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Today, the Jedi Temple on Coruscant is a strange mix of harried and frozen. Ahsoka grew up never able to get to the next turn in the halls without seeing — or being roped into — some kind of winding conversation. Now the conversations she does see around her are hushed not for mindfulness but for anxiety, concern, or maybe just sheer discomfort in these wide open halls that, all at once, both stink of lingering Darkness and hold an unfamiliar, new, almost dizzying amount of Light.
She hurries through herself. The last thing Ahsoka wants right now is to be dragged into talking about her feelings by some Master she hasn't spoken to since she was an Initiate. How are you holding up? she can imagine them asking, with your Master put into a coma while everyone tries to figure out how to fix his brain because his friend passing away broke him? What's it like being the one in charge now? It must be so hard, stepping up for the entire 501st like that. Do you want to talk about it?
No, she kriffing well would not like to talk about it. What is there to say that the Jedi who have stayed here through the war could understand?
Turning left, Ahsoka enters the hall she's been avoiding for almost a week. Anakin's case is so unexpected and so severe, apparently, that he can't stay with the more physically injured patients in the Halls of Healing. Instead, one of the temporary accommodations has been turned into a makeshift... she doesn't even know what to call it. ICU room? Personal infirmary for the weirdest case any Mind Healer alive has seen?
The room itself, when she quietly knocks and enters, is clean and neat. There's a round table with three chairs, a sofa, a meditation mat, sunlight streaming in through open blinds. Fake sunlight, she knows, they aren't actually up against an outside wall, but the effect is still soothing.
A Human Jedi is reclined on the sofa, a tray of food on the coffee table and a holobook lit up above their lap. They look up, note her entry, incline their head in seated greeting, but go back to their book rather than engage Ahsoka in conversation like she had been half afraid of.
There's a bed too, of course, bathed in sunlight. And there's Anakin.
With a brief glance at the Mind Healer — because that's all they can be, really, and she's heard the basics of how Anakin doesn't have any shields of his own anymore to keep his sheer star-bright presence tucked away inside himself where it can't literally blind everyone — Ahsoka tiptoes over to the side of Anakin's bed. It's stupid, really, she knows he's out good, and yet she feels like she's sneaking around anyway, inching into his room on the Resolute at 0051 to whisper, "Hey, Skyguy? I can't sleep."
It had taken her a month at the very beginning of it all to tell him exactly why. Nightmares were nothing to be ashamed of, the Crechemasters had always said, just normal experiences to be learned from, but Anakin had been the Chosen One, this monumental figure to her, scarcely mortal — and her new Master she was secretly terrified of disappointing besides.
"I get them too." That was what Anakin had said when she finally mustered up the courage to be fully honest. Not something dismissive or trivializing like "I know, you were obvious," but a hand outstretched in the dark, easing him off the pedestal the Order — and the giggles of her crechemates — had placed him on.
He's in a waking nightmare now, even comatose as he is. She hopes he can't dream like this. He does look peaceful, at least, his features smooth and lax, his head neatly bandaged on the right side, his cybernetic arm placed safely on the other side of the room. Maybe he'll wake up unchanged, wisecracking and adrenaline chasing, and crush her against his side in a fierce, perfect hug until she's forced to stomp on his foot to escape even as they both laugh and laugh and laugh.
Anakin's breathing doesn't change. She waits for one long minute, maybe two, knowing it's pointless but still needing to hope, but he doesn't tell her to stop staring, doesn't grimace at the tube sending food to his stomach through his nose, doesn't even give her a little flutter of his lashes to prove that he's still in there, her Skyguy, just waiting for the most dramatic moment to make his return to the waking world.
Nothing. Not even a word from the Jedi keeping watch.
Maybe she's the one in a waking nightmare, then; with Anakin out of commission and Obi-Wan busy navigating whatever harried ceasefire the top generals are trying to throw together, it's like she's become a ghost drifting through the same Venator halls she used to dance through like a madwoman. Technically speaking, she's first in command of the 501st right now. Realistically speaking, she's been useless.
"Ahsoka?"
Ahsoka whips around. It's Rex of all people, the door already firmly shut behind him, watching her for who knows how long. She swipes roughly at her eyes and doesn't take a single step away from Anakin's side. "Hey."
Reading her like he always does, Force-null or not, Rex joins her. He's in his grays, buttoned up neatly; every other detail about him, from the stubble on his cheeks to the vague haze over his eyes to the strength of the exhaustion coming through his Force signature, strongly implies he isn't sleeping well — if at all. She wonders if he's using stims. She wonders if he'll stop being responsible for everything and everyone soon. She wonders if somehow, through some messed up cosmic balance beyond even the Force she understands, she's stealing hours of sleep that were supposed to have gone to him.
That's all she's been able to do, after all. She wouldn't be able to sleep through meeting after meeting and even maybe a meal or two if Rex wasn't attending them for her.
"Waiting to see if he'll wake up?" Rex asks in an undertone, leaning ever so slightly towards her.
The burst of familiar, comfortable outrage that hits Ahsoka square in the chest is just strong enough to burn away those creeping tendrils of despair. "Stop reading my mind," she hisses. "I'm the Jedi here, not you. Seriously."
"I'm always serious." A little quirky of an almost-smile at the corners of Rex's mouth belies the claim, though. Then he shrugs. "I only ask 'cause it's what I've been doing. I didn't know you'd be here too."
Ahsoka sighs gustily. Her first instinct is to apologize for butting in on Rex's watching and waiting time, and then her second is to push him on if he really means "didn't know" or something more like "didn't think," but neither option settles right in her chest. Instead, she just nods. No use pretending he's wrong when they both so clearly know he's right.
"They're giving him another week before they start easing him out of it," Rex says. He nods to the IV bag on a pole and clarifies, "By lowering sedation but keeping him under double watch."
"Someone told you that in a meeting I missed, didn't they?"
"Yeah. Yesterday afternoon." Rex looks over at her and immediately his expression wrinkles, his arm coming up to hook itself around her shoulders and tug her against his side. It's not one of Anakin's hugs, the ones she's craving so hard it feels like her soul itself is crying, but it's still one of Rex's hugs, snug and solid, gentle but not like she'll break. "I don't blame you for missing it, you know."
"I do," Ahsoka whispers. At least she's consciously aware of the hot tears welling up this time instead of finding them on her cheeks already cool to the touch. "And the two that morning, the five yesterday, the one with Master Kenobi that I got to half an hour late—"
"You're trying," Rex says vehemently, turning to face her head-on and crushing her against his chest in one move. His arms tighten, trapping her, but she needs it and the wounded whimper she lets out proves it, muffled in the sharp gray jacket she's probably already making wet with tears.
The Mind Healer on the couch politely clears their throat. "I need strong emotions to be kept outside, please. The balance in here isn't actually as easy as it looks to maintain — this book is my meditation."
Their escape is made quickly and quietly, with Rex guiding Ahsoka along by the shoulders and offering a hushed apology to the Mind Healer over one of his own. Once they're a safe distance away, though, down the hall and around the corner just to be safe, Rex holds her close again and she lets him eagerly. They're almost the same height when measuring eye to eye now. Sometimes Ahsoka wishes she was still a head shorter. Maybe, if she was small enough to hide behind a trusted clone or in the robes of a trusted Master, she wouldn't have to do all her hiding by way of her room and her bed and a blanket that's starting to feel less like relief and more like a fellow prisoner.
"Maybe you need a Mind Healer too," Rex murmurs, a thought that Ahsoka honestly can't decipher her feelings on at first. "I don't much know the specifics of how they work, but I do know that you're drifting away from us. I'm not about to suggest the ways a brother would try to get out of that particular kind of rut."
Okay, well, consider Ahsoka's curiosity piqued. "What ways are those?"
Rex huffs, seemingly caught. "Booze, stims, or really good sex." From the way he laughs at her exasperated groan he had expected as much. "I told you I wasn't suggesting them. Believe me now?"
Ahsoka concedes defeat easily with a short nod, focusing the brunt of her energy instead on pressing her face into Rex's shoulder so hard she almost can't breathe. It smells like sweat, as buried as she is, plus a little bit like the nice deodorant Anakin once bought Rex on shore leave for seemingly no apparent reason, though both scents — especially the first — are far more subtle than, say, fresh out of the trenches with only the top half of his armor de-shelled and the black undersuit further darkened in patches. Like this, just the history of a day walking and talking through climate-controlled halls, it's actually pleasant.
Or maybe Ahsoka has just missed his hugs that kriffing much.
Footsteps sound down the hall, approaching at a brisk pace, but Ahsoka doesn't bother looking up from the cradle of Rex's arms. She knows who it is, anyway, a little more of a mess than when Rex approached her but no longer so lost in her own thoughts that she can't register the approach of a familiar Force presence.
A spike of surprise humming its way into her jaw through the Brightness inside Rex tells her the exact moment when that new clone turns the corner behind her, as does Rex's blurted out, "Cody?"
"Oh, good," Cody says, sounding pleased. "I was worried you two would be harder to find."
Rex bristles slightly, but he can't feel what Ahsoka can: that sharp spike of worry when Cody saw how she's practically attached herself to Rex, his dogged affection for the both of them even as Rex puffs up, and a strong undercurrent of fear for — not of, as understandable as that would be — his general's beloved former padawan.
"Well, here we are," Ahsoka offers, only turning her head part of the way. Less muffled may not be un-muffled, but it's still an improvement from fully muffled. "Why were you looking for us?"
"A few reasons," Cody says. "Updates, explanations, a general welfare check."
Ahsoka feels her pulse kick upward at that second reason — and Rex's, too. "Really?"
The soles of Cody's boots creak ever so slightly as he shifts his weight, probably below a Human's range of hearing. "Really," he confirms, and it's just awkward enough to catch even without eyes on his posture or his face. More obviously, he's thinking a running litany of curses so hard that Ahsoka can make out individual languages, the force of his thoughts rising perfectly in time with the feeling of Rex's growing ire.
Finally, it snaps.
"So you're telling us things now?" Rex says, with an edge that's sharp but just on the soft side of cutting for the sake of the Temple — a threat Cody would have to be dead not to hear. "Now that Anakin's comatose, the Chancellor's in the morgue, and the entire fucking war's suddenly at a standstill because both sides are busy running around like mynocks with their heads cut off? Now that whatever the hell you've been doing behind everybody's backs is all over?"
"It's not over yet," Cody tells them both, and that's what finally pulls Ahsoka away from Rex's shoulder with a cautiously rising feeling in her chest. Cody has this look in his eyes that Ahsoka knows well, mischief and danger all wrapped up in each other like old friends. "And I need your help to finish it."
"Then we'll help," Ahsoka says. Maybe it's a little underhanded to volunteer Rex when he's angry at Cody, but she knows them; once there's been time for Cody to fully reveal the truth in all its already obvious complications, once Rex has something to do again beyond endless meetings, the wall between them will crumble and they'll be thick as thieves again.
Ahsoka may be too numb to feel a similar anger right now, but she needs this too. Force, maybe she needs it because of that numbness.
"Okay," Cody breathes out, and every pore and Light of him screams relief. "Follow me."
Contrary to what Ahsoka had expected, Cody doesn't lead them down a hundred levels or into a musty safehouse above a poorly maintained restaurant — he takes them to the headquarters of the Coruscant Guard. "We commandeered some old unused rooms in the basement as our base of operations during the planning phase," Cody explains, guiding them down a side hallway and into a locked stairwell, "and then it ended up being the best place to keep most everyone involved hidden for at least the brunt of the fallout. Mind your step, Snips."
Ahsoka carefully avoids a suspicious looking tripwire. "Are you keeping people in or out?"
"Both," Cody says, which totally answers every question she's ever had. "And believe me, neither one is a fan of it."
So, curiosity piqued, Ahsoka reaches out. They're enough levels below the main headquarters for the Force signatures of the majority of the Coruscant Guard to be muted, distant and muffled like murmurs heard from under water. More immediate are two stationary energies further down the hall — one aggravated, one furious — and just as soon as she feels them does she also feel something breathtaking.
Familiarity.
"Cody," Ahsoka says. Her feet won't move, or maybe she doesn't want them to, or— "Cody?"
Cody turns, slows, stops. "You can feel them, then?"
Rex blinks. "Feel who?"
"You aren't imagining things," Cody continues, ignoring Rex for the time being, and maybe it's selfish but Ahsoka has never been so glad to be the center of attention in her life. "It's him."
"He's dead," Ahsoka chokes out.
"No, Ahsoka. He's alive. He wants to see you."
It's those words that turn it from some vague, confusing hypothetical to a life-altering reality. 'He wants to see you.' Well, kriff. Ahsoka has wanted to see him since the day he supposedly died, dreaming both awake and asleep about a world where things weren't always so kriffing unfair — a world where he had never gotten caught up in his own head to the point of being a danger to everyone around him, a world where—
Nevermind that now. Ahsoka unsticks one foot from the floor, then the other, until she's pushing past Cody and leaving both clones behind to careen around the corner, then down another long hall, and wrench open a heavy door that beeps violently at her for the slight but can't distract her from her singular focus because behind that door is him. Behind that door is Fives.
She doesn't waste time taking him in from afar — he has all four limbs and he isn't locked up or tied down and kriff, that's good enough for her to lunge at him with all her weight and tackle both of them to the floor with a shriek.
"You!"
Fives' yelping groan is music to her ears. His arms, too, come up to cradle her in that special Fives way that she's missed with a terrifying, almost violent fierceness. "Me!" he wheezes. "Kriff, 'Soka, you weigh a ton."
"That's what happens when someone grows up, idiot." She isn't sure exactly when she started crying again but her voice is as thick with tears as it is with joy. "You were supposed to be there for it, you kriffing—"
"I know," Fives soothes. "I should've been. Life's fucking unfair like that, isn't it?"
Ahsoka chokes out a laugh and peels herself off of him to get away from the rough surface — it's duracrete here, floor and walls and ceiling all the same drab, depressing gray. Maybe she should have been a little more careful with that tackle, actually, because Fives clambers to his feet with a drawn out groan and a hand pressed either soothingly or protectively against his tailbone.
"Good job," a voice suddenly says from somewhere behind her, the sneer in it audible, "breaking him so quickly after your heartwarming reunion."
Ahsoka whips around. How she didn't register the layout of the room before, she really couldn't say, but it's quite relevant now: there are two sides to it with heavy durasteel bars separating this side from the other. On the side with her and Fives are a simple bed of blankets, bottles of water, a box of ration meals and a bucket for waste. On the other side are the same things — and a man hunched sullenly in the far corner, a thick collar blinking around his neck with a steady, cheerful green light.
His scowl could shatter diamonds. It twists black tattoos and crimson skin into something fierce and monstrous and, just like Fives, familiar.
"Oh, Force," Ahsoka says.
The smile Maul gives her, sarcastic and sardonic, is more than venomous enough to make her recoil. "Pleasure."
She opens her mouth to speak, tries desperately to, but nothing comes out. How could she not have recognized him at the same time she had recognized Fives?
"I see you found the reason I need your help," Cody says from the doorway, raising his voice momentarily over a slew of violent curses from Rex when the man catches up behind him. "Are you ever gonna grow out of running on ahead?"
"Don't plan to," Ahsoka says faintly. Her eyes locked on Maul's pearly white fangs, but the spell has been broken now — Maul is just a man. She reaches blindly for Fives' hand and he grabs it tight, squeezing until she's almost worried for her circulation. "How the hell did you actually catch him? When the hell did you catch him? How is Fives involved — and why are they both locked up together?!"
"It's really just him stuck in here with me," Fives cheerfully assures her, stepping out into the hall at Cody's beckoning gesture. Ahsoka follows on suddenly clumsy feet, Maul's snarling face the last she sees of him before the door shuts and Cody re-arms the locks — multiple, actually, not just the frantically beeping one she noticed on her way in
Cody turns to her once they've made their way a safe distance down the hall, just as Fives pulls his hand away to let Rex hug the life out of him. "Maul's in there," Cody says almost sheepishly, "because he killed the Chancellor. Fives is in there because he's how we got Maul close enough to kill the Chancellor. He didn't die of natural causes, Ahsoka — do you really think Anakin went down like that just from feeling some old man have a heart attack?"
Ahsoka blinks. It had been weird, sure, the timing of everything that happened, but this was kriffing insane.
It must show on her face, her sheer bewilderment, because Cody laughs a quiet laugh and tips his head in acknowledgment. "Look, the exact specifics aren't all that important right now. There'll be time to ask as many questions as you want — after we finish this."
"How?" Ahsoka says. Rex looks like he's paying attention again too, and Fives has this strange half grin on his face that she can't decipher.
"I've been planting the idea for three weeks that Maul could be on planet," Cody slowly says, "going after anyone and everyone who's wronged him. Obi-Wan is far too protected to try to jump right now, of course, and Anakin similarly, but if their mutual loved one were to just... traipse out of the Temple to join a small group of clones for a night out..."
Rex looks like he's getting flashbacks to mission briefings with Anakin. "Are you fucking kidding me right now?"
"Who would I go with?"
A knowing smile starts to form on Cody's face. "A small gaggle of commandos who will have spent a few days publicly buttering up Rex so it makes sense for him to go with them when they aren't 501st, and of course Rex himself to keep it all as plausible as possible. Maul, for his part, shouldn't even know we let him escape on purpose until he's right back in custody."
"Absolutely not," Rex groans, looking to Ahsoka for backup, then does a double take as dawning comprehension — and dawning horror — slowly grow on his face. "Ahsoka..."
Because it's such a Skyguy kind of plan, isn't it? It's idiotic, harebrained, risky as anything, the sort of thing she knows she'll laugh and cry her way through when he wakes up and asks about everything he's missed. It's so stupid, genuinely, that it just might work.
Ahsoka grins the biggest grin she's given anyone since Anakin went under and it is all. Fucking. Teeth.
"When do we start?"