Star Wars and its images are © George Lucas and Disney.
A/N: Inspired by a chance comment from Commander Ray. This just kinda wrote itself over the last couple of hours. Yes, my headcanon won't stop regarding our favorite clones and one former Jedi. Sparer than usual, but seemed to fit.
"For everything there is a season."
—Ecclesiastes 3:1
In the end, she found him alone.
She wasn't surprised to see his familiar silhouette near the base of an Imperial compound's massive perimeter wall.
The old GAR HQ, in fact.
She was surprised at the decay evident in this particular Imperial military precinct, all painted a rusty gold by Coruscant's evening light. While a hefty girth of broad, colonnaded boulevards separating the main compound from the squat district subsidiaries—every one of them a uniform duracrete-gray against the pristine white of the boulevards—there was a grittiness to it all, a smudge of desolation and timeworn apathy that reminded Ahsoka of the Undercity.
The utter emptiness of it—the underlying silence behind the Imperial wall and along the surface streets—was unsettling.
Victory's cost, she realized.
Or maybe Anakin had made a foothold within Vader for longer than she'd suspected. Maybe he always had.
But now wasn't the time to mourn only her lost Master.
"Rex," she called quietly.
The man in battered Mando armor turned from the wall. His face was lined and weary and her own body recognized that exhaustion. Too much had happened within the past months, all too quickly for her mind to filter and sort. She ached, from the tips of her montrals to the needling pain in her legs, and Rex's steady glow in her mind wavered with an echo of the same.
His eyes, though, were bright with a different pain, and even as she stepped to his side and felt the familiar weight of his arm slip beneath her rough cloak and around her waist, she couldn't help but stare up at the segment of wall that so held his attention.
It was, in actuality, a gate—a simple perimeter checkpoint—but from the numerals above it, she knew it was so much more. Already a small memorial had been built at its base; a painted Republic symbol, and gathered below, trinkets and hand-made emblems of a time long lost but still, somehow, held in the memories of billions. Trillions.
Memories that, in all likelihood, had been softened and gilded by time and the durasteel-grip of a despotic emperor.
Perhaps if Palpatine had been a kind and benevolent ruler, the Jedi would not have been remembered so fondly.
"How'd we manage it?"
His voice was rough but soft, a yearning ache, bewildered; a survivor who didn't quite know why death had passed him by only to choose others. She knew his question wasn't regarding the Empire's fall, or even the fight they'd pressed and parried for so many years.
The mourning would come, as quickly as night now fell.
She could only answer honestly. "I don't know."
They stood in silence until the soft blanket of twilight activated all the streetlights behind them, a quiet buzz that flickered in counterpoint to the black silence beyond the high gate. No high white spotlights would flood the Imperial parade grounds that night, but she couldn't bring herself to rejoice in that.
As the pop and crackle of distant fireworks reverberated between all the rigid buildings rising at their backs, Ahsoka unclipped a silver hilt from her waist and offered it to the once-trooper beside her.
At his quizzical glance, her lips twitched in a small smile. "Seems right to leave a mark."
He didn't smile back, but Ahsoka hadn't expected him to. He did, however, quirk one dark eyebrow at her. "Defacing Republic property already?"
She couldn't laugh yet, either.
"You're the better artist."
"No, I'm not."
She pressed the hilt into his hand, anyway.
With a sigh, he slipped his arm out from beneath her cloak and took the remaining steps to the wall. A snapping hum and bright emerald cast his armor into black and glowing green, and around the crudely painted symbol of the old Republic, he carved symbols with the point of her lightsaber's brilliant blade.
A little bird alight.
A wolf's head.
A snapping dragon.
Another bird, long-necked and lithe.
The stylized 5.
Some other time she'd tease him on his form—it was a saber, not a pike—but not tonight.
The last, he left to her, deactivating the saber and offering it back, and at the apex, she deftly swiped jaig eyes, tipped with twin chevrons. The marks in the duracrete smoldered red in the night, where not even the streetlamps seemed to offer light.
Her hand found his, and as the night deepened and the sound of revelry reached even here, they stood together and needed no words.
Twenty of Rex's brothers entered the old Senate building with all the exactness and precision that history remembered them by: heroes, warriors of the bloodiest war in recent memory.
A war that, in truth, had only ended mere weeks ago with a battle above a distant moon—and ironically, the site of their first true base, post-Order 66. Until the natives got a bit too restless.
Before the march, Rex had issued his last order. It was oddly fitting.
"Military reg, men."
And to a man, heavy beards were shaved and shaggy hair was trimmed to crew cuts—or buzzed, in Jesse's case, his tattoo once again dark and prominent across his face; a relic, but one he had always proudly worn. And always would.
Rex shaved it all off and rubbed one thickly-calloused hand over the unfamiliar smoothness.
Ahsoka would complain and he'd find a way to make it up to her. He almost smiled at the thought.
He turned to Cody expectantly—if they went by the old ranks, Cody would lead them—but his oldest friend had snapped a salute and merely said, "It's been an honor, Captain."
When they marched, they were quickly recognized despite the Mando kit and the years that had worn down their faces. It might not have gone as well if Ahsoka hadn't stepped to his side, silver hilts gleaming at her belt, cloak gone, blue chevrons bright in the morning sun.
But he knew the Holonet had loved their story, now that the news wasn't as carefully sanitized and other sources were enjoying a remarkable amount of freedom, suddenly unfettered from Imperial censors. Putting faces to names hadn't taken long and the information had whirled through the Core like wildfire.
Along the Senatorial District's wide promenade, he first heard the murmurs and the rumble of the crowd and then it all trembled into a roar that made him want to duck for shelter and seek a target—but Ahsoka stepped even closer and the small smile on her face tempered that instinct.
Coruscant—the center, the crown jewel of the galaxy—was cheering for them.
"Where to?" she said, after it all and in the pampered luxury of some senatorial apartment. He could hear a cluster of his men out on the balcony; raucous laughter drifted in over the soft patter of a massive and grossly-ornate fountain. He'd never experienced luxury of this kind.
Being a hero of the New Republic was nice.
Being a man was better.
He drew Ahsoka into his arms and she came willingly, although she shifted a datapad in-hand so that he could read it, too.
"This many creds, you can get that farm you wanted, you know," she quipped. "Mucking stalls. Digging in the dirt. Tossing bantha patties."
He snorted a soft laugh. "Eopies."
"Tossing eopie patties," she corrected.
"Maybe farm life isn't our thing."
She turned her head and lifted a white eye-marking at him. "Good. 'Cause I'm really tired of roughing it."
His chuckle was a low rumble that made Ahsoka rub her montrals against his cheek, as he knew she would.
"We could stay on the Fury," she offered. "Keep an eye out on the boys."
As if on cue, the laughter outside reached a new octave. He winced.
"I think they can take care of themselves." They should by now.
She peered up at him and a little sly smirk curved her mouth, sweetly enough that he pulled her closer for a lingering kiss.
"Theuliss III is an option," she murmured against his mouth.
"How'd I know?" His voice came out more growl than anything.
But she drew away and her grin turned impish. "Too bad it'd only be for two months out of the year."
"Can't have paradise so easily." Regardless, he'd make sure they'd go. Once a year, at least.
"You're remembering a bit loud," Ahsoka noted.
He pulled her in for another kiss and she laughed into his mouth. Although it was more of a giggle.
A sound that made him ridiculously happy.
They'd had very little to find funny, the last year.
"I could get a lot louder."
She whacked him on the shoulder. He chuckled.
And then he realized where he truly wanted to go.
"We should check in on some old friends."
Olirus V hadn't changed.
It was almost remarkable, but Ahsoka knew there was precious little here for the Empire to have been tempted by. A common, temperate world with common, temperate trees, it only attracted those who wanted to get away from it all. And situated as it was along the outskirts of the Mid Rim and far from most hyperlanes, it didn't even rank as a rustic vacation spot.
It was as perfect now as it was over twenty years ago.
With a start, she realized just how much time had passed. In their constant fight and flight, time had carried forward, unnoticed except for the deepening lines across Rex's brow.
She would not consider the alternative of life without the Spaarti gene-therapy.
At her side, Rex ran his hands over red-tinted bark and she could practically see him calculating the amount of lumber he'd need to build the house he'd sketched out on the flight here.
He was utterly determined to make a home for them.
The concept was as foreign to her as it was endearing.
"Let's find the lake," she said, her voice hushed by the thick mat of fallen leaves and dense growth, fragrant with a rich spice that surrounded them with every step they took.
The forest spoke to them as they passed beneath low boughs and blue-leafed arches, redolent with the sounds of life.
The whiterock-lined lake shimmered in the afternoon sun, glittering as bright as a Vors-glass edge, brilliant against her eyes, but she drank it in. The opposite shore was dark with forest and in the middle rose a rocky island. As always, a part of her wanted to go exploring.
But they would have time enough for that.
From behind, Rex pulled her against him, arms wrapping around her middle and chin nestling between her montrals.
When he spoke, his voice thrummed through her body and pooled low in her belly.
"Here. Where we can wake up to this every morning." He moved his hands, one to rest on her hip, the other to splay across her abdomen. His teeth grazed one montral curve and the flutter of desire fanned from her belly outward. "Where I can make love to you every night."
It was a rare admission. She covered his hands with her own and heard the laughter in her voice. There was joy budding again, after all this time. "Want to add on a few rooms to that sketch of yours?"
His mouth stilled. His fingers twitched against her stomach. "How many?"
She took her time answering, pulling away and turning in his arms. There was an answering heat in his gaze and she couldn't help but tease him. Her best friend. Her captain. Her lover. "As many as necessary."
Although she hesitated, then amended, "Maybe not as many as Kix." Her montrals still ached from their brief visit to the medic's home in the nearby town.
Even as Rex chuckled, the light in his eyes flared, this time with hope and a promise.
"Yes, sir, Commander, sir."
And she laughed as she was lifted flush against him, and even though all she'd known for a lifetime had ended, the beginning of a new life, one of her own choosing, pulled her forward—and the warmth of her lover's gaze was as bright and warm as the sunlight above her.
This beginning would be made together.
Fin.