0 ABY (five days after the Battle of Yavin)
Lothal, headquarters of the Lothal Rebel Cell
The seeds of the Rebellion, carefully planted across the galaxy during twenty years of oppression, had finally bloomed in the skies above Scarif, and the frantic aftermath of that horrific battle had led, at last, to the explosion of an all-out war - and the less metaphoric explosion of the dreaded Death Star. Now, as the plan to restore the Republic seemed to be more than a wild bantha chase, the heads of the Rebel Alliance had sent a number of envoys to the cells scattered across the Galaxy, asking them to join forces and planning the next moves against the Empire. The identity of the envoy sent to Lothal, Princess Organa herself, was a testament to the central standing of the local cell in the Rebellion; the Princess was now in a meeting with General Syndulla, and Captain Rex, former CT-7567, had been tasked with the unpleasant duty of entertaining the Princess' pilot.
With a satisfied groan, the young man - who had introduced himself as Han - slammed his now empty glass on the table, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Rex didn't really want to believe that this man had actually fought in the Battle of Yavin. Han was the furthest thing from a soldier Rex could have ever imagined, slumped as he was on a fuel tank refashioned as a stool, his legs outstretched on the table – well, a durasteel container refashioned as table –, his head leant back to rest against the plastene wall of the makeshift cantina.
In all fairness, in the last few days almost no one had behaved like a proper soldier, and the makeshift cantina right inside the Rebellion Headquarters was a blatant proof to that. Yavin IV had been a major victory, of course, but this wasn't really an excuse for the men to get drunk everyday - Dogma would probably have had seizures, had he been there to witness it. During the few spare moments he'd had in the last few days, Rex had lazily wondered what his Generals would have done had something like that happened during the Clone Wars. He could almost picture General Kenobi rolling his eyes and making a flippant remark about the uncivilized lassitude of victorious troops, only to suddenly turn serious again and reminding everyone that the war was not over yet; General Skywalker would have probably joined the men for a drink – and Kenobi would have grudgingly followed suit. According to clone rumors, Grevious had once said that where there is Kenobi, you will always find Skywalker not far behind; Rex knew only too well that the reverse had been equally true.
"Too bad the Emperor wasn't there to enjoy the show himself", Han was saying, a slothful smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
Rex sipped his ale thoughtfully. "And what about Chief Buckethead?", he enquired.
Han snorted and gestured the Ithorian waiter to refill his drink. "Who, Vader? He escaped, old Palps' akk pup. The Emperor paraded him in Imp City this morning."
"Well, you can't have everything in life", Rex sighed, massaging his increasingly stiffening neck. Not having the Death Star anymore was, for the moment, more than enough.
"I'm afraid it will take more than a simple explosion to blast Vader into oblivion", Han mused, as he gulped down his third shot of the day. "Not even Kenobi's fancy laser sword could do the trick."
Rex froze, feeling his blood draining from his face. He couldn't have heard that right.
"Sorry, sir? Laser sword?", he asked, his knuckles white against the pitcher he was clutching in his hand.
"Yeah, that old Jedi stuff. The fool tried to buy us time and cut Vader down. Mind you, I'm grateful, but it wasn't pretty to see."
Well, there were two options, Rex thought, as he tried to rationalize. Either someone had crushed a deathstick into his beer, or…
"Kenobi, you said? Kenobi… who?"
Han waved his hand dismissively.
"An old crazed wizard. Her Highness swears he was the General Kenobi of the Clone Wars. Aged badly, if you ask me."
Kenobi. General in the Clone Wars. Obi-Wan Kenobi. Alive.
"Yes… yes, of course", Rex muttered without thinking, his eyes almost out of their sockets. "Where is he?"
"What do you think?", the man smirked, rolling his eyes. "Going at Vader with a glowing stick? Bought a one-way ticket for a tete-a-tete with the Force."
Somewhat distantly, Rex felt his shoulders slumping and his hold on the pitcher slackening. The clunk as it fell to the floor, spilling beer all over his trousers, brought him back to himself.
"I thought he was dead", he whispered.
"Well, he surely is now. Oh. You knew him?", Han asked, his voice tinged with slight disbelief as he became conscious, a little too late, of his conspicuous lack of tact.
"A long time ago", Rex whispered, diving under the makeshift table to mop up the beer and hide the moisture stinging at his eyes.
Extreme situations call for extreme measures.
Given the extreme extremeness of that particular situation, Rex was pretty sure that Corellian brandy wasn't too an extreme measure, after all. He had never been prone to drinking but, well, too much was too much. It seemed almost fitting – and in hindsight it certainly looked predictable –that the red line of his "too much" had to be crossed by Kenobi. Either him, or Skywalker.
Kenobi, alive for twenty years. Kenobi, in hiding. Kenobi, of all people.
In hiding, leaving Ahsoka once again on her own, leaving her to mourn them alone.
A part of him, the part that was still Capitain Rex of the 501st, was trying to rationalise, saying that Kenobi would surely have had a good reason to hide and let the world believe he was dead. Another part of him, that of Rex the man and the rebel, the Rex that was going to abandon his past as a soldier behind as soon as the war was finally over, couldn't help picturing the image of a lonely Jedi hiding from the world after his world had been destroyed, the image of a broken Jedi who had spent twenty years mourning his lost brother. Rex could sympathize, of course; after all, he himself had lived in hiding before answering to Ahsoka's call. Only, from his Jedi General, he would have expected more.
Of course, what truly burned was the very bad timing of his death. Couldn't the man have waited for a few more days, after waiting for twenty years?
The only happy thought – and the fact that he could define it as a happy thought was saying something – was that Kenobi had died in battle, fighting face to face with the archenemy of his lot, and not shot in the back by one of the men he had trusted with his life. He had deserved more than to die with the bitter taste of betrayal in his mouth; at least in this, the Force had been merciful.
He was still brooding – a word that hadn't been part of his vocabulary until half an hour ago – when a small hand clasped his shoulder.
"Rex, Hera – Sith's blood, Rex, have you been drinking? You smell worse than Hondo! – Hera wants to see you in her office."
Slowly, somewhat clumsily, Rex turned his head to regard the newcomer. Mandalorian. Short purple air.
"Satine." No, that was Kenobi's duchess – Kenobi's girlfriend, according to Skywalker. Why did Mandalorians like these variations on a name? Not even clones had so little imagination, for kriff's sake! "Sabine. Thank you. I'll be going."
Mustering all the dignity of an war-worn veteran, Rex got to his feet under Sabine's suspicious gaze. As soon as he was standing, he realized that the drowsiness he felt was not to be blamed on the alcohol. He was not drunk, not even slightly. He was… thunderstruck.
In a haze he reached Hera's office, a prefab room cramped with plasteel boxes full of flimsi and holopads and droid spare parts; Chopper's continuous shrieking only added to the overall confusion. As his eyes fell on the young General's swollen belly, he found himself once again admiring her strength and her indomitable dedication to the Rebel cause. Not even the advanced stage of her pregnancy had stopped her from fighting at Scarif, and only the severest ban of her med-droid had forced her to stay behind as her crew flew towards Yavin.
"Rex, come sit here", she greeted him; in all her weariness, she still found the strength to smile. When he sat on the chair across her desk, she wrinkled her nose in distaste. Well, corellian brandy was strong.
"Rex, what have you… Oh." As realization came, her slender hand moved to rest on his, young fingers gently squeezing the older ones. "You already know."
Rex nodded gravely. "The Princess' pilot told me." He sighed. "I thought he was dead."
Hera's large eyes were full of compassion.
"We all did, Rex. This… this doesn't make sense. I didn't tell the Princess you knew him, I wanted to speak with you beforehand. What do you think, Rex? Why would he hide for twenty years?"
Rex shook his head. "No idea, General. I… it doesn't add up." He exhaled slowly. To lose a friend once was bad, to lose one twice... "Why did he come out of hiding?"
"That's the only simple answer, Rex. After Scarif, when the Tantive was boarded, Princess Organa hid the Deathstar plans in a R2 unit and put it into an escape pod with a protocol droid, with the order to bring the plans to General Kenobi."
An intense sense of deja-vu settled in the pit of Rex' stomach with the same grace of the proverbial bantha in a china shop. R2 units had been out of production for more than twenty years. He had a very bad feeling about this.
"A 3PO unit, perhaps?", he asked, trying to keep his voice as uncommitted as possible.
Hera frowned. "How did you know?"
The bantha in his stomach made a backflip. Only the Force knew what Kenobi could have thought in seeing his exile ended by the appearance of Skyalker's bossy astromech and Amidala's idiotic droid.
"I… knew the droids. Cocky astromech and fussy protocol droid, that's them. Can't believe they're still around", he said, massaging his knotted neck. "So Senator Organa knew he was alive."
"He did. Leia doesn't know why he lied. I'm afraid we'll never know now."
"Where was he hiding?", Rex asked, still unable to really picture Kenobi in hiding.
"Ezra was right. He was on Tatooine."
The bantha had apparently turned into a Super Star Destroyer.
"Tatooine", Rex repeated, inanely.
Tatooine. Tatooine, of all karking places. Skywalker's homeplanet.
"Tatooine. What in the blazes was he doing there?"
Hera shook her head, her lekku swinging behind her.
"No idea."
"Sorry, General, but I don't understand. Kenobi was hiding on Tatooine… The little droid brought him the plans of the Death Star... and he just went to the Death Star to challenge Darth Vader? The General has always been reckless, but this…"
Hera sighed in dismay. "No, he was headed for Alderaan. He found the Death Star instead."
Rex lowered his head. "So he went to free the Princess." He wouldn't expect anything less from the General.
"Actually, his two companions went to save her. Kenobi engaged Vader to give them the chance to escape."
Rex couldn't suppress a bitter chuckle. "That's our General." He tried not to think of what Cody would have said. "Always risking his life to save others."
Hera's eyes lost focus for a moment. "I just realized… He saved the whole rebellion", she said, more to herself than to Rex. "It's like Kanan said, the will of the Force… Had Skywalker died there, the Death Star –"
"Skywalker?", Rex blurted, interrupting her.
No, this time he couldn't have possibly heard right. It was all wistful thinking.
Hera regarded him with a mildly curious stare. "Yes, Luke Skywalker. The boy who came with Kenobi from Tatooine, the one who blew up the Death Star."
In the following years, Rex could never remember how that conversation had ended. At some point, he must have excused himself and left a puzzled General Syndulla to sort things on her own, because the next thing he remembered was waking up on his cot with a splitting headache and a salty taste on his lips.
The first articulate thought he could remember was his realization that Grevious was still right, even after twenty years and against all odds.
Where there is Kenobi, you will always find Skywalker not far behind.