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“So, where to now? Rex asked.
He really didn’t know, his options quickly running out. Each planet he knew from the Republic had now become the Empire, every safe haven now the opposite.
The Empire was dangerous to everyone, but to no one more than a former Jedi.
Rex conveniently overlooked the fact that as a deserter he wasn’t exactly in a good position either. His first priority was the safety of the Togruta with him, then that of his brothers, and his own only trailed far behind.
It hadn’t been easy to combine those priorities. While more and more clones were questioning the new order, they could still be susceptible to the effect of their inhibitor chips. It was for that reason that Rex hadn’t let Ahsoka come with him when he had looked up Cut Lawquane on Saleucami to see if they could lay low there for a while – Cut might have deserted from the Grand Army of the Republic long before Rex had, but that didn’t mean that his chip wouldn’t have activated.
In the end, his efforts had turned out to have been meaningless: the Empire had already descended on Saleucami, and Cut, Suu and the kids had been in the middle of preparing to flee themselves. Even if Cut was safe for Ahsoka to be around, it wouldn’t be safe for Cut to have Ahsoka around. The man was attempting to find somewhere away from the danger to raise his children, and to have a former Jedi and a high level clone deserter travel with him would only paint a much bigger target on him.
So Saleucami wasn’t an option, and neither was any planet that used to be part of the Republic. But where should they go instead…?
“I’ve been thinking” Ahsoka said slowly, “about going to Onderon.”
“Onderon?” Rex repeated, the planet eliciting a surprisingly strong reaction in him. Lux’s face creeped into his mind. “No. There has to be somewhere else we could go.”
“I understand your concern” Ahsoka said patiently, and Rex raised an eyebrow at her in surprise. “I know they were aligned with the Separatists during the war, but they fought heavily to free themselves. They wouldn’t agree to Imperial occupation.”
“Still” Rex mumbled, unwilling to divulge the true reason for his hesitation: he didn’t trust the former senator’s son. Lux had collaborated with Death Watch, and had put Ahsoka in a lot of danger because of it. It would be directly contradictory to his personal mission of keeping her safe to have her in his vicinity again.
And perhaps he didn’t like the way she used to look at him, a lifetime ago.
“We don’t have much choice” Ahsoka said softly. “He worked with both the clones and the Jedi, Rex. He might make a valuable ally.”
Rex sighed. “Fine” he bit out. He could be protective all he wanted, but in the end Ahsoka was her own person, and if she wanted to go to Onderon to talk to Lux he wouldn’t stop her.
But if that sneaky bastard would attempt to kiss her again, Rex would make sure that it would be the last thing he would ever do.
Focus, he thought at himself, watching the familiar patterns of hyperspace in an attempt to distract his mind. She’s not yours. You’ve made your decision.
The feelings for his former commander had started at the Siege of Mandalore. Before Ahsoka had left the Jedi Order, she had always been the child of the 501st, General Skywalker’s padawan learner, even if over the years she had gained his respect as a capable warrior and commander. But it had taken not seeing her for almost a year that had made Rex realise that she had grown, matured into the young adult he was now on the run with.
And with that had come the realisation that he felt differently about her than he did about his brothers.
Already before she had left Ahsoka and him had become close friends, talking for hours during downtime, each other’s first person to share whatever was on their minds with, even if it would technically be against Republic military protocol. But all that time he had been the experienced veteran, and she the learner. During the Siege of Mandalore they had finally become equals, in more than rank, and it had opened up a lot of possibilities.
Possibilities Rex had never acted on. At first he had told himself that she was still a Jedi, in thoughts if not in official title, and might return to the Order after the Siege was over, which meant that the kind of attachment he had been hoping for was out of the question. Later, at the urge of his brothers, he had decided to postpone the issue until after the war was won, after he would become a free man, and worry about if she might harbour similar hopes then.
But the war never ended, a much bigger evil rising in its place. They were fugitives now, wanted criminals, with little to no allies they could rely on. There was no room to think of a happy life together. Not when so many of Rex’s brothers were still stuck in a regime that wanted nothing more than to get rid of them. It was all Rex could do to keep Ahsoka safe while he tried to free his brothers. He couldn’t ask any more of her. It was too complicated.
If he was being honest, he had expected the grief for his fallen brothers – grief that still cut through his heart every single day, the rows of helmets over makeshift graves an image that never fully left his mind – to distract him from his feelings for his friend. But it hadn’t. Contrarily, it only made him yearn for solace in her arms more. Ahsoka was the only one in the galaxy who truly understood his pain, who truly understood him, even better than the other clones he had worked with since the rise of the Empire. Clone Force 99 were the only other clones who had aware of their actions during Order 66, but they had always been a secluded group. They might have lost Crosshair to the Empire, but they didn’t understand the true loss of countless brothers like Rex had experienced since the start of the war. Just one conversation with Hunter already showed as much.
“We’re coming up on Onderon” Ahsoka said, in reaction to the hyperdrive signalling its approaching target.
“I’m still in favour of punching in our next coordinates and go” Rex said pointedly.
Ahsoka rolled her eyes at him. “We don’t have any next coordinates, that’s why we’re here. I’m going down there. But you’re free to do what you want.”
Rex sighed. “I’m coming with you.”
It wasn’t even a decision to make, it was simply a given. And judging by the smile playing around Ahsoka’s lips, a smile that for a second made him forget about the precarious situation they were in as his insides turned to jelly, she had known that.
***
The welcome to Onderon wasn’t as warm as Ahsoka had hoped. Of course they couldn’t easily identify themselves, which meant that it took quite some effort to even get a meeting with Lux.
The atmosphere in the streets was grim, the Onderonians glancing around nervously, not talking much. It reminded Rex of the last time they had been here, attempting to help Steela, Saw and Lux free their people from the Separatists and their false king Sanjay Rash. Back then, they had succeeded in driving the regime away, but it didn’t seem like the people believed the same could be said about the Empire.
Neither did Rex, if he was being honest.
King Dendup’s men escorted them to a building just outside of the city limits, quickly ushering them inside. Lux was waiting for them, looking the same as he had during their last mission together.
Exactly the same, Rex thought scathingly. Still a child.
He glanced at Ahsoka, who walked up to Lux with a new spring in her step, the prospect of finally finding a possible ally in Lux clearly much more uplifting to her than it was to Rex. She had become an adult since, shown not only by the length of her lekku and montrals but also by her face, the shape of her body, and most of all the calm wisdom in her words.
“Lux” she said, relief in her voice as she finally took off the hood that had attempted to hide her recognisable head from view. “It’s good to see –”
“What are you doing here?” Lux cut through her, his tone holding none of the warmth Ahsoka had tried to approach him with.
She visibly startled, and then her entire demeanour hardened so swiftly that Rex understood her earlier friendliness to have been a front. “Hoping to find a friend.”
“My mother always said the Republic would bring ruin to the galaxy” Lux spat. “And look what happened.”
“You can’t possibly blame the Republic for this” Rex said, eyes narrowing at him, giving Ahsoka some time to find her footing again. “We aren’t the Empire.”
“But that’s what the Republic has become, isn’t it?”
“We are fighting against it, Lux!” Ahsoka said. “Just like we fought against Dooku’s occupation!”
“Ah, the Jedi’s need to be peacekeepers” Lux sneered. “As long as it was peace for the Republic. Are they gonna keep the peace for the Empire now, too?”
“The Jedi are dead!” Ahsoka cried out, tears of anger pooling in her eyes. Rex unthinkingly reached out to grab her hand and hold her back.
Lux’s cold look softened somewhat. “I heard. Which is why you’re not safe here.”
Ahsoka froze, her hand squeezing Rex’s. He tried very hard not to think too deeply about it. “Are you gonna turn us over to the Empire?”
“Of course not!” Lux said, eyes widening in surprise. “I’m not with the Empire, we only tolerate their presence here to avoid worse.”
Rex’s heart sunk. Despite his misgiving about the Bonteri boy, he had hoped for Ahsoka to find the refuge she’d been looking for here. She deserved a moment of rest and safety amid all this chaos. “The Empire is here?”
“Not actively, not yet” Lux sighed, running a hand through his hair. “So far they haven’t done more than root out some ‘extremists’ – or attempt to, anyway. But the people don’t trust the change in regime.”
“They shouldn’t” Ahsoka muttered.
Lux chuckled humourlessly. “Saw thinks we should take immediate military action. But I’m not willing to drag our people into another war, not if we don’t need to. We barely won the last one.”
And only because we had been there to help you, Rex thought privately. It had been General Skywalker, Ahsoka and him who had trained the Onderon rebels, who had designed their strategies, and Steela who had rallied the people. Lux had been nothing more but a simple soldier, and not even a good one at that, his life as a privileged senator son making him too dainty for the battlefield.
Lux sighed. “Why are you here, Ahsoka?”
“We’ve been on the run for a year” Ahsoka said, and Rex’s heart warmed at her immediate inclusion of him. “We’re running out of allies. We’d hoped to find… if not an ally, then at least a place to lay low for a while.”
Lux was already shaking his head before she had finished the sentence. “You can’t stay here. It’s not safe.”
“I thought you said that Empire wasn’t really active here?” Rex pointed out.
Lux shot him a glare. “Saw has hired mercenaries to fight them, and the Empire keeps sending new squads to find out how they killed the old ones. It’s only a matter of time before they come down on us with full force.”
“Saw is out of control” Ahsoka said. “You need to stop him.”
“I understand him” Lux replied, his voice cold. “We both lost Steela, lost a lover and a sister, and I lost both my parents as well. I don’t expect a Jedi and a clone to truly know what that feels like.”
Rex just stared at him, stunned into silence. He had lost so many brothers to the war and to Order 66; some he had barely met, and some he had grown up with, trained with on Kamino, stood beside during countless battles, entrusted his life to numerous times. Fives. Hardcase. Hevy. Tup. 99. Cutup. Oz. Ringo. Vaughn. Jesse.
Not to mention what Ahsoka had gone through, the moment the order had been issued. What she was still going through.
She had stilled just like him, looking at Lux as if he had slapped her across the face, but now the fire was returning to her, eyes blazing. “I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever loved except for Rex, every ally I’ve ever had! That’s why I came here!” she hissed.
“So you could make me share that experience?” Lux countered, face contorted. “My parents died because of yourcivil war, you dropped Steela to her death! Haven’t you done enough?!?”
“She was trying to save Steela!” Rex snapped, and this time it was Ahsoka grabbing his hand to hold him back from snapping Lux’s pretty little head clean off his torso.
Lux opened his mouth to retort, but before he could do so, a light blinked on the holoprojector on the conference table to indicate an incoming transmission, and they all fell silent.
“That’s Saw” Lux said, visibly pulling himself back together. “Quick, get out of the holo’s view and stay quiet.”
They did so, Ahsoka pulling a still-seething Rex with her, and Lux pressed a key on the transmitter.
“Saw” he said stiffly, addressing the hologram appearing over the table.
“No time for pleasantries, I’m afraid” Saw said, though the eery smile on his face said otherwise. “I have some disturbing news.”
Another person stepped into his holotransmission; a tall, imposing species that reminded Rex vaguely of an oversized feral tooka, scarred and heavily armed. He had a feeling that he’d seen the species once or twice before, but he couldn’t quite remember what it was.
He stole a glance at Ahsoka, who caught his eye in return. Lasat, she mouthed.
“I told you, I don’t want anything to do with your mercenaries” Lux said.
“I’m afraid that is no longer an option” Saw returned, either not noticing the way Lux was eyeing the two of them warily because of the quality of his transmitter, or choosing to ignore it.
“One of the Imperial shuttles from the last raid left the planet” the Lasat said. His voice was deep and gravelly with a noticeable accent. There was something about the bounty-hunter that sent shivers down Rex’s spine, and not the way Ahsoka’s hand still holding his was. “There weren’t supposed to be any survivors.”
“Don’t you always go down there to shoot them all one by one to make sure?” Lux asked coldly.
The bounty-hunter bristled. “I did.”
“And you see how even that precaution isn’t enough!” Saw said. “You’d better make up your mind about joining our cause, Bonteri, because whatever Imperial managed to report back will no doubt have the rest of them over soon. And we are not gonna give up Onderon without a fight.”
With a flash, the transmission ended, leaving them all staring at an empty table for a second.
Then Lux turned back towards Rex and Ahsoka, his jaw set. “You see?” He said angrily. “Onderon is not a place for refuge for you, and I have better things to do than harbour known enemies to the Empire when our situation is already so precarious.”
“And what exactly is Saw, then?” Ahsoka remarked, her voice cold.
“Enough of an inconvenience already” Lux snapped back.
“You mean you’re not even gonna fight the Empire?” Rex said incredulously. Where was all the battle training he had given this kid? Was he that afraid of losing his comfortable home?
“Saw may be willing to set the planet ablaze to avoid occupation,” Lux reacted, “but I’m not. Now leave, and make sure your ship can’t be tracked back to this system.”
Ahsoka nodded curtly at him. “Thanks for your assistance” she said, her tone measured but with that biting sarcasm she had learned from General Skywalker seeping through, before turning on her heels and striding out of the room.
***
Neither of them had said anything as they left the planet. There was only one thing to say, only one conclusion to draw. And Rex wasn’t ready to voice it, not out loud.
It was only after Ahsoka had set the ship down hidden in one of the mountain ranges outside the inhabited part of Ord Mantell that he spoke up again. “Ahsoka…”
“I know” Ahsoka sighed.
There was a time where that would have surprised him. But after having been on the run for the better part of a year with her, just the two of them, they had gotten to know each other very intimately. There were few things about her that could catch him off guard anymore. They felt each other perfectly, often only needing half a word to understand what the other meant.
Still he forced himself to say it out loud. If not for her benefit, then for his own, to finalise it in his mind.
“We need to split up.”
Ahsoka nodded. There was no surprise in her expression, only pain. “You can’t help your brothers if you keep having to hide me from them” she said seriously. She’d made that point before, and every time Rex had replied that he could work around it. And he did, gladly. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t right.
“And I don’t want to keep dragging you back into the fight” he replied softly.
Ahsoka reached up to put her hand on his cheek, softly stroking the blond scruff that coloured it more often than not these days. “You haven’t” she said softly. “I’ve gone with you of my own volition each time.”
Heart hammering in his chest, Rex put his arms around her and pulled her against him, his forehead settling between her montrals. She was getting so tall these days…
“I know” he whispered. “And I am grateful for it.”
They remained standing like that for a long time, neither willing to let the other go. He knew why she had navigated to Ord Mantell of all places. He had someplace he could go here. He just didn’t want to, not yet.
Ahsoka brushed the tears off his face when they finally broke apart, and he made no movement to stop her. As always, his mind jumped to the very first time she’d seen him cry, and his heart lurched violently.
“I know where the Bad Batch stays” he said. “It’ll only be a couple days’ trekking from here. You can keep the ship, find someplace safe.”
Ahsoka smiled at him through her own tears. “I’m considering Thabeska” she replied. “Perhaps I could work as a mechanic again, people seem to buy that story.”
“Be careful” Rex said.
“Always” Ahsoka smiled, the ghost of a cocky expression she’d inherited from her master.
“Are there Togruta on Thabeska?” he asked. While not quite as rare as Saw’s Lasat mercenary, Togruta’s were uncommon enough that people tended to remember encountering one.
“Are there clones on Ord Mantell?” Ahsoka countered. Rex opened his mouth to protest – he knew that for sure, at least – but she cut him off with a chuckle. “Enough that one more won’t be noticed. But I’ll make sure to buy a new cloak, just in case.” She had outgrown her old one, her montrals raising the hood too high to give her any sort of cover. “Speaking of which –”
She walked to her bunk, rummaging through the storage crate that doubled as a table. Rex followed her, intrigued, which quickly became befuddled as she handed him a heap of fabric. “You’re giving me your old cloak?” It wouldn’t exactly fit him, montral-less as he was.
Ahsoka smiled vaguely. “Try it on.”
Rex did, and to his surprise it wasn’t the Togruta-shaped cloak he remembered vividly; it was a poncho, hooded and tailored to fit both his head and his armour.
“It’s a bit crudely done, sorry” Ahsoka said, eyeing him. “But I thought… I wanted you to have something of me.”
The fabric still smelled like her, and it was intoxicating. But not quite as much as the idea of Ahsoka painstakingly sewing the poncho together, a gift made for him alone.
Clones didn’t often have many possessions of their own, not belonging to any culture that valued such things or navigating any situations where non-combat-related possessions where in any way necessary, and being on the run from the Empire had not been any different in that regard.
Of course this could be seen as a purely practical gift, a disguise he desperately needed if he were to continue on the path he had chosen. But Rex knew Ahsoka better than that. This was her way of begging him to stay safe while they were apart. Of making sure that he would always carry a part of her with him, no matter how far they might be in reality.
The feeling of being cared for like that overwhelmed him, and he was filled with the urge to give her something in return. Unholstering one of his treasured DC-17s, he offered it to her, handle first. “Then you should take this.”
Ahsoka’s eyes grew wide. She knew how much his blasters meant to him. “B-but… Rex, I can’t take this, it’s yours” she sputtered. “They belong together.”
Exactly.
“Then you’d better make sure they come together again soon” Rex said, looking her in the eye as he pulled his hood over his head. “I do want that back, you know.”