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Ahsoka woke to an all-too-familiar pinching sensation in her wrists and ankles.
She registered a cold durasteel floor and cuffs on her hands, chained to a bar on the wall. A single cracked light illuminated Rex, also in chains—but hanging from the ceiling. What? She started as she saw the entire left side of his face covered in blood.
Then the pain hit.
“Ow,” Ahsoka groaned, moving a hand to her head, glad the chain had some reach. “Rex,” she hissed.
Rex woke with a start, chains clinking, and looked down at her. “Was hoping they didn’t get you too,” he said, sounding strained.
Ahsoka twisted in her bonds, testing their strength, and took in the room. No cameras, at least. “Right. Pirates. This has better not be Hondo’s crew. I can only forgive him for kidnapping so many times.”
“We’d better hope it’s not Hondo,” Rex said darkly. Ahsoka’s throat went dry as she finally focused on the implications of being captured. Hondo knew she was a Jedi—former Jedi. He would likely recognize Rex as a clone as well. If he turned them in to the Empire...
She started tugging harder on her chains. It was too risky to use the Force—if their captors saw her, she’d be dead. And the pirates were the least of her worries; with so many Jedi gone, it was all too likely that using the Force would get picked up quickly by the wrong people. Ahsoka wasn’t sure whether there were any Sith Lords left, but considering the state of the galaxy, it was likely. Not to mention the emptiness she’d felt the last time she’d sunk into the Force. It wasn’t something she wanted to experience again. So much death, so many lights that had been snuffed out. The Force was a void. There was nothing, and no one. She still refused to consider the truth behind that. Anakin, Obi-Wan, Master Plo...
She shut down the thought.
“How’s your head?” she asked Rex, forcing herself to focus on the current situation.
“It’s seen better days. They might have broken a rib, too. Times like these are when I miss my kit.”
Rex was doing his best to sound normal, but Ahsoka could feel the undercurrent of pain behind his words.
“Not heavily secured, assessed me as the bigger threat, you’re handcuffed but nothing at the ankles,” Rex mused. “Either Hondo’s memory is a lot worse than we thought, or this is another group.”
Ahsoka nodded in agreement. “Play into their expectations, then move when their guard is down.” Behind her back, she gathered some of the chain in her hands.
She picked up on footsteps outside the door, and all it took was a glance towards Rex for them both to fake unconsciousness.
“They were protecting some farmers crop, Boss, so we took ‘em!”
The door swished open and Ahsoka picked up on two sets of footsteps. A lackey and the Boss, apparently. Time to find out whether their cover was blown. One of them stepped towards her, and then there was freezing-cold water dunked on her head and she shot up, spluttering.
A face she recognized leered at her from much too close. One of the pirates from the village. “What’s a pretty little lady like you doing guarding a bunch of farmers?”
Ahsoka spat water out of her mouth. “We’re bounty hunters. The farmers hired us to protect their crop.” That was true enough—the farmers had paid them for protection.
The other pirate spoke up. “Anyone who comes in the way of Koro’s crew suffers the consequences,” he said coldly, and stepped towards Ahsoka from where he had been leaning against the door. As his features came into the light, Ahsoka fought a sigh of relief. Not Hondo.
“Nothing personal,” she said, and tried to sound bored. “Just a job. If you let us be on our way, we’ll make sure not to interfere with your...business ventures.”
Koro—she assumed—only laughed, which wasn’t all that surprising. The chances of the pirates just letting them go were slim anyway.
“Unfortunately, you’ll have to answer for the credits we’ve lost.”
Koro nodded to the other pirate in the room, who produced an electro-stick and stepped towards Rex. The stick was a miniature version of the MagnaGuard weapon of choice, but didn’t pack any less punch. Rex let out a groan as the pirate jabbed him in the gut. Again. And again. On the third hit, Rex let out a cry of pain and Ahsoka felt as if electricity was coursing through her own veins.
“Stop!” she yelled to Koro, who only looked at her impassively. She tugged on the chains, and Koro stepped closer.
“Where’s your ship?”
“Sold it,” Ahsoka lied through her teeth. Rex got another jab with electricity for that. Anger bubbled up inside her and she did her best to tamp it down. She needed to focus . “We weren’t planning on going off-planet anytime soon.”
Koro nodded to the lackey, who moved to Ahsoka’s side, just out of reach of the chain, and pointed a blaster at her temple. Ahsoka glanced at Rex, who seemed to be unconscious.
“And where are the credits from that sa—“
She moved, letting go of the extra length of chain hidden in her hands. Ahsoka swept the legs out from under the one holding the blaster, shot him in the shoulder, and leveled the blaster at Koro all within a moment.
Koro had his own blaster pointed straight at her. “A good effort, but not good enough.”
The pirate on the ground groaned, and Ahsoka kicked him hard in the face.
“You’re going to let us go, or else Koro won’t be around to lead this crew anymore,” she said quietly.
“You’re the one in chains, girl. I’m starting to think I should just sell you to the Zygerrians and get this over—“
Ahsoka fired.
Koro keeled over backwards, a hole in his skull.
There had been a time where she would have aimed for the leg, or arm—nonlethal hits. But in the Empire, all that mattered was survival. They were pirates, anyway. Thieves that took from the vulnerable. They had been trying to take the farmer’s harvest when Ahsoka and Rex had run into them.
The justification didn’t keep her from wondering what Obi-Wan would have said. Jedi did their best not to kill. But I’m no Jedi, she reminded herself.
Ahsoka shot her cuffs with the blaster, then the chain, and ran over to Rex. He was unconscious.
“Rex,” she said, shaking his shoulder, as high as she could reach. “Wake up!”
Rex’s eyes fluttered open. “...Commander?”
The title was a stab to the heart. “Just Ahsoka, Rex. This is going to hurt.”
She blasted the chains above his head, and did her best to catch him as he fell to the ground, but he was heavy and she didn’t have the Force to help her. His boots hit the ground and his knees crumpled, and Ahsoka tried to keep him from crashing to the ground.
“Come on. We have to get out of here.”
She threw one of Rex’s arms around her shoulders, and pressed her newly-acquired blaster into his hands. On the way out, she took Koro’s blaster for herself. By some miracle, there were no other pirates in the hallway. Ahsoka chose a direction at random, hoping the exit was near—and that they were still on the ground. They reached the end of the hallway and she peeked around the corner. There was the exit, and two pirates.
“I‘ll take the one on the left, you take the right,” Rex said, reading her mind.
She nodded. “In 3, 2, 1...”
They rounded the corner, and one-two shot the pirates down. Ahsoka ran towards the exit, still half-supporting Rex. A viewport beside the door showed sunny skies and warm grass—decidedly not space—so she slammed the open door button. As they stepped down the ramp, Ahsoka saw they were on the outskirts of the city. They needed to get to their ship.
“This way.”
She led them into the twisting alleys of the city.
——
After what seemed like an eternity, they made it to the ship and set a course for Hutt Space. With that done, Ahsoka went in search of the medkit.
Rex desperately needed medical attention, but Ahsoka didn’t dare go to a proper medic. The Empire thought she was dead, but if they got word of a young Togruta and a clone trooper traveling together...
We need to be more careful. Medkit in hand, she went back to Rex and tried to patch up his injuries. The blood on his face, she could handle. The broken rib, not so much. And he’d been shot through with electricity. Kix had taught her some medical throughout the war, but not enough for this.
Kix . Ahsoka brutally shoved the thought away, but not before a whole host of other memories bubbled up. Kix bandaging her up after getting shot by a droideka. Kix shaving his head to display the signature tattoos. She had forced herself not to think about any of them since it had happened. Her fault .
The clones had always been easy to tell apart, but as she looked at Rex now she could see Kix and Fives and Ridge and Jesse and all of her troopers that were gone.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Ahsoka’s eyes met Rex’s, and she looked away just as quickly.
“I may as well have killed them,” she said quietly. “I set Maul free, and he tore the ship apart. They all died in the crash. That’s my fault. ” She slammed the medkit shut too hard.
“Not all,” Rex said just as quietly.
She looked over at him. “But I made you kill your brothers . How—“ Her voice broke as she fought to keep her emotions under control. “How can you ever forgive me for that? I didn’t give you a choice.”
“You tried to save them, Ahsoka. Even when we were hunting you down, you saved me.”
She would never understand how Rex still believed in her, after everything. “But if you’d had the choice, would you want me to save you? To take you away from your brothers?”
Rex didnt answer, and the silence was unbearable. Ahsoka bowed her head and made to turn away before: “Yes. None of us would ever choose to become servants to the Empire. Those—those flesh-droids weren’t my brothers. And I don’t believe that they died for nothing! There are still countless clones out there that are trapped in their own heads, and we’re going to bring them back.”
Rex’s tone was pure confidence, but she could see the guilt and uncertainty in his eyes. The question lingered between them unsaid: How?
Ahsoka had freed Rex, but they couldn’t get every clone trooper to a med station. Even if they managed to rescue some, word would spread that clones were being dechipped, and they’d lose then element of surprise. It was an impossible task.
But one we’ll do anyway, Ahsoka thought.
Rex clapped a hand to her shoulder. “We survived. Let’s make it count.”
They wouldn’t be able to save all the clones. But even one life was worth the risk. The Jedi had taught her that much.
Not just the Jedi, Ahsoka realized, as Rex looked at her expectantly. The Jedi had told her that all life was precious, but it was the clones that taught her the value of a single life in blood.
Half their brothers in the 501st were gone, but there were still countless troopers chained to an Emperor’s will. Here was a cause, something to fight for. And Ahsoka and Rex had only ever been fighters.
Rex grinned in approval as Ahsoka said, “Where do we start?”