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Ahsoka knows the stormtrooper is a clone as soon as she feels him in the force.
She'd like to think she would be able to tell even without that, just by the way he moves—perfectly measured and sure in a way the new civvie troopers have never come close to achieving—but there's no way of knowing. The sense of hollow emptiness the chipped clones have is always the first thing she notices about them, no matter how much she wishes it wasn't.
Their signatures aren't even particularly attention-getting in the force. Subtly quiet, like still ponds, and oh how she hates that they're so serene, that they betray no fight, no suppressed struggle. There should be something more viscerally wrong about them, she thinks, some mark of a mind stolen and warped and scrubbed clean—but there isn't. Only a subtle, slightly-too-hollow blankness that stands out to Ahsoka only because of how cleanly it's burned into her memories.
The human man Mon Mothma had sent with her on this mission doesn't notice the way she freezes—doesn't even hear the steady clicking of the trooper's boots against the ground until several seconds after she senses him. "He's the one," he whispers, words barely more than a murmur. "I think he's alone."
Ahsoka doesn't bother to confirm his observation, muscles already feeling twitchy in the way they always do when she forces herself to stay utterly still.
Her partner has an accent not unlike Anakin's, that same indistinct blend of outer rim and core typical of spacers who have lived too long without a true home planet. It somehow only adds to the general aura of indescribable annoyingness he has continually projected since their first briefing together.
Ahsoka forces the knot of irritation forming in her chest to smooth, releasing the prickling emotions into the force.
It's not fair to be angry when her partner hasn't actually done anything to aggravate her. He's really one of the better operatives she's been saddled with since she started running missions for the rebellion—but it's hard to stay patient with any of the rebel recruits, who seem to be drawn more from the likes of idealistic coreworlders with rebellious streaks and malcontent criminals and smugglers than anyone who actually understands the realities of war.
This one, at least, knows how to quietly drag someone into the shadows of an alleyway and knock them unconscious without getting a patrol called down on them, so Ahsoka thanks the force for that at least.
He drops down to his knees to begin stripping the trooper of his armor, and Ahsoka is slow to help, frozen for a moment before she follows. It's not old trooper armor, not anymore, but it still seems wrong to be ripping it off him like this.
Her fingers hover over the clone's helmet before she thinks better of it and pulls them away, starting in on the hand pieces instead, which somehow seem less personal. It doesn't matter—her partner pulls off his helmet a second later, setting it aside before taking the first of the removed armor pieces and slipping it on. Ahsoka averts her eyes, looking back down at the trooper. Taking a bracing breath, she gently rolls him over onto his side so she can get his chest plate off.
It's only then that his face, previously turned away from her, comes into full view, the shadows and harsh light of the alleyway cutting dark shadows across his face and revealing the curving scar on his right temple.
She gasps, snatching her hands away from his side like she's been burned, and his head drops against the cracked concrete. Cringing at the noise, she quickly slides her hand between his skull and the ground, cradling it gently.
The prickling sensation of her partner turning to watch her tingles at the back of her neck, but it's not enough to make her look away.
Cody.
Ahsoka had dreamed once, when she was alone on a ship in the dead of hyperspace and her only ally was traveling fast away from her and out of reach, of rescuing more brothers than just Rex.
It had been her first fixation, after getting back on her feet and joining the rebellion, but it had been quickly dismissed as not worth the lives and resources out would take.
Three million men had seemed like a lot during the height of the clone wars, but it was nothing compared to the billions of storm troopers conscripted afterwards. And even if finding the surviving clones wouldn't have been like finding needles in a haystack, the rebellion just didn't have personnel capable of reliably subduing genetically engineered super soldiers who had been trained in combat since they were old enough to hold blasters.
No personnel Command was willing to risk on it, anyway.
"Got your eyeful?" her partner drawls, interrupting her reverie. "Because if you have, I could really use that chestplate."
Ahsoka starts, nearly drawing her blaster before she realizes it's only him. She drops her hands, but can't stop the warmth heating her montrals. "I am not ogling him!"
He smirks. "Really? Because it sure looked like it."
She scowls, pointedly keeping her eyes off of Cody's face. "I recognized him, that's all."
His eyebrows rise. "You do realize that's a clone, right?"
Ahsoka's eyes narrow even further than they already had. " He's a clone," she bites out. "Not that. And yes, I realized."
She tosses the chest plate at him with a little more force than necessary before standing up, heaving Cody's unconscious form up onto her shoulders.
Her partner's eyes widen in alarm when he realizes what she's planning. "What are you doing? "
She sets her jaw. "Achieving our new secondary mission objective."
***
Things are awkward, at first, between Ahsoka and Cody.
She's so happy to have him here she could cry, but in a way, that makes speaking to him harder. She and Cody had never actually been friends. They'd known each other, but she couldn't remember ever actually really talking to him the way she had with so many of the other troops, and it feels odd trying doing it now.
Ahsoka doesn't know how to temper the massive surge of relief and affection that surges up in her throat every time she sees him, and the latent emotion swelling in the silences between them grows more claustrophobic with every conversation they're forced to have throughout his recovery.
There is something strained in him, too. He doesn't actually look that much older than he did the last time she saw him, despite his supposedly having physically aged six years, but there is something closed off and drawn in his features that makes him look like a different person regardless, and his responses to her when she speaks to him are forcibly sterile and emotionless.
Ahsoka can feel something roiling and heavy beyond his force presence's facade, but it's too shuttered away to read, hidden behind the crystalline, structured shields of his mind. Cody had always had good shields for a force null, but they are even more opaque now than they used to be, warped and twisted in form to something far closer in form than she is comfortable with to the rigid placidity his mind had had while chipped.
It makes him hard to read, and she's left to wonder whether his strangeness around her is due to not knowing how to act around her or actual dislike.
She wants to believe the former, believe that the ironclad, unquestionable loyalty the Jedi had had with their troops isn't something that could be broken by three years of mind control, but there's a part of her that wonders. He would be fully within his rights to hate her for everything she'd done in the wake of order sixty-six, even if she hadn't had much of a choice in most of it.
That the real reason might be guilt doesn't even occur to her until it's staring her down point blank.
"I killed General Kenobi," he says one morning when she comes to collect him for breakfast, listless and monotone. "I gave the order to shoot him down. I thought you should know."
"Palpatine killed him," she says. "You're not accountable for anything that disgusting piece of bioware made you do."
He flinches. "There were reports of brothers resisting it. Whoever was supposed to get Billaba's padawan didn't."
"Maybe theirs were broken," Ahsoka says levelly. "I know you wouldn't have if you had a choice, Cody."
He turns on her, looking her in the eyes, and there's something dark in them that she knows he wants her to see. Too understand. "I never had to choose between loyalty between him and the Republic. I don't know if you entirely understand just how deeply following orders is drilled into us. I have no way of knowing I wouldn't have."
His eyes burn a moment longer before he turns his head, as if he can't bear to look at her anymore. "I remember doing it. It didn't even feel like I was being controlled. It felt like duty."
She takes a step closer to him, back into his line of vision. "You wouldn't have."
"You can't know that."
"Maybe not for sure," she says. "But I know what Rex used to tell me about you, and it was never that you were loyal to the Republic above all else."
She feels the start of indignation rising in his force presence and raises a hand. "I'm not saying you weren't a loyal soldier. But your first priority was your brothers. You fought for them. And I don't think I'm wrong when I say Master Kenobi was like a brother to you."
"I--"
Her gaze sharpens. "I refuse to let you blame yourself for this. "
His face softens, just the slightest bit, and he swallows. "Understood, Sir."
That same feeling of indescribable emotion she's been warring with ever since she found him wells up again, and, unable to push it down this time--not wanting too—she steps in closer and hugs him.
It's probably too much, still, but he doesn't pull away, awkwardly wrapping his arms around her in return and hugging her back.
"You don't have to call me Sir, you know," she says as she breaks away.
The corner of his mouth quirks upward. "I wasn't sure 'civilian' would be an appropriate title."
Ahsoka knows, intellectually, that this is the time for her to tell him to call her Fulcrum , but she finds herself biting her lip instead, chest feeling strangely warm. "'Ahsoka' would be fine."
"Okay, then," he says.
They both linger there, standing just a touch closer than they need to, for a half-moment longer, before Ahsoka loses her nerve and turns to the door.
***
They're real friends after that.
It shouldn't happen so quickly but it does. They speak their own language, one made up of old G.A.R. slang and ARC signs and incomprehensible Kenobi-isms, and they rarely leave each others' sides unless they have to.
Ahsoka can tell the other rebels who know her are confused, maybe even concerned, by her sudden switch from totally isolating herself to being joined at the hip to an Imperial deserter. (Not that those accusations are fair, given he'd ever deserted or joined the Empire in the first place.) Ahsoka, for her part, doesn't care. The communal, Togruta part of her brain that forever hungers for clan goes happy when she's around Cody, and he seems equally stabilized by her presence. There's no point in staying away from him to preserve her lone-wolf reputation when they're both pack creatures at heart.
It feels good to have someone by her side again.
They don't talk about the war, most of the time. They don't pretend it never happened, either, but it's hard to talk about even with him, and so the conversations come slowly, happening only in the quiet moments when they both truly feel safe.
Ahsoka is able to tell him that Rex is still alive, and free—or was, at least, after Order 66—and he tells her what it was like under the chip. Tells her how wrong it feels, even now, to be without his brothers.
He confides in her one day, when they're completely alone, that he misses the empire sometimes.
Ahsoka very carefully doesn't flinch, setting aside the spanner she'd been using to poke at the malfunctioning systems the freighter she'd been repairing, and turns to look at him. They are alone in the belly of the ship, the buzz of machinery and internal computers softening the edge to the silence.
"I don't want to go back," he says. "I know what they did to us is horrible, and I hate what they made me do, but… Me and my brothers aren't like natborns." He tightens his hands into fists, before he abruptly lets the tension seep away. "We don't… stumble around finding our own way in life and being misunderstood. We were all raised from birth to serve the same purpose, and we all knew what it was, and we all knew each other. The empire… it took that and twisted it into something evil, but we still had it."
He turns away from her and laughs, low and bitter. "It's kriffed up. I know."
Ahsoka has gone very still. "No. It's not."
When she dares to look at him again, he's staring off into space, eyes unfocused. "It wasn't even them , anymore, by the end. They stripped us of our individuality so well it was hard to tell each other apart. Why the kriff would I miss that?"
"It's natural to miss belonging somewhere," she says softly.
"When we used to talk about what we'd do after the war, the one thing I always pictured myself doing was finding someone to fall in love with and starting a family." He smiles bitterly. "I realize now... it never would have happened. I don't understand these people."
Ahsoka snorts. "Natborns are disappointing."
He gives her a meaningful look. "Not all of them."
"Don't count," she says, saluting him. "Honorary clone trooper."
That, at least, finally drags a small smile out of him. "Of course."
"I'd like to think I understand," she says carefully. "At least a little."
He takes a breath, then slowly lets out in one long stream of air. "Better than anyone."
"I guess you'll just have to date me then," she says, batting her eyelashes at him ridiculously. "We can't deprive the children of Dad Cody, it would be such a shame--"
She's joking, mostly, but when she wins another laugh, a new warmth sparks in her chest.
(neither of them is alone anymore)