A/N: From one betrayal to another... This chapter references events from Season 5: The Wrong Jedi.
"You lack faith in the Jedi."
"I find their tactics ineffective. The Jedi Code prevents them from going far enough to achieve victory, to do whatever it takes to win, the very reason why peacekeepers should not be leading a war."
―Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker and Admiral Tarkin
Two years, two months after the First Battle of Geonosis
"Padawan Tano, how plead you?"
It was over.
"You will be stripped of your Padawan status, and shall forfeit all rank and privileges within the Grand Army of the Republic."
After everything—clone troopers and Tarkin, Ventress and Force, even doubting her own mind—the Council's cold dismissal hit far harder, burning through her skin like a blaster bolt to the back.
How could this have happened? And why?
"You will be turned over to the Republic courts to await your trial and whatever punishment they will set for you."
Why wouldn't they just listen? Had she ever done anything to make them doubt her loyalties, to make them think that she would even be capable of doing any of this?
She could sense Anakin behind her, boiling with an impotent fury that thrummed against her mind with bruising strength. The Council high overhead seemed superbly immune to it. Or maybe they just didn't care.
"Henceforth, you are barred from the Jedi Order."
Six of the Temple's faceless guards escorted her to the north entrance and into the waiting circle of an equally faceless—but all-too-familiar—Coruscant shocktrooper squad, Commander Fox at their head. Ahsoka felt the commander's grim satisfaction, could almost see the barely restrained hostility rolling off the other clones. They were soldiers, trained to follow every order, but they hated her and the pain of it hit hard and low.
With a distinct snick-hiss, Fox snapped a set of binders over her wrists and an icy crack, like the too-close skim of a vibroblade, shot up her arms, across her skin, and through her mind. Force-block.
In her prison cell, mercifully free of the binders but still tingling to the tips of her lekku with the thrum of Force-wards, time slid by in disjointed fragments, broken only by short visits from either a stone-faced Admiral Tarkin or an increasingly desperate Anakin.
It was during one of Anakin's visits that Ahsoka fully realized the vast depths her Order had thrown her into. The Republic's convoluted justice system had grown ever more closed and dictatorial beneath the war's heavy weight, and when it came down to semantics, she wasn't even a citizen of Coruscant—not without the claim of Jedi on her shoulder.
She didn't even have the right to a civil lawyer.
"Are you even allowed to be here?" Ahsoka asked, some part of her hating the dull sound of her own voice, as Anakin ran his hands through his hair and paced back and forth in front of her.
"I've got to do something!" And just as quickly, he disappeared.
She'd sat for hours in her cell, picking at the bacta patches they'd applied to the bruises on her ribs and hip, wondering if she'd ever see him again.
Two hours before her trial, he'd charged back into her cell, Padmé close behind. His Force-signature had hardened to a grim, coal-dark burn that flared only when she mentioned Ventress' involvement—and then he was gone again.
"Let's go over your defense," Padmé said, steadfast and indomitable, but Ahsoka could sense the senator's agitation...and a flicker of fear.
Too soon, troopers came with heavy blasters and those Force-block binders, but before they could march her off, Padmé folded Ahsoka's hands between hers. Ahsoka recognized the hard glint in the senator's eyes and gratefully squeezed Padmé's hands in return. Ahsoka had seen that particular expression of Padmé's before; it always bode poorly for whomever the senator might face off across the vast Senate theater. Surely Ahsoka had some chance.
"It'll be fine, Ahsoka," Padmé said, a quiet sincerity to her voice. "We both know how Anakin is."
Ahsoka attempted a wry smile at her Master's expense. "Down to the last second, of course."
Padmé's return smile was warm and surprisingly reassuring.
Please, Anakin. Hurry.
Through the corridors and over the endless stretches of durasteel plating, Ahsoka actually held onto some small bit of hope...until faced with the tribunal chamber.
It echoed with a cold sterility; every edge and incline hard and rigid, every dip and curve of perforated durasteel sharp against her montrals. Despite the Force-block, she sensed a lingering taint of fear—could smell it, an acrid stench that not even the air scrubbers could remove—a remnant from the hundreds of sentients who had faced off against the Republic's military might.
Only now, for all its towering, grand scale—Really, could the GAR not do anything that didn't involve a few hundred tons of durasteel?—the chamber was...crowded, every one of its side chambers and annexes filled to bursting with senators and her former Council. Probe droids flitted between each alcove and over the vast open chasm below, some of them obviously military standard and others emblazoned with the Holonet news stations' sigils.
And high above, as always, sat the Supreme Chancellor.
"Ahsoka Tano. You have been charged with sedition against the Jedi Order and the Republic itself. This court will decide your fate."
The last time she'd stood in that chamber, clone trooper Dogma had hunched above the repulsor platform like a whipped and broken anooba, waiting for his judgment. She remembered the desperation in his eyes—the longing—as he'd searched the faces of his commanding officers.
But he'd remained mute and merely bowed his head when the sentence fell.
"When you are found guilty, I ask the court that the full extent of the law be brought down upon you, including penalty of death."
The first time she'd faced the newly-christened Admiral Tarkin, in the prison cell after Letta's death, his undisguised hate had surprised her. It seeped away from a righteous battle-fury—that heady, soaring strength she would always associate with the 501st—down into something bitterly cold and calculating, formidable as the stone monoliths standing guard over the GAR's Coruscanti complex. It was too similar to Anakin's anger—that surging, almost unbearable force that could lift mountains if it meant victory.
But his was twisted into something...else, and all of it focused solely on her.
She wondered how many of the non-clone GAR personnel felt that way, maybe towards her or maybe towards all Jedi; if maybe she had just never noticed that growing distrust or distaste or whatever while learning to keep up with her Master—and then learning to lead on her own.
"A Jedi may have been responsible for the murder," Padmé urged, her voice rising in well-practiced appeal as she stepped out onto the defense bridge, "but that Jedi is not Ahsoka Tano. Members of the Court, you are prosecuting the wrong Jedi!"
But as the echo of Padmé's voice faded, Tarkin's slow applause glanced off Ahsoka's montrals, each clap too similar to the numbing blows from another's lightsaber.
"Well said, Senator Amidala." The Admiral's voice, carefully cultured and measured, sent an odd shiver down Ahsoka's spine. "However, if she is innocent, then why was she seen conspiring with known Separatist terrorist, Asajj Ventress?"
Ignoring the icy spasms of her binders and the quick, admonishing headshake from Padmé, Ahsoka jerked forward. "Ventress set me up! My Master will prove that!"
"And where is your Master?" the Admiral asked, a sudden edge to his voice.
Doesn't like his golden boy where he can't see him. The thought ricocheted through her mind and surprised her with that quick, dawning realization.
But why…?
"He's trying to find the real murderer!" she snapped.
The hard planes of the admiral's face turned skeletal and a cold light blazed in his eyes. "Perhaps he should be looking at you!"
In the brief moment she held his gaze, another chill washed over her—but this time with frigid clarity.
She had trusted the Masters and followed them eagerly for sixteen years—and now, she saw that same misplaced trust at work. The Jedi had offered themselves up as bloody sacrifices to a Republic, only to be circled around and fed on, like a squabbling flock of opportunistic harvaps over a carcass.
Ahsoka just happened to be next.
She only had to glance at the so-called "evidence" offered by the GAR; Ventress—and whoever else might've been working with her—had decided to destroy Ahsoka as both Jedi and GAR commander, and Tarkin only had to grab the hover-ball and run with it.
And now, there was nothing—absolutely nothing—she could do about it.
If she'd just had more time…
She wondered if her execution would immediately follow the trial; if they would just take her out behind the barracks and shoot her like a diseased akk dog. From the hostility radiating off Tarkin, still stinging her skin through the Force-block, she deserved no better. Guilt or innocence had nothing to do with it.
Whatever game Tarkin had decided to play in all this, he'd won.
"You really think Commander Tano would do this?" Fives asked in an undertone, stepping close to Rex's side and giving the common-room's main viewscreen—and the mass of troopers gathered around it—a dark look.
The trial hadn't started until 0900 Coruscant time, but the Holonet had burst into a frenzy from the moment Ahsoka's run hit the news-streams. Between accounts from so-called "professional" panels and assorted feeds, the vast majority of Torrent Company had glued themselves to the screen like sol-struck nunas.
But then, Rex couldn't seem to drag himself away, either.
By some unspoken consensus—or just by the expression on his face—his troopers were giving him a wide berth, so that he stood in a circle of empty space several meters behind the rest of his lounging company, arms folded across his chest and chin tucked close to his pauldron. On the screen, Ahsoka stood defiantly in the middle of the repulsor stand, a bright burst of sienna against all the rigid lines of black and grey.
He hated all of it; it was like Umbara, but reversed and twisted into a drowning mass of images and data.
Ahsoka wasn't the first high-profile case to run across the Holonet; the war brought with it hundreds of captured Separatists and suspected sympathizers, and whenever he'd bothered to glance at a newsfeed over the past two years, every trial was only fodder for some other agenda. Rex never could wrap his head around any of it.
But to showcase this one, like their commander was the next-best thing to a nerf-and-Wookiee show, left Rex with a bitter taste in his mouth. Something was off about the entire, fekked-up mess.
And he couldn't do a damn thing about it.
If the situation were different, he might've been entertained by the absurdity of it all. It was a brighter, cleaner, better-dressed version of Circus Horrificus, and the high-glossed holojournalists and their constant clamor over each other reminded him of a gratifying incident on Moorja, when a certain ARC managed to scramble the droids' receivers. Squadron after squadron of B1s had done an excellent job of shooting each other down—and for a week after, Fives had worn the satisfied grin of a kill-happy nexu.
Rex glanced at that particular ARC. "Weren't you due back a few days ago?"
Fives was still fully kitted out in his gear, even smelled of the stale air from a military transport, and the helmet in his hands sported a few fresh scrapes. Rex doubted he'd checked in yet with Special Ops, per procedure, before stopping by Torrent Company's barracks. But then, this was Fives.
"Got delayed." Fives snorted, eyes on the viewscreen. "Ringo Vinda isn't going to be easy."
Rex shook his head. No Separatist blockade was ever easy, but this was Admiral-kriffing-Trench, back from the dead like some Endor shipwreck. When he'd reviewed the stats and parameters for the objective—a joint task between only the complements of the 501st and 330th—he knew the results wouldn't be pretty, even with an entire team of ARCs to help pave the way beforehand.
The Seps were wearing them all down. Even the Jedi.
"How much have you heard?" Rex asked, keeping his voice low and jerking his chin toward the screen.
"Enough."
Rex shot him a pointed look. Fives shrugged. "They sent out reports. Just basics, but...it didn't look good."
No, not between all of Corellia's nine hells did any of it look good.
After they'd brought Ahsoka in from the Undercity, Rex had retreated to his office and stared at piles of flimsiwork and datapads and tried to focus on something—anything—else. Three hours later, he couldn't remember a single word that had scrolled past on a 'pad he didn't recall picking up.
When he found himself in the common-room late last night, he wasn't surprised to see dozens of his men hunkered down to watch the unfolding drama.
But the flashes of Ahsoka shown before the trial—mostly grainy, disjointed shots caught by security cams as she leapt through a low-level transrail—hurt in ways that seemed just as grainy and disjointed, as if his skin didn't fit right anymore. The feeling only intensified as the day wore on and the trial began.
Onscreen, Senator Amidala swept forward across the defense bridge, looking serene beneath a fierce metallic headdress and the most colorless dress Rex had ever seen the senator wear. It had the unfortunate effect of blending her into the rest of the chamber, like a bit of the wall in motion.
But Fives' presence at Rex's side seemed to break the unspoken rule of space for the captain, and as Rex watched the senator begin her speech, he noticed Kix straighten from his perch against a hard-backed chair and wade through the other troopers toward Rex, his face dark with intent.
"If she did it," the medic asked, folding his arms across his chest as he stepped close to Rex, "is there any Jedi that won't turn?"
Rex fought back a sigh. None of Torrent Company's troopers turned to look at their captain, but he could tell at least a few had heard the medic and were waiting for an answer. A handful, he noted, were troopers that had wandered in from several other 501st companies and were openly curious.
Of course they were. Torrent was known for fearlessness and body counts and securing the most impossible of impossible objectives, and the fact that Torrent worked most often with the "Hero With No Fear" and his fierce little Padawan wasn't lost on anyone.
And anyone in his company would know the juiciest gossip concerning said Jedi, especially the captain.
Kriffing hell, Kix.
"I'm just a soldier," Rex said slowly, "but from where I'm standing, it doesn't look like they've proved she's done anything."
"Captain—"
"That's all that I need to say, Kix." Rex knew his voice was harsher than it needed to be. "We fight for the Republic, and part of that is the right to a fair trial."
The medic shook his head, but subsided and moved away to join Jesse, who sat with his back to the screen, absently flipping sabacc cards along one of the battered tables. Judging from the creases along his forehead, Jesse didn't like any of it—on the screen or otherwise—but couldn't ignore it, either.
Kix's attitude wasn't surprising—he'd never been quite the same since Umbara—but it still bothered Rex.
"Funny how Krell never got much of a mention," Fives muttered, leaning toward Rex. "This rates internal comm-reports on the hour and every GAR and public holo."
"This...hit a bit closer to home, Fives."
Fives grunted a non-answer.
The viewscreen cut to Ahsoka, the familiar spark of determination still in her eyes as she stared up at the Chancellor's balcony. In one smooth sweep, the cam rotated to include the lined and weary, but somehow still compelling face of the Supreme Chancellor, high above her slim form.
Something deep in him ached, and he wanted to hunch his shoulders against the feeling.
"You didn't answer my question, Rex," Fives noted, although he kept his voice low.
The image of three troopers, charred and cut through by the unmistakable lines of a lightsaber, burned bright in Rex's mind.
"No," he admitted.
Fives turned to meet Rex's gaze. "No," the ARC repeated, slowly. "You didn't? Or...you don't?"
"It just…doesn't add up." He shook his head. "None of it does."
Rex recognized the sudden, shrewd gleam in Fives' eyes; it usually led to trouble. And explosions.
"What's missing, then?" the ARC asked.
Rex flicked his gaze toward the screen as Tarkin moved forward. The cam had swiveled to include the half-shadowed alcoves lining the tribunal chamber's walls, all filled with the seated figures of senators and Council members. He rubbed absently at the back of his neck. "Nothing seems to make any sense—not even the evidence."
"Yeah?"
"When she ran, it was—" Beautiful. Horrifying. "I saw three dead troopers, but kark it if I can get access to those feeds. Not even the general could get access, and that really doesn't make sense. And when she was out in the open, she could've deflected or—" He stopped, unable to say it, another dark night too vivid in his mind.
"Yeah, I saw."
It took Rex a moment, and then he turned, exasperated. "Fives."
The ARC shot him a quick grin. "Wasn't me this time. I'm a decent slicer, but not as good as some."
"Then why'd you say you only heard the basics? Fek, Fives, you're in the barracks. Drop the assignment osik."
Fives shrugged, unabashed, but gave the captain an oddly assessing once-over. "Wanted to know what you thought."
Rex shook his head, still irritated. "Someday you're going to dig yourself into trouble that you can't get yourself out of."
Fives only chuckled and turned the helmet in his hands, fingers tracing its blue-painted lines before tucking the bucket beneath one arm. "Ah, relax, Rex. It's always been worth it."
Rex narrowed his eyes. "All right, then. What did you see?"
Fives glanced back at the viewscreen and tapped his T-visor. "It's what we didn't see. All the feeds were chopped, including the HUDs. Just a nice cut—" He emphasized with the flat of his free hand, slicing through the air, "—right from her sleeping like a tooka kitten to running up on the Wall."
"That doesn't exactly clear her name." He noticed Kix, sitting stiff and still, and lowered his voice to a hiss. "You got past the encryptions. That doesn't necessarily mean she couldn't."
"It's one thing to be a passive observer in a system, especially ours." Fives shook his head. "You can't just turn off the feed; the system isn't designed that way. My—eh—colleague didn't like what that meant, either."
"What does that mean?"
"A lot of effort went into keeping the entire prison sector in the dark for about an hour, the night Ahsoka ran."
Yet the GAR had presented holo evidence—which included five dead troopers on a segment of corridor he had seen, personally, empty and body-free during the chase.
A chill crawled along the back of the captain's neck. He shifted on his feet, suddenly unable to watch the hard face of Admiral Tarkin as the officer's icy composure seemed to break against Ahsoka's sudden outburst.
"And where is your Master?"
"He's trying to find the real murderer!"
"Perhaps he should be looking at you!"
The admiral's words faded into a deep, hanging silence. Rex watched Ahsoka tuck her chin to her chest in frustration and his gut twisted uncomfortably.
Rex had told Commander Fox the truth, even as he'd stared at the three burned bodies of his brothers—the real bodies—on the prison corridor floor and smelled the char of flesh through his bucket's filters: he knew Ahsoka. He knew she had come a long way from that moment she'd attached herself to Skywalker's side on Christophsis, knew she was fully capable of taking care of herself and could hold her own against the worst the galaxy could throw at her. He'd seen it.
He knew she still had a hard time controlling her impulses, and that sometimes her emotions got the best of her.
He also knew she was an utterly horrible liar.
Rex rubbed a hand across his face, suddenly wishing he could drown out the sound of the final addresses and part of him knowing the trial should not have moved so quickly—and another, shameful part of him wanting to ignore what Fives left unsaid.
Something was rotten about all of it.
"So," Fives finally said, "what are you going to do about it?"
"Fives," Rex growled.
The ARC's expression instantly hardened. "You'd let her die?"
It was a gut punch. His ears rang and spots flashed nauseatingly across his vision. It wouldn't be like Umbara—and over a year later, he still struggled with what he had allowed, what would have happened if the man beside him hadn't convinced Rex's own troopers to do the right thing.
Because Rex wouldn't step forward and say those words himself.
Ahsoka's execution would be clean and cold, far away from her men, as impersonal and dispassionate as the rest of Coruscant. There wouldn't be any chance for a last minute, desperate appeal.
He'd failed his own brothers before. Would he fail Ahsoka, too?
At a sudden shout from behind, he stepped deftly aside just as a brother's arm shot around Fives' neck. "You vat-head—you're late!"
Tup, wearing fatigue grays and with his long hair still wet from a post-gym shower, was promptly thrown down to the durasteel floor, although the trooper managed to twist away to his feet with a laugh and a nod towards Fives' bucket. "Nice paint job. Did the droids help?"
Rex took another step away from the two brothers to lean against a support pillar, hating that he was grateful for the interruption and unable to re-focus on the trial. What could he do? Fek, they were in the middle of the GAR's karking HQ, the whole of the 501st pinned down by orders that came from up high enough to give a rock-jumper like him vertigo.
"Thinned 'em out so you don't get all that hair blasted off," Fives was saying as the ARC reached over to grip Tup's shoulder. He then thumped him hard enough to make the other trooper wince.
"Ah," Tup wheezed, rotating the abused shoulder, "you don't have to make excuses. All that fancy gear's just making you soft."
Jesse, who had finally looked up from his sabacc set at Tup's arrival, snorted an abrupt laugh.
"You karking—"
"Shut it!" snapped a sergeant from in front of the viewscreen. "They've got the verdict."
Already? Rex cursed himself; he should've paid attention.
"That was fast," Tup commented dryly, turning toward the screen. "They'll acquit her."
Rex threw a look at the trooper, disturbed by his lack of concern. Tup was one of the few Rex hadn't seen stick close to the Holonet feed.
"What makes you so sure?" Kix countered, swiveling in his seat to face Tup, his expression fierce.
Tup only shrugged.
"Ahsoka Tano, by an overwhelming count of—"
"Chancellor!"
"There's the general," Fives muttered, staring avidly at the screen.
At Skywalker's appearance, a flurry of noise swept the common-room; Rex could see the Supreme Chancellor speak, but Palpatine's words were drowned out by the rush of chatter.
"Quiet!" he barked. Silence was immediate.
"I am here," the general said, stepping forward with a familiar, barely-contained fury Rex was intimately acquainted with from the battlefield, "with evidence and a confession from the person responsible for the crimes Ahsoka has been accused of."
"Like I said," Tup went on, but Fives whacked him again on the shoulder and Tup subsided with another shrug.
"Barriss Offee, member of the Jedi Order—and traitor." The venom in the general's voice sent a finger of unease down Rex's spine.
But even worse—the cold realization that the traitor was a Jedi.
Ah, shab.
"Barriss?" In that moment, Rex watched all the defiance Ahsoka had held onto during the trial simply...bleed away. "Is that true?"
Something tight gripped his chest as the cam flipped between Ahsoka's heartbroken expression to the miserable face of the other Padawan. But when the cam focused, the Mirilian's eyes chilled to a disturbingly familiar fervor.
"I did it."
Rex's unease intensified.
"Because I've come to realize what many people in the Republic have come to realize, that the Jedi are the ones responsible for this war." Offee's voice rose and fell with a passion that pushed Rex upright. "That we've so lost our way that we have become villains in this conflict, that we are the ones that should be put on trial—all of us!"
Rex heard Fives shift on his feet and mutter a steady stream of curses under his breath.
"And my attack on the Temple was an attack on what the Jedi have become: an army fighting for the dark side, fallen from the light that we once held so dear!"
All the karking hells...
"This Republic is failing! It's only a matter of time."
Silence held in the common-room in the seconds after; a collective, drawn-in breath, broken only when the Supreme Chancellor gestured for Offee to be taken away.
"Kriffing hell," someone said, an unnerving note of awe in their voice.
Fek. Fek-fek-fek.
Rex let his focus slide off the screen as he stepped forward; only vaguely saw the flashes of bright, sickly yellow from the Temple guards' saberpikes. He let his hands fall to his sides, one to grip the edge of his bucket hard enough to pop tendons, the other to brace against his utility belt.
Snippets of muttered questions, comments—things that did not need to continue in his company's barracks—swirled around him.
"That's it—it's done."
He knew his voice would carry over all the others, noted that all snapped to attention at the hard edge he deliberately added. "We know this war is not for the weak. We know the Separatists will try anything and everything to cut off the Republic's head, to bring us all down—and it's our job to make sure we keep standing strong."
He paused, sweeping his gaze from one side of the room to the other, studying the nicks and scrapes and marks of fresh paint on well-shined armor, the hardened or smooth-skinned faces of an almost haphazard mix of veterans and shinies; the bright, clear shine of some eyes and the duller, shadowed regard from others. The same exact faces of too many that he'd already lost, and for all the ones still here, he would not stand to have them live in fear of traitorous leaders.
But why did it have to be another Jedi?
"We've got a war to fight, and our commander is coming home." His hand tightened further on his bucket; the plastoid grated against bone. "General Skywalker and Commander Tano will expect us to be ready. Ringo Vinda is waiting for us to set it free."
He swept his gaze over the room one last time, then gave a sharp nod.
"Let's get to it."
He turned smoothly, unclipping his bucket and slipping it over his head as he made his way out of the room, even as the collective roar from his men hit his back. He had his commander to see.
Before the door slid shut behind him, he heard Tup's easy laugh. "See? Told you she'd be acquitted."