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She’s had to grow up too fast.
The irony of that thought is not lost on Rex. He’s the one who looks and sounds like a man of almost thirty at the ripe old age of thirteen standard years. It’s not the same, though. He’s supposed to be grown, weathered, beaten. It’s what he was made for. Commander Tano is not like him; she’s a young woman, somebody’s daughter, unique and exceptional. She’s supposed to be full of life and hope and dreams. She’s supposed to have a future, damn it all.
Instead, she looks like Rex—grown, weathered, beaten, tired. She looks so, so tired.
They’re seated—slumped, more like—on a fallen support beam, in front of a meager fire they’ve barely been able to keep burning, hidden away within the wreckage of the Tribunal . Commander Tano is curled up against Rex’s side, and he has an arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders, keeping her close, keeping her warm, her robe draped over both of their backs doing little to keep out the moon’s chill. Every breath she takes, he can see a plume of vapor leave her lips. It’s a comforting reminder that she is breathing. She’s alive. He got her out alive.
If only the same could be said for the rest of the battalion.
They’ve just buried a few dozen of their brothers—a few dozen out of a few thousand who were aboard that Venator. The rest are gone, vaporized in the atmosphere or scattered throughout the wreckage around them. Dead. Gone, and no one will remember them, Rex thinks bitterly. They were just clones. Numbers. No one will remember him, either, years down the line, once he and all the people he dares call friends are dead and gone.
The wind howls outside, circling the wreckage like an animal stalking its prey, and what’s left of the Tribunal creaks and hums in eerie harmony. It’s too easy to imagine it’s the spirits of the fallen clones singing. Commander Tano shivers. Rex wonders if she’s thinking the same thing.
He pulls her closer to his side, rubbing her bare arm with the palm of his hand in a lame attempt to warm her up through friction and sheer force of will. “Are you sure you want to stay here tonight?” he asks. It’s the first either of them have spoken in ages. “We can go whenever you’re ready. S’bloody cold.”
“We need the rest,” she contends.
Rex agrees. But they aren’t resting. They’re trying to, curled up together in what used to be part of the Tribunal’s main hangar, in front of what barely amounts to more than embers. Tired as he is, weary to his very bones, Rex is not yet tired enough to rest in these conditions. Neither, it seems, is Commander Tano. Rex sighs. “Commander—”
“Ahsoka,” she corrects him. “You call me Ahsoka.”
That’s a command, if ever he’s heard one. “Ahsoka,” he amends.
He’s already lost his train of thought.
Ahsoka leans forward to rest her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists, and her cloak slips down her back. She shivers again. Rex places a gloved hand on her shoulder, as if that’ll do a damn thing. “I consider you a friend, Rex,” she says, glancing only slightly back at him. “Not just a soldier.”
“And I you, Com—… Ahsoka.”
A smile graces her lips, thin and feeble, but genuine (and beautiful). She reaches up with her opposite hand to lace her fingers with his on her shoulder. A few moments later, she seems to think again, and removes his glove before lacing their fingers together again. Her hand is warm. She feels lit from within compared to the stagnant chill around them. She’s always run hot. Never needed as much clothing or armor as others to be comfortable, even when she was a young teenager, so gangly and frail-looking that Rex thought the Jedi were crazy to put her in battle. On better days, it makes him chuckle, how dead wrong he was to ever question her strength, her skill. Her resolve, most of all.
Still.
Rex lets go of her hand, and takes her cloak off his shoulders to drape it over her instead. She looks back at him, surprised. “Rex—”
“You need it more than I do,” he insists. Even though he’s taken off his armor, he’s still in his body glove. The chill is already starting to seep in, despite. He won’t let her sit there with nothing on her shoulders.
She’s looking at him still, scrutinizing but not quite readable, with her brow slightly pinched and lips slightly pursed. She’s thinking. Rex wonders what about.
She leans back up and once again wraps the cloak around the both of them, but this time she snuggles in closer to his side, and rests her head on his shoulder. It should feel awkward, with her montrals in the way, but it doesn’t. It’s comfortable, and it feels right to pull her close, wrapping an arm around her waist and resting a hand over her stomach. It’s quiet except for the wind outside, and the crackling of the dying fire. As the silence stretches on, Rex tunes in to the quiet sound of Ahsoka’s breathing, instead. Her stomach expands against his palm with each inhale. It’s still more comforting than he would have expected. She’s alive. He didn’t kill her. His brothers didn’t kill her. He wants to press his ear to her chest, and listen to her heartbeat. It feels like any moment the wind is going to rush into their hiding place and blow her away from him, leaving him with nothing but another pile of ash in his arms where someone he loves should be.
“Rex, what do you think of me?”
I love you. “I care about you a great deal, Ahsoka.”
“And I, you.” She picks her head up to look at him. The firelight dancing on her face—tired and weary, but alive and whole—is an image he hopes to remember for a long time. “That’s how we got here, isn’t it? An attachment to each other?”
Rex smiles ruefully. “The Jedi wouldn’t approve.”
It’s a lame attempt at a joke, and she doesn’t play into it. “I don’t care.”
He knows she doesn’t, though part of him will always think of her as padawan, Jedi, commander. She’s none of those things, anymore. She’s a young woman: Ahsoka. And although he remains CT-7567, clone, soldier, he is also a man: Rex.
This man very much wants to kiss the young woman in his arms.
But he shouldn’t. So he doesn’t.
Ahsoka’s eyes are shining, bluer than any Rex has ever seen, and Rex’s chest aches. “I want to forget what just happened,” she says. “Just for a while. Will you help me?”
Rex could tell her honestly that he would follow her to the edge of the universe, but all he says is, “Yes.”
She leans in, presses her chapped lips to his, and kisses him. She does it, so he doesn’t feel bad about it. Not yet, anyway. He’s too distracted by the kiss itself to feel much of anything besides her lips, and her soft skin against his palms, and the newly catching fire in his gut. She kisses well—well enough that she must have done it before. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, but to Rex it does. He’s never thought about her in this light before. He’s a little jealous, if he’s being honest with himself (which he’s not).
Their lips part briefly as Ahsoka moves, turning to straddle Rex’s legs. It’s awkward, balanced on the fallen beam; she has to sit too close, her weight resting over Rex’s groin, stoking that fire in his gut, warming him more than their actual, pathetic fire could ever aspire to. His face flushes. He bites back a moan, and breaks the kiss. “Ahsoka—”
She rolls her hips, just a little, but enough to catch Rex’s words in his throat. She’s doing this on purpose.
She meets his eyes. “Do you want to?”
Oh, stars. “We shouldn’t.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He knows it’s not, and yes, he wants to. He’s just a man, and every muscle in his body is tensed and ready to take this woman. His self-control is waning. He tries a different angle. “ You don’t want this,” he says. “You can’t. I— I’m just—”
“Just what?”
Just a clone. Just a number. One of millions. Not unique. Not special. Not what she deserves.
“Tell me ‘no’,” she says, when he doesn’t manage an answer out loud, “but don’t tell me what I want, Rex.”
And there, right there, she has him. She doesn’t seem to know it, but she does. Just hours ago, he’d had a chip in his brain that stripped him of his free will, and it hadn’t made him this helpless. “I will never say ‘no’ to you, Commander Ahsoka Tano.”
She searches his gaze, presumably for a lie. She’ll find none. Her eyes are bluer than the Kaminoan seas, and Rex is drowning, but he is not lying. He’ll never lie to her, either.
She backs up, out of his lap, and stands. For a moment, he thinks she’s changed her mind, and he can’t decide if he’s more disappointed or relieved. Then, she removes her cloak from around his shoulders, and spreads it out on the floor. She turns back to him . Her gaze locks on his. Neither of them speak, but an understanding passes between them, nonetheless. They need this. They both need this; Ahsoka as much—if not more than—Rex, and Rex will never deny Ahsoka what she needs.
He stands, and the perfect height to place a kiss on top of her head. Her montrals brush against his cheeks as he begins to remove her right gauntlet. He lets the small piece of armor fall, and presses his lips to the pulse in her newly exposed wrist. Oh, she’s warm. Warm and soft, tasting of smoke and metal. Rex wonders what she would taste like if she hadn’t just been through battle. She hums, eyes closed, and tilts her face up. Hesitation gone, at least for the moment, he kisses her lips again, pulling her closer with his other hand on the small of her back. She places her bare hand on the back of his head and pulls him closer still, deepening the kiss while he swaps hands and begins to fumble with her remaining gauntlet, still purposeful, still controlled. He hasn’t lost himself yet. He aims to keep it that way.
Once both her arms are rid of armor, she takes Rex’s face in her hands, and flicks the tip of her tongue into his mouth. He shudders pleasantly, and maybe he does lose himself just a little bit, because his tongue is in her mouth now, twined with hers, tasting, exploring. She runs as hot inside her mouth as she does outside. Rex can’t help but wonder how hot she runs elsewhere. His half-hard cock pulses at the mere thought, and he can’t stop the swell of guilt that follows. There’s still something inside him insisting he shouldn’t think about her this way. Whether that’s because he’s known her since she was so young, or because she was his superior for so long, or something else entirely, he doesn’t have a clue. All he knows is that it’s dizzying, the combination of yes and no and please and stop fighting to the forefront of his mind. Through it all, though, she’s there in his arms, a constant presence. Solid and steady. As she has been: his rock in a storm.
He has trusted her with his life more times than he can count. Why should he stop only now that she’s offering him something more than survival? If she’s offering him comfort, if she’s offering him pleasure, to offset the agony lodged deep below his ribs—why shouldn’t he accept? Should he not offer the same in return?
Too soon, the kiss slows and ends, and Ahsoka backs up, but this time—well, this time, she hooks her fingers in the neck of Rex’s body glove, and takes him with her. She lowers herself down onto her cloak on the ground, looking up at him with eyes more black than blue now, knees brushing against his hips as she plants her feet on either side of him. He cages her in with his arms. His heart thunders in his chest, pumping blood directly downwards at an impressive speed that leaves him lightheaded. She places a hand over his heart.
“Have you done this before?” she asks. Her eyes roam over his body, still almost completely covered with his body glove. The fabric is thin, though, and tight, and it stretches. Rex is sure she can see the evidence of his arousal just fine.
His throat is too dry to speak. He swallows, and croaks, “Yeah. Have you?”
“Not all of it.”
Oh, gods. “Are you sure you want to?”
“I’m sure. I—” She pulls her gaze back up to his. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, now. I want to know what it feels like, with you.”
With me. Rex turns this over in his mind. A slip of the tongue, or something more? He’d never considered that Ahsoka might have had a…a crush on him, before. The possibility shouldn’t come as a surprise though, should it? She was in her early teens, when they met, and he looks older than her. They had certainly spent enough time together. It would make perfect sense for her to feel some amount of curiosity towards him, at least. Still, it’s…odd. And maybe Rex has the wrong idea completely. He’s a clone. He shares a face with millions of men. He was never meant to be singled out. She is singling him out, though, and he won’t disappoint her.
She moves on. “You have an implant, right?”
“Of course. You?”
She shakes her head.
They need to fix that. They need to fix that yesterday . Rex can’t believe she’s been running around the galaxy all these years without a contraceptive implant, but he’ll have time to worry about that later, while he’s overanalyzing how willing she was to have sex with him before confirming that at least one of them was protected. (She really doesn’t think she’s going to survive long, does she?)
She reaches around him to unzip his body glove in the back, and he sighs softly in relief. It always feels good to take the damn thing off. It always feels better when a woman takes it off him. It feels even better when that woman is Ahsoka Tano. Rex straightens up on his knees to pull his arms out of the long sleeves, letting the top half of the garment fall down around his waist. The soft, quick intake of Ahsoka’s breath, and the slight widening of her eyes as she splays her hand over his abdominal muscles, fills him with an unexpected sense of awe. She finds him attractive. She finds him attractive.
“What—what have you done, before?” Rex asks, battling with himself to stay coherent.
“I’ve…touched. Been touched,” she says, and Rex doesn’t miss the way her hand shifts slightly lower on his stomach. Stars, but he’s aware of that . She shrugs, and now her smile is tinged with embarrassment. “I’ve…given a blowjob before.”
Rex can’t think too hard about Ahsoka with a cock in her mouth. It’s an uncomfortable combination of arousal and jealousy that has him gritting his teeth. It was probably that Onderonian kid, he thinks, and Rex’s traitorous mind immediately conjures up images of Bonteri with a smug, satisfied grin on his face as he gets Ahsoka on her knees.
Rex pushes those thoughts away, violently. “Has anyone ever used their mouth on you? ”
“No,” Ahsoka answers, and if that isn’t the biggest load of banthashit Rex has ever heard. Not that he doesn’t believe her—he does—but if she put her mouth on someone, the least they should have done was return the favor.
One at a time, Ahsoka lifts her knees to her chest to remove her boots and set them aside. Rex takes this permission for what it is, and slides his hands up under her skirt. He hooks his fingers into the waistband of her leggings, she lifts her hips, and he pulls, easing them off her legs and exposing her to him. He has to convince himself that it’s okay to look. She’s offering. She’s not his superior, anymore. (She’ll always be his superior.)
Rex has never been with a togruta before, but her anatomy is more or less what he expects—a soft, slick opening between her legs. She doesn’t have hair anywhere on her body, but her orange skin fades to blue around her entrance, to similar effect, drawing the eye. Rex’s cock throbs in the confines of his body glove. Raw, animal instinct is pounding at the inside of his ribcage. He wants to pin her down and bury his cock inside her as deep as it will go. He won’t (yet), but gods, the urge is there. He bites back a groan.
One hand on her knee, he looks up at her face as he reaches down, between her legs. He watches her eyes widen and her lips part on a gasp as he presses a finger into her. She runs even hotter down there. Wet, too, easing Rex’s entrance as he slips a second finger in beside the first. He curls them back towards himself, and she gasps, jerking tensely. He freezes, worried he’s hurt her, but the soft look on her face reveals a very different sentiment. She liked that. Rex strokes that spot again. It’s just inside her entrance; he’ll be able to reach it with his tongue. He suddenly can’t wait to get his mouth on her. He only laments that he won’t be able to see her face as well as he sinks to his stomach, but it’s worth it when the smell of her finally hits him. It’s light, sweet, almost floral, with an undercurrent of something damp and heady that the simpler part of his brain instantly recognizes as sex. Hesitation gone, he pulls her legs over his shoulders, braces himself on his elbows, and presses a filthy, open-mouthed kiss against her opening.
“ Oh ,” she gasps. Her thighs clamp down around Rex’s ears. “Oh, stars, Rex—”
Rex chuckles— Oh, she likes that, does she? —and slips his tongue inside her, aiming for that spot he’d found before. He knows he’s found it again when she cries out, arching her back and scrabbling for something to hold onto. Her hands find his. He laces their fingers together.
She tastes like she smells—strangely sweet. Rex isn’t sure if he would find it pleasant on anyone else, but he sure as hell finds it pleasant on Ahsoka, panting and whimpering beneath him. Her inexperience is showing, and pride fills Rex’s chest. He knows he won’t be the only man to have her like this, but he’ll be the first. He’ll always be the first. There’s still guilt, too, poking at his gut. After all she’s been through, she’s still innocent of something, and Rex is going to take that from her.
She asked him to.
So he holds her hands while she grips them tight, and he presses his tongue over and over against the spot inside of her that makes her squirm and moan until she screams.
“Ah— Rex!”
She comes, shaking, with his name on her lips.
When it’s said and done, she’s boneless and out of breath, eyes closed and brow furrowed. Rex has seen her after a hundred battles, not reduced to this. He allows himself a selfish, cocky grin. She doesn’t see it, anyway.
They release each other’s hands, and Rex rises to his knees. He strokes her thigh. “How was that?”
“That was—” She pants. “It was amazing, Rex. I’ve never—”
Rex frowns. “Don’t tell me you’ve never finished, before.”
“Not with anyone else. Besides myself, I mean.”
Well , Rex wants to say, then you weren’t with the right ‘anyone else’. He doesn’t, though.
“Let me—” Ahsoka sits up, and reaches for his body glove, still hanging loose around his waist. He catches her wrist.
“Wait a minute.”
“But—”
“I’ll get mine, don’t you worry, but I want it inside you. If…that’s still alright.”
She nods, immediately and eagerly.
“So give yourself a minute, and whenever you’re ready…”
She nods again, and leans her forehead against Rex’s shoulder. He wraps his arm around her back. She’s safe against his chest. The most precious being in the galaxy. Rex closes his eyes, so he can pretend they’re somewhere else. Somewhere soft and warm. Safe. Somewhere besides a site of disaster, surrounded by ghosts even younger in death than they were in life.
He feels when Ahsoka’s muscles relax. Hears her breathing return to its natural, unhurried pace. He strokes the smooth skin of her shoulder blade with a curled hand, and turns his head to brush his lips against her montrals. She responds by tilting her head up and kissing his lips. She’s ready. “Lie down,” he tells her, and she does.
He doesn’t need anything else; the mere idea of what he’s about to do has his cock stiffening again. And beyond that, she’s looking up at him now, her most vulnerable, open and trusting him to be good to her. He rolls his body glove down past his hips, groaning as his cock finally slips free. He’s rock hard and dripping already, and she hasn’t even touched him. Rex doesn’t want her to. All Rex wants her to do is lie back, take it, and enjoy herself.
He leans over her again, holding himself up with one hand and taking his cock in the other. He guides his cock to her entrance. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
Rex keeps his eyes on her face as he pushes against her, watches her brow crease as the pressure builds, hears her short, sharp exclamation when her body finally gives way and takes him in. A moan catches in his throat. Nothing could have prepared him for how hot and tight she feels around the head of his cock, how soft and perfect. He has to bite his tongue to get his wits about him.
“Relax.” One hand now free, he cups her cheek, and strokes it with his thumb. “Just relax.”
She places her hands on his shoulders, and takes a deep breath. Her blue eyes open. She meets his gaze. She looks—is— beautiful.
“Good,” Rex says, when what he means is you’re bloody amazing. Slowly, he shifts his hips forward. She whimpers, and bites her lip. He continues to stroke her cheek. “You’re doing so well, Ahsoka.”
She whimpers again, but this one is less pained, more…pleased. It soothes some of the worry still clenching insistently at Rex’s heart.
It’s painful, the slow pace with which he enters her, stopping every second for her to adjust and breathe. It isn’t long before Rex’s arm is trembling, and he lowers himself down onto his elbow, bringing their faces closer together. He rests his forehead against hers. He can feel her rapid breath across his cheeks, focuses on that. Finally, after a minute—it feels like ages—he draws back, and rocks back in, slowly, just a little bit farther than before.
“ Ahh, ” Ahsoka exhales shakily. “Rex—”
“Are you alright?”
“Mm. Yes.”
“Say something,” Rex is already drawing back again, “if it hurts too bad.”
She says nothing, only adjusts her arms around his shoulders, and whines softly as he sinks deeper into her. He continues to work her open at a glacial pace, with minute, aborted movements of his hips that seem to be getting him nowhere except dangerously close to his own climax. He bites his tongue, closes his eyes, remembers where they are and the tragedy that brought them here—anything to distract himself from the soft, wet heat enveloping his cock and firing pleasure up his spine. Every breathy whimper that falls past Ahsoka’s lips is anotherI blaster bolt, reminding Rex who exactly is lying underneath him, and exactly what he is doing to her. It’s all too much, and not enough.
He moans in relief when he bottoms out, hips pressed against the insides of her thighs, and chances a look down at her. She looks like the best type of dream, with her closed eyelids fluttering and her bottom lip clamped beneath her teeth, legs spread wide to accommodate him. He immediately closes his eyes again, and rests his lips against the top of her head, not to kiss but just to breathe her in. He knows he could lose himself easily, now. He grinds in deep, circling his hips, and oh, she must like that as much as he does, because her body arches off the ground and up against his, and she lets out a broken cry.
“Oh, gods, Ahsoka…” Rex grinds into her again, and again, and again, barely pulling out between each thrust, mindlessly trying to get closer to her. His mind has gone thick and hazy with the smell of sex. It’s getting harder to focus on Ahsoka. He wants to make her cum again, then cum inside her, fill her and claim her. He wants to cradle her close to him when he does, pretend they’re real lovers instead of soldiers seeking primal comfort in the midst of unfathomable tragedy. It would be easier to ignore the circumstances if she was someone else, someone he could fuck selfishly and walk away from in the end, but it wouldn’t be as good. He knows it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t scratch the itch so buried within him he hadn’t known it was there until she touched it—the urge to bond to a woman, fully and unbreakably, to give himself to her in mind, body, and soul. To be together with her, two halves of one whole, something greater than they are apart.
“Come here,” he pants, sliding one of his arms under Ahsoka’s back. He hauls her upright with him, sitting back on his heels, and her straddling his lap. She takes the movement in stride, and follows his lead when he puts his hands on her hips and begins to move her. In this position, he has to look up to see her face. She’s looking down, open-mouthed and glassy eyed, at the place where their bodies connect. Rex knows better than to do the same. Oh, but he can imagine it—her pretty blue entrance stretched around the base of his cock, soaked with her slick. He can imagine her core muscles contracting and toes curling as her pleasure mounts again.
He slides his hands up her sides, around her back, but she keeps riding him just like he showed her. Each roll of her hips down onto his cock pushes him ever closer to the precipice of release. He tugs her in, hugging her around her waist, and she tightens her arms around his shoulders. He begins to grind up against her in time with the rhythm she’s maintaining, slightly slower than the one Rex set. It’s good, though. Better than. It’s slow enough now for Rex to feel every shift, every ripple around his cock. He groans, muffled against her shoulder, and clings to her, digging his fingers into the back of her dress and fantasizing about ripping the whole damn thing off her.
“ Oh, ” she pants, and her rhythm falters. “Rex—” He crushes her against him, and moves her with his own thrusts. She gasps. “ Rex! ”
He can feel the tension in her body build through every point of contact, including and especially inside her, until her thighs begin to tremble, and her fingernails dig into his shoulders as she spasms around his cock, sobbing through her second orgasm. “Shh, shh, I’ve got you,” Rex murmurs, barely coherent enough to form the words. “That’s it, Ahsoka. It’s alright.”
She collapses onto him, still trembling and holding onto his shoulders, and he takes a moment to bask in his accomplishment before his body demands its due, greedily seeking more. He places one hand on the back of her head, and holds her like the precious thing she is as his thrusts come faster and less controlled, driving himself quickly and steadily towards his own release. He loses himself in the smell of her, and the shape of her in his arms. Whispers her name into the soft skin where her neck meets her shoulder.
(Gods, he’s so glad she’s alive.)
When his climax overtakes him, pulsing mercilessly through his cock, it’s not the wave of pleasure he’s used to. It feels more like destruction, white-hot and blinding. Deafening. Agonizing in its totality. It leaves him shaking, burning, breathless. It claims him like the wreckage around them claimed his brothers. A different kind of death. He welcomes it. It’s only fair.
But when the smoke clears, Rex gets to breathe cold air back into his lungs. He comes to with his best friend in his arms, brain fogged with warmth and satisfaction. Ahsoka looks down at him. The dim firelight glints off tear tracks on her face. Only when she takes his face in her hands and brushes her thumbs across his cheeks does he realize he has them, too.
She is all he has left.
“Are you alright?” he asks her. The fog is only beginning to lift, but he’s able to think a bit more clearly even now. It starts to settle in, what he’s done, like a stone in his stomach.
“Yes,” she says. She’s breathless, but sounds sure, and he lets that calm him.
He guides her off his lap, and she grunts softly as his softening cock slips out of her. His seed leaks out between her legs, tinged pink with a bit of blood—a sick reminder that this was her first time, on the cold ground in a destroyed Venator, by the light of a dying fire. She deserves better.
When he drags his gaze back up to her face, hers is waiting for him, a blue so impossibly bright. She takes his face in her hands and leans in for a tender kiss. Rex shivers. He could pretend it’s from the cold, and not the utter rapture he feels, in a brain still fogged from equal parts orgasm and grief. Where do they go from here? He has lost everything, except for her —this young woman with an unmerited target on her back, sentenced to death for a treason she didn’t commit.
He will proudly walk beside her into whatever hell she has to face.
They clean up and redress one another in silence. Perhaps the gravity of their actions is weighing on Ahsoka, as well. What has occurred, cannot be altered. It’s not only about the sex. It never was.
He gathers her into his arms, and they cling to one another, lying together on her cloak, as what’s left of their fire dims. Rex feels a slight draft through the wreckage. Gentle as a breath, it smothers what’s left of the flame, and one final curl of smoke dissipates into thin air, just like that. He can’t help but think it’s one of his brothers, watching, disapproving, snuffing out their light.
There will be no sleep for either of them, tonight.