"What do we do now, Commander?"
Ahsoka had finally returned from her silent vigil before the fallen. He felt nothing but gratitude for her respect. When she dropped her lightsabers onto the ground, he knew what it had meant for the both of them; it was over. Their bodies still lived, still moved, still were filled with blood, but they were dead as the men under those helmets were. That life was taken from them. Nothing would ever be the same.
"I'm not sure. No one can know we're alive."
"But we can't exactly just disappear. What about other Jedi? What about my brothers? What will become of them?" Rex's voice was calm and quiet.
Rex didn't expect Ahsoka to be able to answer any of his questions. How could she? This world they found themselves in wasn't like the world they thought they had known. And yet he should have seen it coming. He should have seen through the illusion.
Fives had been right. The Clone Army had been designed to do one thing and one thing alone; destroy the Jedi order. Rex knew he should feel hot anger at the knowledge that they had all been betrayed and deceived. But instead Rex was far away from his emotions. He knew which ones he should be feeling, but they decided not to show up.
"Rex, I know. I'm thinking of them, too. There must be some out there that we could help. But…" She trailed off and her blue eyes started to see things that were only memories, images in her mind. The sadness in them awoke his own. It was so intense, so all encompassing that it was like waking up to discover you were buried alive.
Crushed. No way out.
Action. He had to think of an action. If he was idle it would have time to settle, to build up, and then he would have to confront it. He couldn't, not yet. He wasn't ready.
"We have to do something. They couldn't have all been-" His voice had stopped working.
Ahsoka was silent for a moment, her eyes closed. He recognized the look of concentration on her face. She was casting her mind into the Force, searching.
"I can't sense...anything. The Force is so…" Ahsoka's brow pulled together in a look of intensity. She shifted her head slightly as if the adjustment would give her a better reading. "Everything feels different." She opened her eyes. "I can't-I can't sense anyone, Rex."
"They can't all be gone. Surely General Skywalker. General Kenobi-"
"Rex..." Why did she have to keep saying his name like that?.
Rex began to feel desperate. It wasn't a time for contemplating what they didn't know for certain. It was a time for action; it had to be.
"Commander. Just tell me what our new mission is. Please. I need a mission. I have to do something." He felt he should be shaking, but on the contrary his body was as still as the ship fragments around them. If he moved, pieces of him might start to break off. He had to keep whole.
Ahsoka was close to him. Closer than she needed to be. She had a hand on the hull of the Y-wing, the other was clenched at her side. "The mission is to stay alive. Both of us. Together. One day at a time."
Rex clutched his head where the chip had been removed. He was still scared, scared of what he might do. If he could just be distracted by something familiar, anything familiar. Gathering intel. Recon. An inspection of...of something. A search and rescue. A stealth mission. His head ran through all things familiar to him; battle strategies, resisting interrogation, performing interrogation, retreating procedure, deploying from an airborne vessel, but none of those things were things he could do now. How could he explain to her that he had never had this happen in all his life?
What was he supposed to do, exist? Eat and sleep and spend each quiet moment contemplating every brother he had seen be blasted to pieces or never return from a deployment?
Rex's voice wasn't as steady as he would have liked when he next spoke. Couldn't he just keep that note of pleading from out of his tone?
"But I need an occupation. I need orders."
Ahsoka locked eyes with him and the pity in them was enough to see himself for what he was.
Broken. Scattered. Ruined.
Ahsoka's fist unfurled and moved as if to touch him. He took a step back from her, afraid of what their closeness was making him feel. If she touched him like she had done on the Tribunal, he didn't know what might happen now that the danger was less pressing. Her touch had helped to steady and calm him when he needed it most but now, now that the adrenaline and the threat of life and death were gone, the seams holding him together were loosening. If she touched him now, he was certain he would fall apart.
"There are no more orders Rex." There was pain constricting her voice, and he didn't know why. But the words she spoke frightened him, terrified him.
No more orders? Then what was there?
Rex felt it then. The void that was inside him. Where there used to be brotherhood, purpose, mission, was now empty. There was nothing. He was nothing.
Tears returned for the second time that day, stinging his eyes and pride, but the sting was nothing to the desperation he felt to fill that space with something. Anything.
Blue eyes.
Rex looked into them and saw pain, emptiness, a void, just like his own.
"We can move forward. Together."
Did she believe that? Rex didn't know or care. The void inside him consumed the words and ached too, to draw in her as well.
She could be there, instead.
No, it wouldn't fill the void, wouldn't satisfy it, but it could be enough to keep it from driving him mad with its vastness. Its weight.
"We have each other, Rex. It's not over as long as we have that."
Ahsoka reached up and placed a hand on his chest. The touch didn't unravel him like he imagined it would. It pressed him together, like before. He wanted to thank her for being there, but didn't know the words. He lifted his own hand and put it over hers.
"Yes, ma'am."
376 days after Abafar; Mandalore System"How did you get on this planet?"
Bo Katan's expression hadn't changed all that much when Rex had taken off his helmet to reveal his face. What had he been expecting? Surprise, maybe. After all, he was still getting used to the idea that now, his helmet wasn't as easily recognizable as his face.
The helmet was a modified phase one that he had picked up off Geonosis during an attempt to find a planet that wasn't crawling with Imperials. Rex had fused it with a few mouth plates from a Ubese helmet and joined it all together with a voice distorter. He'd removed the top fin and painted the whole thing black and grey, forgettable colors. No patriotism or memorials. Simply survival.
Bo tilted her head a fraction to the side. Perhaps there was a slight lift in her brow. Perhaps. She was a reflection of the role he was now playing. Battle hardened, firmly set in the somber attitude of addressing one life threatening conflict after another. His Captain's face. But now, it was just his face. He wore no others these days.
Rex cleared his throat. "Business brought me here, ma'am. But as of now, I'm an ex-black market employee. My team is probably none too happy about my resignation. I was supposed to provide them with clearance codes for the next five deliveries."
Bo eyed him. "You're telling me that the Empire didn't bother to change any clearance codes after the take over? Seems like a serious oversight."
Bo was lingering near the door, her helmet under one arm. She looked exactly the same as she had a year and a half ago. It didn't matter if she was triumphant or under the thumb of an oppressor, Bo Katan always had that look of non negotiable contempt for existence. Yet she still fought tooth and nail for it. Rex could relate to that feeling all the more, now.
Bo finally sat down at the desk in front of Rex. The meeting room was small, but had a glorious view of the plaza outside the government building. There was a small portrait of the late Duchess Satine on her desk, similar to the painting that had once hung in the throne room, but this time with a more clear likeness of her thin, pale face. Bo put her helmet on the desk and blocked it from Rex's view.
"Not an oversight at all, ma'am. We clones, as you know, always follow orders. There would never be an officer who knew as many clearance codes as I do going AWOL. That's impossible."
Rex held Bo's gaze. She let out a small huff out of her nose and put a gauntleted hand on top of her helmet.
"No, of course not. I know all too well the dogmatic obedience of a clone." She gave him a small nod.
A great relief washed over him. Even though he had spent the last few months gathering together all the information he could about Mandalore, Bo Katan, her clear abhorrence of the Empire, her poor standing with the Emperor himself, and her infamous defiance of its beskar-like grip on the galaxy, he hadn't been certain what she would do upon seeing his face.
Rex knew his desperation had reached an all time extreme. He could see a comment about it sitting on Bo Katan's lips, but thankfully she didn't say what they both knew; Rex was taking some serious risks in coming to her.
"This isn't just about the reward for information on Maul, is it?"
Rex silently thanked her for cutting to the chase. Bo was all business. No games or chit chat. That was one thing he really liked about her. "No, but I still do have information to give. This wasn't a ruse. I am, after all, the only person left alive who witnessed his escape." He'd grown better at lying, but still, he hoped Bo didn't notice him stiffen as he did so. She didn't need to know about Ahsoka.
But Bo's eyes grew soft and lost their vigilance. She took in a deep breath and looked over Rex's shoulder with distant eyes.
"So he is alive then."
Rex nodded, feeling a bit of regret at having to be the messenger of such news. The man that she had risked everything to defeat was still out there in the universe. He knew that feeling, too, only on the opposite side of the spectrum. He had risked everything to save one person, and now he didn't know what had become of her.
Rex shut down the train of thought quickly. The Captain's face. He had to have it on at all times. He couldn't take it off for even a moment, or he knew that what had happened at that cantina on Ciutric IV would happen again. And he couldn't survive out here being that. He had to be this person, this hardened Captain and leader, even if he was only leading himself. Being anything else was too chaotic, too vulnerable.
Rex clenched his jaw as if the action solidified the role into place.
Back to business. Back to the mission.
"I don't know if he is still alive now, but I can confirm that he escaped the crash of the Tribunal."
Bo Katan flicked her eyes back to Rex. "That's it? That was two years ago. He could be anywhere."
Rex didn't break eye contact. "Well it's a lot more than nothing now, isn't it? Besides, why does it matter to you where he is? He wouldn't dare try to take back Mandalore-"
Bo's eyes flashed dangerously.
"It wasn't a question I needed answering. The Empire-assigned-this task to me." Bo sneered at him. "What else do you want, besides the credits, I mean?"
Rex lifted a hand. "I don't want any credits. I can get credits. What I want is information in kind."
Bo's exhaustion peeked through as her gaze wavered. She glanced down to the table, and her shoulders drooped.
"I don't know if you've heard, but I've been stripped of all the-privileges-afforded to most Governors."
"I am aware of that fact. Obtaining the information is something I can do for myself. I just need to be pointed in the right direction."
Bo sighed. "As long as you're willing to risk your own neck. What exactly do you need?"
"'You have an Imperial academy on Mandalore. One that's training new recruits."
A venomous look came over Bo's face and she jerked as if to stand but didn't complete the motion. She pulled in her top lip and looked away from Rex.
"Yes. Regardless of my objections, the warriors of Mandalore have once again been coerced into training the armies of non-Mandalorian osik." She gave Rex a look that he knew was one she wished she could give the Kaminoans. It was an embarrassment to her and many other Mandalorians that their prowess in battle was used as nothing more than a training program for oppressive entities.
Rex shrugged off any offense and plowed on. "Is there a military database somewhere within the academy?"
Bo looked at him, silent for a moment, before folding her arms in a gesture of begrudged compliance.
"No. But I know where you can find one. Once a month they send a high ranking officer to tour the academy and see the progress of new recruits. The ship they arrive on will have all the military information you could ever want. It's directly connected to the military database."
Rex nodded. "Very good, ma'am. When will they visit next?"
"Fifteen rotations."
"One more question, ma'am. Are there any Maul sympathizers left on Mandalore? Judging by the presence of Gar Saxon, I assume the Empire had the members of the Death Watch released?"
Bo nodded. "As well as their records expunged, as long as they pledged loyalty to the Empire. Many of them are now Imperial loyalists. But there are others that abandoned their pledges soon after being released. But I wouldn't call them Maul sympathizers. Maul abandoned them. They are wanted criminals, nothing more."
"Very good. I want them as well. Any knowledge about how I can contact them?"
Bo's eyebrows lifted in surprise. "And what would you need from them? Not planning on reviving a dead cult, are you?" She said this without the slightest trace of abashment.
Rex shook his head. "No, ma'am, just in need of willing participants for a small, distracting display of rebellion against the Empire."
Bo lifted her chin. "I can't see them being all that eager. They are few in numbers. Any sort of activity would expose them."
Rex picked up his helmet and stood. "I can promise them passage off this planet."
"Assuming any of them survive your mission."
Rex put his helmet on and spoke, his voice garbled and low. "Men in front of a firing squad don't really care if the escape plan may have a similar result. A chance is a chance."