risky rescue

Afir heard Ahsoka's little voice before she felt her in the force. Which was quite a surprise, considering her line of work.

"Master!" the little Trogruta yelped. She seemed as surprised as anyone. "We're here! We've come!"

"I told you we'd come get you," Anakin grinned at her.

Afir wished she had the guts to rip his arms out of their sockets and beat him to death with his own lightsaber handle.

"I hope you brought reinforcements," she murmured. "We're not getting out of here alive."

Helena Davis looked over at the uniformed jedi. She'd heard the comment and wondered at it.

"Doing a bit of fortune-telling now, Commander?" Rex asked. "Don't mind me if I put more faith in the blood and guts delivery system than your mystic mob sense, will you?"

Afir arched a brow at him and snickered. He and Anakin flanked the door and prepared for violent egress. "Ready?" the clone captain asked over his shoulder.

"I'll read your palm for a coin, soldier. Just let me find my crystal ball." She drew her own blaster and held her lightsaber at arm's length.

"Good girl," Rex purred. His hand signals meant something to the men in his command, even if some of his companions were forced to rely on verbal messaging.

Altis considered the proprietary feelings he felt from the ranking clone. Very few of the clones he'd met were protective of the jedi in such a way. It wasn't an assignment. It wasn't a combat bond. There were soft, warm feelings from the clone toward the young woman. Quite a different warmth than the amusement and kinship that he read Rex emitting toward Ahsoka Tano. This was like hero worship and affection. And, again, very different from what the clone felt toward Anakin, who held quite a bit of his loyalty. It was tangling. It was very much like a man with a woman he loved and respected. The marrying kind of love and respect.

Altis wondered that the other jedi didn't pick up on the attachment. Or perhaps they had. He'd known Master Yoda's pet negotiator for very few moments himself and he knew without a doubt that he was a better person for it. She was simple. Of all the traits he admired, that was his favorite. She seemed to weigh every heartbeat, reassessing with every second that passed-deciding which risks were worth the effort-and consciously deciding on a course of action. He'd heard Anakin complaining to his company that she wouldn't have been in this mess if she'd had her own troops around to help her. He'd heard Rex chide his general that the woman was her own and that it was better that she live life her own way than succumb to another's vision. The trooper had said something about packing springtime away into a box. Altis understood the emotion. Better to let the seasons come and go-better to let the woman answer the call to her own conscience-than to try to hem in what couldn't be safely contained.

"Anakin?" Afir asked now. The younger man turned, concern on his face. "I don't feel good about this..."

"Relax, Master," he assured her. "I'm here, Rex is here, and we even brought some extra jedi juice to amp up the ante. We'll get you home safe."

Fear and regret oozed out of the woman's aura. Her face was grim as she nodded sharply. It wasn't agreement. It was resignation. One of Rex's men-the one who introduced himself as Hil-reached out and patted her elbow.

"We'll get you out of here, ma'am," he echoed. "We're young yet, but we're good at this."

"What a thing for us to achieve," she said, reaching out to touch the chin of his helmet with the back of her hand. "We cannot cure all ills, cannot mend all injustice, but we've managed to flash raise a race of men with compassion and bravery and-"

"Shush, now," Rex cooed from the doorway. "We're proud to be here. My guys-we're happy to come get you, anytime you need us, Master Kuay Li'in. You know that. We don't need all the pretty words."

There was a faint beep as her blaster reached full charge.

"On my count." Rex's voice changed and he was in command again. No more comforting, now it was all business.

Afir looked up at Rex as he jumped aboard the ramp. She was elbow-deep in his brethren.

"If you do something like that again I'll have you reconditioned," she said softly as she glanced back down.

"You'll try," he teased her. His heart wasn't in it and she looked up again, her miserable face meeting his eyes despite the opaqueness of his visor. She could always find their eyes. She just knew and it made more than one of them feel stripped naked. Now the expression of mourning and worry and despair twisted the ache in his gut even tighter. He wished he could find some safe hole to shove her in and keep her there until this war was over.

"I'm going to get on the gun," he announced to no one in particular.

"Anakin's got the ship well in hand," she told him. "I'll watch out for Ince while you're gone."

She'd watched over Vere, too. He'd felt the swell of emotion as she'd comforted his dying comrade. Both had known there was no other possible outcome, but she'd eased the man's final breaths and Rex had seen how much that had taken out of her. As if days and days of surviving on a hostile planet with probably very little to eat or drink and certainly no creature comforts hadn't done enough, she'd been willing to give everything in her for a man she'd never met before.

She'd be empty-hollow-long before this war was over.

There'd be nothing left to give if she kept up at this pace.

And that was just what he knew of her.

When Rex went back to the medcentre to check on Ince's belongings he found himself face to face with the jedi again. Too soon for comfort.

Afir had waited as long as she could when she'd felt the man's life energy merge with the force. She'd known her claim on him was negligible so she'd continued to help the med droids and human physicians in medbay with the other wounded men and women. But now she sought to comfort herself. Tears fell from her eyes as she stroked the dark hair that had only just begun to grow out of the standard Kamino issue-clipped close on the sides, cropped almost flat on top.

"Two for two," she said as the clone came back in. "Was it worth it?"

His heart raced out of control as she looked up and met his eyes.

"Worth losing two of mine to save the two of you?"

Afir nodded and he shrugged. His mind leapt with more conviction. Yes! followed quickly by No! Never!. "I'd give my own life to protect yours, Master Kuay Li'in. The offer's been made before."

"I can't stand myself right now," she told him. "I hate myself. I hate Helena Davis. I hate the Regent and Republic Intell and the Seps and Master Syfo-Dyas."

"That's quite a list," he told her. He began to empty the man's pouches and pockets. She continued to stroke the dead man's head as if he were a child with a headache.

"What makes our lives more worthy than his?" she asked him. "I can promise to defend you with my life. I can promise to defend truth and democracy and justice...with my life. But how can I demand that of another? How can any moral person send a slave to a place where he might die to defend someone else's ideals? And where the hell are our ideals on Fath? The Regent?" She snorted. "He can go to hell. His ideals are not my ideals. The rebels? How do they justify killing their own? What is justifiable risk? What is the trade-off between bloodbath and necessary evil?"

Rex's hand shook as he covered hers with it. "You need to find a quiet place. A place where you can shut it all down, shut it all out. We're lucky in that, I guess. I can hide in my armor and not deal with any of you. I can filter you out and stay sane until the world seems safe again. Where do you go?"

She shook her head. "I'm for Gareth next," she told him. "There's another damned agent out of contact. Another world that neither side has managed to destroy yet."

"Are we tasked to you?"

She met his eyes directly again. Helmet and all, she looked right at him.

"I hope not, Captain. I hope not. I cannot bear the thought of another man dying under my banner. The blood of strangers is far preferable to me than that of you and your men."

"Be that as it may, Master Jedi, think on this-if we'd never been created we'd still not be here. Our lives may seem slim and meaningless to you. We may be a cause or cause for debate, but whatever the source, whatever the reason...we're here now. We have this one chance to live that we never would have gotten if there hadn't been a need for an army. So maybe it's right, or maybe it's wrong, but the same slavery that created us created us. I'll take my chances. I'll get as close as possible to as many of the lads as I can so that I can say that I was touched by something, by someone. I'll teach them so that when they die they'll be able to have lived-even if it is a limited life in a barracks waiting for the drum and bugle to sound us to war."

"You're a better human than I, Rex," Afir said softly.

"It's because I'm designed to be as perfect as humanly possible," he told her, squeezing her hand under his again. "And you jedi are just random creatures with superior sensor arrays." She started to slide her hand out from beneath his.

"Thank you..."