My dear friends and loyal readers,

Today is a very hard day for me. My grandfather just passed away this afternoon from cancer. I miss him desperately. I needed to do something that wasn't sitting still and thinking on how much it hurts to lose someone so loved, so I sat down and finished this for all of you.

If it's not my best work, that would be why.

Please keep my family in your thoughts and prayers in these days to come! We would greatly appreciate it.

Hope you like the chapter =)

You promised to protect us.

You lied.

You took what was mine and thought I would let you live?

No.

I am not the one who started this war.

I will be the one to finish it.

My teeth are bared and this is how I claim the stars.

If she had to pass one more brother with empty eyes and a blank, empty Force signature, Ahsoka was going to scream.

That, or set a course straight for the Imperial Palace and rip Palpatine's head off, because the men of the 212th were vibrant and unique and warm and that wretched demagolka had made every single one of them cold.

Hunter's intel was accurate. The 212th was still on Utapau, mopping up the last of the Separatist strongholds. Apparently, Grievous had used this base as his main stronghold, and it was taking a long time to work through all the data, reports, and horrific war machines the droid general had been developing.

Personally, Ahsoka thought it was taking so long because all of the men responsible for the clean-up had had their brains scrubbed of everything that made them better than droids. Watching them going about their various assignments was heartbreaking in all the worst ways. The vode did not talk to each other. They did not laugh. They did not hum, or read, or prank each other. They moved in eerie unison with a bizarre stiffness to everything they did, like they were…well, droids.

Ahsoka returned from her and Hunter's scouting mission practically vibrating with fury and one wrong word away from an entire emotional breakdown. The enhanced clone didn't try to make her talk the entire way back, just stayed right by her side with a hand on her shoulder. To restrain her or comfort her, she wasn't sure, but either way, she was grateful for it.

They passed Wrecker, who was patrolling the perimeter of their encampment, and he picked her up in a hug that nearly shattered her entire ribcage. But by the time he put her down, she felt a little less like she was going to explode into a thousand little shards of heartbroken fury.

She had barely ducked into the tent when Tech was all up in her face.

"Done!" he declared, dropping a small, sleek device into her hands.

She scrambled to catch it before it could crash to the ground. "What is it?"

He grabbed her hand, pressing her forefinger into the sensor pad. The device whirred, opening up to show…oh. Oh.

"You finished it," she breathed as she took in the sight of the little makeshift gadget she had cobbled together back on the space station expertly spliced into Tech's much fancier work. "And this…this'll knock out the chips?"

Tech nodded, looking very satisfied with himself. "You got it. Every chip in a four-klick radius."

Ahsoka cheered, tackling the technician in excitement. "You did it!"

"Oh!" Tech floundered for a long moment before gingerly resting a single hand on one of her shoulders. "Um. Yes. I did. It is…it is indeed done. Can you…let go now?"

"Sorry." Ahsoka beamed up at him, bouncing up on her toes. "So, do we have a plan?"

"We're working on it, vod'ika," Echo answered, coming up beside her and throwing an arm over her shoulders as he guided her over the table that he, Rex, Hunter, and Crosshair were clustered around. Echo had hacked into the garrison's servers when they arrived the night before, so there was a holographic schematic of the stronghold pulled up. "Right now, the working strategy is the six of us setting off six thermal detonators at intervals all around the perimeter of the stronghold. The garrison is deployed to check it out, leaving the stronghold relatively unmanned. You break in and attach Tech's little miracle right here." He pointed to a spot in the main power core of the building. "You'll need to splice it into the power lines. Can you do that?"

"I can." Ahsoka took a deep breath, viciously crushing her excitement down to a manageable level. "I'll signal you when it's connected, and you trigger it remotely? Or do I set it off?"

The clones exchanged looks.

"Probably best you do it," Hunter said slowly. "We…might be busy."

Ahsoka's eyes snapped up and locked onto the Sergeant, laser focused. "Busy with what?" she asked, voice sharp. "You said you were going to cause a distraction and then lure the troops away from the stronghold."

"Ahsoka," Rex said, meeting her eyes. "We're not going to try to engage. We don't want to hurt our brothers any more than you do. But…for all that they're acting like clankers right now, they are still some of the most efficient soldiers in the galaxy. Their training is just as good as ours."

"But they took all of their ingenuity and individuality," Ahsoka pointed out.

"But they still have Cody," Rex countered. "And no matter what they did to his soul, his brain is still fully functional."

And Ahsoka…

Didn't have a response for that.

Because Cody had truly been the best of the best.

That was why the Council had assigned him to Obi-Wan.

Because the two of them could accomplish the impossible.

Personality or no, Cody was still the most terrifying warrior the GAR had ever produced.

Ahsoka swallowed hard, channeled every last bit of her inner Anakin, and decided to do what the Skywalker-Kenobi-Tano Team did best—wing it.

"Leave Cody to me," she said, looking up at her brothers. "Tech, as soon as you set off your detonator, you come back here and make sure the signal stays steady. I'll comm you when it's connected and then you set it off. I'll…I'll take care of Cody."

"No," Rex said bluntly.

"I handled Maul, Rex," she reminded him.

"You didn't have a problem with lopping off a few of his limbs if it came to that," Crosshair snapped, crossing his arms. "You won't be willing to do that with the Commander."

"Worst comes to worst, I slam him into a wall and knock him out," she said. "I can do this. You know this is the best option we have. If we don't have a specific plan to take Cody out of the equation, then he will make this impossible. This way, he's occupied with the Jedi, but he has to catch me before he can try to hurt me. By the time I let him do that, you'll have activated the pulse, and it will be Cody who finds me, not CC-2224."

"I hate it when she's logical," Rex groaned to no one in particular, dropping his head into his hands.

"Agreed," Crosshair growled, looking even more sour than usual.

Echo was pale, and his hand on Ahsoka's shoulder was bruising. "Are you sure about this?" he asked. "We…we can't lose you, vod'ika."

Her heart warmed as she met five pairs of matching worried gold eyes. She smiled at them, strong and reassuring.

"Trust me," she told them. "We'll get them back. You'll see. It'll all work out."

Ahsoka was never going to tell him this, but…Rex may have been right to worry.

Because Cody…was not himself.

CC-2224 had no problems setting off energy fields and motion sensors to try to pin her down. He had no problems firing at her with lethal force. He had no problems gassing her out of the ventilation shafts and floor vents with toxic paralytics. He had no problem beating her into the floor when he finally caught her.

She barely dodged the blaster bolt to the heart, but couldn't quite bite back her scream when it punched neatly through her shoulder instead, almost right on top of the old scar she had from Onderon. Her mind went white with pain for just a moment, but CC-2224 was the best of the best and a moment was all he needed.

She blinked away the tears in her vision just in time to see his fist coming towards her face. She managed to flip out of the way, but it was clumsy and barely got her a meter of distance. CC-2224 never let her recover. He kept at her, brutal blows raining down on her slender body, bruising and breaking.

Ahsoka had never in her life been truly afraid of a brother.

She had been terrified on board the Vod'ika, but that fear had stemmed from a protective fury and heartbroken confusion, not genuine fear for her life. Not until right there at the end, and that was because it was she and Rex versus literally an entire battalion of elite soldiers.

But here…

Right now, she wasn't sure she could hold out long enough for Tech to trigger the device.

Because they had overlooked one terrible, vital detail.

The 212th was not the 501st.

As reality-defying and insane as the 501st had been, the 212th was universally regarded as the most powerful battalion in the GAR and there was a reason for that.

One half of that reason was currently doing his level best to murder Ahsoka where she stood.

Ghost Company had recovered from 99's distraction far faster than anticipated and had reacted with terrible force. From what Ahsoka had heard over her comm before CC-2224 jammed her transmissions, Crosshair had taken a bad hit to the leg and was currently pinned up a tree, fending off the others with as little lethal force as possible. Wrecker was actually still having a great time, plowing his way through the less-experienced part of the battalion. He was on his way to rescue Crosshair. Tech, as instructed, was laying low back at their camp, frantically trying to get a signal out past CC-2224's jammers to activate his device. Echo and Hunter were staying on the move, constantly pursued and surrounded and having to find new ways out. And Rex… Rex was trying to reach her. Then they'd lost contact.

She'd had time to whisper, I'm sorry, but that was it.

The comm had cut to the sound of Rex screaming her name.

She had no idea if her brothers were still alive, or if Ghost Company was still as horrifically effective as they had always been.

She barely dodged another of CC-2224's attacks and tried for the thousandth time to reach him.

"Cody, please!" she begged, backpedaling as fast as she could without losing her balance. "Please, ori'vod, remember me! Remember you!"

"Good soldiers follow orders," CC-2224 said, his voice flat and empty.

Ice trickled through Ahsoka's veins.

That was all he would say.

No matter how she pleaded, that was all he would say.

She turned tail and ran.

He was chasing her, and she was employing every single trick she'd ever known to avoid his pinpoint accurate blasterfire.

She sprinted around the corner, still looking over her shoulder, and that was where she made her fatal mistake. She was so focused on the threat behind her that she failed to look ahead of her, and the armored boot to her lower left leg definitely cracked something. She tumbled to the ground with a shout of pain, rocketing back up and turning—just in time for CC-2224 to land an overwhelming blow to her torso that snapped at least two ribs and threw her across the hallway to slam into the wall.

She hit the floor hard and lay there, stunned, choking on air, blood coming up to stain her teeth and splatter on the floor. She couldn't see, a terrible ringing in her montrals that blocked out all sound. She couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't breathe. She tried to get an arm underneath her to rise, but someone yanked it out from under her, twisted it around so harshly that something popped in her shoulder. She yelled and crashed back to the floor under another white haze of agony.

Tears burned scorching trails down her skin as she tried to breathe. After several long seconds, her vision cleared up just enough to see the brother once known as Boil's cold, empty expression as he leveled his blaster between her eyes, side by side and in eerie unison with CC-2224.

"I…forgive you," she choked, blood spilling over her lips as something else in her ribcage gave out—her heart, cracking in despair at the knowledge that she had failed. "I… know it's not…your fault. I…forgive you."

"Good soldiers follow orders," they answered in unison, and she closed her eyes and waited for the Force to take her home.

I'm so sorry, Rex.

Jesse, I'll see you soon.

But the anticipated blaster bolts never struck her.

Something clanged harshly and she jumped, instantly regretting it as agony lit up her entire torso. Her eyes flew open.

The sound had been Cody's blaster hitting the floor.

The Commander was standing as stiff as a pole, shaking from head to foot, staring at his hands like they didn't belong to him. His amber eyes were wide, horror and terror and such a raw, terrible, depthless grief welling in them that it made Ahsoka cry harder.

Boil staggered back, his own blaster crashing to the floor, until his back met the wall and he crumpled to the ground, deep sobs beginning to wrench their way from his chest as he buried his face in his hands.

"…Cody?" Ahsoka dared to whisper after a handful of moments where the other Commander seemed frozen in time, levering herself up on one arm, the other wrapped carefully around her ribs.

Cody's eyes snapped down to hers, and his face drained of color so fast she was worried he was going to collapse.

"Commander?" he whispered; his voice was trembling as hard as the rest of him. "What…you…" His legs suddenly gave out and he fell beside her, reaching a single hand out to wipe away one of her tears. "What happe—" He inhaled sharply, ripping his hand away. "I did this," he whispered, horrified. "I… I was trying to kill you—"

"No," Ahsoka cut him off as loudly as she dared. "Sidious was trying to kill me. You were the tool he was using to do it." With no small amount of effort, she forced herself up on her knees, ignoring Cody's protests, until she could reach out and grab his face with the hand attached to her functional arm and force him to meet her eyes. "This is not your fault," she told him, determination burning in her heart again. "There's a chip in your head, Cody. Do you remember what happened to Fives?" Her voice cracked just thinking about it.

Cody actually stopped breathing for a long moment, and Boil uncurled from his fetal position across the hall and stared at her.

"What?" he croaked, wiping away his own tears. "Fives…yeah, I remember that, Fox was torn to pieces over that. He said…" Boil cut himself off, turning pale suddenly.

"Fox couldn't remember pulling the trigger," Cody whispered, his eyes wide and his trembling finally slowing. "He…he had no memories of that entire day. He was devastated when Thorn told him what he'd done. We…" Cody swallowed hard. "We had to keep him from eating his blaster."

Ahsoka flinched, her eyes widening. "Oh, Force," she whimpered. "He was using them even back then."

"But it's the chips?" Cody pressed, desperate. "The anti-aggression chips?"

"They're control chips, Cody," Ahsoka told him, sucking in a deep, careful breath. "They're inhibitor and control chips. If a specific person—that person being the Emperor—gave you an order worded in a specific way, that chip activated and quite literally re-wrote your entire brain. The entire GAR just became a blank spot in the Force. Your personalities were gone, your individuality was gone….you were moving in columns like clankers and you didn't laugh and there was nothing left and you were hunting me and I couldn't—"

"Ahsoka!" Cody cut her off, gripping her shoulders gently. "Breathe. Breathe, little one. You're safe now. I'm here. I'm here, Ahsoka. You're safe. Breathe."

She clung to Cody like her life depended on it, trying to slow her panicked gasps for air. Her ribs really hurt now, and so did the rest of her. Her right shoulder and left shin in particular were throbbing in agony with every beat of her heart.

"I think you broke my leg," she told Boil with a slightly hysterical giggle. "And quite possibly dislocated my shoulder."

He flinched hard, scooting across the hall and tentatively nudging their fingertips together. "I'm so sorry," he told her, his voice cracking with grief.

"That's okay," she told him, trying to smile even as tears started coursing down her face again. "J-Jesse and Rex tried to kill me, too."

Her words fell into the silence like a blaster bolt, and the wounded noise that tore from Cody sounded like he'd been the one it hit.

"Rex'ika?" he said, his voice all kinds of hoarse and broken. Tears were welling in his eyes.

Ahsoka reached out with her good arm and dragged him down until she could press their foreheads together. "I got it out," she told him. "The droids helped me. We got it out of Rex. He's okay. I think. I don't know. He was okay before you cut the comms."

Cody…crumpled.

She didn't have a better word for it. His eyes closed and his face twisted and his shoulders curved in and his entire body just seemed to…shrink. He was smaller than she'd ever seen him and she viscerally hated it. It was so, so wrong. Cody was as big as Obi-Wan. They were bigger than life, so sturdy and dependable and steady.

To see him shatter like this absolutely broke her heart.

"Hey," she said, her voice wavering. "Hey, we figured it out. We found the chips, and we found 99, and we found you. We can do this. It's gonna be okay, Cody."

Her voice broke and Cody crawled behind her, so she was sitting sideways between his legs with her own thrown over Boil's lap, her face tucked into Cody's neck and her fingers twisted so tightly with Boil's she was losing feeling in them. Cody's arms were around her waist and his face was hidden in her shoulder and he was shaking.

They all were, she realized.

Overwhelmed and swept away by an unbearable weight of grief and loss.

"General Kenobi," Cody finally whispered. He didn't raise his head.

Something in Ahsoka froze.

"I—we—" Cody stopped, let out a broken sound, shook harder.

"We shot him down," Boil whispered. "His varactyl was up on one of the cliffs and we—" his face drained of even more color. "I shot him down. We…we saw the varactyl fall. We found its body in one of the mineral pools at the base of the cliffs."

"We never found the General's body," Cody whispered into her shoulder.

Her heart started beating again. "Oh, thank the Force," she exhaled, holding onto her boys even tighter. "There's no way he didn't survive that. Into water, and you never found him? There's literally no way he didn't survive that. I don't know where he is, Cody, but you did not kill your General."

Cody broke, then.

He cried like his very heart was breaking.

She just held him tighter, and Boil crushed himself as close as he could get and she squeezed his hand even tighter, and they broke together, right there on the floor.

She couldn't say how long they'd been there when pounding footsteps started echoing down the halls, followed by desperate voices shouting at the top of their lungs.

"Ahsoka!"

"Commander Tano!"

"Ahsoka!"

"Ahsoka!"

"Commander!"

"VOD'IKA!"

"REX! ECHO!" she screamed back, as loud as she could, twisting around in Cody's grip just in time to meet Rex's eyes as her Captain and her brother came sprinting around the corner, both of them paler than death with tears already sparkling in their eyes.

They slammed into the floor and threw themselves into the embrace with shaking hands and desperate breaths of her name, relieved sobs of laughter, and overwhelmed whispers of Cody's name.

"I'm here, Rex'ika," the oldest clone whispered, grabbing the back of Rex's neck and pressing their foreheads together. "I'm here, vod'ika."

Rex just shook his head, golden eyes bright with emotion, his voice choked off.

"It's damn good to see you again, sir," Hunter said with feeling from just behind Echo.

Ahsoka didn't know when 99 had arrived and she didn't particularly care. Her eyes were closing without her permission, and she missed Cody's response. She let the tension flood out of her body with a deep sigh.

Voices rose in a clamor around her, but she felt Cody's chest rumble against her cheek and the others fell silent.

"You can rest now, little one," Cody said softly, one warm, calloused hand smoothing down her back lek.

"M'kay," she slurred, slumping more into the familiar plastoid armor. "Missed you, ori'vod."

Cody's exhale was shaky and his voice was thick. "I missed you, too, ad'ika. Hold on, now, I've got you."

Strong arms gathered her close, careful of her wounds, and then they were moving. The rocking motion soothed her into the beckoning darkness, and she surrendered to it secure in the knowledge that her brothers had her.

There was a steady, incredibly obnoxious beeping going off right beside her montrals.

Ahsoka woke slowly, feeling leagues upon leagues better than she had when she passed out. She stretched out slowly, smacking her lips and screwing up her face at the lingering too-sweet taste of bacta.

Gross.

She gingerly sat up, shooting a glare at the beeping machine as she did so. She was in a private room in the medbay of a ship, on a terribly uncomfortable cot in a terribly uncomfortable medical gown with a little monitor clipped to her forefinger.

And her room was packed with brothers.

Rex and Echo were crammed into a chair on her left, and Cody was to her right, slumped over with his head on his arms, her hand tightly held in one of his. Boil had his boots propped on the foot of her bed, head tipped back and snoring loud enough to wake the dead. Wrecker, Tech, and Crosshair were piled together on the floor, and Hunter was leaning against the doorframe, clearly standing guard.

His eyes were bright with relief as he smiled at her.

"Good to see you awake, Commander," he said quietly.

She grinned back.

"Good to be awake," she said simply. "What have I missed?"

"Nothing much." The sergeant made his way over to her cot to pass her a canteen of water, which she gratefully drained, rinsing out her mouth. "We've got two thirds of the 212th de-chipped already, and the rest are under now. I don't think I've ever seen a more efficient setup, but…the medics are a little…well…"

Ahsoka grinned as Hunter trailed off. "Terrifying?" she offered.

Hunter snorted. "That's one word for it."

"Yeah, Helix was Obi-Wan's CMO for all three years of the war," Ahsoka said impishly. "We used to take bets on how long it would take him to make the new shinies cry."

Hunter paled a little. "Yeah, I can see that happening."

Ahsoka snickered, and Cody's head jerked up at the sound. His wide golden eyes met her blue and they stared for a long moment. And before she could say or do anything, her brother had wrapped her up in a hug so tight he'd lifted her completely off the bed.

"You're alright," he said, his voice trembling. "You're okay. I'm so sorry. I am so sorry, Ahsoka, I never wanted to hurt you. I would never—"

"I forgive you," she interrupted, hugging him back just as tight. "I forgave you before it even happened. I knew what I was getting myself into and it was worth it. Every single one of you is worth it. Got it?"

Cody choked out a laugh. "Yeah, I got it, vod'ika."

"Good. Don't forget it."

Cody sat himself against the headboard of her cot and pulled her close under one arm, letting her rest her head against his shoulder. She cuddled close instantly, because she was cold and he was warm and this was familiar in a way that so few things were these days.

They had only been settled for a few minutes when Rex suddenly snorted himself awake, accidentally knocking Echo off the chair as he jerked upright.

The younger clone hit the floor with a yelp and a crash, sending the rest of the room's occupants scrambling into wakefulness.

"Echo! Vod'ika, I'm so sorry—" Rex started, already reaching out to help him up, but Echo cut him off with a beaming grin.

"Ahsoka!" The ARC bolted to his feet and lunged for the bed, reaching out to grab her hand. "You're alright!"

Rex was only a step behind him. "Vod'ika, you're okay!"

"Hey, she's awake!"

"Yes, Wrecker, we can see that."

"Where. Is. The. Caf."

The room was alive with the voices of her brothers, and they were all trying to hug her at once and Ahsoka couldn't have stopped her smile if she tried.

She didn't realize the heart monitor on her finger had been pulled off until she heard Helix roar from down the hall.

"AHSOKA TANO! IT HAS BEEN LESS THAN 24 HOURS! WHY DID I LET HER BACK ON THIS SHIP!"

Dead silence fell over them, every single one of her brothers exchanging wide-eyed looks.

Ahsoka couldn't help it.

She burst out laughing.

Really laughing, like she hadn't in so long.

Then Echo snorted and Boil started snickering, and before long they were all laughing with her.

Ahsoka met Rex's shining eyes and saw the same helpless joy she felt reflected back to her.

They weren't alone anymore.

Even when Helix slammed through the doors, spitting curses, armed with three hyposprays and absolute murder in his eyes, she couldn't stifle her grin.

Because she and Rex had found a part of their family again. She had no plans to stop until she had found them all, and she knew her boys would help her.

But that was a mission for tomorrow.

Today, she could sit here and laugh with her brothers.

There was nowhere else in the galaxy that she would rather be.

When Helix stepped back with the grudging admittance that she was physically fine, Ahsoka squared her shoulders.

Her men straightened reflexively, feeling the change in the air.

"I'm so, so glad we found you," she said. "But the 212th is only the first step. Cody, Helix, Boil, I'll tell you what I told Rex and 99. I am going after the vode. All of them. I will not leave any of them to Palpatine. They are my brothers, and he may not have them. Come with me or don't, it is your choice, but I'm not stopping until every single brother is free."

Nine pairs of brilliant gold eyes met hers.

"We follow," Cody said, his voice strong and confident, every inch the Marshall Commander. "We owe it to every General, Commander, and vod that we've ever loved and lost. We will follow you, Commander, to the stars and suns and anywhere else you see fit to lead us."

In the strong set of his shoulders, in the unwavering eyes of their brothers, there was no room for hesitation. Only complete trust and total determination.

Ahsoka smiled.

Maybe the Force will have mercy on you, Palpatine, she thought, and she felt her smile grow sharp. For I will have none. You have enslaved my brothers, my family. They are mine, and I am coming for them, and you cannot stop me.

"Then today we rest," she said. "And tomorrow? Tomorrow, we hunt."

Her brothers' voices thundered out together in a vow that shook the stars.

"OYA!"

So have I sworn.

So shall it be.

There you are, dears!

Hope it was a satisfying ending for all of you who have kept up with me even after such a long period of silence.

If there is anything wrong with it (continuity errors, grammar, formatting...whatever) please don't hesitate to let me know.

I love hearing from all of you, and can't wait to find out what you thought of this final chapter.

Love you all!