Work Text:
◿♢◺
The HoloNet had been created to act as both a communication supernetwork and a repository of all information known to sentient species with a connection to it. Anything one desired to know, no matter how esoteric, could be answered with only a few clicks of a terminal keyboard and some navigational skills. It was the great equalizer; no longer would information be gatekept by academia and held behind a tuition's ransom, any answer was instantly available if one knew how to seek it out.
In theory, at least, that was how it was supposed to work. Ahsoka was finding it woefully unhelpful. Normally she would turn to the Archives for research, but she didn't dare risk alerting Madame Jocasta to her… condition. She backspaced again and started a new search.
Togruta + venom metering + muscle control + how to dry bite
429352063639 Results Found
"Venom optimization, also known as venom metering, postulates that most venomous animals have physiological control over their production and use of venoms…"
Missing:
Togruta
"First, muscle contractions drive their envenomation. Venom is synthesized and stored within a paired gland [7]. A significant portion of the venom glands are surrounded by skeletal musculature, including the compressor glandulae [12]. Venom gland pressurization by contraction of these muscles results in venom flow from the glands through the venom ducts to a pair of hollow fangs [7].Missing:
Togruta
Dry bites can occur from all snakes, but their frequency varies from species to species. For example, Pantoran eastern white snakes can inflict dry bites 80% of the time while Doshian meemees inflict dry bites only 5% of the time.[3] About 50% of snakebite cases can be dry bites.[2] They are characterized by fang and tooth marks and the absence of injected venom.[4]Missing:
Togruta
Ahsoka backspaced and tried again.
"Togruta" + venom metering + muscle control + how to dry bite -snake -spider
0 Results Found. Would you like to try without "Togruta" ?
Ahsoka covered her face with a groan, frustrated to the point of tears. She appreciated what Anakin had done for her, but her newly-regrown venom gland was turning out to be more trouble than it was worth. Her mouth constantly tasted like salt. She kept waking up in the middle of the night, gagging on a sudden flood of let-down venom. Her throat was sore from the constant drainage down her throat, and while nobody had said anything—yet—she just knew her breath stank.
Long gone were the days of her innocently chewing on Rex's greaves to soothe her growing fangs. If she tried that now, she'd kill him. Or make him wish he was dead.
Not that she'd told him she had her venom gland back yet. Outside of the mission chatter on Washanooir, she'd barely spoken to him in the month since that stupid lizard had poisoned her and made her lose her mind. She was too humiliated. Her heat cycle was a convenient excuse to stay out of sight of everyone but Anakin, and she just didn't know how she was supposed to apologize for… for hunting him like she was some sort of lustful beast. Every time she thought about it a singularity of shame opened up in her gut and threatened to swallow her whole.
She couldn't think about what she might have done without Anakin to stop her. The idea that she might have… assaulted Rex sent her into a panic spiral. And the few times she and Rex had spoken he was anxious, and he spent the entire time pretending that he wasn't uncomfortable, which made it worse. She played along and let him think she didn't notice because it made him feel better, even though it was killing her. The medevac flight up to The Resolute, with her robes hanging off her in burned tatters and Rex looking in every direction but hers, had been the most awkward twenty minutes of her life.
As a Jedi, she was supposed to be in control of all of her bodily processes. Or at least be able to influence them. She knew how to purge toxins now, but that didn't undo what had happened, and on top of everything she was producing what felt like liters of venom. It was disgusting and she had no idea how to make it stop. Maybe if she'd grown up with the glands intact she would know how to stop producing so much. Was there some sort of instinct or reflex deep inside of her that had withered away, lost forever from lack of use?
Her comlink buzzed with an incoming call. "Where are you?" Anakin immediately asked.
Ahsoka rolled her eyes. "Hello to you too, Master. I'm in my quarters, what do you need?"
"I need you on the bridge running my simulation while I brief the Council on our upcoming assault, Padawan. Did you forget?"
Ahsoka winced. "Sorry, I lost track of time. On my way." She closed the channel and shut down her terminal. More pointless research would have to wait.
◿♢◺
When they were cadets, Rex and Cody had both been fascinated by glimpses of their Mandalorian trainers' tattoos. It didn't happen often with them being in armor constantly, but every so often they'd turn their head just right to expose a stark-black geometric line on their neck, or they'd strip down to their flight suits for Echani training and they'd catch a flash of a design on their hand or ankle.
During flash training on galactic cultures, they learned that those skin paintings were called tattoos and that they were made by injecting ink into the skin with needles. Naturally, Rex and Cody clandestinely gathered supplies to make their own tattoos—ink balls from the practice range, wire filaments from explosives training—and holed up in one or the other's tube at night, poking designs into their legs.
They both ended up with infections. The Kaminoans had been bewildered and thought they were self-mutilating at first. Rex and Cody had held hands in the medbay, terrified that they were going to be decommissioned, but then the Prime had showed up, taken one look at them, and explained to the Kaminoans what they'd tried to do. They weren't punished, just sent back to training after a bacta bath with a stern warning not to do it again.
Rex still had the scar on his calf. Once they were adults—and had finally learned how to do a proper sal'gam—Cody covered it up with a black band as tall as his thumb all the way around the leg, but when he tilted his calf just right he could still see the raised keloid in the shape of a beskar'ta. It had long since healed, but Rex still remembered the way it had throbbed with the infection and sent cramps shooting through his calf muscle that made him writhe in pain.
And now every time he looked at Ahsoka, that's what it felt like in his heart. Infected. Scarred. Irreparably changed.
He had deleted the footage of the incident on Grascow happily, but he couldn't delete it from his brain. In there, he still saw his little cadet walking towards him with that look on her face, that smile that said she wanted to eat him—and he'd welcomed it. He didn't remember the gritty details of the moment, but he remembered the feelings: the helpless desire that had made his whole body throb at the sight of her, the jealous, blinding possession and blood-boiling rage at the General for keeping her away from him.
He'd… he'd wanted his vod'ika. For a brief, horrible moment she'd been everything he ever wanted, and he'd nearly attacked Skywalker for putting his hands on her. It made him sick, all of it, and he didn't know how to fix it. Ahsoka had barely said a word to him since it'd happened. Sure she was on her heat, and she barely talked to anyone but Skywalker when she was deep in it—some evolutionary Tog thing that made her hide away and sleep in a blanket fort for a month, he was used to it—but she seemed so nervous now whenever they exchanged words, like she was just waiting for an excuse to flee.
Washanooir had been like speaking to a droid, and then when she'd gotten caught in that mortar strike… Rex was sure for a moment that she was dead, and the thought of that being how it was left between them had been enough to make the infected scar on his heart cramp hard enough to cut it in half. But she'd survived, and in the process had half her robes burnt off, and then that had been a careful exercise in not looking in her direction while he dragged the unconscious Skywalker to the medevac. The ride back up to The Resolute had been awkward as all hell with her being virtually topless. Not because he wanted to see her in that state, but because he wanted her to know that he didn't want to see, and he had gotten so caught up in trying to project that complicated of an emotion that by the time they landed he feared she thought he hated her.
Whereas Ahsoka had been quite the guard-massiff over her Master in her youth, the roles had swiftly and aggressively reversed. Ahsoka had not been alone with anyone but Skywalker in the past month. Not even Coric. Everywhere she went there was Skywalker, towering like a shabla hawk-bat over her shoulder. There were no more sabacc nights, no more holovid marathons, no more weightlifting or Echani training or Mando'a lessons. It wasn't a spoken thing, it just was, and Rex was caught between missing her and being grateful that he didn't have to face her.
And as much as he wanted to believe it was because of her heat that she'd retreated, he knew it wasn't. Outside of her first few heats, way back when she was a kih'verd who barely came up to his cuirass, she didn't cling to Skywalker in her weird little blanket nest and hibernate the entire time. They were at war, she didn't have the luxury of taking a month off. She forced herself to overcome her instincts. She trained, she ate in the mess hall, she put in a valiant effort to exercise for at least the first two weeks. She didn't hide like this.
Rex clicked his tongue and brought the volume of the bridge back up. The brief was wrapping up. Skywalker was intoning where they'd launch their fighters for the orbital assault around Gor—Rex was already dreading touching down on the hot, swampy planet again—and Ahsoka stood at the simulation controls, demonstrating their three-prong approach. She looked miserable. Her lekku and montrals were bound in gray silk strips, only her montral tips poking out so she could hear. Her rear lek was swaddled particularly tight, and the fatty flare halfway down looked as swollen as a twisted ankle. Every so often she made a face of pure disgust and swallowed hard, like she'd brought up vomit in her mouth.
Maybe the poor thing was just having a horrible time of it, and Rex's worries that he had destroyed their friendship by failing to resist her projection were for nothing.
"I-I could have hurt her. I'm not fit to be around her, Sir."
"Rex, I don't think you heard me. She caught me in it." Skywalker looked at him pointedly. "I mean this respectfully, but you never stood a chance."
Skywalker said it wasn't his fault, but he still didn't trust him around her. It was shabla confusing as all hell, and even more frustrating. But it wasn't her fault either, she'd been drugged, and it was just horrible timing with her cycle. He couldn't find it in him to resent her for something completely out of her control, not when she was so devastated by the aftermath.
Rex took a deep breath in. They could not continue as a battalion like this. It wasn't anyone's fault, and that was the problem. He knew his vod'ika as well as he knew himself. He knew she blamed herself for everything, just like he did, and they were both being di'kute about the whole thing and trying to claim responsibility for the same uncontrollable situation. Uncontrollable.
He just needed a minute alone with her to explain that, but he didn't think he was going to get it. Not with Skywalker looming over her; and either Rex was shrinking, or Skywalker had somehow grown another inch. Rex actually had to look up to talk to him now.
Ahsoka shut down the simulation and stepped back. Rex belatedly realised the brief was over; thankfully, he'd written half of the plan and hadn't missed anything he didn't already know. Hopefully. He'd read the minutes later.
"Dismissed," Skywalker announced once the Council's hologram had dissolved.
Rex knew he only had a few seconds. "Commander Tano, could I have a moment?" he called.
Ahsoka froze like a startled shatual fawn, but quickly composed herself. "Of course. What do you need, Captain?"
Skywalker stalked behind her like a shadow around the holotable as she approached.
"I only need the Commander for a moment, General." Rex pulled off his helmet and gave his most bland smile. "I don't want to waste any of your time."
Ahsoka looked up at Skywalker without speaking. After five seconds of a thick, silent conversation that Rex wasn't party to, Skywalker backed away with a tight nod and lumbered off the bridge. "What's up, Captain?" Ahsoka asked, turning back to him. She stood stiffly, like she was ready to flee.
Rex chewed on the inside of his cheek. No, this wasn't right. She shouldn't be so uncomfortable around him. He cursed his weakness once again. "Permission to speak freely, Commander?"
She nodded. "Always."
Rex snatched her hand before he could stop himself and squeezed it. "Listen. We're both blaming ourselves for something we had no control over. We need to stop. Both of us."
Ahsoka deflated like she'd been unplugged. Her eyes locked onto his feet. "I'm so sorry, Rex," she whimpered, her lip trembling. "I can't believe what I did to you. I'm so, so sorry—"
"Hey, I shouldn't have stopped General Skywalker from sending you back when you were first exposed. It is what it is, vod'ika. It's nobody's fault, neither of us are to blame. We need to let it go." He tilted her chin up with one finger until she was looking him in the eyes. Hers were enormous, fully porg'd, and wet with tears. "I thought you Jedi were supposed to be good about that," he teased, giving her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
The last bit of blue around her pupils disappeared. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right. But please tell me you forgive me." Her lip quivered pathetically. "I know what you said, but please. I need to hear it."
"I forgive you. Even though there's nothing to forgive, I forgive you."
She nearly knocked him down with her flying tackle of a hug, but he wouldn't have minded if she had. He squeezed her hard enough to hear her squeak, breathed deep her familiar scent of amber and sunshine, and said a silent prayer of thanks to the Force that hugging her still felt the same. He was… more aware of her shape, but he held no inappropriate, lingering desire for her. Of course he didn't. It was never real in the first place, just temporary insanity.
She was just Ahsoka, and he was just Rex. Vod'ika and ori'vod. It was how they'd always been, and how they always would be.
◿♢◺
Ahsoka's blanket nest had been disassembled already. Now that she was at the tail end of her heat cycle, she got too hot under all of those blankets and all she wanted to do was soak her head. The first few heats had been a nightmare trying to get off all of the itchy, peeling skin that signified the ordeal was over with, but then Padmé—sweet, thoughtful, kind, blessed Padmé—had gifted Ahsoka a nifty little inflatable head spa that she could soak her head in. She had to set it up on the floor of her quarters because of its size and it took a day's water rations to fill, but it was worth it once she turned on the little pink-lit water jets and relaxed. It took a little maneuvering to get her lekku in too, but once she did they floated next to her face like striped life rafts.
"Hey." Anakin looked down at her from his perch, belly-down on her bed. "I contacted Madame Jocasta. She pulled some holocrons on Togruta venom and transmitted the contents to me. Excessive venom production is normal during heat cycles, apparently. 'Cause you know. Excess fluids and all." He made a face. "You just can't help but be juicy."
"You told Madame Jocasta?" Ahsoka asked, surprised.
"No. I just asked her for everything she had on Togruta venom. I didn't say why."
"And you don't think she's going to be suspicious?"
Anakin shrugged. "She can be suspicious all she wants. Your glands were surgically removed, which is documented in your medical history. It's impossible for them to regenerate" —he smirked— "normally, at least, so unless you go out of your way to inform her that I grew one of them back with the Force, there is no proof that you are re-venomated."
"Except for the fact that I'm drooling it constantly. 'Cause, you know, I'm just so juicy." Ahsoka turned on the spa's speaker and slowly bobbed her head to the soft, slow-tempo electronic music. The jets adjusted to sync with the beat.
"I think it's as bad as it is because the gland just regrew. When you were little you made so much that you had to have your fangs milked every morning."
"I am milking them—it—every morning. And afternoon. And before I go to bed. I feel like a bantha."
"Well it should dry up once you're done bleeding. Just a few more days."
Ahsoka stared at the ceiling, chewing on her lip. "I don't understand how that makes sense, evolution wise. My venom is designed to make males go away. Why would I make more of it when I'm in heat? Why am I putting out all these stupid pheromones to attract males if I'm going to constantly leak something designed to hurt them? I can't kiss anyone like this!"
"Well…" Anakin scrunched his nose. His aura went all gooey and green with discomfort. "You could, because apparently it… changes during your heat. Chemically."
"Oh no." Ahsoka clapped her hands over her eyes. "Please don't say what I think you're about to say."
"It's not an aphrodisiac."
"Oh thank fuck."
"Ahsoka!" Anakin's aura spiked out in white shock. "You never used to swear this much before you met Boba."
"I swore all the time, I just did it in other languages," she said, snickering.
"Except for in front of Master Plo." Anakin's eyes turned wistful. "Do you remember the first time you said kriff in front of Plo?"
"Vaguely. I remember feeling so guilty." She laughed. "I still can't bring myself to swear in front of him."
"As well you shouldn't, Padawan. It's inappropriate."
"Master, you're the one taught me every way to say fuck in Toydarian, Huttese and Bocce."
He grinned. "And in Jawa sign."
"And Máor-Grasta. In fact, I learned how to say fuck from you in more ways than anyone else."
"Because I'm a thorough teacher." He shot her with a mech finger gun, snickering. "But, ah, yeah. Anyway, your venom. It chemically changes from being the most painful mammalian toxin in the known galaxy into something that makes the victim more… amenable."
Ahsoka's blood ran cold. "What?"
"Submissive was the term used. They'll do anything you ask. It still works by targeting testosterone, so generally it only works on males and that whole" —Anakin waved his hand— "side of the hormone wheel, but it's like a huge hit of oxytocin with your pheromones at the epicenter. They become devoted to you. They'll hunt for you, guard you, even die protecting you and your young."
"Devoted. You mean enslaved." Ahsoka had a hollow feeling quickly expanding in her chest, crushing her organs. She silently thanked the Force that she had still been de-venomated at the time, because she couldn't imagine how much worse it would have been if she'd been dripping venom. She'd only nipped Tup, but she probably would have chomped Rex in her insanity, and then there would have been no stopping them. She was such an animal that all it took for her to rob him of his free will and rape him without hesitation was a psychedelic lizard. "How long does it last?"
"From what I read, a day or so. Shilian time, so twenty six hours. And the effects seem to top off after a certain amount. You can't overdose anyone, don't worry."
Ahsoka didn't speak for a few seconds. When she finally did, she felt like she had to squeeze the words out of her chest. "I don't like that. I don't like that I can take away the free will of others so easily."
"Yeah. I had a feeling you wouldn't." Anakin rolled back over the edge of the bed, out of sight. "Unfortunately, evolution does."
Ahsoka ran her tongue over her fangs. "Maybe I should just—"
"No. You're not getting it removed." Anakin rolled back over and gave her a stern look. "You were born with venom glands, Ahsoka. They're natural. You're supposed to have them. It was unnatural to have them removed. You're not getting it taken out again just because you don't like the effects."
" 'Kay," Ahsoka answered dully.
Anakin reached down and squeezed her limp hand. "Don't do this to yourself. There's a learning curve, just like with everything, but you'll get it under control. I'll help you."
Ahsoka soaked in silence for a minute. "Was there anything in those holocrons about dry biting?"
"What?"
"Dry biting. Biting without venom. I'm supposed to be able to do it, but I don't know what muscles to use."
"I'm sure there is. I'll send everything I've got to your terminal. Don't worry, we'll figure it out."
Ahsoka turned off her head spa and patted her montrals and lekku dry. "Ready?"
Anakin sat up, her kerokan and a spray can of caara oil already in hand. "Yep. C'mere, banana head."
Ahsoka crawled between his legs and sat facing out. "I'm not a banana head," she grumbled.
He started at the base of her montrals where her lekku began and gently wiggled the kerokan under her peeling skin. "Bet I can get it all off in one piece."
Ahsoka rested her heavy head against Anakin's thigh, closed her eyes and let him work. For all she cared, he could wear it like a hat. Whatever made him happy.
◿♢◺