Hey guys! I'm sorry I haven't had time to post in a while, things have been crazy, but I really want to get back into a somewhat regular posting schedule. So I present: a short little story I wrote instead of studying for finals! :)

There's not much time.

Ahsoka knows this.

Ever since she proposed the idea to Bo-Katan- the idea of going back- she's known she wouldn't get to say everything she's needed to.

"This isn't a reunion." Bo had reminded her grimly on the ship, a firm hand gripping her wrist. "We have to get what we need, and get out."

Ahsoka had agreed- though for a completely different reason than the Mandalorian had intended. It wasn't the mission she was worried an emotional homecoming would put at risk, it was her own sanity. She'd been living with her veins wide open for the past six months on her own, letting every thought of the Jedi Temple break her, allowing every memory of her masters to dig her further into a pit of depression and regret. She wanted to tell Anakin that for so long, but she knows she can't.

It would break her. She had to protect herself.

Which was easier said than done.

It was damn near impossible, standing in front of Anakin and not telling him how sorry she was. She had looked at him, studying the new grayness of his eyes, the new slouch of his shoulders, and it was all she could do to stop herself from bursting into tears.

"I don't sleep much anymore." She wanted to cry. "I lay awake at night and just stare at my communicator. All I want to do is call you, Anakin, but I can't. I know I'd come back, and I can't. I'm sorry, I can't."

She wanted to lay it all out in front of him like the old battle maps they used to study at camp. She wanted to let him see the pain she'd caused herself. Let him understand how tired and lonely she was, just so he could patch up her wounds like he always did- like he always used to do.

Instead she kept her words clipped. She put up a wall between them that was more like a shield around herself.

"You don't have time." She told herself. "You just need to find Maul, you don't have time."

It worked, for the most part. She let herself feel nothing. Let herself be bitter towards him, because underneath her stoic coldness was a sea of vulnerability, and there was no way she could break down the dam and let everyone see.

She wore a mask even when she was with Rex, hiding behind well rehearsed war-time banter.

She couldn't stop wondering if the clones had hated her for a while after she left them without a goodbye.

Part of her wished they had, because it hurt too much to believe that they still loved her after what she had done to them.

"You don't have time for this. You just have to get Maul. That's all you need. Just get Maul." She told herself every time the miserable thoughts came to her, and it became a mantra of sorts. "Just get Maul." She whispered a million times through it all. "Just get Maul."

But now that doesn't matter.

Now Maul was set free, roaming the galaxy, and somehow it was the least of her worries.

Now, everything is different. Ahsoka sinks into the ache of her arms as she shovels through the tough gravel, tears falling freely down her cheeks because holy fuck she's burying everything she's ever known.

And here, at the end of it all, Rex gently takes the shovel from her blistered, bloody hands and whispers, "Were you happy?" and his honey-brown eyes are full of desperation and sorrow. "You know, with us?"

It's a stupid question. Of all the things to worry about, the past shouldn't be one of them, but he has to know.

It's been nagging at him since she left, Ahsoka can tell.

He has to know if somehow, in the clutches of a war, she had been okay. He has to know that between all the horrors and nightmares she'd been forced to live through, she had a decent childhood because now that was the only period of peace she would ever know again. His surviving brothers would come soon to hunt her down, and he had to know that she at least had some good memories of them before they turn her into a martyr.

And for a moment Ahsoka just stands there, because she can't give him the reassurance he so desperately needs.

An old memory of Mortis slips into her mind. "Are you happy, child?" A vision of an older version of herself had inquired, and she'd avoided the question then too, because the truth was too ugly to bear.

She wasn't.

Throughout the war, Ahsoka had seen things no teenager should. She'd watched her friends as they died in her arms, visited hospital camps ridden with disease and suffering, committed cold blooded killings out of what she tried to convince herself was a necessity.

Though she had to remind herself there were also good times.

There was laughter and warm hands clasping her shoulder whenever she visited the clone barracks, and her first drink they bought her when they took her out to 79's on her sixteenth birthday. She had been blessed with warm tendrils of the force spanning out between her and Anakin. She'd been so lucky to have him as a Master, as a friend. There were the countless cups of tea Obi-Wan used to make her, and the card games she played with Rex, and as much as she doesn't want to admit it now, there was her friendship with Barriss.

Ahsoka lays her hand on top of Rex's, and after a long while she finally says, "I was loved, Rex. I was loved."

Somehow, as they are living in the wreckage of the old world, it's enough.

Everyone who has ever loved them is buried six feet under the soil where they stand, but for the moment, it is enough.

It would have to be.

Thank you guys for reading! I love you lots!