Chapter Text
Rex pecked the crease in her forehead, rupturing each one of her cells in a ripple like effect. It was so casual for him, as if it had been part of his morning routine all this time. Kisses on her forehead were something that this false version of herself was meant to be accustomed to by now.
Ahsoka swallowed around the knot in her throat and replaced the photo back to its temporary home, upon a shelf that would never need dusting, and turned down a long corridor. Following hot on her heels, Rex spied the bedroom through an open door and, chuckling softly, wrapped himself around her from behind and eagerly hurried them to the shared quarters.
There would be no walls of separation here as there had been aboard the Tribunal.
The strong hands encircling her waist tightened and Ahsoka shrieked, curling inwards as Rex lifted her. His speed increased and then she was airborne, thrust upwards with her lekku catching wind as the bed caught her. Rex was already waiting beneath her as she knocked against him, having moved perhaps too quickly for poor Kix’s liking and cradling her in tandem with the embrace of the mattress.
It molded itself to fit around the shape of their entwined forms and, twice today, Ahsoka recognized that she’d been graced with things much softer than she ever deserved. Even a lavish mattress couldn’t hope to rival the plush lips of the man beside her as he pressed them to the underside of her jaw. She was a fit of breathy giggles as Rex covered her in adoring kisses, his mouth touching every part of her he could hope to reach. He drowned happily in her, the both of them catching his quiet, satisfied groans as he lost himself in such affection.
The tips of his loving fingers teased the hem of her dress in an attempt to steal a touch at more of her skin, but Ahsoka caught his wrist just as the contact was made, careening into his touch before pushing his hands gently away. She couldn’t fight the twitch of her muscles or the spread of warmth in her abdomen, forever a stranger to such foreign intimacy.
Ahsoka’s adrenaline helped conjure an excuse. “I’m going to wash up before bed. I’ll be back in a bit,” she rushed to say, pecking the corner of Rex’s pleading eyes with clumsy lips.
Nuzzling into her further, Rex grunted his disapproval but didn’t attempt to convince her to stay. “Hurry back,” he mumbled, settling back into the endless amounts of pillows decorating their bed. “I’ve missed you.”
I’ve missed you.
“I missed you too, Rex…” Ahsoka trailed. “Do you, um, need anything while I’m up?” She adjusted her clothing and glanced around the room as if not for the first time. She wondered if his missing her was new or if it had been one of the few things he still remembered from before. Their knees could be brushing whilst sitting atop crates on the Resolute and yet she would still miss him fiercely in the moment. Over the course of three months, neither one of them ever had the courage to admit it, leaving their eyes doing all the speaking.
The impact of such communication was discreet to no avail, as Ahsoka had later learned from Jesse.
“Actually, yes, have you seen my datapad lying around anywhere?” he asked.
Ahsoka reached for the night table nearest to her. “Exactly where you left it,” she smirked, relieved that somehow his datapad had been planted there. “But Kix was strict on no screens until you’re better.”
Rex groaned playfully, “I’m starting to think you’re just making some of this up.”
“Believe me, I wish I were,” she answered, mulling too long over how much she meant it.
The steaming sonic greeted her like an old friend, trapping her in the fog and under the falling water, offering to help her make sense of the nonsensical. The patter of the droplets never failed to wash away her troubles and, foolishly, she hoped the spray might also melt Rex’s touch permanently into her skin.
It would do no such thing.
Ahsoka massaged her aching montrals, gripping the peaks to urge herself to remain focused, to stay on mission. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry but was sure she did a bit of both. This was all fabricated. Even the cruel, beautiful glimpse of the lie had her in just as fuge a state as Rex. There were few things she wouldn’t give to live in the reality he was existing in.
She’d sleep on the sofa, she’d keep her distance, she wouldn’t allow any more strings to bond them. There were only three— really two days now until her Knighthood ceremony. That gave her two days to sever the damning strings of attachment to Rex in which she already helped knit. These things are always easier said than done, as Ahsoka still had yet to cease pressing her buzzing lips together to savor the taste of him that had been left behind.
Scanning the sonic for soap, her hands fell limply to her sides. There was a half used bar sitting on one of the ledges. Padmé had been nothing but thorough in her aid to this elaborate ruse. With a set jaw, Ahsoka turned her burning shower to the coldest setting before finishing up and stepping out, wishing that she and Rex had been the ones to shrink the bar instead.
“I need to ask you something,” Rex called suddenly from inside the bedroom, catching her as she was toweling off.
The Force alerted her that his hand was nearing the door panel and so the towel was wrapped around her body at a hyperspeedic rate. “So do I. Why are you up?” she asked with furrowed brow markings.
Not a moment later, the door separating them slid aside and steam from her sonic wafted out of the refresher to claim his tall figure. Rex stepped in with mischief tugging at his lips and he leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, noticeably without the shirt he’d been wearing.
Ahsoka gripped the towel tighter around her, acutely aware that they were each staring at the state the other was in. “You should be resting, Rex,” she exhaled, its sole purpose to reduce the threatening blush in her lekku.
The devilish smirk she’d only been introduced to today deepened. “How high is our water bill?” he asked abruptly, brushing off her remark.
“Our— Your urgent question was to come in here to ask about our water bill?”
He strode towards her, stopping so close that they shared the oxygen of a singular person. “I was thinking we could save a couple more credits each month if we showered together instead,” he drawled, speaking against her parted lips before claiming them with his own and walking her right back into the wet sonic.
Ahsoka’s breath was stolen from her, taken hostage by Rex as she fought to keep her towel from becoming compromised. His head tilted, needing to have her, tongue entering her mouth with a temptatous demand of entry — one she could not refuse. She whined as he swiped at her bottom lip and Rex chuckled at her sensitivity, his wandering hands falling and settling at her hips. The place between her thighs was swollen with excitement.
Fingering the length of her towel where the gap rested near his thumb, he whispered between her panting, “There’s no chance you’ll let me relieve you of this, is there?”
“Is your memory so bad that you’re forgetting Kix’s orders?” Ahsoka breathlessly retorted, unable to concentrate with his carefully placed knee grazing her core.
He smirked and pulled away, distracted still by the beautiful woman pressed between him and the wall. Rex ran the pads of his fingers against his lips. “You know I’m notorious for questioning orders. Or am I remembering that incorrectly, too?” he challenged, eyes dropping to her chest and wiping away a stray water droplet from her clavicle. If a remark about being wet was dancing on his tongue, he didn’t voice it, but the simmering glint in his amber eyes all but spoke it for him. They were quite good at that.
Boldly, Ahsoka freed one of her hands, pulling him down to her level by the nape of his neck and initiating affections for the very first time, kissing him hard and with a passion that caused him to whimper helplessly into her mouth. But Rex was too enamored to detect her bait, opening his eyes to discover he was the one now backed into the damp sonic wall, an orange hand splayed in the middle of his chest with Ahsoka at an arm’s length away. He panted, delighted with her deception and writhing under her palm, amber irises flaring. Her thumb twitched, grazing his old blaster scar and he was rendered defenseless, hips jerking involuntarily.
Securing her towel and cheekily saluting him, Ahsoka made to exit the refresher, muttering under her breath something about whatever was in the injections Kix had administered, when Rex called after her. “‘Soka,” he said, hanging on the open door of the sonic.
She turned, lekku gliding across her wet shoulders, the nickname only adding charge to the electricity coursing through her body.
“I keep a journal in that datapad. That’s what I wanted to tell you. I remembered it. Could you read to me what I logged over the last few days? Figured it might jog my memory sooner.”
Ahsoka was stunned. “Oh. Do I— you never told me,” she revealed, heart constricting at the weight of what he was asking her to do — of what she knew she might find.
He winked, eyes darkening as he unbuttoned his trousers and followed in her steps back towards the door. Rex’s tented briefs peeked out from beneath his unsecured pants but he paid them no mind, grabbing hold of the frame above Ahsoka’s head and leaning in. Her breath stalled in her lungs and her lips reached instinctually for his.
But the only thing that moved was a towel hanging on a hook beside her head. Rex’s chest rumbled in a low, dark chuckle at her deflation, “You’re not the only tease living here.”
The lines in his back were made visible to her as he walked away, leaving her dazed, disoriented, and all too almost-naked in his wake. Déjà vu continued to hit her like a train.
Ahsoka pressed her back hard against the door when it shut, making up for lost oxygen and cursing herself for losing the focus she’d so desperately scrounged up. Rex’s datapad sat untouched on the bed. She swallowed and fled into the only room she had yet to explore, finding a large closet the size of her quarters at the Temple tucked inside the bedroom. The towel nearly fell to a heap on the floor. Padmé… Padmé had outdone herself. For only a few days worth of a ruse, her friend had thought of even the most minute of details.
Men and women’s civilian clothing lined the racks, organized between hers and his, by color and season. Rex’s helmet sat atop a crate she recognized as the ones that clones stored personal effects in. Even traditional Togrutan robes adorned a few of the hangars. A series of drawers were built into the racks and Ahsoka considered them carefully, knowing they wouldn’t be empty. She reached for the first, discovering a collection of Rex’s Republic war medals inside. In front of them, however, sat something that didn’t belong — something that once belonged to her.
Ahsoka traced the convex grooves of the akul tooth headdress, picking it up as though she half expected it to crumble under her touch. The last time she’d set eyes on it, she’d pawned it off in the Underworld for enough credits for a decent place to sleep. Her chest tightened and she placed it back, comparing the bed she’d slept in that night to the one beyond the closet door.
Pride bloomed in her chest for Rex, finding awards and achievements he’d never before mentioned amidst the collection. There were a few he was rather proud of and Ahsoka spotted them quickly, remembering a time when the Captain had been one to brag. She was absorbed in her admiration for him when she came across another piece in his collection that didn't belong amongst the rest.
It, too, had been pawned off below the surface of the planet. The small diamond charm necklace stared back at her like a stranger. Ahsoka immediately searched for her Padawan beads as well, but they were nowhere to be found.
This had not been Anakin’s contribution to the ruse. Padmé had found these items in Rex’s personal quarters.
The second drawer was opened with less apprehension and Ahsoka was greeted not with gold or memorabilia, but with various lacy underthings. One side contained the same pairs of briefs she’d seen from beyond Rex’s fly in the refresher. She swallowed. The other side was much more colorful. From among the items intended for her, Ahsoka plucked out the least amount of material she’d ever laid eyes upon.
Groaning, she closed the drawer and searched for some sleepwear that would cover her rear more than the underwear promised to.
Minutes later, she was settled between the sheets with Rex’s datapad in hand, staring blankly at the amount of logging he had done. There were journal entries dating back from even before the war, back when he was still a cadet on Kamino. When his memory was restored, she hoped he might read her a few of them. She found the most recent entries and what he’d written before they left for the mission they’d just returned from.
Year 3, Month 8, Day 89 post-war
The boys have been restless. They’re itching for the field but the fight has been waning since the Seppies were defeated. We’re being sent to Serenno to collect an alleged war chest under the ownership of Dooku and redistribute it back to those it was stolen from. Sterling is attempting to convince some shinies to paint themselves like droids for target practice. But killing clankers takes an edge off that target practice doesn’t. The feeling hasn’t eased, but is mostly manageable.
Year 3, Month 8, Day 73 post-war
I can’t tell these days if I love or despise serving the GAR. I fought for a cause I believed in, a cause we won, but I’ve never been more unsure. The fight allowed me to forget my selfishness. I was never meant to have this much time to think, let alone think at all. There was never supposed to be a point in which I had to weigh what my life’s purpose was. Until now, it’d been decided for me.
Year 3, Month 7, Day 58 post-war
When she first came back to us, I was worried I’d lose concentration. I was wrong then just as I am now. Skywalker notices. So does Jesse. She and I work almost too well together. It’s something I could never begin to explain correctly, but ever since Mandalore, we are linked — forever fused in a way not unlike my own armor. I am a better man with her around, a better soldier, but not the soldier I’m supposed to be.
Ahsoka was robbed of the air in her lungs. Her own throat threatened to suffocate her. She was well past the limit of “the last few days” of entries he’d set for her.
Year 3, Month 6, Day 35 post-war
I’ve had my resignation papers drawn since we returned from the siege. If I thought I could bear the look in Skywalker’s eyes, I’d have handed them in already.
Year 3, Month 5, Day 15 post-war
She accepted General Windu’s offer. Whether she stays or goes I will always lose her.
Year 3, Month 5, Day 1 post-war
My heart exists outside of my body in the for
Tears stained her knuckles as Ahsoka checked the entry again and again, looking for the rest of the words. Rex had left it incomplete.
“So, is my poetic recount of our first time bringing tears to your eyes?” Rex asked, stepping into the bedroom.
Ahsoka jumped, drying her betraying eyes. “Something like that,” she hurried, patting the empty bed for him to join her.
He hummed in consideration, pulling her undivided attention to where he stood. A towel was slung low around his hips — below his hips, rather. She averted her eyes back to his datapad and he chuckled, striding towards the closet.
“Tell me everything,” Rex urged once he’d finally slipped in bed beside her, placing a hand over her knee and drawing her closer to him.
His cheeks were colored with the heat from the sonic, giving him a glow that would’ve been deadly for anyone so close. Between his warm skin, masculine aroma, and his silk pajama shorts that matched her own nightwear, Ahsoka lost her truce with concentration. If her Great Trial had been not to ogle Rex’s bare, unfairly muscular chest, she would have failed almost instantly.
“‘Soka, are you feeling alright? What’s bothering you?”
She nodded, powerless but to read him a false entry that did not exist, to lie to him through her teeth as per her orders. “Month five, day eighty-nine post war. Ahsoka and I will be visiting the men at the shipyard this week. They were sent on a mission to Serenno retrieving stolen artifacts from Dooku. Skywalker gave us permission to personally return any Shilian items back to her people. All Ahsoka can talk about are her parents.”
“Have I ever met your parents?” Rex asked hopefully, considering the entry.
Tears threatened once more in her eyes at the possibilities they’d have if they were entirely different people. Ahsoka shook her head and continued, “Well, not yet, anyway. Alright. Month five, day seventy-three post-war. Some days I miss the GAR, but I might just be better with kitchen appliances than I am with my pistols. I asked Ahsoka for her review and she declined to comment.”
He laughed and leaned further into the pillows. “So I am a terrible cook?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll still kiss the chef anyway,” she smiled, pressing one to the faint scar on his chin.
She could feel the low hum in his throat. “Read to me our first time,” he prompted next.
Ahsoka stiffened, skin blooming with heat. “Rex—”
“What?” he teased. “You remember when it was, don’t you? I’ll vow to you right now that this is the one and only time I’ll ever forget an important date.” He put one pleading hand over his heart and the veins were noticeably standing out, drying her mouth further than it already had.
Ahsoka rolled her eyes and summoned the courage that evaded her, “And this is the one and only time you’ll ever get a pass.”
He wet his lips and nodded back to the datapad as if to repeat his question.
She searched through his older logs and found the one from that night in the hangar — the night something might’ve happened had things gone according to plan. Her lekku darkened further and she could see Rex’s wiggling eyebrows in her periphery.
“Go on,” he goaded, squeezing her knee in encouragement.
Year 3, Month 5, Day 1102 of war
I have marked this entry for deletion, but not before I’ve committed every detail to memory. I woke up in my quarters this morning with no memory of how I got there. The last thing I remember was leaving and finding Ahsoka in the hangar control room. I expected the amorous nature of our exchanges to dwindle as we returned back to the monotony of our respective roles, but things shifted in that room, coming to a precipice as she removed my helmet and we rendezvoused in the shuttle.
Days of tortuous feelings snapped into place, gaining clarity, gaining a name. My impossibly short life has gained infinite more meaning with her back in it. She gives me years back. I prefer who I am when I am with her. I am better for knowing her. I envy the rain's ability to fall for her and soak into her skin. I never did make it to her room and I’m trying to tell myself it’s for the better, but I can’t get the memory of her off my tongue. I wanted to believe it was something I could escape through physical release, but I have never finished so hard and yet I still—
Rex placed a gentle hand on her thigh. “You don’t have to read it, ‘Soka. I just like being the reason your lekku turn three shades darker.”
Ahsoka blinked rapidly, shutting his datapad off and returning it to the night table. The entry had been quite lengthy, continuing on in detail about what he remembered that she could not allow herself to read. She was scarlet in the face and met his eyes sheepishly from the shelter of her own shoulder.
Laughing, Rex squeezed her leg and invited her to lie next to him. “If it left you that speechless, I can’t wait to find out how often we test the integrity of this bed frame.”
She nearly choked, shifting it quickly to match his amusement. “It’s just very… enlightening to read from your perspective,” she settled with, gathering her many feelings on his words into one broad statement. The image of Rex pleasuring himself was stamped into her mind, making it difficult to maintain eye contact. “Did it help you remember anything?”
“I’m recalling the Serenno mission a bit, the talk about all the different artifacts Dooku pillaged, but nothing else.”
“A good night’s sleep will help,” Ahsoka said. “Ewok steps.”
“Ewok steps,” Rex repeated, smiling and switching off the lamp.
So she inched downward in the sheets, fitting herself to Rex’s front and finding that the point of her montral didn’t bother him as she’d long worried it might. Rather, it curved around his shoulder and hooked there as if they’d each been designed for that very purpose, to fit from the very start. She had entirely forgotten to refuse the comforts of the bed for the couch, but her tired body protested.
Rex sighed once she settled, his heart calm while hers continued to challenge the cage it was trapped in. He had more than become that relaxed man he’d spoken about so hopefully on the Tribunal three months ago. He had embraced the life she’d wanted with him, allowing himself what his heart desired without the duties of their titles interfering.
A wave his relaxation washed over her, contagious and inviting, having no need for the water of the sonic to melt his touch into her skin. His feverish touch caused it to happen all on its own. He hummed and delicately stroked the tip of her montral, dipping into the curve. She shivered. A sleepy kiss was pressed to her rear lek, drowsy with incomplete words of love slipping off his lips.
Rex slept the next day away. Ahsoka had the entire apartment memorized by the time he emerged from the bedroom, decidedly not lingering on words he’d only half written or half said. She was also half convinced the amount of rest he’d gotten might help his brain play a bit of catch up, but that theory proved incorrect to her chagrin.
“Anakin and Padmé have invited us over for dinner tomorrow tonight,” Ahsoka announced as Rex entered the kitchen.
He rubbed his face and came to where she stood by the caf maker, slotting himself behind her and wrapping his hands around her middle. Ahsoka laughed softly and leaned her head back, giving Rex the room to place his chin on her shoulder and kiss the curve of her lekku. It took her by surprise just how fast the role she was playing had taken root. Standing like this in the kitchen with him felt natural. Guilt bubbled in her stomach, sick with the way she was having to think of this as any other mission, preemptively mourning these moments.
“Think he’ll ask me aside about yesterday?” Rex asked, releasing her when the caf maker sputtered.
Ahsoka went to fetch a mug from the cabinet and stopped cold, their conversation before his fall hurdling to the forefront of her mind. “What did you say?”
He cocked an eyebrow and continued, “Skywalker. He was there at the shipyard yesterday. I think he’s withholding something.”
She blanched, coming back to the present as Rex carefully removed the mug from her fingers. “Sorry, I just— you remembered something.”
Rex smiled briefly, teeth shining. “He’s never been able to hide the way his emotions come across on his face. Now that I mention it, what exactly are his thoughts on his former Padawan and Captain living together? He didn’t seem to be in high spirits when he saw us.”
How his brain had omitted where they were standing when this happened was beyond her.
“Oh. He’s, well, it did take him a while to accept. And no one was in high spirits, Rex. You fell pretty hard.”
“That’s all?” Rex asked, a brow arched.
“You know how Anakin is. It’s only been three months,” she added.
He let out a short huff of air and sipped his caf. Guilt gnawed at her. Rex was already confused as it was and her broken lies did nothing but make it worse. “So it’s going to be one of those dinners, then.”
“Unfortunately.”
Ahsoka detailed the fall he took the day prior but he had no recollection of it. Nothing about datapads, Commanders, her upcoming ceremony, or a privately scheduled conversation seemed to come to mind for him. “There’s more I should be remembering, isn’t there?” he asked.
She ran a hand through his buzzed blonde hairs. “It’ll come back. They’ve asked me not to say much just in case it hinders the healing process. You have to remember on your own,” Ahsoka revealed, feeling herself shrink in her fuzzy, monogrammed slippers. Rex readied to protest but she continued, “I’ve been thinking. We should go back to the shipyard. Something there might make something in that old brain of yours click and I’m told the boys are still unloading.”
He pecked her on the cheek and traced the markings there adoringly. “Yes ma’am,” he whispered and gave her a small salute.
Only a handful of troopers roamed the shipyard, as most had taken their leave to the barracks or to the sports bars by now. A squad from the 332nd was stacking emptied crates, nodding to their Commanders as they made their way through the open facility. Rex said nothing, but Ahsoka could plainly see the smile on his face at their orange painted buckets as they passed by.
The Resolute and the Tribunal were docked beside one another, both of them with lights shutting off. Confused, Rex turned to squeezed Ahsoka’s hand, lifting their joined fists and pointing to the cruiser. “Why are they preparing the Tribunal? I thought its maiden voyage was its last.”
Ahsoka bit her tongue, certain that it was her they were prepping it for. As a Jedi Knight and no longer Anakin’s Padawan, she’d be given her own Venator. Gone were the days she’d be a staple in the halls of the Resolute. From here on out, she’d be sleeping in the General’s quarters because she’d actually be a General. “I’m not sure,” she said untruthfully. “I can ask Jesse. I let him and Kix know earlier that we’d be stopping by.”
Rex only nodded, swallowing the fact that these things Ahsoka could not tell him must be quite big.
They found Kix sitting on the ramp of a smaller shuttle, patching a laceration on the elbow of a shiny. Ahsoka waved at the pair and he beckoned them closer. As they neared the shuttle, its familiar dim lighting and wear greeted her. Kix was occupying the shuttle she and her Captain had stolen away in during their return from Mandalore. She turned to Rex for confirmation and he was already grinning, shooting her a wink.
“Mind if I drop off another patient?” Ahsoka asked the medic playfully.
Kix laughed, securing the bacta patch on the other trooper and telling him he was free to go. “Suppose I can make time for one more sorry soldier,” he jested. “What have you two been up to lately?” He looked to Ahsoka, communicating wordlessly with her.
“Honestly? Sleeping and spilling caf,” she answered.
“Well, there are studies that prove caf intake can improve memory performance. How is the old thinker? Remembering anything at all?”
The look she received was one of sympathy, one Rex couldn’t see. Kix just clicked his light into Rex’s eyes for a quick checkup.
Ahsoka sighed, “Little things. No major events, really.”
“I see,” Kix said, understanding her meaning. “I could do a quick brain scan before I head off for the evening if you’d like. Jesse’s in Rex’s old office if you want to speak with him.”
She thanked Kix and squeezed Rex’s shoulder before heading in the opposite direction overhearing as the medic asked Rex if he knew his last name, to which they laughed. It was dark now, but she’d long since memorized the way to a certain corner office. The door was ajar when she arrived, a lamp she’d gifted him illuminating the room.
A sizable dent had been made in the stacks of reports that had been there yesterday and occupying the newly emptied space were a pair of crossed feet.
Jesse was lounging in the desk chair, legs propped up and passed out cold. His mouth hung agape with exhaustion and Ahsoka stifled a laugh, approaching her dear friend. “Jesse,” she called, watching closely as he stirred. “At attention.”
His nose scrunched and she stifled a giggle, taking a datapad and nudging one of his feet. Jesse’s feet uncrossed and both pistols were drawn before his eyes ever cracked open, a steel look in his dark eyes.
“Ahsoka,” he signed, chest rising and falling violently under his armor. “I’m so sorry, I— I would have never— I must’ve fallen asleep.”
She softly released the breath she was holding, “It’s okay, Jesse. I should’ve knocked. I’m sorry I startled you.”
His pistols were replaced into their holsters and Jesse rubbed his face. “That’s no excuse to have pulled my blasters on you, I—”
“It’s alright,” she said again, offering him a kind smile. “You didn’t know. You— Rex has them, too.”
He looked up at her and she sat adjacent to him at the large desk. “He told you about the nightmares?”
She shook her head. “No. I only found out about them last night. He slept for a long time, but he didn't sleep well… I had no idea.”
“I don’t think any of us really get any decent shut eye once we leave Kamino. No one talks about them, except maybe the medics. It’s something we tend to keep pretty close to the chest. Did he have them all night?”
Ahsoka thought for a moment before responding, “No. No, not until after I got out of bed.” Her lekku flushed.
Jesse smirked. “So you finally slept together?”
“Jesse,” she warned.
“Nothing stops them, you know. The nightmares. Kix has tried everything at this point. So if you stopped them, even for just a few hours, that tells me everything I need to know,” he said.
“And what would that be?”
“He’s bad in love with you.”