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(“I am one with the Force,” the girl – the Jedi – the traitor says, “and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.”
Somewhere deep in his subconscious, the words find a foothold. They slot in alongside memories of stripping and cleaning his Deece, checking the seals on his armor, all those soothing patterns he’s been reinforcing since childhood. When the girl – the Jedi – the traitor repeats her mantra, it’s the most reassuring thing he’s ever heard. “I am one with the Force –”
“– and the Force is with me,” Rex whispers back.)
Saleucami is pretty pleasant, as far as planets go. The native fauna tends to be friendly, there’s an abundance of beautiful plant life, and its weather is decent as long as you avoid the deserts. The temperate wetlands transition from warm, damp summers to cool, sodden winters without fanfare. Rex blows in at the tail end of autumn, on a day so foggy he can’t see his own feet; when Fay-One sets the Milo down and he tries to disembark, the landing ramp lowers and keeps lowering, hydraulics be damned, until it dangles over the lip of the cliff. Rex is slightly perturbed. Drack just laughs and pounds on the bulkhead. “Fay, you old rust-bucket, watch the canyon! You trying to get us killed?”
“That is a violation of my programming,” Fay-One deadpans. Drack laughs again. Once the fog lifts, Rex leaves through the cargo hatch instead.
It isn’t an omen, he tells himself. He doesn’t believe in omens. But his luck has to run out sooner or later, considering how much he’s had lately. Drack can hardly see anymore, leaves the flying to his downright ancient FA-1 series pilot droid, whose facial recognition software is shoddy at best. They don’t know what Rex is and neither of them will be able to describe him well enough to invite suspicion. They also don’t ask too many questions. The three of them had made a deal on Centares – Drack and Fay-One were headed to Klatooine via a minor trade route, Saleucami was only a couple hours out of their way, and Rex could hitch a ride in exchange for some maintenance work on the Milo. He’d been bred for infantry and trained in small arms before getting transferred to a command unit, but nobody serves under General Skywalker for three years and doesn’t absorb a respectable repertoire of mechanical skills. He had whipped the stabilizers back into working order, babied the wonky atmospheric thruster, and patched up the fault line in the hyperspace shunt (and Drack has to be the bravest man Rex’s ever known, flying around the Outer Rim with that time-bomb in his ship). Nothing he could do about the short in the navigation computer, as the complicated electronics were a bit beyond him. Fay-One’s just going to have to keep compensating for it. Drack is delighted nonetheless. The Milo takes off and Rex hikes across the countryside to a small settlement called Vaat, where the woman running the large outdoor market is all too happy to point him in the direction of the Lawquane homestead.
And now he’s here. The kids are taller and Jek’s missing both front teeth. They bought an ASP-7 unit to help with the farm work. Shaeeah almost chopped a finger off by accident last spring, an event she describes to him in great detail, complete with demonstration of how her finger no longer bends correctly. Cut and Suu haven’t changed much, aside from a new tendency to watch him when they don’t think he’s paying attention, brimming with poorly-hidden concern. He makes an effort to stop spacing out so much around them and that helps, somewhat.
He only meant to visit for a few days, check in with Cut, confirm everything was all right. Saleucami had hosted one of the final battles of the war and he worried they might’ve been caught in the crossfire. But it’s been two weeks, local time. The kids are adorable and know how to use that to get what they want, and apparently what they want is for Rex to stay. They don’t understand he shouldn’t. While he’s less likely to be looked for now than he would’ve been had he stayed the first time, he won’t be able to live with himself if he brings the Empire down on their heads.
Nevertheless, he stays.
There’s no experience quite so humbling as being lectured by a gap-toothed seven-year-old on the proper method of mucking out eopie stalls. Shaeeah and Jek find it very entertaining to watch him blunder through chores they’ve been doing since they could toddle, so the both of them tend to pop up and ‘supervise’ once they’ve finished with their own responsibilities. He doesn’t mind. It’s tough to get lost in your own head when you have a talkative little womp rat hanging off each elbow, pointing out all the spots you missed. And better them than the ASP droid, which clearly thinks he’s a moron even if it’ll never say so outright. Like it’s Rex’s fault he doesn’t know how to winterize a roti field.
He does what he can. As long as he’s here, he’ll pull his weight. Ineptly, perhaps – besides his lack of farming experience, the blaster wound in his shoulder was aggravated and infected by the time he’d been in a state of mind to treat it, and his arm still twinges something terrible if he moves it too much. So he’s already favoring his left side, which is his better side, because he’d refused to comply with the rigid Kaminoan regime and be right-handed like everyone else. Fortunately, he’s strong enough to carry a bag of feed in one arm. He goes down the row, filling each grain bucket in turn, but the sack’s spent before he reaches Rila’s stall and she brays dolefully at him. “Don’t give me that,” Rex tells her, going in search of more feed. He doesn’t care how pregnant she is; he’s not going to take insolence from the livestock. And she slobbered all over his face during his previous visit. He might be holding a bit of a grudge. “Uh….” He sifts through the pile of empty sacks in the corner and looks over to Cut, who’s tending a laceration on Melly’s foreleg. “Where’s the rest of the grain?”
“Oh, right –” Cut releases Melly’s leg, grabs the ladder, and climbs into the loft. “Sorry, forgot to tell you we keep the bags up here. I did a lot of panic-cleaning during the siege and I was tired of tripping over them.”
A fresh sack of animal feed slams into the ground at Rex’s feet. He kneels to slice it open with his knife, pondering. Rila gets her dinner and Rex leaves her to it, follows Cut out of the barn. The windows of the house are merely slatted, taking advantage of Saleucami’s comfortable climate, and Cut’s started closing up the shutters ahead of the oncoming storm. “I thought you said you weren’t anywhere near the fighting.”
“No,” Cut says, turning a latch. “We were lucky. The battle never even made it as far north as Vaat before the war ended.” He’s silent for a moment, looks off at the heavy, dark grey clouds looming on the horizon. “When things were getting hairy,” he says quietly, “I started listening in on some of the old military frequencies. Didn’t expect much, but occasionally the troops on Saleucami used one of them. I wanted to keep abreast of their movements, so if they got too close… well, I was going to take the family on a surprise vacation and the hell with the crops.”
Bile floods Rex’s mouth. He holds it in until Cut vanishes around the side of the house to shut the next window, then leans over and spits into the dirt.
“Shit,” he breathes, bracing his hands on his knees. “Shit.”
He can’t do anything yet. The rest of the shutters need closing first, the loose equipment lying around the property has to be tied down or put away, there are still nunas scratching in the grass outside the coop. It takes an hour to do it all and he feels like he’s going to launch out of his skin the entire time. He waits for Cut to go round up the eopies, the kids on his heels, and for Suu to settle at the table so she can clean the guns. Rex joins her as soon as the rest of them are out of earshot. “I need to tell you something,” he says, and he proceeds to tell her everything.
By the end of his story, Suu is wide-eyed and pale, breaking down the blaster on autopilot as she tries to process the bombshell he just dropped. Neither of them speak for a good five minutes before she says, “I think I would have noticed if he had been brainwashed.”
Rex brushes away a moth that keeps getting too intimate with him. The door is propped open to keep the house cool and there’s an entire cloud of the things circling the lamp, but Suu doesn’t seem to care, just takes the next component of Cut’s old DC-17 from the array on the table. The order in which she cleans each piece is as familiar to Rex as breathing. Standard Kaminoan-trained weapons maintenance, right down to inspecting the actuating module’s casing for any dents or warping that could reduce the rate of fire; she must’ve picked it up from her husband and it’s strangely relaxing to watch. “I won’t pretend I know exactly how it works,” he says. “He might be okay. But if he was listening when the order came through…”
“There are no Jedi here,” Suu reminds him.
There are no Jedi anywhere. Rex swallows. “I know. That’s why he might not have started acting any differently. But there’s something else.” She raises her tattooed eyebrows at him, swiping the cleaning cloth over the module. “The protocol also requires us to execute any trooper who’s noncompliant. It’s a good kriffing thing I didn’t tell him the details when he asked why I left. If his chip is active and he finds out I – look, removing my chip, even having any knowledge of its actual purpose probably qualifies as a capital offense. There’s kind of a precedent.”
Suu’s expression doesn’t change, but he thinks her hand quivers the tiniest bit as she slots the actuating module back into place. “He likes you very much,” she insists. “He wouldn’t want to hurt you, no matter what you’ve done.”
“One of my best friends started trying to shoot me the instant he realized I wasn’t cooperating,” Rex says dully.
Her hands definitely shake this time, though it doesn’t stop her from reassembling the blaster with practiced ease. Her rifle is next. The moths have moved on towards the porch lamp, which glows more brightly against the growing dusk compared to the indoor lights, and they can see Cut leading the last eopie into the barn, Jek sitting on his shoulders. Shaeeah’s lagging behind them, turning cartwheel after cartwheel. “Dad, watch,” she’s saying, “watch me, I can do four in a row now!”
Cut and Jek clap when she finishes. Shaeeah, beaming, takes an extravagant bow.
“They don’t need to see their father like that,” Rex whispers.
Suu slowly breathes in, manages a smile and a wave when Shaeeah turns to see if her mother was watching too. “So you want to remove his inhibitor chip,” she says in an undertone.
“Yes, I do,” Rex says. “I’m just… not sure it’s my call to make. And I don’t know if asking him will trigger anything.”
She mulls that over while she dismantles her rifle. Rex’s own DC-17s are in the cabinet, the one the kids know they’re not allowed to touch, but there’s no point in tending to them now when he’ll inevitably wind up doing it at two in the morning. Thirteen years old and he still sleepwalks like he did as a tiny cadet. He supposes he should be grateful he’s never done anything more troublesome than routine blaster upkeep, and Cut and Suu seem to find it amusing instead of alarming and haven’t banished him to the barn yet. Between that and the nightmares, though, he hasn’t felt truly rested in a long time.
“My husband is a peaceful man,” Suu says. She holds up a hand when Rex opens his mouth. “That is why he left your army. When we tell him about this… thing inside his head that can force him to do violence, he will want to take it out.” She inhales again. “But we’ll find out how to do it first. There are medcenters on Saleucami, but I do not know how safe they’ll be for him. Maybe a medical droid, if we can find one for sale. That way, if something goes wrong….”
Outside, Jek shrieks and dodges his father’s grasping hands by a hair. Cut, after much pleading, has apparently consented to playing ‘monster’ and chases Jek and Shaeeah through the barren fields. Their laughter echoes up to the stars. Suu abruptly stands, holding the detached barrel in her hand, and calls, “Cut, if we don’t get dinner on the table soon, the children will be eating in bed.”
Shaeeah’s delighted “Can we?!” is barely audible over Cut replying, “On my way,” and then she trails off into a squeal as he grabs both kids and slings them over his shoulders like sacks of grenades, deaf to their giggling pleas for mercy. Suu’s face goes soft, but her eyes are steel when she looks back at Rex. He knows how she feels. She’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect her family. He couldn’t help his own, but maybe he can help protect someone else’s.
The rain hits while they’re cleaning up from dinner. Barred from playing outside, Shaeeah and Jek beg their mother to get the paints out, and Suu eventually relents under one condition. “If you start fighting over them,” she says, lining the jars up on the table, “they’re going away again and you won’t be seeing them for a while. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Mom,” they chorus, and set to their task with unrestrained glee.
Cut sits down by the back door with a sewing needle, thread, and an old jacket. “Shaeeah’s outgrown it,” he says when Rex glances at him. “It’ll go to Jek once I fix up this sleeve. Kind of like passing on your training armor, huh?”
“Right….” The tradition was unsanctioned, but the Kaminoans turned a blind eye when many of the older cadets graduated to the next size and handed down their previous set to a favorite little brother, dents and scorch marks and all. Rex paces around aimlessly for a bit, tempted to slump into a boneless puddle on the floor and just sleep. He’s so tired and his stomach keeps swooping like he’s on a larty with no stabilizers. It’s not him who’s nervous. Whatever Ahsoka’s up to, she’d better come through okay. The feeling quells before his dinner makes a return trip, thankfully, and then he sits across from Cut, turns his datapad on, and starts researching.
Suu’s right about the medcenters – the tiny clinic in Vaat, three hours away by speeder, is fairly off-grid but doesn’t have the facilities for brain surgery. Another five hours would get them to the city, where they’d have to fill out datawork and lose any pretense of anonymity, and it’s potentially under Imperial occupation. Their best bet is to keep an eye out for a used surgical droid, or even a broken one as long as the repair work is within their abilities. It’ll have to be cheap. The Lawquanes get by, subservient to the whims of Saleucami’s weather and soil; another droid isn’t an expense they’ve budgeted. For a second, Rex thinks he was foolish to bring it up at all. He isn’t planning on staying here much longer, so if he keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t talk about the Jedi or Order 66 or the circumstances of his own disappearance, Cut should be fine. Still, he can’t forget the inexplicable degradation of Tup’s chip, the parasite explanation he’s never entirely bought, how normal it’d felt to point both blasters at Ahsoka and start shooting. And who knows what other directives might be built into the inhibitor – if Cut’s chip drives him to make contact with the army for the first time in three years, he’ll be court-martialed for desertion, assuming they don’t pull a Krell and execute him outright.
So he ought to be pursuing that angle, now. There are thousands of secondhand droid markets in the Outer Rim alone, a lot of them advertise on the holonet, and he could get an idea of how much this’ll bleed them. Suu warmed up to the concept quickly – Cut was educated in basic field medicine like every other clone and she’s a deft hand with stitches, but if there’s ever a serious problem, the ASP droid isn’t going to be much help. Having a working medical unit would be useful. Too bad Rex simply stares at the datapad, preoccupied, for so long the screen goes dark.
No matter what he’s doing, his mind inevitably wanders to his remaining brothers. Cody’s always the first to distract him, forcing Rex to reluctantly write him off, too uncertain of his status. Echo is second. Brain trauma from the explosion and the cybernetics forced on him by the Techno Union add up to a nonzero chance his inhibitor chip isn’t functional. The rest of his squad, however… the Bad Batch is a pack of lawless di’kute and they’d be livid if they knew their thoughts were being hijacked by some decrepit Sith Lord. Going gung-ho for an obscure contingency order? If Echo isn’t compromised, he would’ve realized something was wrong with them very quickly.
In that case, there’s also a nonzero chance the others executed him. Rex tries not to dwell on it or else he’ll sink into despair and never resurface. He has to assume all official channels of communication are monitored, their unofficial ones shut down or abandoned to keep the clones in lockstep with the Empire’s ideology. A suspicious message will be reported – possibly by whichever brother he tries to contact – and traced to its source, unless it’s disguised so well as something innocuous that it can only be understood by a clone with an inactive chip….
His train of thought stalls; he eventually shakes himself out of his stupor and realizes he’s been gazing blankly at the lone lingering moth doing loops around the lamp. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. What happened to the tenacious little brat who looked the supervising Kaminoan right in the eye as he wrote out his number (his entire number, unit and series and growth tier, some twelve digits long) with his left hand? He can’t concentrate for shit these days. Last night, he’d dreamt he was searching endlessly through the crumpled corridors of the ship for Cody, but every yellow-trimmed helmet he removed had the wrong face beneath, and he’d been exhausted when he woke. The night before, the Wolfpack chased him into the bowels of Coruscant until they were Trandoshans and he knew he was dead if he stopped running. And occasionally he doesn’t dream at all and wakes up crying, swamped in someone else’s misery. Giving up on his investigation for the time being, he turns off the datapad, tucks his socked feet up beneath him, and leans back in the chair. Rain lashes the side of the house, creating a pleasant backdrop of white noise. Suu’s humming as she puts the dishes away.
He’s just beginning to doze, chin dipping towards his chest, when he’s disturbed by the inevitable. “Moooom, Shaeeah keeps taking the red!”
“You’re hogging it!” Shaeeah says indignantly. “I need some too. And you’re not even using –”
“What did I say?” Suu interrupts. “If you can’t share the paint, I’m putting it away.”
“I was almost done,” Jek says. “You can have it back in a minute.”
“But I’m – hey!” A jar slides across the table. Rex’s and Cut’s eyes meet for a moment and Cut hastily looks back down at the jacket, smothering a laugh in his fist. Natural-born and clone kids argue over the exact same nonsense in the exact same way, which they both find hilarious. “Give it back –”
Then there’s a thump, something splatters, Shaeeah gives a yelp, and at least two jars hit the floorboards. Cut’s smile fades. Putting the jacket aside, he stands and heads for the table. “That’s enough. You heard your mother. Jek, close the rest of the paints and then help me wipe this up,” he instructs. Rex glances over his shoulder, about to ask if they need another pair of hands on deck.
Shaeeah is covered in blood.
The words pile up in his throat, choke off his airway. The floor drops out. He can’t figure out where it’s all coming from. Blood drips off her hands and arms, runs in rivulets down her lekku, soaks the front of her tunic, pools in her lap like –
(– like Jesse. Clever, stubborn, principled Jesse. The last of Rex’s close friends in the 501st. Jesse, who swore up and down Kix would never desert without telling him and something must’ve happened, and Rex had promised he would do everything he could to find their missing CMO. Jesse, who faced down a firing squad, who lost both Hardcase and Kix, who suffered Maul’s ministrations and held his head up and kept marching.
Jesse, whose chestplate is smashed so far into his ribcage the shattered edges scrape against Rex’s vambrace as he carries his brother out of the cruiser.
He’s neither the first nor the last they’ve found, but they try to plan the rest of the makeshift graveyard around him – if nothing else, he deserves a place of honor here. When Ahsoka gingerly takes off his helmet, some of his teeth come with it, dyed with the blood from his broken nose, and Rex is relieved when his vision blurs too much to notice any further details. He shovels dirt over Jesse’s body as gently as he can.
The others are no kinder. Signal has a bad case of hero-worship when it comes to Commander Tano, was even the one to suggest they paint her facial markings on their buckets to show support. Ahsoka uncovers his corpse in the wreckage of the hyperdrive. There are tear streaks cutting through the grime on her cheeks, but she catches him under the arms and lifts him without hesitation. Rex follows ten feet behind, carrying his legs. Impact, Torrent’s budding entomologist, who’s told to shut up at least once a day when he goes off on a tangent about can-cell color patterns, is so charred Rex can only ID him by half a tattoo on his wrist. His armor melted to his skin; they bury him without removing his helmet. Two rookies who’ve not yet chosen names died holding hands. Seven’s in the medbay, the stump of his arm cleaned up and sealed in a bacta sleeve, an intravenous line taped to the crook of his other arm. “General anesthetic,” Ahsoka murmurs while inspecting the bag. “He never saw it coming.”
At least somebody on board went peacefully, Rex thinks. The medic treating him was less fortunate. They walk into the next room and it takes a moment for them to notice what they’re standing in and he doesn’t blame her in the slightest for swiftly turning away to vomit. Most of the bodies are too ruined to even identify, much less move. Rex tries to carry Phantom to the gravesite, but he has to keep going back for shards of his skull. The boys who were simply decapitated in a hallway are easier to bury. On his third pass through the hangar, he spots a smear of blood behind the remains of a transport ring, follows it through the shadows until he almost trips over one last trooper. Mollie’s visor is crushed into glitter, his remaining eye stretched wide with terror. Rex tries to close it, but the lid’s shredded. Stomach heaving, he looks at the long gory trail instead, takes in the distance between Mollie and the hyperspace ring, the tackiness of the blood on his fingertips, the way Mollie’s arm is stretching forwards and reaching for the next groove in the floor…
It’s Rex’s turn to be violently sick across the hangar deck. Mollie had survived the crash. He’d been trying to drag himself out into the open, somewhere he’d be found. No, there isn’t much they could’ve done, but they all carry painkillers in their medkits, and he wouldn’t have gone alone and afraid if Rex had paid better attention. Just one more man he failed by not listening to Fives and figuring this out sooner –)
“Rex?” a man – a brother – calls from far away. There are fingers wrapped around his left wrist, squeezing, anchoring. His own hands have gone ice-cold. “Do you know where you are?”
Strange question. They’re in the hangar, obviously, and his plates must be too tight because he can’t breathe. But the longer he considers the question, the less sense that makes. He remembers leaving the cruiser behind on the barren surface of the moon, how small Ahsoka felt in his arms when she hugged him goodbye, the rush of relief once he’d determined the trader and his droid weren’t likely to recognize him. So if he’s not on the ship… Rex tries to speak and only then realizes there’s already a quiet litany spilling from his lips. “I am one with the Force and the Force is with me… I am one with the Force and the Force is with me… I am one with the Force and the Force is with me….”
Another squeeze to his wrist. The clone holding his arm is not dead and therefore Rex is not on the ship. He makes his eyes focus on the brother kneeling in front of him. Reddish-brown hair, thinning at the temples, long enough to tie back. What’s your number and rank? My name is Lawquane. “Saleucami,” Rex mumbles. His ears are ringing so loudly he can barely hear himself. Cold sweat crawls down his spine, gluing his shirt to his back. “The farm. We’re in your house.”
“Right.” Cut squeezes again. “Feel that?” Rex nods. “Good. You’re doing good. Can you tell me what you see?”
Rex’s gaze wanders over Cut’s shoulder, landing on anything that catches his attention. Shaeeah’s doll is wedged in the handle of the conservator’s door. There’s a puddle of something bright blue next to the table. The ASP unit (as of yet unnamed, because Shaeeah and Jek haven’t decided what it should be called and thus change its name twice a day) recharges in the corner. Water gurgles noisily through the pipes, filling the tub upstairs. Rex dutifully relays his findings to Cut. “Good,” Cut repeats. His other hand taps Rex’s cheek. “Hey. Try to stay with me, okay? You’re hyperventilating. Need me to count?”
Rex lets his eyes slip closed, shakes his head, inhales. “I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.” Inhales again. “I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.” Again. Another three or four repetitions and his lungs start to expand properly, the haze in his brain receding as soon as the oxygen hits.
When he opens his eyes, Cut is watching him steadily, fingers still locked around Rex’s wrist. “Interesting mantra,” he says. “Where’d you pick that up?”
Cut may be compromised. Ahsoka is off-limits as a topic of conversation. He can feel her presence at the edges of his mind, a tiny light too far in the distance to reach. Rex evades – “During the war,” he mumbles. “Heard it a lot.”
Really, he’d heard it sporadically, back before Ahsoka had left the Jedi Order. She mostly seemed to use the phrase as a meditation aid. Once or twice General Skywalker joined her and they’d chanted the words in unison. Rex had even overheard General Kenobi mutter it a few times when Skywalker did something exceptionally boneheaded, although it always sounded more like an exasperated plea for strength. But he’d never taken much notice until the half-repaired Y-wing, further battered by debris and suffering from a few rough landings thanks to Rex’s dubious piloting skills, had been in desperate need of maintenance. They docked at the most discreet backwater spaceport they could find in the system and got to work. “The hydraulics are shot,” Ahsoka had said, both of them elbow-deep in the inertial dampener. “If we don’t get this fixed, the whole thing’ll give out in flight and then we’ll be bug juice. There should be a new O-ring for the piston in the spare parts canister.”
“All right.” Rex ducked beneath the right-hand support pylon, hammered at the jammed hatch until the compartment opened, and sighed. “Ah, there’s no –”
“– spare parts canister,” Ahsoka groaned. For a heartbeat, a swell of despair threatened to engulf him; it ebbed as Ahsoka took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and sighed, “I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.”
Rex was staring at her when she reopened her eyes. Her brow furrowed. “You said that to me,” he said faintly, in response to the unvoiced question. “On the ship. I don’t remember, but – I know you did.”
Ahsoka hadn’t said a word for what felt like a very long time. Then she set down her wrench, stood, dusted off her hands. “I did,” she said. “Come on, let’s go find some food. Maybe see if there’s a scrapyard around here, since we’re going to need parts. And after that… we should talk.”
He doesn’t say any of that to Cut. He can’t stop shivering. Cut is eyeing the stack of blankets by the dejarik table, but he can’t reach them from here and he’s clearly unwilling to leave Rex, who suspects he might drift away like a balloon if Cut lets go. “I was just curious,” Cut says. “Whatever helps, right?”
“Yeah.” Thinking about Ahsoka is making him queasy. There’s some buried, terrible part of him that didn’t want her to leave. Everyone else is gone – Cody, Fives, Echo, Jesse, Kix, General Skywalker. He can’t inspect his decision to visit Saleucami too closely, because if he finds he put the Lawquanes in danger just to feel less alone, he’ll never forgive himself.
She can probably feel his panic tightening around her lungs. He needs to stop, but his customary relaxation techniques (like reading Skywalker’s bantha-shit action reports) are either unavailable or had been downright useless last time. Cut had tried to help then, too. Rex, embarrassed by his reaction to something as insignificant as a bad dream, lashed out instead, snarled that he wasn’t one of the children and didn’t need to be coddled.
This episode is worse. His hands are freezing, the room keeps tilting, he’s sick to his stomach, and those are usually signs he’s about to pass out, which would be even more humiliating. What’ll it hurt to let Cut handle this? His pride? That’s long gone; he’s learned the hard way not to stand too close to an eopie’s backside. The man apparently knows what he’s doing. It won’t be the first time he’s been bested by his own ‘experience outranks everything’ philosophy, anyway.
“Rex? Rex, you’re hyperventilating again.” The rest of Cut’s words are engulfed by the wailing in his ears and –
(– and Ahsoka’s been frowning thoughtfully at her tray ever since they retreated back to their isolated docking bay with dinner. Either she’s contemplating the grilled foodboard or this is far more serious than he expected. “I think,” she says slowly, “when I used the Force to find your chip, I may have… created some kind of connection between us.”
Rex doesn’t understand. He spears a piece of foodboard. It tastes like salted flimsiplast, but he’s hungry enough to eat actual flimsiplast right now. “You mean a psychic thing? I don’t think I want anyone reading my mind, not even you.”
Ahsoka puts her fork down and folds her hands on the crate they’re using as a table. She looks so much like General Kenobi for a second that the foodboard turns to dust and he almost can’t swallow it. Then she tells him about Force-bonds, these mental links Force-sensitives can form among themselves. Supposedly, the really powerful bonds let people do impossible things like pass objects across immense distances, but he’s not sure he buys that and she admits she only read about it once. Training bonds between Master and Padawan are more common and don’t typically last beyond apprenticeship – he doesn’t ask and sees a flicker of gratitude in her eyes. They allow for limited telepathic and empathic communication. No mind-reading. More importantly, she tells him about those frantic few minutes in the medbay, how she located his inhibitor chip, breathing I am one with the Force and the Force is with me into him until it popped up on the scanner. And, it seems, forged a bond in the process.
“I’m not Force-sensitive, though.”
“No, and I’m pretty sure we don’t have a normal Force-bond, exactly, but we have something that wasn’t there before.” She nibbles at her foodboard with a grimace. “It could be one-sided. I keep having dreams about falling.” He cringes. “And I’ve been feeling these emotions, but….”
“But they’re not yours,” Rex finishes, filled with relief. He was starting to think the medical droid had nicked the wrong synapse or something. “I don’t know how I know, but I know. It’s like they’re slightly to the left of my own.” He rubs the side of his head, the ridge of scar tissue, as if that’s where his emotions are kept. “I almost punched a wall the other day and had no idea why I was so upset, and then you told me that capacitor blew. It was you, not me.”
She brightens. “It’s definitely not one-sided, then. I think it’s stronger on my end, which makes sense – I thought we should get dinner because I could feel how hungry you were.” Her smile doesn’t last, though, and then she’s surveying the foodboard despondently again. “I didn’t mean to do it. I don’t know how I did it. We weren’t required to study Force-bonds extensively. I wish I could ask someone.”
Gods, doesn’t that resonate. Rex is adrift, cut off from the only family and support and structure he’s ever known. Clones were engineered to work together, feed off of one another; unit cohesion is key in a functional army. No single trooper was intended to shape their own path in an unbelievably vast galaxy. “Do you think it’s permanent?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Dangerous?”
“Probably not.”
Shrugging, Rex dumps an entire packet of souse-mustard on his foodboard. There’s no way to make it less palatable. “Then I guess I’ll live with it. Just don’t ask me to start levitating rocks.”
Ahsoka laughs, sudden and loud and maybe a little hysterically. It wasn’t that funny, but she’s not done more than crack half a smile since Order 66 went out –)
“Rex.”
He comes in hot this time, shaking off the clinging memory, almost ripping his arm out of Cut’s grip before realizing who he is, gasping, “I am one with the Force –” There’s no stopping himself and he doesn’t even try. The sides of the floor panels on the Resolute had shone in neat, parallel streaks from thousands of troopers marching through them, shift after shift, keeping to the right as they were taught. He thinks Ahsoka’s words wore a path in the grooves of his brain the same way. He’d never uttered them in his life and he woke up after surgery and they were just there. They help him pull it together. “Saleucami, the farm, your house,” he recites without being asked.
One side of Cut’s mouth quirks up. “Yep. You went away on me again for a few seconds.”
“Felt longer.”
“They usually do.”
Rex breathes, slow and even, without the aid of the mantra. This flashback wasn’t as bad. He jiggles his hand. Letting go, Cut stands and winces when one of his knees pops. He goes to the sink, fills a glass, and drags his chair over so they’re sitting shoulder to shoulder. Rex has to resist the desire to dump the cold water on his head and shock himself out of his state. “Is Shaeeah…?”
“She’s not hurt. It was paint, not blood. They were fighting over the red and I guess Jek let go and it splashed all over her. None of the jars even shattered. Everyone’s fine.”
“Oh.” Either the Kaminoans were talking out of their shebse when they claimed clones were designed to withstand any type of stress, or Rex is utterly pitiful, losing it over a little girl splattered in red paint. “Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” Cut says. “It’s happened to me too. And hey, now you know how to talk someone else through it, so you can pass that on to the next guy.” He nudges Rex with an elbow. “If you finally had enough, it won’t be long before more follow.”
It’s well-intentioned, but Cut’s conviction just makes Rex feel worse. He’d wanted to tell the truth when Cut asked what tipped Rex over the edge. An uneasy churning in his stomach told him not to. Maybe he’s getting paranoid in his old age, maybe that connection to Ahsoka had allowed him to tap into the Force for a minute there. There’s too much in his head, though, he has to get something out – “You remember those collapsible shovels we were issued for digging latrines and trenches?”
Cut makes a low noise that could be amusement or horror. “The ones that’d collapse while you were using them and take chunks out of your fingers? I still have the scars.”
“I used one to dig my brothers’ graves.” The glass rattles in his hands and he tightens his grip until they quit quivering. “Took off Sammy’s helmet so I could put it on the post, but it was the only thing holding his brains in.” He hadn’t been able to throw up anymore by then. Didn’t stop him from trying.
“Stars, Rex.” Cut releases a shaky breath. “You say stuff like this and I can’t figure out why you think you’re weak for having trouble coping. Anyone would be a little messed up from that.”
“I’m - we’re not supposed to do this. Fall apart. Panic.”
“I did,” Cut says quietly. “Still do, now and then. Do you think I’m weak?”
“No.”
“Then you’re being too hard on yourself.” He touches Rex’s back, rubs his knuckles up and down the knobs of his spine. It doesn’t hurt the way Rex half-expects it to, the way it probably would have coming from Cody or Wolffe or Jesse; comfort in the army often included minor injuries to the receiving party, giving them something else to focus on and a socially acceptable reason to whine. A lot of them aren’t great with feelings. Having a wife and children has softened Cut’s finely-honed edges. Now that Rex isn’t being a shabuir out of obstinate pride, it’s… kind of nice.
He can breathe. His heart isn’t flinging itself at his ribs like it’s trying to escape anymore. His hands are steady again, so he downs the water without sloshing it out and says, “I’m all right.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” Even so, the last time his limbs felt this feeble and disconnected, he had Arreyelan flu. “If it won’t put you out, I think I’ll go to bed early.”
One more pat to his shoulder and Cut gets up, stretching. “Not a problem. Once the kids are bathed and tucked in, Suu and I are probably headed to bed as well… let’s hope Rila doesn’t decide to deliver during the storm, huh? Calves have a bad habit of strangling themselves with their own umbilical cords unless someone’s there to detangle them, and I’d be lucky to find my way to the barn in this mess.”
There’s a mental image Rex could’ve done without. He stands as well, waits a moment to make sure his knees aren’t going to buckle, and wobbles over to put the glass in the sink. “How will you know?” he wonders.
Cut waves his comlink. “Left the other one in the barn. Eopies do not give birth silently.” He tucks it back into his pocket, makes for the stairs, then pauses at the foot of them. “Rex.”
“Hm?”
“You’re going to be okay,” he says. Rex blinks. “I know it probably doesn’t feel like it, but I’ve been there. You’re going to be okay.” Smiling slightly, Cut starts heading upstairs. “Night.”
“Night,” Rex echoes. Then he stands there at the sink, arms wrapped around himself, worrying his lower lip between his teeth. It takes a loud crack of thunder to get him moving again. Cut and Suu refused to stick him back in the barn, so all the spare blankets in the cellar were dragged up and dusted off and put together into a pretty decent pallet. He’s slept in far worse places. Plus, the family’s upstairs and he’s downstairs, which means he doesn’t bother them if (when) he sleepwalks. He arranges the blankets on the floor next to the wall. No windows at his back, uninterrupted lines of sight to both doors, not likely to get him stepped on if anyone comes down for a drink. His blasters go under the pillow, just in case. He slips into the ‘fresher between bathtimes, washes up, and turns out the lamp before crawling into bed.
Rex stopped keeping up with the nightly remembrance rituals a long time ago. There are simply too many names. These days, when it’s not pouring, he looks out at the stars and instead remembers the ones he may yet be able to save. Echo, of course. Kix, if by some chance he’s out there and hasn’t been dead since the day he vanished. Cody, because Rex misses Cody more than anyone else in the entire galaxy. The list is shorter than he’d like, but he runs through it nonetheless as he tries to find a comfortable position.
The hardest part, he thinks ruefully, is getting to sleep. It doesn’t matter how exhausted he is or how much he likes being here; the second he beds down for the night, he’s instantly, acutely aware how far from home he is. He can hear splashing and muffled explosion noises. Jek must be in the tub, reenacting an enthusiastic naval battle with those wooden boats Cut carved for him. Floorboards creak overhead. Shaeeah scurries downstairs, grabs her doll from the conservator door, hisses, “Good night!” and runs back up before Rex can respond. The rain’s relentlessly pounding the house. It all couldn’t sound any less like Torrent Company’s barracks.
He closes his eyes and tries to go back there. Hardcase had gotten his hands on Vaughn’s datapad once. As soon as he’d scuttled to safety on an upper bunk, he proceeded to dramatically act out both sides of a steamy encounter between Dacie, an idealistic Rodian aristocrat-in-disguise, and Ruhan, the dashing Coruscanti rogue who’d rescued her from an assassination attempt. Aurek and Helix were tasked with hindering Vaughn’s attempts to throttle him, because Vaughn thought everyone didn’t already know he liked reading sappy romance novels in his downtime. Kix got his own datapad out to provide the appropriate background music. The rest of them settled down and enjoyed the show. Jesse shared his awful contraband daranu with Fives and Echo, who were stopping by to catch some sleep after an ARC mission they’d not been allowed to discuss. Fives had acquired a fractured ankle and some outright filthy drinking songs (which he taught the shinies without explaining what most of those euphemisms meant) and Echo, nursing a dislocated shoulder, suddenly had quite a few opinions about predatory lending practices. Impact, of course, was ignoring Hardcase and talking Ridge’s ear off about selectively breeding can-cells for color variants. Rex definitely did not pay attention to the revelry while he finished a report on their latest assignment; when he looked it over the next morning, he realized he’d used an awful lot of flowery, overwrought description.
As badly as he wants to burrow into the memory, wrap himself up in it like a cocoon and never emerge, he reluctantly lets it drift away. Rex has never run from a harsh reality. It’s not the same, it’s never going to be the same, and he has to get used to that, a step at a time. Letting Cut help him when things get to be too much might be one of those steps.
I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. He’s not Force-sensitive, but the Jedi always claimed the Force was in everything and everyone, regardless of their ability to actually use it. Cody had once stood up in front of a crowded hangar and delivered a pitch-perfect imitation of General Kenobi’s favorite lecture on the subject, to resounding applause. Even Kenobi clapped. Skywalker had given himself hiccups from laughing. Rex tugs the blankets up to his nose, shuts his eyes. He’s going to be okay. He and Suu will remove Cut’s chip before it becomes an issue. And if anyone can survive on their own in this galaxy, it’s Ahsoka; she’s been doing it since she left the Jedi, after all. When the nagging little voice in the back of his head tries to remind him the Empire wasn’t hunting Order 66 survivors then, he drowns it out. “I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.” He’s going to be okay. “I am one with the Force and the Force is with me… I am one with the Force…”
Rex whispers the words over and over, like a prayer, until he falls asleep.
(“I am one with the Force,” he hopes out loud, transmitting a terse, heavily-coded message across a few of the old frequencies, just in case any of his brothers can still listen.)
(“I am one with the Force,” he breathes into the night, too soft to hear, because Wolffe’s head is tucked into the juncture between Rex’s shoulder and neck and he’s so raw he can’t even say General Koon’s name.)
(“I am one with the Force,” he grumbles, voice muffled by the respirator, blood rushing to his head as he dangles into the belly of their dilapidated AT-TE, trying to fix a fuel leak before all three of them asphyxiate.)
(“I am one with the Force,” he murmurs. He must be out of his mind – he’s getting old, he’s out of shape, and his back aches just watching Ezra twist and weave between each measured swing of Kanan’s lightsaber. And yet here he is, standing in the cargo hold of the Ghost, absently tracing his fingertips over the familiar scars and tallies on his helmet. Anticipation thrums beneath his skin like a live wire.
Ahsoka presses her shoulder against his. When he glances at her, she grins at him; for a second, he can see the impetuous fourteen-year-old apprentice she used to be, nicknaming her new Master five minutes after meeting him. She radiates fierce determination. He can feel it, even after all this time, and together they say, “And the Force is with me.”)