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Rex knows something is wrong when Ahsoka heads straight to her quarters.
She doesn’t even meet his eyes as she passes. She brushes off the greetings of a few of the men too quickly, too lightly—too forced. He’s not sure if anyone else notices, but he does.
He also notices the limp she’s trying to suppress.
He wasn’t assigned to this last mission, but he’s been following it closely, and he knows it didn’t end well. While the small city they’d been defending from Separatist siege technically isn’t in danger of being controlled by said Separatists anymore…that’s only because it is now very much blown up.
Luckily, most of the civilians had taken shelter in underground bunkers built for a civil war that occurred decades ago. But the injuries sustained among the troops weren’t insignificant, and there had been casualties.
Skywalker is tangled up in last-minute clean-up operations planetside. He’d sent the Commander and most of the men back to the Resolute to get patched up and debriefed, and he’s likely to be down there for a while yet.
Therefore, this becomes Rex’s newest mission.
He finds his way to her quarter with ease and knocks on the door. “Commander?”
She doesn’t answer immediately, but when he hears an almighty crash, he’s not even thinking as he types the code he’s technically not supposed to know into the keypad to unlock her door. It slides open with a soft whoosh , and he’s alarmed to see Ahsoka on the ground. A first-aid kit is overturned next to her, the contents spilling across the durasteel floor, and she’s interrupted in her hasty collection of the items by Rex’s intrusion. She looks up at him, and a blush of embarrassment covers her cheeks.
“It’s okay, I’m okay,” she rambles as he reaches out and helps her to sit on the edge of her cot, but there’s an edge of desperation to her words that’s decidedly not okay. Rex has only known her a little over a year, but that’s a lifetime in war, and it’s enough to know she’s damn stubborn. Really, she’s too alike to her Master than she has any right to be.
He goes for a hard approach, giving her his most disapproving look– the one that sometimes gets through to the General, and almost always makes shinies quake in their boots. “You should be in the med-bay.”
It doesn’t work. Her eyes become steely as she stares straight past him toward the wall, and her voice is full of conviction as she says, “I’m fine. The men need the attention more.”
“Then let me help you.”
Now, standing directly opposite her, he notices what he didn’t before. She’s covered in a fine layer of dust and grime, and small nicks and cuts graze the left side of her face and lekku. There’s a laceration on her forearm that starts at her elbow and ends midway down, and a number of bruises are starting to paint their purplish hue across her skin—and that doesn’t even begin to cover the limp. She’s in rough shape, and they both know it. Her jaw works for a moment as she thinks, and to his relief, she gives a tight nod of assent.
He collects all of the supplies scattered across the floor, then sits down beside her on the cot. He starts with her arm, taking her wrist and gently stabilizing it with one hand while going through the motions with the other. Disinfectant wipe. Bacta. Bandage. The only sounds outside of his ministrations are their soft breathing and the persistent hum of the ship’s engines.
He moves onto her lek, for a moment reflecting on how grateful he is that none of these lacerations require stitches, and then to her face. Ahsoka continues to stare determinedly ahead as he swipes across her cheek with a wipe, and for once, he wishes he had Force powers like her and the General. He wishes he could look into her mind and see what she’s feeling.
When she first arrived on that transport on Christophsis, what felt like nearly a lifetime ago now, Rex had seen a young girl, wide-eyed and naive, full of boundless energy and enthusiasm with a fierce need to prove herself. She took to the men almost immediately, and they took to her, finding her a shining beacon of optimism and hope in a war that too often became dark.
That hasn’t changed, per se. That brightness is still there. It’s most easily seen in their downtime, when they share a meal or play sabaac around the fire, helmets off, defenses lowered. Rex still sees it when she jokes with the General, even with him on occasion. But it’s a rarer occurrence these days, not like it was when she was still green. Through the pain and horrors of war, she has drawn up her defenses and created a metaphysical armor as strong as any clone wears. She’s become tough—tougher than any teenager should have to be.
It’s a protective measure, and Rex appreciates that. Being able to accept the realities of war with a cool head makes her a good and reliable leader, but he knows the vulnerability that lies just underneath the surface, and he worries what will happen if she continues to bottle it up.
“Commander, look at me,” he says suddenly. It’s a massive breach of decorum, and she could call him out on it, but he knows she won’t. “Ahsoka–”
“Rex, it was my fault,” she snaps, his hand falling away from her face as she turns to finally, finally meet his eyes. “I should have noticed the bombs sooner. I could’ve diffused them, or gotten everyone out–”
“It’s not your fault. None of us are infallible, not you, not me, not even General Skywalker.”
“Rex, men died under my command, directly because of my actions! Do you–do you even know their names? Because I do! Rudy, Potshot, Axel, Imp–”
“--Jolly, Trapper, Flex,” he finishes calmly. “Yes, I do, Ahsoka. I know every last one of them, from this battle and all the ones that came before it.”
She deflates, gaze dropping to the floor in shame. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”
He pulls her back with a hand under her chin, a dab of bacta on his thumb soothing over a cut there. “No, it wasn’t. But I understand. You’ll always feel responsible when someone dies under your command. And you’ll always wonder if there’s something you could have done differently to prevent it, but you can’t let those thoughts consume you. You can only move forward and do your best to make sure those deaths didn’t happen in vain.”
“I-I’m too attached,” she admits, “Attachment is forbidden for Jedi, but I care too much…”
He finishes tending to her face and wipes the excess bacta on his fingers with a spare piece of gauze. “Pardon me for saying so Sir, but I’d be worried if you weren’t. If we don’t care, what makes us different from battle droids?”
She takes in a shuddering breath as she considers his words, and he knows it’s time to move on to the most pressing issue at hand. “Commander, what happened to your leg?”
“It-it’s my foot. My boot, I–I can’t get the karking thing off,” she says, and for the first time, he can hear the frustration bleeding through her voice. She kicks her leg, only to wince sharply at the resulting pain.
“Settle down,” he commands, voice just slightly sharper than he would have liked. It’s involuntary—he hates seeing his troopers in pain. He makes up for it by gently lifting her boot, resting it on his knee and pulling out his vibroblade. “May I?”
Chewing on her lip briefly, she nods, and he starts slicing through the material as delicately as he can.
“Those were my favorite boots,” she says with the barest amount of humor, and he knows she’s trying to downplay the situation, trying to distract him—or maybe trying to distract herself. Because it’s bad. Her entire foot is swollen, purple and black, and several bones are clearly broken. He’s shocked she made it all the way to her bunk on her own. It must be excruciatingly painful.
“It was a piece of debris from the explosion. I saw it coming, I should have used the Force to push it away, but…I couldn’t. I didn’t.”
He worries about the implication of that, worries about the potential of her punishing herself for her mistakes, but he sets that concern aside for later. “This needs more than just a bacta patch, Ahsoka. It’s time to go to the med-bay.”
Her eyes squeeze tightly shut for a moment and she exhales. “Okay.”
Ever so gently, he helps her stand and wraps her arm around his shoulders. “ It hurts ,” she says quietly, and he knows just how significant the admission is for her. Her whole body is trembling minutely; he can feel it as it resonates through his armor.
If he could, he would take her pain as his own. He would take the pressures and responsibilities war has left burdened on her shoulders, he would take her trauma and scars. He had come to love his Commander as fiercely as he did any of his brothers, and he would do anything to return the normal, peaceful childhood that had been stolen from her. But it was impossible.
He tightens his grip around her as they start slowly making their way to the med-bay, and she rests her head on his shoulder in a way that makes his heart melt just a little.
There was so much he couldn’t take for her, but he could take her weight, if only for a few moments.
“I’ve got you,” he says. “I’ve got you.”