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The last thing Rex wants to see right now is Ahsoka smiling at him, but he manages to pull himself together enough to smile back, hopefully in a way that doesn’t make her worry. Of course, Ahsoka is a Jedi, so he’s not sure how long he can keep anything from her.
He wants to, though. Ahsoka is a kid, still, as much as she likes to pretend otherwise. She doesn’t need to hear or think about what happened on Umbara.
“Hey!” she says cheerfully. “I brought milkshakes!”
Rex narrows his eyes suspiciously, but it’s not like he’s going to turn down the chance to eat something that didn’t come out of a can or a vacuum-sealed bag. Ahsoka must realize this, because she smirks at him when he takes the one she’s holding out. He takes an experimental sip. Shuura fruit. His favorite. (Of the limited flavors that he’s tried, anyway.)
“Wanna take a walk? I’m finally out of class.”
Rex has a feeling he knows where this is going, but he’s not able to bring himself to say no. Instead, he nods, and off they go.
Admittedly, Rex doesn’t really know his way around much of Coruscant. The way to 79s, sure. And a few parks and the diner Ahsoka and the general like so much. But other than that? Since the war started, Rex hasn’t been on Coruscant for more than a week at a time. When he’s there, he’s mostly catching up on sleep or readying shinies for their first deployments.
“So,” Rex says once they’re far enough away from the barracks that they probably won’t run into any of his vode . “What’s this about, kid?”
Ahsoka widens her eyes innocently. “Nothing specific. Can’t I want to see a friend when we’re both on leave at the same time for once?”
It is pretty rare for them both to have free time at the same time. It’s a shame—Ahsoka makes him laugh.
“I heard you guys are here for three weeks,” Ahsoka hedges in between sips of her milkshake. “That’s a pretty long time.”
They move off of the busy thoroughfare and on to a much narrower side street. Rex suspects that Ahsoka is picking her route based less on where she wants to go and more on how crowded it is.
He sighs. “What have you heard?”
He’s not going to be the one to tell her about Krell and the 212th and Waxer and Hardcase and—Rex shuts that thought down before it can sting more. Two years into this war, he’s pretty good at that.
“Technically,” Ahsoka says in a tone of voice that he’s more accustomed to hearing coming from her master, “I didn’t hear anything. Anakin won’t tell me what happened!”
Rex nods. “As he shouldn’t.”
Ahsoka bristles. “I’m not a little kid! I’m sixteen!”
Now, Rex may not know a ton about nat-born development, much less Togruta development, but he’s not an idiot. In most circumstances, Ahsoka still would be considered a kid. Should be considered a kid.
She doesn’t need to know everything. For once in his life, General Skywalker is being prudent. Still, it’s not like Rex is going to argue age with Ahsoka, considering that he’s technically younger than her.
“I read it,” Ahsoka finishes.
“Okay, then. What did you read?”
Ahsoka has the good grace to look at least slightly chagrined.
“Master Obi-Wan’s mission report,” she says quietly. “Anakin and I may or may not know the entrance code to his quarters.”
Ah. Rex sips on his milkshake while he tries to figure out how to proceed. General Kenobi isn’t the type to skip the gory details in a report. He’s thorough; it reminds Rex of Cody in a lot of ways.
“Are you okay?” he ventures after a few moments of silence.
Ahsoka splutters. “Am I okay?”
“Yeah,” Rex says. “It must have been tough to read.”
“Tough to read ?” she says, big eyes even wider than usual. “What about tough to live ?”
Rex shrugs. “It was what it was. It’s over now.”
That’s the only kind of attitude that gets you through this war, Rex has learned. Things happen, and you deal with them. Simple as that.
“Anakin says that Jedi will disappoint us sometimes,” Ahsoka says heavily. “But Mas—I mean, Krell was more than a disappointment.”
Rex places a hand on her shoulder. War has a way of revealing uncomfortable truths. Someone like Krell, Jedi or otherwise, would have showed his true colors someday regardless, but war made it obvious faster. Rex just wishes it hadn’t been at the expense of his brothers.
“It’s different than we thought it would be.”
Ahsoka takes a slurp of her drink, her straw rattling at the bottom of an empty cup. Rex thinks fondly that she’s going to give herself a stomachache eating that fast.
“What do you mean?”
Rex sighs. He’s not sure that there’s a nat-born, no matter how sympathetic, that can understand what they’d thought this war would be like.
“The Kaminoans told us about the Jedi. Or, at least, they told us what they thought they knew about the Jedi.”
Which, Rex is learning, wasn’t very much. Or very accurate. Even the clones, who work with the Jedi constantly, are at a loss when describing them sometimes. He can only imagine how easy it would be to misunderstand them if you knew even less.
“Oh,” says Ahsoka, and the way her face falls tells Rex that she knows exactly how those misunderstandings go.
“They always told us that the Jedi wouldn’t care if we lived or died.”
Ahsoka actually gasps. “That’s horrible!”
She’s still innocent in some ways, then. Rex doesn’t think she’d sound so surprised if she’d heard some of the things nat-borns said about them.
“It made sense to us,” Rex says with a shrug. “You don’t create an army with the intention of keeping all the soldiers alive.”
There’d been a part of Rex that had wondered back in his training days if the Jedi had wanted a war. They were certainly good at fighting one.
“But then I went into battle with Anakin for the first time. I thought one of the other shinies was done for, but the general carried him two and a half clicks through a firefight to make sure he got to a medic fast enough.” Rex swirls his straw around a few times. “My point is that we were prepared for far worse than we got. So trust me when I say we got lucky.”
Ahsoka stops dead in her tracks as she considers that. For a moment, Rex fears that he’s revealed too much. He’d only meant to make her realize that they’d all been prepared for someone like Krell, that the betrayal hadn’t hurt as much as it could have.
“You didn’t get lucky. You got what you deserved.” Then, she smiles, genuinely this time. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. You got pretty lucky. How many commanders would buy you a milkshake?”
Rex rolls his eyes. “You were trying to get information out of me. I don’t think it counts.”
She clinks their cups together, and Rex can’t stop the corner of his mouth from twitching.
“It counts. Now come on. I still have a couple hours before Anakin wants me for training, and I’ve got about a hundred places I want to show you.”