This A.U. story is dedicated to Teresa S. This is her idea and I'm writing it for her. I hope you like it, T. :D
Disclaimer: I don't own the Star Wars characters.
There is an explanation of how my calendar works in 'Flame of Hope' if you're curious.
He's Gone
Getting Off The Ship:
D213/20 BBY, The Outer Rim
"Abandon ship!" Obi-Wan yelled the command as he struggled to stay on his feet while the decking heaved and rolled beneath him.
The view out the transparisteel windows was nauseating and frightening as the Venator class war ship spun madly in the unforgiving grasp of the wormhole they'd somehow managed to fly right into. Despite the roar of the engines struggling to fly them out of the mess, Obi-Wan could see large durasteel plated sections of the Reckless flying past the windows. Their ship was being torn apart around them and their only chance of survival was to get in something smaller and more likely to weather the space storm.
The clone bridge crew obeyed instantly, jogging from the bridge as best as they could in as orderly a fashion as possible under the circumstances, even as the squealing sirens filled the air, letting the entire ship of thousands know it was time to cut their losses.
Obi-Wan gestured to Cody and Rex who hadn't budged yet from their place near his side. "That means you two as well. Move it!"
"Yes, Sir!" they replied briskly and in sync, falling in behind him as all three waited for the last of the other bridge officers to get out the door first. Obi-Wan gave up on trying to get his friends to move towards safety before him and hotfooted it down the hallway while being nearly tossed from one side to the other.
He caught himself on the wall yet again just as Anakin appeared around a corner, running down the hall towards them. His tunic was slightly crooked and his hair was sticking straight up in places. He'd been off duty when the Reckless had come out of hyperspace right on the very edge of a worm hole and obviously had been attempting to catch up on some much needed sleep.
"What the kriff is going on?" Anakin yelled over the sound of sirens to Obi-Wan as he about-faced and joined them in their run towards the escape pods. "I was having a rather pleasant dream for once and then all of a sudden I was thrown out of my bunk and now we're abandoning ship?!"
"Some sort of wormhole hurricane," Obi-Wan yelled back. "Never seen anything like it, but as you can probably sense, the Reckless is stuck in it and being shredded."
"Yah, I got that," Anakin said rather dryly even as he paused, turned, and grabbed Rex before he was thrown into a wall, using the Force to hold them both up. "It feels like we're spinning in circles while being shaken by a very mad Zillo beast."
Rex laughed as he grabbed Cody too. "Excellent description, Sir. I'll be sure to add that one to the report."
"You do that, Rex," Anakin said with a hint of a smile. And they all took off once more, taking advantage of smoother running as the ship settled down for a moment.
"Please tell me you're on your way, Captain," Fives' voice said inside Rex's and Cody's helmets. "I've packed the last of us into the final escape pod in this sector of the ship. And the computer is reading that the other sections of pods are rapidly ejecting."
"We're almost there," Rex reassured his second in command.
After only another half minute of running, the little group made it to the hallway of escape pods. The last pod was packed full with clones from the 501st in their white and blue armour. Fives paused in his pacing when he saw the Generals and his brothers running towards him. "Thank the stars, you made it, Sirs. We were getting worried."
Anakin smiled in at his men, feeling the waves of relief from them to see him and Rex even as he noticed there was no possible way all four of them were going to fit in the pod as well. He exchanged glances with Obi-Wan, both of them thinking the same thing. They would Force push Rex and Cody into the pod and stay behind. They could run like lightning to another section of the ship and hopefully catch another pod.
Rex and Cody had also come to the same conclusion, and being the men they were, it never even occurred to them to take the place of safety before their Generals. They also knew exactly what the Jedi would do in the situation. They exchanged the smallest hint of a nod with their helmeted heads and palmed their blasters, flicking the switch to stun with their thumbs.
As Anakin and Obi-Wan turned around to grab their friends and forcibly shove them in the pod, they found themselves shot instead, not even leaving time for a cry of disbelief.
Fives caught their falling forms by their tunics with a hand each, as his inherited clone reflexes were beyond excellent. Helmeted heads exchanged stares as Rex told Fives to pull the Jedi into the pod and go!
Fives wasn't pleased about leaving Captain Rex and Commander Cody behind, but he knew how to obey orders from his commanding officer. He nodded once and dragged the unconscious Jedi into the pod, placing them on the feet of his brothers already lining the small space.
Rex smacked the button to close the pod door and hit the next one to eject it from the ship.
Cody and Rex watched the last pod burst out into space through the little window even as Fives' voice came through over their comms in their buckets. "As our Jedi would say if they weren't out cold; may the Force be with you, Sirs. Good luck. I promise we'll come looking for you after you get off that flaming ball of death. You keep your shebs alive until then, you hear?"
Rex held the vibrating wall as his chest tightened with all the emotions that were catching up to him. "We hear, Fives. That goes double for you, too."
"Understood," came back the barely audible reply of Fives. And then the comms went to static as the Reckless was pulled even further into the wormhole and the escape pod joined the fleet of little pods valiantly flying away from the space hurricane.
Coruscant, Senator Padmè Amidala's apartment.
Ahsoka was standing quietly in the background as Padmè and senators Organa and Mothma had a boring meeting about some bill or other they wanted to pass. Her new job as a guard for her friend was largely unexciting except when they went on trips or when Anakin found some time to come visit, but at least it was a job. And it came with great food and a comfy place to sleep, which was more than she could say about most of her time spent working as a Jedi in the war.
She suppressed the urge to yawn and talked her shoulders into squaring again while wishing it wouldn't look bad if she leaned against the wall. Dormè glanced at her from across the room and her lips twitched in amusement. Padmè's handmaidens had had years more experience with standing still and impersonating statues and they found it funny that they could be stiller than an ex Jedi Padawan. Ahsoka rolled her eyes ever so slightly at the older girl, making her mouth twitch again.
As the voices of the senators droned on, Ahsoka closed her eyes and stretched out her senses into the Force, just for something different to do. She didn't really expect there to be any danger to the senators; there hadn't been a single death threat to any of them in a couple of months now.
As expected, she didn't sense anything dark or foreboding in the immediate vicinity of the skyscraper apartment building. Journeying further, she brushed over the Jedi Temple, a wave of sorrow for her old life and her friends distracting her from how very clouded and dark the Temple was.
Wanting something a little more cheerful to dwell on, Ahsoka reached for her Master across the vast distance of space separating them. If he wasn't battling a droid army or sleeping, he always welcomed having her mind brush his with a mental hug. They both needed those mental hugs more than they would ever admit to anyone else, just to reaffirm that no matter what the Jedi Council said, they would always be connected to each other. Ahsoka heaved a mental sigh when she brushed up against Anakin's sleeping mind.
And then she frowned as a sense of danger and a disturbance in what should have been the calm emptiness of space seemed to surround Anakin. What was going on?
She reached for the weaker, but still there, bond she had with Obi-Wan and found him mentally unresponsive as well.
Now really worried, Ahsoka went for her last resort when it came to hopefully getting answers, since her secret mate was ridiculously closemouthed about how bad things might actually be. Despite not being Force sensitive, her bond with Rex was the strongest of the three. Not even she and Anakin could talk as clearly with their minds as she and Rex could. Her soul deep mating with Rex had been just one factor in her decision to leave the Order, but perhaps the biggest one. You would think that fighting side by side with her mate would be the most ideal situation, but Rex had been going just a little too far in his driving need to protect her and Ahsoka was sure he was going to get himself killed in the process. And that just wouldn't do.
Her frown increased as she felt that Rex was even more embroiled in the sense of danger than her Masters were. "Rex, what in the galaxy is going on?" she thought at him fiercely, grateful that he, at least, was awake to hear her. "Why does it feel like my Masters are both out cold and why does it feel like the area around you is having a temper tantrum of epic proportions?"
Rex winced as he and Cody ran for the nearest hangar, having already accessed the ship's computer and seen that all of the escape pods had been launched. They hoped to find a working shuttle or LAAT or even a fighter that they could escape the dying war ship in. "Nothing to worry about, Soka," Rex lied as he bounced off a wall and skidded around a corner. "Just another day in the war."
"So everything's going to poodoo and you're about to die," Ahsoka thought resignedly.
Rex pictured himself grinning. "That about sums it up, babe."
Ahsoka sent him a picture of her eyes rolling around in her head like loose marbles, eliciting a mental laugh from her mate. "Do you need me to send help? Or come help?"
"That's actually a really good idea," Rex admitted as he and Cody all but fell through the door to the hangar. He suppressed the urge to groan as they found what used to be an orderly row of ships and shuttles now little more than a jumble of smashed parts against one wall and then winced some more as the ship changed its tilt and the pile of debris started sliding across the hangar towards the other wall. Anything that came close to the opening in the floor for shuttles to fly through fell out. "You could send a rescue team to retrieve the escape pods. I'm pretty sure we're near Seelos."
Cody and Rex whirled on the tilted deck and ran back out the door aiming for the next hangar, which was now uphill from them. That one contained the fighters and had an opening in the ceiling for deployment. At least those wouldn't be falling out of the Reckless in pieces. As they ran, a little silver and blue droid careened down the hallway towards them, beeping frantically about finding his master.
"Artoo!" Rex called, happy to see the droid. "The General's fine. You might want to come with us, though."
Artoo beeped out a series of relived sounding binary and then turned around and powered up the hallway beside the clones.
Ahsoka sucked in a breath as she sensed that Rex was hiding something rather important from her. "Rexxxxxx. Why do I get the impression you're not in any of those escape pods?"
Rex sent her a picture of him with an apologetic wince. "Because I'm not?"
"REX!" Ahsoka wailed in his mind.
Rex flinched as he ran up the slanted hallway, calves straining. "I'm sorry, baby. I don't know if I'm actually going to make it out of this one, but I sure am trying."
"Oh, Rexi," Ahsoka whispered, shoulders slumping. "Don't say that. You know I can't lose you."
Rex imagined giving her a hug and kissing her forehead. "I know. And I'm doing my best here."
"Yes!" Cody whooped as they entered the fighter hanger and found a messy row of Jedi Starfighters and Y-Wings smashed up against a wall. Because of the direction of the hangar and the smaller amount of space to slide around in, the fighters had fared much better in the spinning Jedi Cruiser. Cody smacked the emergency button to open the ceiling hangar doors, smiling in relief when they started to move.
"Now we're getting somewhere," Rex said out loud to Cody as they ran to the end of the line and clambered up into a yellow painted Y-Wing. Cody took the cockpit and started flipping switches and Rex jumped in the gunner's seat in the bubble turret. Artoo flew up into the droid's spot and helped get the fighter going faster than recommended by the manufacturer.
"Now we're getting where?" Ahsoka demanded, having overheard the proclamation in his mind.
"Now we're getting out of this mess," Rex replied happily. "The Reckless is done for, but Cody, Artoo, and I are flying out now. All that's left is to get out of this shabla wormhole."
"WHAT?!"
Rex's whole body flinched from the volume of Ahsoka's screech. "Pretend you didn't hear that."
"Ohhhhh no, Mate, I am most definitely not! You're in a wormhole?!"
"Unfortunately... Yes," Rex admitted, sorry he'd mentioned it.
"GET OUT OF THERE!" Ahsoka demanded.
"We're trying. Honest, baby," Rex thought to her as Cody cursed and fought the controls as the space storm flung the Y-Wing in random directions. Pieces of the Reckless were flying dangerously close to them, caught in the same storm. Artoo kept beeping out notes of alarm.
Off to their left, the flaming cruiser suddenly burst into a ball of white light as the hyperdrive fuel exploded. Pieces of the Reckless were flung in thousands of directions. Inevitably, their Y-Wing was struck, sending them spinning even further out of control and one of the engines burst into flames.
Not yet strapped into his seat, Rex was flung into the glass bubble, his helmet smacking into it with skull crushing force and making a spider web of cracks in the transparisteel.
"REX!" Ahsoka cried out loud as her sense of his mind suddenly went blank. She held onto the tenuous connection she had with his essence, barely reassured that he seemed to still be alive, but freaking out nonetheless.
And then, a few seconds later, even that became almost too faint to feel.
Ahsoka feel to her knees as tears streamed from her eyes unheeded. Her chest seized up as her whole body went into shock at what felt like the sudden loss of her mate.
"Rex, Rex, Rex," she moaned under her breath over and over.
A hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently, finally brought her back to her awareness of the here and now. Ahsoka looked up and gulped in her first real breath of air in over a minute as she took in Padmè's concerned features.
"What's wrong with Rex, Ahsoka?" Padmè said gently, from her kneeling position in front of her young friend.
"Gone," Ahsoka croaked out through her tight throat. "He's gone."
Padmè exchanged worried glances with Bail, Mothma, and Dormè at how defeated Ahsoka looked. She gathered the girl into her arms as Ahsoka's tears fell faster and she started to gulp out wretched sounding sobs.
She let Ahsoka cry until she'd sobbed herself out a few minutes later, rubbing her back soothingly and murmuring nonsense syllables. She'd known that Ahsoka was very fond of Rex, but this seemed a little extreme for a person with such ingrained Jedi training, Anakin's emotional influence or not. "Ahsoka," she said softly when it seemed like the girl had settled down enough to talk again. "Can you tell me what happened to Rex?" Unspoken, but also hanging in the air was the question of whether or not Anakin had also been involved in whatever took out his Captain. Padmè waited with baited breath for Ahsoka's answer.
Ahsoka sat up and swiped at her eyes, slumping back against the wall behind her as she hugged her knees to her chest. She explained what she knew or had pieced together from images from Rex's mind that he unwittingly showed her. "The Reckless flew into a wormhole near Seelos. They abandoned ship. Rex and Cody stunned Anakin and Obi-Wan to make them take the last places on an escape pod. I can still feel my Masters, so I think the escape pods made it out of the wormhole, but I'm not sure. Rex and Cody were stuck on the Reckless until they found a working Y-Wing. They made it out of the Reckless, but I don't think they made it out of the wormhole. The Reckless blew up and something hit the fighter. I think Rex and Cody are... gone." Ahsoka barely whispered the last word, burying her face in her hands once again.
Padmè's hand was pressed below her throat as she struggled to school her emotions. She was incredibly worried about Anakin now and sympathizing with Ahsoka's pain wasn't helping. She squeezed Ahsoka's knee with her other hand. Not quite wanting to believe it, Padme needed some sort of confirmation of what Ahsoka had just said. She hadn't seen her husband for a couple of months and she would be heartbroken to lose him now; especially considering that she was carrying his child and he didn't know it yet. "Did you see this in a vision? Is this the future or happening now?"
Ahsoka shook her head and then nodded, sort of all at once in a confused motion. Realizing that made little sense, she said, "Now. It's happening now. I felt it and saw it." Drawing strength from somewhere, Ahsoka suddenly stood. "Come on. We have to go rescue my Masters and the clones." Her eyes took on a steely resolve as she stared at Padmè, knowing perfectly well how much Anakin meant to her and that the older woman was carrying her Master's child. "We don't need to lose any one else."
Padmè nodded firmly, rising as well. "No, we don't."
"Rex! Rex!" Cody called after he got the fighter back under some semblance of control, having heard him cry out and then go silent. The lack of answer over his helmet comm worried him greatly, but he didn't have time to check on his brother just yet. Even as he watched in disbelief, the fighter was dragged deeper into the wormhole, the somehow swirling black space around him nauseating to look at even through his visor.
"Rex is unconscious," Artoo sent him over the fighter's computer.
"Great," Cody mumbled, worried.
And then the air pressure in the cockpit went insane, making it feel as though Cody was being crushed from the inside out. His brain screamed as his bones whimpered. And then there was nothing as his eyes closed involuntarily and he blacked out.
Cody gasped as consciousness returned. He looked around him frantically for a moment and saw he was still in the edges of the wormhole, but it seemed to be swirling him out now instead of pulling him in. Cody grabbed the controls again and pushed buttons, trying to get the fighter running again. He breathed a sigh of relief as the remaining engine sputtered to life.
"Rex?" he tried again, glancing over his shoulder, but he couldn't see his brother in the gun turret. The bubble was severely cracked but still intact, which meant that Rex had to be in there somewhere; probably on the floor. The bad news was that with the cracked bubble, Rex (if he was still alive) was probably relying on his helmet's limited supply of air right now. Rex didn't have long before he'd become starved for oxygen.
Setting his jaw in determination, Cody forced the fighter to fly in as straight a line as possible towards the peaceful looking opening of the wormhole. The fighter bucked and fought him every kilometre he gained, but Cody was winning the argument.
And then he was spit out into normal space, and Cody almost cheered. Spotting a hospitable looking blue and green planet not too far away, Cody did cheer. If he could land them on that planet within the next minute or so, Rex still had a chance of surviving without brain damage.
Cody flew the poor sputtering Y-Wing as fast as he could make it go. "Artoo, whatever you can do to get this poor bucket of bolts going faster, do it," Cody said, thanking the Force that they had been lucky enough to have an astromech along to help boost things along. And the fact that the General's favourite droid wasn't a pile of flaming bits right now was definitely a good thing. If they ever got home, Cody looked forward to seeing Skywalker's reaction to being reunited with a droid he considered to be part his family and was sure to be believed permanently lost by now.
Artoo sent a, "Working on it." A couple of seconds later, the ship picked up speed even as it whined alarmingly and warning lights flashed all over the consul.
Cody ignored them as he flew past a... weird metal thing that might be a satellite and entered the atmosphere of the planet. More systems crashed as they plummeted in a vaguely controlled fashion towards the earth below.
The clouds parted and Cody was now looking at a green mountainous region beside a long ocean coast line. The ground approached much too quickly as the fighter continued to essentially fall from the sky, the last engine sputtering badly. "Kay, Artoo, whatever you can do to help me out here, that would be shabla fantastic," Cody muttered, tension radiating through him as he held the fighter's nose up out of sheer determination.
"Working on it," the droid said again. Cody could practically read the implied eye roll in the aurebesh writing on the screen.
"Thanks," Cody said with real feeling as the flight of the Y-Wing smoothed out and Cody felt like he had something resembling control again.
Which was a good thing, because they were almost on top of the mountain range now. Cody flew around it, looking for a good place to land. Spotting a cleared pasture, he aimed for that and flicked the button to activate the landing gear.
Nothing happened.
"Artoo... Landing gear?"
"Unresponsive," came back the reply a few seconds later.
Cody grunted as he flew over the tops of pointed green trees, startling some sort of four-legged animals into flight below him. Suddenly spotting a large rectangle of what looked like sand with strange obstacles scattered throughout, Cody aimed for that instead. Sand would make a much better crash landing than the grass he'd originally been aiming for.
The bottom of the fighter skimmed over the fenced rectangle of sand and hit the white stuff with too much momentum for Cody's liking, but he went with it, having no other choice.
White particles flew up into the air, and the strange colourful obstacles flew too, as the Y-Wing skidded a deep groove into the sand and finally came to a stop near the far fence line.
Cody shuddered out a sigh of relief, slumping in his chair for a moment before he jolted himself back into action.
Releasing his safety straps, he popped the cockpit hatch and clambered back to the gun turret. As he suspected, Rex was crumpled up on the floor of the space, more or less wrapped around the base of the chair.
Grimacing in sympathy at the awkward position, Cody smacked the button to open the bubble. It sprang back with a groan and promptly fell apart. Gaping at how close Rex had come to being spaced, he thanked the Force again and climbed down onto the seat of the chair. Kneeling on it so as not to step on his brother, he reached down and took off Rex's helmet. There was a fair amount of blood coating the side of his head and seeping into the neck of his black bodysuit, but he was visibly breathing. Cody closed his eyes in relief for a moment before shaking his head. "You're getting just as reckless and stupid as your general, vod. Would it have been that much of a bother to actually use your safety harness?"
"Yes," Rex mumbled as he cracked an eye open and turned his head slightly to look up at his brother. Putting a hand to his pounding head, he struggled to a sitting position in the tight space on the floor. Squinting up at the blue sky with an occasional fluffy cloud floating past a bright sun, he quirked a brow. "Where are we?"
Cody laughed once as he climbed onto the top of the fighter and helped Rex out. "I have no idea, vod."
Mando'a words:
Shabla – screwed up, f**ked up, f**king. (depends on context)
Vod – sibling (in this case; brother)
