Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Awesome cover art by Chocomars

[Image ID: This shows the cover to the fic of a Star Wars Big Bang. Ahsoka in her Rebels outfit is suspended mid-air in the middle of the cover, tinted with a red filter. Rex’s helmet, a white clone trooper helmet with blue Jaig eyes above its visor, is behind her, covered in frost and ice, and it is lightly tinted in blue filter. Jagged ice align the top and bottom of the cover, representing icicles. ‘Rex Quondam, Rex Futurus’ is written in a Star Wars font at the bottom of the cover. The top right of the cover shows the credited names of the Big Bang team, which are ‘Written by: Zarz’, ‘Beta by: Shadowsong16’, and ‘Art by: chocomars’.]

Chapter Text

“Don’t make me regret this.”

Ahsoka punched in the code to release Maul from his imprisonment, but even as the cell hissed open she was already having second thoughts.  Maul was a Sith, utterly untrustworthy and liable to kill her troopers purely for the sake of killing.  Hadn’t she been willing to abandon Coruscant - not only the seat of government, but also the site of the Jedi Temple and home to trillions of innocent people - for the sake of capturing this one zabrak?  Maul had orchestrated a coup to take over an entire sector - how many more people might she be condemning by letting him go?  But it was too late now to put Maul back into the prison, and she didn’t have a hope of figuring out what was going on and getting Rex and the other troopers back to normal without some sort of distraction, so she’d just have to make the best of it.

“You survived,” Maul coughed out.  He clearly knew something had gone wrong, for him to sound so surprised by that, but she didn’t have time to argue with him.  

“I need a diversion, and you’re it.”  She held her lightsaber steady at his neck as she gave him the order.  “I’m giving you one chance to get off this ship and disappear back into the depths of the galaxy, so I suggest you take it.  There are ships on the hanger deck.  Make yourself obvious, get some of the men to follow you without hurting them, and then get on a ship and get out of here.”

“And as soon as I get on that ship, then what?  All batteries fire?  Is this all an elaborate ruse to have me shot while unarmed, as an escaping prisoner?  I’m almost impressed at your ruthlessness.  Still, not very Jedi-like of you, is it?  Tsk, tsk.  You’re falling further away every day.”

Ahsoka felt her temper flare, but desperately wrestled it back under control.  She knew he was just trying to get under her skin; he was a Sith, it was what they did.

Almost normally, she managed to tell him, “I’m their primary target; most of the men will be chasing me and as soon as you’re no longer on board the rest of the men should lose all interest in you.  And if they don’t,” she couldn’t resist the petty urge to add sweetly, “I wouldn’t expect a Jedi to have any trouble evading the fire of a ship this size, especially with the crew in disarray.  Are you really going to tell me you won’t be able to manage?”

She held his gaze for a moment longer, but he didn’t seem to have any further objections.  She dropped her saber from his throat and said, “Go!”

He vanished, and all she could do was pray to the Force she had made the right choice.

---

Maul’s distraction had given her just enough time and space to find the report on Fives and get Rex’s chip out, but then the full force of the 332nd was pursuing them again.  She wondered, briefly, whether Maul had gotten off the ship safely, or whether he was lying dead in a corridor somewhere, but with the Force still crying out with the grief of thousands upon thousands of Jedi dead in an instant, she truly couldn’t bring herself to care.

She and Rex had finally worked their way through the ship to the bridge.  The doors were closed, but as Commander, Rex had the authority to override any lock on the ship.  

They met eyes, nodded, and Rex triggered the doors.  They dove inside in sync, with Ahsoka batting away the blaster bolts headed their direction and Rex hitting the bridge officers with precisely-placed stun blasts.  For just a moment it seemed like it would remain the easy task it ought to be, no different than dozens of similar operations during the war.  But then Jesse’s squad came pounding up behind them and they were trapped between the two groups.  

“Rex!  Get the doors closed again!” she yelled.

“Already on it!” he yelled back.

Two lightsabers were nowhere near enough to keep the shots from two dozen men - ones who were familiar with her style and tactics and had trained with her repeatedly - off of both her and Rex, but what choice did she have?  

Jesse’s furious voice called out, “Commander Rex, you’re in violation of Order 66.  I accuse you of treason against the Grand Army of the Republic.  You’ll be demoted in rank from commander and subject to execution along with the traitor Ahsoka Tano.”

From the tilt of Rex’s helmet she could tell he wasn’t impressed by the threat, but his hands kept working steadily on the door controls even as he muttered back, “Good thing I didn’t much like being a commander anyway.”

The shots kept coming and she resisted the urge to tell Rex to hurry up; it wouldn’t do anything but distract him.  

Finally, finally, the door behind them slid shut, blocking the shots from Jesse’s squad.  Then it was just the troopers in the bridge itself who were left.  Four more blocked shots, and it was over, every trooper down to one of Rex’s stun blasts.

Ahsoka turned off her lightsabers and took a moment to just breathe.  Beside her, Rex holstered his blasters, pulled off his helmet, and did the same.

But their moment of peace couldn’t last long.  Rex went to make sure there was no way any of the controlled troopers could slice the doors back open again, while Ahsoka pulled the stunned bridge crew over to lie stretched out in a corner of the room, rather than the random piles they had fallen in.  

It was as she was checking the last trooper, the very first one Rex had stunned as they entered the room, that she saw it.  When the trooper - Evon, judging by the single earring that he had said made him look “rakish” - had fallen, he had landed directly on top of some of the hyperdrive controls, changing their course and sending them hurtling off through the unknown.  

“Rex, look!” she gasped, trying frantically to figure out how to end their headlong flight.  

Rex heard the panic in her voice and was at her side in an instant.  One glance was all it took for him to recognize their danger, and he practically threw himself at the next instrument panel over.

“Some of the controls aren’t responding,” he added with horror a moment later.  

It didn’t take long to pull up the security camera files from the past hour and see Maul.  He appeared to have mostly been heading towards the hangers like Ahsoka had ordered him to, but she shouldn’t have been surprised to see him take a few brief detours to catch the attention of more of the troopers via large-scale property damage of important ship systems.  

Ahsoka’s heart sank.  Was this her fault?  She had told him to catch the troopers’ attention, but also not to hurt them.  How else had she been expecting Maul to achieve that goal?  At least damage to the ship was still preferable to damage to the innocent, mind-controlled troopers - but only so long as they didn’t end up flying straight through a sun and all dying together.

It took them a long time, far too long of a time, to figure out a work-around and drop them out of hyperspace.  In the end, it was only just barely fast enough, as a planet loomed up in front of the viewport so close that Ahsoka only barely managed to pull the ship up enough to avoid getting irrevocably caught in its gravity well.  

There was no time to breathe, though, as behind them the noise of Jesse’s squad, unsurprisingly still attempting to break onto the bridge, switched from the ineffectual small-arms fire they’d been hearing to the terrifying hiss of a laser-cutter.  

“We can’t hold your brothers off much longer, Rex.”

“I know.”

---

There wasn’t much he could do for the ship now, so Rex stationed himself by the bridge doors.  He had barricaded them as much as possible, but the laser cutter Jesse had found was meant for cutting through the outer plating of ships in case of emergency rescues or for boarding parties.  There was no question they’d eventually break through.  When that happened, he’d just have to see how fast he could snipe them.  The bottleneck would help, but not enough against the relentless onslaught of a few hundred mind-controlled brothers.  

When there was no possible solution, it was time to change the parameters of the equation.    

“That planet we almost crashed into - does it have a breathable atmosphere?” Rex asked urgently.  “Can you put us down?  We might have better luck getting away from them on foot than while we’re all trapped on board here.”

Even as he said it, Rex wasn’t sure if that was actually true, but there was no way they’d last much longer if they tried to stay here.  And even if he and Ahsoka didn’t survive, better that his brothers were stranded on some distant planet than able to return to the new Empire and spend the rest of their lives hunting down any surviving Jedi.

“It’s Ilum!” Ahsoka called, from where she was bent over one of the computers, a touch of hope in her eyes.  “Cold, but maybe we can take refuge in the Temple there.  I’ll do my best to land this thing.”

Between Maul’s assault and the unplanned hyperspace jump, the ship had taken significant damage.  From the moment they entered the atmosphere it was clear to Rex that this would be no proper, planned landing.  Metal shrieked and groaned, steam hissed, and Rex could see through the viewports how massive chunks of the ship just fell off and dropped away.  Through it all, Ahsoka held onto the ship’s controls with a durasteel grip, face creased in desperate concentration as she threw all Anakin’s training in both the Force and flying into getting them down on the ground in one piece.

For one terrifying minute Rex was sure they weren’t going to make it.  A massive wall of ice jutted up in front of the front viewscreen, and Rex was absolutely certain the ship’s momentum would drive them right into it, crushing the ship like a tin can.  But Ahsoka dropped them down onto the rocks below.  Meters of ice and snow boiled off in an instant from the heat of their entry into the atmosphere, and the rocks gouged their way into the maintenance levels at the base of the ship.  But that bled off just enough of their momentum that hitting the wall of ice merely knocked them off their feet, rather than killing them all instantly.  

“Quick!” Ahsoka called, jumping to the top of the ship’s control panels.  “Before they recover!”  

A few quick slashes of her lightsabers were enough to carve through the transparisteel front viewport, and then Ahsoka was tugging Rex up and out of the hole and onto the ice plateau they had run into.

Behind them, they heard the door to the bridge finally give way.

“Run!” Rex called, and they both did.

They were mostly uninjured, while many of the brothers pouring out of the crashed ship behind them were hurt in one way or another, whether not having expected the rough landing or still disoriented from a stun bolt.  That didn’t help any, though, when the chip prevented them from noticing or caring.  

It wasn’t long before the first blaster bolts came flying towards them.  

Ahsoka had her sabers out and ready, and batted away any bolts that got too close, but the quick glance Rex threw behind them showed a massive wave of blue and orange painted troopers marching steadily towards them, Jesse’s cog-painted helmet in the lead.

“If the Temple you mentioned is anywhere around here, now would be a great time to figure out where,” he gritted out, sending a couple of bolts from his blasters back towards the advancing brothers.  He wasn’t aiming to hit, just warn off, but it was like the troopers didn’t even notice as bolts hit just centimeters in front of their boots.

“It isn’t,” Ahsoka returned unhappily.  “I had to land the ship fast.  We’re on pretty much the exact opposite side of the planet.”

“Any other ideas, then?  Otherwise we need to decide how we’re making our last stand.”

It was blunt, but so was their situation.  Even if Ahsoka was finally willing to acknowledge that they had no hope of saving both themselves and the chipped brothers, they were out of options.  They were on a flat plateau, now.  No handy snow slopes to trigger an avalanche from, no obvious weak points to collapse underneath his brothers, and definitely nowhere to hide that would conceal them for more than a minute or two.

“Actually…” Ahsoka began, her eyes going distant as she listened to the Force, “I think I do have a plan.  Keep them off me as long as you can.  Ideally stunners, but really any shots that aren’t instantly fatal.”

Rex had no idea what she was thinking, but he had long experience following strange Jedi orders.  He planted himself between her and his brothers, and started shooting.  

The range was still too far for stunners, but given the way his brothers were utterly ignoring risks to themselves, he could pick his targets.  One shot, and Jesse’s leg collapsed under him and he fell.  Another, and so did Zeer.  

Blasts started coming back towards him as the approaching troopers realized he was in range and took firing positions.  Most were off-target, and for just a moment Rex wished he could tease his brothers about how badly the chips had affected their aim.  There were a lot of shots coming towards him and Ahsoka, though, and he didn’t have a lightsaber to deflect them.  All he could do was stand in front of Ahsoka’s barely armored body and hope his own armor was up to the task of absorbing the blasts.

One shot skimmed off the edge of his helmet.  Three centimeters to the left and it would have gone straight through his brain, but as it was, it just shot off the light from the side of his helmet.  

Another shot hit his right arm, and Rex barely managed to hold onto his blaster.  A third shot hit his thigh, and Rex focused on staying upright and dropping more of his brothers in their tracks.

A fourth shot scorched straight through his armor just above his hip, and Rex fell to his knees.  He wasn’t going to last much longer as a shield for whatever Ahsoka was doing.

Luckily he didn’t need to.

Behind him Ahsoka raised her voice in a wordless cry, and suddenly every brother in the advancing army fell to his knees.  Rex stared in awe, and then horror, as suddenly hundreds of massive crystals jutted up from the snow on every side of his brothers.  

At first it looked like the crystals were moving, but a moment later Rex realized they were actually growing - and then, a moment later, as he pushed himself back to wavering feet through sheer terror, growing directly over all of his fallen brothers.

“Ahsoka!” he yelled.

He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the crystals entombing his brothers, but he felt her step up beside him and carefully ease him back down to a seat in the snow.

“Peace, Rex,” she said, suddenly sounding very old.  “The kyber crystals of Ilum won’t hurt them.”

“That’s not what it looks like!”

“Have you ever wondered where someone got the very first idea for carbonite freezing?  It was here.  It started with Jedi who were too badly injured to survive transport back to Coruscant, but it’s also been used a time or two as a safe and humane way to contain captured darksiders.  The crystals will put them to sleep, a form of stasis actually, and keep them that way safely for as long as necessary.  Over time, the kyber will actually heal them - of their injuries, definitely, but I think the Force is also saying it’ll eventually break the chip’s control, too.”

“You’re sure?” Rex breathed, hope filling his chest for the first time in far too long.  “How long will it take?  A couple days?  A week or two?  Then we can get everyone back on the ship and see what we can do about taking down Palpatine!”

“No, Rex,” Ahsoka winced.  “I’m sorry.  Not days or weeks.  This isn’t bacta.  It’s going to be years, at least.”

Rex snapped his head over to her, eyes wide.  It would take as long or longer for his brothers to heal than the entire war?!

“Depending on what’s happening in the rest of the galaxy, maybe I can get another ship that can take all your brothers to a proper medcenter and get their chips removed that way, but Rex, I felt most of the Jedi across the galaxy die.  I don’t know what Palpatine has planned, but honestly, this is probably the safest place for your brothers right now.”

Rex hesitated for a long moment, then nodded.  He didn’t like it, hated it in fact, but with chips in the minds of every clone across the galaxy, all activated by Palpatine and with the sole purpose of killing the Jedi to grant Palpatine absolute power and control over the galaxy, no medcenter in the Republic  –  or rather, whatever was left of it at this point  –  would be willing to help free his brothers of those chips.  Outside of it, maybe, but even with all the credits in the galaxy there wouldn’t be many back-alley options capable of dealing with several hundred clones at once.  And that was even if all his brothers could survive the trip, and based on how badly some of them had been looking after the crash, Rex doubted it.

Rex pushed himself out of the snow.  The cold wasn’t good for him, he knew, even if it felt soothing on his blaster wounds.  Drawing on a dozen years of brutal training and combat experience, he started hobbling forward, needing to see his brothers with his own eyes.

Jesse was the first one he came to.  Rex’s blaster bolt had knocked him down, and now Jesse lay on his back, wholly encased in a several centimeter thick layer of kyber.  His face was covered by his helmet, but somehow his body language, even through the distortions of the crystal, looked relaxed.  He looked like himself again, not whoever the chip had turned him into.  

Between the crystal and the armor there was no way to tell by looking whether he was still alive or not.  Rex laid his hands on the kyber over Jesse’s heart, and pulled up the life-signs reader on his HUD, hoping desperately for some sort of sign.  

He felt Ahsoka come up beside him, and a moment later one hand wrapped over where his were laying on the kyber, and the other came to rest on his helmet.  Ahsoka closed her eyes, and as she did, his HUD finally latched onto the signal coming from Jesse’s armor.  

“Alive,” flashed across his screen in bright green, and all the breath left Rex’s lungs in a rush.  “Pulse: 1 bpm.  Status: unconscious.  Temperature: 9°C and stable.  Armor has entered power saving mode.”  Jesse was alive.  It wasn’t as much info as Rex would have liked, or as a medic’s HUD would have given, but it was enough to corroborate what Ahsoka had said.  

Ahsoka pulled her hand away, and instantly the signal from Jesse’s armor was lost.  She seemed to understand what he needed, though, as she offered him her shoulder to lean on.

He conceded to himself that he really did need the support, and let her help him around toward the next trooper.  The crystals here were a little more opaque, but he eventually picked out enough clues to determine the trooper was Ridge, and with Ahsoka’s assistance his helmet managed to pick up the signal from Ridge’s armor as well.  The readings were the same: alive, unconscious, slow pulse and low body temperature, but stable.  

He dragged her to check three more troopers before he finally conceded they’d all likely be the same.  

As he did, the manic energy that had possessed him left him in a rush, and he leaned most of his weight on a nearby crystal outcropping.

“So what now?” Rex asked, exhaustion and blood loss seeping through every part of him.  “We need to get off Ilum, for one.  Given our landing, I’m guessing the ship won’t actually fly again, but we ought to be able to find a working shuttle on board.  And maybe a bit of bacta, too.”  He shifted against the crystal and winced as his injuries pulled.  “Then maybe see what other Jedi we can find?  You can’t have been the only one who escaped.  And maybe more of my brothers?  Now we have some idea what’s happened, so if we’re prepared for them, and can find a meddroid or two….”

But Ahsoka was already shaking her head.  “I’m sorry, Rex,” she said, looking devastated.  “But we can’t stay together.  We’ll be too noticeable as a pair.”

Rex stared at her in shock.  Separate?  After all of this, with Rex’s brothers mind controlled and Ahsoka’s family dead or dying, they couldn’t even join forces together against whatever evils Palpatine had just unleashed?  And would they really be that noticeable together?  Ahsoka’s return had never been formally announced; only Skywalker, Kenobi, and a handful of other Jedi had even known she was back and traveling with a clone battalion.  No one else would think to look for her with a clone.  And Rex’s face was recognizable, yes, but there were plenty of cultures, and even entire species, who routinely covered their faces for one reason or another.  Dress up in one of those traditional outfits and it would take a pretty invasive ID check for someone to realize he was actually a clone.

Rex sighed.  It might not seem logical, but he also had three years of trusting that when a Jedi gave you advice, you took it.  Even without a full-fledged vision, if Ahsoka felt like it was a bad idea for them to stay together, he’d believe her.  

So what did that mean for him?  Go back to the ship, hope there was enough bacta to take care of his injuries - they hadn’t been well supplied even before they had had to patch up the dozens of troopers injured while capturing Maul - and then wander the galaxy alone, hoping to stumble upon some of his brothers to catch and drag to a medcenter?  Maybe.  But realistically, alone, he wouldn’t get very far.  

And as pressing as the weight of the rest of his brothers felt, he had a more immediate responsibility.  His promotion to Commander might have just been a cover for the fact that an entire battalion was being put under the leadership of someone who had officially resigned her place in the chain of command, but that didn’t absolve him of responsibility.  These were his men, here in the kyber, and so long as they still lived they were his responsibility.  

Decision made, he turned back to Ahsoka.  “What you did to them, putting them in kyber - can you do that again, to me?  If I can’t stay with you, then let me stay here and protect them.  If nothing else, I can be here for them when they wake up and have to come to terms with what happened.”

Ahsoka looked even more stricken at his request, but she finally nodded.  “Yes.  Yes, I can put you to sleep with the rest of them, and for what it’s worth, the Force agrees that you should be here with them.”

Decision made, Rex didn’t want to keep either of them out in the cold any longer than necessary.  “Where should I be?”

Ahsoka pointed him to a spot next to Jesse, and helped him limp over there.  He hesitated a moment, then took off his helmet.  It wasn’t like it was going to matter in a few moments, and he wanted to say goodbye to her without plastoid in the way.  

“Thank you for everything,” he said quietly, knowing she’d feel how much he meant it in the Force.  “It’s been an honor to serve with you.”

“You taught me more than I can ever repay,” she answered, stepping in to give him one last hug.  He returned it, clutching her tightly.  “I’ll miss you, but I’ll see you again one day, Rex.”

Then she stepped back, still looking towards him but eyes starting to go unfocused as she concentrated on the Force.

Rex wondered for a moment what it would feel like.  Terrifying, as he was entombed alive?  But as the crystals started to grow up around him, all he felt was peace, and warmth, and a lack of pain.  He felt like the Force was calling him home.  

Ahsoka’s eyes refocused on him one last time as she smiled.  Rex smiled back, and that was the last thing he saw as he drifted off to sleep.

Awesome chapter art by Chocomars

[Image ID: This a scene out of the end of Chapter Two of "Rex Quondam, Rex Futurus." Rex is standing at the left part of the page. He’s smiling, accepting, holding onto his helmet as crystal slowly climbs around him. There are two vertical rectangular comic panels on the right side of the page; the top panel shows Ahsoka, concentrating on using the Force as she lets crystal climb around Rex, her face displaying anguish and resignation. The bottom panel shows Rex’s head in a profile pose, still smiling at Ahsoka as more crystal climbs on each side of his head. They’re both in a snowy cave, icicles hanging above their heads while the deeper part of the cave is dark.]

Chapter Text

Ahsoka kept her eyes fixed on Rex’s as the kyber grew up around him.  There wasn’t a hint of pain or fear on his face any longer, just peace, and that gentle smile he’d always had for her.  She kept watching, doing her best to smile back, as finally his eyes closed and a moment later the kyber covered him completely.  Only then did she let the tears escape.

Much as she wanted to sink down to her knees and bawl like a crecheling, in the middle of an icefield with temperatures low enough the tears would freeze on her face was not the time to do that.  So Ahsoka walked forward, finally, steps unsteady, and reached her hand out to rest on the kyber over Rex’s heart.  In the Force she could still feel him, mind calm and peaceful as he slept.  That would have to be enough.

“Goodbye, Rex,” she whispered.  “I’ll come back for all of you once it’s safe.”

Then she turned and walked away.

As she approached the ship, she shuddered at just how narrow their escape had been.  Though she had hardly done a headcount as they were being chased, she was pretty sure she would have felt it if there had been deaths in the crash, and she hadn’t.  Looking at the remains of the ship, though, the only reason it hadn’t been a bloodbath was that all the controlled troopers had been attempting to break their way into the bridge at the very highest point of the ship.  Had they been much deeper in the ship they would have been crushed instantly.

Ahsoka forced her rapidly stiffening limbs into action, and jumped back through the hole she had made to get out of the ship and started to see what she could salvage.  The ship retained at least a little heat, and the cold weather gear she eventually located helped even more.  She also finally found a shuttle that should still fly, and, even better, she could fly alone.  Her droids - and the entire medbay where she had freed Rex from his chip - were completely unsalvageable.  Maybe Anakin could have - but no, she wasn’t going to go there.

Getting the shuttle out was even more of a challenge, but lightsabers made an excellent impression on recalcitrant doors.  Finally, there was only one thing left to do.  

Three hours of work in the only remaining accessible engine room, and she was done.

She lifted off, and set the shuttle to hover five hundred meters above the wreck, then carefully pressed the detonator.  The Tribunal imploded.  

It had taken some thought to figure out a method of destruction that wouldn’t melt all the ice sheets for a dozen kilometers around, yet would still look plausibly accidental.  A few weeks, or maybe even just days, of snowfall, and Rex and the rest of the 332nd would be completely buried and invisible to a casual search.  With them hidden and only the handful of twisted metal ship remains visible, if anyone came looking for them, they’d assume the ship - and everyone on her - had been completely destroyed in the crash and would hopefully never think to investigate further.

Ahsoka programmed the hyperdrive to take her back towards the Core, and finally let herself grieve.

---

The next few months were some of the hardest Ahsoka had ever lived through, but she had grown up with a dozen years of the best education in the galaxy and another three of wartime survival, and above all, she refused to give up.

First step was trading the military shuttle for one a little less noticeable.  Then weeks of skulking around listening to newscasts and figuring out just how the galaxy had changed.  

And then, action.

Not everyone was willing to believe the Jedi had suddenly turned traitors, and it wasn’t long before some quiet freedom trails began to spring up, as people worked to smuggle children, families, and the handful of surviving Jedi to safer locations.  Ahsoka’s ship was a valuable asset to the growing networks, and so, too, was her ability to help Force sensitive children - both those who had escaped from the Temple and those whose parents had never given them to the Temple - stay calm and quiet and learn to hide their abilities.  

And as she traveled she quietly started talking to mechanics and healers.  It took a couple months, but finally one of her contacts was able to get her a second-hand meddroid, and then it was finally time to start working on her second goal: the clones.

It didn’t take long to find a town that was being inspected.  The official rationale was that rebellious terrorists had threatened mayhem, but given that Ahsoka wasn’t aware of a single Rebel cell on the entire planet, she was pretty sure it was just an excuse for a show of force.  Hopefully her next actions wouldn’t bring down too much retribution on the innocent locals’ heads.  

She waited until the commanding officer ordered his stormtroopers to split up and quarter the city, and then she followed a squad of four down an alleyway.  

Even with their features completely covered in the new stormtrooper armor, she’d recognize the clones’ distinctive stride anywhere.  

She didn’t dare use her lightsabers, but she didn’t need to.  The clones were good, or rather had been good, but the chip’s control suppressed much of their tactical thinking.  They weren’t expecting an ambush.  

Ahsoka slammed two of their heads together with the Force hard enough to knock them out even with the protection of their helmets, then dropped down between the remaining two.  A high kick she had learned from Marshal Commander Cody was enough to take out the third trooper.  The fourth was just starting to raise his blaster.  She stepped forward, far too close for him to use it, grabbed his right arm with one hand and pressed the blaster in her other hand into the gap between two of his armor plates and pulled the trigger.

The stun blast hit him full force and the trooper fell instantly.

Ahsoka looked around at the bodies scattered around her feet and sighed.  It was nice to know her military skills hadn’t deserted her after months of hiding in shadows, but the one catch with getting them all carefully knocked out was that now she had to actually get them out of here and back to her ship - without bringing the rest of the Imperial Army down on top of her.

It wasn’t an easy process, involving faking the clones’ voices over the comm channel, stripping them of their outer armor and dumping it in the river, and finally a lot of hauling and swearing and discreet assistance with the Force, but she eventually got all four loaded onto her ship and the ship itself hidden behind a moon half the system away where hopefully no one would ever think to look.  

She gave each of the clones a second dose of sedative - it would be a very bad idea for them to wake up now - and lugged the first one onto the makeshift medbay table.  “Okay, One-bee, do your thing.”

It took her help for the droid to find the chip in the clone’s head, but hopefully after doing a couple of these it would get easier.  

The droid eventually got the chip extracted, sutured up the hole, and covered the entire spot with bacta.  Then it was just a matter of waiting.  

Ahsoka paced restlessly, periodically wandering back to check on the other three troopers, but they were still out and would be for hours yet.  

Then the clone stirred, and she rushed back.  She made sure her lightsaber wasn’t immediately visible, just in case, and waited.  He looked vaguely familiar, but then, he was a clone.  With no obvious tattoos, piercings, or unique haircut, and with her Force abilities now carefully suppressed whenever she wasn’t actively using them, it was impossible to tell whether she’d met him before or not.  

The clone opened his eyes slowly, then sat up in a sudden rush, panic rushing into his face and voice.  “Who are you?  Why have you kidnapped me?  I am Republic property and I demand that you return me to Kamino at once!”

As he spoke, Ahsoka suddenly realized what must have happened - a young clone, too young to have joined the GAR prior to Order 66, whose last memory before the chip took him over would have been Kamino.  

“What’s your name, trooper?” she asked carefully, trying not to crowd him.

“CT-9704,” he answered suspiciously.  

“How do you feel about the Jedi?”

His suspicion hadn’t lessened at all; if anything it was getting worse.  Still, she could hardly blame him, and it was a better sign than the chip’s unnatural blankness.

“The Jedi are our commanding officers and are to be obeyed without question.”

All the breath left Ahsoka in a single rush.  She reached out a hand and levitated her lightsaber up between them and carefully turned it on so he could see the blue blade.  

“I am a Jedi.  Commander Ahsoka Tano.  I haven’t kidnapped you off of Kamino; it’s okay for you to be here.”  Ahsoka winced internally at the lies.  Being an undercover agent in the growing rebellion had certainly taught her a lot about lying believably, but she wasn’t supposed to be using that skill against an ally.  But trying to explain her own status as a former but not Fallen Jedi - or that she had kidnapped him, just not from Kamino - would probably go easier if he at least trusted her enough not to try shooting her the moment her back was turned.  

Indeed, it seemed to have worked.  CT-9704 had instantly dropped his suspicion.

“I’m ready to serve with whatever you need, sir!” he said, snapping to attention.  

She returned his salute, second-nature now after years of war.  “At ease, CT-9704.”  He settled back down, but only into the poised readiness that it also took months to assure troopers they didn’t have to hold themselves in every moment a Jedi was in a ten-klick radius.  “Actually, is there anything else you’d like me to call you?  If you truly haven’t picked a name yet I’m happy to keep calling you CT-9704 or whatever else you like, but if you do have a name, it’s completely okay to use it.  I promise you won’t get in trouble.”

He hesitated a moment, but finally offered tentatively, “Some of my squadmates liked to call me Arch?”

Ahsoka’s eyes widened instantly at the name.  Maybe it was a coincidence.  It wasn’t like there hadn’t been plenty of repeated names in an army millions strong.  But his designation had rung a faint bell.  And looking at his face again….  She could throw her connection to the Force wide enough open to sense his unique Force signature, but just the thought made her skin crawl.  She had done that exactly once since the Republic fell, and she never wanted to feel that overwhelming pain and Darkness so clearly again.  But she didn’t need to; there was another very simple and unambiguous method to be certain.

“Arch,” she asked, voice quavering very faintly, “would you mind rolling up your right sleeve for me, please?”

“Of course, Sir,” he answered, the hint of confusion probably more about her phrasing it as a polite request instead of a direct order, rather than the actual direction itself.

As he rolled his sleeve up just past his elbow, he and Ahsoka stared in equal shock at the arching patterns thus revealed.  Arch, Ahsoka knew, must be surprised at discovering he had a tattoo without any memory of having gotten it.  Ahsoka, however, did know he had a tattoo - she had met him back at the 501st barracks the night after he got it, two weeks after he had joined the 501st and less than two months before she had left it.  

He wasn’t some shiny who had never left Kamino before Order 66 was given.  He was a veteran member of the 501st who had almost certainly been on Coruscant with Anakin when the Order was given.  He had served with her, fought with her.  He wouldn’t have just forgotten her.  

She took a deep breath.  “Arch, I think I have a whole lot of things to explain to you.  But maybe not on an empty stomach.  Would you like some food first?”

She was already moving even before she heard his agreement.  The troopers were always hungry.  They ate at least double the rations of baseline humans, and probably could have used even more except that Kaminoans abhorred the thought of their supersoldiers getting enough calories to have even the minimum of healthy levels of fat on them.  And once they were out in the field, the Senate had always complained about how much food they had to keep sending out.  Judging by the glance at Arch’s arm, the Empire had cared even less about their troopers’ wellbeing.  

It made a useful excuse.

She got out of the makeshift surgery room, made sure the door was firmly closed behind her, and then tried desperately not to cry.  What had happened?   It wasn’t supposed to be like this!  She’d free them, and they’d all come out of it just like Rex had - back to normal and ready to rejoin the fight.

She made herself move towards the ship’s kitchenette and tried to think through the process while she reheated some ration packs.  Arch had lost a year or more of memories.  Was there any chance that Rex had, too, and neither of them had happened to notice in the brief time before they landed on Ilum?  It wasn’t like they had had a lot of time to trade reminiscences!  And a year’s worth of memories for Rex would still put him in the middle of the war and able to remember her.

The thought was a terrifying one, not least because of what it would say about her as a friend to have not noticed something that large, but finally she rejected that theory.  They hadn’t had much time, but Rex almost certainly would have mentioned it if she had suddenly appeared a year older in the blink of an eye.  And he hadn’t shown any surprise at what had been going on all over the ship - he clearly remembered Order 66.

But if not that, then what?

While the food heated she checked on the three other troopers and made sure they were still out cold.  

They were still thoroughly unconscious, so weren’t able to provide her a distraction from further speculation.  Could the missing memories have actually been a gift from the Force?  She had heard that the 501st had been the ones to march on the Temple at Darth Vader’s orders and “Purge the traitorous Jedi from their den of depravity and corruption, which has been for too long a rot right at the heart of the galaxy!”  Ugh.  Still, it was better to groan at the Emperor's purple prose than let herself remember the massacre that those words actually referred to.  

She wondered if the 501st had killed Anakin before they had marched on the Temple, or whether he had died defending the Temple and the younglings with his last breath.

No, Ahsoka, not the time to go there!

Perhaps the Force had elected to protect Arch from such horrific memories?  Knowing how much harm you had been forced to do against your will might easily break someone.  Perhaps the lost memories were therefore intended as a kindness?

Yet even as she wanted that explanation to be true she knew it wasn’t.  There is no ignorance, there is the Force.   The Force might comfort someone in such a situation, but it wouldn’t simply make those memories disappear.  Much less be so imprecise about it.  

What was different about Arch’s surgery than Rex’s?  She had been less desperate this time, certainly, but despite what the trashy Jedi holonovels said (which she would never, even under pain of torture, admit she sometimes kind of enjoyed), desperation didn’t actually help you use the Force, and it certainly didn’t help you use the Force more precisely.

The length of time he had been under the chip’s control?  His age?  

The timer on the heating unit dinged, shaking her out of her thoughts.  Time to give Arch the explanation he deserved.

She got Arch sitting down, eating his food, and then explained.  All of it, or as nearly as she could manage.  Her resignation from the Order, the mission to Mandalore, Maul, the Order, the chips, Rex, leaving Rex, the Empire, and finally, Arch himself.  That she knew of him from the 501st.  What she knew about him.  That somehow something had happened to cause him to lose over a year’s worth of memories.  

She wouldn’t tell him about Ilum, only that the other troopers were safe.  Nor would she give him any specifics about her work fighting against the Empire.  Some secrets weren’t hers to tell.  But she wouldn’t hold back anything else.

When her explanation finally petered out, Arch simply looked at her and said very seriously, “Thank you for explaining, Commander.  What are your orders?”

For a moment she was suddenly, irrationally furious.  She wanted him to rage, to cry, to yell at her.  Something, anything except look at her like she somehow had all the answers!  But he was Kaminoan raised.  Judging by his brothers (and himself, in that time he currently didn’t remember), it would be months before he’d become comfortable allowing a commanding officer to see his emotions.  Probably weeks before he’d even admit to himself that he had those emotions.  Ahsoka wouldn’t do him the discourtesy of trying to push him through that process faster than he was comfortable with, simply out of a desire to have a proper fight with someone.  

Besides, for all her attempts at explaining, Arch seemed to be convinced that because she could use the Force she still qualified as a Jedi.  Maybe it was Kamino, not properly explaining the difference between a Force sensitive and a member of the Jedi Order, or maybe he was just desperate enough for a commanding officer to ignore the finer details.

Either way, she needed to do her best to live up to his expectations, and that meant managing her emotions rather than letting them manage her.  

Arch sat there, still looking at her expectantly.  Right.  Orders.

“Let’s take a look at your brothers.”

The three other clones were still lying there, sedated.  Without his memories, Arch didn’t recognize any of them, and she wasn’t ready to strip search them on the chance that there were other identifying tattoos hiding under their blacks.  

“We have a choice now, Arch.  I can either try to get another chip out, potentially taking some memories as well, or we leave the chips in.  They probably won’t be able to identify me, so maybe we can drop them somewhere they’ll eventually be found.  As the ranking officer, I can make this decision if you want me to, but they’re your brothers, and it was your memories I messed with, so it seems like you ought to have a say, too.”

Arch stood staring at them for a long moment, but finally turned back to her and said, “We were made for the Jedi.  To be ordered to kill them - you - instead?  Any risk is worth being free of that.”

She nodded, and together they manhandled the next brother onto the surgical table.  

The wait was somehow even more nerve-wracking this time around, maybe because now she knew just how much could go wrong.  

Finally, finally, the sedative started wearing off and Ahsoka and Arch were both watching with bated breath as their patient’s eyes opened.  

“Hello,” Ahsoka ventured after a long moment of silence.  “Welcome back.  What do you remember?”

There was no response at all.  

It took most of an hour and a rather more invasive Force scan than she’d have preferred, but finally Ahsoka couldn’t avoid the conclusion any longer: their patient’s mind was gone.  

He would eat, if food was placed in his hand.  He would sit, stand, and even walk if given a clear, direct order.  At some point Arch took him to the fresher and Ahsoka decided not to ask exactly how much help he did or didn’t need.  But he wouldn’t talk, and as far as Ahsoka could tell he wasn’t even thinking.  

The surgery didn’t actually kill him, but in pretty much every other respect it was an abject failure.  

What was different than what she did with Rex?

Oh.

She had been so careful.  She had searched and searched until she had finally gotten ahold of a proper medical droid.  But beggars couldn’t be choosers, and it was a trauma-specialist droid rather than one dedicated to brain surgery.  She hadn’t figured that would make a difference - she had done the operation on Rex with astromechs, for Force’s sake!

But she had also had a Kaminoan-designed surgery tube to do the actual chip removal.  Perhaps equally important, R7 had been her droid for years.  Anakin had never really cared about droids as individuals other than R2-D2 and maybe C-3P0.  But he also wasn’t about to let any of his people go into battle with substandard droids.  Add to that his pure pleasure at tinkering, and it seemed like every week R7 would disappear for a few hours and reappear with yet another upgrade or new set of programs.  

Programming an astromech droid with brain surgery subroutines more advanced than even the average purpose-built medical droid was absolutely something Anakin Skywalker would have done.  

But R7 and the surgical tube were both so much scrap now, far beyond even Anakin’s ability to extract usable data from.  Maybe this droid could improve, given time and practice, but how many clones was she willing to sacrifice for it to gain that experience?

She had been really, really hoping not to resort to this solution again, but it looked like she was out of other options.  

‘So, Arch,” she started, once he and his brother had reappeared from the fresher, “I told you that I left Rex and the 332nd somewhere safe.  I think it’s time I gave you the rest of that story.”

Less than an hour later they were on their way to Ilum.

---

Between her and Arch it wasn’t hard to get the two still-unconscious troopers leaned up against the kyber crystals encasing the 332nd, and their walking, nameless brother directed to stand between them.  (Ahsoka hated not having a name to refer to him, even in her own mind, but names were precious among the clones.  Giving a new name to someone without their consent, without any way to even find out whether they had had some other name before, was not something she’d ever willingly do.)

With the three of them arranged, she looked over at Arch.  He hesitated, and she waited patiently.  Finally he asked, “Do you think he’ll regain his memories?”

It was a fair question.  

Ahsoka lowered her shields, just slightly, and then a bit further when the expected pain in the Force seemed a little easier to bear here than when she was closer to the Core.  

“Yes,” she said finally.  “I think, eventually, he will.”

“Then…, then can I stay, too?”  Arch’s voice was tentative.

Ahsoka gave a reluctant nod.  She had missed traveling with someone else to talk to, missed that desperately.  But Imperial inspections were getting more thorough by the day.  If she had been traveling with Rex she would have been caught multiple times already, and Rex was as well-trained as they came.  For all that she wished Arch had asked to stay with her, it was for the best that she didn’t have to summon the strength to refuse him, and he’d be far safer here with his other brothers and Rex than wandering the galaxy alone.  And here he’d have the chance to recover his memories, recover from the trauma of the failed surgery.  Arch deserved the chance to heal.  One day she’d see him again.

Ahsoka gave him a last good-bye, then pulled the Force around the four clones.  

Three minutes later it was done, and she walked away leaving four new crystals behind her.

---

That raid marked the turning point.  It had been disheartening, at first, to realize she couldn’t free all the troopers immediately, but this setback didn’t mean they couldn’t be freed at all, it just meant that as soon as she had a few captured Ahsoka would set course for Ilum to let the kyber heal them.  

And once she had that realization, it was clear the Force was with her in her efforts.  Stormtroopers were everywhere, it seemed, but the clones never got any harder to nab.  She started small, just a squad here and a squad there.  As her confidence grew, so, too, did her targets.  The other members of the growing rebellion didn’t always understand her quest, but they were willing to help out  –  especially when it meant fewer soldiers in the Imperial Army without having to resort to assassination and mass murder.  A few times Ahsoka even managed to sneak into Imperial bases at night and fill entire bunkrooms with sleeping gas, disappearing into the night leaving only the new, willing recruits behind.

On a couple of occasions, Ahsoka even stumbled upon free clones in her journeys.  The Bad Batch had been quite an experience.  After a dozen chipped clones and some valuable intel were jointly liberated from a critical command post, and the command post itself was blown up behind them, they had had a moment to stop for introductions.  When Ahsoka had realized Echo was with them, Echo, they had both burst into tears.  

Rex had given her the short version of Echo’s survival and rescue as he had been catching her up on the doings of the 501st on their way to Mandalore, but it was nothing compared to actually getting to see Echo again in person.  

They spent a few hours catching up, and Ahsoka offered to bring Echo along to Ilum with her and the sedated troopers to see Rex again, but the Bad Batch had their own time-sensitive missions to continue, so they reluctantly said farewell, though not without sharing comm codes and promising to keep each other updated as much as was safe.  

That turned out to be more valuable than any of them realized.  Seven months and several hundred rescued troopers later, Ahsoka was half-way through the delivery of a Force sensitive child to a (hopefully safer) rebel base when her comm lit up with the simple message, “Echo needs you.  Come as quickly as you can,” plus a handful of coordinates.  

Ahsoka would not abandon a child for anything, but she did complete the rest of that mission in record time and push her ship to the absolute limits to meet the Bad Batch.  

When she arrived, Tech met her outside the ship.  “It’s bad, and getting worse.”

“Tell me.”

As they walked inside, Ahsoka finally caught sight of Echo lying on one of the bunks, even gaunter and paler than he had been before.  He cracked one eye open as she walked over, and gave her the ghost of a smile.  Ahsoka rushed forward, then made herself slow and take Echo’s flesh hand as gently as she could in both of hers.  “What happened?”

Awesome chapter art by Chocomars

[Image ID: This is a scene out of the end of Chapter Three of "Rex Quondam, Rex Futurus." Ahsoka is wearing a poncho and the bottom part of her outfit reveals it’s from The Untold Tales outfit. Echo is in his blacks. Echo is lying on his bunk, looking gaunt and sick with two pillows propped up behind his head as the blanket is pulled to his chest. He’s smiling wanly at Ahsoka, who’s sitting at the edge of the mattress as she holds onto his flesh left hand with both of hers. She’s smiling softly at Echo, and they’re both dappled in sunlight. There is a side table beside Echo’s bunk with a glass of water on it..]

“Nothing new,” Echo said with a pained but sincere smile.  “Just me outliving my warranty by a few too many years.  I just… just wanted the chance to say good-bye.”

“Good-bye?” Ahsoka repeated incredulously.  “But what’s wrong?  Can’t we at least try to fix it?  I have connections with Senator Organa now….”

Tech came up beside her and ran a scanner over Echo, grimacing at the results.  “It’s the prosthetics.  I’ve done my best to keep Echo’s arm and legs functional, but for all my knowledge I’m not a neurosurgeon.  If we had a Techno Union prosthetic specialist here, who actually understood all the connections they wired into Echo’s brain and nervous system, maybe they could fix whatever’s been degrading and causing the problems.  Or maybe it’s simply that the imbeciles who designed the set-up were so short-sighted that they didn’t bother making hardware designed to last more than a few years.  Either way,” Tech sighed, and Ahsoka was reminded yet again how young all the clones truly were, “the implants are breaking down in a way that’s doing lethal damage to Echo’s bodily systems, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Tech,” Echo said, voice faint but still with a hint of the command he had learned as an ARC trooper, “you’ve done absolutely everything you could, and if it’s my time, well, it’s still years more than I ever thought I’d get.  Don’t blame yourself because of something someone else did to me.”

“So that’s why we asked you.”  Ahsoka startled as she realized Hunter had come up behind her without her realizing, Omega peering sadly over his shoulder.  “You mentioned what you’ve been doing for the regs on Ilum.  Would that save Echo?”

Ahsoka felt a sudden burst of hope at his words.  Echo didn’t deserve to go like this.  She didn’t have any great skill in Force healing herself, and Senator Organa’s connections probably wouldn’t extend as far as finding a Techno Union prosthetic specialist, much less one they could trust to actually help Echo.  But maybe there was another way.

“Hunter,” Echo answered, expression fond but with a hint of exasperation, even as his voice weakened further, “the problem’s the implants.  I’ve seen Jedi Healers using the Force to heal injuries, but rewiring pieces of metal in my skull?  It’s not going to happen and it’s not worth getting any of our hopes up.”

“And yet the inhibitor chips in the regs are just pieces of metal inside their skulls, and Commander Tano seems to think those will get fixed.  There’s no reason not to try all options,” Tech said.

“Well, Commander?” Echo asked, looking up at her with unshakeable trust.

“‘With the Force all things are possible,’” she quoted softly.  This was Echo’s decision, and after so many years of other people taking the clones’ choices away from them, the last thing she wanted was to do that herself by being too pushy with her own opinions.  But he also more than deserved the chance to know all his options - and the chance to live.  “I don’t know for certain, Echo, but I think there is at least a chance.  It’s possible I’d be able to give you a more solid answer standing on Ilum itself, but this close to the Core and Darth Sidious, I can’t, I’m sorry.  Are you up for us trying?”

Echo thought quietly, and the rest of them all but held their breaths.  

“I suppose… even if it doesn’t work… it would be nice to say good-bye to Captain Rex before I go…”

Everyone’s breath whooshed out audibly, and a moment later Wrecker’s voice rang out joyfully, “We’re going to Ilum!  Wait, where is Ilum?”

Ahsoka probably could have flown to Ilum in her sleep by then, but even pushing the Havoc Marauder to its limits Echo was visibly worse by the time they landed on the planet.  Ahsoka had tried to offer whatever healing and pain relief she could to him through the Force, and Tech had given him a couple of varieties of pain medications, but whatever damage the failing implants were doing to him was clearly accelerating.  Echo was conscious, but only barely, and Wrecker scooped him up, blankets and all, when it was clear he was no longer up for walking.  

Ahsoka led the group towards the spot she knew down to her bones, then used just a touch of the Force to call the wind to sweep away the snow burying the white-clad army.

As Rex’s face was revealed, Echo gasped faintly.  It was enough for Wrecker, though, and he carried his brother close enough for Echo to place his hand over Rex’s chest - the same location Rex had once placed his handprint on Echo.  

Ahsoka took two steps closer, then opened herself to the Force.  There was Rex, brilliant light shining brighter than the stars.  There was Echo, body failing but soul just as bright.  And there was the Force, wounded, scarred, half-smothered in the Dark, still grieving the loss of so many of Its children and the pain caused to so many more, yet still shining.  The Light shines in the Darkness, and the Darkness cannot overcome it, the old mantra came back to Ahsoka unbidden.  

And in that moment of becoming a conduit between Rex, Echo, and the Force itself, she felt Rex welcome Echo.

Come home.  We’re waiting for you.  You will find healing here.

Echo nodded once, decisively, stronger than he’d been in days, and Ahsoka turned away to give him privacy to say his good-byes.

Chapter Text

Echo seemed to mark another turning point in Ahsoka’s self-appointed mission, as clone troopers became harder and harder to find.  Rumor had it that the Empire was stepping up their efforts to replace the clones with natborn recruits, and the propaganda posters everywhere extolling the benefits of joining the Imperial Army seemed to bear that out.  

Ahsoka wasn’t quite sure what the logic was - for all of her efforts, she had saved perhaps one or two thousand troopers, out of several million.   Not exactly a devastating threat to Imperial domination.  And despite the downsides of the chips, the clones were still stronger, faster, and far better trained than the new recruits.  Plus they were guaranteed to be absolutely loyal.  Was it pure prejudice?  

Ultimately it didn’t matter, though - not when some of her contacts got her word that the last remaining thousand-odd clones still in service were being transported to the Imperial Army Training Center on Centax-2, there to be processed and then decommissioned.  

Ahsoka’s blood ran cold at the thought.  Rumors disagreed on what the phrase “decommissioned” actually meant when it came to the Imperial Army.  Some believed it was simply that the clones would choose whether to stay on in the Army as trainers, or give up their rank and equipment and retire to do whatever they wanted across the galaxy.  Others, more pragmatic or at least less trusting of the Empire’s good will, figured the Empire wouldn’t want to risk the clones revealing military secrets, much less the various atrocities the Empire had ordered them to participate in, and would simply execute them all.  And yet other rumors whispered darkly about Imperial mad scientists and plots to create devastatingly powerful soldiers with sentient minds placed into droid bodies.  

Ahsoka resolutely ignored the rest of the rumors making their way around.  It didn’t matter.  If the clones were to be abandoned then it would be vastly easier to collect them while they were still in one place, and not scattered to the far corners of the galaxy.  If the clones were going to be killed or experimented on, it was even more critical for her to do everything in her power to save them first.  Which meant she had one option: sneak onto the transport ship and free the clones before they arrived at Centax-2.  

But, she finally acknowledged to herself, there was no way she could do this alone.  It was time to call in every favor she had accrued over the last few years.  

It took longer than she had hoped, for all that she knew it was objectively the absolute minimum time needed to plan and implement a mission of this caliber, but eventually Ahsoka and a Rebel strike team were lurking in an Imperial shuttle at the precise coordinates where the transport ship was due to drop out of hyperspace before transferring to another hyperlane on its way to Centax-2.  

The expected arrival time came and went, and Ahsoka did her best to breathe through her nerves.  But then, five minutes later (not long, considering the distances involved, but she could still almost hear Rex’s scornful “Sloppy!”), the boxy ship dropped into realspace directly in front of them.  

Ahsoka let out a whoosh of breath, then reached for the comm unit.  “Imperial transport ship 972, this is Shuttle 176.  We have a few additional clones we were instructed to deliver to you.  Permission to dock and get them offloaded?”

“What?” the harried voice came back.  “We weren’t informed of any additional deliveries.”

“Well, these ones were from Vader’s Fist…” Ahsoka let the sentence trail off meaningfully.  Internal Imperial Army reports showed that Vader had been hard on the clones in his company - hard on all his soldiers, honestly, caring nothing for any of them beyond how effective they were at succeeding at the missions he ordered them on and killing them with abandon if they failed.  It was highly unlikely there were any clones left alive who had served under Vader.  But that mattered far less than the implication that Vader was involved in this process at all, which would hopefully prevent the officer on the other end of the call from questioning the story too closely, lest he bring an upset Sith Lord down on his head.  

“Fine, fine,” the officer grumbled.  “Just get them over here.  We have a schedule to meet.”

Ahsoka cut the comm signal, then traded grins with the other Rebels.  They had their in!

A moment or two of careful maneuvering later, and they were docked.  Now, ideally at this point they’d have a couple freed clones with them, maybe Wolffe and Gregor, or Howzer and a couple of his men, to really sell the story, but they hadn’t had enough time to collect any of them before they needed to intercept the transport.  

They’d just have to strike fast and hard instead.  

The two ships docked, the doors opened, Ahsoka took a single glance to see that they were being met by solely natborn officers - no clones - and then she led the charge.  Thirty seconds later and the officers were down for good.  

This ship had a very similar layout to some of the transports she had used in the GAR, plus she was the one with lightsabers, so Ahsoka led the team along the short passageway to the Bridge.  She counted down silently on her fingers, then blew the doors open with the Force.  The crew here were also entirely natborn Imperials, and even if Ahsoka had been inclined to show any mercy, the Rebels weren’t.  Ahsoka’s squad wasn’t big, but the ship’s crew wasn’t either, and a moment later all were down without having fired even a single shot in return.

With the bridge taken, half the Rebels stayed to disconnect all the communications equipment and look for any tracking or monitoring systems, while the other half headed off to the engine room to check for any straggling crew members and any additional devices the Empire might be using to keep tabs on their ships.

That just left Ahsoka and Tala, with the toughest part of the mission yet.

When Ahsoka had put out her request for assistance to every rebel cell, freedom trail, and smugglers group she had contact with, her most critical request had been someone with a legitimate Imperial military rank.  She had almost despaired, until her request had reached the Hidden Path, a sector-wide network smuggling Force sensitive children to safety.  They had gotten Ahsoka in touch with Tala Durith, an Imperial captain who had become disillusioned with the Empire’s tactics and goals, but had agreed to stay undercover in the army and use her rank to assist in the Hidden Path’s operations.  And now, she had volunteered to use her scarce few days of leave to help Ahsoka.

One of the rebel techs passed Ahsoka a datapad showing the security camera feed from inside the main hold.  There they were - just over a thousand clones, sitting on the floor (because why would the Empire bother to transport them in a ship that actually had seats?) in neat ranks, all with their armor and weapons, staring straight ahead and waiting patiently for whatever their next set of orders might be.  

If all went well, it would be Tala giving those orders.  If all didn’t go well, then she’d likely be killed instantly - even standing right outside the doors to the cargo hold with the Force and the camera feed to warn her, there would be very little hope of Ahsoka successfully barging in and rescuing Tala fast enough.  

But the thing that had impressed Ahsoka most over the single day they had gotten to spend together was Tala’s utterly unshakeable courage - or at the very least, her ability to fake it.  There wasn’t the slightest hint of hesitation in Tala’s bearing as she straightened her uniform, turned with parade-ground precision, and marched straight through the doors into the cargo hold.

Ahsoka had to consciously remember to breathe as she watched the camera feed.

“Who is the ranking officer here?” Tala demanded, the moment she walked into the room, not giving any of the clones the slightest opportunity to question her presence.

“I am, sir,” a Purge Trooper said as he stood and saluted, then marched over to her from his place near one of the corners.

“Excellent,” she replied, with an impressive level of proper Imperial disdain.  “I am Captain Tala Durith.  You may check my rank cylinder if you need confirmation.  I regret to inform you that not half an hour ago a despicable crew of pirates attempted to capture this ship.  An undercover Imperial officer was able to transmit a warning to my patrol craft, and we successfully fought off the pirates, but not before the crew of this ship were tragically killed.  As I do not have any crew from my ship to spare, I will need you and six of your men with piloting or astronavigation training to take over for the rest of the flight.”

Now Ahsoka really did hold her breath.  There were holes in that story large enough to fly a Star Destroyer through.  And yet for once, she was almost grateful for the chips.  No, not even now.  Without the chips they wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place because all the Jedi would still be alive and the Republic wouldn’t have fallen .  Still, under the circumstances, much better to be trying to convince people with chips than without.  After all, the whole point of the chips had been to convince the troopers to believe that the Jedi had turned traitor despite all the holes in that story - why weren’t there signs of it, where were the evidence and fair trial, how in the world could children qualify as traitors….  

The Purge Trooper thought it over for just a moment, then nodded decisively and called out half a dozen numbers too fast for Ahsoka to figure out if she recognized any of them.  Ahsoka let out her breath in a whoosh.  That was the first hurdle past.

“These troopers have the most experience flying ships of this type,” the Purge Trooper told Tala, as the others lined up behind him.  

“Good,” she answered.  “I have to return to my patrol route shortly, but let me introduce you to your new superior officer, Anna Tennebrant, who was the Imperial officer serving undercover among the pirates and who will now be taking over command of this ship for the remainder of this mission.”

Ahsoka walked through the door, and nearly a thousand helmets turned to stare at her.

Given her cover story she didn’t need to find an Imperial uniform to wear, though she did have a fake code cylinder that would hopefully “prove” her Imperial credentials if needed.  That wouldn’t have been enough for most Imperial troops, though.  Even those who weren’t themselves utterly appalled at the thought of a nonhuman female officer would be well aware of their superiors’ prejudices and the resulting unlikelihood of someone like her gaining a position of trust in the Imperial military.  (There was a reason Tala wasn’t ranked any higher than she was, and the fact that she hadn’t yet faced a firing squad meant it was for a reason unrelated to her treasonous activities.)

The thing about prejudice, though, was that it wasn’t usually done via official orders, which meant that it shouldn’t be a factor to the chip.  An introduction by someone the clones had already accepted as a superior officer, a code cylinder, and a well-practiced layer of makeup disguising her montral and face patterns just enough to avoid recognition as a known traitor, and that was it.  Not a single trooper raised his blaster, or even registered an objection.

Ahsoka did her best to disguise her slightly shaky sigh of relief.  But her experience in the growing Rebellion stood her in good stead in that regard, so an instant later she pulled the mantle of three years as a Commander around her and straightened to attention.

“Soldier,” she began, turning to the officer who had first responded to Tala, then hesitated.  Even as an Imperial surely she could give at least some acknowledgement of the clones’ individuality?  “What’s your rank and designation?”

“Imperial Purge Trooper CC-2224, sir,” he answered promptly, and Ahsoka ruthlessly pulled on all her Rebel experience to keep the shock and hope off her face.  

“Take your helmet off,” she demanded, voice just barely level.

He did, and a moment later Cody’s face revealed itself.  There were a couple more scars, and definitely more wrinkles, but nothing that would disguise the ancient scar curling around his eye.  But there was not the slightest hint of recognition in his eyes that he was standing in front of someone he had fought beside in dozens of battles over the years, as the 501st and 212th took joint mission after joint mission.  That was a good thing, certainly - if he had recognized her he would no doubt have instantly tried to kill her, but Ahsoka couldn’t help the brief stab of disappointment.  Still, the fact that Cody was finally in her grasp?  Happiness coursed through her and she giddily imagined what Rex would say when he realized who she had managed to find.

Mostly, Ahsoka had simply rescued whichever troopers happened to be easiest to reach.  Not one of them deserved to be trapped in their own mind, helpless to prevent their bodies from being forced to commit unspeakable evil, and given that she was only one person trying to rescue thousands, efficiency mattered.  Yet on the rare occasions Ahsoka had had access to Imperial databases, she couldn’t help but look up troopers she had known personally, wondering what had become of them.  With a handful of exceptions like Arch and Nax, most of the 501st that had followed Anakin to Coruscant had been folded into Vader’s Fist, and it would have been a suicide mission to sneak in close enough to any of Vader’s operations to rescue them.  Ahsoka had had slightly more luck finding former members of the 212th, but there hadn’t been any sign in the records of Cody.  But it was only now she understood why - she had never had a chance to slice in at a high enough level to gain access to the Purge Trooper files.

Yet now here he was, standing in front of her, alive and well - or at least as well as could be expected with a mind control chip in his head.  

Time to fix that.

“Alright, CC-2224, bring the pilots and follow me.”  

Tala slipped out of the hold ahead of them, no doubt checking to ensure the Rebel crew had finished their work and returned to the shuttle.  Better to avoid risking a trigger-happy clone getting a glimpse of a still-living “pirate.”

A moment later, Tala slipped back down the passageway and nodded to Ahsoka.  “You’re all clear.  Safe flying.”

It wouldn’t fit their respective characters for Ahsoka to give her a hug good-bye, or even a heartfelt thanks for making this rescue possible.  

“I’ll look forward to working with you again,” Ahsoka returned, voice professional, but eyes hopefully conveying how much she hoped Tala would survive until then.

Then Tala turned off to the airlock and her ship, and Ahsoka led her handful of clones to the Bridge.  They spread out, assigning themselves to each of the necessary stations without even a moment’s discussion, and then Cody turned to face her, awaiting orders.

“Given the pirate attack, we can no longer continue with the original route.  Set a course for Ilum.”

---

At least the clones were orderly, Ahsoka supposed, a day into their flight, though it didn’t make it any less distressing when the clones didn’t seem concerned about their own physical needs unless specifically ordered to do so.  Still, once she found the crate of emergency supplies on the ship and told one of the officers to get them distributed, he did so with the same military efficiency that had always been the hallmark of the clone armies.  

For once Ahsoka would have liked a little less efficiency.  Ilum was much further from the core than Centax-2, so the trip was correspondingly longer.  With the pilots more than competent to navigate the hyperspace lanes, and the ration bars and water packs distributed, there was nothing else for Ahsoka to do.

Eventually, she took a deep breath and went to sit by the nearest group of clones.

It was odd, Ahsoka thought, that for all her efforts trying to rescue the clones, this was the first time she had really had a chance to talk to them with their chips in.  Her standard cover was a small-time spacer on a freighter.  When it worked, her interactions with the clones (or any of the newer recruits to the Imperial Army) tended to be limited to customs checks and “enhanced security checkpoints.”  The handful of times her cover hadn’t worked had resulted in a lot of running and shooting.  And then, once she had her targets captured, she made sure to keep them well-sedated on the trip to Ilum.  She always hid the blasters on those runs, of course, just in case, but the minor detail of a missing blaster wouldn’t be anything more than a slight inconvenience to a Kamino-trained clone trying to escape captivity.  

Now, though, with her cover as an Imperial officer, it hopefully shouldn’t seem too out of place to the clones if she asked a few questions.  

The results were both more and less promising than she had hoped.  The troopers did indeed seem willing to answer any questions she asked, without getting suspicious.  She got their ranks and designations, along with their last few years of military postings and enough classified information that she had to resort to every trick she had ever learned as a Padawan studying for tests in order to get it all memorized well enough to carry it back to the Rebellion.  What she didn’t get were names.

Once she convinced them to take off their helmets and gloves, there were a few dozen visible tattoos, a couple of which Ahsoka thought she recognized.  Several more of the numbers seemed familiar - probably members of the 212th.  Of the 501st, she’d never found more than a bare handful who she was certain had been part of the battalion prior to it becoming Vader’s Fist.  One day, when she was finally able to wake them up again, she’d have to ask them how they made it away from Vader alive.  

But that tangent was just a way to distract herself from the realization that none of the clones knew their names anymore.  They had perfect recalls of their time under the Empire, but their memories from before the chip activated were few and fragmentary.  Some could tell her which battalion they were in, or which “traitor” they had served under, while others couldn’t manage even that much.  And then, of course, were those who (as she had mistakenly assumed with Arch) hadn’t even left Kamino before the chip activated.  They still looked painfully young, even now, after years in the Imperial Army had left them aged even beyond what the Kaminoans had done to them.  But it wasn’t like Ahsoka hadn’t known just how little the Empire cared for its soldiers.  

After far too long and yet nowhere near long enough, the pilots announced the ship’s approach to Ilum.  Ahsoka directed them to land on the edge of the now extremely familiar ice sheet.

The pilots rejoined their brothers, and Ahsoka ordered Cody to lead the troopers out onto the snow.  A few minor adjustments to their formation, and then they stood there, all at perfect parade rest next to their sleeping brothers, utterly heedless of the freezing temperatures and blowing snow that would be going right through any armor less well-insulated than the handful of snowtroopers’.  

Ahsoka raised her hands to call on the Force, then hesitated.  These men trusted her.  Or maybe that was the wrong word, with the chips.  But whatever the Empire had planned for these soldiers on Centax-2, the troopers would have faced it with equal equanimity and inability to object.  Ahsoka wasn’t going to kill them, or subject them to horrific experiments, but she also wasn’t giving them any choice.  She couldn’t, not really, not when they were literally programmed to obey her every word, but somehow she needed to do something more.  Give them something to hold onto as the chip’s control eventually broke and they woke up with the memory of everything that had been done to them since the fall of the Republic.

“Troops,” Ahsoka called out finally, in her best parade ground voice.  There was a lot she couldn’t tell them without risking a thousand blaster bolts, but she had to try something.   A thousand helmets focused on her with unwavering intensity.  

“Troopers, you have served the Empire loyally.  And yet now there are others rising up to serve the Empire, and your duties are done.  It is time for you to rest.  And…” Ahsoka hesitated.  Could she spin this so it would help them understand when they woke up again, without risking their objections now?  “There is something else you should know.  Some factions in the Empire wished to guarantee your loyalty.  They used control chips to ensure you would be incapable of betraying the Empire.  Yet there are others within Imperial ranks,” not many, but Tala counted at least, “who know that you have always been loyal to the true government, and trust you to choose where to place that loyalty yourselves.  Here you will have the chance to rest from your battles and prepare for whatever duties you may be needed for in the future.  And, when you wake, you will once again have the chance to demonstrate your loyalty of your own free will.

“Now, close your eyes.”

A sea of mostly-white helmets stared back at her blankly, with a handful of black Death Trooper and Purge Trooper helmets, and a few tan Shoretrooper helmets mixed in here and there.  Ahsoka mentally scoffed at herself - of course she wouldn’t be able to tell whether they had followed her order.  If they hadn’t, and then they saw her calling on the Force… well, her life would get very exciting, and probably very short.

Yet her fears, however rational, would only hinder her ability to call on the Force.  She took one deep breath in, and then released it, letting go of all her worry and anxiety at the same time.  And then she raised her hands and called on the Force.  It came at her request, just as willing to help as that first time, and the entire formation of troopers slumped all at once, as the kyber finally let them relax after years of the chip’s forced rigidity.  

Then the growing kyber covered their helmets, and Ahsoka could no longer make out anything but shadows, deep within the crystals.  Hesitantly, Ahsoka walked forward, and placed her hand over the kyber-encased heart of what her memory assured her was Cody.  She let her eyes slip closed and slowly began dropping her shields.  There were echoes, even here, this far from the Core, of pain and death in the Force.  Still, it was easier here to feel the eternal Light still enduring.  As Ahsoka breathed in and out with the Force, she finally felt it - a web of lights stretching across the plain of ice, souls both familiar and less so, all healing.

As Ahsoka looked closer, she felt the familiar touch of Rex’s mind against hers.  She felt his joy at the brothers she had brought to Ilum for healing, and his grief that so many had been lost before they had ever had that chance.  And then she felt it almost as a tug against her mind, as Rex brought her attention to the 332nd.  Where before their minds had been entangled in darkness, now there were only a few last twisted strands of Dark influence wrapped around them.  

“Soon,” Ahsoka and Rex whispered together.  They weren’t quite ready for Ahsoka to wake yet, and those she had rescued most recently still had years of healing yet - but for those earliest troopers it might be only weeks before she could release them from their crystal hibernation.

And then?

Well, it was probably time for Ahsoka to decide that.  The growing Rebellion could use them, certainly.  As direct troops, of course, but perhaps even more so as trainers, teaching their skills to the people beginning to show up to the Rebellion wanting the skills to be able to fight back.  

And yet it would hardly be fair to demand the clones go straight from one war to another.  If the Rebellion truly wanted to right the Empire’s wrongs, they could start by giving the clones their long-deserved pensions along with the freedom to choose their own futures.  It truly was the least they deserved, and Ahsoka would make absolutely sure the leaders of the Rebellion understood that.  

Soon.

---

The moment Ahsoka left Ilum, she was pulled a dozen different directions.  Rumors were floating around of a Jedi newly active on Daiyu.  When she investigated, Ahsoka didn’t find a Jedi, just a con artist, but one who had at least a handful of scruples and was interested in getting connected to the local smuggling routes for Force sensitives.  Then she got word of a planned Imperial raid on a local Rebel base, and spent a frantic 27 hours helping them with their evacuation.  She left it almost too late, fleeing the system just as she felt the faint brush of an Inquisitor against her shields.  

Then it was a pure humanitarian mission, as a nasty plague ripped through a Bothan community, and as it didn’t seem inclined to jump to humans, the Empire utterly ignored it.  Ahsoka eventually tracked down a lab that could develop a vaccine for it, and another the Rebellion could bribe into synthesizing enough doses for the entire population.  There were a few in the Rebellion who considered it an irrelevant distraction to their primary task of overthrowing the Empire, but luckily between those who believed in common decency and those who understood the value of soft power, the Rebellion finally put together a group to distribute the vaccines to everyone who hadn’t caught it yet and provide medical support to everyone who had.

By the time the situation was stabilized enough that Ahsoka felt it was safe for her to finally leave, she was about ready to put herself into crystal, just so she could actually catch up on her sleep for once.  But then there was word of an escaped padawan who needed a rescue, and then a set of Intelligence reports that desperately needed to be wiped before they could be sent on to Imperial High Command on Coruscant.  That was when Ahsoka discovered that Wullf Yularen, the Admiral who had run Anakin’s ships, had - willingly! - joined the Imperial Security Bureau and was now hunting down Senators suspected of supporting the Rebellion.

Not since Barriss did Ahsoka think she had ever felt quite so betrayed.  The clones hadn’t had a choice in turning on her.  She had been angry when Master Obi-Wan had wanted to support Coruscant instead of Mandalore, but even at the time she knew was the one being unfair - still holding onto the anger from her trial, despite rationally knowing that the Council had been trying to make the best choices they could under the circumstances, both circumstances.  

This, though, was truly a betrayal.  Yularen wasn’t a clone whose free will was overridden with an inhibitor chip.  He had a choice!  He could have resigned entirely.  He could have helped Anakin fight off the controlled clones!  He could have paid lip service to the new Empire, but then served as a double agent for the Rebellion.  For nearly a week Ahsoka had held out hope that was what was actually happening.  But no, he was either the best actor in the entire galaxy, or the moment the Republic fell he had willingly turned his back on every single one of its principles and volunteered to help find and execute everyone who actually was still loyal to principles of freedom and democracy.  

How had she and Anakin worked alongside this man for three years and never noticed he didn’t actually have any morals?

For one long, furious moment, Ahsoka had considered slipping into his fancy Coruscant apartment and demanding answers.  Then she had considered slipping into his fancy apartment and simply beheading him in his sleep.  It would be justice, for all those he had already betrayed.  It would preventative, for all those he’d no doubt go on to kill (or more likely, turn over to be tortured and then killed).  

Ahsoka sighed.  It would be entirely revenge, based not on a logical assessment of the value of assassination as a tool for the Rebellion, but purely on her own hurt feelings.  She’d turn her data over to the Rebellion, give them all the observations she’d gathered and conclusions she’d come to, and then let someone more objective make any decisions necessary.

She really needed Rex.

It was later than she had planned to go back for Rex and the 332nd, but more time in the kyber wouldn’t do them any harm.  They wouldn’t age there - she had some hope that the kyber had even managed to break the fast aging the Kaminoans had left them with.  The worst that would happen was they’d be a little cross they hadn’t been around to support her when she learned about Yularen.  

Or rather, that should have been the case.

Ahsoka dropped out of hyperspace in a boxy freighter that ought to fit all of the 332nd, though they’d be a little squished until they got to the nearest Rebel base and could decide where they wanted to go from there.  

Then, in a terrible repeat of that first, horrible flight to Ilum, she immediately had to pull up with all the force, and Force, she could muster, lest she and her ship be shattered into a million pieces.  Except this time it wasn’t the planet itself she was about to smash into, but an Imperial Star Destroyer.  

Ahsoka leveled off, heart in her throat, and knew the only reason she hadn’t yet been hit by a barrage of laser fire was because the Imperials were just as surprised as she was.  She spared a single moment to look down at the planet below her, and see another Imperial Star Destroyer hovering directly over the ice sheet where the clones were sleeping while hundreds of shuttles ferried mining equipment down to the surface.  She let herself have a single moment of absolute horror, realizing that her brothers were lost.  Even if the Empire by some utter miracle hadn’t found them, the mining operations - was the Empire going to just wholesale rape Ilum of its kyber?! - would obliterate the clones together with the crystal, and even if she was wrong, and that wasn’t the exact location she had left Rex and the others and they actually were still safe (at least until the Empire expanded their operations), she couldn’t get to them.

But then she had no more time for grief as the Star Destroyer realized she had no business being there and readied itself to shoot her out of the sky.  Her transport ship was meant for neither speed nor acrobatics, but she had been Anakin Skywalker’s apprentice and she had the Force and she would not die here.  Even as the first shots were coming at her from the turbolaser batteries she was already accelerating away from the planet.  As the first TIEs launched behind her, the stars blurred around her and she escaped into hyperspace.

And in her grief, her shock, her rage, and her fear, it perhaps wasn’t surprising that she missed the still, small voice of the Force whispering, “Peace.  All will be well. Their time has not yet come.”  

---

Ahsoka shook with the force of her grief.  She had promised the clones, her men, that they’d be safe on Ilum.  That they’d have the time to heal but then be able to return to the rest of the galaxy.  But the Empire had found them.  She had failed them.

And yet this wasn’t the first time her entire world had crumbled around her.  The foundations of her entire world had been shaken more times than anyone should have to endure, and yet she had survived this long.  

Ahsoka shoved away her grief and guilt, and made her way back to the Rebellion.

Over the next decade, the Rebellion grew.  She became Fulcrum, spymaster.  She found some Rebel cells and founded others.  Then she worked to weave the web of all these separate groups - keeping each sufficiently independent that the loss of one to the Empire would not bring down the entire organization, but giving each the chance for more connections and support, and the ability to make bigger strikes than they ever could before.

Occasionally she even found Jedi who had survived the Purge.  One such was Kanan, who had even found a padawan of his own, a young orphan named Ezra Bridger.  When he and his Rebel crew needed more support, she pointed them in the direction of the Bad Batch.  It turned out to be a more emotional reunion for them all than she had expected.  

Then, when they needed help against Vader and his Inquisitors, Ahsoka volunteered to go with them.  She dueled Vader, and did better against him than she had dared to hope.  Then she damaged his mask and knew for certain precisely what - who - was under the mask.  And after a year of hoping against hope she had been wrong, she had to finally face the truth.

She had thought Yularen’s betrayal was bad; this was a thousand times worse.

Anakin had been dead.  She had mourned him.  She had consoled herself with thoughts of the heroic ways he might have died, using his last breath to defend the children in the creche.  

Vader had been the one to lead the 501st in the march on the Temple and murder the children, the elderly, the sick, and the injured who were the only ones there and not out on the battlefield.

Vader had led the 501st.

If she hadn't been quite so stubborn about putting Bo-Katan’s request for aid for Mandalore ahead of the needs of everyone on Coruscant, if Anakin hadn’t split off half of the 501st to make the 332nd, that would have included Rex.  And Anakin  –  Anakin who had hated the Zygerrian slavers passionately  –  would have not only accepted that Rex was instantly and completely brainwashed, but then he would have taken advantage of that brainwashing to order Rex to slaughter toddlers.  Just like he had ordered Arch and Nax.  Just like he had ordered all the rest of the 501st who had trusted him with their lives.

Ahsoka wanted to yell at Anakin.  To curse him, to unleash her rage and betrayal.  To really impress upon him just how vile every single action he had taken as Vader had been.  To maybe, somehow, reignite whatever was left of the good man - good Jedi - he used to be.

(Had he been, though?  She had left him, yes, and she knew it must have hurt him terribly, but as a Jedi Knight he should have known how to deal with loss without letting it turn him into this.  And he had seemed fine enough when they had talked before Mandalore.  But if he was just days away from becoming a Sith, how much had she missed?  How much had she missed the entire time she had known him?)

But all those words were tangled up inside her and all she could say was, “I won’t leave you.  Not this time.”

They fought, and she accepted her end.  Except moments before she died, a hand grabbed her shoulder and yanked, and suddenly she was in a star-studded realm of darkness with an Ezra years older than she had seen him moments ago.  

That explanation - of a place known as the World Between Worlds, a point where all of time and space apparently converged, which he had used to reach back through time and save her - was one she’d never forget.

There was a cost to Ezra’s rescue of her, however.  She missed two Death Stars, Luke Skywalker joining the Rebellion, her last chance to speak with Master Obi-Wan, the death of the Emperor, and Vader’s - Anakin’s - final decision to return to the Light.  

Still, she got the chance to see the building of the New Republic, and the New Jedi Order, and track down any number of former Imperials who thought they could vanish quietly into the Outer Rim without any consequences for their years of atrocities.  

Eventually, though, she found herself getting restless again.  She had a debt she still needed to repay - a life for a life.  

After Ezra had rescued her from Darth Vader on Malachor, he had returned to the fight for his home planet of Lothal.  With the help of many of his allies in the Rebellion, he had managed to prevail, but at a heavy price.  To end Imperial control of the planet, Ezra had called the giant space creatures known as purrgil.  They had come, and they had captured Grand Admiral Thrawn’s Star Destroyer and pulled it, and him, through hyperspace to some unknown location in - or perhaps outside of - the galaxy.  In doing so, Ezra had sacrificed his own life for he was on that ship, too.  

He hadn’t been heard from since.  

So Ahsoka provisioned a ship, said her good-byes, and then she and Sabine Wren headed off into the Unknown Regions to find where Thrawn had ended up and bring Ezra home again.

No one heard from them for a very long time.

Chapter Text

Rex slept, and as he slept, he dreamt.  

He knew that he was dreaming, and yet he also knew that it was not yet time for him or his brothers to wake, and so he let himself float in the Force.

He could feel, all around him, the lights of his brothers’ souls.  Each one shone, brighter than the brightest nebula he had ever seen from the bridge of a Venator.  And yet, that brilliance was shadowed.  

There was a planet, he thought he remembered.  Maybe Felucia, though at some point they had all started to blur together.  It had had some species of plant absolutely covered in thorns.  Fives had barely been more than a shiny at that point.  He had been curious about the plant, and reached out just enough to get it tangled around his arm.  Rex had been sound asleep when he had heard the kid’s yell, and had rushed out, in just his blacks but with his blasters at the ready, to fight off whatever was attacking him.  When he had realized it was just a plant, he had given the kid a lecture about not being an idiot.  

Though in truth, who was the idiot?  Rex had spent five minutes trying to carefully pull the thorns out from where they had gotten wedged between the pieces of Fives’ armor.  Except what he hadn’t realized was that the plant was a little more mobile than he had given it credit for - at least not until after it had wrapped itself around large portions of him.   It had taken far longer than either he or Kix would have liked to get Rex freed.

That’s what it looked like now.  Jesse, Evon, Zeer, Ridge - the entire 332nd looked to his dreaming sight like they had been enshrouded in thorny vines, wrapping around them and keeping them imprisoned in their own minds.  

Except these thorns weren’t a natural part of the ecosystem.  They reeked of Sith magic, and Rex wanted nothing more than to rip them all out of his brothers’ heads.

And yet, trying to rip those thorns off of Fives, or off of Rex himself, would have left them even bloodier than they already had been.  So, too, with the Sith magic of the chips.  The Orders were sunk deep into his brothers’ brains with barbed claws, and Rex was starting to see why getting them out would be no quick or easy task.

But the Light was patient, and implacable.  

Already, Rex could feel the kyber crystals resonating with the Force, allowing it to sink deep into each one of them, knitting torn flesh back together and slowly, carefully, one-by-one pulling the barbed thorns of Sith magic out of their souls.

Rex wasn’t a Jedi and didn’t know how to call on the Force.  But he had asked to stay here to watch over his men, and so he sent a thought, or perhaps a prayer, outward.

Please, let me help them.  Let them have a chance to heal and come back to themselves.

And maybe he did get an answer.  He found his attention drawn to Jesse, and what the chip had made him.  And then he felt the smallest nudge within himself to remember Jesse not as he was now, but as he had been, and as he would be again once freed from the chip.

It was hard, trying to focus on that.  Rex’s mind kept going back to those terrifying moments, on the ship and during their escape across the ice, when Jesse’s body was hunting them down with horrifying certainty.

Except that hadn’t been Jesse.  Jesse was smart, and kind.  He had done an admirable job leading the squad on Saleucami after Rex had been wounded.  On Umbara, his actions, along with Fives and Hardcase, had probably saved the entire 501st.  Rex had been overjoyed to realize he hadn’t been killed by Maul on Mandalore.

That was Jesse, not whatever the chip had turned his body into.  

And as Rex focused on those memories, he began to feel Jesse’s soul reasserting itself, and the suffocating tendrils of Darkness beginning to fade.  

Rex smiled, and moved on to the next trooper.

---

There was no time, here in the Force.  Rex thought he probably should have gotten bored, or tired, or something, but instead there was simply the peace of knowing he was where he needed to be for the moment.

So he couldn’t have said how long it was before he felt a very familiar soul touching down on the planet.  His heart leapt with joy, and yet he also felt an undercurrent of concern.  His brothers were healing well, and he was confident they would eventually be entirely free, but eventually was still a ways off.  Why had Ahsoka returned?

Then Rex felt the four souls with her.  Two were missing the vile influence of the chips, and yet Rex could also feel gaping mental wounds left by the chip’s removal.  Rex’s heart ached at the feeling of those holes, and yet a moment later he felt the sudden joy of realizing he recognized one of those souls!  Arch, whom he had given up for lost along with the rest of the 501st who had stayed with General Skywalker.  The other wounded soul, and the two others whose minds were still ensnared by the chips, were less familiar.  And yet not wholly unfamiliar - they were clones, and thus even if they had never once met in person they would always recognize each other as brothers.

Rex’s perception of the universe as he dreamt was not sight, nor hearing.  And yet he didn’t need either to feel Ahsoka’s grief, and resolve, as she called upon the Force.  It answered, and Rex felt the Force wrap itself around his brothers and call them into healing slumber.  

Rex wrapped himself around them, too.  They might not have served in the 332nd, and only one in the 501st, but that didn’t matter now.  If Ahsoka was going to bring more clones to Ilum for healing, then Rex would watch over and guard every single one.

---

More brothers came, and Rex welcomed every one of them.  Some of their souls were just aware enough to reach out to him past the thorns and hang on to him.  Others of them had been wounded too badly by what they had been forced to watch their bodies do.  For them, the Force gave sleep so deep as to be far past dreaming.  And for them, Rex would wait as long as was necessary until the Force had freed them enough that they were both able and willing to connect to the ever-growing network of recovering souls.  

Here in this place of dreams it was natural for Rex to know each of his brothers, recognizing them with impossible clarity from a brief glimpse across a battlefield or a shared training exercise on Kamino, or even just connecting through their shared upbringing.  And yet here and there were others where the connection ran far deeper.  Ahsoka returned to Ilum, a blazing bright sun no matter how she tried to conceal it for her own safety, and she brought with her half a dozen souls, all with far more awareness and clarity than most of her companions.  

It was harder to recognize them as they approached, as they were not yet entwined with the kyber and the Force.  But in this state of dreams, Rex could be patient as he had never before been allowed to be save for waiting for a sniper shot, and so he waited as they approached.  

Then Ahsoka walked forward, and reached for him in the Force, and he suddenly understood who the Bad Batch had brought here to Ilum and why.

Come home, he told Echo.   We’re waiting for you.  You will find healing here.

He understood all of their hesitation and concern.  This would take Echo away from the new family he had found, and there would be sorrow at that parting, however long or short that time might be.  But Rex could feel the war going on in Echo’s body and mind.  It was different than the war going on in the minds of their still-chipped brothers, but both were equally unwinnable alone.  Neither would be healed without help from the Force.  The Force was powerful, and with time and trust it could heal unthinkable trauma.  

Rex felt Echo agree, and then Ahsoka was calling on the Force and Echo was coming back to Rex, and to all of his brothers in the 332nd.  Rex felt Jesse welcome Echo back with unspeakable joy, and then the rest of them, showering Echo with their love and care.  

And Rex watched over them all.

---

There were more brothers, and even more, each one a bright spot in a galaxy seemingly determined to become darker every day.  Rex could feel the Force’s grief at all the pain its children were doing to each other, out in the galaxy, but here there was peace.  And yet, Rex began to feel a growing impatience.  There was so much evil out there - when would it be time for him and his brothers to go out there and fight?  But every time he asked, the Force said, Not yet.   And so Rex waited.  Much as he wanted to be out there in the galaxy with a blaster, he had made the decision to stay here on Ilum and guard his brothers, and he would not abandon that duty for anything.  

It also helped that he could tell progress was being made.  All the physical injuries of the 332nd were healed, and Echo had regained large portions of the strength he had lost.  

Removing the chip’s influence was a longer process.  As Rex held in his heart and mind the knowledge of his brothers as they were, the Force used that faith as a conduit to work away at the Sith influence that had come so close to destroying their very identities.  

Then, one day, the Force had a feeling of expectation about it, and Rex followed its prompting out beyond Ilum’s atmosphere to an approaching ship.  

Brothers.  Brothers, and brothers, and brothers.  Nearly as many at once as Ahsoka had collected in all Rex’s time on Ilum.  Rex waited, impatiently, as the ship landed and the first of the troopers stepped out onto the ice.

Cody.

Rex was overcome with a wave of grief, and joy, as he felt one of his closest brothers step onto the ice, Sith magic and more recent Dark influence wrapped tightly around his mind and soul.  

Cody was followed by hundreds more brothers, and all around him Rex could feel the flickers of recognition and joy from his brothers dreaming under the ice as they recognized many of the newcomers.  

Ahsoka led the group, and Rex reveled in the sense of how far she had grown from the tiny child on Christophsis.  The troopers took their place on the ice, and Ahsoka spoke to them a final time.  

Dreaming, Rex wasn’t sure of her exact words, yet he could feel the sense of them, as she did her best to give his brothers some comfort, some peace, some form of explanation to hold onto before she called the kyber.  

Then Ahsoka finished, and Rex could feel each of his brothers sinking down into the Force and into peaceful slumber.  The damage that had been done to each one was immense - the evidence of the chip was just as horrific as it always was, but at least it was a pain Rex was well-acquainted with, and its healing likewise.  But Cody had been a Purge Trooper, along with a bare handful of other surviving brothers in the group, and they had had close contact with Inquisitors  –  evidenced by the gaping mental wounds they had been dealt which would never heal surrounded by that much Dark.  Some seemed intentional  –  interrogation, perhaps, or punishment.  Others, Rex suspected, were just poorly trained Darksiders lashing out because they had no reason to control themselves.

But in the end, the source of the injury didn’t matter  –  only that now there was finally the chance for healing.  Rex gathered the souls of each of the newcomers together, weaving them into the network and making sure each one had another, more healed, brother watching over them.  When every soul was supported, Rex himself turned to Cody and wrapped himself around his brother in the closest approximation to a hug a dreaming soul could manage.  

Deeply, far too deeply, under Sith magic and Darkside damage and guilt and grief, Rex found the part that was Cody.   He felt Cody recognize him, acknowledge him, and then falter at the weight of everything that had been done to Cody and through Cody.

So Rex simply wrapped the Force’s peace and healing even tighter around Cody, and let it draw him far deeper into sleep than dreams could reach, waiting for the time when he had healed enough to be able to accept his brothers’ comfort.

With Cody resting, Rex turned his attention back to Ahsoka, and felt her reach out for him in the Force.  He reached back, and did his best to offer her his gratitude for the lives of so many brothers rescued.  

He felt a question from her, and opened himself as wide as he could so that she could sense through him the vast array of brothers she had brought to freedom here.  Then he brightened, and arrowed in on the 332nd.  He couldn’t speak to Ahsoka in words, not while dreaming, but he could help her sense how faint the strands of Sith magic had become  –  gossamer instead of durasteel.  

He felt the moment when she understood just how close they were to freedom, and together they thought:

Soon.

But Ilum was too inhospitable for Ahsoka to stay for long, and so Rex felt her farewell through the Force.

Soon.

---

As Rex waited for Ahsoka’s return, he had plenty to keep him occupied, as he soothed the hurts and grief of their new arrivals, and brought the Force to bear to begin their healing and salvation from the chips.  

And yet, in the back of his mind, he couldn’t help but wonder what his own path forward should be.  The 332nd were almost free.  Jesse, Evon, Zeer, Ridge… all were taking nearly as active a role as Rex himself in supporting their brothers.  Soon Ahsoka would come back and wake them.  

When he had asked her to put him into kyber with the rest of the 332nd, Rex had assumed he’d wake up with them, too, and then they could all work together against Palpatine’s Empire in whatever ways they could.

That was before he had factored in Ahsoka managing to find and rescue so many other of his brothers.  The damage of Arch’s chip removal was close to healed, his memories regained, but the three brothers with him would all take more time.  Echo’s chip wasn’t an issue, having been damaged too badly to activate, but he also wasn’t healed enough yet to wake.  The immediate harm from his degrading prosthetics had been healed, but waking him now would just restart the ticking clock  –  the Force needed a lot more time to fix the underlying problems that had caused that harm.

And then, of course, these newest troopers would take just as long as the 332nd had to heal  –  or, perhaps, even longer, considering that they had not only the chip to contend with, but also the mental pain of years of being forced to commit atrocities for the Empire.  Freeing them from their chips wouldn’t be enough if immediately upon waking they all had mental breakdowns from the grief and guilt.  

Which left Rex in a quandary  –  he was the commander of the 332nd and they were his troopers; if they were to wake up to fight a new war in the galaxy, how could he not be with them?  And yet every trooper Ahsoka had brought him since had also become his; how could he just abandon so many others when he could help guard them and speed their healing while they slept?  

Rex turned towards the Force in his dilemma  –  which should he choose?  How could he choose?  And yet the Force gave him no direction, only a sense that he would know what to do when it was time to act.  

That comforted him, but only slightly.  

It would have comforted him much less had he realized the Force was giving him no advice because the question was about to become moot.

---

Time passed, and more time, and Rex waited and watched for Ahsoka’s return.  He was getting better at sensing things beyond the bounds of the kyber.  Faintly, very faintly, he thought he could sense Ahsoka out in the distant galaxy.  Grief and anger radiated from her, and Rex wished he could somehow comfort her, help her resist the allure of the Dark.  

But he was not a Jedi, just a sleeping clone trooper, so eventually his mind quested onward, uncaring of time passing as he felt the galaxy spinning around him.  

Then he felt it.

For one brief moment he thought it was Ahsoka once more.  She was the only one who’d ever come to Ilum, after all, and in her anger and pain perhaps she had chosen to come back to Ilum to recover from whatever had happened to her amidst the Light of the kyber and the souls of her troopers.  

Yet even as he thought it he realized it wasn’t true.  There were people, hundreds of them.  Perhaps thousands of them.  All awake and active in a way no chipped clone trooper ever was even before Ahsoka stunned them for the trip.  They were spread around far enough he suspected they must be on multiple ships.  Or a very big ship.  

Or maybe, he thought with growing horror, as more and more minds dropped out of hyperspace over Ilum, multiple very big ships.

And then the Darkness arrived.  

What Rex had felt before was the faintest hint compared to what he now felt as the ship the Dark presence was on arrived in Ilum’s orbit.  Hatred and pain and rage poisoned the air around him for parsecs, and Rex abruptly understood why Ahsoka was so careful with the Force away from Ilum, if a being like this existed in the galaxy.

And yet, there was something almost familiar way down deep inside…

The Darkness felt the barest brush of his curiosity and whirled around in a fury  –  or the closest mental equivalent at any rate  –  and Rex could nearly feel a red lightsaber sizzling by his throat.

Rex was not ashamed to admit he fled, his dreaming mind burrowing as deeply as he could back into his physical body, hiding there and holding his breath until the presence turned its attention away again.

Rex uncurled himself, slowly.  Carefully.

And then he felt the first ships land on Ilum’s surface, and start to unload equipment.

We need a plan, Rex thought grimly towards the rest of his brothers.  Whatever they’re planning to do is not in any way good.  For us, or for Ilum.

Agreement flashed around between his brothers, and peaceful sleepers turned once more into soldiers.

Rex could feel each one taking stock.  The 332nd were nearly free of the chips.  One last wrench and the last tendrils of Sith magic would be gone.  Painful, no doubt, and doing one last spike of damage, but nothing that wouldn’t heal on its own eventually.

Cody, and the other troopers who had arrived last were still too entangled in the chip.  Wake them up and they’d likely still be bound to obey orders  –  that was not a viable option.

Those in the middle…  Rex hesitated.  Trying to force the last of the destruction of the chip in an instant might cause wounds beyond that which time alone could heal.  Yet even as he thought it, every brother firmly volunteered, sending him their determination to defend this new planet, and the Force and the kyber which had taken care of them all so well, and the rest of their sleeping brothers  –  no matter what it might cost them in return.  And if they could remove that Darkness from the galaxy permanently, well, that would be an ending worth as many lives as it took to make happen.

Rex knew that here in this dreaming space they could feel his grief and his pride at their willingness as easily as he could feel their own determination.  And so he turned  –  away from his brothers, and towards the Light that had surrounded them so long.

We’re here, and we’re ready to fight.

A great wave of love and gratitude swept over him, over them all.

Rex braced himself to wake, and then the answer came in words every one of them could hear:

No.

Rex’s shock reverberated through the network of souls, echoed and amplified by everyone else’s.

But…! he began to argue, wavering on the knife-edge between fear and fury as he felt more and more people land on Ilum’s surface with hearts full of Dark intentions.

That endless, ageless, infinite voice didn’t let him finish.

It is not time.  And then, before they had the chance to argue further, And how would you fight?  With few weapons, and none able to attack a ship?

Rex hesitated.  The 332nd had been frozen with their weaponry, but Ahsoka had carefully disarmed most of the brothers she had delivered.  That last large group, with Cody, had still had their weapons, but trying to retrieve them without waking the still-chipped brothers holding them might not be possible.  And even counting them, what they had were all pistols and rifles, not surface-to-air-missiles, or anything else Rex would consider appropriate firepower for an assault this scale.  But they were the 501st.  Improvise, adapt, overcome.  

And they couldn’t just not try!

Against the ships and their crew, perhaps you could be victorious, the Force offered gently.   Against a Sith Lord, I would not see you risk your souls in combat with him, untrained as you are.  But more importantly, my will is worked through mortals, not directly.

And as the Force offered them the understanding of what it meant, Rex cursed in frustration.  How could he protect his men, any of them, if the Force wasn’t able to free them from the kyber stasis itself?  If it required a Jedi to wake their bodies, and Ahsoka was on the other side of the galaxy?

Please, he begged.  What can we do?

The Force smiled.  Fighting is not the only answer.  And then it showed them.

It wasn’t the ideal solution  –  Rex would have strongly preferred a plan that prevented that walking ball of Darkness from tainting the galaxy even a minute longer  –  but it met the single most important criteria: it kept his brothers safe.

So Rex released his rage and his fear, and reached out towards his brothers.  Every one, even those who had been most grievously hurt, reached back.  And together, they felt for the crystal around them.

Kyber grew here on Ilum like very few other places in the galaxy.  And while the planet might not technically be entirely kyber, there were massive veins of the crystal running through the entire mantle all the way down to the core.  It was one of these veins Ahsoka had called on first to entomb the 332nd, and then every other clone she brought to Ilum over the years.  

Now the clones themselves called on it.  

Briefly, Rex had wondered if it would be possible to put everyone on the ships into kyber themselves, holding them in stasis and preventing them from carrying out their horrible work, whatever it might be.  

But even before feeling the Force’s negative, Rex regretfully gave up that plan.  There were too many, for one.  They also weren’t exactly people he wanted to feel sleeping and dreaming right beside him for the next months or years.  But most importantly, they’d be missed.  Someone would realize they hadn’t come back from their expedition and come looking for them.  This many Imperials was awful.  More would be immeasurably worse.

So Rex and his brothers didn’t call the kyber up, asking it to cover someone new.  Instead, they asked it to bring them down.  

It wasn’t anything crystal was supposed to do.  Crystal didn’t move just because someone asked it to.  But then, all the rules went out the window when the Force was involved.  So the clones asked, and the vein of kyber opened, and the crystals containing the physical bodies of several thousand clones dropped deeper and deeper into the heart of Ilum.

Rex didn’t know how far they went down.  500 meters?  1000?  5000?  That wasn’t something he could judge in this state.  But as the horrible screeches and vibrations of mining machinery started up overhead, he realized they were just in time.  Ilum was going to be hurt, and it broke his heart there wasn’t anything he could do to prevent it, but the men he was responsible for, the men he was sworn to protect, were safe.

---

Rex felt Ahsoka arrive in system.  Moments later he felt her leave again, and he hoped she understood.  Ilum would not be safe for her for a very long time.

---

Out there, somewhere in the galaxy, Ahsoka’s grief spiked.  Focusing on her, Rex suddenly realized why: the roiling ball of Darkness and evil had found her and she and those she loved were about to die.  Then horror overtook sorrow, and as if a veil were taken away or a picture came into focus, Rex suddenly realized what had become of his general on the night the Republic fell and the Empire rose.

---

Rex waited, and watched, and grieved every atrocity the Dark inflicted, and then one day the Darkness ended.  Swift as the sun rising, the two vortices of evil passed away, one into darkness everlasting and the other at last giving himself to the Light.  It was over; the Light victorious.  Joy swirled incandescently through Rex and every one of his brothers.  It was worth it.  It was all worth it.

A bare handful of days later the last of the Imperial ships and mining equipment disappeared from Ilum forever.

---

Asleep as his body was, Rex had no clear sense of time passing, nor boredom he had to deal with.  Yet with the destruction of the Dark, he wondered.  He had wanted to fight against the Dark.  Fully planned to.  And now, finally, every one of his brothers was long since free from the chip and their injuries and ready to fight with him.  Yet without Ahsoka to wake them, neither he nor any of his brothers had ever gotten the chance to.  And not that he didn’t want peace for the galaxy, or the chance to live in peace himself, but that wasn’t exactly what he was trained and skilled at.

Was there something else they were supposed to be doing?  And how, if Ahsoka wasn’t returning to free them and no one else in the galaxy even knew they existed?  Knew Ilum itself existed?

And so once more he asked.

The Force, ever patient even with mortal impatience, gave them their answer: Peace.  Not yet.  And trust me.

The Force had healed them.  The Force had freed them.  The Force had saved them.  Of course they’d trust the Force.

And so, more or less gracefully, they waited, and they watched the galaxy spin on.

People tried.  Oh, they tried so hard.  But Palpatine had broken many things in ways that were very hard to put back together again, and slowly Darkness started seeping into the cracks.

The Darkness spread, and spread, and with the death of the Jedi Order there was no one left alive who understood how to notice it, much less drag it into the Light and banish it.

And Rex and his brothers waited, and watched, and got ready.

And then came the day the Darkness returned to Ilum.  Ships, and soldiers with them, soldiers who didn’t know quite enough to realize how much they didn’t want to be there, and equipment that began to drill down deep into Ilum and turn the planet from a Temple into a weapon.

And the Force said, Soon.

Chapter Text

“I’m just here to get Rey.”

Han wanted to shake the kid.  With the reports coming out of the Republic’s capital at Hosnian Prime of the horrifying warning shot they had received, and the beam of destructive energy that had skimmed just along its upper atmosphere unleashing devastating storms across the entire planet while not incidentally vaporizing nearly all of the orbital military and defense structures, all official New Republic forces and institutions would be in complete disarray.  The Resistance was almost certainly now one of the few remaining fighting forces capable of standing in the First Order’s path to galactic domination.  If, in the next hour, they were vaporized, the First Order would be virtually unopposed.

“People are counting on us,” he snapped at Finn.  “The galaxy is counting on us.”

It was hypocritical, perhaps.  At Finn’s age he certainly hadn’t cared about anything beyond his own skin, and maybe Chewie’s.  Even once he got entangled in the Rebellion, he’d cared a lot more about Luke and Leia as individuals than he had about the Rebellion as an organization, or abstract principles like democracy.

But once he’d finally started going down that road, there’d been no turning back.  Even after that first terrible argument with Leia after Ben’s Fall and Luke’s disappearance, the first time he’d run away, determined to go back to the only thing he’d ever been good at, he couldn’t quite leave it all behind.  He’d overheard a few rumors, gotten his hands on datastick with intel the fledgling Resistance had been looking for for months, and made sure it made its way to Leia.  

That wasn’t the only time it had happened, either.  He’d get into another fight with Leia, they’d both need some time to cool off, and so he’d borrow one of the Resistance’s big cargo ships and see what intel he could scrounge up.  Or supplies, or favors, or whatever else seemed useful.  It was definitely a shame about those rathtars  –  King Prana had promised quite a bit of money for them, which would have been a major boost to the Resistance’s coffers.  

Finn had been flung straight from a brainwashed upbringing in the First Order into a fight for his life, and then a group of people telling him that the fate of the galaxy rested on him betraying every person and ideal he had grown up with.  The kid needed time, but that was time they didn’t have.  The shields needed to come down, now, and billions of lives depended on this former janitor.  

Sanitation, really?

If this “flooding tunnel” got them in the base, he supposed it wasn’t a total waste, but they needed to get those shields down!

“Solo, we’ll figure it out.  We’ll use the Force.”  

Finn’s confidence in Han’s earlier comments about the Force might have been heartening at any other time.  As it was… “That’s not how the Force works!”  After sitting through way too many of Luke’s lessons to Leia, and a few too many rounds of begrudgingly volunteering to play practice dummy for one technique or another, Han still might not be entirely certain how the Force did work, but he knew quite a lot about how it didn’t.  

But Chewie was right as he growled his complaint about the weather, snarky as Han couldn’t resist being in his reply.  They needed to stop standing around arguing.  This was the kind of cold that went straight through the heaviest jacket  –  or layer of fur  –  and even more importantly, time was wasting.  If they didn’t have a proper plan they’d just have to make up what they were doing as they went along  –  and at least that was something Han was extremely familiar with.

They moved out.

 –  –  – 

The tunnel Finn had promised wasn’t far, and Han sighed with relief as they finally got out of the wind.  The tunnel was hewn out of solid rock, with only a handful of lights strung along it and a couple of alarms which Finn quickly and confidently disarmed.  

The first hundred meters or so was clear and smooth, and for a moment Han actually thought they’d make it all the way into Starkiller Base without incident.  

I shouldn’t have jinxed myself, he groaned a moment later, as Finn stopped suddenly in the middle of the tunnel.

“What is it?”

“This wasn’t here before,” Finn answered, worry clear in his voice, finally stepping aside so Han could look past him at the fallen rocks littering the floor of the tunnel.  “I walked through here less than a tenday ago, and it was completely clear.”

Wild explanations and conspiracies swirled through Han’s head for a moment, before he finally hit on the most logical explanation.  “This planet just shot out a beam of energy strong enough to blast a planet to bits.  No matter how many inertial dampeners they built into the array, there was no doubt some shaking when it fired.  But that means we’d better not still be hanging around here when they fire again!”  Han punctuated the comment with a firm prod to Finn’s back to get him moving again.

After a moment Finn did finally start moving again, but slower as he picked his way through the fallen rocks.  Han followed his lead only to nearly run into him from behind when he stopped again.   

“What now, kid?” he sighed.

“That wasn’t there before either,” Finn answered, clearly barely paying attention to Han, and started moving towards what Han eventually figured out was a crack that had opened in the wall, just barely big enough to get a determined Wookiee through, by Han’s quick estimation.  

Except… “Hold up, big shot!  We don’t have time for sightseeing.  We need to get Rey, take down the shields, and then clear this place before it blows, remember?”

But Finn ignored him, and as Han finally caught a glimpse of the abstraction on his face he let out a groan.  Another Jedi?  Hadn’t he had to deal with enough of them in his life?!

Okay, sure, the kid wasn’t technically a Jedi (yet).  Maybe even less than Luke had been on the Death Star, since he’d never even gotten that single lesson by Ben.  But Han had seen Finn holding Luke’s lightsaber, how he had fought for his life with it in battle.  Imperfectly, sure, but from everything Luke had found, non-Force Sensitives had a hard enough time avoiding killing themselves when using a lightsaber, never mind successfully blocking a dozen blows in a row with it.  He honestly ought to have expected the distant look now on Finn’s face that made it very clear that, consciously or not, he was currently following the promptings of the Force and was not going to be reasoned with.  

Shouldn’t be reasoned with, much as Han hated to admit it.  Sure he could probably drag the kid away, but every time Luke had gotten that expression on his face, there had been a reason for it  –  something they needed to find, a path they needed to avoid, something.

Han groaned again for good measure, then set himself to helping Chewie through the crack.

 –  –  – 

As mysterious promptings from the Force went, this one wasn’t too bad yet.  The new pathway had opened up again after only a moment or two, and Chewie could stand fully upright again.  It was even going in approximately the right direction as the base.  

Even better, as the three of them stepped out into a slightly larger space, barely illuminated by Han’s glowrod, a shout rang out from the corridor on the far end.

“Finn!”

“Rey!” Finn called back, overjoyed, and ran to meet her.  She did the same, and they met in the middle, throwing their arms around each other.

Urgent though their mission was, Han gave himself a few moments to breathe a sigh of relief and thanks that she seemed to be in one piece, and not too horribly traumatized by whatever had happened after Ben had carried her away.  

Still, it wasn’t surprising that Finn’s first question was, “What happened to you?  Did he hurt you?”

But Rey completely ignored him to ask, “Finn, what are you doing here?”

“We came back for you,” he answered simply.

But Chewie couldn’t resist the impulse to meddle a little, and pointed out just whose idea the rescue had been.  

The blossoming joy on Rey’s face was something to behold as she pulled Finn in for another hug.

“How did you get away?” Finn finally asked.

“I can’t explain it.  And you wouldn’t believe it.  How’d you find me here?”

“I’m not sure I can explain that either.”

Great, Han thought to himself.  Now he had two Jedi-in-training to be responsible for.  They’d better find that map to Luke soon, because Han was absolutely not equipped to deal with this!

But that was a problem for another day.  “Shields now, hug later,” Han broke in impatiently.  

“Wait,” Rey answered, with a disturbingly familiar distant expression on her face.  Finn let her go with a puzzled expression, but followed as she walked towards one of the edges of the corridor they were in.  “Bring the light over here.”

Han rolled his eyes but complied, only to freeze in shock at what the light revealed.  What he had initially taken to be the edge of a wide spot in the tunnel was nothing of the sort.  Instead this was the edge of a cavernous room the light didn’t reach the edges of, mostly filled with various rocks  –  or maybe crystals?  –  as large as a person that were what he had mistakenly assumed were the corridor walls.  

There was something about those crystals…

“Do we have any more light?” Rey burst out impatiently.

Telling himself that what he had just seen was completely impossible, Han cursed and rummaged in his bag, finally triumphantly pulling out a couple more glow rods and passing them out.  And with the additional light, Han couldn’t doubt his eyes any longer.

“They’re people,” Rey breathed.

“Not people,” Finn disagreed, then grimaced, “or at least not just any people.  This is a clone trooper.  And this one, and that.  But over there, that’s an Imperial Stormtrooper.  And… a Range Trooper, with a Sandtrooper next to him.  And, oh, wow, that has to be a Purge Trooper!  They were the elite of the elite.  I never thought I’d see one outside of training manuals!”

Han noticed that on Finn’s other side, Rey was staring at Finn with the same slack-jawed shock Han could feel on his face.  It took a moment to get his voice back.

“How in the world do you know all that, kid?  I fought the Empire and I don’t think I could rattle off those armor types like you just did.”

Chewie growled his own question, and Han winced.  Okay, maybe there were more important questions to focus on first.

“What’d he say?” Finn demanded, and Han reminded himself yet again that if they did manage to keep Finn around once this was all over, they needed to find him a copy of that Shyriiwook dictionary they’d started passing around to members of the Rebellion once Han and Chewie had properly joined.  

In the meantime, he and Rey would just have to translate.  “He wants to know why these troopers are here.”

“Training?” Rey hazarded after a moment.  “Or even some kind of trophy?”

“I think they would have told us about it in that case.”  Finn hesitated.  “Is this just the armor, or are there… bodies… in there too?”

Rey paced down the line of blankly staring helmets, then let out a shout of discovery halfway down.  “A face!”

Han, Finn, and Chewie rushed to follow her, and moments later they were all clustered around a figure in blue and white armor.  Unique among the ones they’d found, he had his helmet off, and they could see his bare face.  Han frowned, trying to decide if this was a corpse, or an amazingly lifelike statue.  Given the lack of decay, probably a statue, he finally decided, though it was an interesting choice to have included wear and tear on the armor, and even some pretty significant blaster damage.

He stepped back to tell the others, but Finn and Rey were already pushing forward, staring avidly at the soldier.  

“That’s definitely the face of a clone trooper,” Finn was saying, almost under his breath.  “Though the hair doesn’t quite match.  And that’s ARC Trooper armor, I’m sure, but… is that a Commander rank tab?  Most of the equipment seems to better match a Captain…”

Finn trailed off to stare intently into the figure’s closed eyes.  Rey was doing the same, and then in eerie unison both brought their hands up to rest on the crystal over the figure’s heart.

Han opened his mouth to remind them once more that they were working on a deadline, when suddenly the whole room lurched.  

Han kept his feet, barely, then stared open-mouthed at the crystal falling off the figure in blue armor, shattering on the ground.  

Then it spread, some sort of chain reaction, crystal shattering around the room.  Han suddenly realized just how large the room was, only then realizing he could tell that because the crystal that wasn’t breaking was glowing brighter and brighter.

And one very long moment later, the figure in blue and white armor opened his eyes and stepped forward, a living breathing human being, and behind him, an entire army snapped to attention.

Chapter Text

As the ringing from the last of the crystal hitting the floor faded away, Han fought to keep his hand from drifting towards his blaster.  He was a fast draw, sure, but he also prided himself on having at least a few self-preservation instincts, and they were screaming that this was not a time to make any sudden moves.

Chewbacca, Rey, and Finn all seemed equally frozen, waiting to see who would be the first to break the silence.

The blue-armored soldier in front of them seemed to have no such fear.  “Captain Rex, reporting for duty,” he said.  “What are your orders, Generals?”

Han stared at the figure in shock, a corner of his mind trying to decide which part of all of this was weirdest  –  a room full of soldiers in armor decades out of date, those soldiers coming to life, or that they’d then called him by a rank he’d given up decades ago at the Empire’s defeat.

The situation did not become any less weird when he belatedly realized the soldier, Rex, wasn’t even looking at him, but rather Rey and Finn.  

As Rey and Finn stared back at him in silent consternation, Rex’s brow furrowed.  “You’re Jedi, aren’t you?  Come to deal with the evil in this place?  We’ll help, if you just tell us how.”

Chewie roared briefly, and Han nodded.  There had been those stories that had been whispered through the Rebellion, usually over late night swigs of spotchka when missions were going less than well.  The rumors of an army buried underneath an asteroid somewhere, just waiting to be woken from their slumber before they’d rise up and defeat all evil in the galaxy.

But there were two problems with that.  One, that was just a story.  A fairy tale.  If there was any actual truth to it, why hadn’t they shown up to fight against the Empire?

And two, “I’ve seen a lot of stormtroopers in my day.  Fought a fair number, too.  And that lot isn’t exactly known for being helpful.  And even if we did have any Jedi here  –  which we don’t   –  why would I ever trust a bunch of clone troopers around them?”

Rex nodded in acknowledgement.  “You’re not wrong.  I’ll tell you the whole story when we have the time, but I don’t think that’s right now.  For now, the short version is we’re all clone troopers.”  Around the room, every trooper pulled off their helmet, revealing a variety of tattoos and haircuts, but underneath, a sea of identical faces.  “The evil we were forced to do for the Emperor against the Jedi and the people of the galaxy wasn’t by choice, and we won’t be subject to their control again.  I know that’s not a lot of reason to trust us, but you don’t have a lot of other options right now.”

Rey stared at Rex for a long moment, then turned to Han.  “He’s telling the truth.  I’m not sure why I’m sure about that, but we can trust him.  All of them.”

Han winced internally.  So much for trying to avoid confirming he had a couple of baby Jedi with him.  But if she was right, and what Rex was saying was true….

Finn, meanwhile, was staring at Rex and the other troopers with something like hero worship in his eyes.  “You really are clone troopers?”

“Yeah, we are,” Rex answered agreeably.

“They told us about you!  You were what we were all supposed to aspire to be.  The perfect soldiers, as identical as possible, raised to be soldiers from childhood, giving up our identities to be the perfect parts in a greater system.  They even gave us numbers like yours.  Except… how come you don’t have a number?”

As Finn trailed off from excitement to confusion, Han was reminded exactly why he loathed the First Order with a burning passion.  This was the evil the Resistance was fighting against, the kind of people who would deliberately do this to children.  

Rex’s face had darkened as well, and he dropped out of formal military posture to stand in front of Finn.

“They did give me a number.  CT-7567.  What number did they give you?”

“FN-2187.  But when I left the First Order, a pilot I met, Poe, gave me the name Finn.”

“I’m glad you had someone to give you a name.”

Finn looked like he didn’t know whether to be pleased or appalled.  “Why?  Wasn’t it good to have numbers instead of names?  Wasn’t that why you were the best fighting force in the galaxy?  Wasn’t that why our officers followed your example, so we’d be the best fighters, too?”

“No, Finn,” Rex answered him with calm certainty.  “The best soldiers have something to fight for.   Not a principle, but other people.  The Kaminoans who created us didn’t think we were people.  The Republic sometimes had trouble remembering that, too.  But the Jedi we fought with knew we were people, and choosing names, or being given them, helped us remember that, too.  

“I think we were better soldiers when we were fighting not because of our orders but because we were fighting for our brothers next to us.  Honestly, though, whether or not it improves your fighting doesn’t matter.  You shouldn’t have had to give up your identity just because it might possibly make you a better soldier.  You deserve to be a person, Finn.  You deserve a name and you deserve to make your own decisions.

“Who gave you that number and raised you as a soldier, Finn?” Rex asked suddenly, looking towards Han like Han uncomfortably suspected the wampa had looked at Luke before deciding he’d be a perfect after-dinner snack.

Finn picked up on the sudden danger as well  –  probably with his developing Jedi senses, or maybe just the well-honed caution of growing up around dozens of furious officers  –  and immediately stepped between Rex and Han.  “Not Han!  Han’s been helping me out ever since I escaped the First Order.  They’re the ones who raised us  –  and the ones who built this base.”

“And they’re also going to blow up the planet my wife is on if we don’t get a move on and destroy this place,” Han broke in gruffly, relieved as the sense of impending doom dropped back down.

“Then we’ll help.  Whatever it takes to bring them down for good.  What are the objectives?” Rex asked, fully professional again.

“We need to get the shields down,” Han answered firmly.  “And fast, for the X-Wings to have any hope of coming in and blowing this place to hell before it can fire again.”

“Understood.  Echo, see if you can get into their systems and get the shields down from the inside.”

“Yes, sir!”  Another soldier stepped forward in the weirdest armor Han had ever seen.  And was that a droid’s scomp link attached to his arm in place of a right hand?  Han knew he hadn’t been paying much attention to the Clone Wars, being rather too focused on surviving growing up on the streets, but just what kind of sadistic medical experiments had been going on?  And by whom?  But there was no time to ask as Echo continued, “But depending on how much security has been upgraded since I was last out in the galaxy, it’s possible I may not be able to slice in, at least not in time.”

“We need a backup plan, then,” Rex said.  “Three squads to fan out and look for the armory.  High explosives placed directly on the shield generators will definitely take them down, and enough planted elsewhere might be enough to take out this entire abomination of a weapon even if the fighters can’t get through.”

Han grinned crookedly as he waved towards Chewbacca.  “My friend Chewbacca has a bag-full of explosives.  Let’s use them.”

Several of the clones got downright devious grins, and started negotiating the distribution of the bag’s contents with Chewbacca.  

“Well, you’ve just made their year,” Rex said with a matching grin, then turned businesslike again.  “We should still raid their armory if we can, though  –  too many of us are currently unarmed.  I assume there are fighters stationed at this base?”

Finn nodded.

“Then another squad to commandeer some ships.  Keep the element of surprise as long as you can, but as soon as any allied ships show up and start shooting, make sure to get your IFF indicator switched ASAP!  I don’t want to lose anyone because they didn’t know you weren’t the enemy!”

It took Han a minute to remember the acronym from back in the days of the Rebellion  –  IFF: Identification Friend or Foe.  The signals the ship computers would send to each other to tell each other who was on which side when the massive distances of space and the chaos of combat might prevent a visual ID of enemies.  In atmosphere, in ships visibly First Order, a changed IFF indicator might not be enough to prevent friendly fire, but it might give the Resistance pilots just enough of a pause to listen to a radio hail explaining the situation.

“Any other priorities?”

As Rex had been snapping out his orders, Finn had been looking more and more uncomfortable.  Finally, at Rex’s question, he looked up again, expression firming.

“My siblings.”

Rey looked at him oddly.  “Didn’t you say you were taken away from your family too young to remember them?”

“Not my birth siblings.  The ones here.”  Finn looked at Rex with a veneer of confidence over what was pretty clearly terror.  “What you said, about fighting for your brothers, we never had that in the First Order.  In combat, it was every person for themselves, focus on the objective and your orders, nothing else.  Or it was supposed to be, at any rate.  But then I saw FN-2003 die.  That was the start of what brought me here.  How many more are there like me, only just now realizing that war isn’t as great as they told us it was going to be?  That the things they order us to do aren’t right?   A lot of the people on this base, they really believe.  They want to crush the galaxy under their boots.  But not all of us.  And if we can find them, convince them, help them realize they’re allowed to be a person and make their own choices, maybe a few more of them will have the chance to be free, too.”

Was the kid crazy?   

Then his traitorous mind started throwing up memories of the kinds of things he, Luke, and Leia had been up to at Finn’s age and he had to reconsider.  Luke offering himself up for capture by Darth Vader in the hopes of turning him back to the Light had been crazy.  Finn trying to encourage other baby stormtroopers to desert certainly wasn’t any worse than attempting to rescue a kidnapped Princess of the Death Star had been, and that had worked.  

Still… “You do realize, Finn, that you’ll have to talk to them to have any hope of convincing them to desert.  And if even a single one of them decides not to listen to you, they’ll start shooting?”

Finn’s attempt at confidence was cracking even more badly, the terror underneath plenty obvious to Han even without any magic Force abilities.  But for all his (entirely rational) fear, he wasn’t backing down.

“Then I’ll just have to be ready to duck.”

“And we’ll help, Finn,” Rex added firmly.  “I’ll lead a squad to go with you, and pilots, we’ll need a group of you with larger ship experience to find and fly whatever troop transports this base has.  Finn, however many of your siblings make the choice to evacuate with you, we’ll get them out.  I promise.”

He paused, looking between them.  “Anything else?”

Han desperately didn’t want to say anything, but silence now could easily mean sending people to their deaths.

“There’s a Sith on this base.  Wears a mask, carries a red lightsaber and isn’t afraid to use it, goes by the name ‘Kylo Ren.’”

Or maybe silence wouldn’t have left the battalion in the dark, as Rex nodded gravely and answered, “We know.  We felt him.”

Han almost left it there.  It wasn’t like the rest of it was really important, was it?  But then he glanced over at Finn.  Finn who had never asked for any of this but had still found the courage to risk his life for Rey, for the other stormtroopers.  “He’s my son, Ben.”

Finn and Rey whipped around to stare at him, and he grimaced in apology.  He didn’t know exactly when Ben had done to Rey, or how directly involved he had been in all the horrors that Finn had experienced.  But if there had been anything Han could have done differently, to raise Ben differently, so he might have chosen literally any other path…!

But of all the Force techniques Han had heard Luke and Leia discussing over the years, a way to go back and fix the mistakes of the past hadn’t been one of them.  

So instead, he added, “If we see him, I’ll try and talk him down.  I don’t know if there’s any chance of him listening to me and surrendering, but I have to try.  Having him out of the picture would make dealing with the rest of the base much easier.”

“I think we have a plan, then,” Rex announced.  “Anyone not assigned to another task, do anything you can to stop this base from firing another shot.  Move out!”

Han followed Rey, Finn, and a horde of clone troopers into Starkiller Base.

 –  –  – 

Finn swallowed nervously as he led Commander Rex and a dozen other clone troopers through the base towards the barracks where the lowest ranked troopers lived.  Where he had lived, right up until he had been called up for that raid on Jakku.  

The good news was the barracks weren’t that far away from where the passageway from the crystal chamber into the base had let out.  That was important because they only had a very short period of time to go talk to the other troopers before the alarm was raised and every trooper on base was called up to defend it.  

The bad news was that if was about to die  –  as seemed increasingly likely  –  it would have been nice to have a slightly longer walk to his execution.

But they reached the back door with no hint of the klaxons going off.  

Finn cracked it open, and stared in at the room that looked simultaneously so familiar he wanted to cry from homesickness, yet also so impossibly alien it was hard to believe he’d only defected a handful of days ago.  

And there were his siblings, scattered around the room as they studied their training modules, maintained their blasters and armor, or discussed one of the approved topics with a neighbor.  

The vast majority were human  –  the First Order had always taught that only humans could have positions of leadership, though allowed that a small number of aliens could be acceptable to strengthen the lowest-rank infantry numbers as long as they were properly raised within the First Order  –  and after seeing the incredible diversity on Takodana and in the Resistance, it made Finn ache for everything he’d lost growing up in the First Order even more.

He was dawdling, and he needed to move before the base alarm sounded and his siblings ran out to defend the base and got themselves killed trying to fight real clone troopers.

Finn threw the door open the rest of the way and walked towards the front of the room.

The whispers started almost immediately: FN-2187.  FN-2187 is back.  Traitor.  Deserter.  Didn’t Captain Phasma say…?  

Then they caught sight of the clone troopers, and the room fell deathly silent.

“You know me,” Finn said into the silence, then nearly froze at the sight of a hundred faces staring at him.  But he looked over at Rex, and the other troopers  –  the ones who’d been his heroes since the first training module had mentioned them, and he swore to himself he would not let them down.   “You know my number, and you know that I left.  But I came back, and I’m not FN-2187 anymore.  I’m Finn.  I have a name.”

Whispers broke out again, rising in volume as the other troopers’ outrage grew.  They were First Order Stormtroopers.  They weren’t supposed to have names.

“Remember our training?  Remember our history lessons?” Finn called, trying to recapture their attention.  “They wanted us to be like the clone troopers.  And today I met some clone troopers, and they have names!”   

FN-3118 stood up with a furious expression on her face.  “This is absolute nonsense and I’m not going to listen to it any longer!”

“She’s right,” FN-2199 said.  “I don’t know where you got those costumes, but give us one good reason we shouldn’t shoot you all right now!”

“Finn is telling the truth,” Commander Rex said calmly, and took off his helmet.  Behind him the dozen troopers who had followed him took theirs off as well, revealing faces that could only have been cloned.  “We’re all clone troopers, who served in the Grand Army of the Republic and fought against the Confederation of Independent States.  We weren’t given names, so we chose them ourselves.  When the Republic fell, some of us fought in the Imperial army as well.”

“If you’re really clone troopers, then join us!” FN-3118 cried out.  “You know the importance of a strong army to maintain order!  The Republic of your day was weak, and it fell.  You helped bring it down and served the Empire that rose in its place.  And now the New Republic has shown its weakness and soon it will fall, and the galaxy will realize the First Order is the worthy successor to the Empire of your day, only better, because we have learned from its mistakes.  The First Order shall reign supreme forever, and we have the honored position as the vanguards and heralds of its triumph!”

Rex waited, as the echoes of her voice finished ringing through the room, then shook his head.  “Just because someone said something in a rousing speech doesn’t make it true.  Ruling because you have a weapon that can destroy planets doesn’t lead to order, only fear, and fear won’t last forever.”

The trooper next to Rex, wearing pure white Imperial stormtrooper armor, stepped forward.  “I served in the Empire.  Do you honestly think the Empire cared for its soldiers?  Or for its citizens?  Of course not!  We weren’t made to bring order, much less peace; we were there to keep the common people subjugated so the people in power could do whatever they wanted.  Not only were we not “honored,” they didn’t even let us have free will!”

The rangetrooper on Rex’s other side added, “We didn’t kill the Jedi by choice.  We didn’t serve the Empire by choice.  Because we were clones, all the Emperor had to do was flip a switch in our heads to make us follow his orders without question.  But you aren’t clones.  You still have the ability to choose!  Do you really believe that what the First Order is doing is good for the people of the galaxy?  Or even good for you?  Or will your officers discard you without a second thought the moment that would be convenient?”

Finn thought he saw a few people start to waver.  But others weren’t there yet, and they must be dangerously close to running out of time.  All he could do was tell them the truth and hope to the Force it was enough.  “The First Order stole us from our families.  They stole our names, and gave us numbers instead.  They said it was to make us better soldiers, but I think it was to make us forget that we’re people.  They wanted us to be perfect, unthinking, unfeeling droids.  Except I met a droid who had more feelings in a day than I’ve seen Captain Phasma show in my whole life!  

“The First Order isn’t doing what’s best for the galaxy.  They’re trying to blow up entire planets!  And the only reason they can do it is because they have people like us obeying their orders and helping them do whatever evil thing they decide to do next.  But we can choose differently!  We don’t have to obey them, we don’t have to fight for them, and we have an entire company of clone troopers who’ll help us leave this place forever and finally be free!  Who’s with me?”

And Finn held his breath and waited to see what they’d choose.

 –  –  – 

Han winced at the shriek of the klaxons starting up overhead.  They’d slowly snuck a good ways into the base, but now they’d have to rely on speed over stealth.  Frankly, he was just amazed that a couple thousand troopers in foreign armor had gone unnoticed for as long as they had.

A black-armored clone pacing next to him glanced over and saw his grimace.  “The shields just came down.  Echo reports he was able to slice into their systems just fine, and even turned off all the automatic alarms, but the shields over the entire base vanishing wholesale were a little too visible to avoid attention.”

Han sighed fatalistically.  “I suppose that means that whatever happens to us at this point, at least the Resistance will be able to blow this place to hell.”

“From the surface, with only the munitions available on a fighter…” the black-armored clone shook his head.  “I think this place is too deep for that.  But given just how much some of my brothers love their explosives, I promise you we will bring this base down one way or another.”

That was good.  That was the important thing  –  that this Force-forsaken bigger-and-better-Death-Star wouldn’t have the chance to vaporize Leia and the rest of the Resistance.  

But that meant he was running out of time to find Ben, and he didn’t have a clue where to start looking.  

Maybe the Force was with him after all, though, as no sooner had he thought that than he caught a glimpse of black robes turning a corner up ahead.  

Han sped up, putting on one last burst of speed, and only vaguely noticed the clones that had been accompanying him fall behind.  Good.  He’d have less than no chance of reaching Ben with an army at his back.

Han caught up to him at the edge of a walkway, stretching across a chasm.  

“Ben!” he cried out.  

“Han Solo,” Ben answered, and the refusal to call him ‘father’ still hurt, for all that it was hardly unexpected.  “I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time.”

“Take off that mask.  You don’t need it,” Han implored.  

“What do you think you’ll see if I do?”

“The face of my son.”

And, miraculously, Ben did take his mask off.  He was older now, yet still so young.  How could he have fallen so far, so fast?

“Your son is gone,” Ben answered coldly.  “He was weak and foolish like his father, so I destroyed him.”

“That’s what Snoke wants you to believe, but it’s not true.  My son is alive.”

“No.  The Supreme Leader is wise.”

“Snoke is using you for your power,” Han pleaded with his son.  Couldn’t Ben see?   The Dark Side was nothing but pain and betrayal, and those who believed themselves immune were always the first to fall.  “When he gets what he wants he’ll crush you.  You know it’s true.”

“It’s too late.”

Han’s heart leapt at the hint that perhaps there was still a part of Ben that knew this was wrong, that did want to come home if only he could be convinced it wasn’t impossible.  “No, it’s not.  Leave here with me.  Come home.  I miss you.”

The pain in Ben’s voice intensified.  “I’m being torn apart.  I want to be free of this pain.  I know what I have to do but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it.  Will you help me?”

“Yes, anything,” Han vowed.

Ben held out his lightsaber, that horrible, blood-red abomination that had caused so much pain to so many.  Han reached out to take it.

Yet instead of yielding it, Ben held on.  Han tried to pull it away, but Ben  –  Kylo  –  held on tighter, and as Han looked up at Kylo’s suddenly ice-cold gaze, he knew then that he was about to die.

Yet at that very instant, the red beam of a sniper rifle shot bare centimeters over Han’s shoulder, slamming into Kylo with the force of a bantha and knocking him over the edge of the walkway.  

Han dropped to his hands and knees, not even sure in his own mind if it was a futile attempt to take cover from further shots, a last desperate attempt to see his son as he fell to his doom, or sheer shock making his knees go watery.  

But there was no sign or sound of Kylo hitting the bottom of the chasm, and no more blaster shots aimed his direction.  

Those were blaster shots he was hearing, though, so, heart breaking, he pulled himself up to his feet to figure out what was going on.

Yet even as he did so, the last of the blasters ceased firing, and the same black-armored trooper he had been talking to a few minutes prior slid down a couple of ladders and walked up to him.

“All enemy stormtroopers have been taken care of.  Half the squad is guarding the exits and the rest are working to cover this whole area with explosives.”

It took Han a long moment to gather his wits enough to respond.  His son was dead twice over, but he had no time to grieve.  Still, the sheer shock of the last few minutes loosened his tongue enough to say, “I hadn’t thought you even could shoot a Sith with a blaster.”

“I didn’t introduce myself properly earlier, did I?  My name’s Cody, and once the Empire got ahold of me, I was a Purge Trooper  –  a Jedi hunter.  They made sure we knew how to not be noticed by Force users.  Though honestly, he was focused enough on you that it wasn't hard.”

“I,” Han’s voice broke and he had to try again.  “I can’t thank you for killing my son, but you saved my li…”

“Sir,” Cody broke in, gentle but implacable.  “You should know I didn’t kill him.”

Han stared at him, mouth agape.

“I can’t say I wouldn’t have if I had had a better angle  –  you gave him a chance to turn back and he refused to take it  –  but with how you two were standing I couldn’t get a fatal shot.”

“He fell into a bottomless chasm.”  Yet even as Han argued, hope was starting to grow in his chest.

Hope that burst into full flower as Cody answered, with the long-suffering resignation of one who had spent far too much time around Jedi, “He’s a Force user.  They think gravity is something that happens to other people.  For better or worse, we haven’t seen the last of him yet.”

Han sobered.  Much as he wanted his son Ben back, Kylo Ren had made it very clear that he didn’t want to come back.  And for that matter, if he had, what response would have been fair or just for the suffering and death Kylo had committed?  

But for now they were out of time.  While he and Cody had spoken, the other troopers had placed their bombs, and if they were to have any hope of saving Leia  –  or themselves  –  they needed to get out now and blow the place to the moons of Iego behind them.

 –  –  – 

Trooper after trooper jogged up the boarding ramp of the troop transport, as Finn counted off the squads and then waved for the next group of his siblings to head over to the next transport ship in line.  Past that, another half dozen clones and First Order stormtroopers were divvying up piloting responsibilities for the next couple of transport ships.  

It was incredible watching the evacuation.  Defection.  Rescue.

Every trooper in that first barracks room had agreed to leave the First Order, and nearly all from the next several as well.  Not everyone had, so those who’d chosen to stay loyal had been stunned and were now getting dumped in the last transport in line, with Arch setting the autopilot to get them far enough away from Starkiller Base to not get caught in its destruction, then hover until they woke up and chose what course they wanted to set.  But that still left hundreds of his siblings who’d made the choice to go.  

An unfamiliar sense of urgency suddenly came over Finn, and he froze, trying to parse the feeling.  The only thing he was sure of was that it involved Rey, and it was bad.  He hesitated an instant longer  –  he couldn’t abandon Rey!  But he also couldn’t abandon his siblings!  

Then he felt a nudge at his side and suddenly remembered: he didn’t need to do this alone anymore.  He turned to Rex and begged, “Something’s wrong with Rey!  She needs help!  Can you do anything?”

“I’ll find her,” Rex promised.

“Thanks.  And take this, she might need it.”  It was a wrench, giving it up, but if there was any chance it would help Rey he refused to hesitate.  He handed Rex the lightsaber, and Rex disappeared off in the direction Finn had pointed him.

Finn turned back to his task.  Just a few hundred more defected stormtroopers to get off Starkiller Base before the entire thing exploded.  He looked around at all the clone troopers and defected petty officers who’d stepped up to help with the logistics and smiled.  Together, they could do this.  

 –  –  – 

Rey ran.  

Away from the Falcon, away from the troopers  –  she neither knew nor cared where she was running to, all that mattered was away.

At first, she’d assumed she was going to be useless on the assault on Starkiller Base.  She was a scavenger who could hit things with a stick if she had to, nothing more.

Yet even knowing that she couldn’t bear to just head straight back to the Millenium Falcon and wait to find out whether everyone else had succeeded or not, so she’d trailed behind a random squad, figuring she could at least be an extra pair of eyes.

Then they’d reached an impassable door, and been about to backtrack to find another way around, when she’d taken a closer look at the wiring.

Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that when the First Order had decided to adopt the Empire’s aesthetics and morals (or rather, lack thereof), they’d also borrowed a lot of their construction techniques from Imperial Star Destroyers.  

And if there was one thing in the galaxy Rey knew her way around, it was Imperial Star Destroyers.  Ten seconds later and she’d gotten the door open, and less than a minute after that the squad had found her a junction station she could use to start turning more of their own base against the First Order.  

She’d done a fair bit of damage, but with the X-Wings starting to rain fire from above, and the first of the planted explosives detonating below, she’d finally admitted it was time to evacuate.  She’d been leading ‘her’ squad to where Chewbacca had told her he’d parked the Falcon, hoping to at least get the engines warmed up and ready for a quick getaway as soon as Han, Chewie, and Finn showed up, when he appeared.  Kylo Ren.

And with the horrible voice she’d be hearing in her dreams for years, he’d said: “We’re not done yet.”

She’d raised her blaster, but the trooper in sand-colored armor next to her put a warning hand over hers.  “He’ll just reflect the bolts straight back in your face unless you have a lightsaber of your own to deflect them.”

That was enough to give her pause.  Without a blaster what were her options?  She didn’t have a lightsaber and wouldn’t know how to use one anyway.

The same trooper nudged her back.  “Take cover inside.  We have armor; we’ll hold him off as long as possible.”

Rey shook her head in frustration.  The one thing she was absolutely sure about was that Kylo had zero qualms about killing anyone and everyone in his way.

She paused.  In his way… to her.   That was the answer!  His unfinished business was with her, and while he’d happily kill the troopers around her, it was unlikely he’d waste time killing them just for fun if it risked her getting away.  

And whatever had happened to turn Ben into Kylo Ren, he’d grown up in a loving, peaceful family, and now he was the undisputed leader of a wanna-be Empire, no doubt with lackeys waiting on his every whim and sparing him from the slightest exertion.  Rey, on the other hand, had grown up knowing her survival depended entirely on her own strength and endurance.  True, he had the Force, but apparently so did she (even if she really didn’t know what she was doing with it yet).  

What were the odds she could outlast him?  

She’d just have to find out.

So Rey ran.

 –  –  – 

Rex had expected that waking up from the kyber would mean going back to what life had been like before Order 66  –  alone in his own head.  He’d miss the connection to his brothers, of course, but that was a price he was willing to pay for the chance to affect the galaxy again.

Except strangely enough that hadn’t happened.  When he closed his eyes he could still see the web of lights connecting each and every one of his brothers.  Nor did he need Finn’s directions to know which direction Kylo Ren was heading in  –  he was pretty sure he’d know exactly where to find that ball of darkness even if he was suddenly struck deaf and blind.  

But that also meant he could tell just how tight the timing of all of this was going to be.  

They’d gained themselves a little extra time through their previous sabotage.  Still sleeping, but well aware of what the First Order was trying to do, they’d been able to nudge the kyber that the First Order was aiming their weapon through, just bare millimeters, but at those distances that was enough that it skimmed the surface of the planet they were aiming at instead of hitting it directly.  No doubt it had still been incredibly deadly and devastating, but nowhere near as bad as it could have been.

But the First Order didn’t know what had happened to disrupt their aiming like that.  

So before they fired again at their next target, they’d had to delay long enough to triple-check all their calculations and alignments.  And sure enough, they had found the misalignment and corrected it, even adding safeguards to make sure that same issue wouldn’t affect their aim again.  

But the delay was long since over, the weapon was charging, and the sun had nearly vanished.  They were out of time.

Rex knew the rest of his brothers could feel it as well as he could, but he still tapped his com, “Everybody out!  Find your way to the nearest transport that’ll get you off the surface, and trigger the detonators as you leave!”

A course of affirmatives came back at him, and he sent one more wordless pulse of feeling towards the rest of them: Those explosives will still be more than sufficient even if they manage to disarm half of them.  No playing the hero to stay behind guarding them until the last possible second!

The sheepish feeling he got back implied at least one brother had been contemplating that idea, but was changing course and heading to the hangers instead, so Rex turned his attention to the battle ahead.

He reached the ship Lyon’s squad had been heading to with Rey, and found ‘92 guarding the hatch.  

“Barrel’s inside getting the engines warmed up, though he said he’d only fly the thing himself as a last resort, given the odds of him blowing the ship up because someone decided to wire the hyperdrive through the galley’s caf maker, or something else equally ridiculous.  Lyon and the rest of the squad are tracking Rey and the Sith.  Last report says they’ve managed to keep both in sight, but haven’t figured out a way to take the Sith out yet.”

“Thanks, ‘92,” Rex answered, then took off running again.

For all the pain the longnecks had subjected him and his brothers to, this was one of many times he couldn’t help but be grateful for whatever modifications they had made in their quest to develop supersoldiers who could keep up with Jedi.  Rex followed the sense of Sith, Jedi, and brothers, and let his long strides eat up the kilometers.  

They’d gotten quite a ways, clearly, with Rey leading Ren further and further away from Starkiller Base and anyone else he might hurt, but their pace was starting to slow.  The terrain was getting rougher, rockier.  

Rex put on one last burst of speed, and finally caught a glimpse of them.  Kylo had his lightsaber out and on, and was stalking towards Rey with hatred boiling off of him.  Rey was scrambling away from him, only to freeze in terror as the ground abruptly ran out in front of her.  Sliced off as with a lightsaber (or more likely, industrial mining machines), the cliff fell away below her.  

Rex couldn’t tell from this angle how far down it went, but he could see the moment Rey paled, realizing there was no escape in that direction, and turned to face Kylo.

He was about to reach her, and Rex could see her eyes frantically darting around, looking for an escape, a defense, something.

Rex was still too far away to engage Kylo directly, and there weren’t enough of his brothers around to overwhelm even a half-decent Sith with blaster bolts, but what she needed was a weapon and it was a good thing he had one at hand for her.  “Rey!” Rex called, and flung the lightsaber toward her.  She reached up, and snatched it out of the air.  

The cloud of hatred around Kylo somehow only intensified as Rey turned on the lightsaber and Kylo recognized the blade she was holding.  “That lightsaber.  It belongs to me,” he spat.  

“No,” Rey shot back, “It’s Luke Skywalker’s, and his father’s before him.  Not yours.”  And the battle was joined in earnest.  

Rex made himself keep moving, trying to find a better position where he might be able to actually help Rey, even as most of him wanted to stop and watch the battle, and the rest of him was still trying to figure out how Rey would have been able to recognize Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber  –  and what this meant about the identity of Luke Skywalker.  

Then he got a proper look at the duel and all other speculation was promptly forgotten as he realized he had to reassess every assumption he had made about Rey and Finn.  When the two of them had woken Rex and the others up, Rex had assumed that meant they were Jedi.  He might not be that great at telling natborn ages, but they seemed a similar age to most of his brothers when they were deployed, so even if they weren’t full generals, they should have at least had years as a padawan commander.  Even allowing for Anakin and Ahsoka not being representative samples of what a Jedi could do (no he wasn’t being biased, Cody) , Rey should be more than capable of going toe-to-toe with a Sith apprentice and holding her own.  

Yet the lightsaber battle ahead was almost painful to watch.  Rey clearly didn’t have any lightsaber experience, and was just hacking away at Kylo.  Rex guessed she wasn’t completely unpracticed with a melee weapon, but whatever it was she’d used before was clearly different enough to be throwing her off.  A staff, maybe?  Something with a much longer handle than the lightsaber, at any rate, leaving her doing nothing more than flailing.  

The only reason she hadn’t died instantly was that Kylo was barely better.  He looked to have had a little training at least, and that was probably his own lightsaber he had built, but the blade was flickering concerningly and his swings were nearly as wild as Rey’s.  He clearly expected to be victorious through brute strength alone, and Rex felt a moment of regret that he couldn’t introduce Kylo to Ahsoka and watch her absolutely wipe the floor with him.

Kylo caught Rey in a bladelock and hissed at her, “You need a teacher.  I could show you the ways of the Force.”

“The Force?” Rex thought he heard her whisper, and then she was calming herself and reaching out.  Rex, his brothers, and all of Ilum reached back, wrapping her in their love and support, and trying to show her the hard-earned lessons they’d learned watching their own Jedi in fight after fight with the Sith.  If you twist your blade like this, and duck under his arm like that…

And then she was out, putting some distance between herself, Kylo, and the cliff-edge, and finally Rex was in position.

“Kylo Ren!” he called out, punctuating the shout with a blaster shot right between Kylo’s feet.  

Kylo whipped around at the shot, clearly surprised to see someone else in the clearing with him, but nearly as quickly dismissing him as unimportant.

Rex had no plans to let him go back to trying to kill one of perhaps the only two Jedi left in the galaxy at this point in time.  

Rex sent another bolt at Kylo’s feet as he demanded, “What makes you think you have a claim on my general’s lightsaber?”

Kylo froze for just an instant, then turned to stare directly at Rex, finally seeing him properly.  “That lightsaber belonged to Darth Vader and I am his true heir!  You aren’t worthy enough to even say his name!”

“So that’s what my general decided to call himself after he Fell,” Rex sighed, wondering again at what Anakin had been thinking to betray his entire family like that.

“After he recognized the true power of the Dark Side and threw off the shackles of the old Jedi Order!  They were weak!  Ignorant!  Failures!  The Dark Side is the only true path to freedom and victory!”

“You don’t even realize how much was lost, do you?” Rex demanded, feeling the weight of all the years  –  all the deaths   –  more acutely than he had since first waking up.  “The Sith don’t care about knowledge.  If they did, they wouldn’t have destroyed so much of it!  You know nothing about fighting with a lightsaber, but how could you?  The Sith used us to kill everyone who could have taught you any of the techniques the Jedi spent the last several thousand years perfecting!”

“How dare you!”  Kylo stomped towards Rex furiously and Rex cautiously backed away.  Step one accomplished  –  he’d certainly gotten Kylo’s attention!

But now what?  He had a rabid Sith barely-an-apprentice who was about to kill him, and he had zero weapons other than his blasters to fend him off.  If he got the lightsaber back from Rey… but it wasn’t like he had any more actual experience using one than she did, regardless of what theoretical knowledge he’d picked up over the war.  And she didn’t seem inclined to throw it back, either.  

In fact… Rex was suddenly very grateful for his helmet that kept his expression invisible as he spotted her sneaking around behind Kylo, clearly setting herself up for the best chance to stab him through the back.  And that might be the pragmatic thing to do in this situation, but what would that do to a young Jedi?   One Darksider at a time was more than enough  –  the thought of Rey Falling made his blood run cold.

Zygerria flashed before his eyes and he knew he had to act before Rey could.  

Lyon nudged him then over their bond, and Rex could suddenly feel the half dozen brothers with him, all with their blasters out and aimed at Kylo.  Eight of us wouldn’t be enough to take out a trained Sith, but then, he’s not a trained Sith, is he?   And Rex caught a glimpse of Lyon’s memories of Order 66, hundreds of bolts overwhelming the defenses of even a Jedi Master.  

He hesitated.  For one long moment, Rex hesitated.  Yes, enough bolts would take down Kylo Ren.  But Order 66 hadn’t been deadly for the Jedi alone.  How many would Kylo manage to take down with him before their numbers finally overwhelmed him?  If he had to, he’d make the call to sacrifice Lyon, the rest of the squad, and himself, to take down this Sith.  But oh, he was tired of losing brother after brother after brother.  Weren’t there any other options?

And also…  Kylo was an unrepentant, mass-murdering Sith.  Anakin Skywalker had been, too.  And yet somehow, at the very end, Anakin had still managed to claw his way back out of the darkness and choose a different path.  

Rex watched as Kylo bore down on him and wondered, What would a Jedi do here?

And faintly, he heard a very familiar voice in his ear.

“Have you ever wondered where someone got the very first idea for carbonite freezing?  It was here.  It started with Jedi who were too badly injured to survive transport back to Coruscant, but it’s also been used a time or two as a safe and humane way to contain captured darksiders.  The crystals will put them to sleep, a form of stasis actually, and keep them that way safely for as long as necessary.”

Rex grinned, and felt the fierce joy of every one of his brothers behind him.  

And as Kylo Ren’s right foot landed on the snow-covered surface of Ilum, a crystal shot up around his leg, encasing it in kyber.  

He had just enough time to draw breath for one last furious shout before the crystal, responding to the request of several thousand minds all intent on a single purpose, rose up and covered him completely.  

And with the distant explosions of Starkiller Base’s destruction beginning to shake the earth all around them, Rex caught Rey’s eyes from where she was standing behind Kylo and beginning to process that she didn’t have to make the killing blow, and said, “Let’s get everybody home.”

Chapter Text

Rex watched out the viewport as Ilum exploded behind them.  

Loud whoops and cheers sounded around him as Rey, Finn, Han, Chewie, Lyon and his squad, and even a couple of rescued Resistance pilots celebrated.  Starkiller Base had been destroyed before firing its second shot, and they were heading home triumphant.

A moment later Rey and Finn slipped up next to him.  “I suppose this isn’t as happy for you, is it?” Rey asked perceptively.  

“It’s still so weird to think you were sleeping right next door to us the entire time we were in that base!” Finn added.  “I suppose it must have been home to you?”

“It was,” Rex agreed.  “We were safe there, for a long time, and the Force was really strong on Ilum.  There was no place else like it in the galaxy.  Did you know that that was where the Jedi used to go to get the crystals to make their lightsabers?”

Horror spread over Rey and Finn’s expressions, and Rey looked down at the lightsaber now hanging from her belt.  “Does that mean that now there won’t be any new lightsabers, ever?” she asked, dread filling her voice.

“No, it’s not as dire as that,” Rex assured them.  “Ahsoka told me once that there are other places in the galaxy one can get crystals, too, they just don’t have as many crystals as Ilum did.  That’s not going to be the last lightsaber in the galaxy.

“And anyway,” Rex paused, trying to put into words something he just knew, “kyber is very hard to destroy.  It can channel immense amounts of energy safely  –  which is why it’s used in both lightsabers and planet-killing weapons.  It can break into smaller pieces, but even an explosion that size  –” he motioned to the still-expanding debris cloud that was all that now remained of the planet “–  won’t actually destroy the crystals.  And since the Force flows through the kyber, and the Force binds together the life in the galaxy, I think… I think Ilum’s kyber will show up again one day, scattered amongst all the planets of the galaxy, waiting for the next generation of Jedi.”

“I like that,” Rey said finally.  “Crystals everywhere in the galaxy, ready to be found, but not so many in one place that someone can turn them into another weapon like that.”

Finn nodded fervently, then looked more pensive.  “But how long will that take?  That explosion is powerful, but I don’t think even kyber can send itself through hyperspace.  What about this generation of Jedi?”

And Rex saw how, hard as he tried to hide it, Finn’s eyes flicked down to the lightsaber on Rey’s belt.  The single lightsaber.  

Rex smiled crookedly.  “Turns out there are some advantages to having literally been surrounded by the stuff for a few decades.”  And he reached into his right belt pouch and pulled out a handful of glittering kyber shards.  

Rey and Finn gasped, then reached forward before suddenly hesitating, not sure if it was okay for them to touch.  Rex nodded, and they gently ran their fingers through the pile, hearing the musical tones as they clinked together, but clearly also hearing the soaring notes of the Force itself singing through the kyber.  

It didn’t take more than a few moments for each to find a crystal that they hesitated over, but whether from politeness, a lack of self-confidence, or an innate understanding that they weren’t quite ready to embark on building their own sabers yet, they finally pulled back empty-handed.  

Rex just nodded, and stowed the precious crystals back away.  There wasn’t any rush.  The crystals would be there when Finn and Rey were ready for them.  

“I’m not the only one with them, either.  Between all of us, there are more than enough crystals to rebuild the Jedi Order.  What the Sith did was vile, and the way they used my brothers to do it was worse, but they didn’t succeed, not completely, not as long as we’re still around to pass along everything we remember.  And there might be others out there, too.”

Was Ahsoka still out there?  Force, he hoped so.  And if not her, then perhaps others who’d survived the Purge or learned from those who had.  And now there was a whole new generation of Force sensitives who’d grown up without the shadow of the Empire’s inquisitors hanging over their heads.  

“You two want to help with that?”

Rey and Finn grinned and threw their arms around him.

 –  –  – 

When they finally landed, Rex stepped out of the Millenium Falcon onto the Resistance airstrip and smiled at the joyful homecoming all around him, yet another part of him felt oddly bereft.  

Maybe that was understandable.  Excited as the Resistance was at the news of so many defections from the First Order, no one entirely trusted that every one of those defections was legitimate.  Until they were sure, high command was understandably hesitant to have that many recent enemies running around unsupervised.  So the vast majority of the defectors were being diverted to one of the Resistance’s less critical bases, where they’d have the chance to start figuring out what they wanted to do next.  Since the bulk of Rex’s siblings had ended up on those same ships, that’s where they were going for the moment, too.  

(Even with the chip apparently known about by the Resistance leadership, they were probably happier not to have several thousands armed soldiers in stormtrooper armor show up on their doorstep all at once anyway. Still, they'd promised to work on getting them all reunited as soon as they had enough available transport ships that they were sure didn't have First Order trackers lurking anywhere.)

So Rex stepped out into the hustle and bustle of an active military base, and simply stood there, staring, for long minutes as he tried to adjust to a scene painfully familiar and yet simultaneously disturbingly foreign as soldiers, technicians, and ground crew milled around with a hundred different faces and species, instead of only one.  

Not wholly unfamiliar, though, as the few dozen brothers who’d traveled on one of the ships heading directly to D’Qar swarmed out of the hatches and surrounded him, laughing.

Rex smiled, and let his unease melt away.  The day was saved, the Darkness was defeated  –  temporarily, at least  –  and he and his brothers were once again awake and able to hug each other and celebrate together as they hadn’t been able to do for decades.  And the fact that the people of the galaxy had stepped up to fight together against evil, rather than just leaving their battles to a disposable clone army, was something to celebrate, too.

Off to one side, Rey and Finn had swarmed a pilot just stepping out of a fighter, and Rex had the sudden suspicion that he was the one who had given Finn his name.  

Han, meanwhile, had embraced a shorter woman who held herself with the poise of a senator and the bearing of a general.  Chewbacca gave them a brief moment of private tenderness, then wrapped them in a bear hug that lifted them a good half meter above the ground.

This, Rex decided, looking around the celebrating throng, made it all worth it.

 –  –  – 

Eventually the celebrations wound down, and it didn’t take long after that for Rex to be called in for a meeting with the base commander.  

Very few of his brothers had as intact of a command structure as the 332nd, having mostly been rescued by Ahsoka in ones and twos at random.  So at some point, he and the rest of his surviving brothers would have to arrange themselves into new squads, platoons, and companies and figure out new ranks accordingly  –  those of them who even wanted to stay with the Resistance and keep fighting that was  –  but for the moment all that mattered was that Rex was the highest ranked of them currently on D’Qar, and it didn’t seem wise to leave the Resistance leadership worried about their intentions any longer.

Rex walked into the office and saluted, then immediately bit back a smile as he realized the woman who’d looked like a general actually was the general of this base, and probably the Resistance as a whole.  (Rex was absolutely going to ask for a briefing on the overall command structure of this organization as soon as he got the chance.)  

“Welcome, Captain Rex,” General Organa said, and motioned him to a chair.  “Now.  I’ve heard bits and pieces about you and your men, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I admit the story sounds rather… fantastic.  So.  In your own words, please, tell me everything.”

Rex did.  It took a while, of course, even giving the most bare-bones background before he dove into that horrific moment when he had first heard the words, “Execute Order 66.”  But the General just listened, patiently, as he described Ilum, what Ahsoka had done, and finally their actions since waking up  –  was it truly just that morning?

“And what are your plans now?” she finally asked, as he wound to a close.  

“Fight,” Rex said firmly, then realized a moment later he should probably clarify that.  “We want to help you fight the First Order.  What they’re doing is evil, and as big a blow as we gave them today, I doubt it’ll stop them for long.  There are some of my brothers who aren’t going to be able to be frontline troops any longer, not after so long fighting our own war, or the things the Empire made them do, and a few others who’ll want to retire entirely.  But between all of us we have a pretty wide breadth of skills, so we can provide a mix of ground troops, pilots, mechanics, trainers, capital ship naval officers, and more.  Um, if, that is, you’re willing to have us,” he tacked on belatedly.

“I don’t think you’re lying,” General Organa said thoughtfully, and Rex had a moment of surprise when he suddenly noticed how the Force was swirling around her.  “I’d also be a fool to turn down help when it’s freely offered.  The Resistance is happy to have you.”  And she reached out her hand for him to shake.

With that part done, she seemed to relax a little, dropping out of general mode to ask, “You said you served under Anakin Skywalker?”

“Yes, sir,” Rex answered, curious about where she was going with this.  “I was his second in command.”

The general nodded sadly.  “I wish my brother Luke were here.  If we do find him eventually, I know he’d love to hear stories from you about what his father was like as a young man.”

Rex nodded.  So that’s who Rey had meant, the one who’d somehow inherited Anakin’s lightsaber.  The 501st hadn’t done a lot of search and rescue, but there were some members of the Wolfpack whom Ahsoka had brought to Ilum, and they might have some good ideas about finding a missing person.  

But something else in that sentence had also caught his attention.  Natborn families were complicated.   It might not be polite to ask about, but he still couldn’t help saying diffidently, “You said Anakin Skywalker was Luke’s father, but Luke is your brother?”  And now that he looked, was that a hint of Senator Amidala in the shape of her face?

The General winced, but said, “Better you hear it from me, than try to piece it together from rumors.  Luke Skywalker is my brother  –  we’re twins, actually.  And yes, our biological father was Anakin Skywalker.  Were you aware of what happened to him after the war?”

Rex nodded, reassuring her that she didn’t have to try to explain Anakin’s Fall.  “I felt his darkness.  Kylo Ren said he took the name Darth Vader.”

“Yes, and he served the Emperor and helped wipe out the Jedi.  Luke felt there was still goodness in him, and was there when Darth Vader turned back to the Light and killed the Emperor to save his life.  So he claims Anakin Skywalker as his father.  But I grew up with Bail and Breha Organa as my parents, and then Darth Vader made me watch as the Empire murdered them.  So while I will claim Luke as my brother, I refuse to claim Anakin Skywalker as my father.”

Natborn families were extremely complicated.  But if there was one thing clones understood all too well it was mixed feelings towards biological progenitors, so Rex simply nodded again and asked, “Then maybe sometime you’d like to hear stories about your father?  I didn’t know Senator Organa all that well, but he brought us relief supplies in the field a few times, and generally seemed to be one of the best of the Senators, along with Senator Amidala.  I have a few stories I could tell you.”  

The General’s surprised smile lit up the room.  “He never wanted to talk much about his time during the Clone Wars.  He said he’d tell me when he was older, but then, well, I was older and he was gone.  I’d like that very much.  Thank you.

“And I should also thank you, and your men, for Han’s life.  He told me he’d have died without Cody, and I’ve lost too many people already by this point.  I couldn’t have borne losing him, too, not when I was the one who told him to try to bring Ben home.”  She looked at Rex with tears in her eyes yet steel still in her spine.  “I gather I have you to thank for that, as well.  You did… something… and brought Ben’s body home to us?  After everything he’s done, I doubt few others will mourn him, yet even after all of it, he’s still my son, and I never stopped loving him.”

“We didn’t bring back his body,” Rex contradicted her gently, then saw her start to crumple and belatedly realized what that had sounded like.  “He’s still alive.”

She whipped back around to him with shock written all over her face.

“He’s in stasis in the kyber, just like we were.  We weren’t sure it would work to detach the kyber from Ilum, but given the circumstances we figured we needed to at least try.  The block of crystal is sitting in the hold of the Fearless since they had a tractor beam that could pick it up.”

Organa nodded once, decisively.  “Thank you, again.  I owe you a debt I can never repay.  I need to go see him.”

“Just don’t wake him up!” Rex warned, fully aware of just how concerningly easy it had been for Rey and Finn to wake him up, even untrained as they had been.  “With Ilum destroyed, I don’t think we have any way to put him back in stasis, so unless the Resistance has another way to safely contain a very angry Darksider…”

“I know,” the General said gently, no longer looking like she was about to run straight for the door.  “I’ll make sure I don’t.  But it won’t be real until I actually see him.”

Rex nodded at her, relieved, and was about to ask if he was dismissed, when she circled the desk to lay a hand on his shoulder.

“I did actually have one other reason for calling you in here, besides just asking about you and your brothers’ plans for the future.  Maybe I can give you at least a fraction of the gift you’ve given me.  You see, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen your face.”

Rex went very still.  It took him a long moment to find his voice.  “You met one of my brothers who survived Order 66?  Someone without the chip?”

“I did.  A few times, in fact, and I’ll trade you those stories for the ones of my father, but I don’t just have stories for you.  One of your brothers is still alive, and on this base.”

“That’s impossible,” he said flatly.  “With our aging, they’d have all died decades ago.  Unless,” his stomach sank as the other possibility occurred to him, “you don’t mean Boba Fett do you?”

She laughed, and the joy was infectious.  “Not Boba, though I do have a few stories to tell you about him, too.  No, this is a clone trooper who ended up in stasis like you did.  He found out about the chips, but the CIS kidnapped him for it and put him in carbonite.  The ship crashed, though, and he was only found a few years ago by pirates.  He spent a little while with them, then made his way to us.  He said he was a medic, and within three months he was running our entire medical division more effectively than it had ever been run before.”

A clone trooper, who knew about the chips.  Who disappeared before the end of the war.  A medic.  

He was already halfway out the door and mentally yelling for Jesse before he registered the General pointing him down the street and saying, “Give Kix my regards!”

They had known they were the only clones left in the entire galaxy.  Several thousand of them, sure, yet merely the barest fraction of their numbers before Palpatine had sent them out into the galaxy to fight and die.  To know that there was even one more, one they had never expected, one they had given up for lost, meant more than he’d ever be able to put into words.

Rex ran, and moments later Jesse joined him, with all the rest of the 332nd who’d made it to D’Qar following in his wake.  It wasn’t hard to find the medical tents, designed as they were to be easily recognizable no matter the chaos of battle or disaster.  Several medics were standing around out front of one, deep in some discussion.  And there he was.  His hair was different, and so was his uniform, but they’d all made an artform out of recognizing their brothers regardless of the circumstances.  

So Jesse called out, “Kix?” and Kix turned around and froze, staring at them.

As much as it meant for them, to find one more brother, what must it be like for Kix?  To know he was the last clone in the entire galaxy, every one of his brothers dead and gone, and then to see them, alive, healthy, no older than he himself?  Rex wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d flat-out refused to believe it, lest it turn out to not be real.  

Kix took three steps forward, eyes raking over them, looking for the microscopic tells that were how they were able to recognize each other, and that no imposter would be able to fully fake.  

“It’s really us, Kix,” Jesse said, taking one last step forward, and like a dam breaking, Kix lunged forward, slamming into him and wrapping his arms around him in utter desperation.  

Then Rex and all the rest of them were surging forward, wrapping Kix in the biggest bear-hug they could manage.  

“We’re back, and you’re not alone anymore.”  

 –  –  – 

It surprisingly took very little time at all for Rex and the rest of his brothers to feel at home with the Resistance.  Even in the midst of all the chaos of a military in wartime, General Organa and the rest of her officers were good at figuring out where they could best be of use.  

Cody had almost immediately been pulled in as the General’s assistant, and bets were already being placed about how soon he’d be officially named as her second in command.  

Others were helping the rescued First Order troopers relearn how to be people again, while most of the rest were helping all the new Resistance recruits learn how to be troopers.

His brothers were happy, making new friends and turning this into a place to belong.  

And yet Rex couldn’t help but feel that there was still one thing  –  person  –  missing.  

The first time he caught himself looking up into the sky he dismissed it.

The second time he told himself sternly that it was just wishful thinking.

The third time he felt a nudge from the Force and took off towards the landing field at a dead run.

The ship that touched down moments later was wholly unfamiliar.  The person who stepped out of the hatch moments later was not.  

She was older, that much was obvious at a glance.  She had new scars and a sterner expression and Rex wondered how much more pain she had had to bear since that last time they’d met on Ilum.

“Ahsoka.”

He heard her breath catch as she recognized his voice.  

“Rex?”

She met his eyes and suddenly they were both crying, and hugging through their tears.

When they’d both calmed down enough to actually talk, Rex pulled her over to a boulder on the side of the landing field large enough for them both to sit on.  

Rex opened his mouth, but before he could figure out which question he wanted to ask first, Ahsoka bowed her head in shame and grief and said, “I’m sorry I never came back for you.”

“Oh, Ahsoka,” Rex murmured, grabbing her hands and leaning forward to rest their heads against each other.  “Of course I forgive you  –  we all do.  And we turned out to be where we needed to be.  And even beyond that, we all owe you a debt of gratitude far larger than we can ever repay!  You saved us!  And I have a whole pile of brothers who are absolutely desperate to say thank you for it.”

Ahsoka relaxed, and a small smile stretched across her face.  “Tell me about it?  What did you need to still be on Ilum for?  And how did you even survive that Imperial mining operation in the first place?”

So of course Rex told her the whole story  –  everything they’d lived through since the last time she’d set foot on Ilum, finally ending with the new life they were building here with the Resistance.  

“And now we’re about to head off searching for a Jedi.  Turns out Artoo  –”

“Wait, our Artoo?!”  Ahsoka’s delighted laugh rang out.

“  –  Yup, our Artoo.  Never even memory wiped.  And he’s been sitting in the Resistance base all this time with a map to the location of Luke Skywalker.”

Ahsoka’s laugh died away and she got a pensive look on her face.

Rex gave her a sympathetic smile.  “I take it that’s a name you know?  Did you ever meet him?”

“A couple of times.  But I was still trying to work out my own feelings towards the Jedi Order at that point, so I didn’t want to get too involved.  I figured I’d go spend a couple of years looking for Ezra in the Unknown Regions and figuring myself out, and then come back prepared to work with Luke on rebuilding the Order.  But, well, life never works out as neatly as we plan.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Rex shared a wry smile with her, memories flashing through his mind, and no doubt hers as well, of all their plans that had gone awry during the war.  “Well, Luke went missing a few years ago and no one’s quite sure why.  Rumors range from him becoming depressed and wanting to end the Jedi Order to him being locked in a battle of wills through the Force with the Sith behind the First Order and him cutting off all contact to try to avoid putting anyone else in danger.  But no one knows for sure.

“So now that we have the map, we’re putting together a team to go find him: his sister, his best friends from the Rebellion, a couple of new Jedi who want to be his students, and a few of us who knew Anakin.”  Rex smiled crookedly.  “There’s still room for one more.  Want to join us?”

“You sure?”  She was still hesitant, not quite sure of her place with them any more.  Rex and his brothers would fix that soon enough.  There was no place in the galaxy that she belonged more than with them.

“His sister, General Organa, is sure that Luke’s the key to stopping the First Order and restoring peace and justice.  I figure, the more Jedi the better, and you’ve always been one of the best Jedi I’ve ever known.  Want to come help save the galaxy with us, one more time?”

Ahsoka smiled, and Rex knew he was finally home.  “Absolutely.”