Note: Just another random disclaimer. Star Wars: The Clone Wars isn't mine. Just playing some of Dave's characters. Also, the line "Tell all the truth but tell it slant," that I use IS NOT mine. It's a reference that belongs to Emily Dickinson. (P.S. I read each one of your comments and I love hearing your thoughts. Even if they're like, kind of super random sometimes lol.)
Taking in the painted 18 on the durasteel wall, Ahsoka pulled herself out of the patrol gunship, the unceasing white noise of the Coruscant traffic muffling the thud of Rex's drop behind her.
Ahsoka glanced back at him and almost wished she hadn't. With brows pinched tight and an anxious clench of his jaw, he didn't look confident.
She couldn't blame him either.
Ahsoka hadn't told him her... contingency plan, both with the desire that it wouldn't end up being needed and for the safety of everyone involved. Though she tried to push it away, something within her told her she was holding out false hope.
If what little she had heard of Fives' story was true, then he couldn't stay on Coruscant.
Taking a deep breath, Ahsoka said, "Well, let's go bring him home, Rex," doing her best to project certainty she didn't truthfully possess.
Rex grimaced.
She stepped into the darkness, blocking the faint light spilling in from outside, Rex's shadowy form meshing with hers, covering her six.
It seemed to be an industrial warehouse of some sort – definitely not GAR. Organization was almost nonexistent, providing more than enough cover. She paused, knowing her Captain would recognize what she was doing and wait.
Opening herself to the Force, Ahsoka sought a familiar signature, knowing if he wasn't there to meet them as he said he would, there was little she could do to protect him.
Come on, Fives.
But then his bright, unique light hazed in the Force plane within her mind, and she knew he was there. Ahsoka couldn't pinpoint his exact location, but he was at least there.
Conflicting, abrupt spikes of angry confusion radiated from him, unnatural through the continual worry-fear-frustration.
Withdrawing, the darkness caressed her skin as she nodded, still scanning for their brother. "He's here," she confirmed quietly for Rex.
The clone was standing close enough that his relieved sigh fanned hot across the flesh of her back lek and she had to bite back a shiver as it was replaced once more by the chilled afternoon air wafting in.
The illumination only extended a few yards before even her predator's eyes couldn't pick up much of anything and she pulled her saber from her belt, igniting it before them as a guide.
"Fives?" she called out, cautious. "Fives, we're here."
He didn't answer. There was no sound beyond the gradually diminishing hum of the traffic, but she tried again. Giving up simply wasn't an option.
"Please. Come on out. We just want to talk to you," she pleaded earnestly. Ahsoka meant it. Before they would do anything else – regardless of orders – Fives would talk, and they would listen to everything he had to say.
We are missing something.
Still, for another instant, there was no response. Ahsoka knew he was there, but she was growing worried.
Then -
Then his voice echoed through the upper catwalks, positioned in such a way neither could truly identify the origin. But it was so, so reassuring to hear him alive, as dire as the situation was.
"Commander Tano. Thank you. Thank you for trusting me," he said, voice off in some way Ahsoka couldn't quite place. Whatever it was, Rex noticed too, their concerned eyes meeting, a silent question passing between the two.
His words wrapped around her heart, taunt as a barbed wire, digging into the raw, exposed tissue.
Always, Fives.
However, his next question didn't do much to calm her strained nerves and Rex peered over at her with an arched brow.
"Now, have you come without troops?" he asked.
Ahsoka took a breath.
The Force was with them.
"We have," she confirmed, still turning, still searching for a faint reflection of armor or eyes.
"Put down your weapons then," he demanded. Begged.
Desperation. That was the foreign influx in his words that she had seen earlier in his holoimage. It hadn't left him, seeming to join itself with the man as if it was twisted in his very soul. Like it had become a piece of him instead of an invader.
What did they do to you, Fives?
Ahsoka felt Rex's eyes upon her, breath paused in anticipation for her decision. She dipped her head once, jerkily as she extinguished her saber, allowing the darkness to expand, though the overhead lights provided rays just strong enough for her to clearly see Rex's contoured form.
Hooking her weapon back to her belt, her Captain spoke loud and clear, both DC's drawn. "All right. I'm putting my pistols down," he said, lowering the blasters on to the crate to their left.
Neither had found the source of Fives' voice and they shifted around one another, ever alert.
As kindly as she could, Ahsoka asked, "What are we here for, Fives?"
"I need your help," he replied, response reverberating ominously off the boundless quantity of durasteel material.
Despite the circumstances, Ahsoka smiled, if only to herself.
"That, we can do. But we need you to come down here and talk to us. Let us figure out what you need, Fives."
There was a pause and Rex shuffled closer to her as they waited for him to decide, uneasy. But then a skeptical inquiry reached her montrals and Ahsoka couldn't restrain her wince.
"You – you promise just to listen?" he asked, mistrustful that they would agree so easily.
"Yeah, Fives. We just want to listen – to hear your side of the story. We promise."
That's all I wanted when I was where you are now.
Another longer bout of silence dragged on as she could sense his suspicion-fear-disbelief-sincerity radiate from his deliberations. So much could go wrong here. The Guard could find them, Fives really could have lost it –
But no. The Force had been warning her, prodding at her since the very beginning of this entire disaster. It had chosen her – not Anakin, not Masters Tiplar or Tiplee. Her.
She would follow it through till the very end and her instincts told her Fives was innocent. That he could be trusted.
However, none of that would matter if they didn't act swiftly. The Guard were good soldiers, and they were increasing their chances of being found with every second that passed.
"O – Okay. Just... please, hear what I have to say and... don't move." As he spoke, his voice slowly drew back, and they were finally able to estimate where he was at.
Yet, nothing could have prepared Ahsoka for what her eyes were greeted with.
She gasped, bringing a shocked hand to her mouth as tears welled up involuntarily before she could choke them back.
Oh, Fives.
Everything that had made Fives who he was in Ahsoka's mind had been stripped from him. The cocky confidence that was oft the origin of her amusement had been replaced with a hunched and jittery form. Eyes that had so commonly twinkled with mirth were twitchy in agitation, darting around shiftily. His armor – armor that he had painted with Echo, that he had been so proud of and teased her about how their stripes matched – was gone. Hair he had been so meticulous about maintaining had been shaved from his scalp, leaving a rough and uneven fuzz in its wake.
Someone did this to him.
That realization felt like a vibroblade to the chest, dug down to the hilt and she bit back a snarl.
The lingering doubt that had tagged along despite her best attempts to banish it disappeared in full. Clone troopers, as they had established, didn't just snap.
The differences in symptoms between Tup and Fives were so dissimilar, there was no way they could have both been caused by the same thing. Besides, if anyone had bothered to listen to her, they would realize that Fives' Force signature hadn't changed, despite everything else. He was still Fives.
That meant someone did this to him. Someone was hiding something.
But now is not the time.
"Go ahead, Fives," she prompted, molding and containing her revelation for a safer, more secure time. A time when Fives was off Coruscant.
Guess we will need the back-up plan.
He hesitated for a moment, almost like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. "I was framed because I know the truth," he began, gesticulating restlessly with the manner of a man who didn't know if he fully believed what he was even saying. As if it were too crazy to believe. "The truth about a plot, a massive deception."
Get in line, vod.
Ahsoka didn't have words – didn't want to interrupt him in fear of sending him off an increasingly frantic ledge - but Rex stepped up to her side, dubious. "By whom?" he demanded.
Fives didn't seem all too put off by the question though his words tore from his lips in an roar. Yet, Ahsoka didn't feel as though it was them that he was enraged at, but the information itself.
"Well, there's a sinister plot in the works against the Jedi," he cried, nails digging into his head with a vice-like grip.
What?
Ahsoka whipped her head towards Rex, eyes wide, blood buh-bumping wildly though her. Had Fives managed to stumble upon the growing cloud of darkness that was surrounding the Light?
"I have proof of it!" he shouted, slapping his gloved fingers against the borrowed chest plate.
Ahsoka wanted to let him continue. Let him explain what he had found in explicit detail, but there wasn't time.
A small pressure had begun building in the back of her mind, the Force trying to warn her of something. That something was coming.
We have to leave. Now.
"Fives," she cut him off, doing her best to convey as much urgency in her voice as she could. "Fives, I believe you. But we have to go now."
Ahsoka turned to Rex, not waiting for the ARC's response.
"Rex, how far are you willing to go to save him?" she asked, eyes searching his, seeking some type of answer because she had to know. What she had lined up, if anyone found out, would make fugitives of the Republic, that Ahsoka was sure of.
If he wanted out, she needed to know now.
Her Captain stared back at her, brows scrunched in confusion before it clicked. She had a plan. Of course, she had a plan.
Swallowing back the sudden onslaught of questions that ran rampant through his mind, the Captain shook his head, incredulous. She was crazy. Kark, he was crazy for knowing exactly what his answer was without a second's hesitation.
But it was the honest to Force truth.
"Wherever you lead, Ahsoka, I've got your back."
His eyes never left hers, honest and open in the face of his admission and it was then, in that moment, that Ahsoka felt as if she had been shot point-blank in the chest. As if someone had lifted a veil from over her eyes as she stared back and everything about him seemed just a little sharper, crisper. It was an awareness that slammed into her at the most inconvenient, inopportune of times.
I'm in love with him.
She had loved him for a long time, his loyalty and friendship surpassing anyone she had ever known, but this was different. This was what they had been toeing around. This was a 'I want to hold you through the night, every night for the rest of my life because if you aren't there, I feel like I'm missing a part of myself.'
I'm in love with Rex.
But all she could afford him was a tight, pinched smile even as her new insight left her mind reeling and stomach rolling, adding a whole new level of chaos to her existence.
Captain-kriffing-Rex.
So Ahsoka shoved that down too, locking it tight within the deep recesses of her mind though her heart ached in protest.
She had a job to do.
If committing high treason against the Republic was considered a job.
Turning back to Fives, who was watching their whole exchange with a cagey, guarded air, waiting to see if he was going to have to run, Ahsoka implored him, "I want to hear everything you have to say, but you're not safe on Coruscant, Fives. If you say you're being framed, I believe you, but you have to trust me. I can get you somewhere safe – somewhere where there are no Jedi, no Kaminoans. There, you can tell us what you found. But I must know, do you trust me?"
The one, two, three, four heartbeats passed with captive breath, lungs ceasing to rise and fall until the clone nodded, hesitant but growing steadier.
"Yes, Commander. I – I trust you."
Even as she felt her heart wrench painfully in her chest, Ahsoka smiled gently at him. "Thank you, Fives. And I know you're not going to like this – and I'll explain as best I can later – but right now, I'm going to stun you. If you wake up, no matter what, don't move. Don't breathe. Got it?"
The apprehensive grimace twisting his features made it abundantly clear he was not comfortable with her order, but he agreed. "Fine."
The pressure was extending its tendrils ever wider from the base of her skull.
We're running out of time.
Extending her hand, Ahsoka Force-pulled one of the pistols, the hilt of the blaster smacking cool against her palm. Checking just one more time that it was set to stun, she pointed it at Fives, doggedly ignoring how he flinched as she wasted no time in pulling the trigger.
Blue ray pulsed once from the barrel of Rex's DC, hitting Fives' dead-center in the chest only for him to drop to the floor, head lying limp against his arms
Ahsoka swallowed thickly, refusing to even acknowledge the disturbing parallels of their situation.
Wolffe – No!
Instead, she shoved the weapon into Rex's chest, unable to look him in the eyes for so many reasons, all of them unimportant if they were caught.
"Help me get him to the ship. We must hurry. I'm pretty sure the Guard is almost here," she commanded, hastening over to the fallen man's side. Ahsoka threw an armor-clad arm over her shoulder with Rex sliding in on the other side, taking a large portion of the weight due to their height differences.
Pausing only to grab Rex's second pistol, the sound of their boots scuffling against the grimy floor mixed harshly with small, labored huffs.
"So," Rex grunted. "What's the plan?"
They didn't have to go far, but between the dead-weight of a full grown, armored clone and cramped passages, their progress was slower than Ahsoka would have preferred.
"Fives is going in the back and you'll stay with him, guarding. I'll be piloting." Ahsoka winced as her lek was pinched between the plates of plastoid. Heart pounding, trapped in the cage of her ribs, her adrenaline soared. They were almost to the door.
They were going to make it.
They had to.
Failure was simply not an option.
"Everything is going to move quickly now. Once Fives is secure and we're in the air, I'll tell you what happens next, but we'll have to line our stories up later."
She shut her mouth as they shuffled awkwardly through the tight entrance. There were security cams and probes all over Coruscant. Ahsoka hadn't seen any in the warehouse, but, then again, she hadn't been able to see much of anything. She made a mental note to check as soon as she had the chance.
Tapping in the code, the ramp opened and they hurriedly lumbered him up inside, dropping Fives onto the hovercot within.
The presence, invasive and unpleasant, was still there – still growing stronger.
We're not out of the clear yet.
Briefly, her eyes caught Rex's and she froze as her mind seemed to snag with a reminder of her new understanding, just for an instant – a snippet of time, drinking in his single-minded determination. His dedication.
He's a good man. My good Captain. Who I'd like to be more than friends with.
Who's about to lose a brother if you can't stay focused on the task at hand.
"Ahsoka?" Rex asked quietly, gaze darting over her head in search of some unseen threat he thought she might be sensing.
Heat creeped up Ahsoka's neck and she flinched guilty, dropping her eyes to Fives' slack form.
"Sorry. Lost focus for a second."
Karking inappropriate – unprofessional, Ahsoka. Self – kriffing – control.
"Someone – likely the Guard – is almost here. We need to leave," she said, resolutely ignoring his searching gaze and not giving him time to respond or question. Instead, she turned on her heel and shut the ramp, all but running to cockpit.
Piloting was, amidst all the chaos, a task she could do, one that even came easy to her after years of practice in various warzones. It was simple, familiar, and, above all, calming.
Well, it wasn't calming when she wasn't being shot at. Then it was an adrenaline high.
In this instance, however, going through the motions of prepping and guiding the patrol gunship was the exact ritual she needed to sooth her anarchic mental state where everything was simply going up in flames.
Know your purpose, Padawan.
Within no time, they were off the platform of 18, leaving sector I-19 and the cradle of their crimes behind.
As they steadily rose, the Force warning gradually faded, till it disappeared entirely when an LAAT/i flew past them, focused wholly on reaching the warehouse they had just abandoned.
It was only then that Ahsoka released the breath she had unconsciously been holding prisoner.
Grabbing her comm, Ahsoka opened the channel.
"Rex?"
"Here."
"Alright, we've only got about a fifteen minute window to pull this off. The Guard just passed – they didn't notice us – so we're at least clear for a little while longer. I have a plan to get Fives off-planet, but, um, you're not going to like it."
"What do you mean?" he asked, wary.
"If Fives says he's being framed and the Chancellor is even remotely involved, he's a dead man walking. Which means we have to make him disappear in a way that no one will even think he's out there." Ahsoka paused, waiting for Rex to connect the dots of what she was saying.
"Are... Are you suggesting we fake his death?"
She hesitated but set her jaw. "Yes."
Ten seconds turned to twenty turned to thirty with static as the only reply she received. "Rex?"
A sigh filtered through as he finally responded, resigned. "I – Okay."
Ahsoka wanted so badly to explain why, to justify her course of action, but they needed to press forward. She knew, first-hand, just how messed up doing something like this was, but she hadn't seen any other option.
Her stomach rebelled and bile crawled up her throat before she could swallow, bitter acid stinging the back of her mouth.
"After I comm Anakin, I'll give you the signal. You're going to stun yourself, making it look as if Fives did it. From there, I've got it. You'll likely be out of it till Coric or Kix wakes you up."
He sighed again, disapproval evident. "You know, I do expect a full report once this is all done and over with, Commander."
Ahsoka's lips quirked as she swerved into the left lane. "It'd be my pleasure, Captain."
She closed the frequency only to open a different one, Anakin's voice cutting her off before she even had a chance to speak.
"Ahsoka, do you have an update?" he barked, coating his concern in brashness.
"Yes, Master. Rex and I captured Fives. He's stunned in the back with Rex watching over him. We should be at the Temple in about twenty minutes."
"How did you find him so quickly?"
Ahsoka was almost offended by his shocked tone.
One of the most useful – though likely unintended – lessons she had learned from Master Kenobi was the importance of weaving as much honesty as possible into the lie one was creating.
Tell all the truth but tell it slant.
"Fives approached Kix in 79's and gave him coordinates to give to us. We went – "
"Alone?" he scolded.
She just rolled her eyes, releasing her flash of frustration into the Force. "Yes, Anakin, alone. It was just Fives."
"And it was just Fives who tried to assassinate the Chancellor, Ahsoka. Don't forget that," he warned darkly.
He's our friend, Anakin. You shouldn't forget that.
Ahsoka held her breath, stifling her protests. "I know. I'll check to see how Rex is doing once we're done here."
"Very well, Snips. Let me know if the situation changes."
"Will do, Master. See you soon. Ahsoka out."
She took a steadying breath before she flipped back to Rex. Ahsoka knew Anakin cared about Fives, but his unshaking loyalty to the Chancellor seemed to have blinded him to his duty to the pursuit of truth. She wouldn't deny that she was biased in believing Fives. She had been in the exact same position the clone was in just barely over a month ago, but maybe her predisposition to trust him in face of powerful opposition was exactly what he needed.
Ahsoka would be the faithful defender of Fives that Anakin had been to her.
And just like Anakin hadn't failed her, she wouldn't fail Fives.
We will get to the bottom of this, one way or another.
"Rex, come in."
"I'm here. You ready?"
"Yeah. Set it up as best you can, but I'll see and fix what I need to before anyone else finds you." Ahsoka's grip tightened on the handles beneath her palms. "If you aren't awake before I send Fives off, is there anything you want me to tell him?"
He didn't answer immediately, contemplating her question. "If you could, just - just tell him that I wish him the best of luck." Rex paused. "And that if he wasn't telling the truth about being framed, I'll personally haul his shebs back to the Temple."
Ahsoka snorted.
"I might forget that last bit."
"If you think that's best, sir. And Ahsoka?"
"Yes?"
"Good luck."
She had to physically bite her tongue from saying something stupid.
Reckless. Rash. Truth.
"See you on the other side, Rex."