Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Good afternoon, Commander Flux-"

"Just Tabitha, ma'am… please."

"...Tabitha then. How are you feeling today? I hope our accommodations have been to your liking?" 

"Yeah- Yes, thank you. I'm fine." 

"Mhmm…"

"..." 

"Now, Tabitha, have you been told why you're here today?" 

"This is a hearing conducted by a military judge -- you, I presume, ma'am?"

"Quite correct."

"To determine whether or not the charges against me warrant further investigation and should be referred to a general court-martial." 

"Very good. You seem to know quite a lot about this."

"I've had a bit of time between- I read up on what I needed to know." 

"Indeed you did. I take it you are aware then that this whole hearing will be taped in case of a court-martial?"

"Yes." 

"Very good. Now -- though I'm certain you've already read about them -- I am required to read you your rights, okay?"

"Okay."

"If, at any point in this hearing, you wish to take a break, please inform me. You have the right to be informed of the charges against you, and you have the right to remain silent, do you understand?"

"I understand." 

"If you do wish to have a defense attorney present in this hearing that is also permitted."

"That won't be necessary." 

"... Very well."

"..." 

"Tabitha, are you certain-"

"I'm certain. This is a straightforward case, let's not make it more difficult for either of us, ma'am." 

"Alright, as you wish. Now before we officially start I would like you to know that we will go over the events leading to the charges against you…"

"..."

"... as well as collected evidence, eyewitness accounts, and mission reports to ascertain the best possible way of handling these charges, understood?"

"Understood." 

"Shall we begin then?"

"Please." 

"List your name and rank, please?"

"Tabitha Flux, Jedi Commander of the 212th Attack Battalion."

"Your superior officer?"

"Jedi Master and General Obi-Wan Kenobi." 

"Your last deployment?" 

"..."

"Tabitha?"

"Umbara."

"And what was the campaign's main goal?"

"Take the capital city of the planet and push the CIS army out of the system."

"Tabitha, the charges against you are severe; you have been accused of killing Jedi General Pong Krell after his arrest was issued by General Kenobi, is that correct?" 

"Yes." 

"... And did you do it?" 

"Yes. Pong Krell betrayed the Republic and endangered not only the troops under his -- and my -- command but also the entire Republic operation on the planet. Continuing to try to restrain him alive would have cost us too much." 

"Mhm."

"You don't believe me?"

"Oh, we are aware of Pong Krell's treason. I only wish to take every perspective into account when deciding what will happen to you after this hearing."

"... Yes. I killed Pong Krell."

" *sigh* Why don't we start from the beginning, Tabitha?"

"What do you wanna know about, ma'am?"

"How about when your platoon first met up with the 501st Legion again?" 

_________________

"Something's wrong." 

It's out of her mouth before she's even aware the thought crossed her mind, the meaning of the words settling heavily on the pair walking side-by-side, weaving through the glum foliage of Umbara. 

Beside her, Waxer snorts, though even through his bucket's filter it's more forced than it usually is, "Something's only ever wrong after you say it." 

"Right, of course," the teenager chuckles, glancing at Waxer shortly, "How could I forget I'm the bad omen here?"

Rearranging the rifle in his arms, Waxer lifts one to push aside another weird-looking bioluminescent branch, letting it go deliberately quickly so that it would hit Medal in the face -- or well bucket. Had the younger man not ducked under it with some choice words for his brother. 

Tabitha never knew the reserved man had such a potty mouth on him. Guess Obi-Wan was right: she is a bad influence.

Said brother only chuckles in response, clearly pleased with himself as he catches the rude gesture Medal threw at him in his periphery. 

"You and your dad, kid," Waxer continues, the smirk tangible in his voice. Tabitha staggers, even though there are no roots camouflaged by the thick fog to have stumbled over. 

Recovering quickly, she shoots her friend an easy smile as she quips back, "Which one?"  

That startles a laugh out of the soldier and after stepping around another odd tree/plant, he playfully elbows her in the ribs, making Tabitha swat at his arm with a soft little giggle of her own.

The entire exchange almost makes her forget what caused it in the first place: The prickling on her neck and the shudder jarring her spine, provoked by the threatening looming of a thundering cloud that even the brightest sun can't pierce (something that Umbara doesn't have anyway; it's called the "Shadow World" for a reason). 

The keyword being almost.  

Before the two of them can lapse back into the noisy silence that comes with a trek through the woods, Waxer speaks up again, tone now serious, "Was it that weird sound again?" 

'That weird sound' . 

That's what they've dubbed it now. An ambiguous description for something that has a clear meaning no one wants to acknowledge, not when there is no hope to change it. But saying what it is – screaming, wailing, a multitude of souls crying out in the Force before being snuffed out one by one – it sounds too final -- too fatal . 

None of them want to believe that it might be their brethren of the 501st dying in masses while they are too far away to help; to stand in front of them, stare directly into Death’s eyes, and say 'No more.'

And they know it's them because even when hundreds of civilians died in bombings or attacks, neither Obi-Wan nor Tabitha were brought to their knees by the pain lancing through their heart and head, clutching their ears to block out the gut-wrenching noise. 

The noise of friends and companions bleeding out in the shadows of Umbara, dying just as they were born: without a ray of sunshine in sight. 

A couple of days have passed since then (-- since both Jedi nearly passed out from the shock their systems were given by that --) while the 212th was marching towards their next 'campsite'. Yet that- that weird sound haunts her every waking and sleeping moment, making her doubt Krell's sharp dismissals of the concerns they voiced when they last spoke. 

"Acceptable casualties" do not sound like that. They don't howl and writhe in agony, loud enough for Yoda and Windu on Coruscant to hear. 

However, unlike those two, Tabitha is right here, and still, she can do nothing but listen to those harrowing noises and pray; pray that she’ll see her friends again once this is over. 

All she can do is hope and be glad that right now, at this juncture in time, screaming and screeching is not what’s warning her that something is about to go awry.

Scrubbing grimy hands across her face, Tabby finally answers her friend who has been watching her expectantly out of the corner of his eye, “No.” 

‘But it’s why I’m here,’ , she thinks to herself, squinting into the darkness of Umbara’s flora in hopes of spotting suspicious movement or any indication of trouble. 

Nothing; just like the last three times she’s checked that particular patch of bluish colors. She didn’t really expect there to be, not with there being no foreign Force signatures (that do not belong to animals). 

Tabitha might have said there’s nothing she can do about the noise but she can at least figure out what its exact cause is. Bringing back the stolen equipment the Umbarans looted from the 501st is the perfect excuse to check up on the other battalion (and maybe even lend a hand where she can) before she and her platoon have to regroup with the main force. 

“Vision?” Waxer questions suddenly, startling her out of her train of thought and back into reality. 

It’s such an innocent question, said in such a pragmatic way, Tabitha finds herself wondering for the millionth time when they all got so used to it; to her zoning out without rhyme or reason, sometimes in the middle of doing something (be that walking, talking, or even fighting). She wonders how much time her friends spend looking for the signs of another vision just to make sure they’re close enough to steady her or pull her out of the line of fire. 

She wonders and she loathes, but all the same, she responds with a shake of her head, scanning her own mind for memories she didn’t have before, feelings that aren’t hers. 

A brief probe that comes up empty, as they rarely do, and has her heave a sigh of relief. 

“Not today. Just a warning, I think.”

“We better keep our eyes peeled then,” Waxer declares and throws a look over his shoulder directed at Medal, who catches the words the older clone hasn’t spoken and immediately conveys the message to the rest of the caravan. 

Having already witnessed too many of these strange Force warnings in their time, they all know better than to doubt its validity. If either Tabby or the general says there’s something wrong, then there is. 

Tabitha sincerely hopes there isn't, though. 

Sooner rather than later, this planet has to run out of surprises, and between every ambush, every new enemy tank prototype, every mine, and every supply ship popping in the sky (only to blow up suddenly), they've had their fair share. This has to go smoothly now, doesn't it? 

If only she'd known… 

All of five steps; that's the amount they manage to take before the comlink on Tabitha's right, slightly scuffed vambrace (she'll need to clean that when she gets back to camp) starts beeping urgently, its flashing green light bright amidst the shady thicket.

"And our ears, apparently," Waxer remarks quietly from her right, tone expressing the same sense of confusion Tabby is feeling. 

Long-range communication has been less than reliable lately, and just a little funky. And let's not even mention that the Umbarans now conceivably have their grubby little hands on the Republic's com frequencies, thanks to the stunt they pulled on the 501st. Surely no one would risk compromising their position by comming her now. 

Maybe the Umbarans themselves are trying to gauge where exactly the Republic’s forces are.

Or maybe it’s tied to this omniscient alarm going off constantly in her head and not picking up is going to cost more people their lives.  

Is it really a choice at this point?

Lifting her left arm, hand closed in a fist to signal the rest to stop before motioning for them to find the nearest cover (just to be safe; they could be jumped at any point), Tabitha quickly ducks behind one of the many bioluminescent, oddly tentacle-like trees herself, her shoulder brushing against Waxer’s arm. 

Pleased that her platoon is safe and in cover, the padawan raises the still beeping com device to face-level and presses the button, keeping silent until whoever is on the other side announces themself. 

Which doesn’t take that long at all. 

The moment the line is open, a familiar voice calls out to her.

“Commander- Tabitha, do you copy?”

All suspicion and hesitance vanish then, surprise startling one single word out of her, 

“Rex?”

“What?” Waxer hisses at her side, incredulous, “I thought long-range was karked.” 

Tabitha ignores him, repeating herself louder when the captain doesn’t seem to have heard her, “I hear you, Rex.” ‘I just don’t know why or how’ she doesn’t say.

“What is your location?” The question is crackling over com before she even finished her sentence and something in Rex’s tone – clipped and dour – conveys large amounts of stress and confusion and anger ?

Everything so unlike Rex, it makes Tabitha hesitate and freeze where she stands, doubts creepy-crawling up her spine and across the back of her head. 

What if this isn't Rex? What if the Umbarans figured out how to simulate his voice over the come they've stolen? They're adept enough to do it. 

But then again, how would they know her name – her nickname? How would they get even the slightest hitch of Rex's voice right without him there next to them? 

It could be him – or it couldn't be and she'd sentence her men to death by being the foolish little girl pompous admirals see in her. 

But there's something inside of her – a fleeting tug at her heart – that has Tabitha put aside her doubts and place faith that the man on the other side is truly her friend. 

Going on that small sliver of faith alone, Tabby unscrews her lips and finally answers, "We're about an hour west of camp, on our way to head off the Umbarans." 

A sharp intake of breath can be heard over the static of an unused com line as if the answer took Rex by surprise but had nevertheless been expected. 

Tabitha and Waxer share a look, mutual confusion mounting at Rex's reaction and the whispered "Umbarans?" he probably thought the com wouldn’t catch. 

"Okay, Rex. What's going on here? How did you even contact us? We thought long-range comms were dead," Tabitha says after a moment of tense silence in which she casts a curt look around the platoon curiously – and cautiously – peering around their cover, on the lookout while their commander finishes up the call. 

To be frank, they don't have time for this. They need to get moving if they want to reach the airbase within the next few hours and be back at the main encampment of the 212th tomorrow. 

If only Rex would finally-

"It is." 

…answer. 

"What? Then how-"

The clone captain interrupts her before she can get much further, "Did you just order your platoon to take cover before we started talking?" 

A frown creases the (a little pimpled at the courtesy of kriffing puberty ) skin between her dark eyebrows and the teenager presses her cracked lips into a thin line, a bit reluctant to reply at first.

After a second, she answers regardless, "Yes. How did you-"

Again, Rex doesn't let her finish, "And you're currently peeking out behind a tree."

For some reason, heat crawls up her neck all the way to her ears, and a silly feeling of sheepishness makes itself known, but she brushes it off quickly, more interested as to why Rex and the 501st are here. 

And where the kriff they are anyway!

Retreating behind the rather odd plant again, Tabby reaches across the small gap between her and Waxer without looking and taps the binoculars on his belt the knuckles of her right hand. She then hears him unclip it, no words uttered, before placing its metallic weight in her open palm. 

Wasting little time, the green-eyed padawan leans out of cover again, just enough to lift the binoculars to her eyes and still be able to see the entire expanse of land before her. 

"Where are you?" She implores, head tilted so that her mouth is angled toward her com. 

"Practically right in front of your nose. Maybe half a click away behind a row of bushes." 

Just then Tabitha spies out the bushes mentioned, purplish in color with little shiny blue buds adorning its broad 'leaves', with an arm clad in muted white jutting out from it, waving at her. 

"I see you," she says, watching Rex's arm vanish, replaced with the welcoming sight of his jag-eyed bucket, "But why am I seeing you? Krell said-"

"Krell says a lot," Rex cuts in – again –, some of that hardly restrained anger from before resurfacing in his tone, not even vanquished when the captain takes a deep breath and continues, "Look, I- I'll explain once we get down to you. We've had a lot going on lately." 

'Yeah, no shit,' Tabby thinks to herself, biting back the snarky remark when she hears Rex's voice droop dangerously – as if exhaustion has finally taken its toll on the soldier and overshadows the anger she could sense previously. 

Suddenly, she is reminded of that horrendous noise – the bone-shattering screaming that reverberated in the Force – and already dreads what will come to light once Rex gets down here. 

Tabitha is not sure she is ready to see some familiar faces and miss others at the same time. 

"You think you can get the guys to stand down and not shoot us if we get up?" 

The retort could almost pass as sarcastic but Tabitha can hear something unstable beneath – something troubled, which in turn troubles her. 

That "Umbarans-stole-our-armor-and-are-coming-to-get-you" thing is starting to make less and less sense with every passing minute, and while Tabby dreads their reunion, she's looking forward to getting some answers. 

"Of course," the girl responds swiftly, pausing for a second before adding, "Why don't you take off your helmets once you do? Give them some incentive not to shoot?" 

It's meant as a joke, something to lighten up the situation, but the lack of amused chuckling says more than a thousand words. 

A realization is starting to puzzle itself together in her mind and she does not like the looks of it so far. 

"Good idea. See you in a minute." 

With that, the line clicks shut, and Tabitha squanders no time in switching to her platoon’s bucket frequency. 

"Everybody, stand down. Don't shoot. We got friendlies incoming. I repeat: Our friends from the 501st are paying us a visit." 

Minutes pass by while a flock of white-blue armored shapes emerge from the faraway 'greenery' and close the distance between their two platoons. 

The unexpected appearance of their blue companions has the 212th slowly inching out of cover, curiosity but mostly confusion ruling over their minds as everyone wonders where the supposed deceitful Umbarans are at. 

A feeling they are not alone with, going by how their young commander marches in Rex's direction once he nears their position, stopping a mere few steps away from him with an uneasy frown on her face and all but demanding, 

"Now, what in all Sith hells is going on here, Rex?" 

~~~~~~~~

‘Street laced with mines’

‘Insubordination’

‘Sabotage’

‘Suicidal Orders’

‘Lies’

‘Execution’

Those words should register to her, shouldn’t they? 

They should be the source of her pain, the dagger lancing through her heart and twisting , tearing the already fragile strings that hold it. 

It’s the words that should hurt; the words should be the reason tears spring to her eyes… but they’re not. 

It’s not the words – words that reek of loss and betrayal and exhaustion – that hurt the worst. It’s the screeching noise that builds up steadily in her ears the longer she listens to Rex talk and explain (Fives and Jesse noticeably and painfully absent at his side), the echoes of what she’s heard nearly every day before this. 

The sound of souls joining the Force too soon, too abruptly and violent. 

The sound of brothers-in-arms dying at the behest of a corrupt general. 

It’s not the actual words that hurt but what they reveal: The fact that they were right in their belief that the 501st was suffering, and they still hadn’t done anything about it because they believed Pong Krell’s word – which meant jackshit when looking at his casualty rate in previous battles. They believed the word of a traitorous psychopath, it seems, and they weren’t the ones who paid the price. 

No, every soldier of the 501st, Fives, Jesse, Hardcase ; paid the price for everyone else’s ignorance. 

Never in the history of forever did Tabitha want to go back in time as badly as now and hit herself over the head for not investigating earlier, for looking for excuses to check up on their friends instead of just doing it – damn Krell and his ‘acceptable casualties . 

Rarely did she feel the compelling itch in her fingers to claw her own ears clean of her head so that she could silence the overwhelming wailing that is stuck in there – has been for days, even when it wasn’t actually there – and what it entails. 

Never as strongly as in this very moment though, as Rex sits on a dead trunk in front of her explaining, shoulders slouched and head kept up by pride, dignity, and respect alone (even as his eyes kept darting to the rest of his troops behind him where they all but crashed to the ground when Tabby told them to sit down, unsettled by the obvious lines of exhaustion on their faces).

Beside her on the filthy ground, she gets the feeling that Waxer is about to do a very similar thing to his own ears if only to stop himself from listening to the horrors flying out Rex’s mouth, and all around her hate, anger, guilt, remorse, grief flow into the natural current of the Force while members of the 501st begin describing what they’ve been through to old friends. 

And she takes it all in; the words, the screaming, the feelings and sensations. The girl absorbs all of it and accepts the pain that comes with it because, really, what else can she do except listen and share Rex’s suffering?

What else can she do but reach out to him once his mouth stops moving and deafening silence overtakes their little, separate trio, take his trembling hand in between her steady ones while Waxer moves to sit beside him, shoulders and thighs touching in a silent show of support and consolation? 

What else can she do but mourn with him – with all of them – and do her best to console them? 

‘Justice. That’s what you can do!’ An iron voice in her head hisses, harsh and unforgiving, when Tabitha’s gaze strays from Rex’s sunken eyes to the mingling battalions behind him, orange embracing and supporting blue in every way possible, exchanging looks of concern as even standing or talking seems to be too taxing for most of them. 

Krell has worked most of them half to death. 

‘Some of them even fully,’ she thinks reproachfully, a pang of sadness piercing her heart as she yet again notices the lack of Hardcase’s boisterous voice in the vacuum of noise the collision of the 212th and 501st has caused.  

The voice is right. Krell cannot get away with his crimes and, frankly, they can’t just leave him be so that he can wreak even more havoc on the Republic’s operation and compromise everyone’s safety. 

He has to be incarcerated – or otherwise incapacitated.

They can’t just do-

“We can’t just do nothing,” Waxer says firmly, voicing aloud Tabitha’s conclusion after having noticed her eyes darting from one side to the next – a tell Waxer has learned to decipher means she’s uncertain of how exactly to proceed from here – before hardening abruptly. 

“Agreed.”

Between them, Rex shifts, squirming free from Tabitha’s hold and bracing his forearms against his thighs with a resigned sigh. Apparently, he shares their sentiment, though exhaustion dampens its severity. 

“Krell is probably still back at base. He has no way of knowing that we figured him out… yet . I'd say we use that to our advantage and arrest him before he can run over to the enemy." 

Two nods are all he receives in response but a scowl still finds itself onto Tabitha's face as a thought enters her mind.

"We need to reach my master first, though," Tabby mumbles, running a hand through her gritty hair. 

Hopefully, they have showers back at the conquered base; she could certainly use one after days of wading through mud – and what is still to come. 

She catches a glimpse of the skeptical glint shooting through Rex's murky eyes and puffs out an exasperated breath – not because of him but because she likes nonsensical formalities just as much as he does in these kinds of situations. But it's better to have everything sorted if they want to guarantee Krell faces more than a few days of imprisonment. 

"If we want to keep him in prison once this is over," 'Once, not if. We'll be fine. We always are.' "We need Obi-Wan, as the highest-ranking officer, to order his arrest."

"Otherwise, they might just court-martial us," Waxer grunts, scrubbing gloved fingers over his beard. 

At his side, Rex sighs, wearing the identical defeated expression on his face. "Or find a loophole and let him run free…" 

"Exactly." 

"One problem, though," Waxer pipes up after a second of quiet, standing from his spot on the trunk and shaking out his legs, "Unless we want to go all the way back to camp, we can't really contact the general. Long-range is still down." 

Rex gives an assertive nod, pushing off his thighs and straightening his back with a frustrated huff as he watches Tabitha with a quirked eyebrow. In all likelihood, he came to the same verdict as his brother and is unsure how Tabitha wants to get around that minor obstacle. 

And minor it is. 

Grinning triumphantly, already having a plan in mind, Tabitha jumps up from her position on the floor, not caring about the soot sticking to her dark pants as she flaps a hand vaguely in the direction of Rex's comlink. 

"Those can't," she smiles as the same hand she used to gesture comes up to tap her temple, "But I can."

A snort from Waxer draws her attention to him before she can step away, and she quirks an eyebrow just as her friend tilts his head with a teasing grin on his lips. 

"Forgot about weird wizard magic." 

The shorter girl groans, head falling back to glare up at the dark sky with her lips twitching as if praying for lightning to strike Waxer down on the spot. 

However, she spies the beginnings of a smile forming on Rex's face before she does so and decides to play into the bearded clone's banter, glad to see some of the darkness on the older clone’s subside. 

"It's been over three years, Waxer." 

"Doesn't make it less weird, wizard ." 

Abruptly kicking out with the intention of hitting the clone's protected shin, Tabitha is pleased when she hears a surprised yelp followed by an indignant "Hey!". And even more so when Rex chuckles from where he is seated still, moving to get up himself with a bit more ease than before – only a slight fraction but noticeable enough to make Tabitha's heart flutter happily. 

"I'll go check on the men. Make sure they're rested and ready to move out at first notice," the clone captain declares, stretching his back to work out the kinks. 

Tabitha inclines her head in agreement, glancing worriedly when she hears Rex sigh, fatigue nevertheless tangible. 

She decides not to press, instead shooting her friends a small grin and jabbing a thumb at the treeline behind her left unoccupied. 

"I'll go work my wizard magic over there and let you know what he says." 

She receives two nods of acknowledgment in return before Rex finally turns away, allowing her to witness him putting on the facade of the steadfast captain. Uncurling his spine into a plank-straight rod and taking a deep breath, the blond strides towards the rest of the guys with confident steps that Tabby can now see are more fake than not (and she wonders just how often he does this for the sake of others; she knows she's done often enough herself). 

Before Waxer can follow and leave her to do what she announced, the ravenette catches the crook of his arm in her hand, never once taking her eyes off Rex's receding back. 

Waiting for the ghostly sensation of someone's gaze boring into the side of her head, Tabitha drops her voice into a low tone and says, "Make sure he takes a break too." 

"Will do, commander," he promises, patting her hand curtly to compel it to let go of his arm before meandering after Rex with intent in his footfalls. 

Assured that her weary friend is properly taken care of, Tabitha pivots on her heel and marches toward the line of Umbaran 'trees', emerald eyes hard as steel, pale lips pressed into a thin line, and fists clenched.

Pong Krell is going to get what he deserves today. 

(To her chagrin and shame, and against every instinct drilled into her by training, Tabitha is not sure what exactly she means by that – confinement or death?)

_________________

"Now, CT-7567-"

"Rex."

"Right. Rex has informed us that he believes this was part of Krell's grande plan, hindering our forces from achieving their goal by pitting them against each other. He says there would have been carnage if not for your presence. Do you believe that?"

"I do. Krell obviously didn't think I'd be there, didn’t think I'd chase after an intuition I had. He wanted the clones to mistake each other for the enemy to enact a massacre that would have cost dozens of lives – maybe even the whole operation. Me being there stopped it… or delayed it, at least." 

Chapter Text

“So, across this 'Force-bond' that I've been told about, General Kenobi issued General Krell’s immediate incarceration and handed full command over to you?”

“So that I could act and react instantly to keep my men and by extension the entire campaign safe – without having to cash in a second opinion for every step I made.” 

“And has he specifically told you to give the order to shoot to kill if necessary?”

“...He told me to do what I thought best for everyone, and it’s not like I planned to kill Krell when we marched back to the base. At that point, I wanted to take him alive just as much as everyone else so that he could be brought to justice for his crimes.”

“At that point?” 

*Frustrated sigh* “All due respect, ma'am, read into the words what you will but I wouldn’t sentence someone to be executed without proper trial first, no matter what they did.”

“Like he did to ARC Trooper Fives and Trooper Jesse?”

“What they did, saved all of our ass- all of us. They didn’t deserve court-martial, let alone an execution for disobeying ridiculous orders and doing what was right. Had they not done what they did, the 212th wouldn’t have never come as far as it did. Which was Krell’s objective, I guess…” 

“Oh, I’m not judging, if that’s what you think. Quite the opposite. In my opinion, those two men should be given medals of honor for their actions – as well as their fallen comrade. Hardcase, if I’m not mistaken.” 

“...Yeah.” 

“But let’s get back on track with what we really want to discuss here, shall we? Explain to me what happened once you reached the base.”

___________________

Tabitha glares at the shimmering tip of the tower, scrutinizing its rotund top and pixelated windows as if the secrets to the universe lay beyond its holographic surface, tucked away safely from prying eyes. 

Or in this case, a cruel man with even crueler intentions that she can’t for the life of her discern. 

Right there, before her very eyes – or, truthfully, above her very head –, Pong Krell is waiting for her to make her move, seemingly unbothered by their unexpected and unscheduled arrival at the airbase, with a lot more troops than he ever had under his command here. 

He must know that they’ve found him out, that his plan of sending the 501st and 212th into a staged massacre failed miserably, and they’re not exactly here to play sabacc and have a chat over a nice cup of tea. 

He has to know, yet he hasn’t moved a single muscle. Literally, according to the men still trapped up top in the same room with him (once they got close, Ike – a shiny from the 501st – managed to contact a friend who is currently on shift in the tower and they’ve been keeping each other updated ever since. Krell hasn’t moved from his spot at the window for hours now, stoic and brooding,). 

It’s been over ten minutes since they marched back into base and informed everyone of command shifting from Krell to Tabitha in light of his betrayal. 

Ten minutes since a tense lull settled over them all, pulled taut like a plastic sheet and ready to snap if anyone as much as twitches or breathes wrong.

Ten minutes but Krell has yet to make an effort to escape the tower, let alone the base. 

For whatever reason, he’s letting her take the time to prepare; he’s allowing her to set up troops and snipers around the base to potentially foil whatever escape plan he could come up with. And no matter how hard she tries, Tabby cannot fathom why. Every sane person would have endeavored to flee the moment they made out the first speck of orange in between blue-streaked armors. Every sane person would have long since abandoned their treasonous plans the moment they saw another commanding officer step foot into the walls of the airbase.

Then again, Krell hardly has all his marbles anymore anyway. If he did – and if he were the kind soul a Jedi is supposed to be –, he wouldn’t have done what he did in the first place. 

And yet, here they are: 

Krell standing atop his high tower, thinking he has the world at his fingertips, while Tabitha lingers at its base, poised to bring it all crumbling down around him with one decisive strike (with him in it, if need be) .  

A decisive strike the padawan is still quite indecisive about making – or at least how to make it without it also bringing the whole mess down on top of her and her friends. 

Krell’s lack of action since their arrival does not bode well with Tabitha and she can feel that familiar foul vertigo of anxiety and insecurity swirling in the pit of her stomach, prompting her throat to contract to keep the bile where it’s supposed to be. 

Ten minutes ago, the teenager was confident they’d have this situation under control within an hour; she’d believed that it would be straightforward, a simple chase when the other Jedi spotted the crowd of clones with her in their midst. 

She expected a game of loth cat-and-womp rat, with her and her troops being the loth cat. 

But now? Now, she gets the feeling that they’re equal parts the hunter and the hunted; that it’s not as straightforward as she first anticipated. 

And she’s unnervingly certain that Krell is aware of that too, that he’s been planning this all along and she’s going to lead her troops into a trap when she marches into that tower. 

Hence why Tabitha remains idle on a pair of crates sitting against the inner walls of the tower's base, legs crossed and right hand rubbing her chin thoughtfully. 

In her periphery, she can distantly make out the edge of the elevator that would take her up to the summit – and Krell – and she knows she could just jump right in there with an overwhelming amount of troops to apprehend him. 

She could take the easy way out of her current predicament and throw everything they've got at him, but that wouldn't make her any better than him, would it? She'd just do what he's been doing ever since he was given command of any battalion: throw the men he's supposed to fight beside – bleed beside – at his enemy and hope the sheer number will win the fight for him. 

No strategy, no tactics, nothing. 

Something she is not about to do. 

Too many people, too many friends, have already been lost these last few days; she's not about to add to it if there is a smarter way. 

Tearing her wandering gaze from the opaque door of the elevator to her right, the padawan promptly redirects it to study the glimmering 3D hologram projected onto the metallic surface before her. 

However, her focus immediately slips from the bluish, transparent image to the charred, black mark beyond it, peeking out from behind the crate she's perched on. 

The imprint of a blaster bolt permanently etched into the otherwise pristine steel panel of the wall; the only visible evidence of the horror that was scarcely avoided here. 

The systematic murder of brothers by brothers, while the true perpetrator’s hands remain as clean as water in a pond.

The hand that was previously scratching her chin now reaches forward, disregarding every instinct she's ingrained in herself since she was only 13 years old. 

Passing through the hologram, making it sizzle and glitch soundlessly, her fingers brush over the scorched dent. 

It's just a light touch, with hardly enough pressure behind it to swipe dry, cold ash onto her fingertips, but it's enough to topple the shields she's constructed to protect her mind. To keep the memories at bay because she knows they will only make her ache more for a chance to travel back in time and change everything about this campaign; have Anakin not leave in the first place, then it all would be fine.

From one second to the next, the muted fear and horror and apprehension – the daunting acceptance of death – slam into her like a truckload of bricks, and the whispers niggling at the back of her skull turn into full-blown voices.

Armor clatters as footsteps draw closer to Tabitha's position on the floor, still seated cross-legged with her elbows digging into her kneecaps and her back hunched.

Regardless of the commotion, she doesn't turn her back to the spot the crate she was sitting on – is still sitting on in the present – is supposed to be. 

Doesn't avert her eyes from the two bound figures standing there now, just a meter or two away from her with their upper armor plates removed to reveal their blacks underneath. 

Awestricken, she stares at the men with the tattooed heads before her, taking in their carefully blank expressions and jittery, dull eyes flicking back and forth while a ball of hot-cold panic manifests in her belly. 

Logically, she knows how this ends; she knows that everyone present in this vision is more or less fine in reality. 

Yet she still can't quell nausea crawling up her throat and the tears pricking at her blown emerald eyes as she gapes at the scene before – the execution that has been prepared while her, her master, and the 212th sat back on their haunches thinking everything was 'fine' over here. 

And Tabby certainly can't stifle the flinch that shoots up her muscles when Dogma's voice barks out harshly, somewhere to her right behind her. 

"Ready weapons."

More rattling and clanking as rifles are stabilized against armored shoulders – some more hesitant than others – then silence. 

"Never thought we'd go out this way," the teenager can hear Jesse whisper into the hushed void, eyes raking across the line of brothers and the gaping barrels of their guns aimed at his head (as if he was the enemy here; as if Krell didn't force their hands with his reckless orders). 

All the while, Tabitha goes ignored and she doesn't move to make herself known, remembering that she can't anyway and getting too close now might end up with a blaster bolt wedging itself into the back of her skull. And while she, thankfully, might not be able to die in visions, the pain of death follows her out of it – and will haunt her for years to come. 

Rhudaur taught her so.

Thus, she stays seated, ignoring the sting in her heart as she does so, sucking in a sharp breath and holding it. 

As if that would curb the urge to hurl Fives and Jesse from the line of fire and into safety all of a sudden. 

As if that would stop the single hot tear from running down her cheek, burning a trail into the tender skin there.

"Aim."

The padawan's hands twitch where they're interlaced in her lap; her unblinking, foggy eyes burn but she forces herself to keep looking forward, curling into herself a little more. 

She needs to watch this. 

She has to see what their lack of good judgment almost cost.

She owes her friends that much.

"Wait!"

A gust of fresh air rushes into her greedy lungs as Tabby finally releases the breath she's been holding, a grateful smile tugging at her lips. 

Trust Fives to keep fighting even while staring death right in the face – literally.  

"This is wrong and we all know it! The general is making a mistake,

and he needs to be called on it. No clone should have to go out this way!"

A tense hush descends upon the people behind Tabitha then, but she refuses to see what impact Fives' well-chosen words have on the firing squad. 

She doesn't need to see their faces to know they know the ARC-Trooper is right, anyway. 

She only needs to strain her ears and listen to the overpowering silence as no one dares move, or even breathe. 

Each and every single one of them, with or without a gun, is waiting, hoping, praying, yearning for Fives to go on – to convince them to lower their weapons. 

"We're loyal soldiers! We follow orders, but we are not

a bunch of unthinking droids! We are men! We must be trusted

to make the right decisions! Especially when the orders

we are given are wrong!"

Pride wriggles its way into the suffocating dread mounting in even the tiniest crevices of her pounding heart, battling for the upper hand as she observes Fives stand tall and steadfast. Whereas she cowers here, yielding to the raging currents of conflicting emotions in the Force. 

The girl wishes she could be as confident in herself and her decisions as Fives is at this very moment. 

(She wishes she could just finally settle on a plan, a strategy to arrest Krell in the way that Fives, Jesse, and Hardcase determined to fly those Umbaran fighters right into the heart of the enemy – without any doubts and wasting no precious time.

She wishes-)    

"Fire!"

Tabitha squeezes her eyes shut just as the heat of a dozen blaster bolts whiz over her head, leaving behind the biting scent of crackling energy and fire. 

Dull thuds reverberate off the gleaming walls surrounding them, smothered quickly by the intense and bitter quiet that ensues, and Tabby is almost too afraid to open her eyes.  

What if she does see the corpses of her friends lying on the floor, staring at her with judgmental, dead eyes, because she didn't move to intervene?

What if Rex told her Fives and Jesse we're alive to spare her the pain and guilt of being responsible for their deaths as well? 

What if he didn't and she just suppressed the truth because she couldn't take it?

'But that can't be because in the present, outside of this stupid vision, he's getting them out of the brig right now. He said so; you heard him. Why would he lie to you? Why would you lie to yourself? Just open your eyes and you'll see that they're alive and well, and you can get out of this hellscape of a vision for good.'

Sighing, Tabby admits to herself that the voice in her head has a point; that the logical part of her brain is right. There's no reason to believe Fives and Jesse are anything but fine, and she just has to open her eyes to check. 

She just has to be as brave as Fives has been when he defended himself and his brother.

Deliberately slow, one eyelid forces itself open, followed closely by the other, only to reveal blurry shapes and colors – ungainly blobs of something – that gradually take the form of- 

"What... What happened?"

"Come back, vod'ika."

A fierce flinch shoots through Tabby's previously lax muscles at the gentle but sudden pitch of Waxer’s voice entering her right ear, and out of pure self-preservation, Tabitha's hand recoils from the ghostly heat suddenly radiating off the charred dot on the wall. 

Or, well, her hand would have recoiled, had warm fingers not wrapped around her open palm, keeping her arm straight in front of her. 

And simultaneously obstructing her own digits from curling into a fist and digging blunt nails into the calloused balls of her hands. 

Like she tends to do after every retrocognitive episode – as a grounding technique that is… a rather unhealthy one, she might have to admit to herself. 

Like others have noticed happening on multiple occasions, sometimes to the point where she draws blood. 

However, it's proven effective in staving off the initial symptoms of some sort of dissociative episode she sometimes tends to spiral into after a vision. Which cannot, for everything that is still holy in this galaxy, happen right now.

Therefore, with her eyes staring at her hand in his unblinking, she gives her right arm a tentative tug, testing the strength of the hold on it but quickly discovers that the touch of his skin on hers ( 'He took his glove off! When did he take his glove off?" ), still slightly clammy and sweaty, is just as grounding. 

Quite frankly (and surprisingly), Tabitha finds herself not wanting his hand to let go of hers, finding the warmth of it more comforting and settling than any sting and throb of pain ever could. 

So she resists the urge to tug her arm free completely, instead letting her stiff fingers relax ever so slightly in his hold, a washed-out sigh breezing past her lips. 

In front of her (and basically unbeknownst to her), the holographic tower flickers out of existence as another hand, still gloved with the wrist clad in orange-striped armor, swipes the imagecaster from the crate's surface so that the hand's owner can sit down in its spot instead. 

Their hands, not intertwined but not ready to let go of each other either, come to rest on his thigh with the motion, and without thinking or complaining about him interrupting her 'plan-making', Tabby lets her head fall forward and rest against Waxer's right shoulder pad.

"You okay?" She can hear him hum close to her right ear, voice low and pupils trained on her, unbothered by the bustling of people all around them as they try to prepare. 

Tabitha merely turns her head from left to right once and croaks a quiet "It was so close ." before shifting her weight back a tad to be able to look her friend dead in the eye, eyelids heavy and continuously flickering shut as if tired (or struggling to quench the tears building behind them). 

"Fives and Jesse almost died here." 

"But they didn't," Waxer retorts without an ounce of hesitation, ducking to catch Tabitha's elusive eyes in his deep, compassionate ones. 

And for Force's sake, Tabitha knows that; she's aware that it was another one of those 'hit-and-miss' situations that played out in their favor, fortunately. 

But how long until 'nearly' turns into 'barely' and then into 'not at all' ? How long until their luck finally runs out? 

She doesn't want to think about it, wants Waxer's simple statement to be enough to put her worries to rest. But the relentless murmurs laying dormant in her ears – one step away from pulling her back into the throngs of the vision – prohibit her from not thinking about it. 

Prohibit her from not noticing how one person has been noticeably absent in it; how she's already one friend down. 

"Hardcase did," the teen breathes wetly, quickly averting her burning eyes, hoping that Waxer didn't catch her loss of composure, only to be confronted with the blurry picture to her right:

Clones scurrying around the base's grounds, blasters at the ready and eyes peeled, with backs more rigid and Force auras darker than she's ever seen before. 

None of them know how to deal with this. It's foreign territory. 

Sure, there are the occasional traitors, but how often have they dealt with treacherous and downright murderous Jedi before? 

How often was it that the general you're supposed to trust to get you out of each battle alive and kicking went behind your back to get you killed deliberately? 

How often does that happen?

('Hopefully never again…')

"So many did, Waxer…" Tabitha finishes after a second of taking in the diminished numbers of blue armor she can spot in the crowds. "Because we didn't see Krell falling off the deep end."

"Hey, no!" Waxer interrupts abruptly and firmly, left hand shooting forward to tap Tabby's chin with his index finger, encouraging her to turn her head towards him once again. 

"This is Krell's fault and his alone. For all your weird wizard senses, even you Jedi couldn't have foreseen this," the soldier states, voice holding such conviction, Tabby finds herself wanting to believe him, to leech off of that confidence of his and gain some of her own. 

But couldn't they have? 

Krell had always had high casualty numbers. He's always been harsh and cold and judgemental… for as long as he's been a general at least. Maybe he was a decent person and Jedi before the war; maybe something changed him.

Perhaps that's why they all turned a blind eye… because he used to be a good person. 

Not that his past matters much now, Tabitha has to tell herself to keep herself from falling into that endless spiral of 'maybes' and 'what-ifs' .

What matters is his future and how it's going to impact theirs. 

"Maybe you're right," Tabitha relents eventually, finally realizing how stupid it is to get caught up on something like this when there's more planning to be done. 

Straightening her back and letting the corner of her lips twitch upwards in a faux show of recovered morale, Tabitha does not however realize that she's basically copying Rex’s actions from earlier by pretending to stand strong and confident before her friends and men.

Waxer does though but the fake guise still wins her a sincere smile turned smirk from her friend – though she can see in his eyes that he knows she's still unconvinced – as he pats her hand where they lay on his thigh, ultimately withdrawing his. 

"Hells yeah I am!" He crows confidently, a bit of tooth showing in his smile now.  

Tabitha snorts, a chuckle stealing itself past her vocal cords, and for now – just for now as she sits next to her best friend and savors the comfort of him being close by and the warmth that spreads through her lungs and makes it easier to breathe – she lets herself forget about close calls and thinning streaks of luck. 

It's not helping her win this battle anyway. 

Speaking of- 

“By the way, squads are in position and ready to roll at your signal, commander ,” Waxer starts again after a comfortable sense of quiet and momentary peace has fallen over the pair, a teasing lilt decorating his voice as he addresses her by rank – something he knows always makes her cringe and scowl when coming from close friends.

This time being no exception.

The moment the syllable falls from his mouth, Tabitha gives him the look ; the one where she purses her lips to stop herself from outright pouting and glowers at the offending party with narrowed eyes, daring them to say it again. 

On any other military official, it might have looked intimidating, scary even, but all Waxer can see when she puts on this face is a puppy trying its best to be big and scary like the older ones (or maybe he just knows Tabby too well to be as easily intimidated by her as others might be). 

Either way, Waxer just watches her face contort into this expression with amusement, opening his mouth to say something else – to keep the girl distracted from bleak thoughts and tortuous visions that had been plaguing her when he arrived- 

Only to stop short, lips parted and face falling when he notices the mock-scowl on her face turning into a very real one. 

Seemingly out of nowhere, her brow creases and her lips relax only to be pressed into a thin, pale line as her head falls back and she glares up at the ceiling, imagining Krell still standing there, all smug and confident. 

“It’s not enough,” she states, voice hard to conceal the wisp of disdain in it (directed either at herself or Krell, she doesn’t know), and she can hear Waxer making an inquisitive noise at the back of his throat. 

Letting gravity jerk her head forward again, the padawan glances at her friend before her, all signs of the previous ease that Waxer just managed to give back to her gone , vanished without a trace. But instead of elaborating at first, the ravenette leans around him, momentarily perching on her calves, and grabs the imagecaster that Waxer had tossed next to himself while talking to her. 

“Krell knows what we’re doing. He has to know. He can practically watch us do everything if he turns the surveillance cameras on,” Tabby grinds out between gritted teeth, all the frustration that’s been building up inside her over the past twenty minutes hitting her full force now. “And yet he hasn’t moved a muscle. He hasn't even so much as twitched since we got her.” 

And Force, does she hate not knowing her opponent’s motive; hates that not knowing makes her unable to expect his next moves, makes her liable to mistakes and faulty plans that cost precious lives. If she knew why exactly Krell wasn’t escaping already, she might be able to foresee what his plans were and prepare accordingly. 

But she doesn’t know, and it’s slowly making her go crazy. 

At her words, Waxer’s brow furrows, expression now matching Tabitha’s as his brain works to decipher what this means for all of them.

None of the outcomes he can imagine are… encouraging , and he realizes just why Tabitha got so caught up on Fives’ and Jesse’s close brush with death.  

There’s a good chance that engaging Krell now, without knowing his next move, can be fatal for a lot of them; that there will be no close calls and near misses once sabers start swinging this time.

It’s a harrowing thought that has the clone try to covertly swallow the lump that’s growing in his throat and his tongue flicking out to wet his drying lips before opening his mouth to speak, “What are you thinking?”

Tabitha responds less than a second after the words leave his mouth, having mulled over this point for the last ten minutes minimum. 

“I’m thinking that Krell would rather die than be captured but he still wants to brag about his ‘great plan’ or whatever before he does so. He wants to dangle his achievements and deceptions in front of our noses to hurt us – break us – or maybe even blindside us. He wants us to engage him -”

“To give himself the best chance at escape,” Waxer finishes what she couldn't, watching Tabitha perk up, back snapping ramrod straight so quickly, the taller man is certain he can hear her vertebrae cracking as realization finally dawns on her face. 

‘Of course!’ Tabitha screeches inwardly, reprimanding herself for not seeing it sooner.

Krell thinks he can improve his chances by waiting for them to make the first move. 

This is not just him being sadistic and smug (though Tabby is sure that also has a part in it); he’s waiting for them to engage him on his terms .

But why? What does he gain by this? What is his-

“He wants us all here,” Tabitha almost exclaims when a flash of inspiration hits her, stringing together the pieces she's overlooked before, eyes widening comically wide and fingers clutching the imagecaster in her hands. 

However, Waxer only cocks his head to the side, not yet having caught on, and raises his eyebrows as if to encourage her to go on. 

So Tabby does, “Think about it. He knows most of what we’re doing here and yet he’s letting us prepare down here, he’s letting us take up strategic positions. We have every squad here in the base, with their sights set on the tower, but no one beyond that. No patrols that could spot him, nothing. If he plans to escape, all he has to do is get past these walls. Once he does that, he’s as good as free.”

“He thinks it’s easier,” Waxer says slowly, seeing where Tabitha is coming from as she bops her head in agreement. 

Neither of them likes the fact that Krell believes that fighting his way through everyone here and then hiding is easier than fighting smaller quantities of people while running. If he's so confident that he can accomplish this and get out alive, it only promises worse things to come for all of them.

“So we make it harder,” Tabitha announces, abruptly cutting off the moment of silence where both of them get lost in that sobering thought, voice now filled with the certainty and conviction that she has been sorely lacking before. 

With a curt flick of her thumb, the imagecaster she had been clutching in her hands comes to life before their eyes, lighting up their shady environment with a light bluish hue as the holographic depiction of the tower floats in the air yet again. 

Another press of the button and the image expands, now also showing the environment of the airbase and the ‘woods’ stretching beyond. 

“He doesn't expect us to do it, so I say we get a few squads and have them set up an ambush a klick or two outside the base. Somewhere along here,” she proposes, her left index finger trailing a line into the pictured foliage, just far enough away from the base’s entrance to make it seem unlikely for Republic troops to linger out there and- 

“It’ll lull him into a false sense of security, which makes arresting him a lot easier for us.” 

“And escaping a lot harder for him. Good idea,” Waxer praises, smirking proudly at the padawan before him, which in turn has Tabitha shooting him a smile of her own. 

“I’ll assemble some squads then and have them move out unseen. Don’t need Krell figuring us out.” 

Saying this, Waxer moves to get up, wanting to keep everyone apprised of their change of plans while letting Tabitha figure out how exactly she wants to proceed from here. 

However, before he can even fully push himself off the crate they’ve been sitting on for the last few minutes, a slender hand curls around his elbow and tugs him back down, prompting the clone trooper to twist his head to the side and look back at Tabitha. 

The girl has long since discarded her imagecaster with her eyes now trained solely on him again, a determined, but somewhat apologetic grimace on her face. 

Apologetic?   

"Right, and you're gonna go right with them,” she says, voice soft but stern all the same, contrite but leaving no room for argument – because she knows Waxer, and she knows just how much he hates being pulled away from the action. Or, more like, from his friends who he cannot protect if he’s not there. 

And she understands, she really does. But if they want to have the best chance at success right now, the Jedi commander needs him out there with the other squads.

“What?”  

The grimace on Tabitha’s face only deepens at the shocked tone of Waxer’s voice but she doesn’t rescind her words. Despite how much she too would love to have Waxer at her side when she storms into that tower with Rex and the others, she doesn’t change her mind on this. 

Although she knows she’s going to have to change his if she wants to persuade him without pulling rank, which she doesn't want to do. Not on her brother.

However, to accomplish that, he needs to understand just why she’s sending him with the other squads, why he can't stay with her this time – so she continues before he can oppose her point any further, “I'm not just leaving this up to anyone, Waxer. I want you out there leading them, giving them direction." 

"Think they need a babysitter?" Waxer snorts, but Tabitha merely shakes her head with a breathy laugh of her own.

"These people? Only if they're bored. No…" 

A pause, broken by a sigh so heavy, Waxer just knows that whatever comes out of Tabitha’s mouth next is either going to be an admission of some manner or a logical argument they both don’t like. Either way, the man's ears perk up and he waits, watching curiously when Tabitha’s eyes briefly flash to his, brilliant green and shining in a way they haven’t since reuniting with the 501st – since she's last felt fairly happily at peace on this grim planet.

"I need someone I trust with all my heart out there,” the girl finally admits, voice gentle and genuine, and having Waxer rooted to the spot in split seconds as his thoughts and movements stutter to an unexpected halt, surprised by the sudden personal turn this conversation took. 

Sure, it’s not the first time one of them voiced their implicit trust in the other out loud; they do it pretty much every other day. Doesn’t mean that it isn’t always a bit breathtaking and heartwarming to witness someone placing their faith in you without hesitation.

Trying to regain his footing in this conversation, Waxer forces his lips to part, aiming to say something, anything, in response – even if it's just a small thanks – but before any sound can travel through his throat,  Tabitha is already going on, lush kyber crystal-like eyes boring a hole into his head. 

“Someone I know so that I can be reassured that Krell can't escape, no matter what happens. And I know if there's anyone here who can stop a lightsaber-wielding maniac," the padawan pulls her hand away from where it was resting on his elbow, giving it one last squeeze, before poking her index finger into his chest, the force behind it starkly contrasting the graceful smile adorning her dirtied features, "it's you." 

When she’s finished, Waxer stays quiet at first, maybe a bit winded at the genuine and heartfelt praise he’s just gotten from his commander – in one conversation too. 

Rarely do their chats ever include compliments that aren't at least mildly teasing banter, not that Waxer is complaining. Not when his heart feels very warm and fuzzy in his chest and Tabby is looking at him with those vivid Tooka eyes. 

Eyes that take on a questioning glint when a minute passes and Waxer still fails to respond, startling him out of his delighted trance promptly. 

He clears his throat once, twice, in an effort to salvage his voice from where it's frozen in his vocal cords, and yet it still comes out just a level above a whisper.

"That's a great deal of trust, Tab'ika." 

Slowly and deliberately, the man raises one of his own hands – the one still missing the glove he'd taken off to snap Tabby out of her vision – to encircle Tabitha’s slighter one against his chest, and carefully brings it back down to lay on her lap. 

Tabitha just smiles, both at the gentle gesture and the appreciation and wonder she can decipher in Waxer’s voice and expression. 

"Not more than usual, ori'vod ," she says, shrugging her shoulders as if this entire conversation is par-of-the-course and she didn’t just drop some massive boulder on top of Waxer – which breaks down all of his defenses and, subsequently, his counter-arguments.  

"And you've earned every single ounce."

And really, how can you disagree with someone when they say something that earnest and vulnerable just like that? 

How can Waxer possibly argue with being sent to the backlines now? 

Damn the general and his insistence on teaching Tabitha his way with words.

"Obi-Wan taught you sweet-talking well, young padawan ," the clone trooper quips after a minute of vain deliberation that they both know was more for the sake of putting on a show than actual thoughtfulness. 

Her master just taught her how to handle words a bit too well these last years. The moment Tabby pulled out the ‘trust card’, Waxer already lost and they both knew it.

"I'll take Ares, Ryder, Web, Nemo, and their squads out there. Just don't have too much fun here without us and give us a heads-up if he gets out, alright?" 

"You got it,” Tabitha grins…

Before all but shoving Waxer off the crate and telling him to- “Now go. I'll see you in a few." 

Laughing, Waxer complies to the prodding and pushing hands on his back and gets up from where he’s perched, taking one singular step forward, away from the young girl, but feeling himself coming to a halt not a second later. As if compelled by some invisible force to turn around one last time, look at and memorize the way his best friend sits there, cross-legged and practically beaming as bright as a beacon in the perpetual darkness of Umbara – all traces of her previous gloomy demeanor gone with the breeze. 

(Not for the first time in over three years, Waxer wonders how that happens sometimes, the mood swings. Ahsoka and she seem to have them down to a T. Anyways–) 

He smiles back and without thinking says, "Be careful, Bitty." which only seems to make Tabitha’s grin widen, eyes softening and the last remnants of tension in her back melting. 

"You too, Wax, and may the Force be with you."

___________________

"What made you so sure Krell would resist arrest?"

"As I said, he wasn't moving. He wasn't bothered by us being there. Everyone else would have run. Unless they have a plan. He knew what was coming and was waiting. Never a good sign."

"So you prepared."

"So I did." 

"And what did you tell your troops? What orders did you give them?"

"If you're asking if I told them to shoot to kill right then and there because I premeditated his murder, no I didn't. I specifically told everyone to put their blasters to stun before they got into position. Every single one."

"Nothing more?"

"Nope."

Chapter Text

"Alright, we're doing good so far. Would you like something to drink, Tabitha?" 

"If it's not a bother, please."

"Not at all." 

*door swishing open in the background, footsteps, and the clink of a glass being set on the table. A gulping sound indicates someone drinking as the door closes again with a light thunk.*

"Thank you."

"You're quite welcome. Now, you said CT- Sorry, Captain Rex was getting Fives and Jesse out of the brig while you were planning for engaging Krell. I'm sure they were glad to see you." 

"More than they would have been with Krell, that's for sure." 

"Why don't you go on from there; when you three reunited."

___________________

Head bowed and toeing the floor, Tabitha leans against the closed door of the elevator, trying for all her might to give off the appearance of cool, collected calm for the sake of the eyes she can feel boring into her soul from somewhat far away. 

At this point, everyone is waiting for her to give the word, to allow the few troops that can fit to enter the elevator to confront Krell atop his throne while the others lay prowling, waiting. And, to be frank, she is waiting for it too; the sound of her own voice crawling past her lips, giving the order to engage without her mind ever truly thinking about it. 

She still remembers how much she once hated being the sole barrier between tranquility and chaos, being the person that had an entire battlefield in the palm of her hand and could (in limited ways) control how it plays out. She still remembers how it made her skin itch so very uncomfortable, she’d rather have crawled out of it all together than allow this feeling to persist. 

She still remembers how she had hoped never to get used to being that… messenger of destruction and death , yet here she was, fifteen years old and a little numb to it all. Her skin doesn’t bubble with hundred-thousand insects underneath, her mouth doesn’t hold that distinct taste of ash, and her heart never flinches; not anymore. 

(She wonders if her master ever feels that way; if Master Yoda or Windu ever do)

She’s gotten used to it, and she just knows that little, too naive twelve-year-old would certainly be staring her down in disappointment and pity right about now. 

Tugging one of her lightsabers off her belt as she still leans against the elevator, Tabby begins to fiddle with it in half-hearted attempts to clear her mind of those thoughts, not wanting to face the nauseating sensation sloshing in the pit of her stomach.

('When did it all change? When did I change?')

Tracing the maroon details embedded between the smooth bluish silver and black rubber hold with jittery thumbs, scraping her blunt nails over some of the many scratches indented into the metal, trailing careful eyes across the entire length of the weapon as if to make out superficial defects that could hinder her ability in battle. As expected, she finds none, but the familiar motions of checking and rechecking her weapons of choice calm her fluttering heart a little, indeed allowing her to slip into a little meditative trance where no anxious thoughts or uncomfortable feelings can sink their venomous claws into her flesh. 

And for a few minutes, she stays like that – distant but not far away – feeling the burn of everyone’s eyes slipping away, the tugging weight of the braid in her hair lessening, and the unrelenting shiver in her spine diminishing.

For a few minutes, it’s just her and the Force existing together in tandem, completely synchronized in their mingling dance as the world before Tabby’s eyes blurs together into an unidentifiable mish-mash of colors.

Just for it all to snap back into focus in one split second at the feeling of coiled but enthusiastic… emotion washing towards her in angry waves, lapping at her ankles, biting right through the cloth of her robes, the flesh of her body, and sinking straight into the marrow of the bone. 

The shiver is back.

The abrupt movement of her head shooting up is dizzying and disorienting in its sudden sharpness but instantly Tabby's keen eyes meet three identical, yet incredibly differing gazes making their way towards her, shoving past the loitering squads that have now moved in position. 

Rex, Jesse, and Fives; all decked out in full armor and ready to go, looking for all intents and purposes like men on a mission – probably because they are. 

Though still unobscured by their helmets, with still some handful of feet between them, the padawan cannot quite make out their eyes, or, rather, what they hold, though with the emotion gnawing at her bones that's not really the biggest of her concerns. 

(It's not like she can do much against that anyway; the only thing that can ease that raging within them is giving Krell what he deserves.)

Right now, she's more worried about injuries because, while they might have looked unharmed in the vision she had (during their staged execution) , she still has to reassure herself that they're fine, that they were not too late for at least two of her friends. 

With every step the trio trudges closer to her, her eyes follow minutely, searching and scanning for a limp, a waver, anything to indicate she had to go hound Kix for medical aid (which she doesn't want to do; not with the image of bruised, exhausted eyes and the sound of almost defeated sighs etched into her mind). She finds none, nor does she see a single scratch on them, which makes her lips nurture a soft smile, relieved but certainly not at ease. 

Not with the hollowness she can make out somewhere behind those mental shields of theirs and the waves of emotions breaking against her legs. Hollowness that speaks of more than just the grief, pain, or wrath she can sense; written in it in clear Aurebesh is a bitter betrayal that has no other outlet but vicious emotion, that knows nowhere to go, that will fester in ways that Tabitha cannot predict even after roughly three years of endless war.

They – all of them – might be free from injury but they are certainly not free of hurt. 

A realization that has her pleasant smile stiffen a tad, wavering for a second but remaining on her expression regardless – a moot gesture if anything, for people that might not even care, but it enables Tabitha to maintain the illusion that this is just another Separatist they're arresting, just another normal engagement. 

Not betrayal on the highest level; not someone that she might have called kin not 24 hours ago. 

Just another mission. 

(She'd like to believe that but there's a simmering in her muscles that makes them twitchy, anger in her heart that boils whenever she leaves it unattended for long periods, ugly thoughts that infest her head; everything that she's last felt when Ahsoka was kidnapped and hunted by the Trandoshans. Everything that she's never felt for mere Separatists or normal missions…)
Fives smiles back nevertheless – brimming with the usual swagger which makes the girl feel a little better –, Jesse waves, and Tabby would bet her last stock of her candies that Rex’s lips are twitching a little too as the three come to a halt before the padawan, who pushes herself from the door to stand up straight. 

“You have no idea how good it is to see you, Commander,” Fives utters lightly before the three of them even come to a complete stop, and this time Tabitha doesn’t even have to force herself to smile a bit more natural.

“Consider the sentiment shared, Fives,” Tabby replies simply, already returning the lightsaber to her belt as she gives both him and Jesse another cursory once-over. “I’m glad you’re both okay.” 

Jesse hums low in his throat, shifting his weight to one foot as he plucks the helmet from under his arm. “Even a psychopathic Jedi can’t keep us down.” 

None of them miss the way Rex seems to stiffen a little at the comment, eyes briefly flitting over to the crates – the charred blaster marks – that Tabitha and Waxer had occupied just some five minutes ago (he and his squads were already on his way to their little hiding spots in the woods, having slipped out undiscovered just a minute or two after Waxer and Tabitha parted ways). 

No one says anything though – not even loud-mouthed, sarcastic Fives –, all conscious of the emotional turmoil that must currently be plaguing the good captain. 

A turmoil that Tabitha has been able to observe for the past few hours, watching in muted horror as it grew, shrunk, lashed out underneath the layers of Rex’s consciousness, its vile ferociousness making her wince in sympathy. 

Containing a storm like that within oneself, keeping its harsh lightning and thunder from striking anyone else – anyone innocent – on the outside, is truly agonizing in a way that physical pain could never be, and Tabitha would have done whatever necessary to help relieve him of some of that torture… had it not been for the constant movement and planning that’s been taking up most of their time. 

She’ll have to remedy that after this is all over. 

Now, however, the teenager allows a chuckle to burst from her mouth, keeping one eye trained on Rex and grinning up at Jesse with a raised eyebrow. 

“I would hope not because we still have a little ways to go with him,” she says, head bobbing skywards curtly as if to gesture to Krell’s general location in the tower. 

Promptly, all prior positive energy seems to leave Fives with one heavy sigh that rattles his chest plate, and by now their conversation has regained Rex’s silent but undivided attention. A frown tugs at his dark brows, mouth furling in badly concealed disgust,  “Don’t remind me. There is no way he is going to just let himself be arrested.”

“Nope,” the girl answers, popping the ‘p’ of the word as she pulls the imagecaster out of her belt pouch and swiftly flicks it back on. “He sure won’t. That’s why I put some people on the backburner.” 

Cocking his head to the side, Rex appears to regard the floating holograph between the four of them with a critical eye, humming somewhat pleased when he sees the highlighted strip of woodland outside the front of the base. 

“I was starting to wonder where Waxer went,” the clone captain states, a tentative spasm pulling the corner of his lips upwards as his gaze pointedly flies to the empty spot at Tabby’s side. 

Wherever one of them is, the other isn’t far away; it’s been like this since the beginning of the war and their friendship. Someone has yet to be able to even come close to severing that bond that seems to stretch between Tabitha, Waxer, and Boil, but none have ever succeeded – at this point, even the Jedi Code (for all that its 'no attachment' rule is worth) probably couldn't.

Which is why it surprised him to see Tabitha standing all on her lonesome at the elevator in the first place, with no trace of Waxer anywhere nearby. Rex would have been worried if not for the padawan’s casual stance and almost bored fiddling with her lightsaber.  

In response to his amused statement, Tabby merely shoots him a grin, already putting the imagecaster away again as she opens her mouth to explain their plan, “Wax took a few squads outside the compound into the forest. If Krell tries to run away and gets out, that might give us a better chance at capturing him.” 

Three resolute nods are her response and she can see Rex’s lips parting in an abortive attempt at voicing an unknown question or statement, cut off by the chirping of Tabitha’s com that the padawan quickly silences, quietly murmuring under her breath, “Perfect timing,” before returning her attention to the trio before her – the trio that is already placing their helmets on their heads in anticipation of what happens next. 

“They’re in position."

A crooked smirk makes its way onto Jesse's face as he readjusts his grip on his rifle, "Then let's get that son of a blaster."

~~~~~~~~

If Tabitha thought having a dozen pairs of eyes burning right into her at the bottom of the tower, this – standing back-to-chest, shoulder-to-shoulder in a moving elevator filled to the brink with eager but uneasy people – is infinitely worse. 

Even pressed against the very back wall, she can practically feel the men around her shift restlessly in a professional and not at all anxious way . 

Shrugging shoulders and shaking out arms and legs to relieve building tension in their muscles, checking their weapons at infuriatingly irregular intervals, tapping fingers against the side of their blasters’ triggers; Tabby can feel the movement of it all as clearly as she does the rapid ascend of the elevator. But she can hear it even better and if she weren’t so focused on not shifting her weight from one foot to the other as well, Tabitha might have just dug the balls of her palms into her ears to muffle the cacophonous noise. 

She doesn’t, instead resigning herself to twisting the fabric of her tunic between her twitching fingers as she watches the light of the elevator shaft shoot by through the crack above the door. 

She starts counting the seconds.

1…2…3

These elevators are designed to move at high speeds to prevent any possible delay in reaction time in case of an enemy attack.

4…5…6

The sheer velocity makes her nauseous – or maybe that’s just the slimy sensation beginning to filter through the cracks in the elevator as they get closer to the top, closer to Krell. A sickening sense of calm that is nothing like the serenity of her master’s Force presence at the other end of the training bond. Whereas his is warm and welcoming, a balm on frayed nerves and simmering emotions, this one is agitating, clings to your skin like a leech, and sucks out all the warmth you might have still held within your body. 

Even the Force quivers with the wrongness of it.

7…8…9

Besides her, Rex moves for the first time since setting foot in this elevator, and from one second to the next, his twin blasters are unholstered and clenched in his hands, knuckles surely white underneath those gloves of his. On her left, Fives follows suit and Jesse tucks his rifle closer to his chest. 

Tabitha, however, doesn’t make a move to unclip her lightsabers, cramping fingers slowly letting go of her tunic, flexing.

10…11…12

Their ascend starts to slow, velocity throttling automatically as they arrive at the tip, and Tabby sucks in one last deep breath to pacify her beating heart, letting the audible gust of air she lets out become the only sound in the small area as everyone else seemingly holds their breath collectively, ceasing their fidgeting at last. 

She still hasn’t taken her lightsabers out. 

13…14…15

The door opens. 

Tabitha's eyes flutter shut – just for a nanosecond as she coaxes her mind blank, her thoughts shapeless. 

They move as one, rigid stillness instantly replaced by purposeful motion as the first men surge out of the elevator the moment the door is open wide enough to fit two. 

With quick strides, the squads create a semicircle around a looming silhouette at the front of the room, effectively surrounding it with their weapons raised and aimed at its broad back. 

Tabby and Rex step out last, not uttering a single syllable as the captain takes position beside his brothers, dual plasters poised and ready, while the Jedi takes one step further, out of the encirclement and toward the figure. 

Her hands hover over her belt, prepared to snatch up her weapons at any second as she examines the tall shadow standing before her, staring resolutely through the windowpane. 

As if he hadn't noticed their arrival; as if he didn't care .

Krell looks all high and mighty where he stands, all four hands clasped loosely behind his back which is perfectly straight while his head remains pointed forward, peering into the darkness of Umbara impassively. 

There's not a speck of dust on his neat, Jedi-issue robes; not a fleck of blood or grime; not a scratch or a tear that indicates struggle. 

Everything about him looks pristine, perfect, exuding the very same sense of calm that makes the back of her throat itch with the urge to vomit. He looks normal but in a way that doesn't belong; in a way that makes him stick out like a sore thumb among all the damage and devastation he's wrought. 

And if that doesn't just ignite a red-hot flare of anger in the depth of her gut – a flare that quickly tries to unravel throughout her already jumpy muscles, swimming through her veins like magma for all of one second before Tabitha stamps down on it hard , cutting it off before it could coerce her muscles – her hands in particular – to do something stupidly impulsive.

Her lightsabers stay on her belt.

So do Krell's – for now . 

"General Krell," Tabitha's voice suddenly booms through the room, bouncing off the walls heavily as it drowns out the clatter of armor, the whining of blasters heating up ('I didn't remind them to put their blasters on stun again…') . The stability of it, the power behind it nearly takes the padawan herself aback, having not expected that strength when her insides are such a confusing tangle of feelings and sensations. 

A twinge in the line of the other Jedi's ('ex-Jedi?') shoulders prompts her to continue despite her surprise, hanging onto that commanding voice, "You are being relieved of duty."

She draws the words out, makes them come out loud and clear and easy to comprehend, and observes, waiting for a reaction that comes not a second after she utters the last syllable. 

The spasm in his shoulders turns into a full-blown motion as Krell turns his head to the side, the rest of his body lagging for a little but ultimately following its example and twisting in a 180 turn, facing her – them – for the first time…

And it takes all of Tabitha’s power to suppress the flinch that almost surges through her muscles upon meeting the aloof yellow eyes that tower over her by roughly a meter, contrasted sharply against the typical warm color of a Besiliskan’s scales. 

It takes her everything to remain steadfast and stare defiantly back even when his brusque voice makes her skin pebble uncomfortably. 

“ Padawan Flux ,” delivered from his mouth her name sounds like an insult, but he doesn’t look the least surprised by her presence, nor does he look concerned about being surrounded (though somewhere behind those sickly colored irises of his she can see a faint sheen of annoyance), “explain this treasonous behavior at once.” 

It’s formulated as a demand but there is no heat, no genuine confusion or shock where it should be. It's conveyed in the most monotone of tones possible, and she knows that he expects no truthful answer from her at this very moment; she knows that he is perfectly aware of what is happening right now and why it’s happening. 

So instead of answering, instead of floundering and letting herself be put off by his authoritative posture and poise, Tabitha merely narrows her eyes at him as her hands finally settle heavily on her lightsaber (still not gripping them, not taking them out). 

“Explain yours.” 

“Mine?” 

Her fingers tighten around the rubber pads of her lightsaber hilts as a heated hiss presses itself through her teeth, “Why order your troops against one another? Why make them kill each other?”

“Oh, that,” Krell chuckles, finally letting his perfectly maintained composure drop in favor of an almost smug smirk slipping onto his fatty lips, tugging at the inflatable wattle underneath his lower lip, and this time Tabby cannot subdue or hide the abrupt stiffening of her muscles. 

The tone of his voice is menacing, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up straight, and at last, his hands unclasp behind his back, falling slack at his sides. 

Where he looked imperious before, now he has that air of lazy conceit around him, something aching to pride shining through the cold shell of his eyes, filling Tabby with the urge to just yank the lightsabers from her belt now, cut that smug expression right off his face. 

‘He doesn’t even regret it,’ a vicious voice whispers in her ears and her thumbs twitch towards the activation studs on her blades. 

Tabitha almost draws them, yet stops herself at the last minute. (‘Revenge isn’t the Jedi way. Our objective is arresting him…’)

“I’m surprised you were able to figure it out, captain ,” Krell all but spits, now directed at Rex, taking one large step forward, away from the window. 

Each barrel in the room follows him dutifully, everyone’s fingers itching and tightening around the triggers. Tabitha has half a mind to inch a little in front of Rex, who hasn’t budged despite the threatening and nasty tone thrown at him, and she does so without hesitation, effectively placing herself between the crazed Jedi and her friend. 

She’d be damned if she let him touch another hair on his head.     

Krell seems only amused by this action, a huff drawn from his chest as he promptly halts again upon sensing the growing uneasy animosity around him, continuing speaking as if nothing changed at all. 

“Impressive, really, At least for a clone. Though I presume it has more to do with you showing up.”

Pointedly, his gaze shifts back to Tabitha and, if possible, the distaste they contain seems to intensify, downright slipping into the level of abhorrence as a sneer makes its way onto his ugly face.  

“I should have known Kenobi would send his wench of a padawan to do the dirty work.” 

Tabby has had a fair share of abuse and disrespect directed at her over the last few years (mostly from Separatists or Senators/Nobles who think they're superior to everyone) and this one hardly ranks in her 'Top 10 Worst Insults', to be quite honest. It’s quite unoriginal if she thinks about it; even Gunray could have done better.  

So the padawan stays still, doesn't let herself get goaded or humiliated by a grown-ass man slash filthy traitor, and glares right back at the Krell. She doesn’t react to the insult at all, not even letting herself blink in a way that might make him think he won this round of whatever they’re doing. 

The mismatched array of colored armors in the room, however, shifts a tad, dozens of shoulders rising like hackles on a pack of Nexu and the fabric of gloves squelching against the solid material of rifles and pistols. Behind her, she can feel more than hear Rex stepping closer to her back, dual pistols still raised and ready to shoot on command, which is when she realizes that this verbal match of theirs has to end. 

Right now, it’s achieving nothing but riling everyone up and increasing the chances of someone suddenly becoming very trigger-happy; she won’t get answers from him like this, and, frankly, she’s not sure if she wants any anymore. 

Somewhere along the way – sometime in three years –, Krell has fallen where no one can follow or help him out of; he’s lost himself in the depth of a maze of eternal darkness where no amount of good-natured shouting can lead him to the exit… or perhaps he just found who he truly is and embraced it openly. 

Perhaps there are just some people in this galaxy that are inherently bad…

Either way, lest she wants to have a whole court-martial case on her hands soon, this has to end now. 

Tabitha finally unclips the lightsabers from her belt, balling them into her fists and letting the warmed steel and hefty weight comfort her as she continues staring her opponent down with a warning in her eyes. 

“That’s enough, General ,” Tabitha spits the rank from her mouth like poison, taking one decisive step forward until there are only two or three meters left between them. “This has gone for too long. Put your hands in the air and surrender. Last warning.” 

Said warning is underlined by the ignition of two energized blades, cut off by their momentary low-pitched hum as her surrounding area is basked in mingling blue-green light.  

She doesn’t take her fighting stance yet though, lets the blades dangle at her side with their tips just above the floor, and hopes against hope that Krell will see reason; that the other Jedi will just lay down his weapons already and come peacefully. 

Naive and foolish. 

It’s been three years since the universe last took mercy on her like that. 

Not a second after she’s uttered those few definitive words, Tabitha can sense a huge wall of pure force and energy build up around Krell, invisible to the naked eye but oh so clear to her naturally widened senses. Right in front of her, Krell calls upon the Force to create one large burst of sheer energy, rising like a tidal wave just begging to be released. 

More instinctively than consciously, Tabitha throws up a wall of her own, a shield that she attempts to stretch across the entire length of the semicircle the troops have built, over every single man in the room so that each and every single one of them is protected against the destructive force Krell is aiming to unleash upon them. 

In the split second she has, however, she only manages to shield those conveniently positioned at her shoulders and back in time to prevent them from being flung backward by Krell’s Force wave. 

Everyone who was clearly in her line of sight (the ones, unfortunately, closest to Krell) isn’t as lucky, and before anyone can react, half a dozen bodies fly across the room, crashing into the sturdy walls with loud crashes and pained groans that Tabitha can’t focus on as she can feel Krell’s Force wave collide with her haphazard shield – not if she wants the wall to crumble down around them. 

Behind her, she can sense Rex stiffening, bracing for the inevitable impact of some invisible force on his body (and she’s certain everyone is following suit, having seen their brothers already catch the full brunt of it). 

Instead of them being tossed into the air though, Tabitha staggers a step back, almost bumping into Rex’s chest if the captain hadn’t reacted swiftly and supported her upper back with his forearm laid across her shoulders, barrel of his pistol aimed at the wall to their left. Not that she notices, really, mind too fixated on maintaining her shield under the momentary strain as the padawan grits her teeth against the sudden onslaught of force. 

It’s over as fast as it began, pressure lifting all but instantly, but Tabitha doesn’t have time to catch her breath (or check on the men that are gradually hefting themselves off the floor, bruises most likely already forming on their backs and limbs). 

A hasty moment passes and suddenly the blue-green shimmer around them is intensified by the joining of the Krell’s lightsabers threatening gleam to hers, like a star growing until it encompasses the entire space of the room in an ironic show of symbiosis. 

Tabitha lunges forward, abandoning her position in front of Rex, and two double-bladed lightsabers clash against a pair of dual blades, green against green, blue against blue. 

Predictably, Krell easily pushes her off, a growl slipping past his lips from somewhere deep in his belly, but Tabitha doesn’t let that deter her. 

She jumps again, this time aiming a sweep at his legs that Krell hops over and, in one swoop fell, brings down his upper blades in a downward arch. Rolling to the side, Tabitha dodges what would have been a fatal strike, and in the same motion aims a slice at Krell’s back just as the first blaster shot rings throughout the room. 

Krell blocks both, but he misses the kick that the padawan levels at the back of his knee. It connects with tremendous force, yet the joint doesn't buckle the way she hoped it would, protected by too many layers of muscle, fat, and tendons to be overly affected by a kick from a teenage human girl. 

However, the sudden assault does provoke a twinge to run through the joint, just a tiny spasm that – along with the mere action – ultimately has Krell's focus slipping just a minuscule fraction from where he was blocking an onslaught of blaster bolts. 

It's enough to have one of those bolts ( 'It wasn't a stun bolt… At least, they're not shooting to kill.' ) make it through his defense and embed itself in his side, prompting the nauseating stench of burned flesh to waft through the room, joining the stinging smell of blaster fire. 

A cry bursts from Krell's lips, the pain having him curl around his injured side instinctively, and Tabby uses that small window of opportunity to spring up from her crouched position and aim a one-handed strike at Krell's right hand – whether with the intention to simply disarm or maim not even she quite knows. 

Doesn't truly matter, in the end, it only slices through the topmost layers of flesh, creating a huge, burned gash that runs diagonally down Krell‘s forearm, effectively melting skin and clothing together in a way that Tabby knows to be painful all too well. 

The fact that Krell drops his blue lightsaber after sustaining the injury thus comes as no surprise. Truthfully, the padawan is rather relieved to hear the clang of the heavy hilt hit the floor because this might just even out the battlefield a little (four blades against two seems kind of unfair – and could have proven to be rather tiring in the long run, especially with Krell’s strength). 

Tabitha would have pushed further, would have kept up an endless assault on her opponent knowing just how much a Basilisk and a Jedi at that can withstand and push through. She created an advantage for herself by partially disarming and injuring the larger man, and she’d be damned if she let it slip through her grasp willingly. 

So without hesitation, Tabitha is about to chase after her blue saber with her green one, an upward curve that would have connected with Krell's upper arm or shoulders… 

Had Krell not, at the moment the swing set into motion amassed whatever force he could and released it in one strong push. 

A push that Tabby cannot deflect this time, having been caught off guard by its sudden appearance and the ferocity behind it. 

(There is desperation there too, she can feel it… all of it; a mad attempt to get away from the sheer numbers surrounding him – overwhelming him and forcing him to consider surrender, injury, or death. He doesn't want to but he has to retreat because he wants to survive above all else.)

A tingle at the base of her neck, that's all the warning she gets just as she allows the lingering momentum from the first hit to hoist her left arm along before she can see the push building and release. 

Scarcely before the unmistakable pressure of a Force wave washes over her, makes her skin itch, contract, be pulled taut over bones that jar and jolt because of the tension and pull that follows. 

It's that pull – that unexpected strength and weight slamming against, passing over her – that yanks Tabitha's body backward, lifts her off the ground, and tosses her and everyone else across the room…

…and into walls. Or in Tabby's case, the window. 

She's never been more grateful for the invention of transparisteel in her life than when her back hits the transparent metal hard . Although she is sure that buried beneath the groan that forces the air out of her lungs, she can hear a quiet, shattering crack on impact. 

Landing on the floor in a heap, lightsabers rolling from her hands as she attempts to catch herself before her head collides with the ground too. The shock of touching down thrusts another moan of pain from her lips, her back twinging and throbbing at whatever movement she makes, promising an impressive arrangement of bruises. 

Despite this, she allows herself only a nanosecond of reprieve, breathing through gritted teeth as her hands brace themselves against the floor and hoist her upper body up. 

All around she can sense the others doing the same, some faster, some slower than her, and she only has a fraction of a moment to wonder why Krell isn't moving yet, isn't using this opportunity, when she hears an outcry of "Commander!" across the room. 

Impulse has her head snapping up in an instant, whirling directly to whoever is calling her name only to see a hulking, four-armed figure dashing toward her, intent shining clear in his yellow eyes – which aren't directed at her but the window behind her . 

"Get down!"

And the fifteen-year-old does. 

Whatever progress she's made before she negates by throwing herself to the ground, hands coming up to cover her head and create a Force shield around her out of instinct. 

She chokes on the hiss that wants to press itself through her mouth at the action, ignores the sting that stabs her spine and muscles, and focuses solely on maintaining that shield, bracing herself for Krell's next move. 

A move that comes not a second later as expected. 

Seemingly out of the blue, the window panel behind her straight up implodes, shattering from the inside and exploding outwards with such brutal might that Tabby can almost feel the shards slicing into her skin even though they glance off of her invisible shield. 

Not that she can concentrate on the sensation when her attention is immediately drawn to a gush of air passing overhead, the shadow of a body as it lunges over her and out of the broken window it created, silent, fast, but hindered, injured. 

Krell is escaping, through the window, the courtyard, towards Waxer , and that's all the motivation Tabitha needs to drop the shield the second the glass stops raining and scramble into a standing position, recalling her lightsabers with the Force and grinding her teeth against the bruising pain in her back. 

"Tabitha, you okay?" 

At the call of her name, the padawan looks up, meeting Rex's eyes coming towards her at a brisk pace, gleaming with concern but also determination… maybe a hint of distress. 

Tabby shakes her head, waving off the captain's concern as she swivels around to look outside the window, needlessly searching for Krell (she can see his lightsaber moving through the compound already, pounded by barrels of blaster fire). 

"Fine," she asserts, terse and mindless as she reaches for her com, turning it on with a quick press of a button, "Waxer, do you copy?"

"Copy you, Commander," comes the response not a moment later.

"Krell's moved out of the tower; he'll be out of the base soon enough and heading toward you. Get your men ready." 

"Understood. Waxer out."

Closing the com line after that, the girl presses another few buttons on the device, shifting her gaze and attention to Rex, who is standing beside her, gaze following the green shaft of light drying through the base grounds, evading and running. 

"Rex, track my signal if you have to. Catch up with us as quickly as you can." 

And without waiting for a reply, Tabitha jumps, following Krell with fire in her step and her heart.

___________________

“As you mentioned you anticipated before, Krell resisted arrest and continued to fight his way through the men you positioned at the base of the tower.”

“Correct.”

“But you had the forethought to place a few squads some distance away in Umbara’s foliage so that they could incapacitate him.”

“You make it sound like something admirable. Like it was actually a good plan and not just grasping at straws. All it did was get more people killed. All it did was get him killed…”

Chapter Text

“Tabitha, how about we take a break-” 

“That’s not necessary, thanks.”

“I read the reports, Tabitha. I saw the casualty list. Everyone knows how close you two were. Losing a good friend is never easy, especially under such circumstances. I don’t want to put you under any more stress than you already are. A short break to breathe won’t hurt anyone-”

“I’d rather get this over with… if you don’t mind, ma’am. I’m fine; I don’t need a break. Let’s just continue.”

“ *sigh* If that’s what you want…”

“...” 

“Alright, after Krell fled the base, you went after him so that he wouldn’t evade capture. Continue from there.”

___________________

Feet pounding against the floor, a steady, quickening thump-thump-thump against the firm dirt, Tabitha runs – away from the base and the others –, ignoring the burn of her lungs, the pounding of her heart, the sting of her back, the painful pulsing in her muscles the further and faster she runs. 

She can hear blaster fire up ahead, growing less and less in frequency the nearer she draws, but that's not what has her ducking underneath branches and weaving through thick foliage at a neck-breaking speed. The slowing of a fight is not what has the soles of her boots slap against dirt and rock at an ever-quickening pace or the blood freezing in her veins despite the adrenaline trying to keep it going. 

It's the screams she can hear that do it, the pain, the split-second agony before the diminishing life force, and dimming of what little light there is left in this world. 

The fading presence of friends has her run faster, quicker than she has in a long time with panic seizing her heart, making it hammer but stutter simultaneously. 

She has to get there in time. 

They're dying. Krell is too dangerous, too wild, too violent, and too skilled. More than she thought. She realized it in the tower, when desperation and self-preservation drove him to take chances, should have known a Jedi like him isn't as simply arrested as that. 

Tabby misjudged him, overestimated their chances, had too much hope . She sent her men to certain death by making that plan and every scream drives that realization deeper into her heart, puncturing hole after hole in it in the shape of friends, of trusted soldiers, and men. 

She has to be faster. Get there in time. Help like she's expected to as a commander and a Jedi. 

Have Waxer's six like she had promised, like she always has before. 

She can't have abandoned him now. Not here. Not to Krell. 

Another scream, but this time the teenager stumbles, feels the sound down in her bone marrow as her heart comes apart right before her very eyes, a piece being torn off cell by cell, thread by thread until the excruciating agony and anguish of it nearly force a scream of her own to join the one in the distance. 

But she swallows it, ignores the cleaving pain that slices through her entire being, and drives red-hot tears into her eyes as she regains her footing. 

So instead of a scream, all that manages to gush from her lips is a quiet, watery gasp – a name she'd wished she'd never utter with such pain and fear. 

" Waxer… " 

Coercing her legs to carry her faster, to ignore their desire to buckle under the burden that is her everything right now, Tabitha keeps going, keeps running – keeps hoping against hope even when the void in her heart and her mind tells her differently. 

And that's when she stumbles across the first bodies, smells the stench of charred, coppery flesh and burning plastic, hears the eerie silence of the forest around her where it wasn't just moments before.  

Acidic bile crawls up her throat at the sight, the smell, the – everything . 

White armor is scorched, glimmering with embers still, streaked red in places where flesh and armor plates have become one, granting a view of gaping holes in bodies that Tabitha never wanted to see this… mutilated. Limbs chopped off, throats slit, chests diced up, heads nearly decapitated; with crimson blood in spots where blood still managed to spill before cauterization.  

Everywhere around her, corpses are strewn about; corpses of people she knows – knew . Ares, Ryder, Sigma, Nemo, Web, Skillet, Frost, so many more; all of them she knew, some of them she talked to not a few hours ago, a lot of them she laughed with days ago. Now, their eyes stare into the distance unseeing, hidden beneath (sometimes) busted helmets as their bodies lay unmoving in the shadows of a world that will forget them. 

Grief seizes her heart, wraps around her lungs like venomous vines, and squeezes, making it difficult for Tabby to suck in a deep breath. 

Or any kind of air at all.

Suddenly, all air seems to have been sucked from Umbara's atmosphere, leaving it a vacuum that has her constricting lungs ('too small, don't work') sputter and falter, burn in their desire for air while her mind keeps repeating 'They're all dead. They're dead,' like a sick mantra that only makes the feeling of lightheadedness washing over her worse.

She slows to a walk, or a stumble more like, looking from helmet to helmet, armor to armor as she fumbles forward – the way the bodies lead – gulping down breath after breath that appears worthless to her stagnant, cramping lungs. 

Every corpse she looks at, skims over the armor markings, identifies, feels a pang of sadness, grief, anguish, regret, guilt shoot through her seemingly deadened limbs, urging them to move – to keep staggering, to keep searching.

To find him.

So she teeters over bodies, feeling more nauseous with each and for once not caring that Krell might be getting away right now. 

She has to find him, can’t leave him here. It’s more important. 

She calls his name, first only a whimpering whisper that gets louder and louder when there is no answer to her calls – her pleas for a sign of life. 

After only thirty seconds of it, she’d be surprised if her master didn’t hear it all the way back at the capital – not that he necessarily needed to hear her desperate cries to know something was wrong. 

Tabitha can feel his imploring touch at the back of her mind, the bond warm but tense, dimmed in its brilliance thanks to the darkness that seems to emanate from the padawan alone; darkness consisting of all the fear, the terror, the disgust, the pain, the regret… the underlying anger. She can sense him endeavoring to soothe it even across several clicks of distance, can see the warmth – the comfort – but can’t feel it. 

Tabitha ignores it all. Uncaring, she brushes off the sensations meant to make her feel better, disregards fortifying her shields so as to not worry Obi-Wan – to spare him the numbing coldness quickly enveloping her entire being –, and just walks, scrambles to find in the Force, yells for her friend.

Doesn’t stop.

Until she finally hears an answer, strained and weak and dying.  

“Tab- Tab’ika…”

And then she sees it – sees him . 

Slumped against the trunk of one of Umbara’s many tentacle-shaped trees, helmet slightly askew and panting, dragging in ragged breath after ragged breath with a wheezing sound coming from the back of his throat that has Tabitha wanting to tear her own ears off. 

She’s heard the sound of a dying soldier too many times to count, knows that wheezing all too well… Knows it’s the sound of life slowly slipping out of a person’s body, leaking out of crevices and holes that aren’t supposed to be there. 

She doesn’t need to see to know his wound is fatal, that Krell hit his lung and skewered it. 

She does it anyway. 

Stumbling over her own two sluggish and sloppy feet, Tabitha crashes down at Waxer’s side, for the first time this day letting the tears that had been building slip from her eyes and flow down her cheeks like waterfalls, uncaring – hardly even noticing.   

“Waxer…” the teenager sobs, terrified and horrified all the same as she finally takes in her brother’s condition, stares down at the burned and scorched, and slightly bleeding crater in his chest with dawing dread and devastation – desperation. 

More tears fall, the dam and whatever resistance it still offered breaking away as she gazes at the spot where Waxer’s right lung is supposed to be… where flesh and bones and inner tissue are now revealed, laid bare to the outside world in a grotesque show of what happens when going up against a crazy man, a crazy Jedi. 

A fitting show of what happened because of her .

This is all Tabitha’s fault; she let this happen, didn’t she? Didn’t think, wasn’t fast enough, didn’t do enough… wasn’t good enough. 

She could have stopped Krell at the tower if she had been better, could have caught up to him faster, spent less time talking, and more time acting.  

Waxer is dying because of her. 

So she has to fix it, can’t let him die because of her mistakes. 

Has to save him.

She’s a Jedi; she can do that (‘You can’t. Even the best healers can’t fix a dead organ, you know that.’). All those extra healing lessons have to account for something (‘They won’t. Not here’). They have to be enough to save him; she has to be enough (‘You can’t save him, Flux. Stop lying to yourself!’).   

Coercing her leaden limbs to move, to let her shaking and twitching hands fall onto the stab wound in his chest – which isn’t moving enough anymore, only takes in shallow breathes that grow weaker and weaker already – from where they hovered before, Tabitha is blinded by the tears blurring her vision but it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t need to see; she just needs to heal .

Therefore, she pushes every last ounce of energy that she possesses into the process of knitting together blood vessels, tissue, muscles, flesh, anything and everything that is damaged.

But nothing happens. The Force pulls and tugs at strings that just won’t move, tries to move blood back to where it belongs, only to have it slip through its grasp – her grasp , and- 

Nothing works. No matter how much she concentrates, how much power she transfers into healing, the wound stays open, his lung doesn’t fill with air, and blood keeps seeping into parts of his body where it doesn’t belong.

Another sob rips through Tabitha’s own chest, tearing a hole into her heart that fits the one beneath her hands, and she’s about to push more, give more energy despite the exhaustion she can already feel hazing the edges of her presence, making her dizzy and faint. 

But then, a hand, gloved but calloused, wraps around her right wrist, and tugs (‘Too weak. It- he shouldn’t be this weak.’) . Away from the injury, from the slim (delusional) possibility of saving her friend.

And Tabby lets it, finally looking up to meet the visor that has been staring at her intently since she collapsed next to Waxer.  

“Don’t,” he croaks, voice wet and low, fragile, and hardly heard over Tabitha’s heaving breaths and Waxer’s rattling ones. 

“But I can-”

“No, you-” A hacking cough jars Waxer’s chest, and Tabitha flinches at the painful, wet sound of it, pictures the blood leaking from his mouth under that helmet as he does his best to suck in just one more breath. Hold off death just for one more second so that he can continue his sentence in a gravelly, slurred voice, “you can’t. Krell is getting away…” 

The wheezing man lowers both their hands to his lap and yet again, Tabby finds herself unable to press against the frail resistance holding her back, frozen and unable to breathe properly, with puffy eyes and salty tears on her lips. Even when her friend detangles his fingers from her wrist, the limb stays unmoving where he left it, twitching and trembling as Tabitha fails to make it move. 

All she can do is stare at her friend’s helmet, even as the hand he freed rises to point deeper into the foliage to her right – the direction Krell presumably fled. “You need to go!”

Tabitha doesn’t follow his motion, already shaking her head vehemently before Waxer even finished his sentence – his command –, the movement shaking more and more tears loose from behind her eyelids.

“No! No, I- I can’t leave you. I won’t!” She all but exclaims, something red-hot and scorching filling up the hollowed-out cavity that is her chest at the mere notion of abandoning Waxer – again. 

A sensation doused swiftly by a cool tidal wave, leaving it colder than before when the hand Waxer used to point comes back and settles on her tear-stained cheek, thumb caressing the spot just beneath her eyes where moisture had been pooling in a futile attempt to wipe it away. 

Unconsciously, the padawan leans into the shaky touch, her own hand coming up to cover his, clinging to its fleeting warmth even as the understanding, the sympathy in that one little gesture – in his entire presence – shreds what little pieces of her heart still remain.

Isn’t she supposed to comfort him? Isn’t she supposed to make dying less scarier for him rather than the other way around?

And he is dying, isn’t he? No matter how deep into denial she drives herself, Waxer is dying and there is nothing that she can do anymore; he’s accepted that while she flails like an idiot for a solution, a cure for death that doesn’t exist, refusing to see, to let go.  

The thought has her deflating instantaneously, breath punched from her lungs in small hiccupy gasps as her entire body curls in on itself and her head slides from Waxer's hand, falling onto his chest (the undamaged part). 

His hand follows the motion diligently – or maybe it doesn't have the strength to stay afloat on its own anymore. Either way, unsteady fingers card through her dark, somewhat greasy hair, stroking her scalp in a weak mockery of a motion that often soothed her. 

Now, all it does is make her soul ache. 

A pain only worsened when a whisper squeezes itself past the confines of Waxer's helmet, soft and sluggish. 

“You’re not going to leave me, Tabby," he says, and the padawan in question can hear the reassuring smile in his voice even though she can't see it. "You’re going to stop him. You’re going to save people… You’re good at that.”

Tabitha's breath hitches in her chest at that and, at her very core, she can't help but disagree. 

The proof of that is lying all around her, lifeless and gaunt.

She can't be good at something she seems to be failing at quite a lot lately; something she fails at just as she needs to succeed. 

“But,” the girl croaks into his chest, grief settling so deep in her voice that it splinters apart at the seams, allowing it to spill from the cracks like watery fluid. “But then why can’t I save you?”

The sigh underneath her brow is nothing more than a shallow but long exhale whistling through Waxer's chest as his fingertips press just a little harder against her skull. 

“Because it’s too late for me now…" Another shaggy breath; another stab at her heart. 

'You were too late for him.'

"But it’s not too late for those Krell will kill if he escapes.” 

The hand in her hair slides clumsily over the side of her head, down to her cheek before settling shakily under her chin, pressing ever so lightly against it in a clear prompt for her to look up. 

"Look- look at me, ad'ika…" 

So Tabitha does, lifting her head from his stuttery chest, not bothering to wipe the tears from her puffy cheeks. Not when her hands are already moving towards the rim of Waxer's helmet when she sees his free one trying in vain to remove it himself, too weak to do anything but jerk it up uselessly. 

Slowly – gently –, the girl tugs it off his head revealing the ghastly sight underneath. A sight that makes nausea swirl in her stomach, no matter how expected it is. 

The blood pooling in his mouth, flowing down his chin; the hollowness of his cheeks and eye sockets; the pale hue of his normally tanned skin; the glassy sheen to his eyes. 

It's the appearance of a dying man on his last legs, breathing his last breaths. 

Whispering his last sentences, filled with reassurances made for the last person he'll ever see.

“It’s gonna… be okay, ad’ika. Eventually.”

In an instant, Tabby drops the hands that have been frozen in the air after taking off the helmet, letting them fall into their laps – bucket still in hand – with horror and disbelief contorting her features into a teary mess. “No, it’s not. It’ll never be okay. Boil-”

“Will be taken care of by you and the others." He wheezes, his own hands slipping down to cradle hers where they're clutching his forgotten helmet on their touching legs. "He’ll have his friends to support him. As will you. Together, you will be okay.”

Tabitha doesn't say anything after that, not for a long minute, unable to grasp how Waxer could possibly think she and Boil could ever be okay – be normal – again without him at their side, having their backs at every turn. 

But she can't say that, can she? Can't mention how the galaxy is ending as his heartbeat slows, how tomorrow already seems so impossible to reach or imagine when he isn't there too, how even the next five minutes are enough to make her shrivel up in anguish. 

She can't say any of that unless she wants to make dying all that more painful for him. 

But-

“I can’t do this without you…” she all but whimpers, feeling the gloves of his hands tighten just a little around the prickly skin of hers.

“I never wanted you… to have to.” Waxer breathes sluggishly, and Tabby can already hear what's about to happen next; can also feel the weakening of the grasp on her hands and the helmet. 

Waxer is slipping away – life force dulling rapidly –, and with his dying breath he whispers a quiet, “I love you, vod’ika .” before his eyes slip closed and his heart stills forever.

Leaving her in utter, soul-shattering silence, broken only by her heaving but quiet cries.

“I love you too, ori’vod ,” she sobs just as his jaw slackens and his hands fall away limp, leaving hers freezing in the stale air of Umbara. 

'I’m sorry,' she doesn't add, no matter how much her heart longs to say it whilst she stares down into the lifeless, black visor in her hands.

(Something dark stares right back.)

___________________

“Tabitha, are you sure you’re al-”

“I’m fine. I’m okay… *ragged breathing* ”

“Can we get some more water in here and something to eat perhaps?”

“ *muffled sob* ”

“Tabitha-”

“Can we take that break now?”

Chapter Text

“How are you feeling, Tabitha?”

“Better. Thank you.”

“You’re quite welcome. Is there anything else you need? If so, please do not hesitate to ask.”

“No, thank you. I’m good now. Let’s proceed with the hearing.” 

“Very well. Once they’ve been engaged, Waxer’s squad could not manage to contain Krell, leading to their deaths, and I’m sorry I need to ask this: Were you angry?”

“...What?”

“After Waxer’s death, were you angry?”

“Are you asking me if I- if I wanted Krell dead for what he did?”

“Did you? It’s not uncommon for someone who lost a loved one – whose loved one was murdered – to fall into a fitful rage and chase after the murderer with the intention to kill.”

“I told you-”

“I know what you told me, Tabitha, but intentions – even if previously morally righteous – can change, especially after a loss so heavy. So please, Tabitha: Were you angry after what Pong Krell did?”  

“...”

“...” 

“Yes.”

“Enough to want to kill Pong Krell?”

“No.”

“Could you elaborate?”

“I was angry, yes. But it was an underlying sentiment, something I hardly even felt because no matter how angry I was, I was even more afraid, in even worse pain. That didn’t leave much space for rage. I just lost my best friend – my brother – and I should have only wanted to kill Krell for that. But I’m a Jedi, we’ve been trained to withstand that kind of vengeful thinking since we were toddlers. I was- I was just afraid .” 

“Afraid of what?”

“Of him hurting more of my friends; of him putting everyone on that stupid planet in danger; of everyone dying, the Republic losing and leading to even worse battles in the future – does it matter? I just wanted him stopped, I wanted him away from everyone so that he couldn’t do what he planned to do, what he’d told me he’d do. So believe me when I say, ma’am, even after Waxer’s- Waxer’s death, my initial intent was not to kill Pong Krell.”

“...What ultimately made you give the order to shoot to kill?”

___________________

'You need to leave.'

“Tabitha?”

'Waxer wanted you to leave, wanted you to catch him.'

"Tabitha."

'Krell will get away if you don't get up now.'

"Tabby."

'Waxer will have died for nothing if you don't kriffing move already!'

"No," Tabitha gasps out of the blue, blinking rapidly as if to dispel the fog that had settled over her entire being, hazing her sight of the chipped, dirty identi-tag searing into the calloused flesh of her palm. 

Or perhaps that is just the unshed tears that ceased falling a minute ago doing so, perched right underneath her eyelids as her wails ebbed to merely stifled whimpers just two minutes after Waxer's heart stopped beating forever. 

Perhaps there never was a fog – a haze that drew over her mind like a curtain, shutting out all light of thought (and her master’s concerned touch over the bond) and keeping in all the dark emotion simultaneously. 

Perhaps it was all just scalding hot tears and freezing numbness battling for the upper hand, leaving her body stuck in a limbo that left her fumbling for the memories of the last few moments. The memory of setting the helmet down beside the cooling corpse slumped against the tree; the memory of gingerly closing the centimeter-wide open slits of his dark eyes wholly; the memory of removing Waxer's identi-tag from his armor to clutch in her cool hands instead. 

The memory of anything after her world crumbled alongside a stuttering heartbeat seem to slide right out of her grasp every time she reaches for them, and before long she doesn’t even try anymore. It’s not important, doesn’t matter – all that matters is getting her tingling feet back under her and go ; make Waxer’s sacrifice – all of their sacrifices – worthwhile in the end. 

All she has to do is stand the kriff up, chase after the presence she can feel distancing itself briskly from her position; that’s all there is to it.

She can do that. 

So Tabitha does, forces her knees to stop clacking together like silver spoons as she absentmindedly tucks away the chip into the front pouch on her belt before attempting to finally heave herself from the blood and dirt, choking down sniffles and blinking away whatever tears still remain… 

Only to be stopped short by some kind of pressure pressing down on her left shoulder. A pressure she hasn’t noticed before – hasn’t even felt until now – just like the voice her ears had simply ignored thanks to the malignant silence slowly straining against the confines of her skull.

“Tabitha, are you with me?”

At once, the ravenette’s head swivels around to face the disembodied voice, strands of jet-black hair falling over her face as her eyes finally snap to the figure standing just over her shoulder, firstly landing on the gloved hand laying on her shoulder with its fingers squeezing into the cloth and flesh underneath. 

(For a second, Tabby realizes that she cannot feel the warmth or the texture of the touch; knows that it should be there – probably is there –, has felt a touch like this enough times to know … but simply cannot feel anything but a ghostly weight weighing down on her bones, as if her skin and nerves just fell asleep. Minus the sensations of pins and needles that usually follows.) 

Slowly but surely, her wide, lush eyes travel upward, following the scratched blue markings on grimy white armor over a shoulder pauldron to the inky visor of Rex's helmet. Rex, who is still talking, trying his best to get the padawan's attention (or at least a reaction); is asking if she's alright, if she can hear him, what happened. 

Rex, whose words she cannot quite process, whose voice sounds hollow to her pounding ears, whose questions remain unanswered as Tabitha's brain sifts through words and sentences her vocal cords refuse to enunciate. 

She settles for a simple “I’m fine,” and even to her ears her voice sounds monotone, flat – devoid of the shaking and breaking from just moments before as she was crying above the dead body of her brother, suddenly bereft of the strain of mental anguish. 

Rex hears it too – the uncanny nothingness spewing from Tabby’s mouth, something so resonant of that hard and heavy sensation smothering the piercing of her heart –, judging by the tensing of his fingers around her shoulder. 

And the teenager knows Rex too well to assume he won’t say something, won’t do something to comfort or console her that will only waste the time they need. 

Thus, Tabby shrugs off the phantom touch of Rex’s hand before the captain can react, could even open his mouth underneath his helmet, and she shoots into a standing position, ignoring her muscles' unsteadiness as she does. 

The entire time, she cannot tear her drying eyes from the corpse at her feet or the crimson stains on her hands, only looking away when Rex’s voice pipes up beside her again.

“Tabitha…” 

It’s a warning as much as it is pure, unbridled concern. 

A warning because Rex knows – of course, he knows… Of course, he understands, especially now. Tabby wishes he didn’t because then he wouldn’t regard her with so much worry and sorrow – and sympathy – all written in his Force presence. 

Tabitha doesn’t want sympathy, doesn’t need it. 

All she needs is Krell gone; behind bars, off the planet, who cares as long as it’s far away from the rest of them.  

So, the girl does not heed his warning or bother to soothe his concerns. She just keeps going. 

Because that’s what Waxer told her to do. 

It’s what everyone left needs her to do.

“I’m fine , Rex,” she insists, tone just as dull and bland as before even as her voice rises a tad, “Krell isn’t gone yet. I know where he is, I can still feel him.” 

With that, the padawan turns on her heel, facing Rex (and – as she realizes – most of the men she left at the base, standing slightly farther away) head-on, jaw squared and eyes hard. A look that is most likely undermined by the tear tracks she stopped feeling around the time her tears stopped falling. 

They stay still though, silent, as Tabitha plows on, “So just follow me and be ready for anything.”

Before anyone can respond, Tabby is already whirling around in the direction where she can sense Krell, his gloomy, gray aura twisting through the shadowy undergrowth. And she darts off, keeping her head firmly locked straightforwardly, unwilling to look back at the body she’s leaving behind – the brother she’ll never see again. 

(Just before she’s out of earshot, the padawan picks up the sound of a modulated sigh behind her, followed by Rex’s weary voice telling someone to memorize the location… so that they can collect the bodies once this is all over. Then over a dozen footsteps pursue her. She still doesn’t look back, and her body refuses to cry again.)  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Feet pounding against the floor, a steady, quickening thump-thump-thump against the firm dirt, Tabitha runs – again . 

However, this time it’s not away from everyone, but instead with them right at her heels. And this time it’s not to save someone (at least not directly) but to catch them, bring them down (maybe even to enact some form of revenge, to satisfy that tiny, dark pit buried in the deepest part of her) . 

And this time , she’s advancing on him, just a bit faster than the rest thanks to the Force propelling her forward. 

Before long, Tabby glimpses the miscolored blur of battle-worn robes cutting through the landscape before her, can hear the pounding of Krell’s footsteps above the armored ones behind her, and smell the coppery scent still billowing in his wake. 

She pushes harder now that Krell is in sight, doesn’t care that she’s putting more and more distance between herself and her troops by doing so. All she has to do is stop the runaway general, engage him so that he cannot escape any further, and then they can close that distance again. 

She’ll be fine alone… probably – doesn’t matter, needs to be done anyway. 

Therefore she squeezes every last drop of energy she can spare into her legs, lets adrenaline course freely through the limbs in an attempt to dispel the growing, bone-deep ache in them once and for all (for now, she’s thankful for the numbness of the nerves under her skin – in her entire body – since it allows her to disregard the burn of exhaustion she knows her muscles sear with). 

The adrenaline crash, if she makes it out of this one alive, will be unimaginable and unbearable but she has to get to that bridge before she can cross it – which is still a long way off. As long as she’s not there yet, Tabby will simply focus on the next five meters… 

Or the next fifty, because that is the distance left between her and Pong Krell – a gap she can cross in a few seconds, and even faster if the padawan can find a way to trip the hulking Besalisk. 

Luckily, this feat should hardly be difficult to accomplish, with Krell concentrated on dodging flora and fauna and hopefully unaware of her presence so near already. If she can build up enough Force, a simple push should be enough to topple him over, given his momentum and speed. 

Easy enough maneuver to mount that needs little actual thought, thankfully. At this point, her mind feels so unpleasantly crowded yet vacant simultaneously – so unwilling to think beyond how to defeat Krell –, anything other than ingrained, intuitive skills might be too much to do. 

With prompt efficiency, whilst maintaining her rapid velocity, Tabitha gathers as much power as she possibly can in the palm of her hand and then thrusts out her right hand. Almost instantaneously, still thirty meters or so in front of her, her enemy stumbles, staggers, before he crashes to the ground hard, instinctively tucking all his limbs close to his body so that his shoulder absorbs most of the impact instead of his head. 

Taking advantage of the situation, the pursuing padawan not only crosses the space left between her and the fallen ex-Jedi, but she also leaps straight across his prone form with one forceful jump. She lands in a roll just a few steps in front of him, using her memento upon coming to her feet to pivot on the spot though she still slides back a bit. 

Either way though, the older man is now effectively cut off from his escape the moment she comes to a standstill before him, panting hard with her lightsabers flying to her hands from where she had, at some point, clipped them back to her belt. 

The weapons are already ignited, casting their humming glow over their surroundings, when Krell finally scrambles up from where he has fallen, facing her with a scornful glare on his greenish face and his only lightsaber lit.      

“You are relentless, welp,” the larger man growls, twirling his double-bladed sword to be held protectively in front of his body, readying himself for a fight. 

A fight whose beginning Tabitha would like to draw out long enough for Rex and the others to get here – it’ll limit his chances of dashing off again, even if the padawan is overpowered. 

Hence why Tabby says the first thing that comes to her mind, tone finally shifting from that grim monotony from before to something sharp and fiery, the first inflection of emotion that the girl can’t quite discern the origin of. 

“And you’re a monster, a traitor.”

Maybe this sudden fierceness comes from somewhere underneath that smothering… something throttling her heart – or maybe it’s just a farce, her putting on a brave face to cover up and shove away the heartbreak of loss she is not allowed to deal with right this moment.      

Regardless, Krell is hardly impressed, nor intimidated by the tone of her voice. He doesn’t cower, doesn’t flinch; remains perfectly still except for his heaving breaths and the sardonic laugh rumbling through his broad chest. 

“I’ve betrayed no one, Flux ,” the Besalisk snorts, teeth glistening like the fangs of a predator as he sneers his words, stepping forward with his blades still at the ready. Tabby doesn’t react, merely falls into her fighting stance further and tightens her grasp on the steely hilts in her hands. “All I’ve done is fool them. If they’re stupid enough to believe me it is their fault.”

“Why? Why do this in the first place?” 

Krell smirks at her incredulous question, smug, “Because I can. Because they fell for it… Because they’re inferior .” 

“Inferior?!” The younger Jedi hisses, not believing her own two ears at what she’s hearing and having to dig in her heels to stop herself from lunging forward in a rash attack that would get him to stop talking. She needs him talking, has to stall for time just a few moments more since she can sense the men coming closer and closer with every word Krell utters. 

For just a handful more minutes, she will have to put up with the delusional nonsense he’s blabbering – though that doesn’t mean she just has to take this slander uncommented. 

“You’re a Jedi. How could you say that?”

“A Jedi?” There’s that laugh again, bland but jagged and this time mixed with just a little bit of mirth – as if what Tabitha said was truly ridiculous. “I’m no longer naive enough to be a Jedi.”

At that, a frown etches itself onto Tabitha’s face, though she cannot say she is all that surprised to hear Krell so openly denouncing the ways he’s been taught his entire life. If he had found any value in them, he would have never fallen this far – would have never been able to condone this with a good conscience. 

Whatever Krell was, it was never a Jedi.

… But it still makes so little sense. What does he mean by ‘not naive enough to be a Jedi’? Tabitha has never felt less naive than during the last three years of her apprenticeship. Not with everything she’s seen and experienced. 

Naivety is disregarding those horrors, looking away in blissful ignorance and blind hope for the best. Which Jedi nowadays has that privilege? Which Jedi has ever had that privilege? 

Krell must have noticed her growing confusion – or perhaps he just wants to keep talking, wants to boast about his superior knowledge and his ‘clever’ scheme to someone. 

Who knows; in the end, it plays into her cards in multiple ways. Because he keeps talking. 

“A new power is rising, I’ve foreseen it,” the Besalisk reveals, voice dipping low, taking on a dangerous note that has the human opposite paying close attention to his words, sensing no lie in them. “The Jedi are going to lose this war, and the Republic will be ripped apart from the inside.” 

“So what? All of this, just to survive some probable future you’ve seen?” Tabitha interrupts the ranting man in front of her, mentally recounting every time she’s heard Yoda say how the future is always in flux to keep herself from worrying about his words right now. The next few years carry no importance right now, just the next few minutes. “Why couldn’t you just run away, hide somewhere safe? Why murder these people?!” 

Speaking of, just then the first clone troopers burst through the trees and bushes around them, with Rex taking point as they all begin to position themselves in a circle around the two Jedi, surrounding them while Krell continues, apparently having resigned himself to the fact that any fight breaking out now will be significantly harder to escape unscathed.

“You’re more naive than you think,” the imposing man jeers, gripping his lightsaber just a bit tighter when he casts a quick glance over the blasters aimed at his body. Meanwhile, the black-haired girl wrenches her mental shields higher instinctively, shielding her thoughts just a tad more securely. 

“People like us, padawan ,” Krell motions between himself and Tabitha with his free hand, “we don’t get to run and hide. When the galaxy is at war, we need to choose someone to fight for. We don't have the privilege of neutrality. But you’ll realize that soon enough.”   

A shiver trickles down Tabby’s spine at that last part; however, she brushes it off promptly, unwilling to read into his words more than she has to. 

The troops are ready now; she just needs to end this conversation… maybe with his surrender. 

“So you chose the Separatists to fight for?”

Krell shakes his head with a smirk, “I chose myself – and soon, my new master.”

“Dooku,” Tabitha scoffs all but immediately, easily connecting the dots between the two psychopathic Jedi traitors, “You’re working for him?”

“Not yet, but when I get out of her, I will. After I’ve succeeded in driving the Republic from Umbara, the Count will reward my actions and make me his new apprentice,” and he sounds so sure of it too, so kriffing serious about this endeavor, that Tabitha knows she cannot let that happen; it’ll only prolong this war, make it so much worse for so many people. 

“And then I will rule in the New Order that will arise from the Republic’s ashes.”

“I – We won’t let happen,” Tabby asserts the moment Krell’s voice tapers down, her words underlined by the clacking and whining of rifles and pistols being rearranged and readied. She herself holds her lightsabers just a tad higher, a threat and a warning. 

“Surrender now, Krell.”

The man in question only scoffs, features twisting into a disdainful scowl, “You never learn, Padawan. Arrest me, try me as a traitor to your precious Republic, and I will be free. The Umbarans will retake the base before you can even think of shipping me to Coruscant.”

Momentarily, a violent spark lights up Krell’s ugly yellowish eyes, making them appear bright, almost luminescent. 

Tabitha lifts the index and middle finger of her left hand, a subtle signal Rex – at least – can catch. 

‘Be ready.’ A shift goes through the circle; Rex relayed the message through the clones’ bucket comms.  

“And when they do,” the Besalisk bares his teeth at her, “I will end you, and whatever friends you still have left.” 

“No, you won’t,” the girl snarls right back, mind momentarily flashing to a mutilated chest and glazed eyes.

Krell chuckles, “Naive and foolish.”

Tabitha yanks her fingers down.

‘Shoot!’

Instantaneously, a hail of blazing blaster bolts (stun and lethal) erupts from the circle around them, raining down on their lightsaber-wielding opponent with non-lethal accuracy from dozens upon dozens of barrels. 

Anyone else might have been overwhelmed by the sheer amount, unable to keep track of it all in time to defend themselves. But with more open space than he had in the command center of the tower, Krell knows how to utilize it – how to duck and weave and jump around shots he has no time to deflect; how to force people back in search of cover to give himself just a bit more ground and a bit more time, even a little bit of reprieve.

On the other hand, Tabitha knows how to prevent him from building up too much of an advantage because of it – knows to dash forward when the blaster fire dies down a little too much, engage him in their own little battle – a back-and-forth just a tad too reminiscent of the one they had in the tower – that deprives him of his break; knows when to give her men an opening by ducking back out (a dance perfected by years of forced practice on the battlefield). 

It’s glancing blows, deflected shots, desperate Force maneuvers, and minor injuries for multiple minutes – on both sides. Neither seems to be quite able to gain the upper hand with the advantage they have, locked in a stalemate that will grow tiring before long. Already, the perpetual swooping in is wearing down on her, draining the adrenaline in her veins of its valued energy no matter how many seconds of rest she can sneak away in between each. 

However, Krell seems to be worse off – thankfully . Assaulted by a relentless barrage of blaster fire and melee attacks, his movements are becoming more sluggish and slow by just a fraction, barely managing to dodge bolts he seamlessly danced out of the way of just minutes ago. 

If they’re lucky, he’ll tire out long before any of them, and then all of this will be over.

That’s the thought Tabitha keeps in her head as she bolts forward yet again, keeping Krell engaged when he forces most of the men to take cover from stray blaster bolts (someone got hit in the shoulder by one, another in the thigh, one just missed a headshot by a hairs-width; but no one’s died so far. No one else , at least. Tabby clings to that fact like a lifeline).

‘It’s almost over,’ she repeats in her head again and again as she aims a double-bladed stab at the man’s stomach region, only to be deflected, the tips of her sabers led away from his body by one of his to hit the air beside him instead. 

Unfazed, the padawan allows the momentum she carried with that move to persist, quickly collapsing to the points of her knees so that the force of the deflection lets her twist around in a 360-turn, both sabers coming down on Krell’s left in two different places (chest and thigh). The respective impact of each is slightly delayed, but both attacks end up the same: blocked by his green duo-blades, her blue one tangled with the bottom whilst her emerald one sizzled menacingly against his top. 

Forcefully, Krell shoves both of the heated blades away, diving in with his own attack – but Tabitha was already on one foot the moment she turned fully and uses the leverage that gives her to propel herself backward into a sideways roll, over her shoulder and out of range of Krell’s swing.    

Springing back to her feet the moment she’s upright, the teenager just so manages to reignite her lightsabers to parry the sudden blow aimed at her neck from her opponent, leaning the majority of her body weight onto the green blade striving to decapitate her in an effort to push it into the dirt below. 

As the tip grazes the topmost layer, however, Krell twirls the hilt in two of his large hands around once, ripping away the blade under hers and bringing the other down on her extended arms. 

Having noticed the change in strength pressing back against her blades a second beforehand, Tabitha hops back a couple of meters with the help of the Force, just in time to avoid getting her forearms amputated.  

With some distance between their commander and their former general, some clones decide to get some potshots in, hoping to either hit the larger target or distract him long enough for Tabitha to do so. 

However, at this juncture in time, Krell appears to have grown tired of their constant game of switcheroo, instead deciding to take matters into his own hands now. 

Rather than waiting for Tabitha to jump in and engage him again, the Besalisk merely jumps out of harm’s way before charging the smaller teen instantly, rapidly closing the space between them to encourage the troops around them to halt their assault – lest they want to injure her with friendly fire. 

Now it’s Tabitha’s turn on the defense, blocking, parrying, and deflecting blow after blow, swing after swing, with either her lightsabers or a small Force push/pull, eternally grateful for her master’s training in Soresu rather than just Ataru. Two years ago, this severe storm of attacks might have worn her down after just a few minutes, but now, with practice and training? 

Let’s just say, this way, he’ll definitely run out of energy before any of them.

And Krell seems to understand that, too…

Because he backs off after Tabby thwarts a downward slash meant to split her head in half with crossed blades, pushing him off and sliding to the side, expecting a prompt follow-up… that just doesn’t come. 

Instead, the former general withdraws almost immediately, not stepping back but reeling in his offensive by folding his arms close to his upper body, cradling the lightsaber protectively in front of him, and shifting his weight onto the heels of his feet – seemingly anticipating an attack from her now? 

The sudden shift in his demeanor brings a timid frown to Tabitha’s face, causing her to purse her lips and clutch her lightsabers just a little tighter, hesitant and just a tad bit skeptical. 

Krell isn’t one to give ground voluntarily, someone who backs off when there is even the slightest possibility of winning – unless he faces direct defeat. So her theory that exhaustion and fatigue are finally getting to Krell might be more on point than she thought, meaning Krell just might be doing this to give himself some time to think, to take a breather – to judge what to do next. 

And if that’s the case, then Tabitha cannot allow him that chance, not if it means she can finally end this – finally make him pay for what he’s done, for what he’s taken .  

So, the padawan lurches forward for what she prays is the last time, aiming a hit with both sabers at the top end of his instead of any part of his body in hopes of knocking away it away and leaving him open.

At least, that’s what it looks like in her dream scenario…

In reality, she accomplishes the exact opposite. 

A split-second before collision, the thick, concentrated beam of green light Tabby was aiming for vanishes into thin air, retracted into the metal hilt in her enemy’s hands, and the girl’s swing… connects with absolutely nothing. 

Instead, her blades sail right past his smug-looking face, and with the force she put behind that one swing, coupled with the lack of resistance she had accounted for when making this move in the first place… Tabitha is wholly thrown off-balance.

Before she can even fully acknowledge what is happening, the wide-eyed teenager staggers to the side, tripping over her own two feet with her upper body leaning forward thanks to the momentum all but launching her past her adversary – leaving her wide open. 

The kick to the stomach that follows shouldn’t come as much of a surprise as it does, though perhaps the pain has more to do with the shock surging through her limbs than the actual act of getting kicked (honestly, for a hot second there Tabby thought she’d be impaled, stabbed, cut open by a reactivated blade; a fitting end, considering everything that happened today). 

Regardless, the kick punches the oxygen from her lungs, whilst the subsequent fall to the ground leaves her coughing face-down into the dirt – automatically-deactivated lightsabers still clutched in tense hands – and blinking tears from her eyes. If that didn’t fracture some of her ribs, it sure as hell bruised the kriff out of them, leaving Tabitha wheezing through the sting once the ragged hacking ceased. 

(Internally, Tabitha is screaming at herself for making such a stupid, avoidable mistake, for striking too hard and fast instead of her usual measured swings… for being too blinded by victory and justice to see the obvious trap Krell had set for her. Internally, Tabby hardly acknowledges the pain above the sound of her own frustration.)  

Over the noise of her rasping breaths, roughly five seconds – only five whole seconds – after she first went down, Tabitha’s ears can just so make out someone yelling her name… or perhaps just her rank. 

Either way, the urgency behind it – the small drop of fear buried deep inside – Tabby can sense even if she can’t accurately discern what is being said, prompting her to push her body past the physical pain in her ribcage. 

With tears still prickling behind her eyes, the teenager flips herself over using her left fist closed around the hilt of her lightsaber, hissing at the flare of pain it reignites… 

Only to immediately shove herself in the opposite direction with as much power as possible when a tingle runs down the back of her neck and her hazy eyes burn with the glaring green light of Krell’s lightsaber soaring toward her chest in a downward arch. 

Rolling one, two, three times away from Krell and mortal injury waiting for her at the end of his blade, Tabitha bites down on the yelp that wants to tear itself past her lips at the heightened throbbing in her ribs. In vain, as it turns out because when heated air rushes past her back and the thrumming of condensed energy reaches her ears, the yelp bursts out of her lungs abruptly anyway, bringing with it another stab in her chest – though this one seems to run deeper, shooting right up her spine and into her skull where it explodes into a pulsing headache within seconds.  

The seconds it takes her to scramble from her prone position on the floor, disregarding her raspy breaths and aching chest, and curls herself into a squatting stance instead, facing the spot she once lay. 

Where the entire length of one end of Krell’s blade is now embedded in grime and dust – and sparking steel? 

Two pieces of rounded, bluish-silver steel with small maroon details carved into them, curved familiarly but each ending in a jagged, molten ring of metal and electronics… and a swiftly graying crys-crystal? 

‘Oh no,’ the padawan gasps silently, widening eyes flitting down to her hands, the right one propped against the floor in a closed fist around her lightsaber whilst the other one… is simply pressed flat down into the dirt, no lightsaber in sight. 

Instead, it lays broken under Krell’s green blade, the once bright blue color of the crystal slowly bleeding out of both halves of it, leaving it dull and gray – utterly lifeless.

The headache makes sense now; a Jedi’s kyber crystal is a huge part of their life, an everlasting, sentient companion to go through life with – from adolescence to adulthood, and eventually to death. To have it be destroyed like that, ripped away, and… killed , can hurt in many different ways, on many different levels. Obi-Wan doesn’t uselessly caution her and Anakin that their weapons are their lives because in a way they are and-

‘Oh, kriff,’ her train of thought is suddenly derailed by another realization. ‘Obi-Wan is going to kill me.’  

‘If Krell doesn’t do it first,’ she muses mirthlessly when the aforementioned man yanks his blade off the ground, intent clear in his narrowed eyes as he stares down at her. 

Tabitha is down one blade, has bruised ribs at least, is still a little winded… this is turning out great; really, really great. 

But she’s not out yet, none of them are; so, if she can just get away from Krell for a bit, mentally regroup and recuperate, that would be fantastic. 

Right as that thought leaves her head, the whine of a blaster’s discharge pierces the air from behind her, followed by a cacophony of more as bolt after bolt surges overhead, all headed towards one particular target – Krell, who is quickly forced back by the incoming fusillade.

Having instinctively covered her head with her free hand, Tabitha chances a peek over her shoulder to see Rex, Tup, Kix, as well ten more soldiers releasing what must be a rancor’s weight in bullets, forcing Krell to backpedal into the direction of the rest of their troops. 

Taking the chance presented to her, Tabby starts to clamber towards the group, staying low and keeping one eye trained on her enemy while she does so until she’s within two meters of them. At which point, Kix ducks forward to get to her, wrapping one hand around her right bicep before tugging her along, behind the line Rex and the others had formed. 

Tabitha lets him, waiting until the two of them are safely out of the line of fire before finally righting herself, standing up to her full height with a pained wince and her left hand pressed against her lower ribcage. 

First her back, now this… she can never not get hurt, can she?  

“Commander, are you alright?” 

Of course, Kix noticed; he’s a medic for Force's sake. He was trained specifically to pick apart facial expressions for any signs of pain. 

They don’t really have the time to deal with her injury right now, though, so Tabitha removes her hand from her chest, waving Kix off when he tries to replace it with his.

“I’m fine, a little bruised but fine,” she says, voice still sounding a little winded but otherwise strong. Hopefully strong enough to convince the medic before to let the issue go for now. 

Which he does, after a few seconds of scrutinizing his superior officer with a critical eye. 

“I want to see you in the medbay once this is done,” the clone settles on begrudgingly, to which Tabitha only nods in response, muttering a quiet “We have to end this first.”

“Totally agree, Commander, but how?” Another voice suddenly pipes up from to her right, prompting Tabby’s head to whirl around to see that most of the group from before has dispersed, leaving to help their brothers contain Krell. Only Rex and Tup stayed behind, not once taking their eyes off the scene before them: 

Krell encircled by a mass of soldiers, blue blaster bolts and stun rings flying in every which direction while he darts and hops from one side to the other with renewed vigor and energy (adrenaline seems to be doing him as much favors as her). However, he seems to be keeping to one side more than the other, Tabitha notices as she steps in between the two other clones, gritting her teeth against the twinge of pain every step brings; the side where the density of people is the thinnest.

Where he can break through the quickest if he gets the chance.

“He doesn’t look like he’ll just surrender now.”

And Tabitha doesn’t need to look at Tup, the one whose been talking, to know he’s right; that there is no way they are going to arrest Krell without anyone else dying, no way to get out of this victorious while the former Jedi is still alive – even if he’s behind bars by the end of this. 

“Arrest me, try me as a traitor to your precious Republic, and I will be free.”        

So maybe Krell was right; maybe… arresting him isn’t the right choice.

"You’re going to stop him. You’re going to save people… You’re good at that.”  

Slowly the padawan’s left hand travels behind her back, settling on the engraved hilt of the knife Cody had gifted her long ago – the one she placed there instead of her boot after she gave the other hunting knife to Eryk back during the whole Trandoshan-Ahsoka escapade. 

Maybe killing him is the only way to stop him for good, to save these men and her friends like she couldn’t Waxer and the others she sent away.

“Commander?” 

This time Rex is the one who speaks, presumably having seen Tabitha’s movement toward her back holster and having sensed her inner contemplation. 

The girl only shakes her head in response, a sigh flitting out of her achy lungs and through grinding teeth, “You’re right, he won’t give up now,”

With one swift flick of her wrist, the small, silvery blade is unholstered and wrapped securely in her hand in a tense reverse grip. 

“So maybe we just won’t give him the chance to.” 

That has three necks snap three heads toward her faster than lightspeed can move a Venator, incredulous and questioning – and maybe a little concerned – expressions hidden under blue-white helmets. 

When Kix speaks, it’s clear that he does so with cautious uncertainty but also intrigue, voice strained and a little hushed, “Do you have a plan, Commander?”

A plan? Tabitha almost wants to snort at the absurdity of that; she hasn’t had a plan since the moment she ran away from Waxer’s dead body. Now is no different. 

All she has is a hair-brained idea that is as likely to kill her as it is Krell at best… and purely suicidal at worst, but she’s not about to tell them that. 

Hence why she simply shrugs, muttering a quiet “Kind of,” while her left index finger already clicks her comm on. 

For this hair-brained idea to have a chance at working though, she needs Krell distracted – focused on something else. 

Lifting her right wrist to her lips yet again, the padawan doesn’t waste a second before speaking. 

“Commander Flux to everyone. Permission to shoot to kill granted,” she sucks in a deep breath, ignoring the thundering of her heartbeat against her bruised ribs and the churning of her stomach.

 “I repeat, permission to shoot to kill granted.” 

The change is instant. 

If anyone is doubting her decision or questioning her frame of mind, they don’t show it (at least, not outright).

Where shots were aimed at shoulders, legs, and arms before – non-vital and non-fatal areas –, now each and every single one is going for Krell’s head or heart with not a single stun bolt in sight all of sudden.

Where the troops were out for his blood before, they’re now out for his life.

And Krell takes notice of this, too, shifting his defense to account for the abrupt shift of attitude from his opponents, becoming more and more focused on protecting his vital organs and moving in the direction of his potential escape route.

Just like she had hoped.

All she needs to accomplish now is to get close enough without him noticing, to the point where even if he turns around it won’t save him. 

Ten seconds and they can all wake up from this nightmare. 

Therefore, without waiting for a reaction from the three clones around her, Tabitha dashes forward, her ribs protesting the flashy movement but holding it together for now. 

Her only lightsaber stays deactivated, the knife concealed behind her vambraces.  

And she gets closer, and closer, and closer; passes the first line of soldiers from the circle, who are forced to slow their shooting when their commander enters their line of fire. 

She passes another few, enters the inner space of the circle they made – the empty space just before she collides with Krell for the thousandth time today. 

And only then, when she’s only a couple more meters away from Krell, does he finally note the more cautious blaster fire coming his way. Only then does he finally turn around to see her sprinting at him, eyes widening imperceptibly at the close proximity.

Only then does she ignite her emerald lightsaber, but keeps the metal blade hidden.  

As expected, Krell only takes the shining, larger saber as a threat, raising his own to bring down her and completely missing the movement of her left hand as she straightens it out, revealing the knife that will end his life.

In one split second, from one blink to the next for those watching with bated breath around them, Krell shoves down his lightsaber just as Tabitha slows her momentum, twists to the right so as to bodycheck her opponent, and parries the blow that would have decapitated her. 

All the while, she angles the knife toward the left side of his chest, tip pointed diagonally upward as she thrusts the blade into the flesh and muscle beside his sternum, in between his ribs…

And right into his heart just as her shoulder collides with his broad chest and their lightsabers clash centimeters in front of her face.

Not even a cry of pain makes it past his paling, sickly lips, nor a single breath; not even the shock of the situation registers in his brain before it completely shuts down within a matter of seconds, his heart having stuttered to a stop from one second to the next with no time for the pain of it to course through his veins.

(‘It’s more than he deserves. It should have been painful… like Waxer’s death.’)   

Pong Krell is dead before gravity takes control of his hefty body and rips it to the ground, letting him slip right off her knife with a nauseating quelching sound as the first streams of blood spurt from his chest, painting his robes bright crimson.

Deafening silence falls over the battlefield as his deactivated lightsaber crashes to the floor beside his body with a seemingly booming thump. 

Somehow, it feels wrong to cheer – for all of them, especially for the girl in their midst.

Pong Krell is dead and his blood is on Tabitha’s blade and all of this is finally over. She got justice, she fulfilled Waxer’s last request, she saved people – she won . 

But standing over his body crumpled in the dirt with both her weapons dangling uselessly at her side, his dead eyes gazing blankly at the dark sky above their heads, and her staring at the slowly coagulating blood trickling from the hole in his heart… all Tabitha can feel is loss. 

Harrowing, world-shattering loss that entirely disregards the void that swallowed up everything inside her other than physical pain and fierce determination. If anything, this feeling of loss negates it, opens the door to everything else her body had refused to let her feel since after Waxer’s heart stopped beating.

In comes the grief, and the hopelessness, and the anguish, and the fear; everything she had buried under the desire to bring Pong Krell to justice and the hope of making it all go away, of putting it in the ground with him. 

However, you cannot bury something with someone if it never belonged to them.

Krell didn’t create the pain in her heart or the tears she cries; he was a factor in it but not the cause. 

The cause was Waxer, and she’s not quite ready to bury him yet, maybe never will be. 

Thus all she buries with Krell is her determination not to break down.

As she blinks down at the puncture wound in his chest through her rapidly blurring vision, all Tabby is able to see is the crater in Waxer’s; all she can hear is his shallow breathing instead of her own growing faster and faster, hiccuping; all she can smell is his coppery blood on the metallic blade in her hands rather than Krell’s, causing her to flinch away from both of her weapons in disgust, allowing them to fall from her fingers; all she can taste is the salt of her tears cascading down her cheeks one more time as the illusion of being okay comes crashing down around her…  

All she can feel is a multitude of emotions flooding her senses as she collapses to her knees like a puppet with her strings cut, these tortuous sensations running amok in her heart and brain, swelling so rampantly they press against her organs, put pressure against her lungs-  

Tabitha screams .

And it’s nothing like when Ahsoka went missing. It’s not anger, or betrayal, or desperation. It’s not heated and sharp, ready to cut into whoever dares step in its way and mow them down mercilessly. 

No, this is shapeless; uncontrolled, uneven, unfocused wails bursting from her lungs in ugly sobs and heaving cries, speaking of pure and unfiltered pain and nothing more. 

She screams.

And she keeps screaming, wailing, sobbing even as strong arms pull her sideways into someone’s armored chest and Rex's soft voice whispers indiscernible words into her stuffed ears.

She screams until her throat is sore, and even then she doesn’t stop.

She screams until no sound comes past her shredded vocal cords,

Then she just cries silently into Rex’s chest.

For the 501st.

For the 212th

For Hardcase.

For Jesse and Fives.

For Rex. 

For Boil.

For Waxer.

…And even a little bit for herself and the kid she used to be.

___________________

*A pause in the recording, fast-forward several hours*

“Thank you for your patience, Tabitha. Like I told you before, myself and a few of my colleagues have convened over the events on Umbara, the evidence found, and your statements during our hearing, and have come to a unanimous decision:”

“ *sharp intake of breath, tapping sounds of nervous fidgeting* ”

“All charges against you are being dropped, effective immediately.”

“ *harsh exhale*”

“To be honest with you, Tabitha, it was hardly even a choice. Your actions on Umbara saved many lives – present and future – and ensured the Republic’s safety in more than just that one system and on that one planet. You did what had to be done to achieve the best outcome in a bleak and hopeless situation; something that does not deserve to be punished. Therefore your case will not be referred to a general court-martial and there will be no administrative actions taken against you.”

“So I can report back to duty?”

“Instantly, yes, in the same position with the same rank… and the same people. A warning though: I would expect heavy scrutiny over the next few weeks, especially from some military officials and the media. They always have a field day with a story like this and will use it against you if they please. So be careful.”

“I will. Thank you.”

“No, it’s us who should thank you. You did your duty for the Republic and its people; you protected us and might have saved us from this grueling war stretching on even longer.”

*door opens in the background*

“This good gentleman here will bring you to your room to gather your belongings and escort you out of the building. I’ve already notified your master; he should be there any moment now. So, unless you have any further questions, you are free to go.”

*Scraping of a chair against the floor, shuffling of receding footsteps*

“Oh, and Tabitha?”

*Shuffling stops*

“I know it might not mean much but I am truly sorry for your loss.”

*pregnant pause before the shuffling continues*

“...Me too.”

Chapter Text

Sighing through the grimy filter of his helmet, Rex has to suppress the urge to scrub a hand over his face, unless he wants to smear more dirt across his helmet instead. Though he can imagine what the gesture would feel like nevertheless, as fabric scrapes against cracked skin and over aching muscles, fingers press into the bruises under his eyes and run over the growing stubble on his cheeks… 

Stars, that forsaken stubble of a five o’clock shadow. How he’d love to finally rid himself of it, shave the offending hairs off after days of being unable to, being ridden into the ground by a maniacal lunatic to the point where every orderly routine fell away in favor of too few hours of restless sleep. 

You’d think getting rid of the said maniac once and for all would allow for some time to clean himself of the stink that man trailed along like some kind of pet companion, that sheds its fur on everyone in his proximity. You’d think Rex could have less than ten minutes to feel the sag of smooth steel in his palm and run the blade across his cheeks, give his fatigued muscles a much-needed wake-up call by cleaning the sheen of dirt and dust off his skin. 

You’d think and yet… 

Yet, Pong Krell’s death did not remove his presence from their bodies or their minds, and most definitely from their base. 

If anything, it opened the door for more of his chaos, let them see how deep his corruption and betrayal truly went. 

It replaced the man’s time-consuming orders with a scramble to assess, to fix, to scurry back to their feet – to resume the duty he had lorded over their heads like an execution blade. 

Hardly twenty-four standard hours have passed since Krell’s blood soaked the tree roots under Umbara’s soil, one puncture wound in his heart from a simple, metallic hunting blade. Hardly twenty-four hours have passed since their battalion stumbled and staggered back into the conquered airbase, down one general (and several squads) but up a commander (an unresponsive, almost apathetic commander, shuffled along in the arms of a captain, under the watchful guise of a medic and a dozen wide-eyed, uncertain stares; a teenager without her brother) . 

Hardly twenty-two since the first cracks of Krell’s sabotage have been discovered in the base’s long-range communication device and subsequently repaired. Not even twenty-two since General Kenobi’s accented voice finally filtered through the static, carrying updates that made way for a collective sigh of relief around the base: 

The capital was taken, the Separatists and Umbarans were driven back with little resistance still ongoing in some sectors. 

Umbara was won. Their weapons were not needed anymore. They could rest until stragglers have been dealt with by the other battalions and more Venators arrived, carrying transports and fresh men that would replace the battle-weary soldiers on the ground. 

“Make preparations for rendezvous at your position and departure in two standard days,” he said. 

“Sleep, grief, mourn,” his heavy, wilting, sad tone had conveyed. “Because they won’t let you once you’re back up there.”   

(Not twenty-two hours since Rex could only answer the Jedi Master’s query – his heavy-hearted, concerned, and almost frightened query for his padawan’s well-being with unsure phrases, trembling promises, and stolen glances at the empty spot beside him. The spot she had stood in, silent and bare-faced, right up until the com sprang to life with her master’s voice. 

They all pretended not to notice the general’s demeanor slip for a split second when his clear question was met with only uncertain assurances that his padawan was physically okay; how his shoulders slumped from their straight and narrow stature, how his eyes grew heavy and lidden with the beginning fledglings of heartbroken understanding blooming in the pixels of his pupils, how he had to force himself back into the role of professional general even with the ambiguous condition of the young girl in his care lurking threateningly in the emptiness at Rex’s side.

Not twenty-two hours since Rex’s insides twisted, curling tightly around the words he left unsaid or simply sugar-coated… for his sake more than Kenobi’s.)

Hardly twenty-one hours have passed since every man (and girl) collectively decided to gather the bodies of those slain and lost – the friends that they refused to let rot on the same ground their murderer’s blood drenched – for a huge funeral pyre at the end of those two days, an honor and privilege not many soldiers are awarded in this war. Twenty-one hours since the first search-and-gather party left the compound and returned not thirty minutes later with mutilated corpses loaded onto stretchers. 

Hardly twenty since Rex first ordered every scrap of proof of Krell’s sabotage and betrayal – as well as his rotting body – found, documented, and then archived, knowing military and government would start an official investigation the moment they got wind of the situation (and hoping all of it would aid the probable court-martial procedure that was awaiting the 212th's commander and lead to her going unpunished). 

Not even eighteen hours since one of their search-and-gather parties shambled into base with Waxer’s cool, stiff body and Rex watched them settle him gently next to the others, helmet set beside his pale head, just so making out a raven mop of hair vanishing into the crowd that had gathered, dull emerald eyes shining in the artificial lighting of their surroundings as the petite figure ran. 

Eighteen hours since he’d last seen Tabitha. 

Eighteen hours since he last looked at himself in a reflective window and took a thirty-minute nap in the barracks, spent down to the bones. 

Eighteen hours since he last rested and with the way things are going still, it will be a few more until he could again. There are responsibilities to be handled, clean-up to be done, reports to write, casualties to count… 

But right now, there are people he needs to check up on, a med bay to visit – and hopefully a padawan to find.

So, swallowing the yawn that threatened to follow and straightening his back, Rex keys open the door to said med bay, silently grateful for his helmet filtering out the acidic smell of antiseptic he knows is lingering in the air of the room when the metal swooshes open and reveals the stark white interior. 

Even through his visor, the blinding, cold lighting pierces his prickly eyes, leaving him blinking against its harshness as he steps over the threshold, head immediately swiveling around to take in the situation as soon as his eyes stopped burning. 

Across tables lie a variety of medical equipment and medicine the captain has no thought of identifying beyond vague terms; syringes, sprays, painkillers, sedatives, gauze, plasters, bandages, instruments – none of which his gaze lingers on for more than a second. None of it is a new sight – the medics clearly having as much spare time to clean the room as Rex has to clean himself – since all of it had been there before in perhaps slightly less mass. 

No, the mess isn’t what he lets himself focus on; it won’t be theirs to clean up soon enough. It’s the cots that he allows himself to concentrate on, six of them lined up three by three on either side of the stretched-looking, rectangular room, surrounded by scanners, monitors, and littered tables that contrasted starkly with the soft mattresses and bedding the Umbarans had equipped them with (who knew their designers proved to possess more bedside manners and considerate thinking than those of Republic bases and ships these days). 

Only five of them are occupied by the few lucky ones that managed to limp away from Krell’s anger rather than end up on the pyre themselves; two of them are sleeping off concussions under Kix’s watchful gaze in the cots to his right, bacta bandages wrapped around their skulls as they slumbered off the sedatives they’ve been given. 

The first two cots to Rex’s left hold Umi and Gambit, senior soldiers of the 212th he had never gotten to know all that well, though he can take a guess that the two of them are much like twins with their identical buzzed haircuts showing off the same tattoo of claw marks running from the top of the head to the base – an ironic choice given the fact that both of them are in here because of several, claw-like slashes gashes sizzled into the flesh of their limbs. Despite their wounds though, the pair are talking animatedly when Rex lets his eyes flit over them, having shortly acknowledged his arrival with respectful nods in lieu of standing at attention before continuing their conversation, 

The captain let them, assured of their well-being by the warm tones in their voices, and quickly moves on to the last patient in the room; one of his own shinies, still with only a number and not yet a nickname, though maybe almost losing a leg will spawn some ideas in his and his brothers’ heads. Kix says the kid was lucky, a few centimeters deeper and the lightsaber would have cut muscle and tendons bacta wouldn’t have been able to fix so quickly. 

In fact, the medic is telling him that right now, taking advantage of his return to consciousness and lucidity to inform him of his wound and treatment as he stands at his bedside, scowling down at the pad in his hand in a way that makes the shiny squirm just a little bit in his place, trying not to be intimidated by Kix’s sour mood.

And while Rex cannot fault his brother for being in a bad mood thanks to a blend of sleep deprivation, grief, anger, betrayal, and whatever else is swirling inside his brain (he himself is feeling the strain of staying professional right now), he is also aware that if he doesn’t step in right now he might have a scared shiny on his hand and even more frustrated medic – either of which he does not have time for right about now. 

Therefore, during the next pause in Kix’s medical tirade, he walks right down the room towards the opposite wall where all the cabinets and shelves are nestled, catching the medic’s eyes as he goes and motioning for him to follow with a curt jerk of his helmeted head. 

An instruction Kix promptly follows, simply telling his patient to get some more rest and yell for him if he needs anything before stepping away to follow Rex (both of them note the relief that passes through the kid’s drooping eyes as he does but neither comment on it, content in letting him succumb to the residual painkillers in his system). 

Tugging off his helmet before coming to a complete halt, the clone captain all but tosses it onto the nearest table, wincing slightly at the rattle of equipment it produces as he pivots on his heels, leaning his back against the shelf he stopped in front of while he waits for Kix to join him. 

Without his helmet, the stinging scent he assumed the room to reek of fills his nostrils, burning the sides of his nose and the back of his throat so suddenly, Rex has to choke down the itch to cough out the airborne acid – opting instead to simply scratch the underside of his jaw with blunt, covered nails in hopes that maybe this will soothe the itch a little. 

He kriffing hates med bays. Any kind of hospital, really. With their sterile walls and suffocating air, and uncomfortable spaces. And yet he finds himself visiting them almost every single week of his life, less because of his own injuries and more because of others’, none of which improve his mood regarding these places – the resemblance to Kamino does not help much either.

Ten minutes and he can be out of here; one simple check of the med bay’s condition as well as Kix’s, and he can breathe real, oxygenated, fresh air again instead of this acrid… whatever. Maybe even find some time to scrub the smell off his armor and skin before continuing his rounds (unlikely but a man can dream). 

“Well, you look like something straight out of Ventress’ closet, Captain,” Kix pipes up from where he stands next to the table holding Rex’s helmet and his datapad now, a faint smirk flashing across his lips as his appraising eyes flick over Rex’s face, most likely taking in the shadows and stubble he really should have gotten rid of before coming here. Kix might take his raggedy appearance as reason enough to keep him here for a check-up – the last thing he wants or needs right now.  

The medic crosses his arms over his chest, shifting his weight onto his heels, “With all due respect, of course.”

Rex merely rolls his eyes at the snarky jab, feeling his own lips twitch upward a tad as he responds, “Because you look like a rainbow vomited all over you, Kix.” 

He doesn’t. If anything, the medic looks just as bad as him, with the same bruises circling his eyes and deep lines marring his face, speaking verses of fatigue and low energy that Rex knows by heart himself.                                  

“Fair enough,” his brother shrugs, not even bothering to argue. “But I’m guessing you didn’t come here for me to tell you to go the kriff to sleep , so what do you need, Rex?”

The captain acknowledges the steel lacing his medic’s voice, stern and commanding in a way only field medics manage to sound, and promptly ignores it. 

“Just checking in, getting a sense of where we’re at here. The usual.” Rex tries for casual, matching Kix’s arms-crossed posture while casting another cursory glance across the five figures respectfully ignoring their conversation (or snoozing right through it in the case of three occupants). But his sight strays to the empty spaces of the room – though he tries to not make it too obvious that he’s looking for more than a brief – and his voice remains just a tad too tight (too worried) to come across as casual, and Kix? 

He picks it up immediately, turns his behavior over in his mind with a tilt of his head, and shelves the knowledge for now as he indulges Rex, both out of obligation and the need for time to think what else the other clone could be searching for in here other than injured people and a status update.

“Well, we’ve been able to discharge those with minor blaster grazes and burns back to the barracks yesterday, and as for these five,” he says, jerking his head in his patients’ direction, “the kid will have to stay until the switch, the other four I intent to kick out of here by the end of the day. They should be good. Supply-wise, we’re also good and just about ready to get off this planet.”

Absentmindedly humming his approval, Rex’s amber eyes stay trained on their surroundings, flitting around as if the actual target of his search would simply materialize out of thin air, walking in between beds with a bright grin on her face as she gossiped with Umi and Gambit while tending to the shiny with gentle, healing hands. Like he knows she tends to after missions, using her basic Force healing knowledge to the advantage of all. 

Well, tended to do… before. Somehow, he doubts her face would hold anything but a dead, blank look on her face with the occasional indulging grimace of a reassuring smile when someone inevitably asked her about her well-being or suggested she rest. 

He doesn’t know why he thought Tabitha would be here when an hour of duty-related, personal checks in all areas of the base have given him no sense of where she’s at. 

To be frank, coming here in the first place was more out of desperation than the actual belief she could be here; everyone knows Kix is more likely to slip a sedative in your drink than let you go overworking yourself – naturally, only if he deems it necessary –, so it only made sense that she’d avoid this place right now. 

‘But where else could she be?’

“Anything else you’re looking for?” Kix suddenly speaks up, ripping Rex from his train of thoughts with a slight flinch as he pivots his head around to face him again. 

The medic’s eyes have shifted from the sharp professionalism they possessed during his brief run-through of things to something softer, more welcoming and expectant – like he wants to be bothered with whatever is on Rex’s mind. In a sense, that’s probably his job description; being ready to be bothered by others' predicaments, though usually physical. 

And Rex realizes there is no real reason he should not ask Kix about Tabitha; he’s not as busy as the captain thought he’d be when he stepped in here, intending to look and be on his way without taking up too much time. 

The worst that can happen now is him also having no clue – which is a likely outcome, he begrudgingly admits to himself.

Still, Rex breathes out the rest of his intentions of keeping quiet, finally giving into the urge to scrub a hand up and down his face as he repeats a sentence that’s starting to make him want to rip his own vocal cords out:

“I was hoping Tabitha would be here.”

“Because you thought she was helping or because you thought I snuck a sedative into her drink?” 

The snort that bursts from his nostrils is completely involuntary, though not unwarranted given his earlier thought process, but Rex quickly shakes his head to get rid of those thoughts again.

“Honestly, either,” the captain sighs, leaning further back into the shelf as he tries to wrack his brain for further ideas of where their commander could be hiding.

Kix scoffs, an amused little sound that also betrays a layer of frustration that must be burrowing under his skin, growing more visible in the scowl that morphs his features as he casts his eyes around the room and away from Rex now. 

“I would have tried the latter but apparently our dear commander has just up and vanished since I last dragged her in here for her ribs.”

Which was a few hours ago, Rex knows; the word of a medic headhunting a stubborn Jedi always spreads like wildfire in battalions, mostly out of amusement but just as often out of concern.

Which also means, the trail has now completely gone cold and Rex can kiss a shave and a good nap goodbye for now. Disappointing but expected.

“Yeah, that’s what everyone’s been saying,” the blond huffs, not as exasperated or annoyed as one might expect. At most, he’s just worried.

Who wouldn’t be when the last thing you remember coming from her mouth was utterly inconsolable, agonizing screaming – wailing – that ripped your eardrums apart alongside your heart? When you can still feel her shaking weight in your arms as she sobbed silently even though she hasn’t stepped a foot in your direction ever since she left them in the first place? 

When you know exactly what she’s doing because you’ve been doing the exact same thing ever since Krell stepped foot on this planet and various times before – work until you can’t think; shut everything down until the wound stops feeling raw, until it scars over ugly and deformed.   

And Kix seems to share the sentiment, straightening up the moment his statement fully registers, eyebrows pinching in alarm as his arms drop tense at his sides. 

“No one’s seen here?” he questions, mind most likely already racing with worst-case scenarios that would put Rex’s own imagination to shame (medical knowledge is a hard burden to bear sometimes, he guesses). 

He swiftly scrambles to reassure him that it’s not that bad… yet , “No, no. Others saw her doing check-ins and some odd jobs until like an hour ago and the boys on guard duty haven’t reported her leaving.” 

That appears to ease Kix’s mind a little, arms slumping limp and shoulders being loosened consciously. 

“So she’s been everywhere…” 

“... but no one knows where exactly she is right now,” Rex finished with a solemn nod, pursing his lips. 

He never should have let her start this; he knew what was going on the second Tabitha walked into the tower with a straight back and dry eyes, taking on duty after duty with a relentlessness that could be admired if it wasn’t for the empty silence that came with it, so unlike the Tabitha from a few days ago. 

It reminded him of other times; times when the sudden stillness around her was so eerie and unusual, no one quite knew how to approach it, how to pierce it and lead her out into the loudness of the galaxy, fearing what would happen if they burst that strange, heart-shatteringly void bubble.    

Rhudaur, the Trandoshan Hunt, the first time actual blood coated her hands instead of droid oil… He could count the instances that bubble emerged on one hand (as far as he knew anyway) but each was more worrying than the last, harder to approach without risking whatever the risk was. 

No one knew because every time, it was she that seemingly jumped forth from that restraining, bloating balloon with renewed fervor all by herself, lancing through the shell until it was so shredded everyone could move on with few second thoughts and just be happy that she smiled again. 

Rex has no delusions she’ll bounce back like that this time – losing something isn’t quite as devastating as losing someone ; it might be found again, while they never will.

Neither has Kix for that matter, delusions that is, which is why he doesn’t ask the questions burning on his tongue (‘Did they tell you how she looked? How she was doing?) . He saw it himself and if he thinks Rex is looking bad after a few days of this bullshit (of watching brothers die at the hands of a maniac but keeping on) , then Tabitha is catching up quickly. 

Dark, dull eyes, glassy skin, eye bags taking shape; none of it promising signs for healthy grieving (though Kix guesses he shouldn’t judge there; it’s not like he allowed himself more than a second above required resting time before he went back to it. Perhaps healthy coping just doesn’t come as naturally to people when they have been handed unnatural circumstances at birth). 

One singular break would be a start though. Be that a physical break to permit rest, or an emotional breakdown to allow everything out that she’s been keeping in since Krell’s death. 

For that to happen, they need to find her first though.

“So where have you looked?” Kix asks after a minute of silence between the pair, undermined only by the soft murmuring of Umi and Gambit, both of whom have started to look rather antsy, shifting eyes and rapid hand movement. 

Rex puffs out a small breath before answering, pupils refocusing on the man before him, “Command, hangars, barracks, workshops, closets, guard posts. I even had someone scan the kriffing vents for life signatures.”  

“Have you looked at the pyre site, sir?”

Both of their heads swivel around to face the newcomer to the conversation, two nearly identical pairs of eyes landing on Gambit sitting up in his bed (to the chagrin of the medic in the room), looking back at them with a sheepish glint in his eyes that is mostly drowned out by the unadulterated concern swimming in them. 

(Kix realizes the twins must have been listening in, out of concern for their commander more than the need to gossip, and coming up with their own theories about her whereabouts – explains their sudden restlessness. Neither he nor Rex comment on their eavesdropping.)

“What?”

“The pyre,” Umi repeats instead of Gambit.

A frown etches itself onto Rex’s face, “She hasn’t been there once unless it was to drop of flammables to use. What makes you think she would be there now?”

“Because,” Gambit starts, meeting both of their stares and looking for all purposes like it should be obvious, “Waxer is there. And where he is, she is too, even now.”

Umi nods from the bed to Gambit’s right, cutting off whatever protest Rex might have voiced when he opens his mouth. 

“G’s right. She might have been pushing it off by working or something, I don’t know, but Tabby wouldn’t leave Waxer forever. She never could.”

A silent glance from Rex at Kix finds the medic nodding back at him, though the captain doesn’t actually look for his assent of the twins’ theory. He would have gone to check it out now either way.

Before the blond can push away from the shelf and move out of the room though, Kix promptly turns to the table Rex had discarded his helmet on, wrapping his around both that and a small hypo-spray (he doesn’t need to read the label to know it’s a sedative) before quickly handing both items to the captain with an imploring look. 

“Get her to sleep,” he all but orders, peeking down at the spray he presses into Rex’s right hand, “Willingly at best but if you have to…” 

Rex nods understandingly. 

A few hours of forced sleep and a loopy feeling would be better than the alternative. 

The alternative being a complete shutdown, emotional and/or physical. An ugly, draining experience for especially the affected person. They’ve all at least seen it happen once.

“And get some karking sleep yourself, or you’ll be at the end of that hypo, Captain!” Kix barks just as Rex is walking out of the door, making him breathe out a laugh alongside a sarcastic “Yessir.” before marching off, Gambit’s last words that he spoke as Rex walked past his bed echoing in his mind.

“Make sure she comes back to us, Captain.”

Chapter Text

How do you make sure someone comes back from the brink? 

How do you tug them away from that knife's edge without cutting away something important – something vital to their character? 

No amount of tenderness and gentle care could be cautious enough, Rex has seen it happen time and time again from all perspectives of the situation. Each time someone would lose something at that edge even if they returned to the people they loved at some point; something left behind to patch the cracks in their breaking point with reinforced steel that would permanently change them – on a minor scale or monumentally, one could never wager. 

And here Rex strides toward the other end of the base, turning the notion this way and that in his head and mulling over whether or not Tabitha would change so dramatically that Gambit's plea would go unanswered in all but its physical aspects, or if she would change in ways that went unnoticed by anyone but herself. 

In no way does Rex believe that just this once he'll be able to prevent the cycle of grief that takes and takes but gives nothing of what's been taken back; in no way does he believe that he can get all of her back from skirting her breaking point so closely. 

Yet, he's trying to think of ways to lose the least of her along with Waxer as he walks, eyes set on the mounds of wood, leaves, plants, and whatever other flammable materials they could find, arranged in a large, flat-topped platform in a huge open space at the edge of the base, ridden of supply crates and obstacles. 

Simply a large square, still a few more spaces have to be made on the pyre so that all the bodies the search parties could still find had a place on equal ground. 

Equal; that is what they agreed on. That no one was simply tossed on a huge bonfire like some sort of ritual sacrifice or a discarded toy that no one wants anymore. All would be on equal ground – a plateau where each of their fallen could be laid respectfully and not in an undignified heap, for their honor as much that of the living.

It's a tribute to the dead as much as it turns out to be some form of closure for the rest. A clean cut from a messy campaign that would do better as a bad memory than a nauseating reality. 

A clean cut and a chance to honor and respect the soldiers that perished to make up for the fact that Rex hadn't done it the moment they died, abandoned them in the face of orders he knew were utter bantha shit but followed out of his ingrained sense of duty. 

He'd failed them when they still lived, all he could do now (the least he owed them) is to give them the honor of a funeral and promise to their corpses that he would never follow questionable orders again – no matter from who. 

He gets the sense that Tabitha might have the exact same thoughts whilst he draws ever closer to his destination - a plot of land just past the neat piles that had already been arranged by volunteers but are still being worked on currently by a few of his men – all of which he acknowledged curtly as he moves beyond. 

To the small patch of land illuminated by the bluish, cold glow of the laser barriers surrounding the base, uncharacteristically void of everyone except the still, covered lumps of lifeless bodies lying on the ground in straight lines, the distinct shapes of their helmets beside each of them… 

And the lone figure kneeling in between the lines, near the left edge, head bowed and back curved over one of the many bodies as its shoulders tremble from something that cannot be the stagnant breeze weaving through the air. 

For a second, Rex falters, his measured steps wavering as he takes in the dark, tunic-clad silhouette of her back and the matted strands of raven hair obscuring the shape of her face. 

For a second, he feels out of his depth, his kama resting heavily on his hips as he stares at his commanding officer with a sort of apprehension he doesn't understand. 

He has comforted dozens of brothers through the deaths of loved ones, helped them deal in some way, and he knows that there should be no difference with Tabby – not after years of seeing it all together and bonding over it just like he would with his brothers. 

Yet somewhere in his brain, he's looking at an indomitable Jedi ultimately snapping and the cadet in him is puzzled – slightly horrified – even though the rest of him knows that there is nothing mystical surrounding the Jedi except the power they were born with. 

It's the cadet that makes him hesitate, question his suitability to console a Jedi over a profound loss but then the man – the brother – screams out in outrage, making him remember how her entire body had caved into him, sobbing her broken heart out. He remembered a teenager – a girl – and how she absentmindedly clung to any form of comfort from him while growing increasingly apathetic.

And suddenly, the soldier in him is shoved out of the way by the big brother – the one part of himself he had been suppressing every day since Krell arrived in favor of that soldier, and look where that got him. 

'Never again,' he promises himself, and whatever thoughts of suitability or anxiety he has, fly right out of his head with a determined shake. 

He had searched for her everywhere, and he'll be damned if he let ingrown doubts allow her to slip away again. 

He'd get her back – to himself, to Boil and Cody, to her master and Ahsoka and Anakin – no matter what changes about her afterward. They can always help her cope with that then. 

Finally, the foot that had halted in mid-air thuds against the ground firmly, determined to keep stride even as his footfalls grow softer and slower, knowing the sensitivity of the situation. 

He wanders closer; the cadet screws his mouth shut. 

He wanders further; the soldier gets the memo that duty has no place between vod. 

He's almost behind her; his head is as quiet as their surroundings, allowing him to hear the choked sniffles coming from Tabitha whilst the new proximity lets him see what her head is bowed to look at (except for the stark white sheet draped over body-shaped lump): 

An orange-striped helmet with tallies colored onto the side and the cartoonish face of a small Twi’lek girl painted on the front, its black visor spattered with droplets of water that multiply by the second. 

It takes no detective to figure out where the drops come from and his heart stings a little as he watches the tears run down the scratched surface of the visor. 

It almost looks like it's crying too…

Like he is crying with her. 

And maybe he is. Maybe somewhere in the Force, or wherever the Jedi thought the dead returned to, Waxer is shedding the same tears as his little sister, mourning the time that got ripped from them. 

Swallowing around the lump growing in his throat, Rex scuffs his feet lightly across the floor as he takes the last steps to Tabitha's left side, waiting for the girl's reaction to the noises of his approach but receiving none. 

Not a twitch, not a gasp, not a glance in his direction although he stands not a meter from her. Instead, all she seems to do is curl further around the helmet clasped tightly in her hands, resting on her thighs whilst she quietly weeps and whimpers over it. 

The captain sits nevertheless, lowering himself to the ground on her left close enough that, without his armor, he'd feel the warmth of her latching onto his skin, yet far enough away to not be smothering, disrupting – potentially triggering.

Tabitha doesn't move except for the shaking of her back, and Rex doesn't expect her to. 

As a fact, the moment he's seated, he simply breathes, not moving and not speaking – unsure whether words are helpful right now or not. The exhausted man merely stays quiet, allowing her cries to carry through the space between them, shatter her from the inside out whilst he holds the pieces they shake loose close to his heart for safekeeping – until she's ready to hold them herself or others can hold some for her. 

Rex keeps quiet, and in that wobbly silence he takes a moment – a few moments – to regard the body before him and try to recall his last memory of Waxer. One where he was smiling… Not frowning, not grimacing, not bleeding. 

Just Waxer and the way he is – was – when he could simply be. Chaotic and loud but more contained than his 'twin'; wry sarcasm and clever wit topped with a certain kind of ingenuity that often reminded Rex of Echo when he allowed himself to think about it; but also a calm and collected mind when needed with a heart bigger than the galactic core itself.

Waxer was a soldier that loved just as well as he fought; the balance incarnate that could pull people together just by standing at their side. 

Rex himself had felt that influence on him when the 212th and 501st marched back to base as one on their way to confront Krell. 

For once, Waxer vacated the spot to Tabitha's right to be at his instead – a fact that Tabby accepted with a satisfied grin on her lips and a proud glint in her eyes as she instead walked beside Tup. They hadn't talked, at least not really with Rex too weary and focused to be a great conversation partner. Yet Waxer had not left; he was just there, steadfast and balancing, always ready to help – and for that bit of time, Rex had felt slightly less like death itself. He felt a little more like himself, a bit steadier and stronger than he had in days, and he was grateful. Though he never actually mentioned that out loud to Waxer (he should have) . 

Waxer could build up anyone by being there.

Yet he also held the power to destroy them just as fast by not. 

Rex only hopes he can substitute for a fraction of his silent support and comfort by now sitting next to the sister he left behind to stagger and stumble in the vacuum his balance created now that it's gone.

Silence prevails even as Rex's hands twitch with the urge to reach for Tabitha when a particularly nasty sob catches in her throat. 

He lets her be, lets her break while he catches what she loses, listening and watching – waiting for the signs that comfort, verbal or physical, is welcome and/or necessary. 

He waits nearly seven minutes, listening to her sniveling quieting down, and surprisingly it's her voice, cracked and husky and faint, that finally ultimately snaps the hush. 

"I don't know what to-" she chokes on an intake of air, swallowing it down harshly as Rex turns his has to face her, uncovered and bare with his helmet beside him, "-what to say to him."

She keeps her has lowered, eyes staring into the vacant blackness of Waxer's visor as if she could somehow find his eyes behind the reflection of hers. 

Rex lets his gaze settle there as well, looking at her blurry and smudged features through a second-hand mirror and wondering how much worse seeing them sharp and clear would be. 

Just as he opens his mouth to ask who she's talking about (he has a good idea who) , the Jedi padawan shakes her head, huffs out a breath – something akin to an incredulous, self-deprecating chuckle.

"Boil, I mean. I don't know what to tell him," she says to the helmet in her hands, and for a split-second, Rex has the mind to entertain the idea that she might actually be talking to it, not him – that all she's saying isn't meant for ears but those of the dead. Perhaps she actually is unaware of his presence, caught too deep in the throngs of grief to sense him beside her. 

But then, with a speed that could break a neck, the girl's head suddenly snaps to face him, movement sharp but unbalanced. 

He was right in assuming seeing her heartbroken expression head-on would be worse than looking at it through layers of dirt and cracks. 

The red eyes, puffy cheeks, wet trails pooling in the smudges beneath her eyelids; the flat hair, and pinched grimace that refuses to leave her face. Upfront, it looks so much worse than it did 18 hours ago, and seeing it only shocks him into momentary silence that Tabitha fills as if completely unaware. 

"How do you tell someone this ?" she whispers, voice wet and soft. "How do you tell someone they lost their brother, their family? The one person that was always there. How do you phrase that to make it hurt less? How do you say that ?" 

She wants an answer, any answer. It's clear that she's searching for one in the way she gazes at him with tear-filled, shining eyes, mouth quivering in a thin line as she wordlessly begs for something to ease the pressure that one question has on her.

Rex doesn't have one. He doesn't know. He could say he does; could pretend and spew nonsense about ways to sugarcoat Waxer's death but he figured years ago that all of what would come out his mouth would be lies. 

Lies that Tabitha does not need… nor would she be able to take them. 

It must show on his face – the regret and dismay that follows his hesitancy to talk – because just a moment after she uttered the question, she's already vehemently shaking her head, strands of hair clinging to the wet spots on her face as a weak scoff bursts from her chest. 

"Force, I'm sorry, this isn't what you're here for." She huffs whilst scrubbing at her cheeks with one hand to get rid of the tears and hair on her face, that minuscule breath alone laced with self-depreciation "Is there something-"

"Yes, it is."

The padawan startles upon Rex's abrupt interruption, hand falling down to rest on the helmet again as she swivels to face him, a frown etched onto her face. "What?"

Rex meets her confused stare with a gentle smile, "This is exactly why I came here."

Snorting, Tabitha averts her eyes again, leaving Rex to peer at the side of her head while she blinks into space.

"To see me be a self-pitying idiot?" she questions wryly (or as wryly as you can when your voice lacks the energy to make it sound so). 

Rex's lips purse at the tone, at the obvious downward spiral Tabby had long fallen into and descended almost to the very bottom. 

She thinks nothing of her grief, brushes it off as unnecessary dramatics and time wasted, and for a second Rex is reminded a bit too much of himself. How he'd ride himself into the ground, telling himself that he cannot break down – that he has to lead, to be okay; that everything else is selfish. 

Self-pity is a word he'd always judged himself for until someone finally told him that grieving something isn't always the same as pitying yourself for losing it. 

Until Cody finally knocked some sense into him and is steadily helping him let go of that mindset.

It's time for him to do the same for Tabitha; to repay Cody (and her) by teaching her what their brother taught him all those years ago.

So, inhaling deeply, Rex unclenches his mouth and moves to cover her left hand gripping Waxer's helmet in his, his right absentmindedly landing on her shoulder. "It's not self-pity. You're mourning, grieving."

Tabitha doesn't move, hardly even breathes when Rex tugs her fingers loose around the hem of the bucket, carefully sliding it from her palm into his. She merely watches him do it with a hitch in her breath and a crease in her brow.

"It's all the same," she rasps, pupils trailing Rex's movement when he shifts the helmet from her lap to his, right hand unmoving on her shoulder.

Thumbing the side, the clone captain regards the paintings and scratches and dirt on the armor, takes in the history of the person that wore it in a split-second. 

Inwardly, he says one last goodbye to a good friend, and for a second he imagines a trickle of warmth seeping down her neck and back – the imaginary ghost of a touch, a hand squeezing his neck. 

For a second, he imagines the words "Thank you" traveling through the breeze, all but gone by the time they reach his ears, but shakes the weird sensation away. 

He is just imagining things, making himself dream of ghosts that aren't there.

He returns his focus to the ghost that is. 

"No, it's not," he persists, setting the helmet on the ground to the right of Waxer's hidden skull with a sigh before turning back to the padawan –  whose eyes spring back and forth between the body and Rex. 

"Look, I've seen a shiny sit here and do the same thing as you not three hours ago," the man begins, counting on one hand the further he goes on. 

One.

"Jesse keeps staring at Hardcase's bunk." 

Two.

"Leo hasn't talked in three days since he lost his last batchmate."

Three.

"I've got an engineer down in Hangar 5 who refuses to stop working because it keeps them occupied, distracted." 

Four. 

And so many more, he can't keep count of.

Rex leans forward a bit more to catch Tabby's flitting eyes, squeezing her shoulder with a light rattle to gain her full attention before speaking again, deliberating each word carefully.

"Are all of them self-pitying idiots too because they grieve for the ones they lost?" 

Momentarily, horror seeps into her expression, eyes widening as her mouth opens and closes somewhat frantically.

"That's not what I- I'm sorry, I didn't-"

"Don't apologize," Rex cuts her off before she can dig herself deeper into that hole, smiling reassuringly to let her know he meant no accusations. Instantly, her lips clamp shut, shoulders loosening a tad under his touch. 

"What I wanted to say: They aren't self-pitying or selfish for coping with their sorrow and grief in that way, and neither are you. Just because you cry for yourself and your own problems instead of pushing yourself to the brink pretending you don't hurt doesn't make you a self-pitying idiot." 

Seemingly out of nowhere, Rex shuffles on the floor so that his whole body now faces her and with a tug on her shoulder, he urges her to follow suit. 

She does; Rex pretends not to notice the new glossy sheen that has built behind her eyes, nor the unshed tears pooling against her bottom eyelid. 

"It makes you human."

And that's what breaks the dam; cleaves in half the few threads of composure she had shrouded her emotional stability with, and from what second to the next, a new flood of tears spills over her cheeks, more choked sobs burst from her throat even when she tries to muffle them in her own chest and hand. 

This time Rex acts immediately, finally soothing the itch in his arms by gathering the teenager in his arms and cradling her into his chest (a rather awkward position thanks to their knees and legs knocking together between them). 

Tabitha melts into the embrace almost immediately, shaking and trembling in his hold as cries wreck her body – as she allows herself to indulge in the pain jerking at her heart, perhaps for the first time without guilt eating at it too for doing just that. 

Rex simply holds her for however many tears her body has left to cry, willing himself to ignore the screams that reverberate through his head thanks to the deja-vu their situation calls back to the surface. 

Dismissing the growing lump in his throat and nausea in the pit of his stomach as his mind flashes with snippets of hysterical anguish at its peak, the man presses his left ear against the top of Tabby's head, unaware of the hair tickling his skin when he finds that this somewhat dulls the sound of his memories. 

They stay like that for minutes – maybe ten, maybe thirty –, until Tabitha's cries quieten, and the back that Rex had been rubbing soothing circles over begins to settle with only the odd hiccup in between. Until the captain stops hearing things of the past and listens only to her labored, rattling breathing in the present, nausea, and pressure subsiding.

Yet even then, neither of them quite moves away; they shift and shuffle to avoid knocking knees and shins but they don't let go, merely staying in their embrace silently.

But there's more that Rex wants to say; he can feel the words pressing against his tongue, clanging against the insides of his skull. 

There's more he wants to say and even if he doesn't know whether or not she wants to hear more, he decides that the alternative – the endless wondering whether keeping quiet and waiting for the right moment that might never come was the right decision; whether these words might have helped more – is worse. 

Better to do it now, to help more now, than never get the chance again. 

"You can't."

It's out of his mouth before he can think much longer about it, words shooting from his lips a bit quieter – a bit more tentative – than he wanted them to. 

Even through his cuirass, Rex can feel a jolt of surprise flashing through Tabby’s body, hands tightening on the hem of his armor’s collar and breath hitching just before she gasps out one single word. 

"What?"

The repetition isn’t lost on either of them but neither heeds it.

And still, they don’t separate. 

Shaking his head, the blond sighs into her straggly hair, letting his eyelids blink open to cast his sight over the field of bodies around them without ever moving his head. 

"You can't make it hurt less. No matter how you phrase it you can't cushion the impact," he says, his swallow resounding so harshly in the ensuing silence that Rex is sure the whole base could hear it, sense his nerves and worry and pain that statement caused just by listening to that one sound. 

He’s sure Tabitha can. She always does. Jedi usually do but they hardly ever say so. Just like she doesn’t now.

Instead, for a few moments, they just keep breathing in tandem, Rex swallowing the bitter tang the words left on his tongue and Tabitha just absorbing, processing – who really knows but her?   

All that Rex knows, in the end, is that the next time she speaks, her voice is so low, so flimsy and frail – as if her heart would break any minute (it already did, he knows that). Yet, there’s something steady there too that stops it from cracking on each word; a foundation. Acceptance… of defeat. 

"... So what do I do?"

Rex simply tugs her a little further into his chest, squeezing his arms around her shoulders just a tad more before answering,  "Be honest, be open, be upfront. And be there for the aftermath. That's all you can do for him – for both of them now." 

Another bout of quiet as Tabitha melts in his embrace, the hold she had on his armor loosening until her hands just lay flat on the material. Her fingernails start scraping over a scratch there just as a deep exhale pushes past her lips.  

"This sucks."

That startles a chuckle to explode from his lungs. A small, airy thing that is followed by those incredibly stupid-looking tight-lipped half-smiles people do when they can’t quite bring themselves to make it look real. "Yeah, it does." 

All of a sudden, just after the last syllable left his lips, Tabitha pushes away, arms falling away and upper body leaning back as her weight shifted to rest on her knees again. 

Rex lets her go, sitting back himself only to pause mid-movement when his gaze crosses hers. 

This is the first time since he sat down that she looks him in the eye – directly in the eye with no fleeting glances and averting head movements to avoid prolonged eye contact. No, now she’s looking right at him, pupils surprisingly dry unlike her rosy, puffed cheeks, and eyebrows furrowed. 

He knows this look; has seen it on her but also on his own general and commander (not to mention the few times he’s made General Kenobi’s features morph into a carbon copy of that expression): It’s a look he’s come to associate questions – heavy questions rather than simple how-do-you-dos and what-to-get-for-dinner. Questions he would have shied away from answering for them not three years ago, still a little green around the gills and nervous in a Jedi’s presence. 

Now he’s learned that these are the questions they wouldn’t ask you if they didn’t trust you; the questions they don’t know how to make to anyone else in any other moment. 

The questions that provoke this look are the ones that need answering because they will never ask again, rather letting the unknown gnaw at them for the rest of their days than risk… appearing doubtful, fearful, he guesses.

"Do you think I made the right choice?"

Rex doesn’t even hesitate in answering, meeting her gaze with unwavering confidence, "I do. Krell would have only posed-"

However, he stops himself from going any further when instead of open, curious eyes, he’s met with a forceful shake of her head and her frown deepening into a scowl. 

"No not with Krell. I know I did the right thing there and I don't regret it. I would do it again in a heartbeat…" she reveals, chewing on her lower lip as a shadow passes over her face, smooths out her features only to overtake it with something else – something sad. Now her eyes jerk down to the body they’ve been sitting aside for dozens of minutes and she lets herself fall backward on her butt to sit instead of kneeling, shoulders dropping to a slouch when she sighs, "Maybe I'd do it a bit earlier even."

And that’s when the realization hits Rex heavier than any punches Krell could have thrown his way. 

This is more than just grief and sadness; more than just the anguish of losing someone dear to you. 

This is blaming yourself for it, shoveling all that guilt and responsibility on your shoulders until you either break or accommodate its weight for eternity. 

This is telling yourself that everything would have been better had you not been around, had you not been the one making choices, had you not made mistakes. 

This is what-ifs and should-haves that fan the flames eating at your insides, consuming your entire being.

This is grief but the tears and the silence and the heartwrenching screams and the overworking… they are so much more than that too, Rex cannot believe he hadn’t seen it before.

Guilt can sometimes break you faster in the aftermath of defeat than the fact that you’ve lost.

"Tabitha, you can't blame yourself for that," the clone interjects immediately, leaning forward again to clasp one of her hands in both of his while trying to catch her eyes one more time – get his point across. 

For years, he’s done this – still does sometimes (right now mayhaps) – and that yawning, cold sensation at the back of his mind is enough to remind him of the repercussions. The dark patches it creates in your life that never go away even if they lessen; the fear and paranoia you forever carry even if you forget why they exist in the first place. 

He knows, and he can’t let her do that to herself when nothing that happened yesterday was her fault.

"Can't I?" she retorts, giving in to Rex’s attempts at eye contact by flashing her gaze back to him, green eyes sharp and piercing, unlike the dull fogginess tainting them the last 24 hours, "I sent him and the others out there."

"As a precaution. We had no reason to believe he would get that far that fast."

" Yes, we did . Everything about Krell gave us – gave me – enough reason. I just didn't see it soon enough. I had too much faith." 

In who? Them, her, or some kind of higher power? The Force? Rex doesn't ask; doesn’t want to. He doesn’t need to because it doesn’t matter. 

"You couldn't have known this would happen when you sent them away. It was a sound tactic; Waxer agreed. You didn't make him do anything he wouldn't have done on his own." 

Expecting protest in reaction – doubt and agitation preventing her to let go of that guilt –, the last thing Rex is preparing for is for her to get the wind knocked out of her sails by his assertion.

At once, all of her fierce determination seems to cave in on itself as fast as it appeared, flinching back faintly with her eyes screwed shut and tugging on the hand Rex refuses to release – holding onto it as if she’d run away if he let go. For all that matters, the girl reacts as if Rex had just physically rammed a knife into her stomach and twisted – as if he’d said something so painful the distinction between mental and physical pain blurred and blended together. 

Panic has no time to take hold in his mind, though, because the pain seems to have dislodged words she couldn’t make herself say under any other circumstance – words that had not seen the faint light of day until now.

"He didn't want to go. At first."

This time it’s Rex’s turn to answer her whispered, abrupt confession with bewilderment, "What?"

"He wanted to stay with me, in our team, but I sent him away because- I don't know. Because I thought it was best. For the mission, you know." she warbles, unmoving, shame no doubt swirling in her gut – no matter how misplaced Rex judges it to be. His pinched expression softens, eyebrows unfurling and mouth curving into an understanding grimace as he squeezes her hand – whether in encouragement or comfort, not even he knows, "I should have just let him stay like he wanted." 

"Why do you think that would have ended differently?" He challenges. 

He knows it’s insensitive and blunt, perhaps very agitating to hear when the wound is still too raw to prod, but Rex can’t let her go down that road now – can’t let her get stuck in that eternal damnation she’s steering into by questioning choices that she can’t change; things that are out of her control in all the ways that matter.   

Even if that hurts and upsets, a reaction evident by the way that Tabby immediately jerks up, eyes flying open to reveal a burning fire raging behind them that the question lit.

Her hand is extracted from his before he can react and Rex doesn’t attempt to chase it, aware that closing his hand around a waving, frantic fist is bound to only end in bruises.

"Because I would have been there!" She exclaims but even the most untrained youngling could have heard the uncertainty hiding in the crackling tone of her voice.

"And it still could have ended the exact same way," the captain insists, consciously keeping his voice steady but soft, challenging but consoling simultaneously. Shaking his head, he continues, "Tabitha, you can't let these would-haves and could-haves and should-haves drive you crazy. Maybe it could have been different, maybe not, but, ultimately, that is out of your control. It always was. You did the best you could with what you had at that moment; you made good choices and a good plan. You didn't kill Waxer . Krell did. The only one you should blame is him." 

And just like that fire in her eyes is doused, extinguished in seconds, and for a moment, a twinge stings in his heart as he sees the most light that the colorful orbs had possessed in hours vanish into thin air. 

For a second, he regrets saying anything to suffocate that sudden burst of energy her anger and agitation brought although he knows it was the sensible and compassionate thing to do. For a second, he misses her straight posture and clear eyes when it’s replaced by a hunched back and a permanent glazy sheen coating her eyeballs.

However, that regret lasts only that one single second before it’s washed away by a sense of accomplishment and relief.     

He’s under no illusion that he solved all of her guilt in those few sentences but it’s a start, and right now she seems to settle down, mull over the idea, and accept his words as another perspective to judge from.

He understands that it takes more than this, and she seems to know that he knows that – comprehends it on a sympathetic level – because a minute passes in silence where they just sit again before Tabitha is the one to grab his hand, resolutely looking down at them instead of him. 

Her voice is a hush when her lips curl around the words she speaks, "You know, the same goes for you."

He should have known she had been able to see right through him the entire time, sense the guilt he himself buried inside his heart along with the bodies that has been returned. He should have known that even now, she’d try to be there for him despite drowning in her own misery.

He guesses their entire ramshackle family shares that trait, whether or not that’s good is up to the beholder. Rex blames Cody in particular for setting that kind of example (he really doesn’t).

Still, he hums quizzically at her words, pretending not to know as he too rests his gaze on their hands, allowing Tabitha that small reprieve of pressure.

She brushes her fingers over his knuckles as she clarifies.

"If I can't blame myself for Krell killing anyone, you can't either. You did what you could under Krell's boot. You saved who you could. It's not your fault either."

Releasing a sharp breath, Rex takes the words in stride, absorbing them – appreciative but perhaps as unconvinced as she is by his reassurance. 

Seems they both have a ton to work on and cope with for quite some time. 

"Let's just agree that Krell is a di’kut and deserves all the blame for all of this,” Rex smirks, lifting his eyes just as Tabitha does, a fragile smile on her face.

"Yes, let's."

Neither of them believes it, so neither of them does.

"I saw that sedative on your belt, by the way,” Tabby says, jerking their clasped hands to said spray on his belt,  "Kix?"

Rex merely kept the smirk on his face, quirking an eyebrow as he replies, "Who else?" Now, he uses their hands to nudge her leg, smirk widening into a genuine, soft smile. "You need a break, kid. You've been working nonstop, you need sleep. For the pyre tomorrow, and the transport."

"Yeah, I know." 

"Does that mean I won't have to use this?" 

Tabitha shrugs, biting her inner cheek in thought before casting a look to the side, over the field they’re in, "I still might."

"Fair enough," Rex nods, following her line of sight. 

He’ll probably be unable to sleep without some help too; should ask Kix to give him a sedative of his own 

Beside him, Tabitha abruptly tears her eyes away, taking a deep, sniveling breath to steady herself, and refocusing them on him, "But I'll only go to sleep if you do too."

Head snapping back to face her, Rex is about to open his mouth in protest, not quite sure why he’s even protesting when sleep was all he was dreaming about not thirty minutes ago but thankfully the padawan doesn’t let him.

"Please?" she gulps, eyes all but begging, "I don't want to be alone right now." 

And Rex never could resist her tooka eyes – not when she’s trying to sweet-talk her way into getting his permission and certainly not when she’s sad (it’s a weakness both Ahsoka and Tabitha exploit and his men relentlessly rib him for). 

So he relents rather fast, heaving himself off his ass with a put-upon sigh that is slightly undermined by the relieved twitch of his lips when he offers his hand to help her up.

"Me neither, vod'ika. Me neither. 

Chapter Text

Watching the growing silhouettes of the Laaties against the imposing outline of the Venator hovering in the sky above – cleared now of the firework of explosions that had been a near constant for days – both lifts a great burden off Rex’s chest and simultaneously crushes it all the same as anxious anticipation pounds through his body in sync with his heart. 

For a second, the sight of them makes him breathe easier; the familiarity and simplicity of evac easing the incessant nagging in his brain that had followed him ever since he had awoken from his shared slumber with Tabitha dozens of hours ago, with her curled into his chest and a permanent grimace on her face (sedatives could only help so much). 

Just once since then has he given voice to this, allowing the questions it mumbled to be vocalized to one of the few people he trusts with them. Fives had not known the answer; he hadn’t expected him to and a part of him never wanted him to. And since then he had not spoken about it with anyone else, left the questions floating in his brain and hoping they’d vanish. 

(‘What’s the point of all this? What happens when the war ends? What happens to soldiers then?’)

He doesn’t know where exactly they spawned from now of all times; what in Krell’s actions made his brain question the future? Never has he spared it much thought but now, after everything he’s heard Krell mutter about the end of the war and its supposed outcome – after the chaos he had sown in all of their heads, he can’t stop himself from needling himself with his ponderings.

So, yes, the promise of evac – of the post-mission routine that is boring as much as it can be meditative after losses such as this – assuages his mind for a little.

That is until his eyes flick to the side momentarily and land on the raven mop of hair just under his right shoulder. 

Any and all ease that has crashed over his senses is immediately purged, banished from his veins when he remembers who, too, is on that transport heading their way – when he recalls what no one had yet had the to tell the rest of the 212th. 

Briefly, he throws a glance over his shoulders, into the distance where the lump of their pyre can be seen in the artificial light of the base, and the relief is sucked into the expanding, freezing pit opening up in his stomach. He’s sure had he actually eaten more than stale rations, he might have retched all of it back up when he realizes just how clueless most of his brothers in those transports are. 

How they are going to land just be met with this – cold bodies and stifling silences where voices used to sound. How most of them will have lost brothers and best friends alike while hundreds of klicks away, unable to do anything and largely unaware.

Acid burns in his throat as he straightens his head again, bile threatening to rise even when he does his best to swallow it down, reconcile his food with his stomach. He contemplates excusing himself to the fresher, whether to vomit or calm himself (maybe even to cry while he still can) doesn’t matter – plays with the idea in his mind for a second or two, but before he can do anything of the sorts his right arm jolts with a sudden flash of warmth shooting up his nerves. 

Head snapping to his side, peering across his shoulder, Rex blinks at the side of Tabitha’s head even though the girl simply stares forward and into the sky, eyes glistening but unblinking. Then his gaze falls down the source of warmth, coming to rest on his gloved hand that is now encircled in Tabby’s slender, short fingers. 

She squeezes and, whether or not her actions are led by the need to comfort or for comfort, Rex squeezes back, straightening up with a deep inhale as he faces the horizon again.

As well as the nearing gunships. 

Hand in hand, together, they wait as the pilots maneuver their crafts for landing on the designated pads. 

Hand in hand, they wait as the handful of metal monsters settle on the ground in billowing dust clouds.

Hand in hand, they wait for the blast doors to swish open.

They don’t wait long. 

Immediately upon touchdown, the doors open to reveal the infantry bay, and without waiting a flurry of people scurry out of it, fully armored and cleaner than any clone on Umbara had dreamt to be in the last days, which could only mean these are their reinforcements hitching a ride with the men of the 212th.

Speaking of, following the wave of fresh, unbearingly enthusiastic troopers are the weary ones; the ones who would have rather gone to sleep in a nice warm bed up in barracks in that Venator but who have – or had – someone to pick up here, to reunite with. You can pick them out easily by the differences in their armor but more importantly their stance. Professional but more slack and limp, less rigid and energetic, than they would have allowed themselves to be with anything but vod’e…

And their jetii, as it turns out because, in the midst of them, both Tabitha and Rex spy the beige fabric of a classic Jedi tunic, rumpled and dirtied but so uncannily Kenobi that it’s hard to miss amid white and golden orange.

In his hand, Tabitha’s fingers unclench slightly, loosening their tight grip on his at the sight of her master – her father –, head turned sideways with a soft smile on his face as if enraptured in a conversation with someone.

And it’s then that the crowd finally disperses, reinforcements led to their posts by those that they replace and brothers going in search of their comrades. 

It’s then that Rex makes out the antennas and the visor, just the distinct shape of Cody that often helps unfurl that ball of tension in his chest. 

His ori’vod is here and for all that Rex sometimes complains about being called the ‘younger’ brother, he doesn’t mind the feeling of safety that envelopes him as he sees Cody, doesn’t bother putting up a tough front. He can talk to Cody, mourn with him, cry, and it’ll… not be okay but better, for at least a little bit.

Usually, he’d try to catch Cody’s eyes by now, maybe send him some teasing look or make a light-hearted remark about the obvious lack of space between the commander and the general – or their star-struck, lovesick looks that neither of them even try to hide anymore – but today is just not usual and he should have anticipated that there would be no time for humorous ribbing.

Because right next to Cody, bracketing the commander between him and the general, is Boil, helmet left behind in the gunship and grinning stupidly at one thing or another. Rex cannot try to make out what he’s grinning at or why because all the tension that had seemingly seeped out of Tabitha’s body when she spotted Obi-Wan returns ten-fold upon spotting her best friend – smiling and happy.      

The padawan sucks in a sharp, rattling breath, fingers pressing bruising shapes into Rex’s flesh even through his glove and armor, and the captain can’t help but cling to her just as hard, tearing his eyes from their new arrivals to the girl at his side. Just in time to catch sight of the tear rolling down her left cheek and over her pinched lips.

“Let me do it,” Rex whispers, giving into the sharp pain in his heart when he lays eyes on the sight before him – the struggle beneath her cloudy eyes and sallow face. 

He doesn’t want to, already hates that he has to be the messenger to so many others and is just about ready to cave under that pressure, but for her, he’d do it. For her – to get rid of that look on her face and the pain in her heart –. he’d take it upon himself so long as she doesn’t have to.

However, Tabitha merely shakes her head and picks up her shoulders.

“No… I need to do this,” she rasps and without another word, she extricates her hand from his and strides away, toward the trio. 

Screwing his eyes shut for a split second, Rex allows himself a moment of respite, a moment of sadness, before he takes a deep breath and follows.

When he gets there, Tabitha has already grabbed Boil’s hand and led him away a few paces silently and with tears in her eyes, ignoring her best friend’s concerned and somewhat frantic questions about her well-being, why she’s crying, what’s going on . 

Rex leaves them alone and instead joins Cody and his general (boyfriend? at this point he’s not even sure), both of which look just as unnerved and concerned as Boil, though Obi-Wan’s steel-blue eyes have a soft edge to them – a tinge of understanding and sympathy that looks oh so broken and frail. 

Before either of them can ask, Rex just blurts it out upon coming to a standstill at their side, watching with sunken eyes as Tabitha opens her mouth just as he opens his. 

“Waxer didn’t make it,” Rex says, voice hollow, not looking at them.

“I’m sorry,” Tabitha whispers, voice broken as she meets Boil’s worried eyes.  

They watch as Tabby takes something out of her belt pouch and presents it to Boil with new tears cascading from her eyes. 

Waxer’s identi-tag.

The reactions are instantaneous. 

While Boil’s entire face seems to crumble within milliseconds, the frown dropping from his face and the creases smoothing out as his expression goes slack, tears already pooling in his eyes.

(“Tabby- Tabby, no. He can’t be. You’re lying, he’s fine. He was fine. No, no, no, no-” 

“Waxer’s gone. I couldn’t- He’s gone, Boil.”

“No, he can’t be! He was fine!”

“... I’m sorry…”)  

Beside him, Cody’s head swivels around to him while a gasp bursts from Obi-Wan’s lips, one he tries to muffle in his hand unsuccessfully (Rex doesn’t notice the tears hiding in the older man’s gaze as they both watch brother and sister fracture and crumble before them). 

Cody wants to say something, Rex knows he does. He wants to know what happened, demand answers or maybe plead with Rex to tell him it’s a joke like Boil does. He does none of that, mouth simply opening and closing a few times, eyes wide and breaking silently. 

Instead, the commander, too, turns back around to the duo before their eyes just in time to watch it all cave in.

Boil’s knees buckle as his hand closes around the ident-tag and he hits the ground with a dull thud and violent sobs that draw pitying, sad, and sympathetic eyes from all around before most of them hurry off to give them privacy. 

And Tabitha? She simply lets herself fall to her knees before him, chest heaving with cries of her own even as he wraps her arms around Boil’s torso in a hug that stays unreciprocated since Boil cradles the content of his hand close to his heart, hands, therefore, smushed between their chests.

Meanwhile, the three of them remain where they are, two frozen in shock and overwhelming grief, Rex imagines, and so all he can think to do is to tug his stock-still ori’vod into an embrace of his own, averting both of their gazes from the tragic scene before them, and meeting Obi-Wan’s wet eyes with what he hopes is consolation and support. 

All he can think to say is, “I’m sorry,” in the smallest voice he has ever heard from himself even when the Jedi Master gives him a grateful, unsteady smile and lays a comforting hand on Cody’s too-still back just as it begins to tremble faintly.

“I am so sorry.”

(Silently, Obi-Wan seems to do the same – as if he just projected a whisper into Rex’s brain, which he kind of supposes he probably did, Force and all. Though it could also just be the look in his eyes that the captain cannot describe through the haze of tears settling over his vision. 

All Rex knows is that his own words seem to echo back to him, hushed and strained and different from his own as they rattle quietly through his brain.

All he knows is that, in the end, he doesn’t know who he is apologizing to and why – to Cody and Obi-Wan for losing some of their friends and brothers; or to those very same brothers for losing them in the first place.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Half an hour later, after Cody stopped shaking in his arms and Obi-Wan’s tears dried completely, after Rex stopped crying silently into his ori’vod’s shoulder not knowing what else to do or say, after Boil cracked and shut down completely in his sister’s arms (silent, still, hardly moving except for his hitched breathing and rapid blinking – processing) and Tabitha’s tears simply ran out having none left – after all of that, the captain, alongside Cody and the general on either side of him, finds himself standing before the familiar rectangular pyre-platform they built. 

Except now, instead of empty space, the entire top is lined with the bodies of their fallen – their brothers –, and part of him wants to run, to look away and not confront the sheer number of the dead like he’d done ever since Krell set foot in their company. 

Part of him begs for a local retaliation attack that would never come, a sudden debrief or meeting he has to attend although all of them are scheduled for their return to the Venator, any kind of work or distraction that he can drown himself in rather stand here and face. 

He knows that makes him a hypocrite, can remember his worries about Tabitha doing that very same thing not a day before word-for-word, but still, that part of him persists, telling him to flee the sight before him and the crippling emotions it causes to arise. That part argues by telling him this will end him, break him completely, make him useless – and Rex doesn’t disagree; he knows that this won’t give him happiness or joy or satisfaction; this won’t give him anything but the ability to proclaim and defend his honor in the future, the ability to say he did one right thing after dozens of wrongs.

This pyre will be a clean cut from everything here; it will sever the wound that this planet had opened but even cutting off an infected limb leaves behind a hurting and bleeding stump that can’t do anything scab over and scar.       

So, yes, Rex wants to run but he doesn’t let himself. Instead, he clenches his hands together behind his back and locks his knees in a way that makes himself look way too rigid and professional for an occasion like this. But it prevents him from turning tail, though he doubts either of the men at his sides would let him set a foot in any direction that isn’t towards it – they would not let him avoid this, which he is rather grateful for. 

Speaking of them, both Cody and Obi-Wan just stand and stare, regarding the mounts of wood and bodies before them with varying looks of devastation and sorrow. They’re quiet, breathing in tandem and for a second Rex asks himself why they aren’t standing next to each like they usually do, too close to be purely professional but too far to suggest something to the untrained eye (a waste of effort when considering that most people around them have been specifically trained to pick up suspicious body language – suspicious in any meaning of the word). Then he remembers that both of them have a weird protective streak the length of the Jedi Temple’s towers and are both probably very much trying to be supportive by being close to him instead of each other… so he lets it go with nothing but an appreciative thought. 

He guesses that support would extend to Tabitha and Boil as well, guesses they would box them in beside Rex if they were here. 

Hence they’re not. Neither of them is here at their side even as more and more people start to filter in minutes before the scheduled start of the burning but one of them Rex can at least see. 

Tabitha, all alone with Boil nowhere around to be found, is standing on the left side of the rectangle they’d built with her head lowered and her fists clenched together above Waxer’s now uncovered body. She has been standing there in that very same position when the three of them arrived and probably long before but Obi-Wan prevented them from approaching her, maybe leading her away, with a hand on Rex’s and Cody’s shoulder each and a meaningful, yet glum look in his eyes. 

They haven’t moved since then and neither has Tabitha, no matter who else shuffled around them.

And Tabitha still doesn’t, just looking down with a frowning grimace on her face and surprisingly dry eyes (perhaps she really had cried them all and her body can’t be bothered to produce more; Rex knows the feeling). So, Rex allows himself another scan of the field around them, the moving bodies settling into place, looking for that one distinct helmet with its red arrow or that stupid mustache Boil trims meticulously every day.

He looks and looks, searches every crowd and newcomer but he finds no Boil; not even a trace. And Rex is worried, of course, he is, might just take the excuse to leave to search for him to in lieu of running away but at the same time Rex is painfully aware that he is not the first nor the only brother to be absent, too overcome and overwhelmed to even think of bearing to look at the bodies of their family. 

He is not the first to need to be alone after just finding out your twin, the person you’ve shared your life with is gone, so Rex doesn’t leave to search – just like Tabitha doesn’t, or Cody, or Obi-Wan. If Boil wants to be alone, there’s nothing they can do but let him be and hope he shows up on his own accord – or, at least, is safe and okay.       

Rex stops his search and goes to face forward again.

Just in time to see Tabitha’s muscles finally twitch, starting in her latched hands, the bone-white knuckles moving with the urge to open her fingers, before traveling up her arms and into her neck. 

The teenager lifts her head just a slight amount, not enough to look away from Waxer but enough to indicate awareness, and her shoulders rise once as she draws in a deep, heavy breath that she blows out almost full eight seconds later. Only then do her hands unclasp, the fingers of her left extracting themselves from the flesh of her right that she keeps screwed tightly shut in a fist before her chest. Even as her open hand reaches forward, toward the still, cold body of her best friend and brother. Before Rex can question what she’s doing, move any muscles but the ones between his brows as the furrow in confusion, Tabby has already lifted Waxer’s left hand in hers, seemingly unperturbed by its lifelessness as it falls open against her palm, facing upward.

Just then, when the gloved and armored back of his hand lay against the warm palm of hers, her right fist budges, proceeding to float millimeters above the open fingers for a few seconds. 

Maybe for deliberation, maybe for silent prayer, maybe for something different entirely; Rex doesn’t find himself asking a lot of questions as he watches, just taking in the sight and feeling slightly like he’s spying into a private moment he should rather look away from.

(He doesn’t; neither do Cody or Obi-Wan.) 

Tabitha opens her fingers and carefully places something she had apparently been holding into the open space of Waxer’s palm, before gently closing his motionless fingers around them.

While doing so, Rex manages to catch a glimpse of what she had given Waxer’s dead body, taken aback when he makes out the dull, gray glimmer of something shiny catching the light of the laser barricades beyond:

The kyber crystal; the one that Krell had destroyed when he sliced one of her lightsabers in half instead of her neck; the one that had, within seconds, bled out its crystal-blue color into the ground, staying behind gray and lifeless, looking almost like a corpse. The crystal that Slingshot had collected after the battle, along with what remained of her weapon – to return to her once she resurfaced from her hysterical grief. 

Apparently, he had not forgotten and now Tabitha is laying that crystal down to rest in the closed fist of her dead brother, on his chest right where his unmoving heart lay.    

Now, the captain has a question, although he does not even get the chance to voice it when Obi-Wan shatters the silence between them.

“I teach them that their weapon is their life,” he begins suddenly, catching both his and Cody’s attention as they turn towards him with questioning hums.

“Anakin, Ahsoka, her,” he continues, nodding in Tabitha’s direction where she’s motionless with her hand clasped around Waxer’s, “I teach them that their weapons are their lives, that their crystals are a part of them.”

The Jedi Master doesn’t turn his gaze, doesn’t meet theirs, simply looks at his padawan with sad eyes but also quiet pride as her mouth forms silent words heard only by the body before her.

“Losing one can, for some Jedi, be like losing something of yourself, of your life. And leaving that behind can be even harder.”

And then he says no more, falling back into silence even as the two clones wait for a minute or two, but Rex has gotten the answer to his unvoiced question.

Why? Because Tabitha wants her lost pieces to burn with him, wants that clean cut so that she can grieve her brother as well as those parts of her she lost all at once. She entrusts Waxer with them, lays them quite literally in his hand for him to keep them until she can come to collect them from him after marching on herself.

No one mentions the crystal when she finally steps away from the pyre and strides toward them, fitting herself into the open space that Obi-Wan created between himself and Rex with no tears in her eyes and her head held as high as possible.

No one mentions the crystal when her master takes her hand and she lets him, losing a bit of tension as the older man begins to rub soothing circles over her strained knuckles.

No one mentions any of it as they stand there and wait for everyone to arrive so that the funeral can begin. 

Also, no one mentions, that as more and more minutes pass, Boil still doesn’t emerge.

No one mentions his absence when the funeral finally starts, though all of them want to.   

There is no big ceremony, no huge speeches or recitals to set it off. It's almost deathly quiet when the scheduled time ticks by and the last stragglers trickle in, a nonverbal agreement passing between every participant that something so grand – so professional – has no place here. 

A speech is what would come from a politician's mouth, a recital from a preacher's; both so radically impersonal that even if it came from the lips of a brother it would still only feel like an insult to what they were in life – like empty platitudes and half-hearted goodbyes. 

No, nothing is said. It isn't needed. Not one person is unaware of their vod'e's sacrifice, their worth in life and death, the memories they left behind. They don't need words to know or grief. 

All they need are their personal remembrances – a Mando custom where the names of the dead would be repeated and remembered daily, to make them eternal in the memory of the living – murmured to themselves or shared with those closest to them. 

So murmurs and whispers, alongside quiet crying and hushed comforts, alone penetrate the thick, oppressive, pressuring veil that settles over the widespread crowd when Rex and Cody share a nod with Kix and another 212th trooper Rex can't quite recall the name of even though they'd arrived here with Tabitha's company. 

Then, the four of them at once peel off from the assemblage of mourners that had formed over the last dozen minutes, their own remembrances flowing past their lips as they each retrieve a thick, torch-like 'tree branch' (or the tentacle-shaped things that passed well enough as tree branches if all you want to use them for is set a fire). 

Setting them alight on two campfires already crackling and twitching beside the shorter sides of the platform, each clone approaches one corner of the rectangle with their makeshift torches in hand and stoically facing forward. 

Only out if the corner of his eye does Rex make out the hand-holding figures, clad in dirty tunics, watching in silence. 

Only in his periphery, as he walks toward the far left corner, does he, at one point, notice Tabitha peering over her shoulder into the distance – in the direction of one of the many hangars on the opposite end of the base. And only when Rex arrives, pivots on the spot to face the pyre he is about to light, is he able to follow her line of sight to a lone figure nestled into the hangar's wall. 

It takes no genius to figure out who the lurking shadow is that Tabitha is eyeing from afar, just like he is the pyre. 

Boil, for all that it counts, would never abandon his brother, even if he is incapable of standing at his side.

Tabitha returns her focus to the pyre, and so does Rex, letting Waxer's name fall from his lips just as he lowers the flame in his hands to touch the frame they've crafted. 

All four corners erupt in flames simultaneously, crawling across and eating away at the flammables with popping crackles and whistling shrieks as the clones step away, leaving their torches to burn along. The stench of scorching nature rises the farther the blaze crawls and the higher the flames rise, licking and lashing at what few stars the sky reveals, soon joined by the odor of boiling flesh and melting armor that makes more than one shiny gag and most hold their breath. 

Soon, the entire platform is aflame, every last twig and leaf sprouting limbs of fire with minds of their own as they thrash and collide with each other, consuming and growing until no shapes can be identified through the blinding, heated haze that encircles the pyre (and makes Tabitha cringe, though she pretends not to when the general expresses silent concern). 

Soon, the remembrances taper off and utter silence encompasses them like the flickering, overbearing glow shed on their surroundings. 

Soon the fire dies down again, derived from things to singe and spread to, the stink and smoke of burned corpses residing in the atmosphere long after the last flame is smothered to embers.

By the time they leave an hour later, packed in transports, the bodies have burned to ashes and are scattered by the wind across the landscape of Umbara, marking it down to its last fiber as the place where dozens were massacred in the most brutal way imaginable for many of them – by the hands of an ally and Jedi. 

Before they even enter hyperspace, news break:

Commander Tabitha Flux is charged with possibly breaking military law by murdering a general, and is now facing court-martial in the ongoing investigation into Krell's betrayal and death conducted by the military. Their ship is bound for Coruscant, where proceedings will take place and she will be detained indefinitely. 

Tabitha doesn't leave her quarters once that flight until, upon landing,  the Coruscant Guard fetches her and marches her off the Venator and into a waiting shuttle (thankfully without any cuffs or restraints). 

And all everybody else can do is watch as they did the flames on Umbara.