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There’s an ache deep into the very marrow of their bones by the time they reach Coruscant once again; no energy left to drag their feet any farther than the distance it takes to slog to their barracks, unlike poor Cody, poked and prodded and pleaded to until he’d finally relented and allowed himself to be swept off for celebratory drinks at ‘79s by the rest of Ghost Company.
The datapad to Rex’s left pings, muffled by the sheets of the bunk he’d settled himself on, and speak of the devil- it’s from Cody, the message. A picture half of the left side of his head, but mostly focused on a handful of vode behind him at the bar tipping back shots of electric purple something like their lives depend on it.
Ten minutes in and it’s already devolved into a drinking competition, another message explains a second later, and Rex huffs a soft little noise to himself and types back a reply.
Good luck
Kriff, is all he gets back.
“Who’s that?” comes a voice from above, and Rex glances up to see Hardcase hanging halfway upside down from over the edge of the top bunk to look at him. It’s a wonder he hasn’t spilled the bottle in his hand like this, some of Clicker’s rotgut saved up from the last time Torrent and the Wolfpack had teamed up together.
“Cody,” Rex answers, placing the datapad back down, and Hardcase makes a ‘huh’ noise in the back of his throat and sits back up on his bunk, disappearing from view.
“They dragged him into karaoke yet?” Jesse asks from the floor, leaned back against the bunk opposite of Rex where Kix sits cross legged behind Tup as he cards his fingers through Tup’s hair, parting it into sections for a braid.
“Drinking games for now, apparently.”
Jesse snorts at it and makes a grabbing motion aimed above Rex’s head, presumably at Hardcase.
“Karaoke is the only natural progression from there,” he says as Hardcase clambers down from the bunk to join him on the floor and passes him the bottle, scoots himself up all nice and cozy into Jesse’s side.
Rex can’t argue with it; he huffs again, gentle laughter, and leans his head back against the wall, closes his eyes. “I’ll make sure to let you know when it gets there.”
“Doing the maker’s work,” Jesse praises him, and Rex can’t see him but he knows Jesse’s saluting him with his drink.
It’s not much of a New Year's celebration. But it’s what it needs to be- quiet and calm after weeks of blaster fire and adrenaline fueled attacks. Hard won battles, thousands gone in the blink of an eye. Rex stills feels it hanging around him like a fog, curling over his shoulders- the weight of the grief for the brothers they’d lost. It makes this here and now all the more of a visceral thing, and he finds it a little funny for an odd moment in the back of his mind, how something as simple as having a night with his brothers without worry of losing them between one second and the next is so rare.
He knows he’s not the only one feeling it; all of them are reveling in the shared space and the quiet roar of familiar sounds, from the gentle shuffle of Kix as he pats around the mattress for a hair tie, to the syncopated cacophony of each of their breathing. Rex zeros in on it and loses himself in it for a bit. Tup whispers something to Kix and Kix snickers, Hardcase squabbles for the bottle Jesse won’t give away and pouts in defeat with his chin on Jesse’s shoulder when Jesse won’t give in, and Dogma turns a page of the book he’d been reading from where he’s sprawled out on the bunk above them all. Time moves on.
“Do you think it’ll last another whole year?” Tup pipes up a while later, lazing back against Kix who’s leaned himself into the pillows, and they all know what he's talking about without the elaboration but he gives them one anyway. “The war.”
There’s a beat of silent pondering from the room, and Rex cracks open his eyes and thinks on it. Does he? The way it’s been going it seems like it’ll last until the end of time as they know it, but the end is inevitable as it is with all things. Sooner or later the fighting will have to stop- the galaxy can only take so much, pushed and pushed and pushed towards the tipping point until it collapses straight into itself. But, and the true question is, does he want it to? What is life to a soldier, if not given the purpose of a fight?
“I, for one,” Hardcase butts in, alcohol having loosened his already usually free tongue, “Hope it does. Longer it lasts, more clankers that need blasting.” He’s snagged the bottle back from Jesse and takes a swig, and Jesse slumps his head to the side to rest against Hardcase’s temple. ‘Not really sure what else I’d do without it.”
Tup responds with an uncharacteristically noncommittal ‘mm’, and Kix seems to sense something in the way he goes a little tense, lifts his hand to scritch his fingers over the pulled-back hair of Tup’s scalp. Rex glances between the two pairs of them, one on the bunk and one on the floor, and for a single moment in time- thoughts flashing between scenes of active war zones, command in his voice and blasters in his hands, serving his purpose, and a family dinner with a brother that leaves him feeling like an outsider, wondering if maybe, just maybe, he too could have something more- he feels stuck.
“I’m just focused on as many of us getting through this damn thing as we can,” Kix says, and Jesse, eyes closed, blindly reaches over to grab the bottle from Hardcase’s limp grip just to raise it in agreement. Rex is pretty sure it’s empty.
“That’s what we should toast to,” says a voice above, and everyone except for Kix and Tup crane their necks up to see Dogma, book put away, slumped slightly over the side of his bunk to look at them. “Making it to the end.”
“End of the war or just the end of the year?” Jesse quips, and Hardcase snorts.
“Both.”
Everyone turns to look to Rex, who’s pushed himself up to sitting a little straighter and scoots to the edge of his bed. He doesn’t have a drink or even a cup for one, so he flounders for a beat trying to find something until the scuffed up surface of his bucket catches his eye. He reaches for it and raises it out in front of him, and the rest of the boys stare at him for a solid three seconds before Dogma moves, scooping his own bucket up off his bunk and clambering down to the floor so he can hold it out as well.
Jesse cocks a brow. Hardcase glances at him, glances at the bottle in Jesse’s hands and then at his own helmet on the ground at his side, and grabs them both. Jesse grunts an affronted noise in the back of his throat and shoves at Hardcase’s shoulder, but soon enough he’s grabbing his bucket and joining in, then Kix, and then Tup.
“To the new year, and making it to the end. Of the year, of the war,” Rex pauses and flickers his eyes between his men- his brothers, his family. “Of hopefully full lives.”
It’s an optimism they don’t usually allow themselves, but tonight surrounding him, his vod’s eyes soften. A moment to entertain it. To bypass the drilled mindset of beings born to die, and allow themselves to hope.
“Hear, hear,” they chorus, followed by the hard clunking of buckets and a bottle together as they toast.
Rex’s datapad alerts again and he turns his head to peek at it out of the corner of his eye, then lowers his helmet to his lap to pick it back up and read over what it says.
“We need to get some more drinks,” he hears someone grouse as the vode move back to their comfortable spaces, slumped atop each other like a clan of lazy tooka’s.
It’s another picture from Cody- except the picture isn’t taken by Cody. Whoever caught it, Rex wants to find them and personally thank them face to face for blessing him. It’s blurry as all hell but impossible to pick out the subject in center frame as anyone but Cody himself, leaning dramatically all loose limbed against a table with his head thrown back and a microphone pressed up against his lips. Kark , Rex wishes he’d gotten a video. He’ll have to ask if anyone did next time he sees the 212th.
“They got him doing karaoke,” Rex, more than a little gleeful, informs the others- mostly directed to Jesse who perks up and lifts himself off of the ground much to Hardcase’s dismay to take a look.
Rex turns the datapad around and holds it out for him to see, and it’s five minutes later by the time Jesse’s gained his composure enough to talk again without cracking up.