#rex and ahsoka playing DARTS WITH ONE ANOTHER SOMEONE HELP--

[momojedi]

Could I have #88 and #97 with Captain Rex, pretty please...??

JUST MARRIED PAIRING: Captain Rex x GN! Reader

#88 | “Don’t panic but I think we might have accidentally gotten married…” #97 | “I want you and I know you want me too.”

GENRE: Fluff WARNING: none A/N: Since I got prompted #88 by an anon who asked for no one in particular, I mixed up your request with theirs. Thanks for requesting!

MASTERLIST | MOMOJEDI'S 300 FOLLOWER CELEBRATION

"Mhi solus tome,

Mhi solus dar’tome.

Mhi me’dinui an,

Mhi ba’juri verde."

Intense concentration furrows my brow as I massage my temples, striving to translate the unfamiliar words. "For fuck's sake," I mutter, frustration punctuating each syllable as I kick a nearby pebble with surprising strength, eliciting a muffled groan and the metallic clang of beskar as it ricochets off a distant helmet.

Two weeks may not seem long, especially when operating undercover among a terrorist faction whilst the galaxy is engulfed in war. It would probably be advisable to keep a cool head and avoid making a big deal out of insignificant subjects—such as unfamiliar phrases. However, when those words escape the lips of your longtime crush, delivered with an unexpected fervor while locking passionate eyes with you in a language foreign to your ears...

Well, needless to say, I've devoted more time to overthinking it than I care to admit.

When General Skywalker tasked us with shadowing Death Watch until the Jedi Council reached more intel, I hadn't given it much thought... admittedly, he hadn't specified that by "us" he didn't mean Ahsoka and me, as usual, but rather the captain of the 501st and myself—the very someone I've harboured feelings for since the day we met.

Nevertheless, I maintained my composure, played my part, and stayed under the radar, much like Rex, until Death Watch proposed an elaborate ceremony—a ceremony whose name I could barely pronounce, let alone understand its significance. Before any suspicion could arise, Rex quickly agreed in my place, and now here I am, entangled in some eerie ritual with a military captain whose gaze seemed entranced, so intense was his focus.

"If I had my datapad right now...," I hiss under my breath, casting blame on whoever decided I should leave my sole translation device behind. Likely Skywalker.

The crunch of gravel under heavy boots interrupts my daydreaming. I spin around sharply, only to find the very man haunting my mind approaching. "I figured I'd find you here," Rex hums as he settles beside me. "Yeah," I reply with a dry laugh, brushing the dust off my hands. "Sorry, I suppose I just needed... alone time. After everything yesterday, you know?" Rex's eyes widen almost comically, and he sheepishly scratches the back of his neck. "Oh... yeah."

The ensuing silence gnaws at my nerves, prompting me to pop the question after another agonising five minutes. "Hey, about that... what did those words mean, anyway?" "I'm not sure what you're referring to," Rex responds, avoiding my gaze. I gulp. He can't have forgotten, can he? "Come on, Rex... It seemed significant." After a moment's hesitation, Rex sighs, running a hand over his buzzcut before raising his head to face me, though still evading it. "I..." "Yes?" "Alright, fine. [Name], don't panic, but... we might have accidentally... gotten married."

...

"WHAT?"

"Shh!" Rex quiets me with a gentle hand over my mouth, his eyes darting cautiously around us before he releases me. I shake my head slowly, puzzled. "Sorry, but what?" "The, um, the words... they were Mandalorian wedding vows," he admits, his tone tinged with uncertainty. I can't help but laugh. Married? Us? "You're joking." "Unfortunately not," he replies, a slight smile tugging at his lips, before his expression shifts to sheepishness as he rubs the back of his neck. "Though I do believe you'd make an excellent partner." Suppressing a chuckle, I ignore the warmth creeping into my cheeks.

"Actually, I realized we needed a distraction when I overheard some members gossiping behind our backs. They were growing suspicious, so I thought perhaps they'd relax if we participated in some traditions." Rex sighs, examining a pebble he's picked up. I shoot him a hopeful sidelong glance before quickly looking away, feeling my heart quicken.

Force, this man is captivating.

Silence envelops us once more as we both drift deeper into our own thoughts. When I sense the gravel shifting under his weight, I raise an eyebrow. "It wouldn't bother me, you know?" A lump forms in my throat, causing a series of coughs to escape at his words. "Wh-what?" "Being with you." Suddenly, his warm yet weighty hand finds mine. Sweat prickles at my heated skin as I keep my gaze fixed ahead.

"R-rex, are you suggesting...?" "[Name]," he interrupts, turning to face me. Before I can evade his gaze, he gently lifts my chin, compelling me to meet his eyes. I run my tongue over my dry lips, which his gaze is now fixated on. "I want you. And I know you want me, too." His proximity sends shivers down my spine as goosebumps ripple over my arms and back. His newfound confidence is palpable. "I've noticed the way you look at me, how you stare. I know, [name]," he murmurs against my lips, "what do you think?"

I flush, gripping his wrist as I lock eyes with his warm gaze. "I think you're right." Rex chuckles deeply, resonating like a rumble in his chest. "Good." And before I realize it, his lips meet mine,

Time seems to slip away as I surrender completely to the kiss. Eventually, Rex pulls back, leaving me breathless, and flashes me a mischievous grin.

“So, about that wedding night…”

[katierosefun]

For the fak title thing heh; Fighting for her men?

thanks for the ask, anon! 

fighting for her men: okay, so my brain jumped right to ahsoka, and...oh huh. (once again,,,this really is just live feedback from caroline’s brain isn’t it)

but there’s this one scene that always really touched me in the gambit books (the first one!), when ahsoka’s looking around the battlefield and she just goes, “okay, no one’s allowed to die today, okay? you’re not allowed”, and she’s trying so hard to put on a brave face, but i think this book notes that like ahsoka’s voice wobbles a little bit and--ughhhhh i have so many feelings about ahsoka and the 501st don’t touch me--

anyways, where was i,,,i kind of see this as a fic where ahsoka’s in another one of those situations, but make it worse like...i don’t know, ahsoka and anakin get split up, so the 501st is split between the two of them too? i keep thinking they’re underground somewhere...(also i’m so sorry for atla references, but can you tell i get inspired by other stories...but there’s that one atla episode where the gaang gets split up in the mountain--the secret tunnel episode! asdfsdf not me now imaging anakin scream-singing “secret tunnellll, secret tunnelllll--through the mountainnnnnnn”,,,and i think someone already drew fanart of that i’m sorry my brain’s all over the place with this) 

but anyways. ahsoka + her half of the 501st walking around under the mountain and uh. uh. bad things happen. everyone gets out alive in the end, because i really don’t wanna kill any clones (that’s dave filoni and george lucas’ job :/// i say no clone deaths on my watch), but. ahsoka throwing her shoulders back and being like nope, nope, nope, i will be calm and collected commander!!! (meanwhile, the 501st are also trying their darnest to stay positive because they, too, would rather not like to cause panic.) 

ask game

[voxmyriad]

Ok a prompt if I may:

The 501st are on leave, Ahsoka finds Rex as he’s leaving the barracks, asks him what he wants to do after the war, they wander around the city chatting and end up in a spot that Rex likes to go to between deployments because it’s peaceful

I just love their brother/sister BroTP vibes and I think they’d have good conversations

- @anstarwar

This ended up not being on Coruscant, but I still want to hit up this food market. Set sometime before things get really awful everywhere. || Send in prompts

Sometimes, they got lucky. Sometimes, a mission wound up not being a mission at all. They'd been sent to give support to a group of city-based freedom fighters, but by the time they'd arrived, guerrilla forces had pushed the Separatists to the fringes of the city, easy targets for the 501st air support. They hadn't even needed to land troops.

They hadn't been responsible for the victory either, but the leaders of the people had invited them into the city anyway, a gesture of solidarity toward their intention of joining the Republic. The Resolute wouldn't be running with a skeleton crew, by any means, but every trooper not currently on duty was being released for some overdue shore leave.

So was Ahsoka, and as soon as Anakin let her go, she ran toward the barracks, full of ideas, and skidded to a halt as Rex emerged. "Hi," she said, grinning, a little out of breath. "I got a tip about a good dumpling place."

"When did you have time to get a tip about a good dumpling place?" Rex asked as he fell into step next to her, helmet propped on his hip. They were off-duty, but he wasn't going anywhere without his armor.

"Okay, I don't have a tip about a good dumpling place," she admitted. "I was hoping you'd want to come look for one with me."

Rex laughed, tension unspooling from his shoulders as they hopped aboard a LAAT/i with a group of shinies for quick transport to the surface. "Yeah, let's look around. Maybe we'll find something even better."

"Better than dumplings?" Ahsoka asked skeptically.

"I don't trust dumplings," a trooper said. There was barely a scratch to his armor yet. Could probably count the meals he'd eaten planetside on one hand. "Could be anything in there."

"They could hide anything under a bowl of noodles, too," the trooper beside him pointed out. Another shiny, but he looked like he'd at least seen a battle or two. The easy camaraderie between them could mean they were squadmates, but Ahsoka didn't know them yet.

"At least with noodles you can dig around and make sure you're not gonna eat something with too many eyes."

"How many eyes have you ever found in a dumpling?"

Ahsoka and Rex fell silent, grinning at each other as the rest of the troopers joined in and the great debate about the perfect food rose around them.

"Something even better" turned out to be an entire small marketplace filled with stalls serving an array of foods for a few credits. Rex and Ahsoka split up, the better to collect as much variety as they possibly could, and perched at a table toward the edge of the market. From here they had a view overlooking a busy park. The native vegetation here was a delicate purple, but otherwise, it looked like dozens of others, filled with citizens strolling the paths, children running across the trimmed grasses. The war had hardly touched them, to look at them now.

"Do you ever think about the end of the war?" Ahsoka asked, contemplating one more tiny dumpling.

Rex finished the one he'd just taken. "Sometimes. I don't really know what to think about the end of the war."

"How do you mean?" Reluctantly, she set the dumpling down again. It was tiny, but it might have been one morsel too many. Maybe in a few minutes she'd have room for it.

Dipping a small cube of unidentified but delicious protein into a fiery sauce, Rex shrugged a shoulder. "Well, we're not citizens. We were created for this war, but they didn't exactly write in pension plans for all of us." He took the bite and washed it down with a bottle of juice the vendor had squeezed in front of him. He didn't know what it was, but he knew it was fresh.

Ahsoka frowned, thoughtful, as she set her flimsy tray aside and watched three children playing some complicated ball-tossing game. It was impossible to determine the rules, if there were any rules, but all three of them were laughing, darting back and forth. "Well, what would you like to do? If you could do anything."

"Anything, huh?" Rex watched the game-playing, tracking movements of the ball and the players, and started to piece together the strategies. "I thought once I might try my hand at farming. I, ah. Met someone who came to it late. Seemed pretty contented with the life."

"Farming?" Ahsoka wrinkled her nose.

Rex elbowed her, laughing. "What's that face for?"

"Nothing," she said quickly. "It's—it's not important."

He waited. He knew that tone. Whatever it was, it was at least a little important, or she would have just come out and told him.

". . . well." Ahsoka picked up a skewer that had once held meatballs and bent it lightly between her fingers, testing the tensile strength before it would splinter. "Every youngling in the Temple wants to be a Padawan. But we all know not everyone will be chosen. Of course, there are a lot of other duties, and they're all important!" she added hurriedly. "But . . . being passed over by a Master and sent to the AgriCorps always felt like it would be more of a punishment than a calling. To me, anyway. That's what I think of when I think about farming. It almost happened to Master Kenobi."

"Really?" The children had tired of the game now and were sitting in a triangle on the grass, tossing the ball from one to the next while they talked. Rex wondered what they were talking about, but they were too far away to overhear. "Never heard that story."

"I only know it because Anakin mentioned it once." She paused, uncertain. "I don't think it's my story to tell."

"What would you do, then?" Rex asked after a few moments of thoughtful silence. "If you weren't a Jedi?"

"Me?" The skewer splintered. Ahsoka set it down again and brushed tiny spicules off her legs. "I really don't know. I can't imagine not being a Jedi. . . . but I suppose after the war, I'll still be one. And you'll be . . ."

"A farmer. Yeah, I've decided. I like the sound of it. Besides, who knows? You might come visit me and find out you'd've loved it in the AgriCorps," Rex teased, tweaking the chain that served as her Padawan braid. "Be begging me to stay on and help with the crops, or the livestock, or the orchard, whatever I've got."

"I doubt it," Ahsoka countered, but she was laughing again, thoughts of someday not being a Jedi neatly banished at the image of Rex working his farm. It took shape in her mind, rows of crops, a hill of crooked fruit trees, fenced-in animals peacefully grazing. "I'd like that for you," she said at last, softer now, more serious.

Rex glanced down at their empty trays and plucked up that one last little dumpling. "It's a nice thought," he said, and his tone was . . . pleasantly neutral. It was a nice thought, a nice thought that wouldn't be happening. "C'mon, see if you can catch it. No cheating."

"See if you can throw it straight," she teased right back as she scrambled off the table and backed up to the railing.

He threw it straight and she caught it, right on target, no cheating. The three children looked up toward the balcony at the dual hollers of triumph, but Ahsoka and Rex had already gone.

[lilhawkeye3]

find your way back home - ch 2

Riyo Chuchi x Commander Wolffe, Riyo x Commander Fox

Rating: T |||| Word count: 1.3k |||| Set Post Order 66 |||| AO3 Link

Warnings: angsty, non-graphic injuries

next chapter

Riyo stood in the doorway, staring at the sleeping form draped under a layer of blankets. All was quiet now. The golden light of dawn shone through the gaps in the window curtain, softly illuminating Wolffe’s face. It gave him a more peaceful appearance, one that Riyo knew contrasted what he was probably facing within himself.

The commander had been in and out of it for the past few days. While it was good that he’d been awake for several hours, meaning Riyo could get some water and food into him… she assumed what he was experiencing was doing more harm than she could heal.

The first time he’d woken, he’d just stared at her as if she’d torn his heart out. He hadn’t answered anything she’d asked, but he did let her prop him up so she could raise a glass of water to his lips. He drank slowly with his eyes closed, and Riyo sighed a silent thanks to the Goddess as she watched him empty the glass.

Wolffe dropped off quickly after he finished, and she’d done her best to ease the transition by carding her fingers gently through his hair. It was something Fox had loved, something he told her was commonly done by any ori’vod in a unit to a battle-weary brother to calm them. Riyo’s heart pained when she first realized that as commander, Fox had no one to do the same for him, until her. She wouldn’t be surprised if the same was true for Wolffe, or Rex, or any of the other commanding troopers.

The second time he’d come to, Wolffe had trembled and muttered a constant stream of Mando’a. Riyo only recognized a word or two, but she was so busy focusing on keeping his prying hands away from his bandages that she hadn’t picked up a word he’d said.

They were all waiting to see if Wolffe would be more coherent the next time his eyes fluttered open. It was very touch and go, especially considering his serious injuries and the incision on his temple. The javin worked considerable wonders on the majority of his wounds, but… brains were a delicate thing. There wasn’t much she could do other than heal Wolffe to the best of her abilities and let his body do the rest.

Well… that wasn’t necessarily true. She’d been playing host and healer to Rex and Ahsoka in the meantime. Rex had his fair share of cuts and bruises that she cajoled him into sitting still for her to treat, and Ahsoka had curled up in the chair across from them as the two took turns updating Riyo on what had been occurring in the galaxy.

It wasn’t good.

Hundreds of thousands displaced as refugees, environments already in upheaval, any non-human sentients being barred from entering Inner Core planetary ports without special approval. Battles being fought to bring former Sepratist planets under Imperial control. Rising death tolls. A budding Rebellion, of which Bail, Ahsoka and Rex managed o be in the center of.

At least one good thing had come from this. Riyo hadn’t missed the way the two warriors shifted to keep the other in their sights as long as possible. Whatever they were destined to face, they would have someone watching their back.

Riyo’s snapped from her thoughts by a quiet moan that slipped through his cracked lips. She darted forward, concerned that he may have shifted in his sleep and pulled at one of his bandaged wounds. Her fingers brushed over the bindings, not feeling any change from how she wrapped them earlier, so her attention turned onto his face to see if anything could be determined from his reaction.

His brows were drawn tight together, his mouth curved down in a grimace as another shaky breath left him. Riyo cupped his jaw, tilting his head straight and back to ensure his airway was open and unstrained. His next breath indeed came easier, and his eyes opened blearily in time with his chest rising.

“Riyo? Wha…” She could practically see the cogs in Wolffe’s head starting up to try and work through his confusion. “Where am I?” His voice was tired and scratchy, so Riyo shushed him while she reached over to pick up the glass of water she’d left at his beside.

“Drink first,” she urged, and held the cup to his lips after he gave a tired nod in assent. “You’ve been resting here for three days,” she explained while he was occupied. “Rex and Ahsoka brought you here so you’ll be safe while you recover.”

Wolffe pulled away from the water when he’d had enough. “This… your home? Is Fox–” He trailed off in a groan and moved to grab his head. Riyo caught him before he could touch his incision and curled her fingers around his as she listened patiently. “The… the Pack. General Plo.” His moan was mournful now as he shut his eyes in an attempt to avoid the onslaught of memories. “We shot him down, we shot him down!” He gasped and began to shake.

Riyo knew it was best to let him come out of it naturally, so she hummed a lullaby from her childhood softly while he clung to her. “Focus on me, copy my breathing.” She watched the fight leave his body as his adrenaline left him, neither able to fight or flee.

There were several moments of silence once her song ended before Wolffe’s shoulders slumped and he looked her dead in the eyes. “Where’s Fox?”

She’d told herself she wouldn’t fall apart, not when she had to help these three soldiers heal, but despite her best efforts, Riyo could feel her eyes fill with tears. “We’re all that’s left of him.”

Wolffe let out a broken cry. “Rex,” he whispered. “Can… can I?”

Riyo squeezed his hands and moved to stand, but thought better of it after a sidelong glance at Wolffe. She knew he’d try to get up the second she left the room. Instead, she leaned back her chat and called out for his brother. “Rex! Come here, please?”

Wolffe choked out a laugh at the sound of an abrupt clatter and inventive swears from the kitchen. She was thankful for having plastoid dishes after hearing the commotion, but wouldn’t have held it against Rex if something had broken. Plates could be replaced.

Rex’s amber eyes were wide when he stumbled into the room, as if he’d seen a ghost… which was accurate, Riyo supposed, after the loss of their brothers. She felt the same way.

“Wolffe.” His voice sounded like he’d been punched. “Wolf’ika, you’re alright.”

“Who’re you calling ‘ika?’” Wolffe tiredly joked, trying to move and breaking out in another moan. “Hurts.”

Riyo knew things must be far worse than they appeared for him to admit such a thing. “Can you tell me where it hurts?” She asked gently, placing a calming hand on his chest to try and keep him still. Wolffe’s gaze flickered back onto her, and she bit back a worried murmur at their glazed over appearance.

“Head. Chest cold,” he rumbled. His arm trembled as he lifted it and shifted her touch to straddle his sternum and left breast. “Here.”

Riyo’s vision went blurry as she looked between their hands and his face. “The pain will fade,” she promised shakily, removing her hand from his grasp to smoothen his brow. It was warmer than earlier– not a good sign. “Rex, will you keep him company? I’m going to get something to help fight his fever.”

She stood and backed away from the bed before either could respond, but Rex nodded gratefully as he came forward to take her place beside his vod. Riyo allowed herself a glimpse of Rex leaning down to press his forehead to Wolffe’s before she all but ran from the room.

[hrtiu]

@officialrexsoka I’m a week late but I finally finished! Written for Rexsoka Week 2020, the prompt is “shadows.” 

Rex and Ahsoka were separated for almost fifteen years after the rise of the Empire, but they saw shadows of each other everywhere they looked.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26891554

Wolffe was a good companion. He was Rex’s brother, after all, and nobody understood one another quite like the clones. That being said, Wolffe was a bit of a kill-joy.

“Come on, Wolffe. Just one game,” Rex said, holding his portable holochess set out in front of him like a peace offering.

The two of them just barely fit on the beat-up, tiny transport they’d managed to barter for a few systems back, but Rex somehow still felt lonely at times. He only hoped their intel was right and that they’d find Commander Gregor at their destination.

Wolffe crossed his arms and dug further into the ancient copilot seat in which he’d encamped. “I don’t have time for games.”

“We’re in hyperspace. We’ll be in hyperspace for the next few hours. What else is there to do?”

“Plan tactics. Think up our next move. Sleep.”

“Alright, alright,” Rex said, giving up his brother as a lost cause.

He switched the holochess set on and turned on the one-player setting. It was better than nothing, but he’d always preferred a real, non-artificial opponent.

Rex looked over the projected warriors on the holochess board at Wolffe, who’d taken his own suggestion and fallen into a deep sleep. He remembered a time when he might have behaved the same way as Wolffe. Each of the clones started out essentially exactly the same, but over time different friends, assignments, and life experiences gradually set them on different paths, distinguishing them from each other and refining their personalities. The 501st in particular tended to turn out clones who were more independent, aggressive, and fun-loving.

The battle was fierce, but Rex eventually beat the AI into submission. He knew if the AI had been set on its most difficult setting that he’d never win, which was part of why he preferred a sentient opponent. Rex put the holochess set away and sat back in his seat, closing his eyes and attempting to relax. He remembered the first time he’d played holochess, also on a spaceship but one much larger than this. It had been not long after Teth and the whole mess with the Hutts, and he’d been so shiny it almost hurt to think about.

“It’s your move, Rexter!” General Skywalker’s new Padawan said.

Rex bit back a grimace at the nickname. It was just the kid’s way of showing affection, so he tried to take it in stride, even giving her an affectionate moniker as well, but she’d stick to “Rex” or “Captain” if he had his way.

Rex considered the board for a while, trying to keep all the rules Commander Tano had explained earlier straight in his head. Some argued that holochess could teach valuable ideas about strategy and tactics, but the Kaminoans had considered it too far removed from actual battle to be an efficient use of time. As such, Rex hadn’t learned to play on Kamino.

After some thought, Rex moved a piece three squares over, towards one of her more vulnerable pieces.

“That’s an illegal move,” Ahsoka said.

“What? But I thought it could move three spaces?”

“That’s its range. It’s movement is three.”

“Ah,” Rex said, annoyed with himself for forgetting. “My mistake.”

He moved the piece back two squares so it had only shifted one square from its original position. He was pretty sure it was an awful move, but he didn’t much care. He was just playing to humor the young Jedi anyway.

Ahsoka immediately moved one of her pieces to attack the piece he’d just moved, killing it. She crowed in victory, and Rex leaned back in his chair with a sigh.

“Shouldn’t you be off meditating or something?” he asked.

Ahsoka shrugged. “Eh. You can’t be meditating all the time. It’s important to find opportunities to relax and have fun. It helps you perform better when you need it most.”

“Hmm.”

“I can see you don’t believe me,” Ahsoka said. “But guess what? I’m the best lightsaber duelist my age in the galaxy. Relaxing and having some fun every once in a while didn’t dull my edge.”

“Really?” Rex asked, legitimately impressed. “You’re the best?”

“Yeah,” Ahsoka said with a proud grin. “Why do you think Master Yoda let me get involved in combat?”

That did seem like the only logical explanation for someone as young as Ahsoka fighting. Rex still didn’t approve, to be honest. It didn’t seem right that someone as young and innocent and… full of life as Ahsoka should be on the battlefield. Although he supposed it would be odd of him to object considering he was actually a few years younger than her.

“Well I’ll take that into consideration, Commander. And you’d better watch your back, because one day soon I’m going to beat you at this blasted game.”

Thoughts returned to the present, Rex looked across the cockpit towards his brother again. Wolffe’s eyes were closed, but his frequent fidgeting suggested he was awake.

“Come on, brother,” he said, putting a warm hand on Wolffe’s forearm. “If you can’t sleep at least find a way to relax. We’ll be in a better position to help Gregor if we aren’t wound so tight.”

Wolffe opened first his good eye, then the cybernetic one, casting a sideways look at Rex. “Relaxing and messing around didn’t help save my men.”

Rex’s features softened and he tried to keep the pity from his face, knowing Wolffe wouldn’t appreciate it. “It didn’t get them killed either. That was nobody’s fault but the enemy’s.”

Wolffe stubbornly crossed his arms and closed his eyes again, and Rex decided to let the issue go. He was halfway through another game against the board’s AI when Wolffe stirred beside him.

“Fine,” Wolffe said, turning his seat towards Rex and reaching for the board. “Couldn’t sleep anyway.”

Rex couldn’t help but smile.

---

“Blast it,” Ahsoka cursed under her breath as she dodged yet another laser bolt, this one coming close enough to singe the cloak that covered her montrals. She’d come to this particularly shady smuggler-ridden Corellian city to finally meet an Imperial contact she’d been working for months, but it looked like her contact had set her up.

Ahsoka leapt away from the blaster fire, ducking behind a large crate of who-knows-what for cover and cursing her bad luck. Or maybe it wasn’t luck but rather an inevitability. Whenever she made contacts, no matter how meticulously vetted their background or carefully tested their intel, at some point she had to trust them and take the plunge into a full-blown partnership. The contact she was supposed to meet with today had been very promising, and Ahsoka was disappointed that all that time developing the potential mole hadn’t panned out.

She’d known as soon as she’d stepped into the dingy cantina that she’d been set up—the five imperial soldiers dressed as bounty hunters had given that away immediately. “Dewback,” as the contact had called himself, was a skilled counterintelligence agent, and she had to guess he hadn’t been responsible for equipping the disguised stormtroopers with identical, brand-new E-11’s. 

The stormtroopers’ bodies now decorated the cantina floor, but Ahsoka hadn’t managed to take out Dewback himself. She’d caught a vague glimpse of him in the shadows during her fight, but it wasn’t until the stormtroopers were all down, when Ahsoka was carefully looking over the place to see what hostiles were remaining, that he’d attacked.

And now here she was, pinned behind this stupid crate in the dead-end of an alley in some Force-awful Corellian slum.

If only I could use my blasted lightsaber, she thought, but that had to be a last resort. She’d have to only use her two blasters if she didn’t want to stick out like a sore thumb. The empire was looking for her—and her specifically, though she couldn’t imagine why. It would already be bad news if Dewback was able to report back to his superiors that she was a Togruta. If he reported back both her description and that she used lightsabers? That was a worst-case scenario.

Best-case scenario: she killed Dewback here and now without using any Jedi-specific weapons or abilities. He’d already caught a glimpse of her, so he needed to be taken out.

Ahsoka closed her eyes and reached out with the Force, trying to pin down where her assailant might be. The Force was unfortunately being difficult, though, and she could only get a vague sense of distance. He wasn’t sneaking up behind her, and he hadn’t crept too close either, so that was good to know. She took a deep breath, readied her blasters, and decided to take a quick look from behind her crate.

Shec caught a brief glimpse of Dewback maybe fifty feet away from her at the mouth of the alley before he started firing and she had to duck back behind cover. He knew where she was, and she had nowhere that she could run (without using some Force-empowered acrobatics, at least). He had the upper hand in every way except that there was no cover from where he stood at the mouth of the alley to Ahsoka’s current position. She could use that to her advantage.

Ahsoka closed her eyes again and reached out with the Force, this time blocking out any extraneous details and instead only trying to get a sense for when the Imperial spy started moving towards her. As soon as he left the cover of the corner at the mouth of the alley, she’d break cover and fire on him.

Not yet…

Wait for it…

Wait for it…

Now!

Ahsoka rose out from behind the crate, a blaster in each hand, and started shooting towards the shadowy figure she saw darting into the alley. Dewback dodged and weaved, and Ahsoka’s shots went wide, her aim getting worse as the kickback from the blaster knocked her off balance. Dewback returned fire, and Ahsoka was forced to duck behind the crate again.

“Kriff!” she hissed. Over a decade later and she still wasn’t listening to Rex. She could practically hear his voice from her first blaster training session all those years ago.

Ahsoka shot towards the target, her blast going wide and her arm swinging wildly from the force of the shot.

“Not one hand. Two,” Rex said sternly.

Ahsoka pouted. “Why not?”

“The kickback is too strong, it’ll throw off your aim.”

“But you shoot one handed. One blaster in each hand, even!”

Rex took the blaster from Ahsoka’s hand, inspected it, then put it back in her hand, adjusting her grip and bringing her other hand up to support it. “That’s because a blaster is my primary weapon, and I’ve been practicing with it for years. My mind and body know how to stabilize against the kickback and adjust my aim accordingly.”

“I could do that, too.”

“I’m sure you could, but your time is much better spent with your lightsaber. Everyone has their place in an army, Commander Tano, and you can be most effective with your lightsaber. These lessons are just to help you out if you’re in a scrap—they’re not meant to make you a master marksman.”

“Fine,” she said, conceding that Rex knew what he was talking about and she didn’t.

She raised the blaster up, keeping the grip that Rex had shown her with one hand on the trigger and the other supporting, and fired off a shot. The center of the target lit up with sparks.

“Good shot, sir!” Rex said.

Ahsoka grinned up at him. “Thanks, Rex.”

Back in the present, Ahsoka tossed one of her blasters to the side and held onto the remaining one with two hands. She tugged the necklace out from under her shirt and held onto the pendant, taking a deep breath and focusing on the Force. 

The Force came easier to her this time, and she sensed Dewback not twenty feet from her in the alley. Now was the time. She broke cover again and raised her blaster, holding it straight in front of her with two hands, then shot. She fired off several blasts, but the first one was all she’d needed. Dewback dropped to the dirty street, smoke rising from his singed cloak.

Ahsoka let out a breath of relief and sat back a moment, collecting herself before going to the spy’s corpse to collect whatever information she could. She closed her eyes.

Thanks Rex, she thought.

---

“Don’t come after me!” Wolffe yelled before breaking cover and sprinting towards the besieged bunker. He dodged expertly between screaming blaster beams, some coming from the insurgent forces in the bunker and others coming from the Imperial forces in the valley below.

“No, Wolffe, wait!” Rex screamed after him, then cursed and ducked back behind the mossy boulder.

“He’s going to get himself killed,” Gregor said from his spot next to Rex behind the boulder.

Leave it to Gregor to state the obvious, Rex thought with some frustration. He wanted desperately to rein Wolffe in, but he didn’t think Wolffe would stop at anything to get to that bunker.

A whisper of a hint of a rumor had brought them here, deep in the jungles of Dantooine, in search of one of the last members of General Plo Koon’s Wolfpack. After successfully executing Order 66, the 104th had been sent to track down other “rogue” Jedi. Wolffe had had the misfortune of actually finding his target, who proceeded to massacre his men until only Wolffe was left. Wolffe eventually managed to kill the Jedi, but he never recovered from losing his men. That was when he’d decided he wanted out of the Imperial army.

Several years later and Wolffe had believed himself to be the only surviving member of the Wolfpack, but then they’d started hearing rumors about Boost. Somehow the other member of the Wolfpack had survived, and he was hiding out in the jungles of Dantooine. What Wolffe, Rex, and Gregor hadn’t known when they set off for Dantooine was that Boost had somehow gotten mixed up with a group of dissidents in the jungle, and that those dissidents would be under attack by the Empire when they arrived.

“What do we do, Rex?” Gregor asked. “He’s as good as dead, but we can’t just leave him… can we?”

Rex didn’t know why Gregor and Wolffe acted like he was their CO when he ranked lower than both of them, but it was the dynamic that had developed between them. Rex supposed it was because he’d had longer to adjust to life without the chip, though it could also be because he didn’t have to deal with the guilt of killing his Jedi on top of losing all of his men like Wolffe.

“I don’t know. We can’t go after him, but I don’t want to leave him behind,” Rex said, shaking his head.

“If we’re not leaving then we should join the fight!” Gregor said, his eyes reflecting that wild gleam they sometimes got when he was losing his grip.

Great. Another clone going off the deep end in the middle of a firefight. Just what I needed, Rex thought. Every instinct he’d developed over his long years of service told him to hang back. They didn’t know who the dissidents were or if they’d be hostile to him and his brothers, and they didn’t know the numbers and firepower of the attacking Imperials either. It simply didn’t make sense to rush into the middle of a firefight they didn’t have anything to do with.

“Hang back,” he said.

Gregor looked over at him in disappointment. “But Wolffe!”

“I know, but..!” Rex huffed in frustration, screwing his eyes shut. It wouldn’t help Wolffe if he and Gregor got themselves killed. There was nothing they could do.

“Well I couldn’t just stand back and watch!” Ahsoka shouted, and Rex winced. He’d seen enough arguments between Master and Padawan that he knew this would only escalate.

“Ahsoka, sometimes being a leader means you have to watch people die. You can’t save everyone, and everyone here knows the sacrifices that might be expected of them,” Anakin said.

General Skywalker didn’t say “everyone knows what they signed up for,” Rex noted, because of course the clones never signed up for anything. Rex chastised himself for his traitorous thoughts, but he knew nobody would notice. The two Jedi had forgotten he was there a while ago.

“Well I disagree. We have to at least try to save everyone,” Ahsoka said.

“Sacrifices have to be made to win wars.”

“I want to win the war, but not at the cost of my principles! The men of gamma squad would have died if I hadn’t intervened, and yes, maybe it was reckless. But I had to at least try, and I don’t regret it,” she said stubbornly.

“Karking hell,” Rex muttered under his breath. It was like Ahsoka had stretched her hand out from wherever she was across the galaxy to smack him on the head with that memory.

“What was that?” Gregor asked.

Rex shook his head. “Nothing. Ok, we’re going in, but we’re going to do this smart.”

Gregor nodded eagerly. “Yeah! Yeah!”

“See that tree line along the ridge? We’re going to follow it to the bunker, moving one at a time and covering each other as we go…”

Several hours later they returned to their rusty ship, carrying Wolffe between them. They’d found Boost, but the grizzled clone had refused to go with them, explaining that he was dedicated to the rebel cause now. So they’d helped fight the Imperials off, then left. Rex might have thought the whole excursion was a dangerous waste of time if he hadn’t glimpsed the foreign light of happiness in Wolffe’s good eye.

Rex allowed himself a secret smile as he punched in the coordinates on the navicomputer after liftoff. It had been over five years since he’d last seen Ahsoka, but she still managed to barge into his life. And he was a better man for it.

---

“What do we do, Fulcrum?” the rebel agent asked Ahsoka, eyes wide in fear and uncertainty. His fear was reflected in the handful of other faces that clustered around, all of them looking to her for direction.

“I don’t know, just give me a second!” Ahsoka snapped, guilt immediately rising as the agent flinched back at her response. “I’m sorry,” she amended. “I just need a moment to think.”

Of course the first time she decided to meet with her agents in person the Imps would show up to their rendezvous point looking for them. Ahsoka and her nine recruits had all been meeting together in an abandoned hovertrain platform on Ord Mantell when Ahsoka’s comm crackled to life with a warning from their lookout. Buckets on the move. ETA to your location ten minutes.

This would be so easy if she were on her own. Force leap across the platform, vault a few walls, and nobody would even know she’d been there. But she couldn’t very well carry all nine of her agents with her while she escaped. If they’d been experienced spies then she’d feel comfortable leaving them to their own devices, but none of these people were career agents of espionage. Some of them had been passing along information for some time, yes, but they’d simply been going about their daily lives as normal and reporting Imperial activity in their cities and towns, not infiltrating enemy bases or disappearing in plain sight.

Calm them down, Ahsoka. They need you.

Ahsoka blinked in surprise when she realized the voice in her head sounded a lot like Rex.

“Don’t worry, we can do this,” she said, taking the voice’s advice. “The rest of the station is crowded, and we can blend into the crowd, we just need to make sure we leave at different times from different locations.”

“From different locations? But we’re all in the same place,” one of the spies, a Rodian man named Gundie said.

Six other people started asking questions at once, their chatter forming one incomprehensible mass that hurt Ahsoka’s montrals to listen to.

Delegate. Pick the person with the most potential and let them develop under the responsibility you’ve given them, Rex’s voice sounded again in her mind.

“Quiet!” she hissed, her authoritative voice cutting through the chaos. “Gundie, you take half the group and hike down the tracks to the next platform. That one is also abandoned, so there shouldn’t be anyone there. Once you’re there, each of you leave the platform for the main station one at a time, a minute apart each. Some people can leave together if you think you can make it look like you’re traveling together. I’ll lead the rest of us to do the same thing here.”

Gundie nodded, then opened his mouth to ask another question.

“No time,” she said, cutting him off. “We have eight minutes until troopers arrive. Let’s move, and once you’re safe back in your assigned locations send me a signal”

She picked out the four agents with Gundie and sent them on their way, then turned to her own group. “Ok, head for the platform exit. We wait there behind the gate, then one at a time slip into the main station. And keep quiet.”

Lead by example, Rex’s voice continued. Stay calm and inspire their confidence.

Ahsoka schooled her features accordingly and walked to the head of her little group, crouching low and moving carefully but trying her best to project calm and confidence.

It wasn’t surprising to her that this advice would come in the form of Rex’s voice. While Ahsoka had technically been Rex’s superior, that had mostly been by virtue of her status as a Jedi. Ahsoka’s role in most battles had more resembled a specialized advanced combat unit than a commander, and Rex had done most of the leading on the battlefield. It made sense. Ahsoka was an expert with a lightsaber, but she’d become a commander as soon as she’d become a Padawan, and she’d certainly never been trained in battle tactics or military leadership as a youngling. Everything she knew about leading men she’d learned from Anakin and Rex. And now that she thought back on it, most of the lessons she wanted to keep with her she’d learned from only from Rex.

They reached the exit of the abandoned platform, and Ahsoka held up a hand to call her agents to a halt. She took up a position behind one of the barriers blocking off the hallway to the abandoned platform where she could see the main hallway but couldn’t be seen herself. She waited for a large group of commuters to walk by, then signaled for her first agent to leave.

The nervous man who’d asked for her help went first. Then an Ithorian woman, then two humans left together. Ahsoka took a deep breath as soon as the last two spies rounded a corner at the far end of the main hall and finally let herself relax. Right on time, a squad of stormtroopers entered the opposite end of the main hall and headed in her direction.

“I’d like to see them try and stop me,” Ahsoka said to herself with a smirk, though of course she’d prefer they didn’t see her at all.

She faded back into the shadows of the abandoned platform and leapt up into the air to land on a metal maintenance walkway high above the ground. She rushed down the walkway towards a utilitarian door that her preparations informed her led to the roof, and by the time the stormtroopers arrived on the platform, she was long gone.

That night, as Ahsoka curled up in her tiny bunk aboard the ancient stealth fighter she now called home, sleep evaded her. She tossed and turned for a bit, but still her thoughts raced. Hearing Rex’s voice, imagined though it had been, had called attention to the ache in her chest that had laid mostly dormant for a while now.

With a sigh Ahsoka sat up, giving up the fight to sleep for now. She tugged on a leather strap that she always wore around her neck out from under her shirt, feeling along its length for the pendant and holding the smooth metal in her hand. She didn’t need to look at it to know what she’d asked the Togruta craftsmen to etch there for her. Not many people knew how to read Togruti, Ahsoka included, but even if they did they wouldn’t know what 7567 was supposed to mean.

Ahsoka held the pendant tight in her hand and her mind gradually calmed, allowing her to drift off to sleep. She missed Rex terribly, but today had been a reminder that he was always with her, even if only in shadows.