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He can see it in the subtle ways, his family falling apart. It's shown through the General's anger, the Commander's maturity. The way the troops couldn't look at him after Umbara, after he had let Krell walk all over him like nothing more than a little slave. They don't meet his eyes. Torrent became distant, mourning the loss of Hardcase, but didn't seem to include Rex. Whenever Rex reached out, an excuse would come up.
And then Ahsoka leaves, and another brick is knocked out of the spotty wall.
It's slipping, right through his gloved hands like sand. All Rex wants is to keep his family, to hold on, to not lose anything else.
Then Fives is killed, shot straight through the chest trying to warn them about something that had made him manic. Cody tells him, later, that Fox had called, drunk and crying, regret thick in his voice as he insisted the blasters had been set to stun.
Kix and Jesse stop talking to him.
They leave the room when he enters, only speak when it comes to the battle field. They blame him, he knows, but he can't bring himself to care. Afterall, he blames himself too. If he had just been fast enough, smart enough, better, he could have stopped from losing another. Yet he wasn't, and Fives was gone, whatever he was worried about died with him.
It leaves him feeling helpless, empty, like he's tumbling down a cliff without any hand hold to stop the descent. It's too much for him sometimes, and he can't help but shut down, ignore it, numb himself to anything and everything. Yet he tries desperately to hold on, to keep it all together and it stretches him thin, leaving him drained and wrung out. But he won't give up, he can't lose anyone.
He just wants his family back.
It's easy to think about the past, to remember the times they were all together, happy, laughing.
Now his general has a cold, hard stare to him, anger clear in his features. That bravado Rex had been so fondly annoyed with showed less and less, leaving a bitter man behind. Kenobi had drawn into himself, tired beyond recognition. Ashoka, Echo, Hardcase, Fives. They were all gone because he wasn't good enough. Wolffe was too busy, Cody had shut down almost completely, to the point where he wasn't the Kote Rex had grown up with. Kix and Jesse... they were all he had left. And yet they remained distant.
Kix disappeared, throwing Jesse into a depression, stealing him of his usual humor and charisma. He had thrown himself into ARC training, trying to be better, do better. Rex could understand, understand the drive to do something instead of wallowing in pain, sadness, loneliness.
One by one the stronghold that had been his family crumpled.
The final blow, the one he had been dreading, finally came with Order 66 and that sick bastard Sidious. Jesse.
Ahsoka and Rex parted ways, knowing that there was danger in sticking together. She left him on some backwater planet.
Alone. Like he always feared.