Chapter Text
This was bad. Ahsoka knew this was bad. She had screwed up - no, kriffed up so completely and utterly royalty. She had been so sure of herself, when the battle had started - so sure that she could carve a way through the Separatist blockade over Rhyloth, so sure that she could lead the squad of fighters she had been placed in charge of to victory.
But she got too cocky. Enemy reinforcements had arrived at the exact wrong time, but she was so sure that she could still make it, that they could still get past the blockade-
And now the clones, the lives she had been tasked to lead and protect, the lives that Anakin had put in her care, were gone, dead, atomized and floating endlessly through the cosmic abyss over Ryloth.
She felt tears well in her eyes as she sat in her fighter, shame and regret and guilt and grief and horror and a million other horrid, awful emotions storming her, and her throat was choked with tears and she was shaking and she felt like she was about to throw up and pass out-
A soft rapping on the front of her fighter caught her attention, had her eyes shooting up and, through her blurry, swimming vision (when had she started hyperventilating?) she saw Smoke standing there, helmetless, brown eyes wide.
He hates me, she thought. I killed his brothers. He hates me. He's going to yell at me. Anakin hates me, too, that's why he's not here-
She fell into sobs, curling in on herself.
“Commander!” She heard him call, his voice sounding faint and far away. “Shavit, she's having a panic attack - Coyote! Coyote! Get your shebs over here!”
The fighter opened up, and she sobbed harder, hiding her face in her arms as she curled up into the smallest ball she could, shame so potent and heavy in her body she thought she would start bleeding it out her nose.
“Commander, Ahsoka, ad’ika- calm, calm, calm,” Smoke was saying, resting his head on the edge of the fighter so that his head was slightly lower than hers in a posture of worry and care. “Please, ad'ika, udesii, udesii.”
Ahsoka didn't know what the words meant, but the low rumbling tones of Smoke’s accent when he said them had her unfurling from her ball, crawling out of the fighter and into his arms, sobbing so hard her vision began to black out.
“S-Smoke- I-I’m s-so s-sorry-” she blubbered, her shame only growing as he squeezed her tight. She was acting like such a pathetic child, after she had just gotten her squadron killed, and oh Force Axe and Swoop and Kickback and Tucker were all dead because of her-
“It's not your fault, ad’ika, it's not your fault, it was bad luck, it's not your fault,” Smoke was murmuring, rubbing soothing circles on her back.
“Nobody blames you, kid,” Coyote chimed in. “We all know it wasn't your fault. This is war. That was a trap. We all have to just get over it and keep on pushing through.”
Ahsoka sobbed harder at his words. How could she possibly ever ‘just get over’ what she had just done?! Smoke gripped her tighter, undoubtedly glaring daggers at the other clone.
“Wait, no- that's not what I meant- argh,” Coyote growled. “I was trying to tell you it's not your fault and that nobody hates you or blames you for what happened.”
“A-Anakin,” she sobbed out.
“He’d be here to say the same thing, if he could,” Smoke told her fiercely. “He’s just, uh- busy, right now.”
The lie rang out in the Force, and she sobbed harder.
“Y-You’re lying!” She wailed. “I c-can f-feel it! He h-hates m-me!”
“Kriff, Smoke, just tell her the truth,” Coyote growled. “Kid, he’d be here if he could, but right now he’s currently pinned under about three metric tonnes of vulture droid and space wreckage right now in what remains of the bridge.”
Ahsoka’s breath stopped as Smoke let out a sharp, scolding, affronted “Coyote!”
“He’s alive!” Coyote defended, and Ahsoka went limp with relief, a rush of very confusing emotions surging through her. “Just, well, trapped. But! Don’t you worry about him, because Rex, Appo, Kix, Scatter, and Admiral Yularen are all handling it. He’ll be out soon, bruised and probably needing a few hours in the MedBay, but he’ll be totally fine.”
The Force didn’t sour and ring out like Coyote had just told a lie, but rather it gave an odd little flutter at the statement - Ahsoka sniffled, brow scrunching up in confusion as she tried to figure out what that meant, but exhaustion hit her like a flood wave and she let out a large yawn.
“You need to rest, ad’ika,” Smoke told her gently yet firmly, lifting her up. She clung onto him, nuzzling her face in his shoulder, beginning to walk out of the hanger. As they wandered through the halls, she continued to cry softly, no longer hysterical but still deeply upset, but Smoke didn’t judge or say anything, simply started to let out a series of loud, low hums as they walked.
“...What are you doing?” She asked after a minute, her voice a hoarse whisper, wavy and weak and watery from all the sobbing she had been doing.
Smoke paused in his stride, letting out an embarrassed cough that felt strange against Ahsoka’s montrals.
“Ah, well, General can purr, but I can’t, and I know it makes you feel better, so I- I figured I’d try,” Smoke muttered, and Ahsoka didn’t need to see his face to know how red it must be.
Ahsoka grinned, letting out a squeaky little purr of her own. It was something togrutas could do, albeit not well - vestigial purring phonation, the scientific term for it was. Anakin’s loud, deep, rumbling purrs that felt like soothing thunder or a faraway landslide were something that, as far as she knew, was unique to him and a select few other species.
Smoke carried her the rest of the way to her room, keying in the code that she sleepily murmured to him before setting her down inside, swaying slightly on her feet as she regained her balance.
“I’ll grab you some water and some snacks,” Smoke said. “You do… whatever you need to do.”
Ahsoka nodded, forcing herself over to the ‘fresher to wash her face, taking a quick sonic shower before stepping into her softest pair of pajamas, curling up in her bed under the numerous blankets Anakin had collected for her. Just as she was starting to drift off, Smoke reappeared, a huge basket of various jerkies, salamis, sausages, and carnivore candies in his arms.
“General always makes sure we have a big stock of these,” he explained, setting it down by her bed as she gaped.
“Okay, why are you saying it like that?” She asked, shaking her head as she grabbed a piece of jerky, hungrily ripping the package apart and devouring it.
“...Saying what like what?” Smoke questioned, shifting nervously.
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“You keep saying ‘general’. Not ‘the general’, just ‘general’. Why?”
“Oh… Have I?’ Smoke hummed non-convincingly. “Must just be a weird new habit I picked up… Anyway, I have to get back to duty, but if you need anything, Coyote’s available okay bye-”
Smoke practically fled the room, leaving her completely flummoxed as to what his deal was before she decided that she didn’t really have the emotional capacity to care, instead laying down to eat jerky and fall asleep.
She was out within seconds.
He woke up on a strange bed, in a strange room, surrounded by strange machines and monitors. He blinked, glancing around, deeply perplexed and unsettled. How did he get here? Where was he? Who was he? Why couldn’t he remember anything at all?
I must have been kidnapped, he thought. He wasn’t entirely sure why he thought that, but it seemed reasonable enough in his brain - was that something that happened to him often?
My memory’s gone… Did they erase it? Is that something they can do?
His entire body hurt, like he got run over by a- by a- well, he couldn’t remember any appropriate analogies, but everything felt bruised and tender and, judging by the mottled bruising on his left arm and on his legs, he thought that maybe that had been the case. His head was pulsing, and the lights were too bright, the blankets too scratchy, and he was thirsty as all hells. Nausea broiled in his gut, rising and rising until-
He threw up.
Next to him, a strange shape jolted upwards, and he almost shrieked when he realized it was a person. Their eyes lit up when they saw he was awake, quickly rushing over to him, pressing a strange metal object into his hands, strange colors shifting around their head.
“Master! You’re awake!” The strange person yelped, grinning at him with sharp teeth, her orange hand grabbing his. “You had us worried you might, well, you know what for a moment there, but it looks like Coyote was right in that you’ll be fine, if needing a bit more time here than originally thought.”
He in fact did not know what the girl was talking about, or why her blue eyes sparkled with mischief and the colors around her turned yellow when she said it. He also didn’t know who ‘Coyote’ was. She had addressed him as Master, though - was that his name?
He startled, realizing that she was waiting for a response.
“Oh, uh… Yeah, that’s… that’s Coyote for you!”
She looked at him oddly, crinkling her nose and tilting her head, the colors around her shifting hue.
“Oof, Kix got you on the good stuff?” She asked. “I’m not surprised, Rex said you had a skull fracture, a few broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, a broken collarbone, and a sprained wrist, plus a bunch of bruising and some other stuff I can’t remember. By the way, Jesse told me to tell you to try catching incoming vulture droids with the Force, not your face next time.”
He blinked up at her, giving a hesitant nod when she finished. More names he didn’t know, more terms he couldn’t remember.
“I… will certainly try my best,” he said, and she huffed in amusement.
“Yeah, well, I told him that obviously you caught it in the Force, otherwise you’d be, well, super dead. And then he told me the point of his statement was that there shouldn’t be a next time, but whatever.”
Her grin faded, a more heavy, sorrowful look passing over her features, the colors fading to dull gray.
“We… We suffered heavy losses,” she murmured, and he tried his best to match her expression of grief. “It’s- It’s my fault-”
To his horror, the girl began to sniffle, tears welling up behind her eyes.
“Hey, hey,” he tried to soothe. “I’m sure it’s not all bad.”
Unfortunately, that seemed to make her more upset.
“I’m sorry, Master, I failed you,” she cried. “I- I should have retreated like you said but- but I didn’t and I got- I got my squad killed!”
Master had no idea what kind of kriffed up situation he had landed himself in, but at least he was fairly confident he hadn’t been kidnapped and mind-wiped.
“Uhh………. I’m sorry to hear that?”
Once more, that was apparently the wrong thing to say, and the girl ran out of the room sobbing.
A strange tan-skinned blond-haired man poked his head into the room a moment later.
“Uh, why did the Commander just go running down the hallway crying? Sir?”
Master leveled the stranger with the most wide-eyed, regretful look he had.
“I don’t know!” He exclaimed earnestly.
The stranger just glanced down the hall at the direction the girl had ran down before shaking their head.
“Is this one of those ‘teenage things’ you mentioned, Sir?” The stranger inquired, to which Master just repeated that he didn’t know.
“I’ll go see if I can calm her down,” the stranger sighed, leaving to presumably do just that only to reappear a moment later.
“Ah, almost forgot: Fives caught a live rat and wants you to eat it in front of Echo, Echo wants to keep the rat as a pet, Jesse crashed a speederbike in the gymnasium - don’t ask me how - and Appo is trying to convince Jesse and Fives that ramming an empty Jedi Cruiser into the Separatist brigade is a bad idea, and he wants your help on that. Also the shinies won’t stop hitting each other with hammers. Apparently it’s some sort of new trend in the battalion? Either way Kix is getting really tired of treating vode coming in after they got into fistfights because someone hit the other with a hammer. I told him that’s your problem, not mine, so have fun with that.”
With that, the blond-haired stranger left once more, leaving him alone.
I have to get out of this kriffing place, he decided. These people are lunatics.
Just as he had untangled himself from the thin, scratchy sheets and just as he was about to stand up and disconnect himself from the various machines attached to him, another man walked in, identical to the first save for a completely shaved head.
“Where do you think you’re going?” The man snapped, striding towards him quickly, bringing with him a wave of sharp, unfamiliar smells. “Get back in bed!”
Master quickly obeyed, laying back down.
“You’re a di’kut,” the sharp-smelling man growled. Master didn’t know what that meant, but he figured that it had to have been an insult by the way Sharp-Scent said it.
“That’s not very nice,” Master grumbled, glaring sullenly at Sharp-Scent, who simply rolled his eyes. Sharp-Scent grabbed some sort of flat device from one of the surfaces next to him, scanning over it.
“Alright, your vitals all look good,” Sharp-Scent said with what looked like a frown but somehow didn’t feel like one, staring down at the device. “You definitely had us worried for a moment there with that skull fracture, but your most recent scans show that the nanobots have healed up the damage well.”
Nanobots? He thought. Those were a thing?
Wizard.
“Just a few quick questions and then we’ll get you out of here, Sir,” Sharp-Scent said.
He paled, grasping the thin sheet tight, but tried to school his expression as Sharp-Scent turned to him. He had a feeling that him getting out of here was tied to the maniacs around him not knowing he didn’t remember anything.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
Master paused. What was a normal, non-suspect thing someone not experiencing whatever he was experiencing would say?
“I was… going to the park!” He answered. He wasn’t quite sure what a park was, but the words felt right.
Sharp-Scent stared at him, the colors around him twisting oddly.
“...Right…” Sharp-Scent said, setting down the device. “And… What’s your name again?”
Oh, he knew this one!
“Master!” He answered with a grin, confidently.
Sharp-Scent seemed displeased at that response. Well, displeased perhaps wasn’t the right word - confused, maybe. Perplexed. Definitely very concerned.
“...And what is your wife’s name?” Sharp-Scent asked slowly.
Master blanked. He had a wife?!
“Oh, uh, her name is- well, it’s the most beautiful name in the Galaxy- uhh-”
“I,” Sharp-Scent said, voice strained, “-will be right back.”
With that, Sharp-Scent left the room, leaving Master alone and feeling very, very awkward, somehow getting the feeling that he had flunked that test hard.
A few long moments later, Master was contemplating just booking it, despite that certainly incurring Sharp-Scent’s wrath.
Just as he was about to stand, Sharp-Scent reappeared, dragging with him the blond-haired man from before and another same-faced man.
“Alright. Few more questions here,” Sharp-Scent said before gesturing to the blond-haired man. “What’s this guy’s name?”
The other two stared at Sharp-Scent, the colors around them shifting to match their confused expressions.
“Kix? What’s-” the blond one began to ask, only for Sharp-Scent - whose name was Kix, apparently - to quickly cut them off.
“Oh,” Master said, stalling, eyes glancing rapidly around the room, searching desperately for any sort of potential clue. Surely these guys had some sort of name tag, right?! “Well, that one’s easy, uh, Kix! He was just in here earlier, we had a nice talk. Oh, uh, you needed me to stop the shiners from hitting each other with hammers?”
Now the blond man and the newcomer were staring at him, colors changing once more.
“Uh-uh,” Kix said, unimpressed. “And what’s that guy’s name?”
Master was silent for a long, awkward moment.
“Umm… Is it… Trix?”
The group was silent for another moment.
“This is bad,” the blond-haired one eventually said.
“You don’t… remember us?” The dark-haired one asked, sounding baffled.
“Now, be honest here, what is the last thing you remember?” Kix asked again.
Master thought for a long moment, trying desperately to recall anything he could from his mind.
“Uhmm… I think I remember a- a droid? Blue and white, same colors you guys have, actually.”
“Okay,” the dark-haired man replied, nodding slowly. “That could either be your astromech or the vulture droid that crashed through the viewport.”
Kix let out a low groan.
“We need more scans,” he huffed, grabbing some sort of device from a side closet. “I’m gonna take him over to the Sector Besh MedBay, since their equipment is more advanced.”
Kix turned to him.
“Up,” he growled, activating the chair-like device, which began to hover above the ground.
“Wizard,” Master said, letting Kix detach him from the machines, settling down in the cool hovering chair.
“Wow,” Kix whistled. “Wish it was always that easy to get you to do that.”
“What?” Master questioned, but he was cut off by the blond-haired man.
“That’s gonna cause so much panic among the vode,” he warned. “Once they see him sitting calmly in this thing being pushed around they’ll think- well, who knows what they’ll think, but it won’t be thought calmly, that’s for sure.”
“Uhh,” Master interjected, glancing down at the hovering chair nervously. “Is this thing supposed to hurt or something? Why would me willingly sitting in it freak people out?”
“You know what, General? That’s a very good question. When you regain your memories, I hope you remember this interaction and stop fighting me on this,” Kix sniffed.
“I’ll come with you to the other MedBay,” the blond-haired man said, nodding to Kix.
“Alrighty blondie, let’s go!” Master said, and the colors around all three of the men turned a bright yellow.
“You are also blond, Sir,” blondie told him.
“I am?” Master squawked in surprise, reaching up to feel his hair despite that not actually answering the question as to whether he was blonde or not.
“Well, it’s more of a dirty blond, I’d say,” the darker haired man added. “Bordering on brown.”
“Wait ‘till he’s in the sun for a few weeks, then it really lightens up,” blondie huffed, then shook his head.
Master had been fiddling with some of the controls on the hovering chair, and with a yelp of surprise, he found the ones that made him move, jerking the chair backwards and straight into Kix, who let out a grunt.
“Yeah, no,” Kix growled, reaching over and tapping a bunch of different buttons which, Master found with a frown, disabled the movement settings. “I’m not letting the brain-damaged amnesiac wheel off to terrorize the ship, sorry.”
Master let out a huff.
Rude, he thought.
“Rude,” he said.
“Alright Rex, let’s go,” Kix said with a sigh.
“Rex!” Master exclaimed. “That’s a nice name.”
“I’m glad you think so, Sir,” Rex replied as Kix pushed the hovering chair out of the room, the colors around him shining mostly yellow with a little bit of pink.
“It’s similar to Kix’s, too,” Master continued. “Is that, like, your guys' thing? You all look the same so you all have similar names?”
“No, Kix and I’s names being similar is just a coincidence, Sir,” Rex explained as they veered into a hallway. “We look alike because we’re clones.”
“Wait, there are more of you? I thought you guys were just- just- uh…” Master trailed off, tilting his head in confusion. He thought that there was a word that meant what he was trying to say, but now that he thought of it, he couldn’t actually remember what he was trying to say.
The concerned glance Kix and Rex shared did not go unnoticed by him, and suddenly he felt rather self-conscious. Luckily, his focus was soon drawn to the other - what did Rex call them? Clones? - clones wandering the halls, all of which stopped when they saw him, straightened their backs, and made some odd sort of gesture with their hands. Quite a few of them had expressions of shock or concern, which Master tried to abate with a silly little wave, but that only seemed to confuse and concern them more, so he stopped. As they continued on, the halls grew wider and wider, more and more people walking about, stopping to stare and straighten their backs, the colors all doing similar shifts and swirls.
“What’s with the colors?” He asked eventually, turning to Rex.
“The colors, Sir?” Rex questioned.
“The colors,” Master huffed, pointing to his head and waving his fingers a bit. “The ones around our heads.”
What other colors would I be talking about? Master thought irritably.
“Oh,” Rex replied, eyes widening slightly as he shared a long look with Kix. “Those… are called auras, Sir. And it’s… impolite, to talk about them.”
“Very impolite,” Kix agreed, nodding.
Master frowned.
“Why would talking about the colors- er, auras be impolite?” He inquired.
“Uhm, because-” Kix glanced to Rex.
“Because people can’t control their auras,” Rex told him. “They’re, er, a window to the soul, if you will. They tell you what someone is feeling. And people don’t like it when you point out what they’re feeling, so… best not to bring it up. At all.”
Master’s frown deepened. He supposed that made sense… sorta. Still, it seemed silly to be able to tell what anyone was feeling and not be able to talk about it, but he had the strange feeling that that was true about a lot of things, things he couldn’t even remember.
“The world felt weird when you said that,” he pointed out instead. “Like… uh… sour.”
Rex and Kix just blinked at him, their auras showing both confusion and what looked a bit like worry. Worry for him, maybe? Was the sour-feeling not normal?
“Anakin!” A voice called suddenly, the voice and accent far different than those he had encountered thus far. Master turned his head to look in front of him as Rex and Kix froze in the middle of the hall, doing the weird back-straightening hand-signaling thing.
Anakin? He wondered. That’s a weird word.
“General Kenobi!” Rex and Kix said at the same time. Their auras shifted to a wide variety of colors, but they both seemed… protective, somehow. Of him.
Is this General Kenobi guy an enemy or something? Master wondered, eyeing the newcomer warily.
General Kenobi, for his part, was staring down at Master, his aura the shades of worry and confusion. Another clone stood at Kenobi’s side, this time with the same short dark hair the other clones seemed to have, as well as a large scar carving down the left side of his face.
His armor is yellow and white, Master noticed, intrigued. I thought it was supposed to be blue and white. Weird.
“Anakin, what did you do this time?” General Kenobi asked, still staring at him.
Master glanced at the clone in yellow, figuring that was the Anakin Kenobi was talking to, but nobody answered.
“Anakin?” General Kenobi prompted, his aura becoming more vivid as the confusion and concern the man felt intensified.
“He’s quite out of it, General,” Rex interjected. “A vulture droid slipped past our defenses and crashed through the bridge’s viewport. General Skywalker warned us of the danger and managed to slow it down with the Force long enough for everyone else to get out of the immediate danger zone, but, er, the droid… crashed into him. We’re on our way now to get some more advanced scans done.”
General Kenobi blinked slowly, aura twisting oddly before he sighed.
“Oh, Anakin,” General Kenobi sighed. “Leave it to you to get run over by a vulture droid, of all things.”
General Kenobi glanced back up, his expression shifting into something colder.
“Cody and I can take him down to get the scans,” General Kenobi told them, and Master blinked at the odd change in tone even as Rex and Kix bristled.
“With all due respect, General Kenobi, I am General Skywalker’s chief medic,” Kix growled, stepping closer to Master.
“And I am the Jedi who raised and trained him,” Kenobi snapped back.
Master had the sudden feeling that this argument was actually about something else.
“General Skywalker is an adult who can make his own choices about what codes he wants to follow and who he hangs out with,” Kix hissed. “And I know for a fact that you’ve been told this a thousand times before, but he and I-” Kix motioned between himself and Master, “-are just friends. Just. Friends.”
It was clear by the disapproving glare of General Kenobi that he did not believe that in the slightest.
“Wait, hold on,” Master interjected. “You think Kix and I are, like, dating or something?”
“I don’t care what label you put on it,” General Kenobi told him acidicly.
Master stared up at Kix, tilting his head as he scanned the clone up and down.
“...Him?” Master questioned again. “I mean… he’s alright, but, well, no offense of course, it’s just that if I were to be dating or sleeping with anyone here, Kix wouldn’t be my first choice.”
“...Thank… You?” Kix said, evidently confused as to whether he should be offended at his comment or grateful that he was backing him up.
“Uh-huh,” General Kenobi said, unconvinced.
“Honestly, if I had to choose someone to sleep with… I don’t know, the guy next to you is kinda cute,” Master said, winking at the clone in yellow. “What’s your name, handsome? You like blonds?” He turned to Rex. “I am blond, right?”
They were all silent for a long, long moment, everyone staring at him like he had just said the most batshit thing ever.
“...How hard did he hit his head?” Kenobi eventually asked, voice faint.
“Hard,” Kix and Rex said at the same time.
“Can we go perform the scans now, General?” Kix continued, the slightest hint of disdain in his voice as he said General Kenobi’s… First name? Title? Honestly, Master wasn’t quite sure.
“Yes,” General Kenobi said, still sounding faint. “Yes, you should probably go do those now.”
Without another word, Kix and Rex pushed the chair past General Kenobi, continuing back down the hall.
“Jackass,” Kix muttered angrily.
“Kix,” Rex said warningly. “Don’t go picking fights with the jetiise, even if that jetii has been a nuisance.”
“A nuisance?!” Kix snapped. “He was a nuisance up until he disrespected my status as chief medic and tried to steal my patient! Now he’s a-”
“Kix,” Rex snapped. “You are going to get court martialed if you keep running your mouth. You know we can’t disrespect the Jedi.”
“So… is the scar guy not interested, or do you think there might still be a chance?” Master interjected, hopeful. What could he say? That scar looked pretty hot on that guy.
“Sir, we are not talking about this right now,” Rex told him, looking like he had just bitten into something sour, though Kix seemed amused.
“...So is that a no, or…?”
“Sir.”