This is Not Our Fate
"But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."
'All Along the Watchtower' – Bob Dylan
*
Her eyes opened. The world faded back in, though muted.
There was the sound of a medical readout chirping steadily beside her. There was the sound of Rex's breathing. He lifted his head to look at her. She shifted, the motion muffled by the heavy caking of bacta and gauze on her shoulder.
It was then that she felt the absence.
*
It went badly.
It always went badly, these days. War was a grindstone, lives were the wheat ground within it. A mill of murder. Men carried off in lumpy sacks for swift burial. Rex was too tired to let the anger burn up to the surface. He'd been angry before. Sometimes it was a good focus. It narrowed the world down into us against them, clones against droids, friends against enemies, and it was okay to be angry at the enemy, so long as it didn't cloud judgment. Judgment had to be clear. Bad judgment fed the mouth of the mill still further.
He stood by a window, looking outward. Another ship limped along off the starboard prow of the Resolute. She held together, but streams of smoke were still trickling off into space. Teams would be working to make repairs, keep the old girl afloat.
Insertion had been ugly. Fighting had been fierce. Extraction had taken too high a toll. Superiors were calling it a victory.
Victory? He snorted. Over what?
Terrified civilians running from machines as well as men.
Names sifted through his mind, committing themselves to memory. There was no one off-ship to tell about their deaths. No one back home. No home. No home other than Kamino. He'd seek out friends onboard and deliver condolences. News of the deaths would not take long to reach their living brothers. They would mourn, and move on.
It was the way of things. There was no time to grieve on the field. Men could get used to anything, given enough time. Even constant death.
A quiet noise was made behind him, a small shuffle of the feet that would alert him to another presence, avoid startling him.
Ahsoka stepped up beside him. He waited for her to try to cheer him up, but she did not. He waited, and realized she was not there to give encouragement. He returned his gaze to the black. They stood quietly for several minutes. He found himself beginning to calm.
"I can talk to the men, if you like," she said after a time. "You don't always have to do it yourself."
"I'm their Captain."
"I'm their Commander."
He looked at her sideways. "I'm their brother."
She met his eyes, eventually gave a small nod. He looked away. She added, gently placing a hand on his shoulder, "It will end someday, Rex. Nothing lasts forever." She looked at the battered starship across from them. "Not even this war."
She mourned them too. It was his responsibility, his duty, but she mourned them too. It was, strangely, a relief. She was one of them, a soldier on the front lines. She was also not one of them, and did not have to care. It was not quite like being an ordinary conscript, with a family and friends back on a homeworld. People waiting, people hoping, people praying for his safety. A rush of gratitude flooded him, and some odd sense of relief. It was unwise, for her to get too attached to him. Still, he did not want to be forgotten, or be left unmourned. So long as she outlived him, he would not be. A small way of continuing on.
He was tired. He sagged a little. Her hand tightened on his shoulder. "Are you alright? You should rest."
"So should you."
She stepped closer, hand sliding to his back and arm slipping under his as though to hold him up. "Rex, if you're hurt and didn't go to the medbay…" her words trailed off warningly. Concern remained, but the gentle tone switched to a scolding one.
He gave a single, short laugh. "I'm just tired. Need to get to my rack is all. It is not my fate to die from lack of sleep." He mustered a smile.
She looked at him, skeptically, then her expression changed, the dark stripes of her montrals deepening in color as she blinked hard. His smile faded. Her gaze dipped once, then twice, down to his mouth. She looked away, eyes lowered. His breath pushed against the side of her neck. It prickled, the line of her throat curving upward to meet her montrals, curved downward to meet her shoulder, her collarbones.
She would mourn him if he died. There was a sudden ache in his chest, an absence that he knew could not be filled. He had thousands of brothers, but it was Ahsoka who kept him from being alone, it was him who she sought out. They had been through too much together.
Captain, Commander. Sometimes rank rang false. Her cool skin was too close. He stopped breathing.
Her voice cracked when she spoke. "Can you walk?"
His voice was no steadier. "Yes."
"Get some rest," she said softly as she slipped away.
*
It was then that she felt the absence.
It was a knowledge of something not-there. It loomed large, blotting out everything else with its lacking, a night that suddenly had no stars to fill it. A sense of overwhelming loss gaped outward. She reached, trying to find what was gone. Her senses found only more of the nothing, of the absence.
She had felt it before. Men cut down on the field, lives scattered like chaff. Empty places that had once been filled. These, though, were those who shone differently. Jedi. She felt as though drowning, and clawed outward for some indication of life, of others like herself, of bonds and friendships she'd formed through the years.
She found one. It was not the oldest, but it was the strongest. Master. She ignored the strange decay of it, like tarnish biting into silver. The frayed edges she could not see, but feel with her mind. It existed where so many others did not. She followed, chasing down the man she relied on so much for the last three years. Teacher, friend, hero, almost-brother.
She found a dead star. Where others were lights passed out of existence, this one was dead, a black hole, a well of gravity that pulled everything into it, people, things, time, light. It exuded pain, rage, loss, despair.
Harsh breathing echoed in her mind. She thought at first it was her own, laboring to escape the pull. It was too heavy to be hers. It called without words.
She hesitated. It pulled her. The black star was beautiful in its devastation. Nothing stood before it. Silent, it consumed.
She understood it for what it was. She resisted, reaching out again. Not for this bond. Corrupt, wrong, twisted, dark. She rejected it, groped for another. A second bond brushed past her mind's filament-like fingers. She seized it, pulled herself forward.
Then there was harsh light in her eyes, and someone shouting her name, and a burning was in her shoulder.
It coalesced into reality. A too-familiar face was hovering beside hers. She tried to force air back into her lungs, to remember to breathe. She was grappling one-armed with armor. White armor. White armor was friendly. White armor with guns raised, pointed at her. She recoiled.
Rex was saying, over and over, "Ahsoka." Her face was in his hands, holding her still. She focused on his face. The sudden urge to fight eased. Rex was safe. Rex was a friend. Rex was strong, good, kind, warm.
Her voice cracked when she spoke. "They're all gone."
His voice was no steadier. "Yes."
She clutched his hand. Not everyone.
*
Fives watched the light of hyperspace stream by. He sat in the co-pilot's chair, a frown on his face. "Echo," he said.
"Yeah?"
"The Supreme Chancellor is the only one who can give that order, isn't he?"
His brother looked at him for a long moment.
The Supreme Chancellor lived on Coruscant.
Whatever else was going on, they were running hot with a Jedi on board. The Commander was too injured to be much good in a fight. They could be flying into anything. Echo's face went white, and he turned swiftly to the navigational computer.
Coruscant would be ground zero if a battle was going on.
Their course changed.
*
There's enough Ahsoka deathfic in the world, so she gets to live in stuff I write. Besides, the potential she's got as a character too much to toss away by killing her.
I do like the Rex/Ahsoka pairing, so there will be some of it tangled through this, but it's not going to be a major focus. This really is a fic about all four of them, so expect to see more of Echo and Fives as the story progresses. I don't usually write without a solid plan, but this story is trickling into my head in bursts as I find music that fits each chapter. So we'll see how this goes. There will definitely be at least half a dozen chapters. Beyond that, I can't really say.
As always,
~Queen
