The World Upon Your Shoulders

And any time you feel the pain, Hey Jude, refrain
Don't carry the world upon your shoulders
For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder

'Hey, Jude' – The Beatles

Yavin IV felt different than the others.

It was no one specific thing. Over the last several weeks, Ahsoka, Rex, Echo and Fives had been doing preliminary scans of planets without Imperial presence, but in sectors and systems of potential strategic importance. A war against the Empire was still years off; it was possible there would never even be one. But a foundation must be laid. Rebellions did not grow up overnight, but in fits and starts and with cautious, wary guidance.

Ahsoka had seen enough habitable planets and moons since the survey began to make her dizzy. They seemed to blend together, spending only a day or two exploring. A jungle, then a temperate zone, then a desert, then an ice planet. Another jungle, a woodland with tall deciduous trees making a riot of color in the cooling months, a subtropical shell-scattered beach. More desert. And now yet another jungle world.

It was different somehow. She wandered idly, pausing here and there throughout the ruins they'd found. Echo had mentioned that the ziggurat was in reasonable shape for being so old. There were even areas that looked like they might have once served as hangar bays on the lower levels, ages ago, though now the stonework was broken and covered in jungle flora.

She wondered if she was just being paranoid. It reminded her too much of the world where they had all been when Order 66 had gone out, a lifetime ago. The steep caverns, the pressing humidity, the smell of dirt and plants. Of stagnant water, of decaying foliage, but also the burgeoning life growing out of it.

Leaping lightly over a pile of stone rubble, Ahsoka continued climbing the stairway. Shafts of light breaking through the uppermost level caught her attention. She turned towards it. What had once been a pair of great doors were now fallen from their hinges, the wood rotted and black with age and mildew.

Light glanced down from cracks in the ceiling, striking the ground like dusty fingers. Moss and vines covered the floor, hung down the walls like carpets and drapes. Bright, spindly petaled flowers sprung up in little crevasses in the floor, pale pinks and lavenders and yellows. A couple of large insects buzzed across the open space, darting in repeated, circular patterns. Crystalline wings glittered in the sunlight. A third darted upward as she stepped forward, hummed around her for a second, then landed on her shoulder. It flicked its wings. She stared at it, unsure if it was poisonous or not. Multifaceted eyes seemed to catch prism colors. It was striped a dangerous looking black and yellow down its thorax and abdomen. It clung tightly to the fabric of her coat. She tilted her head, watching it, then lightly lifted a hand and prodded it with a finger.

It burst into flight and darted off towards one of the still pools of rainwater that were collected on the ground.

Ahsoka looked around the room again, and tried to imagine it without all the encroaching nature. Long, rectangular. High ceilings. Flat, paved stone floors. Carved columns of stone. A raised pavilion at the end of the rectangle.

It was an audience chamber.

She stepped further into the room, carefully. The view from this height would be spectacular, if the floor was still solid enough for walking on. She paused, knelt down with the tips of her lekku brushing the floor, closed her eyes. The stone had been hewn ages ago, but it was still rock, still breathing with the Force. She set a pair of fingers down against the cool, slick stone. It hummed, full of the feeling of solidity, strength, age. The surface of it was full of the skittering souls of small wildlife. Insects, smaller reptiles. They danced their daily dance of sunning, hunting, feeding, sleeping. The rock was solid, the fauna not particularly dangerous so long as she stayed away from anything potentially venomous.

Ahsoka wandered towards the middle, then looked up at the great, heavy arches overhead, dripping with vines. She closed her eyes and reached out again with the Force. There was nothing unusual when she deliberately stretched for a reading of the place. So she tilted her head back, cleared her mind, and let her thoughts drift.

Current worries and problems cluttered her thoughts. She brushed them away, let them float along. Idle concerns swirled upward, eddying through her mind. She wondered where the others were. She let the thought drift onward. Yavin. Yavin. Something stirred in the Force about Yavin, and she could not pinpoint it. She knew the place had history, but this place was unoccupied today. Was it an echo of the past she was picking up? Some memory imprinted onto the stone?

She had never been much for seeing through time. Potential futures always swelled and dipped, at one moment, one future is likely, then one little change could shift the entire flow of the timestream. It was like pulling threads from a cloth. The more you tried to pull out one string, the more you ended up with. She didn't have the patience to weave it all back together and read its' pattern.

Images fluttered though her conscious like iridescent insect wings. She opened her eyes, lowered her chin. There was an illusion of air there, faint and pale. The pavilion cleaned of residue. A woman in white stood there, palms outward, hair braided intricately. Ahsoka resisted the urge to recognize it, fearing it would vanish. She forced the tide of understanding back.

Figures swept past her, form without solidity. One dark haired, one light haired, human. A tall shaggy figure, probably Wookie. The woman on the pavilion smiled, looked down. There was a resounding stomp, a sound she knew, the militaristic thump of many men's feet shifting to attention.

And then it was gone.

She breathed in, let thoughts clutter their way forward in her mind. Recognition came. She had seen the woman in white before. Leia. She saw Leia. How this place and the girl were connected, she did not know. It was possible she was only seeing a variant of the future. One possibility. Still, it brought gooseflesh to her arms. This place must be included on the list for later survey. Even if it was a remote chance, there was a marker here. She tried to pull up the faint images again, to scour the vision for clues, but they fluttered around like a dream. The harder she tried to grasp them, the more quickly they slipped through her fingers.

Ahsoka prepared to try a meditative practice, to help focus her recall, but a light tapping behind her interrupted the process. Rex was hovering under the archway, knuckles poised to rap against the stone. She could try again later. She mustered a smile for him.

"It's solid. The floor. Once it's cleaned up it should work, though the ceiling needs some repair," she glanced upward towards one of the cracks letting in sunlight.

"Put it on the list then?"

She nodded and Rex stepped up beside her. She ran a hand over her face, rubbed her forehead. It was turning into a long day. It'd be good to go back to the ship and put her feet up for awhile. She sighed. No, not until she sorted through that fleeting image of Leia. Did she have some connection to the girl, then? This was the second time. Not a bad thing, but she wasn't sure what it meant, if it meant anything at all. It probably didn't. She had held Leia, who was very strong in the Force. There was likely some feeble connection made between the two of them. Anakin's daughter and his pseudo-sister and apprentice. Familial bonds were not only of blood. She wondered if she would ever see the boy, Luke.

A hand came to rest on her shoulder. "Are you alright? You should rest."

She gave a single, short laugh. "I'm just tired. I could use some sleep is all." She smiled up at him, then grew hesitant. Rex had a peculiar look on his face. He was vibrating feelings of concern, but also apprehension, hope, determination and desire. It was a heady mixture. She cut herself off from it immediately, closing herself away. It was rude, at best, to peer into someone's feelings deliberately. But it was hard not to pick up on emotions when a person was practically radiating with them.

More disturbing was the last emotion, something that seemed to keep growing steadier as time passed. Always before, her being a Jedi and his being a soldier kept things on solid ground. Their roles were a barrier they could not pass. Those guidelines gave them footing. Now the Jedi were gone, their rules with them, and Rex was no longer in the army. It made things uneasy, and it had been slowly growing more so for the last several months. Rex seemed to have come to some sort of decision, and was going about his careful way of approaching it.

His feelings were projecting themselves at her. It was hard to ignore them. She supposed this was as good a place as any for a confession; it was beautiful, in its own way. Even romantic, in a sense, green and bright and light-filled.

There was a feeling of gathering, of bringing together all those emotions, screwing them to a sticking place of courage. She felt a flutter of panic. She wanted to move away, and did not want to move away. She wanted to go look out one of the cracks in the stone, to catch the view, to calm down. She wanted to just lean forward, relax against him, and just let go of the fear. She didn't want to be like Anakin. She didn't want to fall. She didn't want to turn to the dark. She didn't want to be afraid.

Rex was groping for words. He got as far as putting his other hand on her shoulder and turning her to face him.

And then the pounding sound reached their ears. Rex flinched. The tips of Ahsoka's lekku curled, and she wasn't sure if it was from relief or disappointment. It grew louder, the sound of feet thundering on the stairs, and the sounds of two clones laughing and taunting each other. Rex pulled back, a quick stab of frustration shooting through the Force as he glared at the doorway.

Echo skidded forward, half slamming into the arch, Fives immediately on his tail, trying to shove past. Echo got an arm out in front of him and leapt forward, skidding into the room first.

"Cheater!" Fives declared.

"Did not!" Echo shot back, grinning. The two of them stopped, laughing, to see Rex and Ahsoka standing in the middle of the room. Rex was aggravated, Ahsoka was fidgeting. Echo looked embarrassed. Fives looked confused for a moment, then seemed to realize they'd interrupted something with a rather juvenile display. He colored.

"We saw you heading up the stairs earlier," Echo began, straightening himself out. "We got a little…enthusiastic. Sorry." He held off on what they were sorry for, unsure of exactly what they had burst in on.

Rex ran a hand over his bare head, and a cloud of resignation settled around him. Ahsoka shoved the worries aside, to turn over in her head later. When she smiled at them, it was genuine. She was glad they could just simply play around. "It's alright. We were just going to take a look outside. We're up pretty high here." She folded her arms. If she were wearing the wide sleeved Jedi robes, it would have made her look ageless, wiser and calmer than her years. She let her nerves fret themselves out into the Force, and composed herself to talk to Rex later. This had to be settled, and she had to face what was going on.

Echo and Fives slowly walked into the room, skirting the two of them. They picked one of the larger gaps in the wall to peer through, and seemed to come to a silent agreement to look away from Rex and Ahsoka. They were already there, and nothing could be done about that without a deliberate retreat. They could, however, give the other two what little privacy they could by keeping their attention focused away.

Rex found his own corner to look out. Ahsoka occupied herself with observing one of the large insects perched on a flower.

She wished the awkwardness would pass.

(Hey, Jude, don't be afraid

You were made to go out and get her

The minute you let her under your skin

Then you begin to make it better.)

There was the boom-thrum of cannon fire.

White helmets with dark t-slit visors crowded around, running, shouting, then disappearing in an eruption of red light. Bodies and sky wheeled overhead, smoke clogged the air. Images fragmented, burst.

He stumbled through smoke. Dead men lay on the ground. Figures swept past, some in white going forward, some shapeless and dark moving towards him. He fired blindly. Round, slit white droid opticals gleamed through the miasma. More pairs, everywhere and nowhere, circling him. Closer, smaller, everything compressed, tighter, claustrophobic. Air circulated like sludge, thick in his lungs, unfiltered, damp.

Then another burst of red, and everything was black.

Rex was choking. Air came in, rasping, but clear. There was also light. It crept into his vision slowly, small and dull, emitted from the little glowing greenish disc that marked the doorway when all the lights were out. It cast a funny peppermint aura over the room.

Then there was a snore, and a mutter. He turned his head, just able to see the outlines of Echo and Fives, each on their bunks across the room. Fives rolled onto his back, and an arm flopped off the bed and hung in the air.

Rex pressed a palm against his forehead. Memories of red blaster fire loomed in his mind, the sound of screaming streaming through crackling audio channels. He tried to shove it off, to calm the tremors in his hands. A nightmare. It wasn't real, not anymore. Not for him, at least. He adjusted the blanket so that it lay flat. He'd strangled it into a knot.

Smoke and dirt and blood in his mouth. Rot. The taste of death, memorized down the years. He grimaced, then kicked off the blanket and sat up. Some water, just to distract himself for a few minutes and try for a better dream. He glanced at Echo and Fives, both sound asleep. Ahsoka would be on watch. He ran his hands over his face, unsure if he wanted to see her right now or not. On one hand, sitting with her invariably lightened his mood. On the other, he was still feeling vaguely embarrassed for the aborted attempt to talk about relationships with her that afternoon. It felt silly even thinking about it. What did he know, anyway? Maybe he should just imitate some hero from a holovid and carry her off. It always looked easy that way. He chuckled at himself for a moment. She'd scream once and flatten him with the Force, probably. Then demand to know when he'd lost his damnfool mind.

The door opened for him, and he wandered down the hall to the galley. The lights were low, and he hesitated. This made the second time today he'd come across her doing her Jedi thing.

She was standing beside the table, poised to look out the narrow window onto the planet outside. A mug of tea steamed lightly in her hands. Her eyes were closed, white brows puckered slightly in concentration, lips drawn just a little thin. The tips of her lekku coiled upward, then relaxed in synch with her breathing. The white candle was sitting on the table in its usual place, half melted, flickering, casting both warmth and shadow across half her face. The other half was lit by the cool glow of sunlight reflected off the planet below them, pressing through the narrow slice of transparasteel window. It was moments such as this when she seemed more Jedi than anything else, something otherworldly, old as stars and dust and just as comprehensible.

She was worrying again. And praying, it often seemed. She bought candles when they stopped for supplies, and he'd found her many times since they started this journey, sitting before it, concentrating, meditating, or sometimes dozing. She never could sit still for too long.

He could splash his face with some water in the refresher. He turned to go, but Ahsoka chose that moment to open her eyes and shudder slightly. The transition took only a moment; the ageless Jedi was gone, and only Ahsoka, far more familiar, remained. She saw him. "Rex?"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt."

She looked at him blankly for a moment, then seemed to focus a little more. She shook her head. "No, no, you didn't. Are you alright? You look a little off."

He shrugged. He'd had nightmares before, he would again. "Just getting something to drink." He shuffled into the galley, aiming for the sink. If he was already there, he might as well.

"There's still some tea if you want any. It's a tisane, so it won't keep you awake," she offered, sipping at her own mug, warm vapor rising and curling from its surface.

He poured himself a mug of his own, tasted it, and made a face. It wasn't as bitter as caf could be, but the flavor was different and he wasn't sure he liked it. Ahsoka gave a light laugh at his expression. "No?"

He gave the tea a skeptical look. "I like caf better."

She said, gently, "It'll help you sleep."

He sipped at it again, warily, but continued to drink. It certainly replaced the taste of blood. She knew why he was awake at this hour. Again, it wasn't the first time. He wondered if the others had ever sat with her in the same way, and she'd encouraged them to drink tea and tried to make them laugh. The reasonable part of him hoped so. The rest of him felt an odd curl of jealousy that he quickly quashed as unfair. She was leaning against the wall now, drinking, watching the planet rotating slowly in its daily cycle. He stepped up. There was a storm brewing on the southern hemisphere. He could almost imagine the grey clouds flashing with lightning.

"Someone will have to do a more thorough survey later," Ahsoka said with a sigh, then a slurp as she drained the last of the liquid, then set the mug down on the table with a slight clatter of ceramic on metal. He gave her a querying look. She bit her lip, shrugged, and waved a hand. "Just a feeling."

"From a Jedi, that means something."

She chuckled. "Glad you're feeling better."

If he were a hero in a holodrama, he'd probably have something witty to say as a comeback, something that should be lame, but wouldn't be due to smooth delivery. Something that would charm her, make it all simple. Something like, You make things better. Instead, he drank down the bitter tea and made another face at it. Ahsoka laughed at him a little.

Spit it out, soldier, you're just making it harder on yourself.

Rex fumbled with the mug for a moment, then set it down next to Ahsoka's. He turned back abruptly, with a vague plan of charging in, and keep charging until he'd managed to say what he wanted to. "Ahsoka," he started, but trailed off when he saw a look of apprehension begin to form on her face. Her eyes were going wide, her lekku seemed to be draining of some color. She'd brought her arms up across her chest almost protectively, closed off.

It always happened like this. They'd get so close, and then something seemed to break in her a little, and she'd close down. Not today. No. No retreat today. Not for me, not for you.

Nothing he could say would sound right. So he pulled himself together, bent down, and kissed her. And kept kissing her, until there was another break, and her hands weren't pushing against him anymore, they were curling into the fabric of his shirt, and he'd figured out putting his hands on her back was better than putting his hands on her shoulders, because he could press her closer, and that awful ache that kept forming up in his chest and arms became a good ache, full of warmth. There was no table, no candle, no tea, no window, no people in the next room, no ship, no planet outside. Just a kind of fumbling, pressing, grasping. Then gasping.

Ahsoka was breathing hard. They both were. She buried her face into his shirt. Something had broken, but not in a bad way. He wrapped his arms around her, tightened his grip. He looked down, tracing the pattern of light and dark that ran down the lekku of her back, the dark tips just reaching past her waist.

He felt vaguely shaky, the way he did after the rush of adrenaline that followed battle. At first he thought Ahsoka was experiencing the same thing; then realized her hands had become fists, and they were, however lightly, striking him while she shook. He pushed her back, a bad feeling starting to work its way through him. She hung her head, looking down, but her hands relaxed slightly and she did not pull away.

"I'm sorry, Rex," she said, then leaned forward into him, pressing her forehead back against his chest, refusing to look up. He froze, and she continued, words coming out in a rapid stream. "I'm sorry. I'm just scared. I don't want to fall. I want this. Force, but I want this. I'm just scared and I don't want to turn to the dark side. I know I'm being stupid about it, and I'm sorry." He felt her shudder, and he tried to take all of that in.

She wasn't pulling away. More than anything, that let him know what to do. Slowly, in case he misunderstood, he shifted closer, tightened his grip. Her hands flattened against him, then slowly slipped around him. They lingered like that, and slowly, a sense of peace began to grow.

What happened with General Skywalker had hurt her. He watched the candle flicker on the table. Her hero had fallen to the dark over misplaced allegiance, pain, and obsessive, overprotective love. The loss of the Jedi was a hole no number of other friends could fill. The Jedi were her life, where she belonged. He understood this; it was similar to the loss he'd experienced on desertion. He had his own fears of this too. He was aging, far more quickly than he should. Even if she did accept him, he would be gone in half the time a normal man would. Perhaps it was selfish of him to pursue her anyway.

But it was her choice as much as his. So he tried.

"I'm no Jedi," he said carefully, choosing his words, "but it seems to me, you've got to want to go to the dark. It's a choice." She pulled back, tilted her head up to look at him. "And you don't want to. So don't."

Ahsoka kept looking at him. It was somewhat unsettling, her blue eyes reflecting some of the planetlight coming through the window. She lifted a hand, and pressed it against his face. Her fingers lightly traced the arches of his brows. The hard planes of his cheekbones and jawline. The downward slope of his nose, then trailed down over his lips and chin.

"I love you," she said.

Before he could reply, she slipped her hand around the back of his head.

Then she pulled him down to kiss her again.

Echo was eating a muja fruit, and trying not to dribble juice down his chin.

He leaned back in his chair, and propped his feet up on the console, trying to avoid kicking anything important on the ship's computer. He glanced out the window to watch yet another potential base planet drifting by, dominating the view, and wondered what number this one was. They'd go down tomorrow and explore. He picked up his holozine and took another bite of the fruit.

Then the door opened. Fives peered inward, looked around, then got a rather evil grin on his face.

"What?" Echo asked.

Fives placed his hands on the top of the doorframe and leaned against it, looking entirely too casual. "I got up to use the 'fresher."

"This is the bridge. 'Fresher's down the hall. You missed."

"Shut up. Rex isn't in our room."

So that's what this was about. Echo gave Fives a skeptical look and chewed on his fruit. "So?"

"So, he's not in the fresher, or the galley, and since nobody's been shooting at us, he's not in the medbay or in here."

Echo took another bite and chewed thoughtfully. "Your point?"

"My point, is that unless he's having a really late night workout in the cargo bay, there's only one other room he could be in." Fives looked triumphant.

"So?" Echo said again, polishing off the muja.

"So he's got to be in Ahsoka's room!"

"Fives, when did you get to be such a gossip?"

"I'm not gossiping!"

Echo rolled his eyes. "You're gossiping. And slow."

Fives shot him an annoyed scowl.

Echo scanned over his holozine. How anyone could believe some of the poodoo the Empire called news he had no idea. Propaganda, all of it, and utterly shameless. "I've got the last shift this week." He flipped a page. "Three nights now."

Fives blinked, took that in, then scowled. "You didn't tell me!"

"I don't have a big mouth," Echo shot back, grinning, then added, "Since Yavin."

Fives brought his hands down, folded his arms, then leaned against the doorframe. "It's going to get weird. Things will change."

Echo paused in his reading and said, somewhat sadly, "I know."

It is so weird writing a kissing scene from a guy's pov. I hope that worked okay. XD

I also just posted a one shot story called The Way of Tea. When I was writing this chapter, I had Ahsoka drinking tea as part of her meditation, and just worked on the assumption it's something she picked up from Obi-Wan somewhere down the years. The Way of Tea is an attempt to explain it, though it definitely can stand alone as a story (and is therefore not actually in this fic). Technically speaking though, it exists in this continuity, if you're interested. ;)

~Queen