Chapter Text
Rex is not freaking out. Yes, the general has been grabbed by some kind of thing none of them had detected and been yanked off into the dark with a cut-off yelp like some cheap horror holo. But that doesn’t mean he’s freaking out. As highest-ranking member of the group Rex is not allowed to freak out, at least not until after the crisis is dealt with.
As part of Torrent Company, of course he’s been in creepy Sith temples before, has even seen ones with weird Sith-monsters in them, but it never got any easier (or less kriffing creepy) and this Sith temple on the uninhabited Bettle II is no exception.
Things had actually been fine for a while (famous last words); no actual, alive Sith had shown up, they had yet to run across any horrifying mutant fauna or magical Force-guardians, and all the various death traps had been easily found and disabled. Unfortunately, they hadn’t found whatever spooky artifacts they had been sent to retrieve, the vault they had found empty of anything but dust and animal bones. But nobody had gotten eaten yet.
And then, two troopers who should have known better (they were shinies yeah, but everyone got the same crash course on what not to do around creepy Force ; the first rule was don’t fucking touch it) had brushed against some sort of button or trigger on a wall, the and the next thing Rex knew his general was being eaten by the stars-damned ceiling.
The entire platoon turned in synchronous horror first to the spot where General Skywalker had been standing, still-lit lightsaber clattering innocently to the stone floor, then up to where something had grabbed him in a flash of movement. Their combined helmet-mounted lights illuminated the dim space, showing that it was not, in fact, the ceiling that had kidnapped their wayward Jedi, but some sort of fleshy ovular pod that was rooted into the stone. It was weirdly pretty when spotlighted, covered in iridescent, gleaming scales.
It almost reminds Rex of the giant, carnivorous plants they’d found in the Keelsh system nearly a year ago at the very beginning of the war, before Anakin had been appointed to lead the 501st legion. As Rex watches on in stunned horror, a fist-sized bulge appears in the side of the pod for a moment, before it seems to bounce back into shape. Ew.
Everyone is panicking now, but seeing as they all have been training as soldiers for their entire lives, it’s a very controlled panic, exhibited mostly by uncomfortable shuffling, a few odd swears, and the back and forth movement of raising and then lowering their blasters, wanting to shoot the threat but worried about hitting their general, as they anxiously wait for orders.
Orders that Rex needs to give. (Kriff.)
He shoves down his breathtaking worry for his dearest, dumbest friend and the frustration that something fucking stupid has happened (again). “Hold fire!” he calls, voice much steadier than he feels, and steps forward with his own blaster lifted. He’ll try and hit the thing right where it joined to the stone, to avoid possibly catching the Jedi. After a careful second to take aim, he looses a shot right at the edge of the pod-thing, and promptly has to throw himself to the ground as the bolt reflects back at him.
Of course the fucking thing is resistant to blasterfire. All Force is.
“Alright, ?” someone calls. He sweeps his gaze around the room as he clambers back to his feet and waves the others off, scanning the environment for ideas, anything useful, and lands on the far corner, near the doorway where they had entered.
“Get that rock over here!” The rock in question is a large boulder, possibly a chunk of rubble from the walls of the temple itself, a good meter and a half tall. Duck squadron, Torrent’s newest batch of shinies who’d drawn the short straw to help investigate the Creepy Evil Wizard Tomb, scrambles over to help Ridge, Jesse, and Rex himself drag the huge thing over toward the center of the room, under the Stupid Pod.
Then, bracing himself, he scoops up his 's dropped lightsaber, and is pleasantly surprised when the thing only buzzes at a slightly lower pitch before settling. He knows vod’e who were damn near bitten when they had to pick up a lightsaber for whatever reason, some sort of hindbrain instinct screaming don’t touch.
Rex hefts the thing in his hand, holding it carefully, awkwardly away from himself, then he climbs his way on top of the boulder. At this new vantage point, he is close enough to reach the pod with the beam of concentrated sentient plasma he’s holding in his stupid human hands. The weapon hums, and something deep in his inner ear hums back. Rex thoroughly ignores this.
Once again he takes careful aim, not wanting to injure his general with the man’s own weapon, and then swipes at the Sith-creature-thing. He’s nearly knocked off his feet as an inaudible screech of r̷͙̪̟͒̕a̶̛̤͔̖̜̽̽͐g̸̬͔͐̇̚͝ë̴̡̟̼́ and p̴͇̝͊ả̵͖͈͝ͅi̵̭͓̽̍̾n̶̯̼̜̟͌͋ smacks into him, the not-sound echoing in his chest cavity like the thrum of engines through atmo.
Then he is knocked off his feet, borrowed lightsaber spinning out of his hand to land somewhere to the side, as a dark, viscous liquid gushes out of the tear (wound?) in the pod and onto his unprepared face. Luckily, his helmet and armor protect most of his skin from being exposed to the shit. Unluckily, Anakin chooses that moment to fall out of his carneous prison, all six-an-a-half feet of him first knocking Rex flat to the ground, and then knocking all the breath out of his lungs.
Rex has only a moment to think about the life choices that led him here before his decorated, superpowered general is rolling off him to crouch on all fours and hack up a truly impressive amount of horrible black goo. He decides he deserves a moment to catch his breath and wipe the fluid from his visor. Neither action is very successful.
He sits up with a wheeze and claps his general on the back. “Alright there?”
“Oh, yeah,” the man coughs out between retches. “Never better.” Rex, knowing that just because a was well enough to snark that did not necessarily mean they were not actively dying, keeps a hand on his shoulder even while he signals the rest of their group to be ready to move. They are getting hell out of here.
Once the general’s gagging has subsided to spitting, Rex helps haul him to his feet. The taller man sweeps a sleeve over his eyes, but only succeeds in smearing the goop around his face.
“!” Rex orders, towing the Jedi along as the whole group moves quickly but carefully in the direction of the exit. Jesse brings over the dropped lightsaber and a clean-ish cloth that Anakin accepts gratefully.
“I had it handled, by the way,” he rasps once his eyes are clear enough to see and he’s gotten his lightsaber clipped back to his belt. Rex, having dropped his grip on the other’s arm in favor of keeping both hands on his blaster, tilts his head just enough to catch sight of his general’s face, the teasing smile and laughing eyes.
He makes sure his voice is flat as flimsi when he responds. “Yessir.”
“Just so you know.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That was a good strike.”
Rex loses the battle against the smile curling over his face (it’s not as if anyone can see it under his bucket, anyway). “Sir?”
Anakin smirks as if he does, in fact, know exactly what Rex’s expression looks like. “Very flashy. Noble, even.”
“You’re not getting out of a visit to the medbay, General.”
He sighs dramatically. “Darn.” Rex finally cracks and lets out a snort.
Anakin bumps their shoulders together, the humor in his eyes softening to warm sincerity. “”
Rex feels his insides melt into gooey mush like they always do when Anakin shows how much he’s come to trust him over the last year. He’s again grateful that his helmet hides his face, and the smile that he’s sure has just turned all sappy.
He tries to cover for the emotion with a witty comeback. “
“I’m older than you!”
“Chronologically? Yeah. Developmentally? Ehhh.” He wobbles his hand back and forth, hidden grin sharp.
This time Anakin’s the one to snort. They spend the rest of their walk in companionable silence, and Rex’s thoughts turn towards what exactly led him here, joking around with his commanding officer, feeling warm bubbles in his chest every time he got the man to laugh.
—
It happened something like this:
Rex hadn’t really had much in the way of expectations when first meeting General Skywalker. He was despairing over being assigned a brand-new shiny of a CO, fresh off completing his training, but he was also vaguely optimistic that at least a Jedi would be easier to work with than the natborn officer Torrent had operated under previously.
He quickly found himself being first grudgingly impressed with the kid’s combat skills and his ludicrous plans that somehow kept succeeding, then pleasantly surprised by his genuine friendliness and willingness to listen to various clones’ advice (to the point of actually seeking out Rex’s opinion when drawing up battle plans).
Rex couldn’t say when exactly he first began to actually trust Skywalker (not in the way clones learned to trust natborns on Kamino–those trainers that were safe to smile in front of, which medics would sneak first aid supplies for other cadets–but in the way he trusts his brothers, his ) but he had it narrowed down to sometime during the third month after the man took command of the 501st.
That month they were joined by their , the having just handed off a whole ass child to be raised by another teenager without so much as a heads-up. Skywalker’s initial negative reaction to Ahsoka was, at least to Rex, a painfully obvious disguise for his absolute panic at the situation. And despite said panic, over the next few weeks he absolutely stepped the fuck up, took to her training with the same dogged determination he brings to every single battle. He not only helped hone her skills with a patience he did not show (did not have) elsewhere, but had also done everything in his power to ensure she was happy, that she had fun in between fighting for all of their lives.
Rex’s rapidly growing respect for the general was rivaled only by his pride in his for their handling of the little commander. Almost immediately, the entirety of Torrent had accepted her as one of their own, the youngest of the 501st.
(Rex will never forget the evening when, while watching Ahsoka giggle from her medical cot as the troopers around her regaled her with stories of each others’ exploits, Skywalker had quietly pulled him aside. He pinned Rex with that intense gaze–and the captain was astonished to see tears gathering in his eyes–as desperate thank yous tumbled from his lips.
That day the general had been the one to step in almost the instant Ahsoka went down, clutching at a spall injury in her arm, deflecting shots in a whirl of blue light as he hustled his student out of the line of fire; but Rex was the one who’d grabbed her, hurled himself across no-man’s-land and scooped her up and held her while she cried, their too busy keeping them all alive to comfort her.
Rex, mouth suddenly dry, could only clap him on the shoulder and stutter out a before hoofing it away down the hall, citing an urgent duty. It was only later that it occurred to him that Skywalker probably didn’t know the Mando’a word.)
Then just weeks later, through a long, convoluted series of circumstances the two of them ended up alone together for a few hours, stranded on a planet awaiting pickup, both lightly concussed. With nothing to do but talk, one thing led to another, and without really meaning to Rex ended up opening up some about growing up on Kamino. The general was silent for a long moment, while Rex got progressively more tense, before he quietly, haltingly, began to speak of his own homeworld. A harsh desert world, dual suns making the days twice as long as the nights, the polar opposite of Kamino’s eternal rainstorms. The two planets couldn’t have seemed more different.
And yet.
Rex listened to his speak in short, choppy sentences about owners and auctions and chips (and he thinks trainers and inspections and decomms). About hunger and thirst and the difficulties of cleaning sand from wounds. He learned of a people who value secrets just as much as his own do, who are just as easily separated from their families.
The general (who at some point during this mission had become Anakin) told him, hushed and with utmost care, about Amatakka, the secret language of slaves. Almost shyly he explained the origin of his own name, its meaning. He offered, soft but sure, to teach Rex, teach a few of his brothers his mother tongue. They met eyes, then, and understanding passed between them: a question and a proposition and a firm declaration. Do you know what you are? Do you want out? You are not alone. An acknowledgment and a resolve and an awed realization. We know what we are. We will do anything for our family. We are not alone.
Rex, realizing the depth of the trust the young was offering him, the favored place he held in his heart, returned with an offer to teach Anakin some . Anakin had smiled at him then, not one of his cocksure battlefield grins, but a gentle, hopeful thing, the delight sparkling in his blue eyes just for Rex.
He vowed to himself then and there that he would do whatever it took to uphold that trust, to preserve that smile.
(That’s when he realized he was absolutely fucked.)