Disillusioned and confused after the events surrounding the death of CT-5555 "Fives", it's not long before Captain Rex finds himself doubting the Republic that he was told he was born to serve. Unable to shut out the warnings of his fallen brother and the way they suddenly seem to make unsettling events click into place, Rex does something he'd never imagined possible - he deserts and goes in search of the only other person he knows who might understand the pain of estrangement from duty: Ahsoka Tano. Refugees of the war, Ahsoka and Rex make their way to Dantooine in the hopes of lying low and starting to put their lives back together, but peace is short-lived. They receive news that shatters their world, and find themselves fighting in a war much, much closer to home...
This is an AU which takes place just after Order 66 was issued and is an effort to understand the impact war would have had on the growth of Rex and Ahsoka, both of whom were young during the battles that took place. What happens to a Jedi when she is suffering from depression and the effects of PTSD? How does a Clone deal with the loss of his brothers? While both have lives ahead of them, both must learn to live. Told from the perspectives of both Rex and Ahsoka. I hope you enjoy it!
There were moments, Rex noticed, in which Ahsoka seemed to vanish. Dantooine was a quiet place compared to the pulsating life of Coruscant - a change which had seemed unsettling to him with the roar of blaster fire still ringing in his ears - but it was a change he knew they both needed. For the sake of their safety, relocation to a quiet, Outer Rim planet had been necessary. A well known Jedi and a deserter Clone, damned to a fugitive life the day the Order was issued. Rex remembered that day well. They'd settled into life on Dantooine almost a Galactic Standard Year ago, and they'd both made an effort to avoid the holonet and pick up the pieces of their lives. It was better that way, they'd decided, and they'd settled into helping the settlers with odd jobs. They'd pooled their credits and invested in a little farm of their own, and Rex remembered the day they'd walked through the door into their barren little home on the edge of a grass sea and laughed, filled with joy and ease and a sense of profound freedom. Ahsoka had been radiant that day, and he remembered the shimmer of hope in her bright eyes as she took her first look around. She still smiled back then.
He remembered the way the smile had drained from her, the day the Order was issued. They'd been on their way home from picking up some supplies, and Ahsoka had been maintaining a spirited trot to match his long stride, telling him about how she was sure she heard a young kath hound in the woods bordering their land, and how she knew she could train it if he'd help her catch it. He'd been mid-laughing protest when her mischievous smile evaporated. Rex remembered everything that followed in painful detail. He remembered the choking gasp that escaped from her chest, and the sound the crates she was carrying made as they dropped and shattered. He remembered the way the unbidden tears shimmered in her eyes, and the sickening crunch as she collapsed over the jagged, shattered crates clutching at her chest. But mostly, he remembered the way each and every muscle in his soldier's body coiled and tensed in response to crippling terror as he ran to her side, laughter turning to ashes in his mouth.
Her injuries had been minor, and her body healed quickly. Scrapes and bruises were nothing to Ahsoka, and they never had been. It had been a reaction to the Force, they discovered - an instant in which their world crumbled, the Jedi burned, and the Republic they had both served collapsed. She'd felt the death of countless friends that day, and he'd been powerless to help. In the days that followed, Ahsoka seemed to fade before his eyes, although he couldn't entirely understand how. She'd stopped laughing and her eyes had lost the sparkle he'd loved so dearly. He wished he could help her somehow, take some of the burden from her shoulders which suddenly seemed so slight, but he was waging a war in his own mind, and exhaustion was wearing him down. The blow that had silenced Ahsoka's friends was dealt by his brothers - the brothers he never should have left. The thought haunted him, burning under his skin and behind his eyes as he tried to sleep. Foreign, stray thoughts tore through his consciousness and shook him to his core. He remembered a time before when the Jedi were his friends, but he felt an anger building inside him that he didn't understand.
It was Ahsoka that brought him back. He'd tried to respect the sound of her silence and her need for distance. Jedi - the word made the hair on the back of his neck prickle and he pushed it quickly from his mind- Ahsoka had always had a need for privacy on occasion. He respected that, at least as far as he could. But the sound of her screams and muffled sobs had a way of echoing down the corridor of the little house, and he always heard them. It was agonizing listening to her suffer, and after too many nights lying wide awake, the sounds of her nightmares populating his mind with the faces of the dead he'd seen, he took a chance. Fully aware of the fact that emotional sensitivity had never been his strongest suit, Rex went to her, hoping to give her some peace. He remembered the bare, emptiness of her small room that night. She'd wanted the smallest one for herself, having no possessions to fill it with. All she had was a small, undecorated crate against the wall directly opposite her bed - the place she'd carefully placed the clothes she'd been wearing the day she left the Order. Her lightsabers and her small, beaded braid stripped from her, they were all she had left. And that's where they'd remained. He'd felt a strange loneliness hanging in the air as he stood in the doorway, but he pushed through its barrier and sat at the edge of her bed, his hand hesitating just a moment before it gently brushed her cheek. It had been all she'd needed. He remembered the way her tears had stopped, and the way she nestled against his touch and fell silent. And he remembered the way she'd come to him the next night, her eyes wide and nervous, wrapped in a baggy tunic. He hadn't been certain what to do, or what propriety called for in this situation, but without superiors breathing down their necks, he figured there was nothing wrong with letting her stay. And so she had, and he'd let her curl into the space between his arm and his chest, and her breathing slowed down until it fell in sync with his own. For the time, it had been enough.