A couple of hours later, all of the troopers were asleep except for Rex. They were exhausted, Rex included, and they had just talked for a while about what was going to happen. They trusted General Tano, but this was unknown territory, even for them. None of them had ever dreamed that they would be on the run from the Republic and they had no idea what to expect. Even Jesse and Rex had a few doubts, although they took it upon themselves to support and assure their younger brothers.

Parts of their armor were in stacks on the ground and most of them were curled up under blankets, although some of them had doubled up. Rex still had all of his armor on just because he wasn't planning on resting yet. For some reason, Jesse was sleeping with his helmet on, which Rex assumed was to muffle his snoring. When asleep, the ARC trooper was louder than a sonic boom.

Rex was sitting in one of the seats, wondering if he should go into the cockpit or wait a while longer. He hadn't heard Ahsoka working for a while, and the last trooper had only fallen asleep about ten minutes ago, but he knew she had been through a lot in the past few hours and that she was going to have to process it sooner or later. In the end, though, he stood up, trying not to wake his brothers and slid his helmet back on. He felt like he needed the confidence boost right now.

Ahsoka was sitting in the pilot's seat again when Rex walked in. She turned when she heard the door open, and pivoted the seat to face him. "How are they doing?"

"Alright, for the most part," he replied. "Some better than others. It's a lot to process. Most of them are sleeping now, though."

She nodded, still trying to process everything herself. Standing up, she explained her own situation. "The tracker is down, no one from the Republic should be able to find us. I scrambled the ship's identification code, and I sent a message to Anakin. If he finds it, he'll know how to find us."

The message in itself was good, but Rex caught the keyword in there. "If?"

Rubbing the side of her arm, she admitted, "It's a little obscure, it may take him a while to check where I sent the message. I don't know when he will get it, or if he'll even receive it in time."

"He's been in tighter spots before," Rex assured her. If Ahsoka could escape the detention center two years ago, he knew Skywalker could pull himself out of Coruscant. "We can wait it out once we land on Xlenia."

Ahsoka nodded, but didn't respond and let her gaze slide away, towards the hyperdrive. She couldn't see his eyes under the helmet, but he could see hers, and he knew something was up. "What?"

Swallowing, Ahsoka breathed in, going over the words one more time. The work she had done hadn't taken the full two hours, but rehearsing how she wanted to say this had. "I don't think it's a good idea for you guys to stay on Xlenia."

"Then why even go there?" Rex asked, looking back at the hyperdrive to see if she had messed with it. "I thought you said it was abandoned, that no one would see us there. Isn't that the safest place to be?"

"The safest place you can be is as far away from me as possible," Ahsoka told him, hardening her eyes and forcing herself to look up at him. She had already thought this through, and she had to convince him that it was the truth.

She was glad he was wearing his helmet though because Ahsoka wasn't sure she wanted to see the face he was making right now. "Are you insane?" He asked, almost angry but not quite, and keeping his voice low.

Gesturing to the controls of the ship, Ahsoka explained her plan. "The Republic doesn't know what you've done yet. If you go back without me, they won't accuse you of treason. You could bring my lightsabers back with you, and just say you dumped my body somewhere. They won't be able to prove anything-"

"And leave you on Xlenia alone?"

"Anakin will show up before long-"

"Do you honestly think there's even a chance of that happening?" He asked her, a harsh bite having found its way into his tone. "You think we don't already know it's too late? That any one of them out there hasn't already considered the consequences of what we've done? What would have happened if we hadn't escaped in time?"

Ahsoka wanted to argue, wanted to prove that they still had a chance to avoid all of that, but Rex didn't let her.

"That ship was going down, and those soldiers, OUR BROTHERS, would have been willing to die, and take you and me and all of them down with them! At least now they might try to save themselves! We could have escaped on our own and gone back to the Republic, but we chose to follow you!"

His words stunned her into silence. That was it. That was the reality all of them were facing now, or at least how Rex told Ahsoka that he saw it. The resolve Ahsoka had minutes ago was breaking, because he had already thought of her plan and he had chosen otherwise.

She had to know. Did he believe what he was saying, was he sure that this was the right thing to do? He stepped forward, reaching up for the side of Rex's helmet. He didn't try to stop her as she pulled it gently off his head. Don't hide behind your helmet, she thought. Your eyes won't lie to me. I need to know that it's you I'm talking to.

Maybe she expected him to be serious, maybe she expected him to be mad or angry at her. She didn't expect Rex to be crying. Just the one tear, but it was there. He looked away for a second, but he looked back long enough to say: "You're all we have left."

She had been wrong. Rex wasn't doing this because it was the right thing to do. Rex, and all of the other troopers, were doing this because they cared, because it was her. He hadn't disobeyed Order 66 for the good of the Republic, he disobeyed because the order meant he had to kill her, and he wouldn't do it.

Rex chose Ahsoka over the Republic. He was the second person ever to do so.

And that was what shattered Ahsoka. It broke her because she didn't think that she deserved it. Not after leaving them, not after everything she had done as the Inquisitor, not after Maul telling her what she would inevitably become. No one like that deserved loyalty, deserved family, deserved unconditional love like that.

Her own tears fell on Rex's helmet, the thing that hid his face to prevent most people from seeing him as more than an asset. The mask he had let her take off, the symbol that tied him to the government he was willing to abandon if it meant saving her. Her knees went weak, and she slowly fell to the ground still clutching that helmet. Rex kneeled right down with her, hands on her shoulder, and refusing to let her think she was alone.

If Ahsoka let go of this helmet, she was going to let go of her plan. She didn't have to, but it was going to happen. As long as she held on to the Republic's control over Rex and the other men, and over her, she would still have the audacity to convince Rex that he had to leave her behind. She could give that helmet back to him and tell him it was for the best, and that she would be fine on her own.

Except she wouldn't be. She knew that the Republic wouldn't save either of them and playing by their rules wouldn't either. If Ahsoka tried to do this alone, she would lose herself to the fear rising up inside her. Rex was all she had left too.

The helmet slipped out of her fingers, as it had fallen out of Rex's hours earlier. It clattered to the ground beside her and out of reach, and Ahsoka closed her eyes as her tears kept falling. "I'm sorry," she whispered, knowing it was her turn to trust Rex. He pulled her in close, as if doing so would protect her from everything that was coming for them.

Ahsoka clung to his shoulders because he was the only thing that felt safe right now. Rex felt her shaking, legitimately shaking, and he only hugged her tighter for it. Out of all of the hugs he had given her recently, this one was the most painful because he knew that she needed it so badly.

"I don't know what's happening," she whispered into his shoulder, her voice breaking between gasps. At that moment, Rex heard a voice he hadn't heard in a long time: the one of a scared 14-year-old girl he had to protect. "I don't know what to do."

She felt so small, so helpless, like the Youngling she had been before Anakin had taught her. The weight of a dead Jedi Order was falling on her shoulders because that had been the thing she had tried to prevent by forming the Sister. Order 66 was the one thing she had hoped to stop out of everything she did as the Inquisitor, but she hadn't stopped it, only delayed it. Ahsoka hadn't been enough to save the Order.

"I can feel it," she cried, giving in to the pain she had been fighting off for hours. "They're all just...gone. I-I don't even know who is left, or who is dead." Closing her eyes, she admitted the truth out loud to herself. "It's my fault, I should have told somebody, I should have made sure this could never happen, I should have known that killing Palpatine wasn't enough, I didn't...I didn't finish the plan..."

Rex didn't even know what to say, or if there was anything he ought to say. Kamino had never trained him for what to do when his best friend was blaming herself for the collapse of her childhood home. He didn't blame her, not at all, but she wouldn't listen to him if he tried to tell her that. Guilt, he knew from experience, wasn't something that just went away. It was always there, nagging in the back of your head at the worst possible moments.

He couldn't just let her take the fall for something this big, though. Ahsoka was one person in a galaxy full of people who didn't stop Order 66 either. At least she had tried to make a difference and had been successful. Eight months was a hell of a difference.

Pulling back just a little bit, he grabbed her wrists gently to make her remember that he was still there with her, even with how alone she felt. Tears still fell down her face, and she couldn't bring herself to look up at him. Ahsoka didn't need to see Rex in order to hear him though.

"Anyone could have done something to stop this," he told her quietly, reminding her of facts she couldn't deny. "Hundreds of people have known about this longer than you have, but you're the only one who did something about it. Just because you're selfless as all hell doesn't mean it's your job to save everyone. It's not your fault Order 66 even exists in the first place."

Ahsoka breathed, trying to believe that Rex was right. It was something she had told herself, once upon a time, but it was a lot harder to believe in right now as opposed to back at her house a few weeks ago.

She let her hands slip into his, holding on to the one person she had with her. Swallowing, she dared to look up at Rex, her eyes still shining with tears.

"You can't keep doing this by yourself, taking all the blame for something one person can't fix," he told her, though he didn't doubt that she would try to. "It's gonna break you. If you think I'm going to let that happen, then you need to remember who we are."

"Family," she whispered, closing her eyes and seeing the picture she had given Rex not long ago. When she had lost everything else she had gotten back since returning from Dromund Kaas, her family was what she had left.

Rex let his forehead rest on hers, just resting, and hoping she could too. Compared to the chill that had overtaken her when Darkness had risen up inside her, his touch was warm. Slowly, Ahsoka faced the guilt inside her, putting faith in what Rex had told her. Yes, she was small and relatively helpless, but the galaxy she wanted so much to save was infinitely bigger than her. Maybe she had been able to survive Dromund Kaas with no one except the Sister, but she couldn't fight the system Sideous had corrupted alone, if she could fight it at all.

So she released the responsibility she had assigned to herself. Maybe she didn't believe it fully yet, but she was willing to trust that she wasn't enough to protect everyone she cared about. There were so many of them and one of her, and one person was too small to carry the weight of a thousand. For once in her life, being young and small and helpless came as a relief, not as a flaw.

Ahsoka found a weak smile inside of her. "Some general you have," she laughed quietly, opening her eyes just enough to see Rex's hands squeezing hers.

"We're all traitors anyway," he decided, since he was already breaking trooper etiquette for getting so emotional around a superior officer. "At least I'm still loyal to mine."