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hrtiu · 4 years

Text

My contribution to day one of Rexsoka week. It’s a little bit of a bummer given the prompt is ‘hope,’ but I like where it ends up!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26703133

Ahsoka had been in love with Rex for about a year when she told him to leave her on some desolate Outer-Rim skug hole of a planet.

A year earlier the epiphany had been like punching a hole in a piece of flimsi—easy and weightless but completely irrevocable. He’d come back to Coruscant to speak at Dogma’s court-martial and to give his report on the Umbara debacle, and she’d been so relieved—so overjoyed—to finally see him healthy and sound that it just clicked.

She didn’t say anything, of course. Even if he reciprocated her feelings, there wasn’t really any way either of them could act on them, and she didn’t want to deal with the heartbreak. She also didn’t feel ready for those kinds of feelings, and doubted Rex was either. Rex was both a grown man and a being who had only experienced twelve years of life—all of them spent as a soldier preparing to sacrifice himself for the Republic. And as many adult situations in which she’d found herself and as much as she liked to think otherwise, curled up in the dark of her room at night Ahsoka was forced to admit to herself that she was still a child in many ways.

Thinking about it as little as possible was Ahsoka’s best defense, and she channeled all her affection for Rex into a fierce loyalty to him and all the clones of the 501st and an unshakable determination to win the war. Maybe after the war… she found herself thinking in her weaker moments. After the war what? She’d become a knight, and his legal status would be uncertain. There was no future.

Things didn’t change much after she left the Order. In theory she was no longer bound by the Code and could seek out personal relationships if she wanted to, but she couldn’t just switch off her entire way of being so easily. She also had no way of knowing if she’d ever see Rex again. She was unlikely to be allowed back into the GAR, and he wouldn’t be able to go looking for her even if he wanted to. She put her head down and tried to move forward with her life, but when her teenage mind decided to take off on flights of romantic fancy, her partner always had brown-golden eyes, stern posture, and light hair that contrasted against his dark skin.

When Ahsoka finally reunited with him for the Siege of Mandalore, she felt the stirrings of hope for the first time. Nothing about Rex was soft, but somehow the modest smile he gave her when introducing her to the 332nd was heart-breakingly tender. She’d worried somewhere in the back of her mind that Rex would have moved on, would not have carried their friendship with him like she had. But she’d returned to find the same disciplined, loyal, brave, true man she’d come to consider her dearest friend.

How quickly things change, Ahsoka thought as she watched the reddish sunlight of the dwarf sun filter through the tiny, rank room she and Rex had rented for the night. The Venator had crashed on some unnamed moon six months earlier, and they’d been on the run ever since. Ahsoka turned her head towards her fellow fugitive, asleep on his own narrow bed across the room from her, and she wondered how he always managed to coax his brain to unconsciousness no matter where he lay his head. Ahsoka hadn’t slept well in months.

In some ways she felt closer to Rex than ever. There was a heavy burden of sadness they shared between the two of them, dragging it from system to system as they tried to erase their tracks, and it tied them together like two prisoners on a chain gang. In other ways she’d never felt more distant from him, not even after she’d left the Order and didn’t know if he was dead or alive.

I did this, the familiar voice of guilt played in Ahsoka’s head. I took everything from him.

She’d replayed her escape from Order 66 over and over again in her mind, trying to understand where she’d gone wrong, what she could have done differently to save all those men. Try as she might, she didn’t see any way out without either giving herself up, which she could not accept, or letting Rex go, which she would not abide. But she must be wrong. There must have been some other way, there must have been something.

Rex stirred in his sleep, and Ahsoka watched the broad planes of his back expand and retract with each breath. It was exactly the same back as his brothers, the ones she’d let die. Did he wish that he’d died with them? Did he wish she’d left him in blissful, brainwashed ignorance? Did he… did he wish she’d just let herself go down?

The sunlight fully peaked through their window and Rex’s restless movements turned to a real awakening. He opened his eyes and greeted the day with a groan, then rolled out of bed and got dressed with typical clone efficiency.

It was still strange to see Rex in civilian clothes—almost like that time she’d seen a holo of Obi-Wan in Mandalorian armor. The faded trousers and stained tunic never seemed to fit him quite right.

“Well, it’s a new day, Commander,” Rex said, and Ahsoka winced. He still always called her that, and she hated the title more with each passing day.

“Not much different from the last few,” Ahsoka said.

“We’ve been here too long. That patrol yesterday was too close a call—we need to move on.”

Ahsoka had to agree, though it pained her to admit it. She was getting so tired of running. She nodded her head wearily.

“So? Where to?” Rex said.

Ahsoka studied Rex for a long moment, then looked within herself and realized that today she finally had the strength to say what she’d been thinking had to be said for a long while.

“You need to check out the tip we got about Wolffe,” she said evenly.

Rex’s brow furrowed and he rubbed at his eyes, as if Ahsoka’s words could be chalked up to his drowsy state. “He’s supposed to be on Kamino. We can’t go to a planet full of chipped clones.”

“I can’t,” Ahsoka said pointedly.

Rex narrowed his eyes at Ahsoka. “What are you suggesting, Commander.”

Ahsoka sat up in bed and gathered her scratchy blankets around her. “He somehow managed to get a message to us that he wants out—you can’t ignore that.”

“We can’t ignore that, I agree.”

“He’s going to be on Kamino for the foreseeable future, and if I go there I’ll only hold you back.”

“Ahsoka-”

“I’m not going to take you away from your brothers again, Rex.”

Rex’s stern brow twitched and he pursed his lips. A long, weighty moment passed between them, then Rex spoke. “I won’t abandon you.”

“It’s not abandoning if I’m asking you to go,” Ahsoka said.

A look of deep hurt flitted past Rex’s face. “You’re ordering me away?”

“No!” Ahsoka said, getting to her feet. “That’s exactly the pro-” she cut herself off and sighed, taking a moment to collect herself. “Before, on the Venator. I made the decision for you.”

“No you didn’t. I all but asked you to take the chip out.”

“Maybe, but I put you in a position where you had to choose between me and your brothers and… it really wasn’t much of a choice.”

Rex huffed in frustration and threw his hands in the air. “Look, I don’t blame you-”

“Don’t you?”

The question lingered in the air between them, and Rex looked away. “No, I don’t,” he said. His voice was firm, but Ahsoka could see the doubt in his eyes.

And that was the crux of it. This awful tragedy hung between them, and would always be there unless they could find a way past it. If Rex was always stuck with her, always following her orders and watching her back, she knew their connection would remain poisoned by guilt and unbidden resentment. He needed to forge his own path, to find his independence. Then, maybe… Maybe many years in the future…

Ahsoka walked up to Rex and put a hand on his cheek, turning his head gently to face her. “I’m done issuing commands. Stay with me if you want. But I’m going to pay for a few more nights here, and I’m going to sleep here tonight, and I hope that when I wake tomorrow morning you’ll be gone.”

Rex met her eyes for a few seconds, then his gaze fell to the floor. Ahsoka held her breath as she waited for him to come to his conclusions. He swallowed a tense knot in his throat, then nodded, all uncertainty gradually draining away.

Pain and relief flooded Ahsoka’s heart in equal measure, and she reached for Rex’s hand, daring more physical affection than she’d ever shown before. “Let’s go out to the market,” she said, giving his fingers a squeeze. “It’s a nice day.”

Rex squeezed her hand in return before letting go, and together they left the seedy hotel for the marketplace in the center of town.

It truly was a nice day—the first pleasant, relaxed, uncomplicated day either of them had experienced in years. They ate a breakfast of hot caf and fried nuna eggs in a tiny cafe and watched the sun gradually bathe the dusty town in reddish light. They went to the open air plaza and dug through piles of the vendors’ wares until they found a newish, non-stained shirt for Rex. Rex picked out several blumfruits from the fruit stand, insisting that Bariss had once taught him a foolproof method for picking the ripest and sweetest, and as Ahsoka ate the red fruit she had to admit it was the tastiest she’d ever had. As night fell the daytime vendors closed up shop and other folks came out, some setting up games and other minor pieces of entertainment for the modest crowd. Ahsoka won Rex a small stuffed convor with a perfect game of ring toss, and though Rex complained that using the Force was cheating, he kept the plush. They ate dinner back at the hotel, whose food was actually somewhat passable despite the rundown building, then went to bed feeling restored.

Ahsoka pulled the covers up to her chin, her bones still steeped in the unfamiliar happiness of the day. She hadn’t felt this close to Rex since the crash, hadn’t enjoyed anything with Rex since then. She knew she’d made the right decision, as much as it would hurt to wake up alone the next day.

“‘Soka?” Rex’s voice carried through the darkness across the small room.

Ahsoka turned towards him, just barely making out the familiar angles of his face through the dim light. “Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

Ahsoka’s lips turned into a smile even as her eyes filled with tears she refused to shed. “You’d do the same for me, Rex. There’s no need for thanks.”

“All the same…”

“Yeah, I know.”

“May the Force be with you, little’un.”

“May the Force be with you, Rex.”

---

The next day Ahsoka woke and looked across the room from her to find an empty bed. The dingy bed had been made to military precision, and Rex had left no other evidence behind. The tears Ahsoka had held back the night before would no longer cooperate, and she buried her face in her hands and cried.

She gave herself permission to cry for a good long while, and after an hour her tears were spent and her heart worn thin. Her sorrow had run out of her along with her tears, and all that was left was a stubborn, insistent sort of hope. Ahsoka closed her eyes and imagined Rex going to Kamino, somehow sneaking into the base and finding Wolffe. She imagined the two of them figuring out how to remove Wolffe’s chip, then going on a crusade to free more of their brothers. She imagined Rex becoming more and more the person he was meant to be, the person his servitude to the Republic held back. And at the end of it all, that foolish, optimistic hope imagined him returning home to her.

#rexsoka #rexsokaweek #fanfic

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