece together a harmony (instinctive, more like), and so she just--doesn’t let herself think on anything other than the notes, the music, closes her eyes (and there are tears hot on her face) and hums a harmony line along with; Rex hesitates for just a second and then keeps going, and she joins him, hums and forces her breathing to stay easy and even, though she’s crying, and she hums and cries until she falls asleep.

(In her dreams, she sees them.)

(I don’t want to die.)

~~~

Rex stays awake the rest of the night more easily than he'd thought he would. He thinks he sings the whole time; at some point Ahsoka’s soft humming stops and it's just him. He's afraid the two Careers are somewhere nearby, waiting for them to be off their guard, and so he doesn't sleep. Just sings. And cries, at some point. And it's not as strong as he needs to be, but… but it's what he has to do, he thinks. So they don't all come for him, the frightened faces.

When the sun turns the sky pale gold, he gets up and carefully wakes Ahsoka up. She jolts a little, but blinks up at him and focuses, and he smiles tightly. “I don't think we should stay here long today,” he says. Not now that the Careers know where they are.

She nods, crawls out of the sleeping bag and grabs her water bottle from beside it to drink; Rex packs up the sleeping bag and takes a piece of the rabbit to eat. They'll need to finish both kills today, most likely, or risk the meat going bad.

He doesn't mention the singing, and neither does Ahsoka. What would they say, anyway?

“Should we still try to get over to the lake?” he asks.

Ahsoka hesitates just a second, then nods. “Yeah. If we can't stay here, we'll need a new source of water, so…” She shrugs.

They both eat and drink plenty, refill their water bottles, and Rex cleans himself off some, unwraps his arm to clean it some and, although he doesn't want to use too much of the bandage, rewraps it with a clean length. Ahsoka puts more burn medicine on her leg, redoes her braid (which looks hard, how do you braid your own hair like that without looking?).

“Your beads are kind of stained,” Rex tells her, and she looks at them and twists her face in a small frown, and he almost thinks she shudders before using a little water from the pool to rinse away some of the soot and blood.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

It's when they're almost ready to go that Rex hears a soft rustling, almost natural in the forest except there's not much wind today, and Ahsoka gestures to him at the same time he plans to warn her, and both of them draw their weapons, settle into fighting stances. Ahsoka nods in the direction of the sound, and Rex nods back, edges closer.

And a small voice says, “Wait, wait, truce? Please?”

Shit. Rex hesitates, but Ahsoka straightens immediately, swallowing hard and lowering her sword, so he follows her lead. “Okay,” she calls. “Truce.”

Because that's the voice of one of the youngest ones, and frightened, and Rex doesn't have to think about this either - they can't ignore that plea.

A small hand emerges from the bushes, palm out in a gesture of surrender, and then the tiny twelve-year-old from Four (Miik) slides out into the sun, eyes wide, other hand clutching a hunting knife.

Rex quickly sheaths his own knives, because quite frankly, this child is not a threat. And he's scared.

Ahsoka sheaths her own sword and crouches a little, meets the boy's bright blue eyes, and he shivers. “Hey,” she says, quiet, smiling a little, and Rex tries to at least relax a little so he doesn't look threatening. “What do you want?”

“I'm sorry,” Miik says, obviously trying to sound brave. “I thought… Maybe we could ally. I'm sneaky,” he says, as if anticipating a refusal, “and fast. And I can steal things.” He holds up his knife, and since there's no way this kid was at the Bloodbath, Rex suspects he did in fact steal the knife from someone or someplace.

Rex frowns a little. He wants to protect this little boy, but they can't afford to ally with someone who's so obviously a liability. Never mind that he will not kill this boy. (He doesn't even consider it, really.)

~~~

The instant she hears the kid’s voice, Ahsoka knows she can’t say no.

He’s small and scared and nothing even close to a threat. And he reminds her, in a strange sense, of Rey.

So.

“We could use someone sneaky,” she tells him, and she swings the backpack off her shoulder and kneels down. “You hungry?”

He nods, creeps closer, and she pulls out some of the rabbit to hand to him. It needs to get eaten up anyway, and they’ve barely touched the packaged supplies (which will last a lot longer than anything fresh). She looks up at Rex to see him skeptical and raising an eyebrow at her, and she gives him a pleading look, then turns away and pulls out what’s left of the open package of dried fruit.

“If you have a water bottle, you should fill it up from the pool,” she says, calmly. “It’s spring-fed, so it’s safe to drink straight from it, too.”

Miik looks worried, and she frowns, but it’s Rex who speaks, says, just as calm as she is, “It’s okay, go for it.”

Rex also motions at her with one hand, and she stands and walks over to him. He drops his voice, says, “This isn’t a good idea.”

Her instinctive reaction is to snap. Fast and sharp, some kind of biting comment about him not being useful because he can’t kill. But--

Something changed, last night. So.

“He can help us with destroying the supplies,” she says, softly, gives him another wide-eyed look. “Please, Rex? Look at him, he’s hungry, and we both know he won’t survive the Games, so why not ally with him for a bit? I can’t just let him starve.”

~~~

Rex has a very reasonable, serious response planned to that comment, it's just he has trouble being stern enough to say it, for a moment, because shit, Ahsoka's eyes are wide and liquid and she just looks so worried about the kid and her eyes are even richer blue than Miik’s and honestly, between the two of them, how the hell is he supposed to be stone?

“You wanna pull him in on an attack on the Careers?” he says, after a second of firmly lecturing himself. “Protecting him is gonna take work, Ahsoka, and that's energy and food and time we don't have.”

“After this, we might have to lure them out. He could set fires, be a distraction,” Rex starts shaking his head before she's done, because that's a big risk, and if it doesn't work they could get Miik killed for no reason, “while we move in, steal what we want and burn the rest. We can't just leave him.”

She sounds convinced, and it almost pulls him in, but there are so many things that could go wrong. “He'll get lots of sponsors, he'll manage,” Rex says. “He's a liability, and you know it.”

“I'm not,” and oh shit, Rex jumps, embarrassed, and looks down at Miik, standing by them both again. Okay, so. Sneaky. “I promise I'm not, I can help. And if I get something from a sponsor, I'll share.”

Ahsoka stares at Rex, very stubbornly, eyebrows raised, pleading, and he scowls at her, avoids Miik’s determinedly casual look (the one that doesn't hide the terror in his blue eyes).

Screw both of them.

“Fine, kid,” he says, ignoring Ahsoka so he doesn't have to see her looking smug. “You seem pretty sneaky to me, so you can stick around.”

Miik grins, wide, and Rex snorts and sits back down.

His mentors definitely won't be helping him anymore.

He does his best to resign himself to that, and to this alliance.

~~~

As it turns out, Miik knows what direction the lake is, which makes it a hell of a lot easier for them to get started.

It also turns out Miik talks. A lot.

She thinks he’d probably like Rey.

Which hurts to think about.

“I heard you singing last night,” he says, brightly. “So I knew you couldn’t be too bad.”

Ahsoka does not look over at Rex.

She’s not entirely sure what happened, last night, but there’s been a shift in the air and things seem… different. Better? She doesn’t know, yet. But there’s a certain level of… of trust, almost, she thinks, that’s new and… well, she’s not exactly sure what to call it. But it’s there all the same.

Ahsoka takes to jumping up into the taller trees and climbing high enough to scout ahead a little ways, even though climbing makes her leg ache (much less than yesterday--the burn medicine works wonders on the swollen, puffy blisters)--they need to be informed of what the terrain in front of them looks like.

A little past midday, they stop and split up the last of the groosling and some of the rabbit, eating quickly and then moving on. She takes a moment to spread more medicine over her leg, though. She’s not sure how often to reapply it, but every time she does the throbbing vanishes and that relief is important right now.

It’s midafternoon by the time they reach the edge of the forest, where it borders the lake; the Careers have set up camp on the far boundary of the lake, their supplies stacked in a huge pyramid. Ahsoka nods to herself, drops out of the tree she’s in and says, “We should set more snares here, eat out of the backpack for tonight and finish off the rabbit. In the morning we should have some fresh meat we’ll have to cook.”

“Okay,” Rex says, turns to Miik. “Can you fish?”

Miik nods, says, “If I had some things, yeah.”

Ahsoka leaves them to their discussion, pulls out some more of the coiled wire and leaves them behind to follow game trails, setting snares. It’s easier with the thicker underbrush here, though the forest is darker. She sets six snares, is adjusting the trigger mechanism on the last one when some instinct twinges.

She frowns.

She’s alone out here… isn’t she?

There’s a blur of motion in the corner of her eye, and Ahsoka moves, flings herself sideways, and that’s how the knife scores a thin line down her cheek instead of slashing her neck. She flips herself up onto her feet and draws her sword, shoving the coil of wire into her pocket, but the girl--it’s the girl from Ten, and she’s fast, oh shit. Ahsoka ducks under another reaching cut from the knife, brings her sword up, blocks and parries and spins away.

As she does, a glint of light catches off the wire of her snare, and an idea comes to mind; she backs up carefully, letting the girl think she’s winning, waits for the right moment, and then--

The girl from Ten goes to take a step forward and her foot catches in the snare, tripping it.

It’s not enough to do much more than slow her down for a minute, but it tangles her foot and ankle, jerks her off-balance, and that moment is all Ahsoka needs to lunge forward with her sword outstretched and cut her throat open.

The cannon sounds.

Ahsoka’s panting, and her leg aches, and there’s blood still sheeting from the shallow but stinging gash on her cheek, and she realizes suddenly she’s been gone long enough that Rex and Miik will probably be worrying (she thinks? maybe they’d rather her get killed out here, it’d be easier on them both), so she leaves the snare as it is (there’s too much blood here for animals to venture this way anyway, now) and keeps her sword out, just in case, and picks her way quiet through the trees back to their camp.

~~~

Miik carefully explains what he needs if they're going to fish, with a certain fumbling that Rex attributes to not being used to having to plan this by himself. Rex tries to keep very still and nonthreatening, because sure, Miik said he thinks they aren't too bad, but Rex doesn't want to spook him.

And he doesn't know what to do with this very talkative and hungry twelve-year-old boy, especially since Miik seems determined to be in a good mood. No wonder he has sponsors: he's cute, tiny, scared, and weirdly cheerful.

Too bad Rex can't pull that off.

“Where did you learn that song?” Miik asks. They’re sitting by a small, shallow stream where Rex refilled their water bottles, waiting for the half hour to pass that means the water is safe to drink. Miik pulls off his small boots and socks and dangles his legs in the bubbling water. “It was nice.”

Rex swallows. “My dad. He learned it from my mom - I think it's from District Three.”

“Where'd your mom learn it?” Miik splashes a small arc of water in the air and smiles to himself.

“She was from Three, so I guess probably when she was little,” Rex says, shrugs.

“Cool.” Miik nods, sagely, his black hair flopping over his forehead, and Rex looks at the stream in front of them and rubs his hands against his pants. Ahsoka should be back soon. She’s better at this, he thinks, than he is.

“So,” he says, after a minute, awkward. “Do you know any songs?” After all, he only knows one, so maybe Miik can sing enough of a new one that Rex can pick it up.

“Yeah.” Miik kicks up more water, splashing Rex’s pants. “My dad sings a couple.”

“Huh. How do they go?”

Miik seems shy about it, for a minute, then appears to think a minute before launching into something (clearly making his voice funny on purpose, probably because he’s shy) fast and loud and holy shit, apparently about someone getting blackout drunk and falling off walls of varying heights.

“Miik,” Rex interrupts, not sure whether to laugh or be sorry. “Where did you learn that?”

“Told you. My dad.” Miik looks sheepish, and Rex rubs his forehead.

“He sing that a lot?”

“Yep.”

Rex nods slowly. He decides he better not ask what other songs Miik knows; he suddenly suspects they’ll just be more drinking songs. “Well, it was… interesting.”

“Yeah, they’re all like that,” Miik says, sighing. “I like your song better.”

A cannon goes off, dull and loud.

Rex jolts, and Miik yanks his feet out of the stream very fast.

Ahsoka’s not back yet.

“Was that…?” Miik shrinks in on himself, suddenly, looking around. “Where’s Ahsoka?”

“She just isn't back yet,” Rex answers, mouth suddenly dry. “That didn’t have to be her, Miik.”

“I don’t like this,” the boy answers, shaky, wrapping his arms around his middle. “I hate it, I hate it here.”

Rex puts one hand on his knife and the other hand on Miik’s skinny shoulders. “Yeah,” he says slowly. “Yeah, me too.” He hates that right now, he knows he doesn’t want that cannon to have been for Ahsoka, but he can’t stop thinking it would be better for them both if it was.

The second he touches Miik, the little boy scoots close to him, huddles against his side, eyes so wide, and Rex doesn’t know what to do, for a second, because that’s too close and maybe he shouldn’t- But Miik is shivering, and Rex doesn’t want to push him away, so. He leaves his hand on Miik’s back and sighs.

“I’m sure she’s fine, buddy,” he says.

“Nothing is fine,” Miik snaps.

“No. No, I guess it’s not.”

Who’s he kidding, he wants her to come back. He hopes that cannon wasn’t her, screw the consequences.

At least for Miik’s sake, if nothing else.

There’s a rustle in the bushes, but he only has his knife half out of its sheath before he hears, weary, “It’s just me, don’t freak out,” and Ahsoka pushes through the undergrowth to stop on the bank of the stream behind them and to their right. Shit. Good.

Miik shrugs Rex’s hand off his back and scrambles to his feet and starts toward Ahsoka, only to jerk to a stop and hesitate, a moment. Rex suspects that’s because of how tired Ahsoka looks. And the line of blood on her cheek. And her drawn and somewhat bloody sword.

Rex eases himself to his feet, and Miik apparently makes up his mind that it’s still fine, because he charges Ahsoka and grabs her around the middle, hard.

Rex makes eye contact with Ahsoka over Miik’s head, shrugs.

“That was fun,” she says to him, dryly.

Hell. Well, good thing his ally isn’t dead.

~~~

Ahsoka tries not to freeze too much when Miik grabs her, just lets him hug her for a moment before gently taking his shoulder with her free hand and pushing him away. She drops down to sit on the grass with a sigh, wiping her sword off and sheathing it, reaches for the backpack and grabs the burn cream, spreading some on her leg, before bending over to splash water onto her face from the stream. Winces a little, because that hurts, but she needs to clean out the cut on her cheek and keep it as clean as she can so it doesn’t get infected.

“Got ambushed by the girl from Ten, what’s her name, Adi something?” she says, settling back. “On my last snare. She was wicked fast with that knife of hers, managed to get me before I really realized she was there.” She shrugs a bit, digs into the backpack for the package of jerky and crackers, nibbles at a cracker before taking a bite of jerky. “I set five snares, though, so we should get a decent haul in the morning.”

“That’s good,” he says, measured. “Is she dead?”

Ahsoka swallows, rolls her eyes, reaches for familiar sarcasm so she can cover how her hands are still shaky. “No, there was just a cannon for no reason,” she says, dust-dry, and takes a sip of water. “Yeah, she’s--dead.”

Rex nods, and she sighs a bit, lays down on her back with her knees up.

“Do you care?” It’s Miik, and she winces a bit. “That she’s dead?”

Ahsoka sighs, swallows, pushes herself to sit up and wrap her arms around her legs, looking at him. “It’s not--it’s not if I care or not, Miik,” she says, very quiet. “Of course I--care, but it’s the Hunger Games. My mom said, once, that sometimes we have to make hard choices in life, and sometimes that means… your values have to change. You have to prioritize things. Choose what’s most important to you. So yeah, I care, but that has to be less important than surviving right now. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, it makes sense,” he says, very quiet, picking at the grass. “But I care.”

She swallows, nods. “Good,” she tells him, careful. “Don’t let them take that away from you.”

“Yeah, I know.” Miik hesitates for a minute, and then he asks, “Do you know any songs?”

Ahsoka smiles at him, lightly. “Yeah, I know a few. Why, do you want me to sing one?”

He nods a little, shrugs one shoulder, and she considers. There’s that old song Rey likes, about the Man in the Moon--she thinks maybe Miik will like it too. So she hesitates, takes a deep breath, and starts to sing. Quiet at first, but then she lets her voice get a little louder on the second verse (and maybe it’s her imagination, but she could almost swear Rex is humming the tune, by then). By the third verse, there’s the sound of birdsong making a harmony--she looks up to spot a black-and-white flash of wings in the tree as a second mockingjay lands on a branch beside the first--and by the time she stops after the fourth, the now-three mockingjays keep going.

Well, she’d told Rex they like to sing with her.

~~~

Rex doesn't actually understand what's happening. If he thinks about it, about the absurdity of this, the unlikelihood of three tributes from different Districts sitting and singing with mockingjays in the arena (singing in the arena at all), it makes him feel small and scared and trapped, like he’d better not hum along.

The thing is, the music helps. So he decides to try not to think about it.

It helped last night, too. Ahsoka singing with him, even if it was just a harmony with no words. Spontaneous, and encouraging, like the one and only time he’d managed to get a mockingjay to sing with him at home.

With all these actual mockingjays singing with her, and him trying to also, and Miik swaying back and forth (but too embarrassed, he thinks, to sing along), everything feels… oddly secluded. Okay, almost. It could almost just be them, in the woods somewhere, not so far from home, really.

The lullaby is very repetitive, so Rex has picked up most of the words and is actually singing them with his harmony when he starts getting concerned about the number of mockingjays picking up Ahsoka’s song. The last thing they need is Aurra and Asajj finding them right now, so he stops singing, says, “Ahsoka, we’re drawing an awful lot of attention.”

She’d stopped singing a bit before he did, but that doesn’t appear to be enough to shut the birds up; she shrugs a little at him, apologetic, and says, “Yeah, I told you they like me. Sorry.”

He chuckles a little. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Miik looks between them, then says, as if he’s confiding a secret, “I’ve never seen a mockingjay. Or heard one.”

That makes sense, for Four not to have mockingjays. Rex offers Miik a small smile, because what a way to be introduced. Hell, he’s never heard this many doing this at once either.

Ahsoka whistles a little series of notes, and the birds stop, seem to consider the notes, and then pick them up, vary them, and seem to decide they like the new tune just as much. It’s at least less obviously a song now. She smiles at the birds, very quiet, like she’s considering, like they’re her friends, and says, softly, “At home, I’d play games with them - bounce melodies back and forth. There’s a few of them that hang around the Victor’s Village now.”

Rex is half-afraid to move, because it almost feels like she didn’t mean to say that, like she wouldn’t have told them if she’d been thinking about it. “Sounds nice,” he says, careful.

~~~

Ahsoka hums a bit to herself, careful not to pick up enough of a tune that the mockingjays (who have started varying the little six-note whistle she’d thrown at them enough that it barely resembles the original pattern of notes) will pick it up, says, “Yeah, it is.”

She likes playing with the mockingjays.

She sighs, then, says, “We should make plans for the Careers, tomorrow. We’ll need to be able to cook our kills from the snares, too, within the day or we can’t risk eating them.”

“If it helps,” Rex says, “I stabbed both of them, so they’ll be slower.”

That does help, actually.

“Miik, are you good at starting fires?”

“Yeah,” he says.

Good. “Well, tomorrow, can you build a fire out of green wood, so that it’ll be really smoky? It’ll need to be a ways away from the lake, so that the Careers have to take a while to get to it, but not so far away that they come back too soon.”

“Okay,” he says, “but then what do I do so they don’t catch me?”

“Once you start the fire, take a circuitous route back to here,” Ahsoka says, after another minute of thought. “We’ll meet up here and then hide in the trees. They shouldn’t even see you, as long as you don’t hang around.”

“Okay,” he says again, still sounds unsure, but at least a little better.

“But we’ll worry about it in the morning,” Ahsoka soothes, light and easy. “For now, we should get as much rest as we can. Do you think you can do a short watch, Miik? Just for an hour or two, and if there’s any trouble or when you get tired, you wake me up.”

“Yeah, sure,” he says, shrugs a bit.

“You can have the sleeping bag tonight,” she adds, pulling it out of the backpack and tossing it at him. Then she turns to Rex, says, “I’ll wake you up for third watch.”

“Okay,” he says. “‘Night.”

“‘Night,” Ahsoka says with a smile.

She lays down, dozes through the anthem and the projected faces of the dead; it feels like she’s only been asleep for seconds when there’s a small hand shaking her shoulder until she snaps awake.

“Hi,” Miik says, looks sheepish, and she smiles encouragingly at him as she moves to sit with her back to a tree and keep watch. Miik curls up inside the sleeping bag, pulls the hood of his jacket up so there’s almost none of him visible, and she thinks he’s asleep in seconds.

Rex is asleep, curled on one side with one arm loose around the backpack and the other hand on his knife; the moonlight filters soft through the trees and splashes over the sharp lines of his face, turns him into something glowing and regal and--she shakes herself, stops that train of thought.

But she doesn’t look away.

It’s long past midnight, she thinks, by the time she gets tired enough she thinks she better have someone else watch; she yawns widely, pushes herself up to her feet and walks over to Rex, crouches down and nudges him, carefully. “Your watch,” she tells him, and then she curls up small, tucking her knees up under the edge of her jacket (because it’s cold without the sleeping bag) and closes her eyes and lets oblivion take her.

~~~

Rex lets Ahsoka and Miik sleep a while after sun-up before waking them - Miik wriggles out of the sleeping bag and pulls down his hood, revealing a mop of black hair sticking up at all angles. Rex chuckles at him, says he better eat a little fruit.

Ahsoka is, oddly, harder to wake up.

Rex shakes her shoulder a bit, and instead of waking right up and getting about her business like a smart person, she just… grumbles at him. And says, “No.” What?

Is this her giving up? Or scared? Or is she hurt some way he didn't know?

He decides none of those things fit right, so he shakes her again, harder. “Um, Ahsoka, it's morning. We have stuff to do.”

“Mm, fine,” she huffs. And doesn't move.

Oh, well, he guesses she just… doesn't want to get up?

But they're in the arena, what the hell is she thinking?

“Ahsoka,” he says, patiently, “We have plans today. To take out the Careers.”

She shifts her hand, twists it and sticks her thumb up at him. Really not the response he was looking for.

Miik marches over suddenly, with his water bottle in hand, and unceremoniously tips it over and dumps the entire contents onto Ahsoka's face.

“Shit!” She jolts half upright, wiping at her face and spluttering. “I was awake already, damnit!”

“It didn't really seem like it,” Rex says, grinning, still a little confused. “You gonna be a contributing member of this team now?”

“Shut up,” she grumbles, getting to her feet with a wince and starting to stretch; Rex hears her back pop audibly and she grumbles more. “Stop giving me that face.”

“I'm not doing anything,” Rex huffs, but he gets up and goes back to his backpack, rifles through their remaining food. Only half the package of dried fruit, no more game, all the jerky. So not too bad, as long as they can catch more game soon.

He checks the cut on his arm. It throbs, doesn't look a lot better, but the bleeding seems to have slowed, so he leaves the bandage as it is.

Miik is refilling his water bottle and adding more iodine on his own - it seems like his mentor made sure he learned these basic survival skills instead of having him try to learn to fight. Makes sense. If the kid wins, it'll be because he's sneaky. And because other tributes, like Rex and Ahsoka, won't be able to make themselves kill him.

Ahsoka makes a face at Miik (who just grins) before grabbing her burn medicine out of his backpack and sitting down to apply it to her leg again. The injury already looks far better than it had, thank goodness.

“I want to check the snares, then we can worry about the Careers,” she says.

“Maybe we should come with you this time,” Rex says. In case she runs into someone again - worst of those options being Aurra Sing and Asajj.

“Fine then,” Ahsoka grumbles, picking up her water bottle and dropping her medicine back in Rex’s backpack. She marches off with no further comment, and Rex snorts, bemused, before picking up his backpack and gesturing for Miik to come with him. Miik is smirking, very self-satisfied with his success in getting Ahsoka up. “I see you back there,” she calls, irritably, and Miik giggles.

Rex does not understand either of them, honestly. They're in the arena, he wants to remind them. This is a bit serious. But he does not. Because it's better this way.

~~~

Ahsoka is miffed.

She had not needed that water bottle thrown in her face, thank you very much, she had already been awake. Mostly. Miik is still highly amused and pleased with himself, and the kid’s smile is the only thing keeping her from grumbling more at him.

Honestly. An entire bottle of water, really?

The first two snares are empty, and she grumbles, triggers them with a stick and tucks the wire back into the backpack; the last three are full though, two rabbits and another groosling, and Ahsoka uses the wire to tie them to her belt where they’ll be out of the way. “We can cook them after, as long as we do it today,” she tells Rex and Miik, and, sighing, she pushes her hair out of her face (it’s half-fallen out of its braid, she really needs to redo it) and starts back towards the lake.

Miik runs off to go start his fires shortly, and Ahsoka climbs up into a tree, where she can see better, jumps from tree to tree, following Rex on the ground. She stays up in the trees until she sees the first wisps of smoke spiralling lazily up into the sky, and then she drops down next to Rex and says, low, “The fire’s lit.”

Their diversion is up.

It’s time to go.

Chapter Text

Rex and Ahsoka make their careful way to the edge of the woods around the Cornucopia, keep low and watch Asajj and Aurra in their camp until Aurra points out the spiral of smoke that is Miik’s fire (and hell, Rex hopes he got out of there as soon as it was burning), and the two of them get up, leave their supplies. Normally they would have left a guard, Rex is sure, before they lost two allies and were injured themselves.

He and Ahsoka wait a few more minutes before moving carefully out into the wide flat space around the Cornucopia, half of the grass dead now because of the traffic of the Careers setting up camp.

There’s still blood on the ground, in places, where it dried and stained the grass. Rex doesn’t look at it, just heads straight for the pile of supplies. He needs fishing things for Miik, more bandages and whatever other first aid things he can find. Food, water purifying kits, whatever they can get before they try to render the rest useless.

Ahsoka has commandeered a backpack and is stuffing it full of things too, so Rex calls over, “I’m trying to find first aid supplies - I promised we’d get Miik things so he can fish. He needed some strong thread or line or something, if there is any. If there happens to be anything actually here for fishing, grab that.” He rattles off a couple other things Miik said he needed, and Ahsoka waves her hand in acknowledgement.

Rex finds another needle and thread, three whole rolls of bandages, a small bottle of alcohol (not for drinking), and some gauze. He puts all of this at the bottom of his backpack, also finds a sack of potatoes - or rather, it had been a sack of them, now it’s just about three sad, small ones. He takes them anyway.

The Careers have eaten way too much of the food, it seems, which makes sense since he suspects neither of them know how to hunt or snare any more than he does. Still, there’s more dried fruit and jerky, and bars made of nuts and seeds. He fits all of this he can into his backpack, then takes a flashlight and drops it in the top. Not the most practical, too glaring really, and obvious, but they may need it, and at the very least they could use the pieces of it for something.

They don’t have a lot of time, so he doesn’t ask Ahsoka what she got, except to grin at the box of matches she holds up. Most of the matches are gone, but still.

If they want to make a pyre for all this stuff, matches will be good.

Not all of it will burn, but there will be almost nothing left to salvage.

They each take half the remaining matches, and go to opposite sides of the pile, and Rex finds the most flammable things, stuffs them into crevices and the bottom of everything else, and strikes a match, starts carefully coaxing flames to a strong enough burn to go on their own, and then Ahsoka yells, “Hey, Rex, here,” and he straightens up in time to catch a bottle of something she’s just hurled at his head.

“Why,” he mutters to himself, opens it, sniffs it, and then splashes the liquid the bottle holds on more of the things in his pile, strikes a new match, tosses it into the mess. This time he doesn’t have to coax the fire at all - it blazes to life, catches easily, and he grins. Splashes a little more of the liquid on the burning things, watches the fire snap up hungrily.

Ahsoka whoops, loud, and Rex laughs, tosses the bottle onto the flames and yells too. Ahsoka is grinning smugly at him across the flames, and he winks, makes his way around the edge of the pile of burning supplies, smirking.

“I think that went pretty well.”

“Damn right it did,” Ahsoka says, fierce and excited and smug as a well-fed house cat.

Rex laughs, hikes his backpack up on his shoulders, and says, “We better go find Miik.”

There’s been no cannon. Their little friend is alright still.

And the Careers have no supplies.

Let’s see you recover from that, Asajj, he thinks, smugly. Wants to shove the whole thing in his mentors’ faces and laugh for a week.

~~~

Ahsoka wants to shout, until her throat is raw and hoarse, wants to be able to see Asajj and Aurra’s faces right now so she can laugh and laugh and laugh. Take that, she thinks, smug, and nods at Rex. “Yeah,” she says, still grinning, so so bright, and she can almost forget that eventually one of them is going to have to die. (And it won’t be her. Can’t be.) “Yeah, we better.”

She walks back to the far shore of the lake, Rex next to her, drops down to sit on the shore and digs her fingers into the soft dirt, smirking. “Now that,” she says, grinning up at Rex, “is what I call a good day’s work.”

He chuckles, says, “Could even say a great day’s work.”

“Yep,” she says, satisfied, shifts to look back at the massive fire again. It’s burning bright and strong still, and probably will for a while, and even once the flames die down it’ll still be too hot to touch.

And it’s too far from the lakeside for the two Career girls to be able to douse the flames easily.

“Revenge is sweet,” Ahsoka says with a sigh, dragging one knee up to her chest and leaning on it.

“Guys guys guys!”

Ahsoka whips around, half-standing before she realizes it’s just Miik, bouncing and beaming.

“The fire I made was huge--whoa,” he says, skidding to a stop and staring. “This is the best day ever!”

Ahsoka laughs. “That’s one way of putting it,” she says, cheerfully. “You did a great job, Miik, your distraction was perfect.” She drops to sit back down the rest of the way, can’t stop smirking. “Y’know,” she says, casually, “I don’t think Anakin’s ever started a fire this big before,” and she grins wider, chuckling. “He’d be jealous.”

Miik bounces over to the shore of the lake, starts scooping up rocks and skipping them across the surface; he throws about four of them, then drops onto his knees and starts digging through the shallows, looking for--shells?

“Hey, kid,” Rex says, suddenly, and Miik looks up. “How do you do that?”

“What, skip rocks?” Miik grins, pockets a couple shells, picks up a couple flat rocks, and starts showing Rex how to do it, something about the angle of the rock and flicking your wrist right, Ahsoka doesn’t pay much attention.

Instead, she focuses on the fire, the edges of the woods, watches and waits until--

It’s been longer than she really expected, but nonetheless it’s not long enough before Ahsoka sees a pair of figures sprinting (well, one’s sprinting, the other’s limp-sprinting) out of the woods on the other side of the lake. Shit, shit, shit, they should’ve been moving by now!

She jumps to her feet, snaps out, “We need to go now,” sees the instant it registers, the way Rex freezes and then throws his stone away, spins, and she takes off into the woods. Hears the two girls shouting, and she pushes herself faster and then swears under her breath, because Miik.

Her new backpack has the fishing stuff, an extra sleeping bag, more food and supplies in it.

“Miik,” she says, skidding to a stop and spinning around, pulling the backpack off her back as she does, “take it and go. They won’t go after you. We’ll lose them and we’ll find you somewhere, okay? There’s food and fishing supplies and a sleeping bag in there.”

He grabs it, but his eyes are wide and he’s shaky. “Don’t die,” he says, fast, and she gives him a smile.

“I promise we won’t die if you don’t,” she tells him. Ruffles a hand through his hair, quick, and then says, “Now go!”

He nods, slings the backpack over his shoulders and takes off, twisting through the trees, and Ahsoka turns to Rex and says, fast, “We gotta get their attention.”

~~~

“Shouldn’t be hard,” Rex says, grimly. “Since I stabbed them and then we burned their stuff.”

Ahsoka cups her hands around her mouth and shouts, “Hey, bitches, over here!”

Well, that should work.

They stand for only a second so the Careers can lock onto them, and then they run, straight into the woods.

Rex stays behind Ahsoka, because she can get them through the woods so much better than he can, sets his feet as close to where she does as he can so he doesn’t trip, make any mistakes. Their pursuers are going to be slower, because of their injuries and because neither of them know how to navigate the woods any better than Rex does.

The undergrowth is so thick it’s hard to stay upright, much less run, but he manages, keeps right at Ahsoka’s shoulder until she glances behind them, grabs his shoulder to stop him, and jabs her finger up at a pine tree. “Let’s climb up as high as we can, get out of sight, they should miss us.”

Aw, shit, no. But he nods, waits for Ahsoka to go first, and then jumps up, climbs up the branches like a ladder, swallows.

Hell, he hates heights.

He just doesn’t look down, scrambles up till he’s clinging to the trunk by Ahsoka, and he tries very hard to pretend he’s fine and his stomach isn’t jumping up and down and trying to escape. Hell.

He hopes Miik is okay. Sure, maybe Miik could have ended up slowing them down, but he helped them, and, well, he’s sweet. And too little for this, so Rex would feel better if he could protect him.

Ahsoka is standing nearly-casual on the branch next to him, holding onto the one a little above her with one hand, and she reaches out silently and puts a hand on his shoulder. He tolerates that, a moment, then shifts to lean harder against the tree trunk and shrugs so she takes her hand away.

They’re very quiet, for a few minutes, until they hear crashing footsteps, and swearing, and Asajj and Aurra run past, below them and some yards away. Aurra is staggering, panting, and Rex can’t help a self-satisfied smile.

They wait a while yet, because they need to make sure the Careers are gone, and Ahsoka looks at him and says, very, very quietly, “You good?”

He shrugs. “Yeah. He’ll be okay, he’s smart. And sneaky,” he adds, with a wry little smile.

Ahsoka smiles back, mildly. “Yeah.”

He tilts his head up a little and stares at the branches above him - and finds that’s also dizzying, shit. Heights. Sure, this tree feels solid, but still. He is not a bird. He’s not like Ahsoka, who might as well be a bird, with all the time she’s been spending in the trees, hell.

He would like to get down now.

~~~

They stay in the tree until Ahsoka is certain Asajj and Aurra won’t come back, and then she motions to Rex, drops lightly through the branches, landing carefully on the lower ones, balancing, and then leaping down again. It’s easy to catch the branches with her fingertips, to adjust her trajectory and then let go, again and again and again; she looks up once, sees that Rex is descending much slower, is actually climbing down instead of dropping, and she makes herself pause a minute to wait for him.

When they finally reach the ground, Ahsoka starts off in a random direction away from the lake, the opposite direction from which she last saw Aurra and Asajj go. She stays light on her feet, instinctively placing them around the pine needles and leaves making a thick carpet on the ground. Rex, she notes, is also careful, though he’s not quite walking as quietly as she is. Close, but not quite--he’s not used to the woods, to this kind of environment.

He’s trying, though, and he’s better at it than she expects Lux is.

The reminder of her fellow tribute is… odd. A part of her wonders where he is--she knows he’s still alive, because she hasn’t seen him in the sky, but… she almost doesn’t want to meet him, here. She doesn’t want to have to kill him.

And she doubts he’d be very approving of her allying with a Career.

She shakes her head, pushes that aside for now, tightens her hand on her sword hilt and pushes herself faster. Doesn’t let herself worry about Miik--like Rex had said, he’s smart and fast. He’ll be okay, and they’ll find him again. And if they don’t find him right away, he has food and a way to get water, and he knows how to fish too, so he’ll be alright.

She has to believe that.

They didn’t abandon him.

Eventually, they come up on the banks of a fast-flowing but shallow river, and the banks are actually low enough they can easily reach the water. It’ll be a good place to camp for the night.

When she tells Rex that, he agrees.

So they settle in for the day, even though it’s only mid-afternoon; Ahsoka finds a place a short distance away to build a fire and cook the two rabbits and the groosling, and then she smothers the flames, stamps out the coals. No need to risk starting a real forest fire.

They feast on the groosling and some of the replenished supplies for dinner, and talk quietly about nothing in particular, until the anthem comes. There haven’t been any cannons, but it’s still a relief to see no new faces in the sky.

Miik is still alive.

And the Careers have no supplies.

Good.

~~~

The next day, they agree to stay camped by the river as long as they can; this place seems good, and there’s water, and some cover, and maybe Miik will find them here trying to fish. Rex tries to do the math in his head, of how many tributes are left, gets too stuck on the faces of the five he killed, and comes up with around thirteen or so still alive. About half, anyway.

Around noon, Rex finds bushes laden with berries and calls for Ahsoka, shows them to her, and she declares them safe to eat. They taste so much better than the dried fruit they’ve been eating.

Rex eats enough handfuls that his fingers and palms are stained red-purple, and considering that, and the fact that he feels grimy and sweaty and generally worn out, he decides that maybe with the sun out like it is, and Ahsoka paying attention in case of attackers, and while they have space, he can at least get marginally cleaner.

The riverbank is mostly stony, warmed by the sun, so he pulls off his thin jacket and submerges it in the river - it’s not as bad as his shirt, but might as well try to clean it too. Takes off his boots and socks, too, and makes an attempt at soaking and scrubbing the socks. He leaves both those things out in the sun to dry, rolls up his pantlegs and tugs off his shirt, which is just a mess, and just holds that in the flowing water for a while because honestly, no wonder he feels so awful, it’s filthy. He is. So he spreads his shirt out on a rock too and ducks under the water for a minute, rubs his hands through his hair (which is getting long already and is gonna get way too long in here, probably) and surfaces to wipe water out of his face.

Hell, the cold water feels good. Even if this doesn’t get him or his stuff much cleaner, it feels better for now, anyway. He stands up, the cold water and pebbly bottom of the river making his feet ache a little, and he looks around for somewhere deeper in the water where he can maybe swim a little. He likes swimming.

And he happens to catch Ahsoka’s eyes, and she jolts and blushes for some reason and tugs on a branch of one of the bushes, and it takes him a second to realize she must’ve been looking at him. Staring, even. And she’s embarrassed. That throws him off so much that he can’t be amused by it right away.

But he is amused, then, and he scratches his head and smiles, slowly. “You okay, Ahsoka?”

~~~

The berries are good.

Ahsoka doesn’t really pay attention at first, when Rex leaves to go over to the river; she keeps picking the berries, eating a few of them, amused at how they’re staining her hands.

She’ll have to clean off, in a bit.

Actually, it’s warm enough she thinks maybe she could even wash herself and her clothes off some; she glances over at the river and notes Rex had the same idea, apparently, because he’s spreading his jacket and socks out on the ground, in the sun, and they’re drenched.

And then he’s--is he--taking his shirt off?

She does not mean to stare, she really doesn’t, but he’s completely unaware and his back’s to her and holy shit, he has a lot of muscles. He ducks his head underwater and straightens up, running his hands over his face, and she swallows a bit, tries to go back to--berries, that’s a thing she’s doing, right, except--when he moves, she can see his muscles flexing and--

How is she supposed to focus?

This is distinctly unfair.

Rex turns, suddenly, she wasn’t expecting it (should have realized what--get it together, Ahsoka), catches her eyes, and she startles, quickly shifts her gaze back to the berry brambles and fumbles for a few to add to her collection. She can feel her cheeks getting hot, and she swallows, focuses intently on her task. Nope. That just… just pretend that did not happen, and everything will be fine.

He’s still watching her, she can feel his gaze on her, and then he says, sounding amused and dry, “You okay, Ahsoka?”

Aw, shit, why does he gotta--can’t he just--she keeps her eyes firmly down, because she does not need to make this more embarrassing. “Yep,” she says, as casual as she can manage while he’s standing there grinning at her, she’s sure of it, hell this is unfair. Digs for an appropriately snarky comeback, though it takes her a minute, and it’s really not her best one. “Are you?”

“Yeah, I am,” he says, all-too-casual, aw shit, not fair. “Just figured I’d ask, because you’re looking a little… stressed.”

She should punch him. That would make him shut up.

No, it probably wouldn’t, and also if she punches him she has to look at him again and she--she wants to look at him which is the problem, why can’t he just--stop standing there and being all smug and way too attractive, who gave him the right, this is not fair.

“Shut up,” she mutters, jerks a berry off the branch a little too aggressively. Stupid-- ugh. She needs to focus. That is a thing she should be doing.

Rex snorts a little, and she can’t help glancing over, quickly--he’s sitting down again, half-facing her, working on scrubbing at his shirt. Not looking at her, thankfully, holy freaking shit.

His arms are more muscled than they looked beneath his jacket, she decides, briefly studying them (and his biceps flex as he works at his shirt and the motion catches her eyes and she swallows hard and can’t quite look away), and then she forces herself back to the berry bushes.

Which are far less interesting.

But. Focusing.

Holy shit.

~~~

Rex would maybe feel bad about teasing Ahsoka for staring, if her reaction wasn’t so… well. It turns out that when she blushes, her whole face and neck and the tips of her ears go all red, makes her freckles stand out even more than usual. And he hasn’t seen her anything but confident, so this is intriguing. Also, well, it’s a little gratifying.

Also, when she purses her lips and makes her nose scrunch up, she looks really adorably frustrated. And stubborn.

And like she wants to kick him in the teeth. So maybe he better leave her alone.

Besides, he does still want to get more of the grime out of his shirt, because as much as he’d like to just swim around for a bit, these are the Games. And he doesn’t have his knives on him. So.

He retrieves his shirt, dunks it under the water again and starts scrubbing at it, trying not to chuckle out loud. That would be kind of mean, probably.

When he’s as satisfied as he’s going to be, he lays it back out on the rock to dry, finds his socks and jacket are mostly dry so he tugs his socks and boots back on, leans against a smooth, warm boulder and runs his fingers through his hair.

After a minute, Ahsoka comes marching over, toeing off her boots, and sits down a short distance away to take off her own socks and jacket and then let her hair out of its braid, all loose and wavy and soft-looking even though it’s probably even worse than his is, at the moment. Probably if he felt it it would still be soft, though. Maybe not. He’s not sure.

She wades into the water, just the edge, and then, oddly, flops over backwards, stretches her arms out and huffs loudly. Rex doesn’t get her, if he’s honest. She hasn’t made any sense to him since he first saw her, even when he thought he had her figured out. Now he’s just not sure what to think, at all.

Her hair looks darker, underwater, all fanned out and silky, and Rex wonders what it feels like, but it looks like seaweed, sort of, and he’s reminded again of them calling her a wild girl, of her telling him something about wild queens in her forests.

She scoots just a little deeper into the water, starts trying to wash her hair, he thinks, because she reaches up and starts untangling her hair, scrubbing at her scalp with her fingers, and alright, yeah, so he shouldn’t have laughed at her because he’s got a really good view of her biceps and he can see the outline of her abs through her shirt.

Damnit.

Why’s she gotta have so many freckles?

Rex twists, reaches out and grabs his shirt (which is still damp, but whatever), and tugs it on, his jacket too, and props his chin on his knees, staring determinedly up at the blue sky. And not at her and her long hair and how deceptively small she is.

This is what he gets for being smug, probably.

Not the worst view, really, though, he thinks, glancing at her again.

But anyway. Not staring, because he doesn’t want her to catch him and get to tease him back.

Ahsoka sits up and gets out of the water, eventually, wrings out her hair and the hem of her shirt and does not look at him the whole time. Rex tries to pretend he was not and is not staring - for the moral superiority - until she’s got all her things on again, then he smiles a little at her and scoots over to his things to get his knife belt and compartmentalize all that, thanks very much.

~~~

Ahsoka puts her socks and boots on, after she climbs out of the water, drapes her jacket over one arm and leaves her hair down and stretches a bit, sighing, before going over to pick up the sheet of plastic they’d pilfered from the Cornucopia with the berries on it. Brings the corners together so it’ll keep the berries from spilling out and turns back to Rex.

Forces herself to push all of-- that-- out of her head when she addresses him. “We should scout up the river a bit, see if there’s a natural shelter. Would be handy in case we get any bad weather.”

“Good idea,” Rex agrees, and she starts off over the rocks, scrambling a bit, careful not to get too close to the river.

It’s a bit deeper here, closer to the banks, and they’re getting into rockier ground--which is good, that’ll mean it’s more likely to have a cave or something they can take shelter in, but--she shivers a little, not from the cold. She does not like deep water.

They only have to travel a little ways upstream before they find the cave, small, but with plenty of room for both of them, secluded and almost completely hidden from view--she’s nearly past it before she sees it, and then she freezes so suddenly Rex runs into her back. “There,” she says, pointing, and she clambers over the rocks, displacing a few but for the most part perching on the slightly uneven, tilting surface, until she gets to the cave’s entrance. She settles the plastic with the berries down inside, drops her jacket by them (it really is nice and warm today) and flops down on her back, humming a bit. “This’ll work.”

Rex drops down to sit as well, pulling the backpack off his shoulders and digging inside. “This is nice,” he agrees, pulls out a package of jerky and takes some out. He leaves his jacket on, though.

Which is probably good. She’s embarrassed herself enough today.

“So what was it like?” she asks, pushing herself up onto one elbow and getting into the backpack herself, pulling out some of the leftover groosling and taking a bite. “Growing up in Two, I mean.”

~~~

Rex pauses mid-bite of his jerky and looks over at Ahsoka, half-expecting her to be trying to mock him, somehow. Instead, she just looks genuinely curious, bright-eyed, and comfortable. Listening.

Not that he has much to say, he doesn’t have stories like she does. Well, some. But he isn’t sure how to tell any of them. And half of what it was like growing up is just, training, and fighting, and learning he and Cody have both been selected as Peacekeepers (inevitable because of who their dad was), and the Reaping every year, and trying to fix their crappy house. And he doesn’t know if he can really talk about Cody - does it matter anymore if everyone knows he volunteered to save Cody, with how weak he’s been here?

“My district is mostly cities,” he says, shrugging. “Not a lot of plants, where there’s open space - it’s kind of a desert, I guess. So, I don’t know, when I wasn’t in the training facilities I was home, mostly.” He’s hesitant to bring up Peacekeeper training again, because that seems to upset her and things are fairly balanced, right now. There’s some trust.

She leans towards him a little, looking interested, and he grits his teeth some. “What’s your house like? And you said you live with Cody, right - what’s he like?” Hell, he wish she wouldn’t sound so earnest, because it makes him want to answer just as frankly.

“My house is falling apart,” he says, smiling wryly, although really, their house is a mess. “I told you a cabinet fell on Cody. And I broke through one of our stairs once because the wood was weak and I still haven’t fixed it. We just step over it.” Because where’s he supposed to get enough supplies to fix a stair, that’s wood and saws and nails probably, and he can manage some things (like screws and cheap plywood to make things at least sort of not-breaking but replacing a whole stair step? can’t afford it, and doesn’t know how, anyway), but not most of them. “We have running water, mostly, though.” Except during droughts, which aren’t too common, but a couple summers they’ve had to go to the city center to get a ration of water the Capitol sent because it was so dry. “And everything works okay. So it’s not a bad house.”

“Did the cabinet really just- fall off the wall and land on his head?” From the mischievous glint in Ahsoka’s eyes, Rex suspects she already thinks she knows the answer to that question.

“It’s a really, really shitty cabinet?” he tries.

She just goes deadpan, raises an eyebrow, and smirks at him, waiting.

“Fine, I was trying to take it off the wall to fix it and I took out a couple screws but I forgot a thing I needed so I went to get it - I thought it would stay on the wall, okay, it looked fine,” and he ignores her increasingly amused expression, it was not that funny, “and it started falling and Cody tried to catch it and so, it hit him on the head. And cut his face.”

He knows Cody is still bitter at him about it, although he does like that everyone is so curious about his scar. Now everyone knows he got it from a cabinet instead of a training accident, though. Sorry, Cody.

~~~

Ahsoka laughs, bright and grinning, because she’d known there had to be a story behind that. She is not disappointed. “So what’s the more dignified story he tells everyone?” she asks, because she knows how brothers are, and knows how Anakin had tried to come up with a story that was better than I fell out of a tree for his scar.

Rex smiles, some. “He told people he got it during knife practice at training.”

She rolls her eyes, though she’s still grinning and laughing a bit. “Not a bad story,” she says sagely. “Anakin tried to tell people he got attacked by a wolf.”

“Cody’s is more convincing,” he says, nodding, and then he grimaces. “Well, it was.”

Ahsoka snorts, says, cheerfully, “Sorry, Cody.”

Rex chuckles, eats more of his jerky, and Ahsoka flops back down on her back, props her feet up against the wall of the cave and eats a couple berries. Arcs her back and stretches her spine a bit, then huffs and says, “What’s Cody like? He sounds a lot more uptight than Anakin is.”

“He’s not uptight, he’s just--serious,” Rex says, sounds almost defensive, and she frowns a little. Alrighty then.

“Relax,” she says, sighs. “I’m not criticizing him, I’m just curious.”

“Sorry.” He looks a little sheepish. “I know.”

She shifts a bit, pulls out her dagger and twists it around and around, before looking back at Rex (and he’s upside-down almost, in her vision, whoa) and saying, curiously, “What’s a desert like? I’ve never--well, my District just kinda looks like this,” and she flops one arm out in an expansive gesture. “And we don’t really see much on TV.”

“Flat. And hot,” Rex says, wrinkles his nose a bit (and oops, she shouldn’t think that’s cute but it kinda is). “And kind of… reddish, most of the time, and there’s some prickly plants and grass. And rocks. And sand. And dry.” He makes a face. “And did I mention hot?”

She blinks, considering this for a moment. “No trees?” she asks, tilting her head to one side, trying to picture this strange concept. “That’s weird. So I guess the arena feels pretty cold to you, if you’re used to it being hot.” How hot, she wonders. Because this feels nice and warm, but he still has his jacket on. “How hot?”

~~~

“Doesn't ever get below fifty degrees, in the winter,” Rex says, thinking. He thinks it's been that cold or colder here in the arena, a few nights. “In the summer… Sometimes eighty degrees. Sometimes a hundred. It depends.” He smiles, wryly. “So yeah, it's been pretty cold.”

From upside-down, with her hair all fanned out behind her head, Ahsoka is gaping at him. “It never gets below fifty?” and he chuckles, shakes his head. “So then have you never- Does that mean it doesn't snow?”

“It snowed once,” he says. “I think. For ten minutes. I was little and everything was a little sparkly for half an hour. Then it warmed up again and it all melted.”

She's still looking shocked, amd excited, and he grins because her eyes are so wide and between that and her hair being all over the place, actually, she looks as if she's literally been shocked. “We usually have feet of snow in the winter time.”

Whole feet of snow? How do they do anything when that happens?

“Once we built a house out of the snow, we hollowed a drift out. Anakin got annoyed at me for hitting him in the face with a snowball so he said he was going to live out there.” She grins, and Rex laughs a little.

“Your brother’s kind of dramatic,” he says, thoughtfully, still smiling.

“My brother is a drama queen,” Ahsoka corrects him, waving her hand. “The biggest one I know.”

Rex covers his mouth and laughs at that, half because of her expression, half because he can imagine her brother sitting at home scowling.

That sobers him a little, though, and he schools his expression. “So did he? Stay out there, I mean.”

“For five whole minutes,” she intones, as if it's very impressive. “Then he got cold and wanted coffee.”

Rex thinks that sounds pretty reasonable. “I want coffee,” he sighs. He usually has it almost every morning, with Cody. It's a small thing, to want, but still.

Ahsoka wrinkles her nose, which is cuter from upside-down, and says, mock-disgusted, “Of course you drink coffee.”

“Yeah…” he says, bemused. “What else would I drink?”

“I dunno, tea?” she huffs, as if it's obvious, and Rex pulls a face.

“Oh, yeah, flavorless leaf water,” he says. “So much better than coffee.”

Ahsoka grumbles, scowling, creasing her forehead into furrows, and fumbles for the plastic holding their berries, grabs a small handful, and chucks them into his face.

Rex glares at her. “Ahsoka, you wasted food. You told me you didn't waste food.”

“That was not a waste,” she informs him. “It was a strategic attack.”

“Shut up,” he grumbles, looking away with a scowl. “No wonder they call you a savage. Throwing food at people, Ahsoka.”

She smirks at him, and he swallows a little. “Maybe I am a savage. Obi-Wan said so, after I threw bread at him on the train. He was being stupid, though, and annoying me.” She sighs, disappointedly. “He kept catching the rolls though.”

“You seem to think everyone is annoying,” Rex says matter-of-factly.

Ahsoka huffs, and rolls over onto her stomach, resting on her forearms and looking at him like he's very stupid, and with a gleam in her eyes like sun off metal, says, “That's because everyone is annoying. You're supposed to be the intelligent one, Rex, haven't you figured that out by now?”

“I've figured out you're annoying,” he says, grumpy and deadpan. “Not sure about everyone else.”

~~~

Ahsoka huffs, glaring at him. The nerve of him! “I am not annoying!” How dare he just--flat out say that. “You’re the annoying one here, y’know.”

“What are you, twelve?” he asks dryly, laughing just a little, and his eyes are sparking gold and his lips twitching like he’s suppressing a smile and damn it why is he cute that’s not fair.

She huffs again. “Do I look like I’m twelve to you?” and she raises an eyebrow, challenging.

He raises an eyebrow. “Do you want me to be nice, or honest?”

She sputters a little, tries to come up with a comeback and fails, ends up just rolling back onto her back and staring at the ceiling of the cave and saying, “I am not talking to you.”

He chuckles, just a little. Doesn’t say anything.

Her resolve lasts for all of five minutes before she shifts her gaze back to him, finds him watching her already, which is--well, at least she’s not the only one. “Twelve, really?” she grumbles.

He raises an eyebrow. “I thought you weren’t talking to me.”

“I wasn’t. Now I am again.”

“And here I had you pegged as stubborn,” he says with a little sigh, leaning back against the wall and staring up at nothing in particular.

She snorts. “I am stubborn. I’m also bored, and unfortunately you’re the only person around to talk to who won’t murder me, so…”

“I make no promises,” he says, not as sarcastic as he’s been being, and she frowns just a little.

“Of course not,” she says, rolls her eyes. Glances back out of the cave entrance to see that the sunlight has turned to shadows--she flips over and pushes herself onto her knees and scoots out to the edge of the cave, looks up--just in time to get hit by a fat drop of water. And another one. She splutters, ducks back inside and wipes the water off her face, says, “It’s starting to rain.” There had been a lot of clouds in the sky, just from that brief glance she’d gotten. Wonderful.

Hopefully it lets up soon.

~~~

Rex scoots to the mouth of the cave and peers out, admittedly curious - rain in Two is usually short and fast and violent, makes the whole desert turn rust red and purple and yellow for a week or so. This is something else, the sky so heavy grey he almost thinks he feels its weight, the clouds swung low towards the tops of the trees, bumbling and ponderous.

Somehow, even with the sound of the wind and the rushing of the river, everything is still.

He watches the rain start to speckle the stones on the riverbank, silver-dark, until it’s raining hard enough that the stone is soaked and the sand is too and all he can hear is white noise, a rush and rhythm of water and wind.

Not like the desert, flash floods and sheets of lightning and thunder. Just, like breathing.

And the woods are all green and silver and soft and hushed, and he thinks this is nice. Nicer than rain at home, although not so needed.

It’s while he’s looking out at the woods that there’s a sort of chiming, and in all the grey and wet, it takes him a moment to spot the parachute, but once he does he whoops and reaches out, catches the gift out of the air and scoots back in the cave, grinning.

“Ahsoka,” he says, needlessly, because she’s already next to him. “Which one of us do you think it’s for?”

“Who cares? Just open it,” she huffs, and he laughs, cracks open the fair-sized container and finds a small loaf of light-colored bread that he recognizes, both by sight and the warm smell, so he pulls it out, finds it’s still warm, somehow.

“It’s the kind from District Four,” he says, handing it to her. His favorite. And still fresh, apparently. Ahsoka lifts it to her nose, closes her eyes, inhales deeply and smiles a bit.

“Should we split it?” she asks, and Rex tries to pretend he doesn’t care, although he’s suddenly desperately homesick.

“If you think we should. I don’t know who it was for.”

She purses her lips, looks at the loaf, and then says, “Maybe both of us.”

He thinks about that, for a moment. Bread from Four. Miik’s District. He puts his hand into his pocket, rubs his thumb over the scrap of embroidery he got from Tiplee, and nods. “Maybe. So then… we should split it.” He smiles a little. “Preferably before it gets cold.”

She rolls her eyes and carefully tears the loaf in half, hands him one of the pieces, and he breathes in the familiar smell for a moment, and he feels safer than he has in a while, with the reminder of home and the seclusion the rain is offering. He takes a bite, tries not to think about Cody too much or he’ll want to go home again and then it all hurts.

Ahsoka slides back into her jacket, leans against the wall and starts eating small bites of her bread, and Rex says, quietly, “This is my favorite. I got some most years, after the Reaping, it was like- I guess it was how we celebrated not-” He’s supposed to want to be here, they both are, but, well, “-not being in the arena.”

“We would- make dessert,” Ahsoka says, very soft, and stilted. Rex can almost pretend that with the rain, no one can hear them - maybe no one really can. “I gathered blackberries to make cobbler with, the morning of- this year. I don’t know if they ate them or not.”

He whispers it, because then he thinks, thinks no one will hear, just her, and the rain, “I don’t want to be here.” It’s strange, admitting it out loud.

Ahsoka hugs her knees to her chest, staring at the ground, and says, small and shaky, “Neither do I.”

So that is them, he supposes. Missing home, and afraid, and they both promised. But they can’t both keep that promise, and it’s not fair.

Not fair that she would leave behind her sister and her brother and her brother’s fiancee (or was it almost fiancee? same difference) and her mentors and all the people that need her.

But also not fair that he would leave behind Cody, who needs him.

He decides he can’t think about this, so he eats his bread and stares at his own knees, and he and Ahsoka don’t set a watch, and (after some tense arguing) Rex gives Ahsoka his jacket and takes the sleeping bag and huddles against the chill in the air and a cold weight in his gut that says not fair and goes to sleep.

Chapter Text

It’s still raining in the morning, when Ahsoka wakes up, slowly, yawning. For a moment she’s warm and the sound of rain is soothing, and she reaches out a hand absently, searching for Rey’s small form.

Except there’s nothing, just rocks and gritty dirt, and then her questing fingers find the wall and--

Right.

The Games.

Ahsoka tugs her hand back, curls up tighter; Rex had given her his jacket, since she’d insisted on him using the sleeping bag (if he’s not used to it ever getting below fifty degrees he’s got to be freezing), and it’s designed to fit him not her. So it’s long enough and big enough on her that she can tuck her legs up inside it, curl small and tight and be warm. Not as warm and cozy as she’d like to be, of course, but warm enough.

She lays there for a while, wants to go back to sleep, wants to let the rushing rhythm of the rain on the roof of the cave soothe her into oblivion, but the reminder of where she is makes that impossible. So eventually she rubs at her eyes and yawns, stretching, sits up and untucks her legs from inside Rex’s jacket, arches her back until her spine pops, sighs.

Rex is awake. Has been, she thinks, for a while; she musters up a smile from somewhere, mumbles, “G’morning,” scrubs at her eyes some more and then reaches for the backpack and digs inside for some food. There’s plenty of dried fruit, and she eats that and some of the berries and drinks her water, although she’s careful with it, because she doesn’t really want to go out into the rain to refill it.

She’ll have to, if this downpour (which she thinks is definitely Gamemaker-induced) doesn’t let up.

It’s not that she doesn’t like rain--being outside in it is fun, the water feels cool and clean against her skin, and Rey always drags her outside to dance in the rain and splash in the puddles, whenever it comes--it’s just that with no real way to warm up after, she has to be careful. If she gets too wet and chilled she could get sick, especially since she’s letting Rex have the sleeping bag.

She thinks he’d give it to her in a heartbeat, if she asked for it.

But she won’t. At least she’s used to these temps.

Ahsoka sighs, tucks her knees back up under Rex’s jacket (because it’s not much warmer, even though she thinks the sun’s supposed to be up by now) and curls her arms around them, drops her chin to rest on them, closes her eyes and sighs again. “You volunteered to save Cody,” she says, quiet, not a question. She’s figured that out, by now. “What did--everyone knows what my family said to me, before I left, because of the interview. What did you two say?” She hesitates, doesn’t look over at him, adds, softer, “If you want to say. You don’t have to. It’s a personal question, I won’t pry.”

“I promised too, you know,” he says, and she startles a bit, because she really hadn’t expected a response--he’s not been very eager to share. He’s picking at his fingernails, not looking at her. There’s a pause, and then he keeps going, says, “I told him I could win, so I… promised I would, and I’d come back and tell him I told you so.”

She swallows hard, can’t look at him.

So there it is, then. They’ve both made promises and only one of them can keep their promise, and… and eventually, in the end, it’s going to be one or the other, and--and for the first time she considers that this alliance might’ve been a bad idea.

A part of her wishes, for once, that she’d just killed him when she stole his supplies.

But she can’t think that, not for long--because he’s not at all what she’d expected, from a Career and a Peacekeeper in training (which she still can’t think too much about), he’s smart and sarcastic and he cares, she hadn’t expected it but she thinks he’s compassionate even though the arena does its best to erase that kind of quality. And he saved her life when it would’ve been easier, better, smarter of him to let her die.

And hell, maybe they should just split up now, go their separate ways, because Ahsoka sits here and looks at his profile and she knows she can’t kill him, and can’t willingly let him die.

But she doesn’t want to--be alone in here, and she doesn’t want to leave him. Doesn’t want to break their alliance.

It’s more than just an alliance, she realizes: sometime in the past few days, entirely without her realizing, they’ve become friends.

She doesn’t want him to die.

“Oh,” she says, soft, looks down at her hands tight around her shins, huffs out a breath, swallows. None of this is fair. It’s not fair that they both made promises and they both can’t keep them, it’s not fair that they got Reaped in the first place, the entire freaking system is unfair and she hates it, all of it. She doesn’t want to be here, never did, ever, she wants to be back at home with Anakin and Rey and Padme and Obi-Wan, she wants to not have a sword stained with blood and burn scars on her leg and the knowledge that the little twelve-year-old who’d cheered over the size of his fire isn’t going to live more than a few more days, because none of it’s fair but at least if she’s at home she doesn’t have to think about that. “I wanna go home, Rex,” she admits, very quietly, hugs her legs tighter and stares straight ahead.

It’s not fair.

~~~

Rex holds his own knees, because it’s chilly this morning, and says, “Yeah. Me too.” Ahsoka is bundled in both her jacket and his, small and wide-eyed and staring at nothing, and Rex swallows because he wishes he could help, but how can he when he feels no better? “I wish I hadn’t promised,” he whispers, so quiet he almost doesn’t think she hears him. Because he doesn’t think he can keep that promise, not when there’s- not when Miik should get to go home. And Ahsoka should.

Somehow, he’d rather it was one of them than him, so he doesn’t have to go home and know they’re both dead, only for Cody to just leave anyway and leave him alone.

“Everyone should get to go home,” Ahsoka says, soft and tired. That isn’t the point, though, the whole point is that they all die and no one wins (when you have a District of victors you understand, no one wins). “Even Asajj and Aurra, all of them. It’s not fair.”

“What does it matter,” Rex says, wearily, tightening his arms hard around his legs. “Fair or not, this is how it is.”

She twists, fast, meets his eyes (although he looks down because there are tears on her cheeks). “It matters to me,” she says, aching, and then lays down, curls up very small (like she’d been before she woke up, but tense, now). “Just because they called me wild doesn’t mean I enjoy this,” she says, after a moment, raspy.

“You think I do?” he says, swallows. “My dad said ‘you had to find something to make it bearable,’ and some people- I don’t know, I guess I’m not sure how.” It was supposed to be his promise to Cody, to come home, but that isn’t holding up, because there are too many other people, and Ahsoka promised too, and how can he weigh his promise against twenty-three lives and say that makes it okay? Cody doesn’t need him that much.

“What could there possibly be that makes any of this- oh, I don’t know,” and Rex flinches, and Ahsoka makes a frustrated noise. She twists around on her shoulder to look at him, and she looks almost angry. Tearstained too, though. “I wish there was some way I could just- refuse. Show them, somehow. That I’m more than just a piece in their Games. That I’m worth more than their stupid entertainment.”

Rex wants to tell her that’s why he didn’t kill her, in the Bloodbath, wants to say that’s why he hasn’t killed her since, because he couldn’t be that, for them, but he can’t. Because you don’t say things like that, not when the Capitol can hear (and they always can), not when you have promises to keep. You don’t risk things like that.

As if she read his mind, Ahsoka hisses, “And I don’t care if they can hear. I’m a person, not- not an animal.” She turns back away from him, curls up smaller, and mutters, “Not a stupid mutt.”

She needs to care. Because she has a family, and the Capitol knows where they are, and they don’t just let things go (they’ve been working on repaying the Districts for the Dark Days for seventy-four years; they take their debts very seriously).

But he can’t say any of that, because she’s angry and crying and small and he doesn’t want her to hate him, and he understands. About not wanting to belong to the Capitol. Better than she thinks.

They picked him to be a Peacekeeper when he was twelve. So he knows two things. One, you don’t get to disagree with the Capitol, with the way things work. And two, the only thing that makes that okay in any way is having something that is just you, only yours. Even if it’s just your thoughts. And he will have that. That and himself, whatever is left after this. Which means there are some things he cannot do. Even to survive. Because that’s why no one wins. All the victors in his District are more the Capitol’s than anyone else.

He can’t be like that.

~~~

Rex doesn’t answer.

That’s probably for the best, Ahsoka thinks, curls up smaller and swallows and tries not to cry. It’s a weakness she can’t afford to have, but--she can’t seem to stop the tears now that she’s finally let them come, and so she just keeps them as quiet as she can, until they finally peter out and she’s left feeling hollow and sick and cold and alone.

She wants Anakin, or--Rey, or Obi-Wan. Somebody. Someone who can tell her it’ll all be okay, even if that’s a lie, because even a lie would help right now. She just--doesn’t want to be here.

She misses home so much it hurts, right now.

How is she supposed to just--do this? To pretend everything is fine, to just--go about her business like none of this has ever happened?

What will she be, if she wins? If she goes home, and Miik is dead, and the small girl from Eleven (her name is Katooni, and Ahsoka hadn’t wanted to know that, couldn’t help learning it), and Rex is dead, and his brother is alone. Who will she be? What will it make her?

Will she be able to live with herself, when she’s done here?

Time passes, the rain keeps pouring down; Ahsoka pays little attention to it, wallows in her self-pity and her misery until, like a shock to her system, she thinks of Rey.

What would it look like, to Rey, to see her big sister throwing a pity party?

It certainly would undo all the years of lessons Ahsoka and Anakin have been trying to pound in to Rey’s stubborn little brain, about not throwing temper tantrums.

So. Enough.

She pushes herself to sit up, letting out a long breath. Scrubs at her face with one sleeve and then shakes herself, some. Decides that, since they’re stuck in this cave until they go crazy or the rain stops, whichever comes first, and she thinks the cameras won’t be as focused on them because they aren’t doing anything interesting right now, she might as well as him the question she’s been wondering ever since he saved her life and then refused to accept a debt for that.

“Why a Peacekeeper?” she asks, is surprised how steady her voice sounds. “Why would you want to be a Peacekeeper?”

He laughs, short and harsh. “I didn’t exactly decide to be one. I got picked.”

She hadn’t realized that. That Peacekeepers really are picked. She wonders--he’s got the self-carriage, the familiarity with weapons, moreso than even the average Career--she can’t help wondering how young he was, then. When he got chosen. “Oh,” she says, quiet, idly traces patterns in the dust on the ground with one finger (Skywalker, in the fancy way her mom had taught her all those years ago). “I’m sorry I was so… rude, about it. When we were first--I don’t like Peacekeepers,” and she shrugs. “But you’re alright.”

“Well, thanks,” he says, dust-dry, and she shoots him a bit of a smile, sighs. “I don’t blame you,” he adds, “for not liking us.”

If only he knew. She shrugs one shoulder, looks away.

“What’d you--what’d you do?” he asks, then, very careful. “To get whipped?”

She doesn’t mean to flinch a little, but she does anyway, grits her teeth. Sighs again, hunches over her knees some. “I was fourteen,” she says, tries to be monotone about it, like it doesn’t matter, like it doesn’t still terrify her if she thinks too much about it. “Was just out--gathering’s legal, in Seven, because they can’t really enforce it. And it doesn’t require weapons to do, so. I was out in one of the meadows, and they just…” She stops, shrugs. “I dunno really why, I was by myself and they could, I guess. Just grabbed me for no reason, and--” no, she can’t say that part. She stops again, swallows. “I didn’t mean to, but I just--fought back, y’know? I broke one of their noses. So they drug me out into the square and--whipped me. I don’t know how many times, Anakin and Obi-Wan wouldn’t really tell me much, ‘cept that I passed out somewhere around ten and there’s a lot more scars than that.”

She sighs again, shakes her head, looking out the entrance to the cave, hugs her knees more. “So I don’t really like Peacekeepers. Because it was just--self-defense, that’s all. And I didn’t…” and she trails off, huffs a bit. Shakes her head again. “Sorry, it’s kind of--a lot.”

She doesn’t think the memory should still make her feel so--small.

~~~

She wouldn’t have been given any less than twenty lashes. Rex twists his hands together, hard. He doesn’t have a defense, for his father’s and his own peers, and he forces himself not to try to find one. Because he can’t start making excuses. He and Cody have both refused to do that, at least.

Jango never did.

So. “Then don’t be sorry,” he says, tiredly. “For being rude.” Although it had stung, but then what was she really supposed to think of him? He knows what the Peacekeepers are, what he was meant to be. Just another way the Capitol reaches them, all the time, and usually the most immediate. The rain hushes soft but unceasing outside, and Rex shivers, just a little. He’s not sure if it’s from the cold or everything else.

“Do you need your jacket back?” Ahsoka asks, and he shakes his head.

“No, I’m okay,” and rests his chin on his knees with a small sigh. “I’m sorry,” he says, quietly. That seems like a good thing to say, anyway. Maybe the only right one. Because that shouldn’t have happened to her, not any of it, and she shouldn’t have had to be strong enough to survive that (although she was).

“No need to be, wasn’t your fault,” she says, shrugging one shoulder. “It’s the way things are.”

“Yeah,” he says. Yeah it is. Still. That burns.

He’s cold, and can’t think, so he reaches for his backpack and digs around, pulls out one of the weird bar-things made of nuts and seeds, figures he better at least try it. Looks like it’ll be good for energy, anyway. He rubs his nose, and takes a bite.

There’s almost no flavor, which is disappointing, but he keeps eating anyway, glances at Ahsoka and her hair tumbling down around her face, loose and red, and says, sheepishly, “Um, I could actually… use my jacket back.”

~~~

Ahsoka winces, says, “Yeah, ‘course,” unzips his jacket and tugs it off over her own, hands it over to him, grumbling. “I feel like they’re messing with the weather on purpose,” she huffs, tugging her hood up and hugging her knees--without the extra layer of Rex’s jacket, she’s chilly, but she’ll be alright, she’s had worse. “Yesterday it was nice and warm, and then today it’s more like fall than summer.”

“This is winter,” he grouses, and she snorts, rolls her eyes.

“If it was winter,” she tells him, very seriously, “neither of us would be able to sit here in just these jackets.”

Which is true. The jackets are nice, built to hold in body heat, but they aren’t anywhere near warm enough for wintertime.

“Well, it’s too cold, then,” and he’s very grumbly and annoyed, and she laughs a little at the look on his face.

“It’s not that bad,” she says, grinning some. “Besides, if you’re that cold, you’re sitting on a perfectly good blanket. I’m pretty sure that thing unzips flat.” She gestures at the sleeping bag with one hand before curling it back around her knees.

He laughs, a bit. “It is that bad,” he hmphs, eyes the sleeping bag thoughtfully, though he makes no move to actually unzip it.

His loss.

“If you aren’t gonna use it, then give it to me,” Ahsoka says, rolling her eyes. “No point not using it.”

“No,” he says, grumpy, “I’m using it,” and he starts unzipping it, wraps himself up in it and glares at her.

She shouldn’t laugh, but--it’s really kind of funny, the big, intimidating Career bundled up in a blanket like her little sister. Ahsoka claps a hand over her mouth, looks away from him, because she cannot take him seriously, and that’s how she sees the parachute.

“Aw, yes,” she says, cheerfully, pushes herself up and crossing over to the entrance to the cave, reaching out and catching onto the parachute’s strings and tugging it inside. She returns to sit cross-legged and settles the container onto her lap, opens it.

There’s a thermos inside, and it’s warm to her hands, and when she opens the lid steam and the distinctive smell of a kind of cheesy potato soup she’d discovered while at the Capitol waft out. Still hot, and fresh, and it--feels like a reward, almost.

No gifts except the burn cream, until now. Food, something that’ll warm her up (one of her favorite dishes)--why? Because she was laughing with Rex?

That would make sense, she realizes, closing her eyes and inhaling the smell of the soup, delighted. Be friends with Rex Fett, it’ll get you sponsors.

Well, she can do that. It’s surprisingly not that difficult.

“What is it?” Rex asks, and she smiles at him, opening her eyes.

“Soup,” she says, brightly. Takes a careful sip--it’s hot, almost too hot to drink still, but the warmth feels good. She does not want to share, because it’s warm and she likes it, but--he shared his bread, so. “I’ll share it with you, if you want.”

“Just a bit?” he asks, sticks one arm out, and she hands it over to him.

“Yeah, sure,” she says. “Just be careful, it’s still really hot.”

He nods, takes the thermos from her carefully, blowing on the surface of the soup. Takes a few swallows and hands it back, and she curls around the warmth of it, smiles to herself. Drinks her soup slowly, to make it last, the warmth and the taste of it, the variety of it making it almost more filling than the supplies they’ve been stocking up on. She toasts the sky, aimed at her invisible mentors, a thanks and an acknowledgement of the silent message all in one, leans back against the rock wall of the cave and wonders, idly, just how long this stupid storm is going to go for.

Hopefully not more than a couple days. She thinks she might go insane, if she’s stuck in a small space like this for too long.

~~~

Rex sticks his hand out of the cave as Ahsoka finishes her soup (a good gift - he definitely can't expect anything like that from his mentors, but he doesn't care so much right now), feels the water splash chilly but refreshing across the back of his hand. “So where did you learn that song you were singing, the other day?” he asks.

“It's one of Rey’s favorites,” Ahsoka tells him. “Anakin taught it to me, when I was little. I think he learned it from Padme.”

Rex nods, slowly, smiling. Tries to ignore the bite of sadness that wishes he had a family like hers. “I asked Miik if he knew any songs,” he says, wryly, shaking his head. “He started singing a drinking song. At least now he knows yours, too.”

“Oh,” Ahsoka says, not looking sure if she wants to laugh or frown. She ends up with tightly pursed lips and gleaming eyes, a smile dancing around the corners of her eyes and turning them a lighter blue. He shrugs at her, grinning a bit.

In Two, they call District Four the drunk District. They say there are public houses along every beachfront, and one on every street in the rest of the District. Rex isn’t sure how true that is, it’s just one of those things they hear. His dad had told them, when they were little, that most of what they heard about other Districts was a lie.

Which reminds him of a question he’s had prickling in the back of his mind, one he’s embarrassed to ask, but, well, he’s curious. And it’s definitely not as risky a question as asking why he decided to be a Peacekeeper, or asking about whip scars. Unless she punches him for it. He’s not sure, he’s probably about to sound completely ignorant.

“Um, Ahsoka,” he says, hesitant, scratching his head, “Is it true that, um, in your District, when someone’s trying to propose to you, they have to try to cut off one of your fingers?” That’s what he’s heard, and he’s been skeptical, but it sounds vaguely possible, and they have a lot of sharp implements in Seven.

Ahsoka blinks at him, then a slow, disbelieving smile spread across her face, and aw shit, now he looks like a dumbass. “Yes, Rex, that’s how we know someone’s engaged. They’re missing a finger and we all ask them who did the honors? and they tell us it was their neighbor’s son with a rusty axe.”

“I get the point,” Rex grumbles, red-faced, rubbing fractiously at his hair again and staring at the floor.

“No, but see, that’s why Anakin and Padme aren’t engaged yet,” Ahsoka says, and he can hear her straining not to laugh. “Because Anakin can’t be fast enough to cut off her finger. He’s tried everything but-”

“Shut up,” Rex groans, wrapping the sleeping bag tighter around himself and glaring at her, which just makes her grin wider at him, eyes sparkling bright and merciless, like the rain outside. “I just heard that, but it sounded weird so I asked.”

“Well, you can’t believe everything you hear,” Ahsoka says, wagging her finger at him.

“Thanks for the advice,” he huffs, propping his chin on his knees through the sleeping bag and earning a full laugh from her.

“You’ve just offended everyone in my District.”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry.” Rex watches Ahsoka laugh again, and smiles to himself. Her hair is so long. It’s got to be annoying, right?

He likes being wrapped up in the sleeping bag like this. It feels secure, and warm. Looks ridiculous, apparently, but he doesn’t really care.

“So what do you do? When you wanna propose?” Rex asks. He knows what they do in Three - in Three, if you want to be betrothed to someone, you give them a really personal gift, usually something you made. You’re supposed to say something with it, of course, to avoid confusion, but he knows his dad had made no promises to their mom. Had just given her a carving he’d made and had never really done more. And then he’d had to leave her District, and she sent their two boys with him because he could afford to take care of them better than she could. And so Jango had gone back to work in Two for a while, taking them with him, and then been redeployed to Twelve when they were six and seven, and had barely been home between times. They’d asked, sometimes, if he’d take them to live with him in Twelve, and he told them no. It wasn’t as safe there, he said, and it was poor, and he wanted them to live better. Now Rex also thinks Jango didn’t want them growing up and seeing firsthand what he did to keep them fed and clothed.

But that doesn’t matter, right now. Right now he’s curious about Seven. So he raises his eyebrows at Ahsoka and tries to forget about his dad, for now.

~~~

Ahsoka bites her lip, trying to stifle a laugh, shakes her head. Cut off a finger, really? It makes her wonder just what they tell each other, in Two.

“There are flowers,” she tells him, amused, hugging her knees tighter and rolling her eyes a bit. “Much less interesting than chopping someone’s digits off, I know,” and she laughs again, can’t help it. “But individual flowers have meaning, so you choose one that means something to the person you want to propose to and give it to them when you ask.” She shrugs, still grinning. “Now I’m really curious what sort of traditions you have in Two.”

Rex is still red-faced and wrapped in the sleeping bag-blanket and she really thinks that shouldn’t be so damn adorable.

“We don’t actually have traditions like that in Two,” he says, carefully calm.

“For some reason, I’m almost not surprised,” she says, dryly, fighting another smile. “After all, if you think that cutting someone’s finger off is an appropriate way to propose, then…”

“No, it’s not appropriate, that was the whole point-- you know what, never mind,” Rex says, still red, grumbling.

She laughs, bright and ringing, shakes her head at him. “You’re ridiculous,” she says, snorting and rolling her eyes. “I can’t believe you actually asked me that.”

(He’s cute when he’s embarrassed, she decides, bright red and glaring.)

“I wanted to know,” he huffs, grumpy and a bit quiet. “I was curious, okay?”

She shakes her head again, sighs, sobers a little and nods at his arm. “How’s your arm?”

“Fine, I think,” he says, flexes his hand, some. “Not infected, anyway.”

“That’s good,” she says, peers down at the burn on her leg. It’s looking much better, and the pain has faded a lot, but she digs through the backpack for the medicine anyway, smears some on.

And turns her eyes to the river, not too terribly far from their cave. Is it her imagination, or is it higher than it was? She shivers a bit, turns wide eyes to Rex, asks, “Do you think the river will--flood the cave? If it keeps raining?” Hell, she hopes not.

~~~

“Shit,” Rex says, quietly. He hadn’t thought of that, but looking out at the river, and the still-steady rain, he thinks that could be a problem. Which would mean leaving their cave and trying to make shelter somewhere else. He doesn’t like that idea - he’s cold already, but at least he’s dry.

Ahsoka shrinks in on herself, some, looking small, and says, “Rex, I can’t swim, so we can’t get stuck.”

She looks properly scared, so Rex tries to be as reassuring as he can, says, “Don’t worry, we can leave long before we get stuck, if the rain doesn’t stop. Besides, I’m a good swimmer. I’d get you out.” Even though the prospect of being out in, not to mention out swimming in, the chilly water is daunting at best.

Ahsoka shakes her head, hard. “I don’t like- I can’t- Never mind,” and Rex frowns, leans forward a little.

“It’s gonna be fine,” he says, carefully insistent. “I’m sure it won’t get that high.” And if it does then they’ll deal with it, and move somewhere else.

“But what if it does?” she asks, inevitably, and hell, he doesn’t quite know what to do with how frightened she’s getting.

“Then we’ll go somewhere else,” he says, simply, firm. “I told you, I’m a great swimmer, so we’ll be fine. And I really don’t think it’ll get up to us.”

“Okay,” she says, but she glances back out at the rain and the river, all the silver and green, and she still sounds scared.

Great. Rex thinks a minute, then unwraps the sleeping bag from around his shoulders and chucks it at her in a mass, unceremoniously. “Here,” he says, huffily. “You look cold.”

Hell, it is cold. Everything is stupid.

Ahsoka pulls a face at him, mutters, “I’m fine,” but she grabs the sleeping bag and manhandles it around her shoulders, her whole self disappearing under it so just her head and her tangle of red hair stick out. Rex chuckles at her.

“You know,” he says, thoughtfully, “Your costume for the tribute parade was cool. All the lights and stuff.”

“Yeah, wasn’t it?” Ahsoka says, grinning a little. “Lando did a really good job,” hell yeah, he did, “I liked it. Even if I had to wear a dress.” Apparently, she does not approve of dresses, because she wrinkles her nose like she’s smelled something awful and huffs a little. Rex laughs at her, shrugs, like what can you do? “Yours was cool, too,” she says, and he shakes his head, although it had been so maybe he should say so, because Sabe would appreciate that. Ahsoka hesitates a moment, screwing up her face a little with a half-frown, and says, sheepishly, “It made your eyes stand out.”

“Oh. Um, good.” Rex shrugs. “Sabe is great.” She is. He hopes she understands he’s been trying to do what she said - or maybe she’s disappointed, he doesn’t know. But he hopes she’s not, because she’s been kind to him.

~~~

Ahsoka watches the rain patter down on the rocks outside their cave for a while, considering; she’s not really sure what to talk about, now, but she wants (needs?) to talk about something. Because the more she’s quiet, the more she thinks about the rain pouring down, the water rising, and just thinking about it sends a spike of anxiety through her gut, so.

Talking.

“I didn’t really expect to get Reaped,” she says, casual, huddles deeper into the sleeping bag’s warmth and comfort (small and lackluster though it might be). “I only had twelve entries, which isn’t that much compared to some people.” She shrugs, sighs. “So it was kind of a surprise, to say the least.”

Rex considers that for a minute, finally says, “Twelve?”

She shrugs, nods, not looking over at him. “Yeah. I signed up for tesserae still, after Obi-Wan took us in, so that I could give it to people who needed it. There’s a lot of families who the tesserae they can get isn’t enough, and sometimes there are kids who--are too young to sign up, and they lose their parents or older siblings in accidents or to starvation or something, and so… it only makes sense. Why shouldn’t I?” She shrugs again. “We’ll do that with Obi-Wan’s winnings, too. Give away as much of the food and the money as we can afford. Seven’s a big District. There are a lot of hungry people. We can’t help them all, but at least we can help some of them, y’know?”

Rex is thoughtful, almost guarded, careful, when he speaks. “You told Miik survival is more important than caring,” he says, slowly. “So why increase your risk of getting into the Games?”

Ahsoka winces, a little. “I… told him that because I was trying to convince myself,” she admits, tiredly, still looking out the cave entrance. “I didn’t want to--kill people, I didn’t want--don’t want--any of this, but… I promised I’d come home, so I have to--I don’t know,” and she sighs, frustrated. “It’d be easier if I could just--not care, but then again, I don’t want that, because then I wouldn’t be me anymore. And I don’t--they don’t get to make me something I’m not. Or… make me less, I don’t know.” She sighs, rubs a hand through her hair, even though it snarls on the tangles (oops). “I have to win if I’m going to go home, but I don’t think I want to win if it’s going to make me--if it makes me so I can’t remember that…” Nothing makes sense, her thoughts are all jumbled, and so she just makes another frustrated noise and falls silent, curling smaller into the sleeping bag.

~~~

Rex keeps very still, where he sits, and observes Ahsoka's features, carefully - the tiredness, frustration, confusion, all of that - and makes himself stone. Looking for- well, he isn't sure what. Looking to be sure she isn't just saying pretty things, he supposes, to be sure she isn't saying something she doesn't mean so she feels better.

The wild girl from District Seven has not been what he expected. And he needs to understand.

“You want to go home as yourself,” he says, gentle, not quite a question.

“Yeah,” she says, still staring out at the rain, easing her fingers through her tangled hair, and Rex feels heavy. “Like I said. More than just a piece in their Games.”

Well, then. He's going to help. Because he promised Cody, but he also promised Sabe he'd show them he was something else, promised himself he wouldn't be what they wanted him to be. And it's better if he fails Cody than if she leaves her whole family and all the people she says she tries to help.

So he smiles at her, soft, chuckles and says, “Somehow I think you'll manage that fine.”

“You have a lot more faith in me than I have in myself,” she tells him, shrugging and making the whole sleeping bag move.

He snorts. “Well, somebody has to,” he says, eyeing her expression appraisingly again, her hand tangled in her hair and the weariness. “Although I seem to remember you telling me a couple times you were definitely gonna win,” teasing.

She rolls her eyes. “Shut up.”

“Fine,” he says, and draws one knee up to his chest and rests his chin on it and stares dramatically out at the river. Clings hard to the steel determination settling in his spine.

He peeks back at her in time to see her grinning just a little (success). “You're an idiot, Rex,” she says, warmly.

“Cody says that a lot,” he says, mock-offended. “I don't get it.”

Hell, he's cold. This jacket works better than he'd thought it would, though.

So does the warmth burning hot and low in his chest, care and purpose all at once.

Ahsoka Skywalker is going to win the Hunger Games. And it's going to be better that way.

~~~

“Of course you don’t,” Ahsoka says, rolling her eyes. She watches him for a moment, notes he looks cold, remembers that for some unfathomable reason it never gets below fifty degrees in Two, so. “Here,” she says, reluctantly untangles herself from the sleeping bag and hands it over to him. “You look cold.”

“I’m fine,” he says, doesn’t take it.

She gives him a look. “You live in a desert. Don’t pull the I’m fine shit with me. If I’m cold, then I know you’re cold.”

He takes it, then, wraps himself up, although he’s grumbling under his breath like an idiot the whole time. She doesn’t bother to listen to him, sure she doesn’t want to know what he’s saying.

The day passes mostly in silence, with some easy, relaxed conversation, and as it turns into evening (discernible only by the fact that it gets a bit darker outside--the rain doesn’t let up) another parachute lands in the rocks just outside the cave.

Ahsoka braves the rain briefly to run and grab it, comes back inside and opens the container to find more hot food--a fish stew of some kind--and some of that spicy bread. The kind that Rex said was his favorite.

It has the same feeling to it, though, she thinks--a message from her mentors. You’re getting more sponsors. Right.

Before she can try to decide who the gift is for, though, she notices a pair of forks with it.

“Guess we gotta share,” Rex says, with a small grin, and she returns it.

The food is good, the warmth it brings even better, especially as it gets colder with sunset and nightfall. Ahsoka doesn’t let herself look at the sleeping bag, even though her jacket is really hardly enough for this kind of weather, just pretends she can’t feel the cold seeping in (especially where she’d had to cut off her pant leg). When the anthem plays, she sticks her head out briefly, to see if she can see anything, but the clouds are too thick and it’s hopeless. She hopes Miik is still alive--they haven’t heard any cannons but that could be because of the rainstorm. It’s been two? three? days since any tributes died, the Capitol audience has to be getting bored. So she just shrugs at Rex, pulls her hood up to cover her ears and curls up in a corner of the cave, hoping to sleep.

It’s cold. But she’ll be fine. Rex isn’t used to this kind of weather and she is, and when she’d suggested the idea of sharing the sleeping bag a few nights ago he’d been emphatic in his dislike for that idea, so.

She’ll be fine.

~~~

If it was cold during the day, tonight it’s frigid. Desert nights get colder, but Rex has never been out in it, and their houses are warm. This is hellish. He’s so grateful for the sleeping bag bundled thick around his shoulders and knees like a blanket that he doesn’t think, at first, about the fact that Ahsoka is definitely cold too, and she’s just curled in on herself with her hood up like that’s good enough.

Rex doesn’t know much about cold weather, but he thinks she’ll make herself sick, that way. And she’s small, so the cold’s got to be worse for her. And he’s got to help her win, and letting her be so cold she gets sick or just can’t focus is hardly helping.

“Ahsoka,” he says, leaning over and pulling the sleeping bag from around him, although hell, shit, that makes him shiver, violently. “Hey, you should use this.”

“I’ll be fine,” she says, and what a lie that is, it’s freezing, “I’m used to the weather. You need it.”

“Yeah, but so do you,” he snaps. Maybe they should just take turns again? Or, hell, he doesn’t know.

“I said I’m fine,” she answers, sharp, and Rex scowls and takes the sleeping bag and drops it over top of her, then sits back against the wall of the cave and crosses his arms.

She pushes herself upright and twists around to glare at him, which wouldn’t be funny except some of her hair is sticking out of her hood and falling in her face, so it takes him an effort not to start chuckling.

“You’re welcome,” he snorts, shrugging.

She’s still scowling. “Look, Rex, you’ll freeze,” she says, grumpily, like she’s out of patience.

“Yeah, well so will you,” he says.

She raises an eyebrow, doesn’t look mollified.

Shit, why’s it gotta be so cold? It’s making it hard to stick to his guns, here.

“Just take the stupid sleeping bag,” he grumbles, tucking his hands in his pockets and glaring. “It’ll help you, dumbass.”

“And it’ll hurt you, which means it’s not an option. This is an equal partnership, here,” Ahsoka snaps, and Rex stops for a moment, swallows, because the frankness of that statement is… strange. Unexpected. And it hurts.

“Well, if it’s so equal, then how’s it better if I’m warm and you’re not,” he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.

They could share.

But he can’t, the sleeping bag is too small so they’d have to be so close and he can’t, can’t, can’t-

But they’ve been using it like a blanket, today, and it’s big enough all flat like that that maybe they can share it and bodyheat and not have to touch. So. So. Hell. So. “We could just share,” he says, forcing himself to be casual. “I mean not- Just, like sharing a blanket,” he says, hasty.

Ahsoka frowns, and answers, also very casual, “If you’re okay with it.”

Yeah, he’s fine. Just no thinking. “Yeah.”

“Okay.” Ahsoka adjusts the sleeping bag so he can lay down next to her, and for a moment he can’t, can’t, doesn’t want to. Then he grits his teeth, scoots under the sleeping bag with his back to Ahsoka and reaches for the edge of it (ignores a skittering pulse of nerves that says no, too close), and pulls it over him. It’s warmer, fast, but having his back to her is worse, oh hell, he doesn’t- So he shifts, trying not to disturb the little cocoon of heat that’s built up under the sleeping bag, and rolls around to face her. Finds she has her back to him, which is better.

And it’s warmer, and looking at her hair is nice, and so he curls up under the sleeping bag and closes his eyes and forces himself to go to sleep.

Chapter Text

Ahsoka wakes up slowly, again, but this time the sound of the rain just reminds her cave, not home.

She doesn’t open her eyes, just curls in smaller on herself and tugs the sleeping bag up tighter against her chin, grumbling vaguely and trying to go back to sleep. If the stupid rain is still going, that means they’re still stuck in the stupid cave, and she really doesn’t want to be awake, if that’s the case.

“Good morning, Ahsoka,” Rex says, sassy, and she squeezes her eyes shut and grumbles louder.

“No,” she huffs, tugs the sleeping bag up more and scrunching her face up. “Mornings are stupid.”

“Sure, ‘Soka,” he says, and she frowns a bit, because since when are they using nicknames?

But she kinda likes the way it sounds, so… whatever, then. “They are,” she huffs, annoyed, and he chuckles.

“If you say so.”

She cracks open one eye and he’s sitting up, looking entirely too--something, too pleased with himself, probably, and she makes a face, pokes the side of his leg and grumbles out, “Shut up.”

“No,” he says, looks straight ahead of him.

She pouts. Closes her eye again, except now she’s awake, which is dumb, so she sighs and opens both eyes and asks, “Is it letting up any?”

“Not really,” he answers, and she sighs and pushes herself to sit up and lean against the wall next to him, the sleeping bag a blanket over her legs.

“Great,” she says, wry, watches as he digs into the backpack for one of the rolls of bandages and goes to work on his arm. “You’re good at that,” she adds, watching the ease with which he rolls the clean bandages around and around his arm, despite only having one hand. His fingers are quick and nimble as he tears the length off, ties it up--it’s only once he goes to set the roll back down that she realizes she’s been staring.

Again.

Oops.

“Yeah, we learn some first aid in Peacekeeper training,” he says, and she swallows a bit at the reminder. “I think you should wrap up your leg too.”

She shrugs a bit. “I don’t really know how,” she admits. “Not well, at least, and we don’t have that many bandages, so…”

“We don’t want you to hurt it again now that it’s getting better,” he says, deliberately, casual, sounds almost nervous. “I can wrap it--if you’d let me?”

“Sure,” she says, tugs her leg out from underneath the blanket. The burn looks much better, but he’s probably right--it needs to be protected, keep the dirt and stuff out, or it’ll probably get infected or something. She’s not really sure.

She focuses on his hands, again, as he wraps the bandages around her leg careful and slow, every movement telegraphed, like he’s trying to be careful so he doesn’t spook her.

She’s grateful for that. She trusts him, but sometimes she still startles too easily, and it helps, how quiet and careful he’s being.

His hands are big enough she thinks he could hold both of her small ones in one of his, she notices. Like Anakin (who is the tall one of the family, who used to be almost twice her size, when he first had his growth spurts) used to do, when he was being very serious. It feels safe, for some reason.

“Thanks,” she says, when he’s done, and she tucks her leg back under the sleeping bag again.

~~~

Rex is glad he doesn’t scare Ahsoka, when he’s bandaging her leg; after she’d explained what had earned her a whipping in her District, he’d half-expected her not to even let him try. So he’s very careful wrapping the bandage around her shin and toned calf, and it makes him a little proud that she doesn’t seem to mind it.

“You’re welcome,” he says, scooting back to lean against the wall again. He feels mildly damp all over, chilly and shivery, but his feet are mostly warm, at least.

Ahsoka huffs a little, wrapping her arms around herself, and pronounces, “I want tea,” in a peeved tone.

Rex makes a face. Honestly, why tea? “Too bad there isn’t any,” he teases.

She rolls her head over to glare at him, and he laughs.

And a minute later two parachutes holding thermoses land by the mouth of the cave.

“No way,” Rex says, scoots out from under the sleeping bag to grab the gifts, brings them back and opens both thermoses. “Ahsoka, they sent us actual tea and coffee.” The tea smells good, for tea. Cinnamony and spicy. And of course, coffee always smells good. Smells like home.

He passes Ahsoka her tea, grins at her, because she looks so excited, and wraps his hands around his thermos of coffee, feels the warmth soaking into his fingers, the steam warming his face, and sighs.

Ahsoka hums, smiling, and looks up from her tea, calls, “I love you, whoever got me this.”

Rex laughs, salutes vaguely and takes a too-hot sip of coffee, warming him all through. “I love coffee,” he says, unnecessarily, grinning. “Your tea doesn’t even seem so bad.”

Ahsoka smirks widely at him, blue eyes bright, and says, “That, Rexter, is because it is the best tea you can get. Way better than your dumb, bitter, flavorless coffee.” She points dramatically at his thermos and then takes a sip of her tea.

Rex meets her eyes and exaggeratedly lifts his own thermos to his lips, raises an eyebrow, and takes a long swallow. “Sure, ‘Soka,” he says, pleased with himself, and shifts a little so the stony wall isn’t hurting his shoulders so much. “You can think whatever you want.”

Ahsoka huffs, offended. “You’re an idiot, that’s what I think,” she tells him, and Rex smirks and pretends to ignore her. Ahsoka coughs, splutters a bit, and Rex glances at her, sees her staring at the cave wall.

“Is that tea not as good as you thought?” he says, snickering.

“Shut up,” she grumbles. She’s blushing, which still makes her freckles stand out a lot.

He likes her freckles, they’re just… interesting. He smiles to himself and goes back to drinking his coffee.

~~~

Not long after the gifts (which Ahsoka is so thankful for--the tea is wonderful, hot and it tastes like home), Ahsoka looks over at Rex again, drawn by the rasp of a knife against wood. She knows that sound, from spending days dulling kitchen knives through the process of turning a twig into shavings.

Rex, it seems, is much more invested in this than just normal whittling, though. He’s taking his time, twisting the small block of wood he’d found around and around, taking short, sharp motions with his knife, and then longer ones, carving a shape.

“What’re you doing?” Ahsoka asks, curious, scoots a bit closer and leans forward to look over his arms at the piece of wood, so small in his big hands.

“What’s it look like?” he asks, wryly, but there’s a thread of softness in his voice too.

She rolls her eyes. “Okay, yeah, duh, but like--what’re you making? Carving? Whatever.”

“Dunno, a bird, I think.” He shifts to grin at her, says, teasing, “Maybe a mockingjay, like you, Ahsoka.”

Her, a mockingjay? She smiles back, slow, says, “Damn right.” She loves mockingjays, loves their voices and everything about them. “Can you show me how?”

“I can try,” he says, hesitantly, and she beams.

They spend the next while like that; Rex hands her the wood and his knife and directs her how to cut, where to, until instead of a block of wood there’s a roughly-shaped mockingjay, wings outstretched in flight. He takes it back from her then, adds in feathers and loosely-scalloped wings, tiny eyes and lines on the beak and the feet, just minute motions with the knife blade and tip, until he eyes it critically and then sets his knife down. Brushes the tiny bird off, runs his thumb over the spread wings and their tiny, detailed feathers, and then says, “Here. You did good,” and offers it to her with a smile.

Ahsoka takes the small carving from him, cups it in her hands, smiles wonderingly at it, traces her fingers over the lines. “It’s really pretty,” she breathes, and she smiles up at him, warm. “Thank you, Rex.”

~~~

“I don’t know, I’ve done better,” Rex says, but he can’t help grinning because she likes it so much and she helped make it, too. “You did a lot of it, so, it’s yours.” He shrugs.

She strokes her fingers over the wings and tail again, so light, and Rex puts away his knife, dusts the sawdust and curled wood shavings off his hands, and leans back to relax, more. He supposes the Capitol is probably bored, right now, but he just hopes someone else is being more interesting than them. Either way, they’ve had a good rest.

And Ahsoka is just turning the bird over and over in her fingers. A mockingjay. Because she reminds him of them, he guesses, with the singing and the wildness and the fact that they embarrass the Capitol. (They weren’t supposed to exist. But then the Capitol's failed mutt mated with a District bird and mockingjays were the result.)

They sit long enough that Rex finds another piece of river-smoothed wood on the floor of the cave and starts on it, carving a vague round shape out of it, and Ahsoka flops on her back and munches on some berries and rabbit. Rex drinks the last few swallows of water in his bottle, sets it outside on the stone to collect the rain.

They talk a bit about Rey, who Ahsoka informs him wants to learn to carve but Anakin won’t let anyone teach her. Apparently, her “least favorite person in the whole world” had offered to, but she’d smacked him because he apparently pulls her hair all the time. Rex is informed that the boy in question is the principal’s son, and nobody really likes him, but least of all Rey.

Rex hopes he’s not watching the Games right now, poor kid.

He carves his piece of wood into what ends up being a scalloped seashell and is trying to smooth the curves when the light begins changing. He doesn’t notice, so much, at first, but then almost all at once everything goes light, soft, and the wood in his hands turns from bone-grey to a soft sandy brown, and the rain and river go from a steady, rhythmic breathing sound to something softer, less orderly. Bubbly, almost.

Rex sets his carving down and gets to the mouth of the cave just after Ahsoka, leans out next to her to see a break in the bank of clouds, wide and golden-edged, sunlight breaking orange and yellow through the trees and rain (because it is still raining, and Rex has never seen anything like this). It’s so bright, after all the grey.

He turns, catches Ahsoka’s eye and grins, and she grins right back at him, and there’s a light in her blue eyes he doesn’t understand, something excited and, he’s not sure, adventurous almost? “Oh, this is Rey’s and my favorite kind of rain.” She sheds her jacket, still grinning, and to his bewilderment, gets up and scrambles out of the cave onto the riverbank, climbs over the rocks towards the woods, and he pauses to grab a knife before following her, almost without thinking about it.

The rain is softer than it’s been, not so cold, and Ahsoka steps off the rocks along the shore onto the soft grass among the trees and tilts her head back a moment, her hair falling in waves around her shoulders, and Rex can’t decide whether to look at her or at the rain, which has turned all silver-gold in the dappled sunlight.

It’s an easy decision a moment later when Ahsoka suddenly laughs and flings her arms out, spins in a circle on the wet grass, dizzily, and Rex edges in closer, although he feels oddly uncertain about intruding on all the light and life and… and he isn’t sure, happiness? of this strange little space. He’s not sure he belongs, so he just watches her spin until she stops, sways a little, lets her head fall back and closes her eyes and smiles, a little, the rain sparkling in her hair.

Oh.

The ground is soft but steady under his boots, and Ahsoka doesn’t move, barely seems to be breathing, when she says, softly, “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Yeah,” Rex says, almost as soft, watching her. She fits, here, with her strength and her laughter and freckles and ferocity.

She turns her head a little, opens her eyes (bright blue and as sparkling as the rain) and grins right at him, encouraging, and he chuckles. “Having fun, ‘Soka?”

She smiles wider. “You should try it,” she tells him, a little mischievous.

“You know, I’m okay,” he says, light, shaking his head.

“Aw, come on, Rex,” she says, turning a little and giving him a pleading look, eyes so bright it’s almost more like she’s daring him.

He shakes his head, smirking a little, and reaches up to run his hand through his hair. “You’re soaked, Ahsoka.”

Still, he takes a few steps closer to her, so he could almost reach her.

And she twirls again on the grass, crows, “Who cares?”

When she stops spinning again, her hair is in disarray, and she’s laughing at him, and Rex smiles and steps forward, pushes her hair back off her shoulder with a shake of his head (and it’s as soft as he thought, after all). “Obviously not you.”

~~~

Rex is so close, suddenly, those golden eyes shining, and Ahsoka swallows, reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear, a bit self-consciously. “Obviously,” she echoes, not as sassy as she’d meant it to be, because--he’s close and he’s smiling and there are raindrops running down his face, catching sparkly silver-gold on his eyelashes and dripping off his nose and chin, and she finds herself wanting to wipe the rain away (she’s curious about the feel of his skin beneath her fingertips). “I’m not the only one getting soaked, though,” she points out, smiling a bit wryly up at him.

He’s so--the sunlight is liquid golden, flowing over the sharp angles of his face and his bronzed skin and the defined lines of his muscles (which she can see, just a bit, by virtue of his shirt and jacket being soaked through and sticking to his skin), turning his hair into something soft and glowing. She wants--she’s curious, suddenly, about the feel of it, all warm and silken-looking in the sunlight and the rain.

Another droplet drips out of his hair, and her eyes follow it as it runs past the corner of his eye and follows the lines of his face, around the base of his nose and across his lips and down to his chin, and it quivers there for a moment, turned crystal by the light, before it falls.

He runs his hand through his hair, which releases another cascade of little raindrops, says, “Yeah, well, I had to follow you out here and make sure you didn’t get stabbed.”

Ahsoka tears her gaze away from his face to glance down at her belt, note the absence of her sword, and then looks back up at him again and shrugs. “We’re probably the only ones dumb enough to be getting soaked through when it’s still getting cold at night,” she manages, smiles again, because she can’t seem to stop. “But this is the best kind of rain, so it’s worth it.”

Rex hesitates, a second, and then, soft, so soft, he asks, “Why are you so happy?”

Ahsoka considers that, for a second. What kind of a question is that? “It’s sunny and raining at the same time,” she says with a shrug, “and it’s pretty, and they--” and she hesitates a second, quickly changes her sentence, “--the Games, they can’t take that away from me.” She shrugs a bit. “Because the things that… my happiness is my own, and I choose to keep it anyway, even if--” and she should not finish that sentence, probably.

“Oh,” he says, just stares, and she tilts her head to one side, observing him back. The rain runs down his face, like crystal, and she swallows.

A shiver runs across her skin, and it takes her a moment to realize it’s from cold and not the strange mood of the air. “We,” and she has to clear her throat, look away from him, “we should probably go back inside.”

“Yeah, guess so,” he says, quiet.

She doesn’t let herself think too much, just careful, cautious almost, reaches out with one hand, palm up, offering, looks up at him with wide eyes. He hesitates, gaze flickering from her face to her hand and back up again, and then, equally careful, takes her hand. She smiles, bright, threads her fingers through his (and his hand is warm and steady and hers is so small in comparison and that shouldn’t feel safe but it does), starts for the cave again, feeling suddenly lighter than she has in a long time.

~~~

They share the sleeping bag like a blanket again that night, and Rex wakes up the next morning to near-silence, with the break of dawn over the horizon - because there is a sunrise, this morning, the sky unnaturally clear, and he sees Ahsoka has rolled over to face him in her sleep, her face creased in a small frown, eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks, and Rex smiles a little, sees her hand close to him and very small. He smiles a bit, slides out from under the sleeping bag and sits up, starts putting their things away, organizing and taking stock of their supplies.

The rain stopped. The Gamemakers probably have new plans now. The Capitol audience got tired of them getting to rest and talk. So, today is sure to be an exciting one.

He gets their things organized, then leans over and shakes Ahsoka’s shoulder, careful. “Hey, Ahsoka. We should get moving, the rain stopped.”

Their camp is safe, for now, but he thinks they should find somewhere else, because they’ve been here a while and he thinks there have to be signs of that, and anyway, it’s better to keep on the move, at this stage in the Games.

He wonders if any more died during the rain and they couldn’t see. Was Miik alright, in the cold?

She doesn’t get up, just curls up tighter on herself and mutters, “I hate mornings.”

“Okay, sure, Ahsoka, but you need to get up.” With the sun comes warmth, but also, the other tributes out on the move again.

Asajj and Aurra have had some time to heal. Maybe they got medicine or supplies from sponsors like Rex and Ahsoka got food.

“Okay,” she grumbles, reluctantly, and yawns a bit, uncurls like a snake deciding it has had enough of you being annoying, thank you, and sits up, rubbing her eyes. “I wish I had a hairbrush,” she huffs.

Rex runs his hand over his hair, perhaps a little smugly, and says, “You better eat something, if you want to. Then we should go.”

Ahsoka grumbles, but she reaches for his backpack and pulls out some of the jerky, takes an exaggerated bite as if she wants him to be very clear on the fact that she doesn’t want to be awake. Rex just chuckles and swings the pack over his shoulders, examines his knives and dries any extra moisture off on the inner lining of his jacket before buckling on his knife belt again, squaring his shoulders.

He needs to keep Ahsoka alive. That’s priority. That’s the new promise, that he’ll make sure she gets home.

~~~

After she eats her jerky, Ahsoka spends a moment or two untangling her hair and pulling it back into something vaguely resembling a braid, sighing. She finds her sword and her knives, slides them back onto her belt, pushes herself to her feet and steps outside the cave, stretching tight muscles until they pop. “What’s the plan?” she asks, idly, crossing over to just the edge of the river to carefully fill her empty bottle, adding iodine into it to treat it and hooking it back to her belt. “I was thinking maybe we could scout upstream some more, find a new place to camp, maybe make a semi-permanent camp to go out scouting for… for the others?”

“That was what I was thinking,” Rex responds, and she grins a little at him and then starts off, though she moves away from the banks of the river, some, so she’s not on the rocks. Or close enough that she could fall in.

Neither of those are really optimal outcomes.

She takes small sips of her water as they walk, once it’s been long enough she thinks it’s safe--the Gamemakers have, apparently, gotten tired of rain and cold, because it warms up almost unnaturally fast, and soon she’s pulled her jacket off and stuffed it in the top of the backpack. “Now it feels like summer again,” she says, casual, and Rex rolls his eyes, just visible in her peripheral vision.

“Finally,” he says, under his breath, and she snorts.

She ventures away from him to set a few snares, and when she comes back, he’s looking at a berry bush, a handful of small, dark berries in his hand. “Do you recognize these?” he asks, casual, light, and it takes her a moment, but--

Shit.

“Don’t eat those,” she says, fast, shaking her head hard, and she strides forward, looks up at him. “You haven’t eaten any, right?”

She doesn’t think he has, because he’d be dead, probably, but--

“No, I’m not stupid,” he says, but he sounds worried, and she lets out a breath. “What are they?”

“They’re called nightlock,” she says, shrugs one shoulder. Wants to tell him to drop them, but--maybe they can be useful, so she pulls out a small belt pouch she’d taken from the Cornucopia and gestures for him to drop the berries inside. “Super poisonous, will kill you really fast. Everyone knows about them, in Seven, because we gather so much of our food. You don’t want to mistake them for a wild blueberry.” She hooks the pouch back onto her belt, makes sure it’s in a place where she can easily reach it if she needs to but where it won’t get in the way of drawing her weapons, smiles up at him. “I’m glad you weren’t stupid this time.”

Rex splutters a bit, opens his mouth to respond, except there’s a sound of trumpets and they both go still, waiting. A feast? That wouldn’t be surprising, necessarily--it’s been a while since there were any deaths, she thinks, a few days, and a feast would be a good way to get more action. She doesn’t think they should go for food--they’ve got snares, and plenty of supplies, but it could be helpful to hide in a tree and scout out who’s left.

Except--when Claudius Templesmith speaks, he’s not mentioning a feast.

Instead, he says, jovially, “We have a rule change, ladies and gentlemen.” A rule change? There aren’t any rules to change. “This year, if the final two tributes are one male and one female, both will be crowned Victors.” There’s a pause. It doesn’t make sense. “Once again, I repeat, if the last two tributes standing are male and female, both of them will win.” The trumpets sound again and his voice is gone, and Ahsoka’s just stunned, for a second.

It doesn’t make sense.

If the final two tributes are one male and one female, both will be crowned Victors.

Oh.

Oh.

That means--

Both of them will win.

Both of them can win.

Ahsoka turns to Rex, finds he’s already looking at her, gaping just a little, the same utterly shocked expression on his face she’s sure is on hers, and she swallows, says, slowly, “Two Victors--both of us can win?”

~~~

A rule change? Why would they… what reason could the Capitol possibly have to change the number of victors? Letting two of them win isn’t what these Games are for.

But two people. Two victors. A girl and a boy, if they’re the two left.

He could… could avoid breaking his promise to Cody.

Or maybe they can find Miik again, and Rex can protect him like he wanted to.

But… but two winners.

Two.

What if he can go home, and see Cody, and not have to know he took Ahsoka from her own family? To know she’ll be alright? And happy?

She’s smiling now, very slow and bright at him, and he finds the strength to grin back, because, because two winners. Maybe him and her, or, better still, her and Miik. She reaches out, careful, and fumbles for one of his hands, squeezes his fingers. He feels so frozen, it’s just… two.

“We can both keep our promises,” she says, earnest, and Rex swallows and nods.

“Yeah,” he says, thinks about that. He could go home. He and Ahsoka both could.

And then he’s laughing, loud, a little ridiculous, throwing his head back and wrapping one arm around his stomach, because maybe there don’t have to be any broken promises, this time. Not any. He squeezes Ahsoka's hand where she's still hanging onto him and shakes his head, grinning. “We can both win, Ahsoka!”

“I know!” she says, excitedly.

He shakes his head, disbelieving, and then, quick but careful, tugs her into a short hug, one arm around her shoulders but not letting go of her hand. Then he steps back, fast, and shrugs sheepishly. “Guess we better both not die then.”

“I'm not counting on it,” she says, but she's grinning and she squeezes his hand a little, and so Rex pulls his hand away with a little grin.

“Why not?” he teases. “I think we've as good as won this thing.”

Unless they can find Miik again. Then he's gotta make sure it's him.

She smiles, bright and soft, and says, “Better not get too cocky. That's how I stole your backpack in the first place.” Excuse her, he opens his mouth to respond and she points at him, cuts him off. “But you're probably right, the odds are in our favor.”

They are. Rex doesn't trust the odds, most of the time, because after all the odds were in their favor and here they still are. But still. They can both fight. Their injuries aren’t severe. “I’m not being cocky,” he huffs. “Just confident. But come on, we should keep moving.”

They make their way back to the riverbank and start upstream again, and Rex luxuriates in the feel of warm, solid stone under his feet and sun on his face. There are a lot of boulders here, the kind of crevices little animals like to hide in, and he thinks about mentioning they should try hunting here, when he sees that someone else apparently had the same idea. There’s a flat, spade-shaped head poking out from under one of the rocks close to Ahsoka, and he says, quickly, “Hey, Ahsoka, stop walking a minute.”

They have snakes at home, and they’re not so bad to deal with if you’re careful and you don’t startle them. This one looks a bit like a rattlesnake, but grey-ish, and it sticks its head further out from under the stone once they stop, tasting the air with its forked tongue. They should be fine, if they’re slow and careful, and-

There’s more snakes. When he said these rocks looked like good places for small animals to hide, this was not at all what he was thinking. The snakes slither partway out into the sun, and there’s no rattles, and Rex swears under his breath, because he’s never seen these before and he’s a little afraid they’re mutts - genetically modified animals the Capitol put in the arena as a present.

Ahsoka reaches blindly out, catches his hand and hangs on very tight, and Rex says, quiet and smooth and easy, “Okay, ‘Soka, we’re just going to go very slow and careful through there,” and he points to the only space left open to them with no snakes. “We should be okay, alright?”

She nods, grits her teeth, and so they start carefully towards safety, and Rex rests his hand on his long knife, in case. If they can get out of this more rocky area onto flatter ground, maybe the still-wet grass, the snakes probably won’t want to leave their warm stones.

Probably. If they are mutts, then Rex has no idea.

They’re easing their way around a boulder (and there’s a snake under it, hissing lightly, and Rex can tell Ahsoka wants to bolt), nearly clear of the whole coil of snakes, when something they do, or some instinct, sets all of the snakes off at once, and there’s a rasp of scales on the stone and they all whip into motion, fast and fluid and definitely not right.

“Go,” Rex snaps, yanks on her hand and breaks into a run himself.

Shit. Oh, shit.

~~~

The instant Rex takes off, Ahsoka sprints with him--she’s been wanting to run almost since they started moving, but Rex had squeezed her hand tighter and shaken his head, warningly, and so she’d forced herself to stay steady, to let him take the lead on this one. There are probably snakes in the desert, he’ll know how to handle them.

Except they’re almost out and then the snakes strike, fast, and she clings tight to Rex’s hand and follows him, fast--her foot catches on a rock and she stumbles, slows up for a second, and it’s her grip on his hand that saves her, because he tugs her to her feet again and they keep moving. It’s all just running, her heart pounding in her chest and her breath short and shallow in her lungs, not daring to glance behind her in case that writhing tangle of snakes (she hates snakes, she decides, never wants to see another one again in her life) is still behind them.

It’s hard, running; the ground is slick beneath her boots and the mud and soft grass makes it hard to keep her balance, but she thinks that’s a blessing, because the snakes probably won’t want to leave their rocks. Snakes are reptiles, they need the heat. Right?

She hopes so.

They finally stumble to a stop in the middle of a copse of trees, and Ahsoka leans against one, panting, trying to get her breathing under control. Everything feels weird, off, her skin feels tight and hot and her right leg’s tingling, like it’s falling asleep.

“You okay?” Rex asks, grabs her shoulder, twisting her to look at him. “Did you get bitten?”

She blinks, frowns, rubs one hand over her face. “I don’t know,” she says, slowly, “I don’t--feel right.”

Rex swears, fast, turns her bodily around, and then swears again, “Shit,” sharp and nervous.

“What’s--did I get bitten?” she asks, careful, feels his fingers tighten on her shoulder.

“Right calf,” he says, short. “You need to sit down, slow your heartrate, shit,” and he pushes on her shoulders until she carefully lowers herself to the ground and leans back against the tree.

Ahsoka swallows, hard, takes a deep breath, says, “I’ll be fine, Rex, don’t worry about it.” She will be. Even if she’s starting to feel kind of dizzy, and her leg is still tingling, and she thinks she has a fever, and the colors of the forest are starting to look a bit off, just in her peripheral vision.

She’ll be fine.

There’s nothing to worry about.

~~~

Shit, shit, shit, Ahsoka’s been running, after getting bitten, so her heartrate is too fast, so it’s really too late to stop the spread of venom, probably. Rex tries, anyway, snaps at her to get her breathing even and to sit still, and digs in his backpack for his rolls of bandages and wraps the snake bite, fast and tight, and he’s never had to do this with a real bite but he still knows how. “How are you feeling?” he asks, hastily, because symptoms, he needs to know that so he maybe knows what they’re dealing with, how worried he needs to be.

“I don’t know, fine really, um…” Rex frowns, and Ahsoka pauses a second, brow furrowed. “Feels like I have a fever. And my leg is tingling, like it’s falling asleep, and-” She shifts a bit, frowning, and glances over her shoulder, and shrugs with a little sigh.

“Hell,” Rex says, tying off his bandage and grabbing a roll of bandages he hasn’t used yet; he doesn’t think he has enough supplies to do this properly but he has to wrap up her lower leg, at least, and he needs splints, but he needs to be calmer than this because he needs her calm, shit. “Does it hurt?”

“Not really,” Ahsoka says, frowning harder, tilting her head like she’s confused, and Rex isn’t sure if that’s a good or bad sign. “I can’t actually feel it at all. ‘s like it’s numb.”

Rex thinks probably a bad sign, then. Shit, he promised. He pushes her pant leg out of his way, starts bandaging the whole lower half of her leg, at least, casts around for a good stick to use to splint it, tries to be as steady as possible. At least he knows how to do this.

Ahsoka rubs her eyes a minute, squinting, shaking her head, and Rex grits his teeth and focuses on his task, can tell she’s at least breathing steady, now. He needs to get her somewhere sheltered and then… then what?

He’ll worry about that when he gets there.

He finishes tying off the bandage, cringes because he barely had enough and he only has maybe a half a roll of bandages left now if anything else happens. “Okay, Ahsoka,” he says, forced-calm and smooth. “So I think those snakes were venomous. Which isn’t good. But we’re gonna try to circle back around to that cave we stayed in - we can go through the woods so we don’t run across the snakes again, okay? But we’re gonna go slow and careful, and you have to keep me updated on what’s going on with you.”

“Alright,” she says, a little shaky, meeting his eyes. “But I think- I’ll be fine, won’t I?”

Shit. “Yeah, I’ve got you,” he says, smiling a little. He’s going to figure something out. He knows they have sponsors, or at least, she does - and maybe medicine for this is really expensive, especially now, but surely her mentors can pull together enough. Maybe. Hell, he doesn’t know.

“Of course you do,” Ahsoka says, simple, reaching for his hand; Rex takes her hand and tugs a little, getting to his feet, tries not to think about this all too much.

“Come on, careful,” he says, forcing a better smile. He can figure something out when they aren’t so exposed. At least it isn’t cold anymore. She gets up, leaves her weight mostly on her unbandaged leg, and Rex doesn’t let go of her hand.

He’s going to fix this.

~~~

They start out small, small enough Ahsoka doesn’t even recognize them for what they are--just little differences in color flickering across the corners of her vision, disappearing the instant she looks straight at them. Trees black instead of brown, flashes of motion that make her check behind her, fast, looking for a threat that’s not there, making her anxiety spike, because her one leg has gone all weird, tingling and half-numb and her balance is off, though not noticeable enough to affect her ability to walk, yet, and she knows she can’t fight like this.

“Do you see something?” Rex asks, low, as calm and steady as he’s been the whole time, and she shakes her head, more frustrated than anything else.

“I don’t know, I keep thinking--” thinking she’s seeing things that aren’t there, oh shit. “Shit,” she says, soft, scrubs her free hand over her face. “I think it’s--the venom,” she forces herself to admit, tightening her fingers on Rex’s. “Making me see things that aren’t really there.”

“Shit,” he says, sharp, and then he takes a deep breath and she can feel him relaxing again. “Let me know if it gets worse.”

“Okay,” she says, and then they keep going.

They have to go slowly, to keep from aggravating the bite, she thinks; soon enough, she has to go even more slowly, still, because her balance is more obviously wrong and she can’t tell why. The odd tingly feeling has spread up past her knee, though she hasn’t told Rex that yet--he seems worried enough, and it doesn’t seem like something worth mentioning.

Something’s creeping along the edge of her peripheral vision, and she doesn’t want to look, knows it’s not there, but she keeps catching the motion and all her instincts keep screaming to look, to see what it is. But she doesn’t let herself, just tightens her grip on Rex’s hand and looks straight ahead.

(Rex glances over at her once and for a moment his eyes are just solid white and it takes all of her self-control not to flinch away.)

“You okay?” he asks, soft, and she nods.

“Yeah.” She has to be, for now. She can be not okay once they get back to the cave, once they’re safer. No one knows where their cave is, it’s safe, so. Just keep going, one foot in front of the other, and ignore the lingering feeling like eyes on the back of her neck, watching her.

They keep walking.

She has no idea how long they’ve been walking for when she goes to step carefully over a branch on the ground, and instead of clearing it with her right food, she catches her foot on the top of it and trips, stumbles into Rex. Which wouldn’t be anything all that unusual, except--

She frowns down at her foot. Why can’t she feel anything?

She goes to flex her ankle and nothing happens, and she grabs onto Rex with her free hand, fast, says, “It won’t move, Rex, I can’t--It won’t move.”

“Okay,” he says, so so steady. “Okay, hold onto my arm and we’ll slow down.”

She can’t quite bring herself to let go of his hand, so she just holds onto his upper arm with her free hand and nods, swallowing, leans into his side just a little bit. Not a lot, just enough to keep herself steadier.

She knows now, at least, why her balance was off.

The numbness (paralysis, she thinks, with a sinking feeling in her stomach) keeps spreading, slow, inexorable, until it’s crept up almost to her knee, and she shakes her head and holds on harder, because she can’t seem to really keep her balance now, everything is wrong and there are still jolts of motion, creeping closer in her vision now, not just on the edges, colors going weird and things shifting, changing, and it’s all too much and she just wants it to stop.

“Ahsoka,” Rex says, quiet, “we might be able to go faster if I carry you. Can I?”

She hesitates.

She doesn’t like the idea of being--helpless, like that, not being able to fight (or fight back). But--but she can’t feel half her leg, and walking is hard, and so she nods, shaky. “Yeah,” but it’s just a rasp in her throat, and she swallows, says it a bit louder. “Yeah.”

He scoops her up, careful, positions her so she can grab onto her shoulder, so her leg is lower than her heart--probably to help keep the venom from spreading, if at all possible.

When she hears the trumpets (again) a few minutes later, she thinks, at first, it’s just more hallucinations, but then Rex goes still and she hears Claudius Templesmith again, apologizing for the interruption, calling them to a feast. A feast, which is always food, usually. That won’t help, they don’t need food. Still don’t need food.

She frowns, though, because then he keeps talking.

“Now, hold on,” he says, his voice booming, and she tightens her fingers on Rex’s shoulder as something flickers just out of site, “Some of you may already be declining my invitation. But this is no ordinary feast. Each of you needs something desperately. Each of you will find that something in a backpack, marked with your District number, at the Cornucopia at dusk tonight. Think hard about refusing to show up. For some of you, this will be your last chance.”

It takes the words a second to penetrate, but when they do, Ahsoka tenses, understanding. She knows, she realizes, she knows what will be at the Cornucopia with her number on it. An antidote of some kind, for the venom, probably. She twists her head to look at Rex, for a second, says, “Rex, don’t you dare, it’ll be a trap and you know Aurra and Asajj will be waiting for us to show up. It’s not worth it.”

~~~

A feast. Rex knows, of course, that feasts are usually their own miniature bloodbath, that they are the best times to set traps. Hell, if he was with the Careers still, he’s sure he’d be planning a trap right now.

But he’s not. Instead, he needs to figure out how to get there and get both his and Ahsoka’s backpacks and get out without getting himself killed.

“Sure, they probably will,” he says, casually. “But I’m smart, remember, and I kicked their asses already,” sort of, “and we need that stuff. I don’t know what’s in my backpack, but there’s definitely medicine in yours.” He walks a little faster, because he has to have her sheltered well before dusk so he can start for the Cornucopia and get his plan worked out.

“I’ll be fine, Rex, it’s not worth you possibly getting yourself killed over it. You promised Cody, remember?”

Rex wants to laugh at that; does, a little. How could he forget? “Who are you kidding, Ahsoka? You need that medicine, and you are not fine. So I’m going. End of discussion.” He adjusts her in his arms, a little, looks around to get his bearings. He thinks they’re close again.

“Okay, maybe I’m not fine, but-” Ahsoka pauses, frowns, then nods in the direction they need to be going - which is, thankfully, the same way Rex thought it was. “It’s not safe, Rex, you shouldn’t go.”

“Oh, right, and just let you die from a damn snake bite,” Rex says, dryly. “Shut up, ‘Soka.”

Ahsoka sighs a bit, shifts in his arms to lean into his shoulder, more, and he grits his teeth. “Rey calls me that too,” she says.

“Cool,” he answers, a bit at a loss.

“Fine,” sounding resigned, “go then. I guess there’s no point arguing with you.”

“Not really, no.” Rex smiles just a little, to himself, and keeps walking, fast as he can without jostling her, and he tries to keep watching her face because she isn’t telling him things, and half the time she looks like she’s off in her own world and it’s not a nice one, because she keeps flinching and sometimes he has no idea what she’s looking at.

Most of the rest of the time, it seems to help her when he looks at her, and it certainly helps him, making eye contact. Even when she does seem scared and confused.

He’s going to get that medicine. And whatever’s in his backpack. And he’s going to save her, because he promised himself and because he doesn’t want to win alone, or with someone he doesn’t trust.

So he hangs onto Ahsoka so tight he almost doesn’t feel anxious and makes his way through the woods following the sound of the river until he thinks it’s safe to walk along the bank again, although it’s tricky navigating the stones, holding her. He thinks the paralysis and hallucinations are getting worse, because she’s gone mostly unresponsive, although she answers him, when he talks to her. Her grip keeps tightening and relaxing on his shoulder, a rhythm with her breathing, tells him she’s at least aware of things, so.

He’s gonna get those meds.

He finds the cave before too long, recognizes the spot along the bank and hurries down toward the deceptively small crack in the rock, eases into the cave and lays Ahsoka down, but props her shoulders up on his backpack so her heart’s still higher than the bite, checks his weapons and takes her hunting knife because he figures he’ll need it more than her.

If he gets to the Cornucopia before dusk, he can make plans, maybe see what trap is planned, and then he’ll be there right away to get his backpack and Ahsoka’s and he has his knives and he’s fast, so. It’ll be fine.

“I’ll be back in a few hours, okay?” he says, grinning, drawing both his knives. Their weight in his palms is a relief.

“‘Kay,” she says, and she sounds more scared than she probably means to. “Don't die.”

“No problem,” he says, leans over to kiss her forehead, hasty. “You should worry about the Careers.”

Because he's not letting anyone keep him from breaking his promises.

Chapter Text

She knows, logically, that none of it is real.

There are no insects crawling up the walls of the cave; she knows that, knows there’s nothing moving there, knows that if she were to reach out and touch the wall she wouldn’t feel anything. But they’re there, all the same, and they don’t go away (until they do, replaced by something else), and she shivers and props herself up on one elbow, digs the sleeping bag out of the backpack. Can’t quite get it all the way out at first, but she tugs hard and it finally comes free, and she drags it around and drapes it over her upper body. Doesn’t bother throwing it over her legs, because she can’t feel them, anyway. Makes herself pull her water bottle out and sip at it, careful, because she needs to stay hydrated.

The feast is at dusk. So. Rex will be gone for a few hours, still. It’s midafternoon, she thinks. She’s not sure, the colors are all weird, just-slightly off, wrong, sending shivers down her spine. She just has to deal with it until then, and he’ll come back with antivenom or something and she’ll be fine, and everything will go away.

She’s not sure if--

If it gets worse--

No. Don’t think about that.

She tightens the sleeping bag around her, closes her eyes against the sights (and it still feels like there are eyes watching her, but at least this is--a bit better, easier), wishes vaguely she could curl up small. It wouldn’t really do much, but--it’d feel safer, she thinks.

Nothing really feels safe, right now.

For a while, closing her eyes helps; Ahsoka lays with her head propped up on the backpack, fumbles in her pocket for the little carved mockingjay and runs her fingers over the feathers, over and over and over again. The wood is smooth and warm beneath her fingers, the patterns the same every time, and she focuses on that. Even as the hallucinations get worse, as she starts to hear things, noises that shouldn’t be (and she opens her eyes once and there’s nothing, nothing, and then it’s all worse again and she squeezes her eyes shut tight again), setting every instinct and alarm bell in her head off, she clings to the reality that is the mockingjay in her hands and forces herself to breathe.

At some point, she realizes the paralysis has crept up past her waist, because she can’t sit up anymore, but at that point the numbness is secondary to the sounds, to the feeling of sparks skittering across her skin, hot and burning in little pinpricks, ants and other small things, and she tries to block it all out, to latch onto the mockingjay, the wood, the patterns in it, because that is real, she knows, that is the only real thing (the carving in her hands, the backpack behind her head, the knowledge that he’s coming back).

She thinks she hears him, once, his voice, coming closer, but then the voice dissolves into hissing and there’s snakes slithering scaly and dry over her skin, tangling around her wrists, trying to tug her away from the carving, and no she won’t let them (not real, not real, not real), they can’t have it, it’s hers. Everything is all too much and too little at the same time, and once she could swear she hears Miik’s voice calling her name, but that can’t be true, isn’t real, and she bites her lip so she doesn’t answer back, because she can’t risk giving her position away if there’s anyone out there.

Nothing is real, she tells herself, there is only the carving wooden and worn beneath her fingers, the backpack behind her head, and she tells herself that over and over and over again as everything dissolves into insanity.

~~~

Rex gets to the Cornucopia about an hour before the feast, near as he can guess, and carefully scouts out the woods around it, meets no one. Either Asajj and Aurra haven't come out here yet, or they've managed to elude him the whole time.

Rex decides to assume the first, carefully, so that means he has time. He's not sure where the feast will be, but he'd guess in the wide-open space in front of the Cornucopia. Which means that from anywhere in the woods, he has a long way to run to grab two backpacks and get back into the safety of the treeline.

But… but, there's an idea, if he was in the Cornucopia…

Maybe. That could work. Shorten the run to the backpacks and keep him hidden until then, and then he just has to make it away. Just. He hesitates a moment, and then, holding one long knife and one throwing knife, eases carefully out of the trees and undergrowth, wishes he had something or someone to protect his back. He waits a moment, poised, for any sign of life, any threat, his heart pounding fast and adrenaline surging jittery through his limbs.

Okay. Okay.

He takes a breath, then snaps into motion, sprints across the grass in long strides, his feet too loud, and it feels like it takes ten minutes but in reality it's maybe only one when he runs into the dark Cornucopia, draws to a hasty stop and drops to a crouch by a pile of abandoned crates. He's breathing hard but he sees no one, and he listens but he doesn't hear anything, so.

So he made it. And now he's ready.

He lets himself breathe for a few minutes, then he eases back in the Cornucopia, deeper into the shadows where no one will see him.

He needs that medicine now. Ahsoka's not going to make it without it, he can tell. And he needs her to stay alive, he needs to get her back to her family.

There's a small scratch of movement behind him, and he freezes.

Shifts, turns around, and jolts at the sight of a small boy with floppy black hair and bronze skin and a very inappropriate smile, considering the circumstances. “Miik,” he breathes, soft, so his voice doesn't echo.

“Hi,” Miik says. He's holding his small knife in one hand, and he looks alright. Alive, is the main thing.

Rex grabs Miik bodily into a hug, burying his face in his little friend’s hair, and Miik grumbles but tolerates him.

“Have you been eating?” Rex asks, immediately.

“Yeah. Rain is good fishing weather,” Miik tells him, with a tiny smile.

“Smart, coming in here to hide.”

“Yeah.” Miik snickers to himself, clearly pleased with his cleverness, and Rex smiles at him because now he can protect him again. “I'm scared,” he tells Rex, after a few minutes. “It's been so cold, and I have the sleeping bag, but I don't have shelter, and anybody could find me.”

Rex nods. Miik’s backpack is probably something for warmth or shelter, then. “Well, you can stick with me and Ahsoka now,” he says firmly.

“Where is Ahsoka?” Miik asks, anxious, and Rex sighs.

“She's sick. Got bit by a snake back by the river. So I'm here to get medicine for her.”

“Oh.” Miik sounds so small.

“I'm gonna get it, don't worry,” Rex says. He is. He promised. And she needs him. And he's not sure what she's seeing now but he doesn't want to leave her alone with images in her head for too long.

He and Miik sit down in the dark and wait, very quiet, not talking much (or at least, not much for Miik), and Rex watches outside the Cornucopia and makes plans. He needs to get Miik back with him to his and Ahsoka’s shelter, while making sure they still get their backpacks. If Miik gets out there first, and gets his own backpack and goes, he should be clear and Rex can be right behind him, make sure he’s fine but still get his own packs, fast.

So when the sun gets low enough he thinks they have minutes, at most, he turns to Miik says, “Okay, so I have a plan.”

“Cool.” Miik leans closer, earnestly, gripping his hunting knife.

“Are you fast?”

Miik’s eyes gleam. “The fastest,” he says, proudly.

Rex chuckles softly, shakes his head. “Well, put your knife away for now. You shouldn’t need it. So we’re gonna run out at the same time, when the feast starts. I don’t know how it’s gonna work but you go straight for your backpack and don’t touch anyone else’s, I’ll be right behind you. Do you know where the river is from here?”

Miik nods fast.

“So find it, and follow it upstream - I’ll try to catch up to you, but Ahsoka’s in a cave, along the river, and if you get ahead of me just look for her. Okay? Sound good?”

Miik gives him a determined thumbs-up and creeps closer to the mouth of the Cornucopia and Rex follows, steeling himself.

It’s just a few minutes before something happens, the light turned soft golden and warm at the end of the evening - there’s a strange sound, grinding and shifting, and then the ground opens, yawning, and a moment later a table, long and low and mahogany-colored, rises into the arena and all is still.

“Go,” Rex says, and Miik bolts.

Hell, he wasn’t kidding, he’s fast - Rex jolts into motion too, clinging to two knives, ready to throw the one if anyone moves, and finds himself actually having to work to keep up with Miik, who rushes along the table, grabs a fair-sized pack labelled 4, and Rex sees Aurra and Asajj come sprinting out of the treeline, thankfully not from the way Rex and Miik need to go.

“Run, kid, don’t wait for me,” Rex snaps, almost cheerfully, and Miik tries to grin at him, slings his backpack over his shoulders, and disappears like a shot towards the river. Rex grabs the smaller of two backpacks labelled 7, because that must be Ahsoka’s, and then grabs his own (labelled with a 2 - Rex Fett), and hefts it over his shoulder, settles for carrying Ahsoka’s in one hand and wielding his knife with the other. He spins to go, finds Asajj and Aurra bearing down on him, and starts to run - but Aurra has already almost cut him off and Asajj is running for the table and the backpacks.

Even with a wounded hip, Aurra manages to get between him and the woods before he can outstrip her, and between her drawn sword and her look of utter disgust and hatred, Rex doesn’t think that injury will be as much of an advantage as he hoped. She won’t, he suspects, let it slow her down much.

Rex twirls his knife, settles into a light, easy stance, because if he lets her close with him properly he might be in trouble.

“Where’s the little wildling?” Aurra snarls, and Rex laughs.

“Getting a surprise ready for you,” he says, and smirks at the reflexive anxiety that flickers across her pale face.

Then she lunges, face twisting in a sneer, and Rex throws himself to the side and flicks his knife towards her reaching arm, doesn’t even tear her jacket because she arrests her own momentum, snaps around to face him again. At least she’s no longer completely blocking his escape route, but she could be again in an instant, so he waits, ducks left under a swipe of the sword again and darts a glance at Asajj Ventress, swinging one backpack over her shoulders and hanging onto the other. Shit. He thinks he can outrun them both. Maybe. But lose them? That he’s a little more doubtful about. And he doesn’t have time to fight them both, can’t risk getting injured if he’s going to protect Miik and Ahsoka.

He catches a strike from Aurra’s sword on his knife, shoves the weapon back towards her and whips Ahsoka’s backpack across her face. Doesn’t do a lot of damage, but it does give him space to force her back, pivot around so she’s between him and Asajj and if he could just get enough time, enough of a headstart, he can break straight for the woods.