This Means War

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The prompt is "War," and somehow I wrote a domestic fluff chapter haha. In case you haven't read my other Rex/Ahsoka stories, this story takes place after the first season of The Mandalorian. Din asked Ahsoka to teach the Child (whose name is Dral), and she agreed. Dral used Force healing to de-age Rex, and Rex and Ahsoka got married. They're both in their late forties in this fic and live together on Ossus where they look after/teach Dral

Rex liked to collect things, which was a sweet habit in theory. Ahsoka loved that somebody who'd never really been able to own things for so long now gathered and treasured his possessions like the most precious of metals. The problem was that the things Rex collected were junk. Trash. Garbage. Useless by any reasonable standard.

Normally Ahsoka tolerated the hoarding because she loved Rex and, living on a near-empty planet, it wasn't as if they were lacking for space. But several days into one of Rex's week-long treks to a bigger planet for supplies Ahsoka was nearing the end of her rope.

Din was off on a hunt and Rex was away getting supplies, so Ahsoka was left as the sole caretaker for Dral. Dral wasn't a particularly troublesome child, but all children were full-time projects, and Ahsoka wasn't used to being the only one around to feed him, bathe him, clothe him, entertain him, teach him, and put him to bed. It was exhausting, and the last thing Ahsoka needed was to be unable to locate Dral's bath towel in the closet among a literal mountain of Rex's stuff.

Midway through Ahsoka's rummaging something fell from one of the top shelves and hit Ahsoka right on the head, drawing several profane curses from her mouth. Looking down to the ground she identified the culprit: a long-since broken beyond repair blaster that Rex kept around for undetermined reasons.

"That's it!" Ahsoka snarled, and Dral—still stark naked from his bath—stopped running around to turn back and stare at her, huge ears cocked in question.

"I've had it with all this junk lying around cluttering up my house! We're getting rid of it, once and for all."

Dral let out a concerned coo and Ahsoka snatched him up before he got it into his head to run away again. She towelled him off, dressed him, then marched him over to the closet that held the majority of Rex's miscellany, setting him down next to her to watch while she sorted through his things.

Ahsoka wasn't cruel. She knew Rex better than anyone in the galaxy and she didn't throw anything out that she thought might have sentimental value. Dral still looked up at her with big, judgmental eyes, so she found herself justifying each item she put in the toss pile to him.

"Look, a takeout menu from some probably closed restaurant on Coruscant. What could he possibly do with that?"

"This is a random piece of plastoid he found in the sand once on some desert planet. It looks like clone armor, but he didn't know who owned it, and it's not even a full piece of armor! There's no reason to keep it."

"Circuits to a burnt-out probe droid."

"And here? A bag of rocks. Just a bag of completely ordinary rocks."

The next day Ahsoka gathered up all the things she'd deemed disposable and took them with her speeder to the dump. They lived in a remote part of a remote planet, so the dump that she and her few distant neighbors used was a few hours away, but it would be worth it to declutter the house. When Ahsoka returned, she walked into her home and breathed in deeply, feeling renewed and refreshed. It was like she'd been carrying the weight of that full closet on her shoulders and the weight was finally lifted. Rex would be mad at her at first, but he'd quickly come to appreciate the service she'd done. Force, he might not even notice that some things were missing.

Rex came home the next day with meat for the carnivores and some other household goods that were hard to get on Ossus. He noticed.

"Ahsoka, did you see that blaster I bought at that pawn shop last year?" he asked

Ahsoka froze midway through wrestling Dral into his high chair for lunch.

"You mean the broken one that will probably never blast again?"

"Well, that's one way to describe it. It's a classic, not produced anymore."

"...It's in a better place now."

Rex returned to the kitchen, his brow furrowed. "What did you do…?"

Ahsoka sighed. She didn't regret throwing the stuff away, but actually telling Rex about what she'd done was harder. "There's all this… stuff you always have lying around that you're never going to do anything with."

Rex narrowed his eyes at her. "Out with it."

"I threw it away, OK? I went through that supply closet and anything that didn't have sentimental value I threw away."

"How do you know what has sentimental value to me?"

"Really?" Ahsoka said, hand on her hip. "Are you trying to tell me you had an emotional connection to those probe droid circuits?"

"I was going to fix that."

"You've had it for five years, Rex!"

Rex sucked on his teeth and slowly shook his head, a surefire sign that he was angry.

"You know what this means, right?" he said slowly, evenly.

"What?" Ahsoka said cautiously, as the feeling that she would regret what she'd done sunk into her gut.

"This means war."

As far as Ahsoka could tell, Rex wasn't doing anything differently, and it was driving her crazy. She knew he'd meant business when he'd declared war, and he was certainly shorter and more cool with her than usual, but nothing he did seemed to match those ominous words. It made Ahsoka jumpier than usual, and she went about her normal life for several days in suspense, always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

In the meantime, she continued teaching Dral, helping around the house, and maintaining her contacts with the remaining fragments of the Rebellion and the burgeoning New Republic on the off chance she could help out with something. Rex kept up with the housework, took care of Dral, and coordinated with the clone rehabilitation house he'd helped establish on Seelos. Everything continued as normal.

Then she tripped over a pile of her dirty clothes in their room.

Then she couldn't find a clean cup when she wanted a glass of water.

Then she found melted chocolate rubbed into one of her favorite blankets.

Then she couldn't clear a space for work on her messy desk.

"Ok," she said on the third day over dinner. "I get it now. You're making a mess for me? You want me to live in a rancor pit as punishment?"

Rex looked up from his plate of food with a look of pure innocence. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"The clothes. The dishes. My desk. You're doing it on purpose!"

"I'm not doing anything, Ahsoka."

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously at him, but he just picked up his cup of tea and sipped it placidly.

"What do you mean you're not doing anything? I just told you-"

"I'm not doing anything anymore."

Ahsoka continued to stare at Rex, then her eyes widened as understanding dawned. "You… you're saying I'm messy?"

Dral cooed and looked back and forth between them, his eyes wide and curious at the unusual displays of aggression from his caretakers.

"I didn't say anything. The evidence speaks for itself."

"That's ridiculous."

"Come on, Ahsoka," Rex said, leaning back in his chair. "You don't clean up after yourself. You know that."

Ahsoka did not know that, and she would not respond to the accusation.

"I'm not blaming you," Rex continued. "It's not your fault you grew up in a fancy temple where your quarters were cleaned regularly by somebody else."

Ahsoka's jaw dropped. Is this how Rex saw her? "That's not true and I'll prove it. Keep not picking up after me and see if I care."

"I already did that and you did care."

"Well keep doing it and see. I'll be just fine," she said, defiantly picking up her dirty plate and stacking it with Rex's and Dral's to take to the sink.

"Hey, I wasn't done ye-" Rex said, reaching back for his dirty plate.

"Well, you're done now," Ahsoka said, shoving the dishes in the sink and turning on the water.

She expected this to be the part where he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her stomach, telling her he was done fighting and was sorry, but he didn't. The chair scraped behind her and Dral's giggles drifted off down the hallway, and Ahsoka continued washing dishes sulkily.

She hated when she got like this. Over the years Ahsoka had put great effort and intention into tamping down her impetuous, snarky side—the side that had earned her the name 'Snips.' Life had become too serious, too tragic for that kind of attitude. She let it come out sometimes still, mostly around Rex, which was part of why she loved him. But she hated when it came out by accident—not because she wanted to relax and be free and easy but because she was feeling petulant and unable to hide it.

Ahsoka finished the last dish and placed it carelessly on the drying rack. She leaned over the sink and sighed. Eventually they'd apologize to each other and this would end, but Rex had declared war, and she wasn't quite ready to lose yet.

Rex and Ahsoka each escalated their war of attrition over the next few days. Rex stopped doing Ahsoka's laundry and stopped cleaning her study, and Ahsoka found a few items of his each day to put in a box destined for the dump. They spoke to each other rarely, which Ahsoka hated but stuck to stubbornly. She sometimes told Dral about her problems, but he wasn't the greatest conversationalist, and she missed Rex's easy company.

On the third day Din returned and Ahsoka was thrilled to finally have another adult to confide in. As soon as he stepped through their front door she was right there with a drink and straw and an invitation to tell her about his hunt. Din seemed confused, but indulged her with a few stories. He politely ignored the messy, chaotic state of her study.

At dinner Ahsoka continued to ask Din about his travels while Rex silently fed Dral. Din tried his best but he'd never been much of a talker, and Ahsoka had resorted to asking him where he refuelled when he held up a hand to stop her.

"Wait up. What's going on here?"

"What do you mean?" Ahsoka asked innocently.

"Don't play dumb. What's up with you two? You're usually all over each other."

Rex huffed indignantly and Ahsoka sputtered.

"We're fine," Ahsoka said.

"Look, I can't be the only one either of you gets your social interaction from. Figure this out, alright?" Din said. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to spend my evening with my son who I haven't seen in weeks."

With that, Din rose from the table and picked Dral up, who burbled happily in his arms. They headed off in the direction of Din's room, leaving only Ahsoka and Rex in the kitchen.

Ahsoka looked across the table at Rex and gave him a wry smile. "Well…" she said after some hesitation, "maybe we should negotiate a ceasefire."

Rex's shoulders shook with a chuckle and he couldn't help the slight smile that raised the corner of his mouth. "That's probably for the best. I've been missing you."

"I'm sorry I threw out your stuff," Ahsoka blurted out, all the apologies that had built up in her head coming out at once. "I can go back to the dump to get it. It was all in just a few big boxes, and it's probably still at the top-"

"It's alright, cyare," Rex said, walking around the table to Ahsoka and taking her hands in his. "You were right, most of that stuff wasn't really worth keeping. But… do me a favor and next time you want to clean things out, just ask me which things I want to save first."

Ahsoka wrapped her arms around Rex and buried her face in his chest. "I'm sorry," she said, just one more time for good measure.

"All is forgiven. And… I should have been more direct with you, too. It was childish of me to punish you like that," Rex said into her montrals, stroking a hand down her lek.

Ahsoka sighed in contentment, relieved at finally being back where she was always meant to be. "I hate it when you're mad at me," she said, eyes closed.

Rex chuckled and pulled her in tighter. "Doesn't happen very often."

"That just makes it even harder when it does. I don't know what to do with myself."

"We make a good team. And so long as we're being patient with each other's… flaws, everything works out."

"Then I guess I'll let you keep more stuff in the house and you keep picking up my dirty clothes?"

"Works for me."

"It feels like I'm getting the better end of that bargain, now that I think about it…" Ahsoka said.

Rex laughed again. "Naw, I'm pretty sure I got a real steal."

Ahsoka sighed in contentment, basking in the comfort of her husband's arms. Peacetime was good.