Archive of Our Own ^beta

The world had gone cold and gray that day, in that field of the dead where the only colors were rusty blood and scraped armor paint. Ahsoka and Rex didn’t laugh anymore – barely spoke, barely raised their voices above a hoarse whisper – and they tried not to feel too much. They knew they would have to go their separate ways soon, because there was almost nothing more dangerous in the Galaxy than an ex-Jedi and a Clone together, but to talk about it would require talking, and neither of them wanted that. So they glided past each other in their stolen light freighter, and existed in a silence that bordered on apathetic, wrapped in gray cloaks in a gray ship in a gray world. They didn’t ask for each other’s permission before changing course or programming a landing somewhere for fuel, and didn’t consult each other on which supplies to buy. Trust was the only thing they had left besides silence, even if it was raw and damaged and it sometimes steered closer to indifference. 

At least they could still look each other in the eye and could stand being in the same cockpit, and sometimes they even held each other.

Ahsoka didn’t know how long it would last before the weight of the grief and loss hanging between the two of them wrecked even that. All the manuals on mental well-being and the talks of what comes after and the endless lessons on meditation and balance and letting go were just words in the end – little specks of light on screens now broken, little snatches of sound in a world now deaf. Just words that didn’t help.

Sometimes, when they managed more than half-sentences over breakfast, Rex and Ahsoka did decide together on the next place to drop by. A low-profile bar or the like, somewhere to get supplies and fuel without being seen.

The safest cities tended to be the ones teeming with life, with thousands of Near-Human men with brown skin and hundreds of Togruta girls with white and blue montrals. Bright and loud like Coruscant used to be – like gunships and barracks and training halls and brothers and younglings used to be. The sounds and the colors sometimes felt like drowning. They always stayed sharp – not that they had to try hard, conditioned to survive as they were, hyper-aware of everything and everyone around them at all times – but the lively chaos of planets that hadn’t yet realized the world had ended could be intoxicating.

Ahsoka honestly preferred the gaping hole in the Force to the terrifying happiness and joy and hope people who hadn’t yet gotten a taste of their new Empire always exuded – so relieved to finally be seeing the end of this awful war. She wanted them to stop smiling like idiots whenever word got around that Coruscant would be sending some security here, finally! She wanted to warn them, to tell them to fly away, run, anything! But fly where? Run away to what? Even Wild Space wouldn’t stay wild for long.

There was always going past that, losing oneself into the void between this Galaxy and the next – hoping that there maybe was a floating rock between here and there. If not—

Ultimately, fleeing was pointless. These kinds of thoughts were why Rex and Ahsoka didn’t want to talk.

Kaller was worse than most of the places they had been so far. It was cold and muddy, the streets soaked in sewage, urine and cold dirty rain, the streets already full of stormtroopers just fresh off their Republic (Empire now)-mandated campaign to liberate the planet.

It was a supply run they couldn’t go without, and Ahsoka had spotted Kaller on the star charts and decided on it because there wasn’t a lot of choice in the Outer Rim. The binary star system had simply caught her eye – mere chance, if there was such thing as that. But it had been Kaller or Mygeeto, and Kaller had been the safest option.

And so, while Rex stayed on the ship to clean the engines and the weapons and to avoid getting recognized by the troopers – his brothers , whom he didn’t have the means to save – Ahsoka left to fill her pack with food and whatever else she might find that they needed. She covered her montrals with a hood, and her blue stripes with a layer of heavy-duty gray make-up she had nabbed from a stall elsewhere, someplace far away. She hadn’t found anything for her face, so she rubbed grime on her cheeks before going into Plateau City. Her clothes were already dirty enough to pass for a local. She roamed the streets, constantly sidestepping trash and various hungry critters, looking for a market or a mall that she felt couldn't be too far from how it buzzed with life.

The city was a maze, full of dead ends and shady alleys. Although this wasn't anything she hadn't seen before, looking for food here felt more and more like it wasn't worth it. But these streets were the standard in the Outer Rim, and Ahsoka's own rising anxiousness surprised her. She felt unmoored, oddly detached from her goal as her surroundings took more and more of her focus. There was a sense of urgency pulling her away from the bustling downtown area, rather than towards it. It put her off enough that she let the currents of the Force lead her around for a while, seemingly aimlessly. 

Her feeling had her stop at a corner between a street of box-shaped duracrete houses and a skeletal industrial tower painted black. It was the tuft of blue grass – blue like the duracrete walls – that made her notice the alleyway that snaked around the base of the tower. The grass looked healthy, for some reason.

Ahsoka went around the pillars of black durasteel, already far more at ease than she had been just a few moments earlier. After years of war and months of surviving on her own, there wasn’t a ‘normal’ being in the universe that could sneak up on her. The world was like a vast plain she watched from a hill, not one motion going unseen. 

The Force, though, could shield many things. 

That was how it suddenly felt going into the street ‒ like walking through a thick mist that she knew wasn't actually there, but that still obscured her vision. It called to her like a vacuum drew things in, the muted feeling strongest of all around a stack of cargo crates somebody had dumped there with the trash.

She studied the crates for a minute, her curiosity waning with each moment. The crates were inconspicuous. They didn’t matter. She walked away, oddly peaceful. Then she closed her eyes and tensed.

There was a loud bang and a crash, and a scrawny street kid scrambled from behind the crates Ahsoka had pulled down with a discreet use of the Force. He was Human, tan-skinned, with dark hair falling over his light eyes – and he wore a tattered dark cloak, impossibly dirty. He shot to his feet, his hand reaching for something at his hip just as her arm shot forward.

"Wait!" she blurted out.

The kid didn't move, but she could hear his racing heart, his muscles tight enough to snap – ready to dash and vanish. He would get swallowed again by the big city, and she would lose him, and her every instinct screamed at her that she could not let that happen.

The way he felt…

"Hey," she managed to croak out. "Hey, kid."

The child froze. 

He couldn’t be older than fourteen standard. He also – startlingly, maddeningly – looked a lot like Petro. She nudged him, barely – inched her mind closer to his and sent him a flick. The scrawny street boy gaped at her, emotions going supernova, and he flicked back. She gasped at the sudden contact, her hand flying to her mouth to muffle the sound.

No one had touched her with the Force for so long …

Tentative tendrils reached out, trying to bridge the chasm of fear between them. She slowly lowered her hood, mindful of her every movement. The boy’s eyes widened in recognition, his breath quick and shallow.

"I’ve got a ship," she blurted out in a hush. "Is there anything you need to get?"

He shook his head dazedly, though she couldn't be sure he had fully understood. 

"Come on, then," Ahsoka pressed.  

She held out her hand urgently. She couldn’t let him slip away – to lose him when the Force had brought her here was just unthinkable. He was taking too long reaching back, and her mindscape was bustling, stormtroopers slipping in and out of her field of perception. She snatched him by the wrist and dragged him through the streets and all the way back to the covert dock in the forest with only minimal struggling on his part, his mind easily surrendering to the insistent pull of hers.

Rex was still on the ship, and she was dimly aware it might be an issue for a terrified Jedi youngling she’d just picked up on a planet full of brainwashed Clones ‒ but the boy was too far gone to even notice her short burst of shame and anxiety. She would figure it out. There was nothing but the here and now, and the need to get away and bring this child back with her, and not let him go.

She didn’t stop running until they were at the edge of the forest, alone and without anyone following them. The kid twisted out of her grasp then, panting, his hand on his hip where she could feel something buzzing with anticipation and fear. Her hands went to her own hip reflexively – but there was nothing there, of course. She had never managed to bring herself to carry a blaster.

"You’re Tano," the youngling blurted out. "Skywalker’s Padawan. I remember hearing about you."

"That’s me," she rasped, the words painful to get out. "Ahsoka Tano."

"I’m Caleb," he offered, brushing aside his cloak to reveal a gray hilt dull with mud. "Caleb Dume."

There was a depth of desperation and agony in his teal eyes that Ahsoka wished she couldn’t understand. But she could and she did. This—

It felt like shrapnel tearing through hastily made field stitches, ripping the skin and the flesh apart and leaving her bleeding out anew. But it was a chance to make one thing right, wasn’t it? She could protect one of them, she could—

"I’ve got a ship," she told Caleb again. "A freighter, not far from here." 

A freighter, with Rex inside, whom she didn't know what to do about. But if she could just get Caleb to lower his guard, to listen … She took a few steps back, beckoning him with a brittle smile. Caleb didn’t follow, still wary and ready to bolt. She wanted to grab him again, but she didn’t think it would work now that they were away from Plateau City and his undivided attention was on her. She raised her hands placatingly, though she felt none of the calm she was telegraphing, and she tried to slow herself down and find the words to explain it better.

"You’re a Padawan, right?" she tried. 

"I am— was," Caleb confirmed quietly, his breath catching on the last syllable. He looked away. "My Master was Depa Billaba."

His pain and loss were so sharp Ahsoka could practically taste them.

"How old are you, Caleb?" 

"Fourteen," he mumbled, still not looking at her. "Just turned fourteen."

He seemed so young, or she was just that old now. She had been bright-eyed, naive and enthusiastic at fourteen, lost at times but reckless and spunky and full of optimism. Had it all ever hurt this much? The few years between them seemed like an entire generation, a gap she couldn’t cross, try as she might. 

"You were on a mission here?" she pressed. "When Order 66 happened?" 

"Order 66?" he repeated, his pained gaze turning confused. "You mean… When the Jedi— When the Clones turned on us?" 

"Yeah," she managed to say.

"… Yeah. We were winning the campaign." 

Ahsoka nodded, her throat closing up as the memories of the Star Destroyer falling through the atmosphere flashed before her eyes. She could see the corridors, the ventilation shaft filled with the smoke from dozens of blasters. Maul's voice, accusing. Jesse's helmet. 

No corridors here, just the vastness of nature, and naked terrain Caleb would have had to run across, and mud pits he'd have hidden into before reaching the city. She wouldn't have survived the underbelly of any capital at age fourteen. He had done it for months. 

She sat down onto the forest floor, hoping he would follow suit. It was damp, easily getting through her cheap cloak and chilling her to the bone, but the closeness to the living moss and the tranquil plants ease her nerves, and Caleb's as well. He remained standing up, his hand still on his lightsaber, his eyes tracking the leaves whirling in the air between them, but Ahsoka could tell he wanted to unwind and just let her take charge and rest. 

She pulled her backpack from under her cloak and tossed it to his feet with a weak grin. 

"If you want to sit down without getting wet," she said. 

Caleb gave her an incredulous look, before reflexively looking down at his disgusting clothes. A dry, nervous sort of chuckle escaped him, taking them both by surprise. Ahsoka gave a chuckle as well, and that got him to finally sit down.  

"What happened to you?" she asked, picking at a blade of blue grass for lack of a better thing to do. 

He didn’t answer right away, his legs tucked to his chest, arms looped around his knees. Wounded and distraught, he stayed lost in memories he kept to himself. Ahsoka could feel the Force warping around him like light around a black hole, and her own memories of the Order kept surfacing. She couldn’t keep them at bay, flashes of Anakin’s screams superimposed with Mace Windu’s, the explosion of agony and fear and death from everywhere in the Galaxy drowning out everything else. And the shock and terror of seeing Rex turn on her – Rex crying, shaking, his mind slipping away.

He hadn’t even been blank and emotionless like a droid. All of them, they had been sharp, and smart, and passionate about their mission. Nothing like a tactical clanker’s cold numbers. But they had been lost to her anyway, just like Caleb’s battalion had probably been. 

"I escaped," Caleb mumbled, fiddling with the hilt of his lightsaber. "Ran all the way to the city and hid there, with the refugees." 

She was starting to catch glimpses of it despite his best efforts, a whiff of charred flesh, the thrum of a blaster bolt narrowly missing his neck. 

There was no way he would ever get aboard if he knew Rex was there. She was feeling it all again, the urgency, the knowledge that it was down to a choice between a bad option and a terrible one. But she couldn’t leave him here, and she couldn’t leave Rex either. Much less steal a second ship, whether to give it to Caleb alone or to go with him. She needed him aboard her ship, safe and whole. 

"I managed to get off Kaller on my own, you know," Caleb mumbled at length, tracing patterns in the mud with the butt of his chrome hilt. She had to stop herself from reflexively chiding him for that. "Stole a ship from a guy. Made it all the way to Coruscant." 

"Then—" Ahsoka trailed off, perplexed. Caleb obviously wasn’t dead. "How— Why did you come back?" 

"I got Master Kenobi’s message."

Ahsoka heart skipped a beat, her emotions exploding in the Force before she had a chance to reign them in. Caleb looked up, looking confused, his own feelings immediately impervious to her prodding. 

"What message?" she choked out. 

Obi-Wan wasn’t dead? It made no sense, no sense at all, because he had been going after Grievous with the whole 212th behind him, and he couldn’t have known about the chips. And there wouldn’t have been medical facilities on Utapau anyhow – nowhere to get Cody’s chip out, or anyone’s. And he would have been one of Sidious’ first targets, as a member of the Council.

"Master Kenobi reversed the beacon telling us all to come home," Caleb explained with a frown. "He told us to stay away from Coruscant."

"Oh," she managed. "I don’t… I don’t have my GAR comm anymore. I got rid of it, right after…"

She had missed a message from Obi-Wan , and gone on thinking he was dead for this long. She wanted to scream at the Force for that one ‒ the Force who could give her warnings about incoming blaster blots and enemy ships, and could guide her through a city's underbelly, and could give her visions of the past, present and future, but couldn't bother to tell her not to throw away that stupid comm.

"Right," Caleb said awkwardly. "Well, I didn’t have anywhere to go, so I came back and gave the guy his ship back." 

"Right," Ahsoka repeated. 

Her comm started beeping. Caleb tensed immediately, unwinding his arms from his knees and propping himself up like he was ready to bolt. 

"What's that?" he asked tersely.

His tone startled her ‒ and when she met his eyes, they were cold. 

"It’s my friend," she answered, with just enough of a hesitation that he picked up on it. She felt his presence tighten on itself. "He’s probably just trying to check up on me." 

"What friend?" Caleb insisted. "You didn't say anything about him!" 

"You’ll meet him later," Ahsoka rushed to say, the words coming out in a stammer. "Caleb… I’m…"

"Is he a Jedi?"

" I’m not a Jedi. I— I left the Order months ago."

"But you’re still one of us," Caleb kept pushing, more and more on edge. "Aren't you?" 

"Caleb, this isn't—" 

"Why aren't you answering him?" 

"Caleb…"

"Answer him!"  

Ahsoka had to close her eyes to brace herself against the sudden onslaught of anger that crashed her way. Caleb lunged across the space between them and snatched her wrist before she could react, and he pressed the button to accept the incoming call. 

"Ahsoka, come in," Rex said from his end, and Ahsoka froze. 

Caleb's look of horror and betrayal would haunt her nightmares, she could already tell. The light of his lightsaber probably would as well. She had just enough time to throw herself out of the way of the blade as it sprung to life ‒ and she had just enough voice to let out a single, desperate scream. 

"Sleep!" 

Caleb's eyes rolled into his skull and he collapsed bonelessly, his lightsaber hitting the grass with a dull thud. She reached for the hilt with trembling hands, and had to take in great gulps of air to stall her nausea. Her montrals were ringing, and she couldn't make sense of Rex's frantic shouts. She put the lightsaber into her discarded backpack, shuddering. She had to believe ‒ she had to tell herself Caleb hadn't really wanted to hurt her. He had lashed out in fear, just like she had ‒ just like she hadn't meant to break past all of his defenses with the strength of her compulsion.

She murmured a reassurance into her comm and shut it off before she could hear the answer, too dazed to care trying to hold any sort of conversation. Then, she slipped on her backpack again, and carefully picked up Caleb from the damp grass. She held him to her chest, making sure his head rested more or less comfortably against her shoulder. Something hard and pointy was digging into her ribs from under his cloak. She shifted his weight a bit, and slowly made her way to the freighter she had never had the heart to name. 

Rex had retreated into the cockpit right after her short explanation and locked himself there, too unbalanced to try and insert himself into the mess she had brought aboard. There had been no point in staying on Kaller ‒ except maybe winning back some of Calleb's trust, but it didn't seem worth the gamble, considering ‒ so he took them into hyperspace and made for Mygeeto.

Ahsoka had laid Caleb onto a makeshift cot in the cargo hold that they had repurposed into a cramped living space. She doubted he would be happy to wake up in the maintenance-closet sized quarters she shared with Rex. Watching him sleep off her intrusive command felt like a violation, so she stared at the wall instead, unable to find any peace of mind through meditation. The holocron she had found when she had gotten him out of his dirty cloak to wrap him in a blanket sat in front of her, untouched. 

She was thinking about Petro, wishing she could find the tears for him and Katooni, Ganodi, Zatt, Gungi and Byph. She remembered Farn and Ran, who were always the first of their clan through the door, and the last to leave, even when the lessons were difficult or confusing. And little Mari, and Ashla… All the little ones… O-Mer and Jinx, with whom she had stayed in touch after Wasskah… They were all gone, and Caleb was the last of them. The last of her siblings. 

It was the one thought Ahsoka clung to, the one justification for what she had just done. 

The last of them… She hadn’t let herself form that thought previously. Of course, she hadn’t been able to separate herself from Anakin and Obi-Wan, even when alone. Anakin had still been her older brother, and Obi-Wan her older… Whatever Obi-Wan was. Her second Master, Master Kenobi – the calm, steadfast rock to Anakin’s lightning bolt. But the other Jedi? Yoda, the other Masters, and the young ones? She wasn’t one of them anymore, or so she had kept telling herself, to absolutely no avail. She missed them. She missed them so badly—

And now Obi-Wan might not be dead after all ‒ and what about Anakin ? ‒ and she had an exhausted, traumatized Padawan in her freighter, and she thought she might drown. Jedi were all about finding balance, and here there was no ground under her feet. After a while Ahsoka went to watch the stars streak by, so her mind would settle. When she knocked on the bulkhead separating the corridor from the cockpit, Rex didn't answer. The one sound he did make had her turn away, eyes prickling. 

Caleb had been exhausted, which accounted for his long sleep more so than her compulsion, but he finally started to stir after a few hours. Leaning against the wall opposite of his cot, Ahsoka studied him. She had his lightsaber at her belt, and his holocron in her hand, and no idea how to handle any of what was coming. The boy woke up quietly, without making any sudden move like she had expected. He stayed very still under his blanket ‒ like a corpse prepared for the funeral rites. 

Most Jedi hadn't gotten those. 

Ahsoka had to blink away the images, again. Caleb stayed motionless, but he was so tense she thought he might shatter. If she looked hard enough, she could almost make out a shudder running through his thin frame, as though his body couldn't handle the strain of keeping itself under such tight control. 

"Caleb," Ahsoka called softly. 

He didn't look at her, his eyes fixed on the grey ceiling. 

"Caleb," she insisted. "I am so sorry." 

That got him to sit up, his eyes burning. 

"Traitor," he hissed. 

The word sent a shiver through both of their spines. Ahsoka had to grit her teeth. 

"I am not a traitor," she corrected as calmly as she could.

"You're working with a Clone!" the boy yelled.

"It’s not like that! He won’t hurt you, I swear!" 

"Liar! Is that what you’re doing? Luring Jedi out and then what? Turning them over?"

"Caleb," Ahsoka said firmly, "you're not tied up. You're not my prisoner. I just had to get you out of there." 

"You're the one who has my saber," he snapped. 

She tossed it to him without hesitation. She was fairly certain she could beat him regardless of who had it, if it came to that. Caleb caught the hilt awkwardly and immediately went to inspect it, snapping components out and back into place. He ignited it briefly, then shut it off and gave her a suspicious look. At least it wasn't pure hatred this time around. Ahsoka's heart sped up a little. 

"Please, Caleb, we won’t hurt you," she repeated. 

"Where am I?" he asked. "And where's the Clone?" 

"You're on my ship. We're in hyperspace. Rex is flying." 

The Padawan instinctively huddled closer to the wall, away from the cockpit door. She sighed.

"The Clones…" she started slowly, unsure of how to explain any of it. "... They have chips in their heads. It made them… well. It made them turn on us, but they didn't want to. I took Rex’s out." She gave him an earnest look. "He will never, ever hurt you."

Caleb studied her, his jaw clenched. 

"I know I should have explained back there," she sighed. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking straight." 

"Can you give me back my holocron?" he bit out. 

She let it float to him, and he snatched it midair. Then, he grabbed the blanket she'd given him and huddled underneath, turning his back to her. She sighed again and went to lock herself in her quarters. 

Caleb was silent throughout the rest of the trip through hyperspace, sitting in his corner of the hold and stubbornly refusing to look at either of them, his eyes trained on the bulkhead. He had used the minuscule decontamination chamber that doubled as a sonic, but it wasn't the greatest for clothes, and he wouldn't wear anything of theirs. His hair was still a mess as well, but he didn't seem to care. He spent his time either floating his lightsaber idly in front of him or tracing the edges of his holocron, never opening it. Whenever Rex needed to get out of the cockpit, Caleb went there instead, and watched space streak past them. Rex did his best to stay out of his way, avoiding eye contact with Ahsoka too, as much as he could. 

Trying to get Caleb to open up by handing him caf or blankets was always met with stubborn silence. Ahsoka kept half-heartedly telling him it was alright, when it wasn’t and never would be. She desperately wished again and again that a Master were here, but the Masters were gone. For all that it had given her a gift, it certainly felt like the Force didn't care what she wished for. 

After about two standards days of this, they had to land on Mygeeto, which was its own problem. Ahsoka had been feeling stuck. She couldn't leave Rex and Caleb alone on the same ship, but Mygeeto was probably still full of Clones. Caleb took the choice out of her hands by slamming her out of the way the second the ship touched ground, and bolting for the exit. He unlocked the door with a single twist of the wrist and ran out of the freighter into the night.

"Caleb, no!"

The scream tore through her chest, echoing in the Force all around them as she willed the air around him to stop moving. Caleb broke free from her grasp effortlessly just as she realized what she was doing, the sharpness of the agony and rage he had been repressing for the past two days tearing through any attempt at keeping him in place like a speeder through wet flimsy. She would have let go anyway. 

He ran, heedless of her calls, and she ran after him. Rex was hot on her heels, but she had no time to spare to tell him to stay back and let her handle it. It was frustrating and unfair. She screamed at the Force as she ran, raging and begging all the way. The world had died, and the Jedi along with it. Was keeping this one kid alive too much to ask for? 

He would go ahead and get himself killed – visions of blaster fire ripping through his body and throwing him onto the ground swam in front of her eyes, with no amount of blinking banishing them. He would slip away and she would fail again, lose one more life. She couldn’t let that happen. 

She ran, desperate to change it, to fix things while she still could.

They had landed the ship just outside a mostly abandoned city some klicks away from the Southern Mesas, and Caleb immediately ran into the streets as though he knew where he was going. He had probably been on a mission there, during the war. Ahsoka followed him into the maze. She was starting to lose him, unfamiliar with the dark alleys he slipped in an out of like a tooka, when Caleb’s attempt to get away was halted abruptly by a pair of long legs. The man he had collided with swayed in place, his hand instinctively reaching for Caleb’s shoulder to steady himself. Caleb pushed him off with a frightened sound – then, he froze. 

The man’s gaze found his, things snapping into focus like a reverse shatterpoint going off. Suddenly, the shards of transparisteel were whole again, the world clear and right for the briefest of moments. The air was knocked from Caleb’s lung, his legs wobbly. 

Ahsoka froze in her tracks, nearly tripping over her own feet as she took in who exactly Caleb had run into. He wore his brown cloak, the same as it had always been, only singed in places and as dirty as her own clothes and Caleb’s – and although he was hunched over, he still towered over them both. 

"Master Windu?" Caleb gasped. 

Ahsoka pounced on him and slapped her hand on his mouth, looking frantically around. But there was no one, only the three of them and— 

Rex. 

Mace Windu’s eyes had widened, though his face betrayed nothing else of his feelings. But when Rex came running after Ahsoka, high on adrenaline and anxiety, Caleb and Ahsoka felt a hurricane of power unleashed. Before either of them could react, Master Windu had wrenched the two of them behind him, called Caleb’s lightsaber to his hand, and ignited it.

"Stay back!" he barked, although it was unclear for whose benefit it was. 

Ahsoka pushed Caleb further back and threw herself between Master Windu and Rex before the former could blast the latter away with the Force. 

"He’s a friend!" she shouted – and immediately winced. 

Master Windu stared at her, his expression the closest it had ever been to shock in the years she had known him. He was swaying on his feet, a grey tinge to his skin. Caleb’s lightsaber was tightly gripped in his left hand. His right arm was pressed to his stomach, somewhat hidden out of sight under the fold of the cloak. 

"Master," Caleb said shyly, his voice wobbling.

"Tano," Master Windu said slowly, his eyes trained on her. "And Captain Rex."

Rex blinked, stirred from his daze. He made a half attempt to reach out, his hand falling back at his side immediately.

"Ah— Sir," he said, at a loss. 

"He’s not a threat," Ahsoka insisted. 

Master Windu appraised them both for what seemed an eternity – yet another thing not even the end of the world had managed to change in him, the rock of the Jedi Order. The lightsaber's blade vanished. Master Windu stared for some more time before turning his attention back onto Caleb, apparently satisfied enough with what he had gathered. Caleb's eyes were filled with tears. Ahsoka's throat closed up at the sight. The Padawan had been defiant up to this point, determined not to show signs of weakness. But Depa Billaba had been Master Windu's Padawan, from what she remembered ‒ and now, faced with his Master's Master, Caleb's defenses were crumbling into dust. 

Caleb managed another choked up sound before flinging himself into Master Windu's robes, sobbing desperately as he held on. The saber hilt was clipped back onto his belt ‒ not, Ahsoka noticed dimly, Windu's own ‒ and one arm encircled his bony shoulders and drew him closer, Windu's face giving away nothing of what he felt. 

Rex looked away, a feeling of burning shame permeating the Force around him ‒ like a nauseating smell Ahsoka couldn't get out of her nose. She stepped back, moving closer to him and looking away as well. 

"You're alright?" she asked softly, doing her best to block out Caleb's increasingly desperate attempts at calming down. 

Rex nodded with a slight wince, glancing at the blasters at his hip guiltily. 

"I'll… go back to the ship," he murmured. 

Ahsoka let him go, unwilling to let Caleb completely out of her sight. She couldn't just leave the two of them without someone keeping watch either, the way Caleb's body-wracking sobs had turned into a near wail. She caught Windu's attention with the Force, but averted her gaze when she met his own ‒ it was hiding such depths of emotion she felt she was intruding upon sacred territory just by catching glimpses of them. Caleb was too far gone to even notice when Master Windu picked him up. It couldn't be easy to carry a human teenager with just one arm, but the thought of offering help felt sacrilegious. Ahsoka led them back to the freighter, dimly that Rex had locked the door to the cockpit again. 

They sat down on the floor of the repurposed cargo hold without much talk, sealing the door behind them and pressurizing the ship in case they needed to take off in a rush. Caleb, too exhausted to do much more than broadcast his every emotion, thought, and memory in the space between them, still managed to get out a few words that Ahsoka couldn't quite make out but that Master Windu seemed to understand.

"I found him on Kaller," she supplied quietly, setting down a medkit, some food rations and some water down between them for when Caleb finally let go of Master Windu's midsection. She winced slightly. "He didn't… want to come with me. And Rex." 

A shadow fell across the man's face, his eyes closing briefly under the weight of an immense burden. 

"I was headed to Kaller," he said back, tucking the folds of his cloak more tightly around the Padawan with the aid of the Force. "After I received Obi-Wan's message. But the Force called me to this city first." 

Obi-Wan's message. It seemed like everyone but her had heard it. That simple comment sparked a bitter feeling in her chest. It tasted like metal, cold and hard and heavy on her soul. She hated, hated, hated it. She wasn't a Jedi any longer, taught and told not to hate, and she found herself hating Mace Windu for being the one here in her ship, out of all the people she wanted— needed to have by her side. Out of everyone who didn't deserve this, out of everyone who should have survived— 

She knew she shouldn't begrudge him for being alive. She couldn't. How could she? But she did, she did. When the world had crashed down and everything had become grey and colorless, there hadn't even been hope to hang on to ‒ but now the universe was forcing some onto her ‒ hope that she couldn't cope with, that she didn't have the strength for. 

And out of everyone— It wasn't Anakin, it wasn't Obi-Wan, it wasn't Yoda or Plo or even Luminara or Kit Fisto or Shaak Ti, Jocasta or Tera, or another youngling. It wasn't—

And as she rattled off the names in her head, growing more and more bitter that it wasn't them ‒ that it wasn't this Master or that Knight she had known and loved without the impossible baggage of betrayed trust and broken faith between them, she realized with horror that her eyes were burning with hot tears that she wouldn't be able to keep in. 

She shot to her feet and considered going to Rex, but she didn't. She could feel his turmoil emanating from the cockpit, and she had no comfort to give him, only her own despair to add to his. So she stared at the bulkhead instead, turning her back to Master Windu so he wouldn't see her feelings, even when he sensed them.

Caleb was falling asleep against him. She just had to wait for him to do that ‒ because of course helping along with the Force was out of the question. She just had to wait, and then they'd talk—

Then—

The words would spill over. She would ask her questions, and tell him her own story, and get to yell at Mace Windu of the Jedi Order. The prospect was not all that appealing, the weight of her emotions suffocating enough that she was afraid she wouldn't be able to get the words out. She could tell Master Windu was watching her knowingly, adding to her frustration. 

"Master Billaba is dead," she bit out once she'd felt Caleb's mind quiet down. 

"I know," Master Windu said tiredly, shifting Caleb a bit more to the side. 

Ahsoka wordlessly handed him a bacta patch and some hyposprays. Then she had no choice but to sit back down to help him with them. She worked without a word, keeping her eyes off his mangled arm as much as possible and trying her best not to make contact with his skin. The wound was at least a month old and hadn't been healing too well, but at least the lightsaber that had dealt the injury had also cauterized it properly. It was still warm to the touch and obviously painful. 

Somehow, seeing Mace Windu hurt felt more uncomfortable than a chat with Maul. It was the kind of bone-deep uneasiness you experienced when your heroes were suddenly weak and broken in front of you, or when a family member was sick and you felt powerless ‒ except Mace Windu hadn't been her hero in a long, long time, and she was certainly not going to ponder whether or not what there was between them qualified in any way as familial issues. Her discomfort suddenly far outweighed her anger. Throwing up on an empty stomach would be unpleasant, so she nibbled on a ration bar and leaned back in against the wall. 

"Do you know about the chips?" she asked, just to start from somewhere. 

He stayed silent, which she took as a yes. He wouldn't have let Rex out of his sight if he didn't. In fact, for Caleb's sake and hers ‒ and being included among the people Mace Windu felt protective towards just made the situation that much more confusing emotionally ‒ Master Windu would have probably killed Rex. 

"What happened to you?" he asked at length. 

Ahsoka wanted to shrug and say 'what do you think,' but being casual with him was far beyond her, even now. She could always try hostile instead. 

"I let Maul escape during Order 66. He's probably out there somewhere," she told him, with an edge to her voice. She hadn't quite been challenging him to comment on that ‒ or at least, she didn't think she had been ‒ but his lack of reaction still felt a bit disappointing. She swallowed back the childish urge to stare at him, and continued. "Rex had suspicions about the chip. He managed to tell me, and I got his out. And the Star Destroyer crashed." 

Master Windu nodded absently, his eyes trained on Caleb's slowly rising chest. Ahsoka's heart gave a pang at that. It felt too complicated to untangle, so she didn't bother with it. He still hadn't touched the food. She grabbed a second ration bar. Once the silence had become too unbearable, she threw her head back and stared at the ceiling. 

"What happened to you" —she asked, and then— "Master?" 

It had slipped past her lips on its own, taking the both of them completely off guard. Ahsoka looked away before the bitterness could spill out. She hadn't meant it as a taunt ‒ she certainly hadn't meant to say it in the first place ‒ and now a thousand moments were replaying in her mind. For a second she considered throwing back at him that of course, he didn't have to share anything with a citizen, but she made herself shut up. Citizen of what? She probably didn't count as a civilian now, if she ever had.

"Captain Rex should be here for this." 

"Why?" 

"He deserves to know as well," he insisted. 

Ahsoka wordlessly took Caleb from him, wincing when the Padawan tensed in her arms and let out a soft whine, and she carried him to the quarters, hoping he wouldn't be too upset when he woke up. She made sure to put him on her cot and not Rex's, and then she went to find her friend. 

It took him quite some time to follow her into the back of the ship ‒ and when he went inside, he had to stop himself from saluting, and he stood there all but vibrating out of his skin, just as much of a mess as he had been during Order 66. Master Windu saw it immediately, of course. 

"Captain," he greeted. "Please sit." 

Rex all but collapsed. He was nearly buzzing with the eagerness to be useful, to help, to fix things ‒ it was nearly as powerful as his guilt. Ahsoka felt a brief flash of envy for him, because he didn't have anger piling up on top of all that, like she did. She sat next to him, dismissing all of it as petty. 

"Captain Rex, Tano," Master Windu started off, slowly. "There are things you need to know about Order 66." 

They leaned forward, their breaths instantly taken away. 

"The Council knew about the chips, even though we didn't know what they were for." 

Ahsoka bit her tongue. It did make sense, from what little Rex had told her about how he had found out himself. 

"Our investigations were shut down by Palpatine shortly after the incident that led to the Kaminoans admitting to their existence," Master Windu said. "We had no reason to believe they could be used to take away the men's free will." 

"Why not?" Ahsoka couldn't help but ask, unwilling to let him get away with any easy excuses.

"If you remember," he told her coolly, "there had been one documented instance of a Clone trooper killing a Jedi of his own free will during the war. As we were told the chip was meant to reduce violent tendencies, and yet the chip hadn't stopped him, we didn't think it could be used to force someone into compliance." 

Rex's hands balled into fists, and he had to look away. 

"Well, sir," he said weakly, "you got that one completely wrong." 

"Yes, we did," Master Windu agreed. To Ahsoka's mild surprise, his voice softened immensely as he addressed Rex. "What was done to you and your brothers is unforgivable. I'm sorry we failed you." 

"Can't really blame you, General," Rex managed to choke out, his voice catching on the title. "We were all a bit busy at the time," he said with a humorless smile. 

Master Windu smiled back mirthlessly. The end of the war had been the hardest, and the reminder of all the campaigns she had missed made Ahsoka feel guilty in turn, as it always did. 

"We also," Master Windu continued wearily, "learned months later that the army had been commissioned by Dooku." 

"What?" Ahsoka blurted out, while Rex let out the same strangled question. 

She looked between the two of them, too shocked to feel anything beyond that. Master Windu rubbed the bridge of his nose with his one hand, closing his eyes wearily. 

"Obi-Wan and Skywalker found out. By the time we knew, we had all but forgotten about the incident on Ringo Vinda. Two troopers out of millions apparently going mad wasn't enough to make us doubt you all," he told Rex. "We knew you as brave and loyal men, and we couldn't afford to have the public turn on you, and us." 

Rex's throat had apparently closed up. He shook his head instead, the strong sense of guilt emanating from him enough of a reply. It made Ahsoka's blood boil. 

"You played politics ?" she spat.

Master Windu's eyes hardened. 

"We could see no other way. Had that information leaked out, we would have had another civil war to deal with." 

"And maybe Order 66 wouldn't have gone out then!" she snapped, dimly aware of Rex's hand on her arm, tugging her back.

Instead of escalating things, Master Windu let it go, and she hated how easy he made it look. 

"Or maybe it would have gone out earlier," he said wearily. "I don't know. I told you this because Captain Rex deserved to know. I don't know that any choice we made was the right one." 

It did seem hard to argue that they had been. And Ahsoka wanted to pin it all on him ‒ the war, Order 66, losing Anakin, her trial, everything ‒ but he wasn't done talking. She had never known him to say so much. Then again, she had never known him well at all. 

"In that last council meeting, when we discussed Maul with you," he said, "we decided that Palpatine should be removed from office if he refused to step down after the war."

More politics. But that time they had been right, though Ahsoka stubbornly clung to the conviction that they had to have gone about it the wrong way, somehow. It didn't make sense, that the world could end just because one man had wanted it. It had to be more than just his fault, more than just— the galaxy being unfair.

"After that, Skywalker discovered Palpatine was Sidious, and I went to confront him with Master Fisto, Master Kolar and Master Tiin." 

Ahsoka almost fell over with how badly she started. 

"Anakin…?" she breathed out, ignoring the heavy look Rex was giving her. 

Her heart held still, in suspension between the blooming warmth of hope and the abyss of bleak reality. Master Windu's eyes found hers, and then Rex's, and then settled on his forearm. And Ahsoka heard his scream echo through the Force, and Anakin's anguished cry, and Sidious' gloating, and the world shattered all over again. 

"No," she said. 

It couldn't be true. She wouldn't — 

"Search your feelings," Windu said, and she felt herself explode.

"No!" she screamed, even as the medkit and the rations packs jumped, and the Force told her yes, and Rex asked her to calm down, and Caleb shifted in the sleeping quarters, and Windu kept his composure. "Anakin would never do that!" 

"Ahsoka…" Rex tried quietly, "Maul said…" 

"I don't care !" 

They hadn't talked about Anakin once in months. Never to reminisce, never to speculate, and certainly never to say that— that maybe—

And just like that, all of her frustration and anger spilled over, and she was on her feet cursing her heart out at Mace Windu. 

"Why didn't you stop it?" she screamed. "Why didn't you do anything ? You hypocritical—" 

"Ahsoka!" Rex tried to cut her off. 

"Stop what? Skywalker's fall? He was an adult. He was a Knight . He made his choices. We are all responsible for our own actions, Tano." 

"Like I was responsible for the bombing? You threw me out! I was innocent and you called me a traitor, and you threw me out!" 

Rex placed himself between the two of them.

"Ahsoka, stop," he said again. She ignored him again. 

"We failed you," Windu agreed. "Skywalker failed himself." 

"Stop saying that!" 

It had to be wrong. It had to be a lie, a mistake, anything but the truth. Anything but having to live with this . 

"You won't be able to run from the truth," Windu said quietly. 

"Says the man who failed to notice the Sith Lord in the Senate," she spat back. 

Windu climbed to his feet, leaning against the bulkhead rather heavily. Even then, she couldn't help taking a step back, and Rex did the same. 

"Stop this," Master Windu said firmly, as though he was scolding a child. 

"You're not my Master," she immediately fired back. "You're not anyone's Master anymore. And I am not a Jedi. You don't get to tell me to stop." 

"I don't care what you call yourself," he said sternly. "You are better than your wildest emotions left unchecked." 

"Don't," she growled. 

It was more than she could take. She turn on her heels and ran into the cockpit. Rex followed her there, and grabbed her forearm and spun her around. She snatched her arm away. 

"Ahsoka," he gritted out, "would you stop?" 

"Stop what ?"

"Can't you just—" he tried, before he huffed in frustration. " Stop ." 

But she couldn't. It all spun around in her mind, her trial, Maul, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Windu. All the things done and said and all the feelings kept bottled up for so long. And the memories of Master Windu teaching her clan to dance to the tune of the Force, lightsabers in hand, were there too, and the sound of the windchimes in the gardens during afternoon meditation in front of the Great Tree veined with gold, and the agony that this had been ripped from her forever. She had wanted to come back. 

She knew she had. 

She had wanted to. 

And now she couldn't, and it had to be someone's fault. Someone that she could scream at, that she could force to see. 

"Are you taking his side?" she asked Rex bitterly, not caring that it was unfair. 

He rubbed at his temple, the way he did when he was frustrated, or he had a headache. 

"As far as I'm concerned, anyone we have left is on our side," he said.

When she didn't answer, he continued. 

"I know this hard for you," he said, and his earnest empathy almost broke through her shell. "And I know there are things between you that I can't understand. But it's hard for me too, and I know him, and I respect him ‒ and I know he's a good man, the same way he was a good General who cared for my brothers. I'm glad he's alive. So please, stop." 

And he went back out. Ahsoka stayed there to think. She could tell Caleb had woken up, and that probably meant Rex would go in their quarters, and Caleb and Master Windu would talk. They probably had a lot to say to each other. She sat in the pilot's seat and watched Mygeeto's night sky outside of the hull, then took off without asking anyone. It never did well to stay on the same planet for more than a few hours. 

To her surprise, it was Master Windu who came to find her, after hours into hyperspace, headed to nowhere. He sat in the co-pilot's seat and watched the blue tunnel. She pretended to suppress an exaggerated eyeroll, hoping he would take the hint and start talking.

He didn't. 

"I hurt Caleb, a lot," she confessed after an eternity. "Is he okay?" 

"He is resilient, and we talked for a while, along with Captain Rex. He will be all right."

"You left the two of them together?" she couldn't help but ask, ignoring the pang of heartache she felt upon knowing she would have lost Caleb forever, if not for Master Windu. 

"In separate rooms," he said with the ghost of a smile. "I think they'll manage." 

She shrugged and turned sullen again, too tired for anger after all. 

"It hurts," Master Windu said quietly, "knowing that your efforts resulted in failure."

If she hadn't been familiar with his blunt way with words, she would have jumped out of her seat and asked what was wrong with him. She let him talk, already feeling exhausted. 

"Do you think you would have deserved it, if Caleb had been killed because of your mistakes?" 

The idea was so awful that she had to let out a wet laugh. But when she met his eyes, they were only sorrowful, and not accusing. 

"Do you really believe any one of us deserved this, no matter what our failures might have been?" 

And she didn't. She really, really didn't. She pressed her lips together. 

Windchimes and battle dances and the soft glow of the archives, Ilum and the warmth of the sun gardens, the mosaïcs and the stained glass, and Master Plo reading her betime stories, and Master Sinube's terrible jokes. Hunting with Shaak Ti and talking about little Ashla, and watching Master Kenobi smile at Katooni and wondering… 

And a vision of her in a world at peace, the Padawans playing with the younglings, the Knights and the Masters talking ‒ and her laughing with Master Windu, talking about Knightings, and Anakin, and taking a Padawan of her own. 

And the Council Masters saving Clones time and time again, and trying so hard, and caring so much, no matter what. 

"I'm glad you're not dead," she managed. 

He simply nodded. 

"Now," she told him more firmly, working hard to keep her voice in check, "I want to hear Obi-Wan's message." 

Caleb greeted her with a shy smile along with a muttered "hey," when they stepped back into the cargo hold. Whatever he had talked about with Master Windu, she was forgiven ‒ as expected of a kind-hearted, brave Jedi kid like he was. She made sure to ruffle his hair lightly with the Force, and was delighted that it got him to pull at her montrals the same way. He handed her the holocron, but she shook her head. 

"I don't think I can do this alone."

"Then we'll meditate together," Mace said quietly. 

And as they turned their minds towards each other and Obi-Wan Kenobi's image sprung to life, the dam finally, finally broke, and Ahsoka bowed her head and quietly let her relief flow out, overwhelmed with gratefulness to the Force. They crossed their legs and closed their eyes, turned themselves inward, and dived into the universe together. 

"Are we going somewhere?" Rex asked when they dazedly entered the cockpit some hours later, happy to leave directions ‒ and the Force ‒ to the Jedi onboard. 

"Tatooine," Ahsoka told him, leaning over his seat to put in the coordinates, still wobbly on her feet. "There's something there." 

"The Force told you that?" 

"Yeah." 

It was true, in a sense, and much more than that all at once. Tatooine had come to her from the depths of her memories, tied to her heart by the bonds between herself, Anakin, and Obi-Wan. She kept seeing binary stars rotating around each other, because it's what the Team had been ‒ and Ahsoka had rotated around them both, so much smaller, with so much to gain from them. She had been burned too, in a way. And so that was how she knew, how she could just tell, when the very fabric of the universe had been damaged and corrupted. Some of the threads still held, leading her to Tatooine. Leading Mace there too, and Caleb ‒ all three of them bound to the same star through different connections. 

They sat together often after that, Ahsoka managing to coax Rex into sitting not too far when they meditated, as Caleb slowly learned to relax in his presence. They ate together as well, what little they could eat, with how low on rations they were ‒ not that if felt like it mattered much. There wasn't a lot to say, so they didn't talk, existing in a silence that bordered on contentment. They reached Tatooine in the blink of an eye, or so it felt. 

The ship touched down in a sea of soft sand – gray in the dim light of Tatooine’s night sky and quiet like space itself. The calm breeze swept slowly across the endless plains, not a lifeform in sight. It was sad and peaceful like a graveyard, soothing and painful all at once. They watched the gray sand from a dune in silent contemplation. The stars were shining overhead, millions upon millions of them twinkling, brighter than even the moons. Rex couldn’t hear their song, but the Jedi beside him were shuddering, their eyes lost in the immensity. He didn’t know what they were looking for – what comfort they drew from the universe’s unchanged nature. By all rights the stars shouldn’t be shining ‒ but then again, none of them should be alive and here either. 

They walked close to one another, Caleb tucked against Mace’s side. Ahsoka wordlessly looped an arm around Rex’s waist and looked at him with shining eyes, a trembling smile on her lips. He held onto her with a smile of his own and walked with her, following that Force of theirs under the Tatooine night sky.

The Jedi were children of the Force and it was their greatest friend, or so they believed with every fiber of their beings. They trusted in the Force. The Force, in the impenetrable depths of its Will – its diffuse, incomprehensible sentience that encompassed everything and everyone everywhere and everywhen – was a trustworthy ally. It sought balance and peace. In the midst of all the confusion and the blindness brought upon by the ones that sought to dominate it rather than serve, it still reached down to its faithful children. This time, this once, it had given rather than taken.

The dunes were endless. In the distance, you could mistake them for sleeping giants. The Jedi navigated them easily, trusting the Force to guide them where their maps couldn't take them. After the horizon had lightened with the hours, they were able to make out a small dot in the distance, practically vibrating with the feeling of importance.

The hut was small and unassuming, beige in the beige sand, gray to their eyes in the gray desert. It could have been abandoned, one more ruin to walk by and ignore like the bleached bones of banthas and krayt dragons or the scattered remains of sandcrawlers ‒ but Mace, Caleb and Ahsoka could feel it pulsing like a soft heartbeat. There was a life there, one that they knew and loved. Ahsoka drank in the feeling, a grin creeping onto her face as tears slid down the dry skin of her cheeks. 

Red flames licked the horizon, orange blooming and warmth seeping into the air. Each breath smelled of sunlight and morning dew, rare and beautiful. Caleb gasped softly at Mace’s side, feeling small. The suns were rising, caressing them all gently. Nature was the Force’s gift – it was the Force, and even here it still thrived. 

Ahsoka was the one to knock on the hut’s door when they reached it, feeling like she was dreamwalking. She’d wake up in the Temple, or on the freighter, safe or alone. This was either too terrible to be true, or too good, and either way it could hardly be real. The door slid open with a crunch from the sand. It sounded real. 

They all stood back, the Force tranquil as a quiet pond. It sent them no bad feelings, no reason to feel anxious or afraid. It just felt calm. Obi-Wan Kenobi stood in the archway, gaping. He was the same – more worn, more subdued, but still Obi-Wan Kenobi in his beige Jedi robes and his brown cloak, his brass lightsaber at his side, full beard and hair and all. He looked impossibly tired, but his eyes shone with bright tears, his mouth agape in wonder.

"Oh," he breathed out, sounding so hopeful and so lost.

Ahsoka hugged him without hesitation. His arms came around her shoulders, the rough fabric of his sleeve comfortingly grounding and familiar. 

"How…?" she heard him ask softly. 

She shook her head. 

Later. Later they could talk, and break each other’s hearts anew with Anakin Skywalker, and the chips, and everything. Order 66 and the stories of the ones who hadn’t made it wouldn’t go away with the suns. The cold wouldn’t just leave after a little warmth. They would have plenty of time to talk, and mourn, and meditate together. 

He ushered them in silently, leaving Ahsoka to sit down on the ground next to Rex, leaning against his shoulder with a weary smile. Obi-Wan had a kettle of tea on, moving about like a ghost. He eventually sat back down among them, offering them ration bars with a look of dazed awe. 

"What happened to you all?" he asked. "How did you even end up together?" 

"That's…" Rex started, trying to talk around his mouthful of rations.

"… Complicated," Caleb chimed in, with a tired smile that was almost cheeky. 

Mace gave Obi-Wan a meaningful look, more passing between them than Ahsoka cared to try and decipher ‒ it really wasn't a happy look ‒ and he dropped the subject, passing the tea around with slightly trembling hands. She reached for the pot wordlessly, and he gave it to her without a word. 

"You should get some sleep," Obi-Wan told them all, once they had finished eating. 

The hut was cramped, but it was clean and neat, and thus had most of the places they had all stayed in during the war and after beaten by a wide margin. Obi-Wan didn’t have a bed, but they were all so tired none of them cared much. Rex tried to offer going outside, for Caleb’s peace of mind and out of a sense of hierarchy that even the months since Order 66 and the trip to Tatooine hadn’t completely gotten rid of. To him, Mace and Obi-Wan were General Windu and General Kenobi, whom he respected more than just about anyone else. Obi-Wan locked the front door before he could step out in the burning desert, slyly calling it a safety issue. There were Tusken Raiders roaming around, and all that. They were all wanted people too. 

"Someone should stand guard," Rex tried to insist. 

Ahsoka tugged him down so he’d lie down next to her, directly on the hard floor. Obi-Wan gave him a look, and he discarded his armor and tentatively tugged her against his chest. They had slept in shifts on the freighter, despite their shared quarters – physical touch between the two of them was something that had been dearly needed, and dearly missed. To everyone's surprise, Caleb unglued himself from Mace's side and crept over to Ahsoka, pressing himself against her ribs. Her arms wound around him protectively, and she sent him the barest of sleep compulsions, chuckling when he swatted her playfully. He sent one right back, which didn't have much of an effect, as her eyes were already closing.

Mace and Obi-Wan watched over the three of them with strained, fond smiles, the last of the stars twinkling out through the window.