Let's Make a Deal

by Zarz

A single moment of compassion has far greater consequences than anyone could have predicted. Crossposted from AO3

Part One: The Choice

CHAPTER ONE

There are legends aplenty, out among the spacelanes. Many are nonsense, of course, products of bored spacers with far too much time on their hands and nothing better to use it for than coming up with ever more dramatic tall tales to regale each other with, once they finally dock somewhere.

But far more have at least some grain of truth in them - the Angels of Iego, for example. Or the cautionary tales of the purrgil.

Some of these tales the Jedi keep particularly close eye on. Because for every dozen tales that are simply a dramatization of an unusual species, there are others that are… more.

Mostly, the Force manifests itself and its will through mortals - Force sensitives. Sometimes, though, there's an entity so powerful as to be said to embody some aspect of the Force itself.

The Bendu for example - an entity last known to reside on Atollon, who speaks of being the one in the middle, between the light and the dark. It is said that he will not take sides in any conflict, and that those who convince him to break his neutrality might live to regret it - if they live at all.

Or Waylin, a trickster spirit of mysterious paths between the stars. When the spirit is thought to be pleased, spacers have claimed to make hyperspace journeys in a tenth the time, or even travel across the breadth of the galaxy in an instant to find themselves exactly where they need to be. When the spirit is angry… well, not every ship entering hyperspace leaves it - at least in one piece.

Raschek, known as the deal-maker, the oath-keeper. They are said to make deals with anyone who can find them about anything they might wish - but woe to the one who attempts to break such a deal. Woe also to the one who makes such a deal carelessly, as Raschek will carry out their end of bargains precisely to the letter.

Some say that physical embodiments exist even of the Dark and Light sides of the Force themselves, though Madame Nu, when asked, is quick to point out that no substantiated records of such beings exist anywhere in the Temple Archives.

But the galaxy and the Force are vast, so most Jedi figure that while there's no reason to disbelieve such embodiments of the Force exist, the odds of any specific Jedi running into even one of these beings is vanishingly small. But the Force, as they say, works in mysterious ways.

In one universe, as the 212th and 501st prepare for an assault on a Separatist base about a year into the war, the generals notice some outlying listening posts scattered throughout the surrounding hills, all poised to intercept Republic communications. Deeming the cost of trying to take the posts intact far higher than any potential rewards, they order their battalions to destroy each post via long-range artillery.

The battle is unremarkable as battles go. The base is destroyed, the listening posts are destroyed, and three days later the 501st and 212th leave, on to the next battlefield, and very few ever think of this utterly unremarkable planet again.

In another universe, Chancellor Palpatine happens to notice the announcement of the campaign. Always looking for another way to twist the knife and make the war just that little bit more desperate, he gives a grand speech to the Jedi Council about how critical those listening posts are to capture, so that the Republic can turn them around and use them against the Separatists. The Council isn't convinced, but he's the Supreme Chancellor and the Supreme Commander of the Republic forces, so ultimately, they don't have any choice but to agree.

This should be a very small change. It isn't.

Cody has half his attention on the blaster bolts flying around him, and the other half on the comm channel that he and Rex are using to keep in touch with the scouts working to capture the listening posts. This is really the sort of mission that calls for ARCs, but neither the 212th nor the 501st have any assigned to them at the moment, so they're making due.

Waxer and Boil finish their report on their approach to the listening post they've been assigned, and then Fives and Echo report that they're in position to take theirs.

"Fives, Echo, go ahead," Rex orders over the comms.

Cody hears a few blaster bolts over the comm channel, barely distinguishable from the ones he's hearing in person, before Fives reports: "Guards neutralized. Entering the listening post now. No sign of additional hostiles. Echo is pulling the logs from the base computer." There's a moment of silence, then Echo yells, "It's a trap! Pull back! All scouting teams pull back! These posts are rigged to blow!"

Cody relays the order in an instant, and keeps half an ear open as the other scouting teams report falling back just in time. A single moment later explosions rock the hills around the battlefield as every listening post goes up in a massive fireball. Eleven of the twelve teams report in, with varying degrees of burns and bruises but all just far enough away from the explosions to survive.

Fives and Echo are the only team that don't report back.

Rex keeps his voice even as he orders the rest of the teams to regroup with their battalions, but underneath it, Cody can hear the strain. This is hardly the first time Rex has had to send his men to their deaths, but he's always had a soft spot for Fives and Echo in particular, and honestly, Cody has too. After rescuing the two of them from Rishi, and failing to save Hevy, Rex has always done his best to take care of them and give them the support and training they need to be the best soldiers they can be. But Cody knows just as well as Rex that no matter how good you are - or someone you love is - that doesn't guarantee survival.

The self-destructing listening stations seem to have been the last major plan of the Seppies, and the battle wraps up shortly thereafter.

Among all the many other aspects of clean-up after a major battle, that means it's finally safe enough to send a medic team out to the remains of the listening post Fives and Echo were examining. Cody knows it's hopeless, but for all their sakes' they have to at least check.

Cody is still waiting to hear back from them when Rex's voice comes over his comm.

"Cody! The tracking signals in Fives' and Echo's armor have come back online! They're currently moving away from the battlefield."

Cody hears the hope in Rex's voice, and answers as gently as he can, "You know it's probably just scavengers looking to sell some clone armor on the black market." At the beginning of the war, there had been some thought to making sure all bodies were recovered for the sake of keeping the clones' armor capabilities secret. But as the war went on (and on and on), such considerations had quickly fallen by the wayside, and now there's a thriving trade in their fallen brothers' armor and weaponry.

"I know," Rex answers, and Cody knows he truly does, "but if there's any chance it's not…."

"Understood. You're going to put a squad together?"

There's sheepish silence over the comms for a moment, then Rex answers, "Actually, General Skywalker already heard the report. He wants us all to go."

Cody sighs, but knows it's useless to try to argue when General Skywalker gets an idea in his head. So instead of starting with a quiet scouting mission to determine whether there even is anyone to rescue, while the various officers continue with all the necessary elements of cleaning up after a battle, both generals, Cody, Rex, and Kix end up all taking a dropship in the direction the tracking signals are coming from, while only Commander Tano and their various second-in-commands are left to finish the clean-up.

Fifteen minutes later they're approaching the site where the tracking signals have come to rest. They appear to be coming from a sandstone structure that blends into the scrublands around them. High walls surround a courtyard, with what might be a low building inside. Oddball brings the dropship around to a landing by the entrance gates, and the five of them walk through the open gates and into the courtyard.

The first thing Cody notices is the raised platform in the center of the courtyard. On it are Fives and Echo. Cody's breath catches when he sees them. His HUD is showing them as alive, against all odds, but they're not looking good. Both of them are chained, wrist and ankle, to poles at their sides, leaving them spread-eagled. Their heads are lolling, and without most of their armor it's obvious both are unconscious. That's quite possibly for the best, given the blood absolutely covering them, dripping down their limbs to pool below them. The faint shimmer of a force-field surrounds them.

Beside them is a small table piled with an extremely disturbing assortment of bloody knives, and Cody is abruptly furious.

So is everyone else, and as one they move towards the two youngest clones, General Skywalker already raising his lightsaber to cut them down from their chains.

Then a figure appears out of thin air between them and the two captives, and suddenly not one of them can move a muscle. Each of them takes a moment to push and strain against their sudden, invisible bonds, but it's no use. Cody can still breathe, and maybe talk, but nothing more than that. From the sounds coming from behind him, Skywalker and Kenobi aren't having any better luck using any of their Force abilities to escape this hold, either.

"Welcome to my humble abode," the figure says as they pull down the hood of their cloak to reveal a vaguely humanoid face and blue and yellow striped hair. "I'm pleased you could make it."

"Who are you?" Skywalker demands, all pent-up fury at seeing his men taken captive and not being able to do anything about it.

"Raschek," the being replies with a sharp-toothed grin. "Perhaps you've heard of me?"

The name doesn't ring any bells for Cody, but Kenobi sucks in a sharp breath.

"The Deal-Maker," he answers, voice tinged with shock.

"You do know me!" Raschek responds, delighted. "But it looks like the rest of your merry band do not. Would you care to explain?"

Cody can just barely turn his head far enough to see General Kenobi, frozen as the rest of them. The general can only manage a miniscule nod towards the being holding them as he says, "My apologies if I get anything wrong, and of course please feel free to correct me; we only have legends to go on, and I'm sure you can guess how those can get twisted over the millenia." Even in these circumstances, Cody can't help the faint smile at his general, always the consummate negotiator.

Raschek nods regally and motions Kenobi to continue, and so to the rest of them, Kenobi explains, "Raschek, so far as Temple records are aware, is an ancient Force entity, known as both the Deal-Maker and Oath-Keeper. They are known for making deals, as I'm sure you can guess from their title. They keep those deals scrupulously, and ensure that such deals are scrupulously enforced on any other parties as well. While anyone can, of course, claim a name, the description matches and the fact that our Force abilities are entirely useless here is a strong indication that you are the one the legends speak of."

"Well said!" Raschek praises, but before they can continue, Skywalker interrupts in a fury.

"I don't care who you are! You've taken two of our men captive; now give them back!"

"Ah, ah," Raschek chides. "I'm hardly going to just give them back, after I went to so much trouble to collect them. But perhaps we can make a deal."

"What did you have in mind?" Rex asks, with a dangerously level tone.

"Quite simple! I'll give these two back to you, and even let the rest of you go as well, so long as one of you volunteers to stay and take their place. After all, mortals are such fun to play with."

"You want one of us to just volunteer to get tortured by you for who knows how long in order for us to get our troopers back?" Skywalker asks incredulously.

"In essence, yes," Raschek answers with total unconcern.

Skywalker is opening his mouth, no doubt to yell at Raschek more, but Rex preempts him.

"I'll do it. I'll take your bargain and trade myself for them, and you'll give them back to us alive."

"No!" bursts out of both generals and Kix. Cody wants to join them in their protest, but can't. Rex has made his decision. And for all that Cody knows full well he's made it out of love alone, he also knows Rex would have made sure to think through all the ramifications first.

The 501st losing their captain will be a blow, and a bad one, far more than losing a couple of troopers already given up for lost. But every officer in the GAR knows just how precarious their lives are. Any day Rex could get killed in one of Skywalker's crazy stunts, so just as he's been trained he's kept the chain of command clear and firm. Within five minutes of Skywalker returning to base with the news that Rex has been captured, there will be a new acting captain ready to take his place. It's depressing, in its way, but it's also how armies are supposed to work - how they need to work.

The fact that Rex is being taken captive rather than killed is both better and worse. It means there's some hope of rescue, but there's also a lot of intel locked away in Rex's brain that any captor might want. In fact, that might actually be Raschek's goal here: trade a couple of troopers who don't know that much for a higher-ranked officer who, with enough torture, could potentially be induced to spill all sorts of military secrets.

But there are protocols for when an officer is captured alive, and an entire set of regs listing every code and password that will need to be updated. Other things, like more general GAR operations, can't be changed in an instant like that. But Cody has to hold out hope that the ARC training Rex received in resisting interrogation will be enough to keep the most critical secrets, and everything else they'll survive losing.

And truly, no matter what the consequences, there was no chance Rex would see a way to save his little brothers and leave them to suffer instead, no matter what the cost to himself might be.

And then, of course, there's also the minor detail that if no one takes this bargain, Raschek might just decide to keep all of them, and the odds of any of them being able to prevent that are looking pretty slim right now. Ahsoka's still free for the moment, but the rescue mission she'll inevitably try to mount as soon as she realizes they've been gone too long isn't likely to be any more successful than their own attempt.

So Cody doesn't protest, only quietly mourns the fact that he can't even give his brother a good-bye hug.

He watches, instead, as Rex is released and walks steadily up the steps to the platform where Fives and Echo are being held. The energy field around Fives vanishes, and Rex steps up to his brother. Without so much as a word or gesture from Raschek, the manacles around Fives' wrists and ankles open, and Fives collapses into Rex's waiting arms.

Rex turns, and carries Fives carefully down the steps, then turns to look at Raschek. "Can our medic look at them?"

"Fine, fine," Raschek waves airily, and Kix is immediately bursting forward to kneel by Fives' unresponsive body as he pulls out his medkit. "Both of these two will remain unconscious until they are back aboard your ship, but they have no fatal injuries and should recover completely in time even given the treatment options you have available."

Kix looks like he's trying to decide between snarling and sighing in relief, but he ends up doing neither and instead just focusing on getting as many bacta patches on Fives as he can.

As Kix works, Rex returns to the platform and retrieves Echo, then lays him down next to Fives on the rough stone of the courtyard pavement.

Then he turns back one last time, carefully not looking at any of the rest of them as he turns, and faces the platform he's about to be strung up on himself.

"No!" Skywalker yells. "Don't do it! Get out of here, Rex!"

"No, sir," Rex answers calmly without turning back. "I made a promise and I don't think it would go well if I backed out now."

He hesitates a moment longer, then strips out of his armor and carefully stacks it on the ground. Then he walks with no further hesitation up the steps of the platform and into the spot Fives was just in. One last deep breath, and he widens his stance and raises his arms, and the four manacles latch themselves around each of his limbs. The forcefield goes up around him, and only now Rex does look down and meet their eyes.

Cody wishes he could do something, anything, but all he can do is smile sadly and try to put all his love for his amazing little brother into his eyes. Rex seems to see it, because he smiles back.

Then, without any word or movent or anything else indicating Rex's torture has begun, Rex's eyes close, and within moments he's sobbing, whimpering, then even begging, "No, no, please no!"

Cody has been trained since decanting that he's not supposed to cry, that it doesn't do anything. He's still practically in tears at just how broken his brother's voice is almost instantly. "Please, no," he begs as well, so quietly he doubts anyone can hear it outside his bucket. "Don't make me just leave him here like this."

Skywalker and Kenobi are rather more forceful: "No! You can't do this to him!" Their voices blur into the background, though, as Cody instead listens for every hitch of Rex's breath.

"Fine, fine," Raschek interrupts after a few moments. "Since you all feel so strongly about it, here's one more deal for you then. If a second one of you agrees to stay and bear witness to everything that happens to your Captain, then in ten days both Rex and whoever stays with him will be free to go. If no one stays, then let's just say it's highly unlikely you'll ever see your dear Captain again."

"I'll do it," Cody vows, before he even thinks it through. But his own officers can take over for him - forever if need be, and certainly for just ten days. And if Kenobi is right and this Raschek really does keep his promises, well, ten days is still a horrifically long time to get tortured, but at the same time, it's an end date. It's a finite length of time, and it's a vastly better length of time than the weeks, months, or years, Cody was fearing this being was planning to keep Rex. Watching Rex get tortured is not going to be easy either, but it's still the least he can do for his little brother. If he had realized what Rex was going to do fast enough, he would have volunteered to take Fives' and Echo's places instead, but he didn't, and so if this is all he can do instead, he will.

"All due respect, sir," Kix breaks in, "shouldn't it be me? I'm the medic."

"And this is all worth nothing if Fives and Echo don't get the treatment they need," Cody answers steadily. "You can come back with whoever else picks us up in ten days, and we'll no doubt be glad to have you, but for now, focus on them." Then a thought strikes him and he turns as much as he can towards Raschek. "When you say we'll be free to go in ten days, I trust that that promise includes that both of us will still be alive at that point?"

Raschek tips his head in respect and says, "I admire your commitment to clarity, Commander; it shall serve you well. Yes, if you stay to witness the entire ten days then I promise you shall both be alive and in one piece when you leave at the end of it."

"Right, then I agree to your bargain," Cody says firmly.

There are a few more token protests from the Jedi, but they all realize this is the only option if they ever want to get Rex back alive. Raschek is powerful enough to hold two Jedi - one of them one of the most powerful Jedi in the entire Order - hostage with no apparent strain. A rescue attempt would likely be suicide, and that's not something the GAR can afford, especially not for a single clone captain.

And because the rest of them know that as well as Cody does, and because they really do need to get Fives and Echo back to a medbay sooner rather than later, eventually their protests die off. It takes a few more minutes for them to truly give in to the inevitable, minutes Cody spends barely listening to the debate as he instead keeps all his attention focused on the pain in Rex's voice, but eventually Skywalker, Kenobi, and Cody himself are released from their imprisonment in the Force and are free to move again.

Skywalker and Kenobi both come up to him, clap him on the shoulders, and promise they'll be back in ten days to get him and Rex off this rock. Kix drops to his knees beside Cody and starts pulling items out of his medpack to leave at Cody's feet. Cody thanks them all, then watches as Skywalker levitates Fives and Kenobi levitates Echo, and Kix follows them both as they walk towards the gate.

But Cody turns back the other direction, to keep his promise and bear witness to whatever his brother has to endure.

CHAPTER TWO

As the rest of the group walks out the gates, Cody resolutely doesn't turn and watch them go. The mission of the GAR cannot come to a halt for the sake of one clone captain, and they know that just as well as he does. They'll do their duty, and Cody will keep his promise.

And so Cody never looks away from Rex. He bears witness, just as he swore, as Rex cries out, sobs, yells "No!" in mingled denial and heartbreak. He watches Rex twist and turn, pulling desperately against the manacles that keep him locked in place, and winces, wondering if the portions of the medpack Kix left him with are going to be enough for the damage Rex is undoubtedly doing to his wrists and ankles, even aside from whatever torture is causing this reaction in the first place.

Cody doesn't know how long he stands, watching Rex, before even the sympathetic pain of watching his brother endure torture isn't quite enough to keep his brain from reminding him he still needs to consider the logistics of his stay. He's going to be here for ten days - that means food, water, 'fresher, and some place to sleep. He's geared for combat, not scouting, so isn't carrying a tent, but the high walls of the courtyard should keep at least some of the weather off of him - off of both of them. Between that, a ground cloth, and the thermo-regulation in his blacks, he should be fine even if the weather gets worse.

Looking past Rex, there's some sort of building with a gaping black hole for a door, but he's not about to trust it as a safe space to sleep. In fact, he should probably scout the place out now just to make sure it isn't going to disgorge any lurking threats at an inopportune moment.

Cody turns away from the platform and takes one step past Rex towards the darkened doorway, then freezes, dread pooling in his gut.

He catches a glimpse of Raschek out of the corner of his eye. The being is just sitting there, perched on a bit of stone outcropping, watching Rex and Cody with an inscrutable expression on their face.

Cody doesn't want to ask, but he has to know. "What, exactly, are the rest of the parameters of the deal we struck? What counts as me breaking my promise to be a witness to what Rex is going through?"

"Taking your eyes off Rex doesn't count as breaking the bargain, Commander," Raschek answers, voice sounding almost gentle. Cody breathes a silent sigh of relief, then winces as it suddenly hits home that of course a powerful Force being would have no difficulties reading his mind, and probably far less scruples about doing so than a Jedi.

"More broadly," they continue, "I will count you as breaking your promise if you set foot outside the walls of this compound, or if you deliberately try to hide from or ignore your brother. But you are free to take care of your personal needs as necessary - eating, relieving yourself, even sleeping - without that negating your bargain."

Cody breathes another sigh of relief. That's eminently reasonable. Between the genetic engineering and the stims in his belt pouch, he could have gone the entire ten days without sleep, he just wouldn't have been good for very much at the end of it. And the last thing he wants is to get to the end of the ten days and discover Raschek has some fine print in reserve that they plan to use to declare the whole bargain null and void, and keep Rex here forever, trapped in the energy field and screaming in pain.

Yet for all his relief at the answer - that it's reasonable, that Raschek gave it to him at all - he's also suddenly furious at this being who has the sheer gall to sound so unconcerned while he's the reason Rex is being tortured.

"Why?" he demands, low and far more vicious than he should be acting towards a being with both his and Rex's lives in their hands. "Why do this? Why maneuver Rex into agreeing to stay here and let you torture him? What do you even want?"

Raschek stands and walks over to him, tilting their head in a move that would be considering on another clone, but Cody isn't going to even try to decipher on a nat-born, much less an eldritch Force being. "You wish an answer? Very well: one last bargain, then."

The last thing Cody wants is yet another bargain, but at least it's not a 'no.' "What did you have in mind?"

"Tell me how I am torturing him, and I will tell you why."

That's a weird bargain, but at least it won't cost him anything to try, and even if he gets it wrong he won't lose anything more than an answer most captors wouldn't give him anyway.

So Cody steels himself, and walks as close to Rex as he can without actually touching the faint shimmer of the energy field surrounding him.

Perhaps it's easiest to start with how Rex isn't being tortured. There are no blades, whips, hot irons, or any other physical instruments of torture being used. It suddenly occurs to him to look over at the tray of knives that was out when Fives and Echo were here, and it's vanished completely. Which is odd - he thought he'd always had it in view - but with most of his focus on Rex it wasn't impossible he'd just not registered it being taken away at some point.

Electricity is another possibility, Cody thinks, as he turns back to Rex, but while occasionally Rex's reactions could match electrical shocks, most of the time they don't really.

The energy field keeping him from touching Rex is another possible source of Rex's pain, not being something Cody recognizes precisely, but that doesn't seem quite right either.

No, there's only one thing that matches. Something entirely possible for a powerful Force user, and which can explain all the myriad sounds of pain, grief, and even rage that Rex is making.

"You're in his mind, showing him visions," Cody says confidently - and furiously. "Sometimes you're causing him pain directly in these visions, other times you're showing him scenes of his brothers, hurt or killed, and he can't do anything to stop it. So why?"

"Very good, Commander," Raschek responds, seemingly unaffected by Cody's rage. "You figured out almost all of it. I'll tell you the rest, and then maybe you'll be able to guess why.

"I am showing your brother visions: visions of pain, suffering, and death. Visions where he loses brother after brother after brother and cannot save them. But these visions are not random, nor did I create them. What he is seeing is nothing more nor less than the path the future would have taken, had he and his battalion left this planet without ever meeting me."

Cody reels, and finally sinks down to sit on the steps as he tries to process what he just heard. Maybe Raschek is lying. That's always a risk. But somehow, he doesn't think they are.

The future.

A future of pain, suffering, and death, with so much of each that watching Rex respond looks like he's being tortured.

And apparently, Raschek has decided to show this to Rex - and coupled with the fact that they've promised to let him go again, the only reason to do so would be that they're allowing him to, maybe even hoping he will, change that future into something better.

So that answers one "why", but Cody still has more. Voice still raw from that revelation, Cody finally turns to Raschek and asks, "Why not just tell us that was your plan, then? Why all this about bargains, and getting Rex to agree to take Fives' and Echo's place to be tortured? Why not just ask if someone was willing to see awful visions of the future in order to change it? Any of us would have agreed!"

"And had it been just yourself and Rex here, that's what I would have asked. But it wasn't," Raschek returns placidly.

"The Jedi?" Cody asks incredulously. "You're a spirit of the Force itself and you aren't willing to be honest with some Jedi?"

"That question, I will leave Rex to answer, once he wakes up. When you leave, it will be his choice who to tell, and how, and when. And should he disagree with my decision, he is welcome to tell any Jedi anything he wishes. Until then, though, I will not tell the Jedi. And, given that restriction, the set-up I gave you all was the best method I could construct for getting actual, informed consent for this." They look over at Rex sorrowfully. "Because truly, the only torture worse than making someone live through this future in visions would be making them live through it in reality."

For just a moment Cody buys it, but then he thinks back to their arrival here and demands, "Then what about Echo and Fives? You wanted to warn Rex what he'd be getting himself into, fine, but if you're so worried about consent, what about Echo and Fives consenting to whatever you did to them?"

Raschek doesn't get angry at the accusation, just raises an eyebrow and asks in return, "And what did I do to them, Commander?"

Cody thinks back then pauses, uncertain. He hadn't actually seen anything actively happening, after all - both of the Domino twins had already been unconscious when the rescue party arrived. They had been injured, certainly, with blood still pooling on the stone beneath where they had been chained up, but then, they had just survived a blast powerful enough to easily have killed them.

"When I found them," Raschek says quietly, after the silence has stretched for long moments, "they were badly wounded from the explosion. I put them to sleep so they wouldn't be in pain, and healed their wounds enough that they wouldn't be left with permanent injuries or bleed out before your medics were able to treat them. And then I brought them back here for you to find. Anything beyond that was simply illusion for the sake of drama."

Cody sits there for long minutes, trying to rethink this entire day in the light of this paradigm shift and see if it all holds together. He's well aware his critical thinking is probably not the best at the moment, between the stresses of the day and the pain in Rex's voice as a constant background element. Still, there aren't any obvious holes in the explanation, and something about it just feels right.

Decision made, he stands back up and plants himself in front of Raschek. "A bargain in return, then. If all that you've just told me is true, and you really are doing this to help us change the future, rather than just because you get your jollies from causing pain, then give me some way to actually help my brother - beyond just being able to bring him back to the GAR in ten days' time. Let me take on some of the visions, or make this easier on him, or something. Please."

"I can't give anyone visions of someone else's future, Commander, and seeing your own future will not give you knowledge enough to make a difference," Raschek answers regretfully, and Cody grimaces. He's always known it would be his fate to die young, but he's never regretted it more than now if it means his brother is going to have to try to fix the future alone.

But before Cody can turn away, Raschek continues, "Still, the only reason I have kept your brother in those chains is to prevent him from accidentally doing himself harm as he reacts to what he sees. If you are confident in taking on that task, I believe he would be far more comfortable with you."

As if to underscore Raschek's point, Rex howls, "No!" as he thrashes in the chains, whipping his head from side to side, perhaps in negation, perhaps to avoid whatever blows he's taking in the vision.

Cody's desperate to immediately say yes, to unlock the chains and pull Rex down from the platform, but he makes himself stop and think first. The courtyard is stone. If Rex, in his delirium, tries to escape Cody, or even just flinches too hard, he could easily brain himself on the ground. Then again, Cody can pin Rex four times out of five even when Rex is in his right mind and actively trying to escape his hold. He'll make it work.

"Yes," Cody answers. "Please."

Raschek makes a vague gesture, and the energy field surrounding Rex shuts off. Cody rushes forward, then makes himself slow down and reach up only a single hand to wipe away the tears running down Rex's face. When Rex relaxes at the touch, rather than flinching away, Cody strips off his own armor as fast as he dares, then reaches up his other arm to wrap around Rex in a tight hug.

There's a faint "clink," and then the cuffs around Rex's wrists and ankles release, and a moment later Rex's whole weight comes to rest on Cody. But it's a weight Cody's never minded carrying before, and he'll do so again, as often as necessary. So Cody carries Rex - not far, just a few steps down so they won't be sitting in the drying pool of Fives' blood - and then sinks with him down to the ground to wrap himself around his brother and hold on tight.

Rex is quieter, now, though whether that's because Cody is holding him, or because his visions are currently at a point between battles, Cody doesn't have a clue. Still, it affords him a moment to check Rex's wrists and ankles, where the cuffs would have been biting into them every time he tried to move. And there's… nothing. No cuts or scrapes, not even bruises. It's another point towards Raschek doing all this to help them, rather than because he's actually trying to cause pain. Still, Cody spends a few minutes massaging Rex's arms and legs, trying to help them adjust to no longer being stuck in a single position.

Then Rex is angry again, and Cody has to drop his legs in favor of wrapping his upper body around Rex's, doing his best to capture his limbs before Rex's flying fists can hurt either of them. Cody definitely ends up with a couple new bruises after that, but it's worth it as he can feel Rex's body slowly relax again under Cody's gentle reassurance and soft touches.

When Rex seems to be temporarily calm again, Raschek appears in front of Cody and reaches out a hand. "Bring him inside with you," they offer. Cody hesitates a moment, but finally lets Raschek help him up, Rex still in his arms, and then he follows the being as Raschek leads them into the small building behind the platform.

Somehow it seems less suspicious now, even though Cody never did get the chance to scout it, and now he'd have to drop Rex before he could reach for his blaster. But as they walk in, nothing concerning jumps out at them - no droids, monsters, or Sith assassins. It's just a long, low room, with high windows letting in some light while still leaving most of it quiet and peaceful. Along the edges are a handful of sunken alcoves, each lined with pillows and cushions. Cody can't imagine what they were originally intended for, but for the moment they're absolutely perfect for laying Rex down on something soft.

When he turns to thank Raschek, there's no sign of them. He and Rex are alone.

A few moments' investigation reveals a water faucet in the corner, and Cody fills up a canteen and returns to Rex. Clones don't die of dehydration as fast as baseline humans, but ten days would definitely be pushing it. Luckily for them both, though - as Cody has neither the equipment nor the skill to set Rex up with an IV - Rex is just aware enough to drink from the canteen without choking. Even better, when Cody mixes in a packet of protein powder to the next canteen, Rex manages to drink that, too.

After that, it's just a matter of waiting. Of holding on as tightly as he dares, of giving Rex whatever comfort he can in the hopes it makes these visions even a modicum easier to bear.

There are moments of levity, moments when the future holds some spark of joy or peace, but they become rarer and rarer.

As his chronometer ticks towards midnight, Cody watches as Rex becomes the most agitated he's been yet. Cody still has yet to ever make out any words Rex says, other than "no," but Rex has started to repeat that one more and more. Then names start showing up for the first time: Ahsoka, Maul, Fives, Jesse. Rex is getting more agitated, and harder to keep pinned, and Cody is ever more grateful they're doing this on cushions, and not on the stone floors of the courtyard outside.

Finally whatever is happening seems to come to a head, and then Rex goes completely, terrifyingly limp. Cody panics for a moment, then sees the tears absolutely streaming down Rex's face.

Cody curls around him, and gives him whatever comfort he can, as Rex sobs and sobs. At some point, he finally trails off, and eventually Cody falls asleep.

Cody wakes the next morning, wondering if that was it, if the vision is over now, but Rex is still utterly unresponsive. The tears have mostly dried, and whatever Rex is seeing now doesn't seem to have as much immediate pain or fear as yesterday's visions, so Cody takes advantage of the moment to get Rex to drink another canteen-full of protein shake. He has enough packets for a few more days, but if this vision really does go the full ten days he promised to stay, he'll have to see if there's any safe way to get Rex to eat some solid ration bars.

The day is much quieter than yesterday, which Cody is grateful for. Rex has moments of distress, but fewer and further between, and Cody is getting better at soothing him after them. Late afternoon, though, there's another really bad few minutes, and Cody wishes he had any clue what each of these moments correspond to in the future that Raschek wants them to avoid.

After that, Rex turns completely listless. He won't even try to drink the sips of water Cody offers him, and he barely reacts to any of Cody's attempts to comfort him. Still, he doesn't seem to be in active pain, and he's quiet enough Cody gets at least a few hours of restless sleep.

The third day dawns with one of Rex's flailing fists catching Cody right on the jaw and his knee coming perilously close to other portions of Cody's anatomy. Cody is immensely glad that Rex seems to have regained some of his energy and drive, but that's definitely going to bruise.

As near as Cody can guess, Rex is having visions of being back in combat, though maybe without quite the number of losses as he seemed to be experiencing that first day. Still enough, though, to make him periodically shake and weep and cry out in denial.

By midafternoon, the visions seem to be coming to another head. Eventually, Rex gives a cry of triumph, a shout of surprise, and then goes terrifyingly limp once more. This time, though, when Cody pulls him up to sit against his chest and hold him, Rex finally opens his eyes.

CHAPTER THREE

As Rex opens his eyes and meets Cody's eyes for the first time in three days, Cody can feel his own eyes start to water. Rex says, in a very small voice, "Cody?" and then suddenly they're clutching each other. Cody has never felt anything as good as Rex's arms firmly, deliberately, reaching around him in a massive hug.

Cody doesn't know how long Rex sits there in his lap, holding him and weeping like his heart has been absolutely shattered, but he doesn't begrudge him a single minute. At some point Rex manages to get out, "I don't think I like the future very much, Cody," and it's enough for tears to start running down Cody's face, too.

Cody takes just a moment to be grateful that he's the one here with Rex - there are very few others in the entire GAR Rex would be willing to be this vulnerable in front of. Whether trying to be the perfect captain or the perfect subordinate, Rex knows, just as they've all been taught from decanting, how important it is not to show any sorrow, weakness, or doubt. But here, without any Jedi, without any younger brothers, with only the same older brother who found him so many years ago, hiding in a supply closet on Kamino and trying not to cry, Rex is willing to let himself admit to all the pain and grief he normally tries so carefully to hide.

Eventually Rex's tears trail off, and after just sitting and breathing for long minutes, he finally manages to muster up a faint smile as he turns to face Cody. "Thanks for staying with me, Cody. It helped a lot. Raschek told you that those were visions of the future he was showing me?" At Cody's nod he continues, "At first, it was like I was really there, really living it all. But then I started to realize you were there with me, and that helped keep me grounded. After that it was more like watching a holo-film - still utterly awful, but a little easier to put some distance between me and it."

"So I take it the war's just going to keep getting worse?" Cody asks, hating himself for making Rex talk about it but knowing he needs every detail he can get to help Rex make changes.

"No," Rex answers with a look of utter disgust. "Well, yes, absolutely - the Citadel, Krell, Anaxes… - but the war's not actually the important part."

Rex must read the skepticism on Cody's face, because his face twists in a grim smile. "This whole entire war, all the pain and death, is just a ruse. Oh, the deaths are real enough, but in some ways they're actually the lucky ones. Because the reasons behind it all aren't to protect the Republic or defend democracy. The whole thing is just a plot to destroy the Republic, destroy the Jedi, and install a Sith Empire ruling the galaxy with a durasteel fist."

Cody's jaw drops. Hearing this from anyone would be a shock, but to hear it from Rex?

"What?!" he finally manages to get out. "How?"

"Chancellor Palpatine is a Sith Lord and the one who instigated this whole war and even our own creation so that he can take over the galaxy."

Cody sits, stunned, for a full minute before his brain can actually process anything again. He ought to protest this, say it's not possible. This could all still be a Separatist plot. Get him primed to believe whatever Rex says, feed Rex treasonous lies, and then wait for the two of them to betray the Republic and laugh.

Except that would require any of the Separatists to actually think highly enough of the clones that they'd believe that two clones - no matter how highly ranked - working against the Chancellor could actually cause enough damage to be worth the effort of setting this whole thing up. And somehow Cody can't actually believe that.

And the scary thing is, it fits. From what he's seen of the man and his policies, and the much greater detail he's heard from Fox, not to mention the absolute surety in Rex's eyes and voice, Cody believes it. The Chancellor is a traitor to the Republic and nothing good will come of letting him remain in power.

Rex has been silent while Cody's worked this through in his head, but his face is hopeful as Cody turns back towards him and says, "I believe you. What can I do to help?"

That galvanizes Rex, and he surges to his feet before hauling Cody up after him and all but dragging him out the door and across the courtyard. "I'm figuring straightforward assassination is the simplest way to go. Getting Fox involved would help, but even if I know he probably wasn't to blame for Fives I'm still not sure I'm ready to trust him with something like this…."

Cody's happy to just follow in his wake, filing the offhand comments away to ask about later, until he suddenly realizes they're approaching the gates to leave the compound. He digs in his heels, dragging Rex to a sudden stop with an inarticulate noise of surprise and offense.

"I made a bargain," Cody replies firmly, and a moment later Raschek appears out of thin air between them and the gates.

"Indeed you did, Commander, and I'm pleased you've remembered to keep it," they reply smoothly.

"What?" Rex asks, startled. "What bargain is this, Cody?"

"I'd stay here with you for ten days and bear witness to what you were going through in the vision, and at the end of that ten days we'd get you back. Otherwise we'd never see you again."

Rex presses into him for just a moment at that, then turns back to Raschek. "Okay, but the vision is over now, and anyway you told me at the beginning of it that your whole point in doing this was just so I could fix the future. You aren't still going to hold Cody to that bargain now?"

"I have sympathy for you and all your brothers, but I am still the Deal-Maker. Sympathy does not change the essence of who I am," Raschek answers him with a touch of sternness. "Besides, my bargain with your brother is more of practicality than whim."

Rex and Cody turn equally perplexed looks at them for that, so they elaborate with a question: "Do you believe you are currently emotionally stable, Captain Rex, and capable of thinking plans through with your usual skill?"

Rex flushes, and can't quite answer.

"I will not prevent you from leaving now, but if you do, not only are you almost certain to never again return to your brothers in the 501st, it is highly likely you will simply get yourself arrested or killed in very short order, and then no one will ever see you again at all. I did not break multiple laws of space and time to give you that vision just so you could run off without thinking things through and immediately end up dead."

Rex slumps a little, and knocks his shoulder against Cody's in apology. Cody squeezes his arm in return. "We still have seven more days before the fleet's going to send a ship back for us. Let's take advantage of the time to plan, and if we need to go AWOL later we can, but until then, having the 212th and 501st around could prove helpful."

"You're right, Cody, as always. I'm sorry, Raschek."

"It is no matter, Rex. You have a challenging task ahead of you, but I believe you are equal to it, particularly with your brothers beside you." They briefly ruffle Rex's hair, then vanish as suddenly as they arrived, and Cody is left to wonder how much the two of them interacted during Rex's vision, that they seem this comfortable with each other.

With his immediate goal thwarted, all the energy seems to have drained out of Rex, so Cody bundles him back inside and gets him sitting down eating proper ration bars. The protein shakes were better than nothing, but clones' caloric needs are pretty high even when resting, and Cody's pretty sure visions don't actually count as rest.

Two and a half ration bars in, Rex is looking a little calmer and more alert, so Cody asks, "What can you tell me about what we're trying to fix?"

Rex starts talking.

It's all absolutely horrific. So many lives lost for so little gain. Battles won here and there, but at immense costs. And then the war. The war which was almost won and then lost so utterly and completely.

Rex's voice shakes as he talks about Order 66, and the fall of the Temple.

"You were there, on Utapau, with General Kenobi," Rex starts, and at first Cody figures the shake in his voice is just because he doesn't want to tell Cody about his own death. Cody reaches over to reassure him, but then Rex goes on. "Your chip activated, and you gave the order, and General Kenobi fell."

Rex goes on - Kenobi didn't die, just went into hiding, and that's a relief but a distant one. Cody had made his peace with falling in battle, but this? Losing everything he is on a Sith's order? Committing countless atrocities because the Sith are Sith, and didn't care in the slightest that he was - is - a thinking, feeling being? Unless because they're Sith they actually thought that made it better.

So the Republic falls, the Empire rises, and Rex goes on the run trying to start a rebellion and free as many clones as he can.

"We tried to get to you. I promise you, we tried as hard as we could to find you and get you free, but we were too late. We didn't learn where the Empire had sent you until months after you were already dead."

By this point Cody is numb. Rex went numb after that too, apparently, hiding out in the wastes with a couple other clones who got free from their chips, until some new Jedi drew him back out of hiding and into the fight.

The story gets a bit better from there: they start striking back against the Empire, and even though terrible things still happen (who have they recruited for this Empire who thinks it's okay to build something that will destroy an entire planet, much less use it?!), the rebellion starts making real progress. And finally, a new Jedi comes along and the Sith Lord and his apprentice are killed. It still takes a few more years to really break the rest of the Empire and get the rebellion set up as a New Republic, but eventually that finally happens.

"And that's where the story ends, or my part of it at least. They were looking for a few more pilots to fly in the Battle of Jakku, and I volunteered. We'd been up there for an hour or more, and I had just managed to take out one of their mid-size ships with a well-placed missile, but one of their TIEs snuck up behind me, and I guess managed to finish me off. And then I woke up back here and the rest you know."

The amount of information Cody has just been given is nearly overwhelming, for all he knows that that was just the briefest of summaries. He's going to need every bit of the seven days remaining just to process it all.

In the meantime, though, he's an older brother with a younger brother who's well past his third wind. So Cody convinces Rex to put off any further discussion until the morning, and if both of them wake up with nightmares multiple times in the night, well, it's still more sleep than they've gotten since they first landed on this planet.

Come morning, they decide to head out to the courtyard for fresh air and sunshine while they start making plans. The poles, chains, and blood on the central platform have all vanished as if they never existed, but by unspoken agreement, they still stick to the steps and avoid the platform itself.

"So what should be our first step?" Cody asks. "Tell Generals Skywalker and Kenobi?"

Perhaps he should have expected it after Raschek's reaction, but he's still unprepared for Rex's violent flinch and utterly instinctive, "No!"

For a moment Cody wants to protest - they can't just not tell the Jedi. They'll need their help, for one, not to mention they're their commanding officers.

Then again, he's currently plotting treason.

(Actually, is it treason? The oath he was told to swear is to the Republic, not specifically to whomever happens to be sitting in the Chancellor's seat at the moment. And if the Chancellor was the one who committed treason first, doesn't that mean he's just following his oath to defend the Republic from all threats? He makes a mental note to take a close look at the regs as soon as he's back on the Negotiator, and ideally before he ends up defending himself in front of a court martial.)

But whatever loyalty he has to his Jedi, he's always been loyal to his brothers first.

And so he says, "Alright, no Jedi. Where do you think we ought to start instead, then?"

Rex slumps a little in relief at his easy acquiescence, then grimaces and says, "It doesn't necessarily have to be secret from all the Jedi, but let's at least not tell Skywalker and Kenobi."

That… doesn't sound good, Cody thinks. "Raschek said something similar, that when we first showed up the reason they didn't tell the truth was because of them. They wouldn't tell me why, though; said it was something I'd have to ask you." He hesitates a moment, because he really doesn't want to know. But that doesn't matter when he needs to. "What should I know about why we can't trust those two?"

Rex looks at him searchingly for a few moments, then presses firmly into Cody's side, seeking comfort. It's hardly a surprise at this point, that the future is so painful for Rex to talk about, but Cody's heart breaks every time he sees yet more evidence. Even worse that it's taken this for Rex to finally have a moment to act his age in dealing with the far-too-great trauma he's been subjected to over the course of his life.

Eventually, Rex starts. "I told you about the Sith apprentice, Darth Vader. The one who led the march on the Temple, spent years hunting down every Jedi who escaped. The one who seemed to enjoy every minute of slaughtering Rebels, and didn't care at all about killing people even on his own side."

Cody nods and Rex goes on with a seeming non sequitur, "Skywalker was my general, and I spent three years looking up to him, trusting him with my life and the lives of my men. Then the Republic fell, and I always assumed Skywalker died with it, because if he hadn't, wouldn't he have been right there on the forefront of the lines fighting the Emperor? I spent nearly two decades mourning him."

As Rex continues, voice now completely flat in a way it only gets when he's utterly furious, Cody feels a growing sense of horror as he suddenly realizes where Rex is going with this.

"And then, finally, I discover that this Sith Lord, this murderer, this torturer, is what Anakin Skywalker became. Is going to become."

All the breath leaves Cody, and if he wasn't already sitting down he'd have collapsed. But now that Rex has started he seemingly can't stop.

"He tried to kill Ahsoka! For years I thought he had actually managed it, and it was only a literal miracle of the Force that prevented it. He had kids, Cody! He had a son and a daughter, and he tortured one and cut off the hand of the other! He stood right there watching as the Death Star destroyed Alderaan. And that was just the stuff he did after I joined the Rebellion. He marched on the Temple and killed all the children there - the younglings, Cody! And he used the 501st to do it!"

Rex is weeping now, as heartbroken as anything Cody had heard from him during the vision, and Cody gathers him up in his arms, not able to do anything more in the face of this pain than just hold onto his brother and pray they can fix this before it happens again.

"I wasn't there," Rex finally says, and there's far more guilt than relief in that sentence. "I was with Ahsoka on Mandalore. But he activated their chips and marched on the Temple, and they killed everyone. And then he spent the next two decades hunting down every Jedi he could find, and the only ones he didn't order the 501st to kill outright were the ones he captured so he could torture them to the Dark Side.

"In the end, Luke - his son - told me Vader turned back to the Light. The Emperor was trying to kill Luke, but Vader killed the Emperor first, even though the Emperor managed to deal him fatal injuries in the process. And that's… I won't say that's nothing. But…."

Rex trails off and Cody just hugs him and tries to process what he's just heard. Cody has never particularly liked Skywalker. Having a general who doesn't follow orders is extraordinarily dangerous, and the way Skywalker cares far more about the success of his missions than how many lives they cost has always terrified him. Which mission will be the one Rex doesn't come back from? And even if he does come back, how many of his brothers can die in one of Skywalker's schemes before Rex breaks?

But this is entire orders of magnitude worse than that.

It's a fight to keep his voice mostly steady as he asks Rex, "Do you think there's some way we can prevent that, keep him in the Light, or do we assassinate him before we go after Palpatine?"

Rex is silent for a long, long moment. Sitting curled up together the way they are, Cody can't see Rex's face to tell what he's thinking, whether it's helping Rex to realize that none of this has happened yet and there's still time to change it, or whether it's just hitting Rex now that if they don't manage to change things enough, he'll have to watch his visions play out again, but this time in real life.

Eventually Rex says, voice heavy, "We can't kill him. I'm not going to kill him - kill anyone - for crimes they haven't committed yet, tempting as it is with Tarkin. That's not the right thing to do with these visions. Though if he does Fall again, I'm outfitting the entire 501st with sniper rifles and we'll get him stopped. I'm not going to risk literally millions of lives just on the off chance he'll finally repent after twenty years."

"Fair enough," Cody answers, and in a lot of ways it's a relief. Executing Anakin now would be the most expedient solution to a decent number of problems, but even besides the pain it would cause to Kenobi, it wouldn't be right. Cody and Rex aren't Jedi and so can't Fall the way they do, but if they start believing that the risks of a dangerous future give them license to do however much evil they want - well, that sounds like pretty much the exact same justification Palpatine is going to use in his rise to power, and there's no point in preventing one tyrannical Empire if they're just going to end up creating a new one of their own.

But that means they need to come up with an alternate way to deal with Skywalker. "Any ideas how we can prevent him from Falling?"

"It would help if I had any clue why he Fell in the first place," Rex says, trying to sound wry but mostly just bitter. He seems a little more settled now that they've agreed to avoid murder, but a certain amount of disgust enters his voice as he continues, "The general had everything going for him! All of us in the 501st loved him and would have followed him anywhere, Kenobi would do anything for him, for all that they still butted heads periodically, the whole galaxy adored him as 'The Hero with No Fear,' he had a wife who loved him and was about to give birth to twins…. And, okay, yes, he was still trying to keep his marriage secret, but the war was almost over! Dooku and Grievous were both dead, and probably in a matter of weeks everything would have calmed down enough that he could have resigned from the Order, admitted they were married, and then settled down with her to raise their kids! Even Ahsoka had just come back!"

Cody winces at the reminder of what Rex had told him about the Temple bombing. Yet another tragedy to try and prevent, another Jedi to try and save from Falling, though hopefully this one will be slightly more straightforward.

"Was it just a lust for power?" Rex whispers, pained. "He was friends with Palpatine for years - were they conspiring the whole time? I don't want to think that, but I don't know what other options there are."

"I don't know, Rex," Cody tells him. "I don't know."

CHAPTER FOUR

Ten minutes later, Cody is still trying to process the revelation that Rex's general is going to turn into a murderous Sith and they don't know how to prevent it. He's restless now, hearing so much heartbreak from his brother, and finally can't stand it any longer and gets up to pace around the courtyard for a while. Rex joins him, and they take the chance to just move.

When the worst of their jitters have passed, Cody figures it's time for a moderate change of subject, even if it's to a topic he's even less excited about discussing than Anakin's Fall. "What about Kenobi? What is he going to do that you don't trust him?"

Rex hesitates, grimaces. "I don't distrust him. In the end he died for the Rebellion, died to get the Death Star plans to safety and to rescue Luke and Leia. But it really comes back to Anakin."

And that's… not surprising. Kenobi has a blind spot as big as a planet towards his former padawan. If they try and tell him Anakin's going to go Dark, he's not likely to believe them. And whether he does or not, he'll want to warn Anakin, and whether they're just friends or actually treasonous conspirators, Anakin is no doubt going to tell Palpatine. And the moment the Sith Lord learns what Rex knows, well, between the chips and the war there are far too many ways to make a single clone captain disappear.

"The thing is," Rex muses, "there were signs Anakin was going Dark. I had years after I learned that Skywalker was Vader to contemplate what had happened, and look back over our time together and try to spot red flags. Some of them were really only visible in hindsight. Others, I didn't notice at the time, not because they weren't obvious, but because it was only after I was out in the galaxy for decades that I really understood just how sheltered our lives have been so far."

That's something Cody has always intellectually known: going straight from Kamino to the battlefield - not to mention spending 99% of that time surrounded by only brothers, longnecks, trainers, and Jedi - was never going to give them a lot of chance to learn how the rest of the galaxy lived and thought. But hearing it now from Rex it suddenly hits him that his younger brother is now nearly three times his age. Rex has spent longer out in the galaxy with natborns than Cody has even been alive. It's enough to make Cody feel very small and he wonders what Rex thinks to look at him.

But whatever his sudden insecurities, Cody isn't going to let anything stop him from giving his brother whatever support he can give.

"The thing is, though," Rex continues, so focused on his memories he hasn't even noticed Cody's minor crisis, "there was other stuff that even at the time I did notice. Stuff that was concerning. And I should have said something, especially after Krell, but…."

"But you were a clone, and he was a Jedi and your commanding officer, and you couldn't know if it would do anything anyway since his commanding officer never gave him anything more than a mild scolding for anything, and so you didn't say anything," Cody fills in the rest when Rex trails off.

"And so I didn't say anything," Rex agrees. "I guess now I have the chance to find out whether it would have changed anything if I had," he adds with a wry smile, then sobers. "But the thing is, Kenobi would have seen nearly everything I did, given how closely our battalions worked together. And he was a Jedi Master, and not as sheltered as us, and he didn't have any reason to be cautious in confronting Skywalker about them. And yet, as far as I know, he didn't."

"Maybe it was all behind closed doors?" Cody offers.

"You think I didn't hear about every single time Obi-Wan lectured Anakin?" Rex responds with a raised eyebrow. "Anakin wasn't exactly shy when he wanted to complain about how unreasonable he thought Obi-Wan was being. So, okay, I'm not being fair. Obi-Wan would sometimes tell Anakin when he was not behaving like a Jedi, but there weren't consequences, and nothing that actually made Anakin actually stop and step back and rethink his own behavior.

"But I think more than anything," Rex starts, then changes tack. "There is so much I never knew about the fall of the Republic. I knew more than a lot of people, but I kept trying to figure out the many, many remaining holes. Once I joined the Rebellion I spoke about it with Senator Organa a few times, though he never had long to spare and I think there was a lot he felt was too private to share." He pauses for a minute, wincing. "It's only just struck me now. Senator Organa, his wife the Queen, and everyone else I met during the rebellion - none of them know me anymore. Luke and Leia aren't even alive yet!" His voice breaks a little at the realization, but a moment later he pulls himself back together and continues.

"Then I met Luke, and after he found out I had known his father, we spent a lot of time together trading stories. He didn't know much about that time himself, but he had ended up with R2-D2 and we spent a fair amount of time trying to unlock Artoo's memories. I don't think we ever did manage to get them all, but I eventually found some things - though unfortunately not until after Luke discovered his father had become Vader in just about the worst way possible. But we eventually found a recording showing how after Anakin Fell and killed everyone in the Temple, he went to Mustafar to deal with the Separatist leaders. Senator Amidala and Kenobi followed him there. He choked Amidala because he thought she had betrayed him, and then he started attacking Kenobi. The thing is, they got out of range of Artoo's sensors pretty quickly, so I have no idea how the fight ended - just that even though Kenobi could nearly always outlast Anakin in their spars, once the fight was over, Anakin was still alive and spent the next two decades committing countless atrocities, while Kenobi went and hid on Tatooine for the next twenty years."

"That's not…. He wouldn't…," Cody breathes. "He wouldn't just hide when there was an evil empire oppressing everyone. He'd be out joining the Rebellion, fighting evil!"

But Rex's face already tells him what the answer will be.

"To be fair, he did have a mission - protecting Anakin's son - but then again, he didn't train him. Luke apparently didn't even know the Force existed until a few days before he joined the Rebellion, and got a grand total of one lightsaber lesson before Kenobi died."

That's… Cody doesn't even know what to make of that. He has a vague idea that most people in the galaxy don't grow up like the clones, aren't taught how to use blasters the moment they can walk. And sometimes, seeing little natborn kids running around playing, Cody thinks he understands just how much he and his brothers missed growing up. But at the same time, the only reason so many of his brothers have survived this long is because they know what they're doing. To send someone out onto a battlefield without that training… how did this kid even survive?

"How did General Kenobi die, in the end?" Cody finally asks.

"He let Vader kill him on the Death Star," Rex answers with a wince, and Cody wonders anew at how different that Kenobi sounds than the one he knows - or rather, thought he knew.

Rex is silent for a few long minutes, then adds, "I spent a few years downright furious at him - well, both of them, but that was before I knew who Vader was, so mostly just Kenobi. If only he had managed to kill Vader instead of letting himself be killed! It wouldn't have ended the Empire, but it would have done so much good, saved so many lives. He was so close to joining the Rebellion, I was so close to actually seeing him again, asking him everything." Rex slumps. "But he died. Just before I even found out he was alive again. It felt like a betrayal, almost, for all that Kenobi didn't even know I was still alive, much less free and with the Rebellion."

Rex grimaces at himself, and adds, "I suppose it's not really fair to be angry at him. I mean, for one thing, there's the fact that this Kenobi hasn't actually done any of it, yet. But also, it was never fair to expect him to be the one to take Anakin down. If I had ever had to face you while you were under the chip…."

"If you had," Cody answers steadily, needing to make sure Rex understands this, "or if for whatever reason we don't get my chip out in time this time, I forgive you. Whatever you have to do to keep me from hurting other people, whether you are or aren't able to save me, I forgive you. And I'm pretty sure that all the rest of our brothers would feel the same way."

"Thanks," Rex answers, just a little shakily, "but let's make sure getting those chips out is step number one, alright? Us first, just in case Palpatine realizes we're onto him, and then the rest of the GAR."

"Sounds good," Cody nods, starting his mental list. "Chips first, then find some other Jedi who it's safe to tell. For the chips, we could say a brain scan is a sensible precaution after being captured - for both of us, and maybe even Fives and Echo, too. That should be enough of an excuse for us, even if not the rest of the men."

"The scan's the hard part," Rex offers. "There aren't a lot of reasons to do a Level 5. But the chip's in the same spot for all of us, so once we have the data for even a couple of us…"

"The medics and meddroids can use that same data for the surgeries for everyone else," Cody finishes. "Not sure about which Jedi we should start with, though."

"The Seppies are going to be attacking Kamino soon. It won't be good… 99 dies, Colt dies, the cadets have to fight, but Shaak Ti is there. In fact, she's probably the closest Jedi to us who isn't involved in active combat right now - we point out that if we need to be worried about physical risks after capture, then we should be equally worried about some lingering Force suggestion or the like. But just to be especially cautious, such a Force scan shouldn't be done by anyone who was on the planet with us, because if we were compromised, they potentially could be, too. And honestly, confirmation that I haven't just been brainwashed into believing all of this when it's not actually true would be kind of nice for its own sake."

"So that gives us a perfect excuse to talk to her in private and give her some warning, and depending on how the battle goes, that'll be good evidence that you know what you're talking about - for both you and her. Plus she's on the Council. That'll be important trying to fight a Sith Lord."

"Before we can take down Palpatine we need enough evidence so that the Senate won't just call the Jedi traitors for taking him down. Anything showing him colluding with the Separatists should do nicely."

"Meanwhile, keep Skywalker away from him, and do what we can to either prevent him Falling or make sure he won't be a threat if he does."

"And hopefully keep both him and Kenobi from noticing the way we're conspiring to remove the Chancellor from office, and ideally, from his head."

"While we're still fighting a war and trying to keep as many of our brothers alive as possible."

"Oh, is that all?"

They look at each other, then burst into slightly hysterical laughter. This is not going to be an easy job, even with all of Rex's knowledge of one path the future might have taken. But they have hope now, have a chance. And they're together. They'll make it work.

Cody and Rex spend most of their remaining time in Raschek's compound making plans, and backup plans, and contingency plans for when even their backup plans don't work. Who to contact, what to tell them, how to keep the Chancellor in the dark.

But at the same time, they know better than most that simply planning for 18 hours a day does neither them nor their plans any favors. So they periodically stop to run laps or spar together. Rex has decades of experience learning interesting techniques from all across the galaxy, but no corresponding muscle memory. Teaching Cody helps fix that, as well as giving him a chance to adapt things for a body decades younger. The techniques aren't always entirely practical for fully-armored soldiers typically going up against droids, having frequently been designed for lightly-armored guerilla fighters going up against armored humanoids, but some of them can be adapted and even the rest are just fun to practice.

When they aren't planning or sparring, Raschek sometimes shows up to talk to them. The entity either can't or won't give any advice regarding their plans, but can be convinced to regale them with entertaining sagas of the beings they've met from centuries or even millenia past.

And then, before they know it, the ten days are almost over.

Their last night before they return to the GAR, they sleep out in the courtyard under the stars.

Laying there side by side, with the whole galaxy spread out before them, Cody finally asks the question he's been wondering about since Rex first woke up from the vision. "Rex, do you miss the version of me - of any of us - that we were in your vision?"

Rex takes a long, slow, shuddering breath, before he answers. "A little. I've told you about the Citadel, about Anaxes, about so many other battles where we fought together, so you know about them, but you don't remember them. You aren't the one who fought side-by-side with me. But at the same time, we've already fought side-by-side on a dozen battlefields, and I wouldn't wish the battles that are yet to come on anyone. And it's not like I ever knew you when you were that much older than you are now - Utapau happens in less than two years."

And after Utapau, however much older Cody's body had gotten after that, it wasn't Cody. Cody hadn't died on Utapau in that other timeline, but maybe in another sense, he had.

"At this point, you're already the insanely competent marshall commander you'll continue to be; the only thing that's missing is another couple years of grief and stress and heartbreak, and I could hardly regret sparing you that." After a moment, Rex adds, "Some of the others I know I'll miss at least a little. It's going to be incredibly weird getting back to the ship and seeing Fives and Echo without them being ARC troopers yet. Still, while I'll have to try to get them the training again this time, I'm never going to wish they were still the Fives whom I couldn't save and just held as he died, or the Echo who never quite felt like he fit in anywhere - even in his own skin - after what Wat Tambor did to him."

Then suddenly Rex's voice twists in grief. "They almost died here, Cody, again, before I even knew I needed to change things! I don't know if I can face ordering them out into the field again, risking their lives again, but I'm going to have to, aren't I?"

There's nothing Cody can say to that except empty platitudes - it's what it means to be a clone, to be an officer, and considering just how many more years experience Rex has than him now, Rex probably knows all those platitudes far better than Cody at this point. So instead, Cody just reaches out and grabs Rex's hand, and after a moment, Rex squeezes back.

"Ahsoka, too," Rex continues after a moment. "She's already grown so much since I first met her, but it definitely is going to be weird going back tomorrow and seeing her as a kid again. Over the next few years she'll grow up into an extraordinary young woman, and even more so in the decades beyond that. And some of that is time and experience, which she'll get regardless. But the rest only comes at far too high a price. Or maybe, all that strength and skill and self-mastery comes despite that high price, not because of it. It would be extraordinary to see what she can become with all the passion and purpose of the next few years but without the grief and trauma."

Rex goes quiet then, and the two spend a while simply looking up at the stars. Rex's breaths don't even out into sleep, though, and eventually he starts speaking again.

"No, I don't think I'll miss the future versions of anyone I know now. Even Wolffe and Gregor, the two I knew the longest - I'd just as soon make new memories with them that weren't so full of pain and loss. But I think the people I do miss are the ones I didn't meet until I joined the Rebellion. Luke and Leia, especially. The changes we're planning are radical enough that there's a pretty good chance they won't even be born. Even if they are, there'll hopefully be no reason in the galaxy for Luke to be raised on Tatooine, or Leia to be adopted by the Organas. No matter what happens, I'm not going to get the people I knew back.

"Same with the Ghost crew. I think I have a pretty good guess where all of them are at the moment, and even if Ezra hasn't been born yet either, I can't think of anything we'll be doing that might prevent that. But the exact set of circumstances that led an orphaned former padawan, the daughter of a Twi'lek freedom fighter, a captain of the Lasan High Honor Guard, a Mandalorian, and an orphaned street rat, much less an old clone captain and a defected member of the ISB, to join together into a new family…. Even if we fail and the Empire rises again, it seems likely we'd have changed just enough to create a world where none of us would ever even meet each other, much less become such a tight-knit crew.

"Wedge Antilles and Han Solo I don't even know where they might be at this point, or where they would - will - be in twenty years without the Empire. Same with a lot of the sorts of people who gave up - or had stolen from them - everything they ever knew to join the Rebellion." Rex's voice twists unhappily. "Others, I know exactly where they are right now, and they're even already adults, but that still doesn't help."

"What do you mean by that?" Cody asks quietly.

Cody can hear a wry smile in Rex's voice as he answers: "The Rebellion never was a big one for standing on ceremony. It didn't matter much where - or how - you were born when everyone was equally as likely to get executed for treason. Smugglers became generals and old clones got to hang out with senators and royalty. But here and now, a clone captain can't just walk up to the Royal Palace of Alderaan, or even a senator's office and say, 'Twenty years from now, in a future that's never going to happen, we became friends while fighting a rebellion together and I'd like to get that friendship back.' I got to speak with Queen Organa sometimes, running missions for the Rebellion, but in this life what are the odds that I'll even once get to speak with her face to face? Or speak with Senator Organa as anyone other than Anakin Skywalker's faceless subordinate?"

Rex huffs a rueful sigh and gently taps the back of his head against the ground a couple of times as if to shake the depressing thoughts out of his mind. "I'm being maudlin and ridiculous. Every single one of the people I met in the Rebellion had faced terrible tragedies due to Palpatine. The Organas died with their entire planet, Kanan saw his Jedi Master killed by their troops in front of him, the Lasats were slaughtered, the Wookies were enslaved, Mandalore was decimated multiple times, and the list goes on. If I have to go my entire life without ever seeing any of those people again, but knowing that wherever they are they're safe and happy and not having their lives ruined by the Empire, I can be well content with that."

"You know," Cody says finally, "I'm sorry you were the one who had to go through the vision, but I don't think there's anyone else I'd rather trust to save the galaxy."

"Thanks, Cody," the soft voice comes back after a long moment, and then they finally sleep.

The next morning they pack up the handful of things they brought with them, then meet Raschek in the courtyard to say good-bye.

"Your bargains are fulfilled, both of you," Raschek says, then rests a hand on each of their heads in benediction. "You have everything I can give you. The rest is up to you."

"Let's do this," Cody says to Rex, and the two of them walk out of the compound and towards the shuttle landing just ahead, a shuttle that will take them back to the GAR, and back to a very different war than the one they thought they were fighting just ten days ago.

End of Part One

Part Two: The Consequences

CHAPTER FIVE

SIX MONTHS LATER

Chancellor Palpatine finishes firstmeal in a surly mood. He has a meeting with several members of the High Council first thing this morning, to discuss what changes should be made in the overall war strategy given General Grievous' death three days ago, and he's not looking forward to it. With no one around to see, Palpatine lets out a tiny burst of lightning to express his frustration - well, that and nothing else really gets his toast properly blackened. He petulantly makes up his mind that no matter what the Jedi suggest or how much it fits with his own plans and strategies, he's going to shoot every word of it down just to relish the looks of frustration on their faces. It's only fair after he's spent nearly every spare moment since Grievous' death trying to find an appropriate replacement. Insufferable Light! Grievous wasn't supposed to die for at least another two years yet!

Twenty minutes later, all properly presentable, Palpatine takes his seat at his desk, and idly flips through his appointment calendar as he waits for the Jedi to arrive. If Palpatine had been paying more attention, he might have noticed that it was exactly six months to the day since he received the report that the captain of the 501st had been captured, but as it is he thinks nothing of the date and simply waves his hand regally at the door when it chimes with the Jedi's arrival.

The door opens, and Mace Windu and Yoda step in, hardly a surprise, but then Palpatine allows an expression of polite confusion to cross his face as the two of them are followed by six more members of the Jedi High Council. Granted, the meeting request didn't specify exactly who from the Jedi were going to be attending, but there shouldn't have even been this many of them in the entire sector! He's always been quite careful to keep the Jedi spread out as far apart as he can, to lessen the risk that they'll be able to work together and notice some of the secrets he's been hiding.

Following the eight Jedi are a dozen clone troopers, who file in and take places around the edges of the room. "Really, Master Yoda?" Palpatine chides regally. "This seems like far too important of a meeting to involve the clone troopers."

If Palpatine had ever bothered to learn anything about clone culture, he might have thought it odd that the Jedi were being accompanied by clones who were wearing completely plain white, uncustomized armor. He might have known that the officers, who would have been the most logical to invite to a meeting like this, spent the most time around the Jedi and thus had had the most opportunity to be reminded that they were individuals and encouraged to display that individuality on their armor. If Palpatine had bothered thinking of the clones as individuals at all, he might have realized that either the Jedi had brought with them a dozen completely new recruits, or that there must be a reason for a dozen veteran troopers to have decided to wear completely new armor - like, for example, a desire to appear completely anonymous should the footage from the room's security cameras someday be reviewed.

But Palpatine doesn't care what random traditions a handful of meat-droids have attempted to develop in the short time before they come properly under his control, so none of that crosses his mind.

Instead, whatever answer Yoda might be giving him (he really can't stand trying to mentally translate the troll's awful grammar and pointless aphorisms into plain Basic, and one of the many pleasurable parts of inaugurating his new Empire will be never having to listen to him again) is lost in his surprise as the last member of the group files in: a Coruscant police droid.

Eyebrows shooting all the way to his forehead, Palpatine turns fully towards the Jedi. "What exactly is the meaning of this?"

"Sheev Palpatine," the droid intones, "you are hereby under arrest for committing treason against the Republic, including providing classified intelligence and other material aid to the Republic's enemies in time of war, breaking your oath of office to put Republic interests before others' or your own, and being a Sith while holding a Republic office. How do you plead?"

"What?!" Palpatine shrieks in shock and offense, then rapidly pulls himself back into his chosen role of kindly grandfather. "I'm sorry, but there must be some terrible mistake! I am loyal to the Republic. I am the Chancellor of the Republic, for goodness' sake! The idea of me as a traitor, much less a Sith, is totally preposterous!"

"A very serious matter, treason is," Yoda puts in, and Palpatine has to draw on all his decades of political experience to keep from drawing his saber here and now. "A very serious matter, being a Sith also is. Since the time of the last great Sith Empire, being a Sith illegal is, while one public office also holds. No Sith for a thousand years existed has, the Republic thought, but rescinded, the law was not. And Sith, under the jurisdiction of the Jedi Order, always have been."

"If you're innocent, then I'm sure you have nothing to worry about," Mace says with a barely-polite smirk that cements him in Palpatine's mind as the second highest priority target of the upcoming Purge after Yoda. "Surrender yourself, and you will receive a fair trial with ample opportunity to rebut the evidence against you."

"Well, as fair as we can make it when you've already packed the courts with your own cronies," one of the other Jedi mutters to themself, just barely loud enough for Palpatine to hear.

That is an interesting thought - he's spent a lot of time filling the courts at every level with very much not-impartial judges, and he's made quite sure that every one of them knows where their loyalty ultimately lies. Should he take that route? Playing the innocent politician unjustly accused by the corrupt Jedi might buy him some sympathy points, though not as many as if he can instead spin it as them attempting to assassinate him - especially if he's the only one left alive and can therefore leave out the part where they've accused him of crimes that someone might actually be able to find evidence of if they dig deep enough. No, surrender seems far too risky of a path.

"I absolutely will not surrender myself in the face of such appalling, unjust, and entirely baseless accusations!" he fires back indignantly.

"Baseless?" the Kel Dor Jedi - Palpatine should probably know his name by now, but he really doesn't care - rumbles in return. "Count Dooku was captured this time yesterday. He agreed to provide evidence on his Sith Master and the origins of the war in exchange for life imprisonment at the Jedi Temple rather than execution for his crimes. His information was very enlightening, though also fully corroborated by evidence we have received elsewhere."

That's it! How dare Dooku let himself be captured, much less spill all his secrets! He's not going to simply surrender to these Jedi and let them drag him back to their Temple in disgrace! It's time to end this!

"Clones!" he roars. "Execute Order 66!"

As one, the clones, with perfect precision, raise their weapons. If Palpatine cared, he might have noticed that the one in the center is carrying two blaster pistols instead of a single rifle, but he doesn't.

The Jedi light their lightsabers, but keep them in defensive positions. They're completely focused on him, rather than on the dozen clones behind them. Their surprise will be total.

Palpatine raises his arms, and sends out a sheet of lightning across the room. The Jedi brace themselves against it, straining as they fight to catch it all on their lightsabers. They'll be completely defenseless against the clones' imminent attack. The police droid doesn't fare so well, caught by a bolt of lightning right in its chassis, knocking it over. (If Palpatine cared about droids any more than clones, it might seem odd to him that that's the only effect - no sparks, no unhappy droid wails - almost as if the droid was pre-hardened against electrical attacks. But he refuses to believe that anyone would ever care enough about a droid to bother with something like that.)

Palpatine cackles with fiendish glee as he sends more and more lightning out across the room, pushing the Jedi back. Until something finally does attract his attention. The clones have raised their blasters, but they aren't aimed towards the backs of their Jedi; instead, every weapon is aimed directly at him.

Palpatine doesn't even have time to blink one last time before every blaster fires and all thirteen bolts hit him directly center mass. He's dead before he hits the floor.

CHAPTER SIX

Six days later, Rex and Cody are sitting on the benches outside the Jedi Council Chamber, working on their pads while they wait for the Council's current meeting to finish.

Before that can happen, though, the doors to the antechamber slam open and Anakin strides through, followed by Obi-Wan. Anakin is clearly furious, and while Obi-Wan doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve the same way, he's clearly at least moderately perturbed.

The two Jedi don't appear to notice Rex and Cody sitting in the corner as they march straight to the Council chamber doors and Anakin uses the Force to fling them open.

Rex and Cody can't help but share a quick glance, and Cody can see in Rex's expression the same mix of We knew this was going to happen and This really isn't going to go well that's in his.

Much discussion had been had about what to do with Anakin, and most likely Obi-Wan as well, when it finally came time to confront the Chancellor. Eventually, the rest of the Council, with suggestions from Rex and Cody, had informed the two of the probable survival of Darth Maul, and sent them out on a comms-dark mission to capture the Sith. Ahsoka, much to her vocal displeasure, had been assigned to stay at the Temple and work on her studies rather than go up against an exceedingly dangerous and probably mad Sith Lord at her age.

A day and a half ago, the two reported that they had succeeded in finding the Sith, who had then attempted to hold Anakin hostage to get revenge against Obi-Wan. Before he could do so, Anakin had turned the tables and killed Maul. Cody couldn't help but think that was probably the safest option for everyone, but he wished it hadn't been Skywalker making that call.

As the two Jedi gave their report, however, they had also discovered what had happened on Coruscant in their absence. It was supposed to have been a several day flight back, but Cody thought he probably should have expected that, after news like that, Skywalker would have pushed their ship to the absolute limit and then beyond to get back as soon as possible.

As Anakin throws open the doors to the Council chamber, he's already roaring, "How dare you murder the Chancellor!"

Just before General Windu waves the doors shut behind him and Obi-Wan, Cody can faintly hear the General's voice, "Tell me, Knight Skywalker, were you aware of the Chancellor's identity as a Sith Lord, and his plans to overthrow the Republic and establish a dictatorship?"

Cody and Rex look at each other and wince.

"Do you suppose we ought to go in there?" Rex finally asks hesitantly. "We always knew we were going to have to tell them what was going on with my vision after the Chancellor was gone, and it looks like this is it, whether we like it or not."

Cody considers for a long moment. "The Jedi Council know we're here; if they need us, they can call us in. But if this discussion is going to start with interrogating Skywalker about what he did or didn't know about the Chancellor's plans, I'm guessing Skywalker would just as soon we weren't present for that, whether he turns out to be guilty or not."

"If he does turn out to be guilty," Rex says with a shudder, "I'm not sure I want to be present for that. There's no way he'd ever go quietly."

"Let's hope the Councilmembers are enough to deal with him in that case."

Rex nods fervently, and then they get back to their work.

As the afternoon drags on, it becomes ever more clear that the meeting they were originally called here for won't be happening. Still, neither of them makes any motion to leave.

Hours after the doors swung closed, they finally open again, and Anakin stalks out, clearly unhappy but still wearing his lightsaber and not restrained in any way. The rest of the Council trails out after him; Windu and Kenobi linger at the doorway, while the other members head straight for the elevator down to the rest of the Temple.

Anakin initially heads towards the elevator, then suddenly pauses, seeing Rex and Cody for the first time. He zeros in on Rex like a kath-hound, and stalks up to him furiously.

"You lied to me!" he accuses viciously. "Every single day you've been lying to my face!" Cody's heart sinks at the tone, but at least there isn't any question about whether Skywalker is now informed of Rex's vision.

"No, General," Rex replies, unhappy but trying not to escalate. "I never lied to you. I just didn't tell you all the truth."

"That's still lying, Rex! I trusted you, and now you've betrayed me by lying to me for six months?!"

Cody can see the exact moment when Rex's temper snaps. "You, of all people, are going to argue that keeping a secret is the same as lying to people? Maybe it is, but if so, do you even realize how hypocritical that sounds?"

That gives Anakin pause, and he asks, almost fearfully, "You know?"

Rex is almost physically rolling his eyes now. "Know? General, I fought beside your children for years! Of course I know!"

A grin spreads over Anakin's face and wipes the anger away, for the moment at least. "I'm going to have children?" he asks no one in particular. "Children! Rex, quick, what are they like, what will their names be? Do they have my flying skills? Are they good with a lightsaber?"

He takes a quick breath, preparatory to launching in on more questions, but Rex answers before he can. In sharp contrast to Anakin's bubbly enthusiasm, Rex is coldly, viciously furious.

"Yes, you'll have children. Your son's name is Luke. He's a great pilot, like his father." Anakin pauses, confused at the flat tone of voice Rex is using to tell him good news. Then Rex continues, and Cody watches as the shock and horror spread across Anakin's face.

"When you tortured his friend, Luke went to face you. It was his first lightsaber battle, and not surprisingly, he didn't do so well. I sat next to him, in the medcenter afterwards, as he was trying to come to terms with the dual shock of having lost a hand and having just discovered that the second most evil person in the entire galaxy was his father. He asked me, then, having known you the longest of anyone still left alive in the entire galaxy save Yoda and the Emperor himself, whether there was any good left in you. I probably should have encouraged him, tried to give him some hope, but considering that I had just realized you were the one who killed General Kenobi, the one who killed your own padawan, the one who found out you had a kid and promptly cut off his hand and tried to turn him to the Dark Side, all I could tell him was, 'No.'"

"I wouldn't," Anakin whispers blankly. "No, I'd never, I wouldn't!"

As he trails off, the only sound left is Rex's harsh breathing. Obi-Wan has been stunned into absolute silence, and Cody doesn't dare break the moment. Windu has heard all of this before, but it seems to just be hitting him now exactly what it meant for Rex to have been the one to witness all of this.

Rex finally pulls himself back together enough to finish quietly, "Your son turned out to be right. There was still some spark of goodness left in you after all that, and you eventually turned back to the Light. But, Anakin, don't you dare blame me for not knowing whether I could trust you were still the general I would follow into hell, or whether that person had maybe never existed in the first place, and you were already the person who was perfectly willing to drag the entire rest of the galaxy down into hell with him."

"Anakin…." Obi-Wan starts, reaching out towards his former padawan.

"I'm sorry," Anakin forces out, "I need to be alone right now," and he turns and blindly leaves the room.

As he goes, Rex collapses in on himself, hunching over on the bench like he's trying to hide from the rest of the world in a way he hasn't since they left Raschek.

Cody presses into his side, wanting to comfort him but not sure how much Rex is ready to accept that comfort right now, much less in front of others.

Finally Rex says, not looking up at any of them, "That was a lot crueler than I should have been, wasn't it? I should really go find him and apologize, if he's even willing to listen to me again after that." He sighs, then finally looks up at General Windu. "Do you think there's hope for him, this time around? Can Anakin still be saved?"

General Windu gives him a faint but reassuring smile as he hunkers down in front of Rex to meet him eye-to-eye. "The choice is Anakin's, just as it always has been and always will be, and there is hope in that."

"You don't know?" Rex asks, almost a little plaintively. "Can't you see shatterpoints?"

"I can see how people could break, Rex, yes. That doesn't tell me whether or not someone will break. If it did, I would hope the future you saw in your vision would have gone rather differently."

Windu lowers himself from his crouch to a more comfortable seat on the floor in front of Rex. If there's anything Cody appreciates about having spent six months planning a coup with nearly every Jedi in the Order save the ones he actually worked with, it's that he actually got to know the other Masters far better than he ever had before, which is also how he knows that for all Windu's skills as a swordsman, as a general, as the Master of the Order, his first love has always been teaching.

"All of us, every person in the galaxy, we each have fault lines in us, cracks that could shatter us if attacked just right. Those cracks might come from our pride, an attachment, a belief we hold, a grief we bear, or anything else. Part of being an adult, and especially being a Jedi Knight, is learning to recognize those cracks in ourselves and dealing with them. Some can be healed, some can be patched, and some can only be carefully guarded. That's one of many challenges for a young Jedi Knight - learning to deal with such things on their own, and perhaps even more importantly, learning that just because they're a Knight now doesn't mean they have to deal with such things on their own. One of the many reasons we have the Jedi Temple is to provide just such a support system! But the war made that hard on all of us, not just the young Knights."

"You couldn't get back to the Temple to talk to people there, you didn't have time for much meditation on your own, and there weren't that many opportunities to talk to other Knights out in the field," Cody fills in.

"Precisely. And then, of course, in Anakin's case, there's the part where a Sith Lord was deliberately trying to widen such cracks in his soul and even create new ones, while all the while discouraging him from the sort of self-reflection or asking for support from the Order that might have allowed him to realize what was going on and begin to heal from it."

"But now that Palpatine's dead?" Cody asks for Rex, who doesn't quite seem up to talking right now.

"Now he has a chance," Windu confirms. "What you told Anakin was harsh, Rex, but it got his attention. Did you notice? He rejected that future. The hardest part of change is always wanting it enough to put in the effort it requires, but you've now given him reason to want to change and become someone who can no longer be shattered in that way. What the final outcome for him will be, I cannot say, but every one of us in the Order will give him whatever help he is willing to accept, and I have hope that he will choose a different future than the one you knew."

"Thanks," Rex finally manages to get out, and Windu stands, gives him a companionable squeeze on the shoulder, and leaves the room.

Then it's just Cody, Rex, and General Kenobi.

There's silence for long minutes, the three of them looking at each other, until Kenobi finally breaks it.

"So why didn't you tell me?" Kenobi asks, and Cody can hear the hurt in his voice, as much as he's clearly trying to hide it.

"Not because I don't trust you," he answers firmly.

He doesn't think he's put any extra stress on 'you,' but Kenobi hears it anyway.

"Anakin, then?" he asks, painfully resigned. "I suppose I'm not surprised. I would have wanted to tell him, warn him. I think… I think I would have kept it a secret if you had asked me to, but probably not without more explanations and proof than it would have been fair to ask you."

"That was a big part of it, yes," Cody answers, then hesitates, not sure if this next part will make it better or worse for Obi-Wan.

But Kenobi makes a questioning noise, and after six months of keeping secrets Cody can't bring himself to be anything but fully honest.

"As was just amply demonstrated, Anakin Skywalker doesn't understand secrets unless he's the one keeping them. In Rex's vision, in another year or two you'd have faked your death in order to save the Chancellor from a Separatist plot."

Rex must be getting a little more back on an even emotional keel, because when Cody pauses, he picks up the tale: "When you returned, alive, the Chancellor unmurdered, instead of being grateful you were alive, or understanding that you had received orders you couldn't simply ignore, Skywalker was furious you had lied to him. After that, I'm not sure he ever completely trusted you again, and instead, he spent ever more time getting support from Palpatine instead."

"Right now, Skywalker is mad at Rex and me for keeping this secret. The moment he has a chance to stop and think, he's going to realize that the rest of the Council and a fair number of the Knights in the Temple knew what was going on, and didn't tell him. Instead of accepting it as an inevitable consequence of making himself a security risk, he's going to feel betrayed by everyone - everyone except you, because you didn't know anything more than he did." Cody grimaces, knowing how it sounds. "It wasn't fair to you, but if Skywalker is going to have any chance of staying in the Light, he needs to have the support of at least one person he still feels he can trust unreservedly."

Kenobi nods consideringly. "I would sacrifice far more than just my pride for the chance to spare Anakin from the fate you've described for him." Then he pauses, as something horrifying seems to occur to him and he abruptly turns angry. "I would sacrifice myself a dozen times over, but what about your brothers? If you had told me about Rex's visions, how many of the 212th could we have saved? How many battles could we have fought differently, fought better, except you didn't tell me?!"

Kenobi is working himself up to a proper fury, and while Cody can't help but appreciate that he's angry for the sake of clones, that he doesn't think their lives are worth trading for a Jedi's, Kenobi is currently working under a rather large misconception. "General," he starts, the rank enough to get Kenobi's attention despite his anger, "do you really think I'd have made the call to sacrifice my brothers like that?" He lets the question hang just long enough for Kenobi to start properly listening, then continues, "Did you ever happen to notice how, after Rex and I were gone that tenday, the Clone Intelligence reports we received suddenly got a lot more detailed and accurate?"

Kenobi's jaw drops in surprise. "That was you? Or rather, both of you?"

Cody's pretty sure his smile is a bit smug. "The reports always came through me anyway, so it wasn't hard for us to do a bit of editing. And it wasn't like I wasn't getting reports from a clone with intelligence about what we were about to face!"

"Except," Kenobi's face falls, "what about when they were wrong?"

"That happened sometimes, yes," Rex answers him with a wince, "and I'm sorry about that. But I was working off 20-plus-year-old memories of battles I often hadn't even fought in myself - just read the reports afterwards. I sent you everything I knew, and same to the other battalions when I knew something that might be useful to them, but it was nowhere near as much or as accurate as I'd have liked to send you."

Kenobi nods in understanding, then offers, "And I suppose that every time we fought a battle differently, or you made any other changes, that would cause a ripple effect that might lead to any number of other changes in future engagements."

"Precisely. The attack on Kamino went badly for the Seppies-"

"That was badly?!" Kenobi interrupts in shock.

"Oh, yes - for them at least. Things could have turned out a lot worse for us than they did. At least this time we didn't have to ask the cadets to help fight, and both 99 and Colt survived. At any rate, that meant the Seppies were more cautious in some battles and more desperate in others, and those differences just kept getting bigger the more battles we changed. I'm glad the intel I had was of at least some use, but knowing that two and a half decades ago in a different universe a squad of droids picked this particular moment to jump out of a canyon that's three weeks and half a planet away from where the battle happened this time around…. That's not information that would have done anybody any good even if I could have given it."

"I take your point."

Kenobi's silent for a long moment, considering, then looks over at them more at peace than he has since this whole thing started. "I won't say I'm not upset you didn't tell me what was going on, but I understand why you made the choice you did. I can't tell you whether or not it was the right choice, but I believe it was the only one you thought you could make under the circumstances. I forgive you for the secrets you kept, and I hope you can one day forgive me for letting the situation with myself and Anakin get to the point where the fate of the galaxy was at stake and you weren't able to trust us to make the choices needed to help you save it."

Cody lets out a breath of relief, and it looks like Rex is doing the same thing. Cody thinks back to those days, so long ago now, when Rex was first telling Cody about the visions he had seen. Rex's memories of Kenobi had been complicated and painful, but it looks like they're finally starting to heal.

"Course I'll forgive you," Rex says gently, as Cody nods in agreement.

With a much lighter mood between the three of them, they finally head to the elevator down and start heading to the nearest refectory.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Cody smiles, heart lighter than its been in days, as he, Rex, and Kenobi walk through the halls of the Temple towards the refectory. The relationship between him and Kenobi may not be back to what it was before he kept a galaxy-changing secret from Kenobi for six months - and Rex and Anakin's relationship definitely isn't - but at least they have the chance to heal now, and with much better odds than Cody was originally anticipating, back when he and Rex were first making their plans to end the war. It's a sacrifice Cody would have been more than willing to make, given the stakes, but it's nice to know he hasn't totally burned this bridge.

After a few minutes of walking quietly, Kenobi offers with a wry smile, "I confess I had guessed something was going on with you two, these past six months, but I had assumed it was related to gaining freedom for your brothers, and thus I shouldn't look too closely unless you asked me to become involved. But I never guessed your plans involved taking down a Sith Lord and ending the entire war!"

Cody and Rex can't help preening just a little at the pride in Kenobi's voice, but then his voice takes on a note of concern. "So what will happen to you and your brothers, now? Anakin and I got notice that we would no longer be needed to serve as generals, but there was no notification of what would happen to the 212th and 501st."

"We're going to be just fine," Cody hastens to reassure him. Next to him, Rex has a sly grin on his face, and he's pretty sure he does too.

"Oh?"

"We may have enlisted a few dozen of our brothers to go talk to every anti-clone-rights Senator in the entire Senate."

Kenobi's eyebrows shoot up. "Should you be telling me this? You didn't do anything…"

"Illegal?" Cody finishes his sentence. "No. Well, a little bit of minor slicing for a few appointment books, but nothing beyond that. No, we just pointed out a few things to them. Like the fact that we've spent this whole war fighting and dying, and in return, we've gotten… nothing. And during the war, we were willing to accept that. We were saving lives, preventing innocent planets from being invaded and their people killed. But now the war's over. And right now, with the droid army non-operative due to Palpatine's master switch, we're the only significant military force in the galaxy.

"So all we did was mention to the Senators that, sooner or later, it's going to occur to every major power in the galaxy that all they have to do is offer us a warm welcome - citizenship, pay, the promise of actually being treated like members of the community - and it's going to be very hard to convince our younger brothers why we should stay loyal to the Republic instead of taking them up on the offer. And if that happens, how exactly does the Republic think they'd be able to stop us from simply leaving and working for someone else instead? Whether that's the Alliance of Neutral Systems, the remains of the CIS, the Hutts, even some random Republic planet that wants a shortcut to becoming the most powerful planet in the galaxy…."

Kenobi's face has gone nearly ashen, and as Cody trails off, he starts murmuring, "Of course. Why would you stay and fight for people who haven't given you anything at all in return, who have enslaved you and your brothers? You could go work for anyone you wanted, there will be a bidding war, maybe another real war, all because the Republic hasn't bothered to give you the most basic of sentient rights, and you deserve, you absolutely deserve, to work for someone who actually appreciates you, who will pay you what you're worth, not merely consider you disposable…."

"Hey," Rex breaks in gently. "You know that we wouldn't actually do that, right?"

"I'd like to think we know a little better than to trust that the Seppies would actually treat us like people for any longer than it took the ink to dry on any contract we signed with them!" Cody adds. "Plus, do you really think any of us would ever in a million years consider taking a job that might end up with us sent against Jedi? Aurek, that's not exactly a recipe for a long and healthy life, and Besh, half of this whole war has been figuring out how to make sure we could get out of it without getting forced into trying to kill you all. The last thing we'd do is volunteer for that! At any rate, it's all moot: it would never occur to most of the Senators that we might have any loyalty to anything but the size of a prospective salary, so they caved remarkably quickly."

"Three hundred of the Senators closest to Palpatine are going to present the bill tomorrow morning, and they've assured us it has the votes to pass. All the Senators who already cared about clone rights have already promised their support, all the Senators who were closest to Palpatine are trying to distance themselves from him and his policies, and all the ones just in it for their own money and power are perfectly ready to believe the same of us. So we'll each be getting citizenship, backpay, salary, healthcare - including an entire medical research facility dedicated to ending our fast aging - and pension, along with all sorts of support for anyone who wants to leave the GAR and transition to civilian life. The cadets still growing up on Kamino will have a vastly improved childhood, and once they're grown up, the same choice about whether to fight or make a life as a civilian."

"That was another thing - it only took a couple of minor hints for the Senators to consider that an army made up entirely of clones would likely always be more loyal to each other than any government, making this kind of negotiation all but inevitable. So for as long as they decide to keep the GAR as a standing army, any clone who wants to stay will get their pick of positions, but they'll also be recruiting from the planets around the galaxy to fill in the rest of the ranks. If the citizens of the galaxy want protection, they'll have to participate in that protection themselves instead of leaving it all to a disposable army."

"You deserve it, all of you. You really do," Kenobi responds firmly, once he's gotten over his shock.

"The Senate isn't fixed, now," Rex adds, almost as an afterthought. "You need to know that. Those cracks that General Windu was talking about in Anakin - they're in the Senate, too. Some of them deliberately created by Palpatine, and some of them there long before, just made significantly worse by him. I'm not a politician, so I can't tell you the solutions. But it's been getting bad enough that, after the Republic fell, some of the Rebels objected to the Rebellion's official name of 'The Alliance to Restore the Republic' because they felt it was corrupt enough that we needed to start completely afresh. A bunch of significantly smarter and more politically savvy people than me disagreed, and felt it was worth saving, but even they were advocating for some major reforms. I only heard a handful of their discussions, but I've recorded what I remember onto a datastick, in the hopes that it might turn out to be useful."

"There are significant dangers in the Jedi Order getting involved in political matters," Kenobi muses as he takes the datastick, "but as we're seeing there are equal dangers in trusting that the Senate is capable of providing its own oversight. Yet given what you've said about the clone rights bill, these next few months will probably be the best opportunity in centuries to pass as many necessary reforms and other safeguards as possible. I'll take your notes to the Council and Senator Organa, and we'll all do what we can to make sure the Republic is something all of its citizens can be proud to be a part of."

Rex nods gratefully, and the three of them walk in silence for a few minutes.

"So what will you two do, then?" Kenobi asks finally. "Stay in the army, or leave? And if you leave, what do you think you'd like to do?"

And that… gives Cody pause.

They've made it to the refectory now, so Cody tries to think it over while he grabs his food and they make their way over to a table. It's not that he hasn't thought about the future at all - he's now spent months trying to arrange the galaxy into a shape that offers a future to the Jedi, to the clones, and to all the citizens of the galaxy who would prefer not to end up under the control of a Sith dictatorship. It's not even that he hasn't thought about After Palpatine - he was one of the instigators of the bill that's about to go to the Senate. It's just that he's been so busy trying to give all his brothers a choice that he hasn't really thought about what path he himself might want to take.

About all he knows is that, after hearing the pain in Rex's voice as he described decades of traveling the galaxy alone, he definitely doesn't want to end up separated from all of his other brothers, and he wants to make sure Rex doesn't end up in that situation either. Beyond that, though? He really doesn't know.

Given that, as they all sit down together in an alcove surrounded by plants, Cody motions Rex to answer first.

Rex hums thoughtfully as he takes his first few bites, but finally answers. "I definitely don't want to stay in the military any longer, but even if I'm not part of the GAR, I'll always be the Captain of the 501st. Since we should be getting more than enough back pay to last us years even without running right out and picking up a civilian job, I think what I'd most like to do is travel around to wherever my men end up, and make sure they're doing okay adjusting to their new lives."

Rex smiles wryly. "Out of every clone in the entire GAR, save Cut and - oh, Cody! Remind me later, I think I've come up with a way to swap a few ID numbers so Cut can also get back pay and proper discharge benefits and everything."

"Course, Rex," Cody answers. Rex had told him, a few weeks after it had happened, about his experiences on Saleucami. At the time, Cody hadn't really known what to think; torn, just as Rex had been, between anger at Cut's desertion and envy that he had found a life and existence outside of the limits all the rest of them were constrained by. He had gained significantly more sympathy since discovering how badly the rest of them were being betrayed by their Commander in Chief. Now, though, with Palpatine gone and the war over, Cut would have far greater benefits to being still officially listed as a member of the GAR than not. Trying to argue that, under the circumstances, Cut had been justified in deserting would likely require years of litigation. If Rex had some way to spoof the identity chip in Cut's arm, or maybe just GAR records, to show Cut as having been a loyal member of the GAR up until he was legally allowed to be discharged, it might not technically be legal but it would definitely be the straightforward - and, Cody believed, right - option.

"Anyway," Rex pulled himself back on track, "me, Cut, and Gregor - no, not even Gregor because we rescued him fast enough this time around - Cut and I are the only two clones in the entire GAR, so far as I'm aware, to have any experience living as a civilian or getting a civilian job. And that's a lot harder than it seems, with our background. The reparations bill is going to include various counselors and advisors, even some with experience helping child soldiers on planets like Melida/Daan, but none of them are going to be clones themselves or understand precisely where we're coming from. The first time I ended up in one of those big superstores I almost had a panic attack. It took years before I could convince myself I was allowed to actually enjoy free time without feeling guilty that I needed to be productive every moment. My experience with civvie jobs may not have been exactly normal, since I was busy trying to stay under the Empire's radar and so couldn't take anything official, but at least I have a little practice working for people who aren't brothers or Jedi and don't understand military mindsets.

"Which means I'm also pretty well acquainted with the issue of prejudice." He sighs, and Obi-Wan and Cody both wince. "Granted, it hasn't had time to get as bad here as it did in my vision, and even there it still wasn't as bad as the awful rumors Palpatine was spreading about the Jedi Order. But legislation isn't going to change hearts and minds. Our brothers can now legally go anywhere in Republic space. Theoretically, we can settle on any Republic planet, find a job without being discriminated against anywhere in the Republic, and generally do everything any other Republic citizen can do. But there are a lot of not-quite-illegal ways for people to make it clear when they don't want you around. I don't think I'll be able to spare our brothers all of that, even if I was capable of vetting every planet they might ever consider moving to, which I can't, but maybe there's some way I can at least give them some support."

"At a minimum," Cody says slowly, thinking out loud, "by keeping an eye on a lot of different brothers, you'll be able to see which ones are doing better and worse. You might not be able to prevent a bad situation, or fix it, but how many of us would even know how to recognize a bad situation from the inside? Having you able to tell a brother, 'You don't have to live like this. Other brothers aren't facing these same problems and that means you don't have to either,' might be pretty important."

"That's a good point," Rex agrees, eyes dark with remembered guilt and pain. "I almost didn't recognize just how bad Krell was until it was too late even when I did have Skywalker as a counterexample. That would be far too easy to happen again to our brothers if they don't realize they've picked a spot to try living that's hostile."

"But you did recognize Krell," Obi-Wan puts in gently. "You recognized how wrong he was in your vision, and then you warned the Council about him this time and now he's locked away where he'll never be able to hurt any clone again. And as for your brothers, with you keeping an eye on them I suspect they'll have no trouble getting the encouragement they need to get out of any less-than-ideal situations before they become unbearable. Still, would it help if I were able to collect some information on which planets seem generally in favor of having clones settle there, and which ones it might be safer to avoid?"

Obi-Wan has far more contacts than either of them do, and across far more walks of life than either of them have access to. They both nod gratefully.

"What about you, Cody?" Rex asks curiously. "What would you like to do now?"

And suddenly, Cody realizes, it's very simple. "Any chance you'd be willing to take a passenger along with you? The 212th seem just as likely to need support during this transition as the 501st, and given how close our men have become to each other, odds are they'll stick close once they're discharged. So might as well travel together if you were willing to have me."

Rex looks utterly flabbergasted, but finally manages to say, "You don't have to. You can do anything you want! I wouldn't ask you to…"

Cody grins crookedly back. "You don't have to ask. I'm offering."

Cody's always been a bit prone to leaping before he looks, at least in situations where there isn't anyone else's life on the line. But usually it's just his instincts working faster than his logical brain can keep up, and when his brain does finally catch up, it can give him actual reasons for his decisions.

So, too, here. There's the obvious, of course. The 212th have been on a lot of the frontlines of the war, and probably most are more than ready to retire. When they do, they'll no doubt be able to use someone watching out for them. Cody's well aware that he doesn't have any more of a clue of how the galaxy outside the military works than any of his men, but that's just another reason to learn what he can from Rex. Even more importantly, Rex spent far too much of that alternate future isolated from his brothers. Which means Cody can trust he'll manage just fine doing that again, especially just for the short hyperspace hops between whichever planets their brothers settle on, but he shouldn't have to.

This offer isn't just for Rex's sake, either. Cody loves all his brothers, even the ones he's never met, but he has some clones he's particularly close to. Ever since they first met, Rex has been at the very top of the list and he'd love the chance to actually spend some time with his brother that didn't involve one or both of their lives at risk. Their assignment to go check on the various listening posts together, the one that had culminated with the attack on Rishi Station, had probably been one of the most purely enjoyable parts of this whole Force-forsaken war.

And that's yet another part of it - Cody actually does enjoy travel, and seeing new places, yet he's seen only a handful of places in his entire life that weren't either the inside of a military facility or in the middle of active combat. It would be very nice to fix that, and if it was with an enjoyable traveling companion and with the purpose of making sure the rest of his brothers were also safe and happy, so much the better.

"If you're ready for a break from the rest of us, I don't blame you. But if you'd enjoy having some company, then I think that's what I want to do most," Cody repeats firmly.

"Then I'll take you up on it," Rex agrees.

And then Obi-Wan, whom both of them had pretty much forgotten was even still sitting at the table with them, says, "I think your brothers are very lucky to have both of you. I wish all of you the best, and I'll do whatever I can to help you all have the lives you should have had all along, were it not for Palpatine's evil. You all more than deserve the chance to finally be free."

CHAPTER EIGHT

Two days later, the Protect Our Veterans' Futures bill breaks the record for the fastest-passing Senate bill (at least, of those which involve the Senate actually agreeing to spend money).

Cody spends an hour or two celebrating with the 212th, then decides to strategically disappear so they can pull out whichever party supplies they've acquired which they aren't comfortable actually breaking out while a superior officer is supervising. Hopefully, none of them will get too drunk, but at least the war is officially over and no one is required to report for duty in the morning.

He meanders around for a little while, just enjoying a newfound sense of freedom, before his feet take him to the giant hanger the 501st have commandeered for their own party. Their celebration is definitely more raucous than the 212th's, but not so much as to indicate that Rex has already made his own retreat. (Probably wise considering the Domino Twins have only been back from ARC training for a month, and are still flying high off the adrenaline of completing their first mission - freeing General Piell from the Citadel - successfully. Enthusiastic Domino Twins are dangerous Domino Twins)

A first glance around the space doesn't reveal Rex, but after a few minutes of lurking at the edges, Jesse sidles up to him and jerks a chin towards one of the giant storage units shoved to the edges of the space.

Cody nods his thanks, then wanders over that direction. As he gets close, he can see Rex sitting on the edge of one of the units, a good three or four meters off the ground, looking out over his men.

Cody isn't wearing a jetpack - all the clones are currently in their blacks, though with the bill now passed odds are everyone will be looking for actual civvies soon enough - and he's not a Jedi, but it only takes Cody a moment to spot the series of jumps Rex must have made and follow his path up. A moment later, he takes a seat next to Rex and dangles his legs over the edge.

"Not down there with them?" he asks after a moment.

"I just can't help thinking of how many more of our brothers ought to be here with them," Rex answers softly, guiltily.

The grief is understandable, but the guilt worries Cody. "We've lost far, far too many brothers in a war that should never have happened in the first place. But Rex, you're not responsible for Palpatine being an evil Sith Lord or orchestrating this war," Cody reminds him.

"No," Rex admits, almost unwillingly, "but what about every single brother we lost since I came back? I knew what was going to happen, I saw the future, and I still couldn't save them!"

Cody wraps an arm around Rex and tugs him close. "First of all, Raschek didn't make you all powerful. He didn't even make you a Jedi, unless you were keeping a pretty major secret from me?"

Rex smiles and shakes his head almost unwillingly, but droops again almost instantly.

"Rex, you know as well as I do that we did everything in our power to end the war as quickly as possible and save as many of our brothers as we could. But Palpatine had decades of planning that needed to be undone. It wasn't possible to move any faster than we did, and you know it."

But that's the problem: Rex does know it, it just doesn't help the grief or the guilt. Still, Cody'll try one more tack.

"Rex," he says consideringly, and the change in tone has Rex looking up at him curiously, "tell me: in the vision you saw, at the end of the war, how many clones were there in the entire GAR who were both alive and not under the chip's control?"

"A dozen, maybe," Rex starts, and he's clearly focusing enough on mentally counting them up that he hasn't figured out where Cody is going with this yet.

"The war is over now. How many troopers are there, in Torrent Company alone, who are still both alive and free? How many in the whole 501st? How many in the GAR as a whole?"

Rex's eyes soften as he realizes what Cody is trying to tell him.

"Rex, we couldn't save everyone. But how many of the people in this room did you save? Since we already knew about the chips, Fives didn't die trying to expose the conspiracy. Echo might have lived through Order 66 in your vision, but this time he wasn't captured and still has all his limbs. Maul is far too dead to still have any opportunity to crash your ship or kill Jesse or your other troopers. Hardcase is still alive - though maybe not for too much longer if he doesn't learn to be a little more cautious with his explosives experiments! I'm alive. I'm alive, and free, and fully planning on staying that way. I haven't even fired on anyone other than Palpatine, and that was of my own free will because he fully deserved it. You saved the galaxy, Rex, and even if not all of our brothers are here to see it, it's okay to celebrate all the ones you were able to save."

Rex sits there for long minutes, still quiet, but looking like a massive weight has been lifted off his shoulders.

Eventually, he says with a shy smile, "Just don't forget that I couldn't have done it without you. I knew what we needed to change - you came up with the plans for how to make those changes!"

"We did it together," Cody replies firmly, bumping his shoulder companionably against Rex's.

After a few more minutes of sitting quietly, Rex says, "It's weird. For six months now, I've known what the future would be. It was bad, and we were desperately trying to change it, but there was still a certain amount of reassurance in knowing what was probably going to come next, and after that, and then after that. But now we've really done it, haven't we? The war is over! The chips are out, Palpatine is dead, the Separatist leaders are dead or captured, and there's no going back to that old timeline. Even if some other would-be dictator tries to take over, they'll have to use some other scheme. And that's everything we've been working for, but it also means I have absolutely no idea what's coming next. And that's somehow both exhilarating and terrifying."

Rex huffs a quiet laugh and continues, "It's not like I don't have any clues about what might come over the next thirty-ish years - I've warned the Jedi Council to keep an eye on what the Zygerrians might be up to, even without the war to give their slaving operations cover, plus there's that supervolcano that's going to off in another decade on Velusia that'll require half the planet to be evacuated - but pretty much everything else I know about the next few years - decades - is so focused on the war, the Empire, and the Rebellion, that almost none of that information is still relevant."

"You could go back to Raschek and ask for another vision," Cody teases.

"Not on your life!" Rex's refusal is almost comically appalled.

"Not even to find out whether Luke and Leia will be born in this version of the future?" Cody asks, not entirely sure whether he's teasing or not anymore.

"No," Rex repeats, more seriously, "I think it would be nice to go back someday, long enough to thank Raschek for giving us the chance to change things, but I think I'm more than ready to go back to not feeling responsible for the future of the entire galaxy. And while I'd really like to know about Luke and Leia, we'll find out the normal way soon enough. And I think," Rex hesitates, but finally goes on, "I think that that's the sort of thing where we're just supposed to trust in the Force. If they're meant to be born, they will be, and if they're not, knowing ahead of time isn't going to fix anything." Then Rex deliberately lightens his tone: "Besides, I really don't want to know what kind of deal Raschek would ask for in exchange this time!"

"Fair enough," Cody laughs. "But that's a good thought."

"What is?"

"We should go on vacation somewhere. A real, proper vacation, like the natborns do. Maybe after we've gotten our men settled down safely, or even before then, if we can wrangle a few days of leave before the discharges go through and everyone starts disbursing."

Halfway across the room someone starts lighting off fireworks and Rex turns away from Cody to yell, "No explosives of any kind inside! You all know that! Take them outside, and no blowing off any bits of yourselves or you'll answer to Kix!" There's some distant grumbling, but the fireworks stop. "A vacation sounds really nice," Rex admits ruefully. "Where were you thinking we should go?"

"You're the one who's been to a lot more planets than me," Cody points out with a laugh. "What would you recommend?"

That gives Rex a bit of pause, and Cody can almost see him mentally flipping though planets in his head. "Scarif is pretty beautiful. Less so covered in Imps, but at least that wouldn't be a problem for us now. Took me a while to get used to an ocean with parts shallow enough to stand up in, but it's pretty neat after you adjust. Yavin IV has some really cool trees, and also some very intriguing ruins - on second thought, though, we always wondered whether there was some connection to the Sith with some of them, so as long as we have an entire Jedi Order to ask, I probably ought to let them know that they might want to check things out and confirm they're safe before anyone hangs out there just for a vacation. Or maybe… Oh," Rex suddenly says, and Cody sees the exact moment when Rex decides where they'll be going.

"We should go to Alderaan."

"The one the Death Star destroyed?" Cody checks, though it's not likely he's remembering that wrong.

"Yeah," Rex confirms. "That's the one. I ended up there a handful of times on rebel business. I told you that the Queen and Senator were always major supporters of the Rebellion, and they raised Princess Leia the same way. It still hurts to realize they won't know me this time around, of course," - and Cody can hear the grief in his voice at that thought - "but it's the most beautiful planet I've ever visited. I never got to stay long, though. The last thing we wanted was to risk someone noticing a connection between the royal family and a clone deserter, so I'd just show up in whatever out of the way place I was told, do what I came to do, and leave again. When I had a moment, though, I'd look out over the mountains and promise myself that once the war was over and the Empire was defeated, I'd come back and I'd actually get to visit properly. And then between one unremarkable visit and the next, the Death Star happened and I thought I'd lost my chance forever."

"But this time," Cody finishes for him, "it's not destroyed, and it won't be."

"And it won't be," Rex agrees thickly. "It won't be."

TWO WEEKS LATER

Cody and Rex step off the shuttle - taking a civilian shuttle from one core planet to another is supposed to be simple and straightforward, but Cody has to admit that he's very grateful he's doing this with someone who actually has some experience in how public transportation works - in the capital city of Aldera. It's not as big or bustling as Coruscant, but the concept that they could go anywhere, do anything, on the entire planet still has him pretty overwhelmed.

Well, after they go through customs and immigration first.

Cody's pretty pleased to hand over his brand new civilian ID to the official, together with Rex's, but he's much less pleased when the gentlebeing scans the IDs and their eyebrows shoot up to their forehead at what they see on the screen. The IDs worked just fine to get them onto the shuttle, so why…? Cody really hopes this isn't a case of clone prejudice; sure, it's now officially illegal to discriminate against clones for being clones, but that won't change people's attitudes overnight. Still, Rex had seemed to think Alderaan was one of the more progressive planets when it came to clone rights.

"Apologies, sirs," the gentlebeing says, "please wait there for just a moment. Someone will be with you shortly."

Cody and Rex shoot each other alarmed looks, but take a seat on the bench where directed. Cody tries to decide whether to discreetly palm his blaster or his comm, but finally settles on his comm. Clone rights are still a pretty new concept, and he doesn't want to give any more weight to the people who claim they're all trigger-happy violence fiends. For that matter, he wants to prove to himself that he can adjust to living in a galaxy at peace, and that means at least making an attempt at trusting that not everything unexpected is the precursor to an ambush.

A moment later a speeder pulls up with a uniformed driver sitting in front.

"Captain Rex and Commander Cody?" she asks politely. The discharges don't officially take effect for another week, so Cody just nods, and beside him, Rex does the same. "Please get in."

"That's a palace security uniform," Rex whispers. "They don't usually arrest people unless they're actively threatening the Queen or Royal Family, but they also don't usually pick up random tourists at the spaceport."

They're starting to get stares from the other passengers from the shuttle, though, so they finally shrug and get in.

The speeder is enclosed - protection? containment? - but with large transparisteel panels allowing a clear view out either side of the vehicle. Cody still wishes he knew what was going on - all their driver said when asked was, "All will be explained shortly" - but for now he lets himself simply enjoy the view.

"You were right," he tells Rex after a few minutes, "it's the most beautiful place I've ever seen."

"I mean, you're probably biased given that there aren't any droid armies overrunning the place," Rex laughs, "but yes."

Hearing their discussion, their driver starts pointing out interesting features - mountains, distant cities, waterfalls, etc., along with the legends that go along with each.

It's all fascinating, and hopefully a sign that they're not about to be thrown in a dungeon for violating some obscure law. Then the speeder rounds one last curve in the mountain road and Cody's jaw drops. There before them is the Royal Palace of Alderaan and it's utterly breathtaking. He only has a few moments to look, though, as the speeder quickly turns off the main road into a tunnel, and shortly thereafter comes to a stop in a large speeder bay.

"This way, please," the driver (guard?) directs them. "You can leave your bags in the vehicle and they'll be collected later." They've come this far, and by this point Cody is immensely curious, so they follow.

They go up an elevator, down several corridors, and finally into a small room with several more guards, one of whom briskly tells them, "Weapons, please. All of them, mind."

"Does that mean…" Rex starts with a tone of growing understanding, then cuts himself off and starts pulling out his blaster and knives.

Cody hesitates another minute, but fighting their way out of the palace would be a challenge even for the two of them, and Rex seems willing to go along with this. So Cody finally gives in and starts disarming. He's wearing civvies for this trip, but then again, the reintegration of the remains of the CIS is still a work in progress, so he wasn't going to travel unprotected. One blaster, three knives, seven grenades of varying types, and a holdout blaster later, the box he was handed to put his weapons in is looking pretty full.

Rex looks over from his own piled-high box and raises an eyebrow at Cody. "The garrote, too," he says with little brother obnoxiousness and an odd air of suppressed excitement.

Cody sighs, but pulls the garrote out from the hem of his tunic. Rex better not tattle on him about his lockpick set, though!

With that, the guards close the boxes, then hold them up for Cody and Rex to press their thumbprints to the locks to set them. "These will be waiting here safely for you when you're done," one says. "You can head in through that door now."

Rex strides forward with growing anticipation, and Cody follows bewildered in his wake.

The door opens onto a wide balcony, and for just a moment Cody stops dead, staring out across the Alderaanian countryside. Then his attention is caught by a man and a woman sitting on a bench at the edge of the balcony.

The woman Cody doesn't recognize. The man, though, Cody has never spoken to directly, but he knows his face anyway. He's Senator and Prince Consort Bail Organa of Alderaan, and that makes the identity of the woman sitting next to him entirely clear even without an ostentatious crown.

Rex leads the way over towards the pair, then pauses, uncertain, a few meters away. "Apologies, Your Majesty, Senator. I don't know how exactly we're supposed to officially greet you…"

"There wasn't a lot of standing on ceremony during the rebellion, was there?" Queen Organa asks gently, almost playfully, and Rex and Cody's jaws both drop.

"And there is no need to stand on ceremony here, either," Senator Organa says firmly. "Please, sit!"

Rex and Cody make their way to the bench sitting next to the Organas', and awkwardly take a seat.

The Queen likely notices their uncertainty, but is polite enough not to mention it directly. Instead she says, "As you may know, House Organa has long been a friend to the Jedi and to democracy, and we are pleased to know that those friendships will not falter even in the direst of circumstances, though we are also grieved at what they could have cost our people." Her smile grows more mischievous at their wide eyes, and she continues, "After the recent revelations in the Senate, Bail has spoken to several of the members of the Jedi Council about what happened and what the best way forward is for the Senate and the Republic. Imagine our surprise when he was given a list of the failures of the Republic and their potential fixes - a list, he was told, made of information and ideas he had once helped create, in a future that now will never be."

"I confess I may have badgered a few of the Councilmembers a little, to give me additional information about whom this datastick was from and how it had come into existence, and then, once they explained, a schedule of your planned visit here" Senator Organa picks up the thread, "but I'm glad I did. If Chancellor Palpatine had gotten his way, things could have turned out far worse for the entire galaxy, but none more so than Alderaan. And we have you, Captain Rex, to thank for that."

The Queen smiles broadly, and genuinely, at them and Cody no longer has any doubt why Rex missed his friendship with this pair quite so much. "We're told, Captain Rex, Commander Cody, that you are the ones who stopped Palpatine and his dark plots. We've also been told, Captain Rex, that in the vision you saw of the future, we fought together in our rebellion against the Empire, and became friends in the process. We are not the people you knew," she adds sorrowfully, "but we know the kind of person you are, and your brother, and we would be proud to get to know you again in this world."

Rex gives a gasp of surprise, then nods firmly. He has his voice mostly back under control after a moment and adds, "Yes, please, we'd like that very much."

"Good," the Queen says firmly. "We'd like to give you some sort of honor or recognition of some sort for saving our entire planet, though only to whatever degree you are comfortable having the details of your role made known. Name you as Paladins of House Organa, perhaps. But beyond any titles or awards, though, we want you to know: you will always have a place here, on Alderaan and in our family. So to start with, please, call us Breha and Bail. We owe you a debt we can never repay."

"And because we suspect you are as devoted to your people as we are to ours," Senator Organa - Bail - continues, "and would consider aid to them to be a far more useful thanks than any gold or jewels we could offer to you, we would also ask you to pass along our welcome to them. Your cleverness in handling the Senate is most impressive, and you have already won for your brothers all the support that they need. But I would still like to make sure that they know that they are welcome here, as many as would like to come. Master Obi-Wan admitted you were concerned about whether your brothers would be able to find places to settle which did not begrudge their presence. I cannot guarantee that none of our people harbor any prejudice, but any who do will answer to us and the rest will welcome your brothers to whatever life, or job, or family, or training, or anything else they may desire here. None of them shall ever be turned away."

That's an incredible gift. The bill won them the right to citizenship, the right to settle anywhere in the galaxy and get jobs or go to school. But being allowed to settle somewhere and being welcome to settle somewhere are two very different things.

"Thank you," Cody finally says. "On behalf of all our brothers, thank you."

"Now in the interests of full disclosure," Breha adds with a smile, "we're not the only planet interested in enticing some of your brothers to live with us. Between the planets whom the GAR personally rescued from the Separatists, the planets who have the moral decency to recognize that the rights you won in the POVF bill are merely the bare minimum the Republic should have offered you the moment we realized you existed, and then the planets who are forward thinking enough to realize that intelligent, disciplined, and well-trained citizens are always a boon, you and your brothers are likely to find yourselves in rather high demand!"

"I won't pretend there aren't many planets whose unthinking prejudice would make your lives there a challenge," Bail says gravely, then lightens as he says with sly humor, "but among the rest, well. Your impressive negotiations with the Senate may have avoided a bidding war for your military services, but the latest rumors have Naboo planning to offer free tuition at any of their universities for any clone who wishes to relocate there - art is highly valued on Naboo, and your determination to create even with only yourselves and your armor as available canvases has apparently cemented your approval there - while Pantora wants to entice you with what they consider to be more practical support, including a long-term career and life counseling service with guaranteed job opportunities for anyone who might want to live there."

Breha adds in a conspiratorial tone, "King Lee-Char is so appreciative of the efforts the GAR went to on his behalf that he's really hoping to have at least a few retired troopers live on Mon Cala. Though it's not entirely altruistic on his part - I'm sure both the shipyards on the planet would love to have some of your troopers share their experiences about how their ships actually perform under combat conditions. But he called me in a panic last week wanting to know whether Mon Cala being a water world like Kamino would be an attraction to your brothers, or whether he should try to play down that connection. I had to confess I had no idea, but I promised to ask the next time I had the opportunity. I don't suppose you have any advice?"

"Well, we're all different," Rex reminds her, "so there's no one good answer for all of us."

Breha visibly winces. "Apologies for the assumption," she replies, "I should have known better."

Cody and Rex are stunned into silence for a moment at the clearly sincere apology, but then Rex rallies to say, "Apology accepted - and thank you. As for our brothers, I'm pretty sure the pilots and engineers will be far too excited about the opportunity to care how much dry land Mon Cala does or doesn't have. Fair warning, none of us ever got training in ship design, but I know at least some of the repair techs tried to study some of the principles when they got the chance and would jump at the chance to get some actual classes on the subject, and I'm quite sure the pilots would adore the opportunity to take test flights and have people actually listen to their opinions afterwards. The Scubatroopers, now, I think there are a fair number of them who would be more than happy to spend the rest of their lives underwater, especially if they could get some help getting new Scuba gear, since they'll have to give back their current equipment when they're officially discharged."

"That sounds entirely reasonable," Breha agrees. "I can give Lee-Char the suggestion. Now we've also heard from…"

As Bail, Breha, and Rex talk over the list of possible planets the Organas have collected, Cody finds himself just watching in awe. In just two weeks, Breha and Bail have contacted hundreds of planets, sounding them out about clone emigration, so they can give the best advice possible to Cody's brothers.

"Now you should be aware," Bail warns at one point, "that these are just the official stances. I know Master Obi-Wan is working with his contacts as well to get you a better sense of what things are actually like on the ground, which will likely prove to be far more important to your brothers' day-to-day lives. So you might want to hold off on passing along any of this advice to your brothers until you hear from him, too. Still, if the planetary government isn't supportive, that will make it much harder to complain about anyone breaking the non-discrimintation laws which have just been passed, so maybe start with ones outwardly welcoming and then winnow the list down further from there."

Rex and Cody are both taking notes on their datapads by this point, and at some point Bail calls for a table where they can spread out dozens of sheets of flimsi tracking all the different governments the Organas have heard from.

When it eventually gets dark outside, the Organas invite them in to join them for latemeal, where they respectfully, but with clearly genuine interest, ask Cody and Rex about themselves as individuals and their experiences on Kamino and during the war.

When the meal finishes, Breha offers them rooms in the palace for the night, unless they'd feel more comfortable in a hotel, in which case she says she'd be happy to ask her staff for their recommendations. When Rex and Cody, grateful but a little overwhelmed, say they'd be happy to accept the offer of a night in the palace, Bail invites them to join the couple for firstmeal as well, along with a tour of as much of the city and surrounding countryside as they can get to before he has to head back to the Senate to start work on the next package of reform bills.

Of course Cody and Rex accept.

That night, as Cody and Rex prepare for bed in a suite of rooms overlooking an elegant glacial lake, with the most comfortable furniture Cody has ever felt in his life, a suite which Breha has declared to be theirs for not just the night but for as long as they want it, he thinks back to Kenobi asking him and Rex what they'd like to do with their lives. He hasn't changed his mind in the weeks since - he still wants, more than anything, to travel around with Rex and make sure all of their brothers are doing okay. But he thinks, now, that there was something he forgot. After they've traveled, after they've gone from planet to planet to planet checking in on Waxer and Boil, Fives and Echo, Wooley and Jesse and Longshot and so many, many more… Cody wants someplace to come home to.

For the first ten years of his life, Kamino was home, if only because he had no idea that home was supposed to be a place where you felt safe and happy and welcome. Then there was the Negotiator, with his brothers and his general. They all meant the galaxy to him, but at the same time, he could never escape the knowledge that any of them might die at any time, and if it was a brother stationed on another ship, like Rex, he might not even find out about it until days after the fact. The ship itself was hardly designed to be warm or welcoming, and spending every minute aboard her either writing up casualty reports from the last battle or trying desperately to plan well enough to limit casualties in the next battle was not particularly conducive to feelings of peace or safety either.

But the war is over now, and Cody will never again have to send his brothers into battle.

Now, Cody thinks, for the first time in his life, he and Rex have finally come home.

The End