It's Commander Tano, Not Padawan

Chapter 28

Note: Thank you to my beta WildHoneyProse! Now, I present you with angst. 

Neither Rex nor Ahsoka were asleep despite their best efforts.

Eyes burning and heavy with a sluggish pulsing in their heads, the two laid there, staring at the ceiling of Ahsoka's bunk. Ahsoka couldn't tell which sensations were her own and which were Rex's and it was driving her ever closer to the edge of panic.

Which she was sure Rex could feel too.

"Rex," she whispered hoarsely, not moving from her place in his arms.

There was a pause where she felt his instant-long consideration of pretending to be asleep before he responded. "Yes?"

"Can you feel... this?" Ahsoka asked, well aware of what his answer was going to be, but unsure of what else to say. They couldn't not acknowledge whatever had happened in the medbay.

The pause was even longer that time and when he finally answered, she flinched.

"Yes," his voice reverberated in her mind.

Ahsoka didn't know what to say. She kept her mouth shut even as her heart threatened to climb its way up her throat.

"Was this – on purpose?" Rex's internal question sounded exactly like his own voice would sound, but she knew her Captain had never moved his lips. Besides the fact he was laying at her side, there was just something... distinct about his new place in her mind.

Swallowing back the uncertainty that was threatening to overwhelm her, Ahsoka tried speaking silently for the second time in the past hour. "No – I'm as lost here as you are. I don't know what I did for this to happen. I would never – "

Ahsoka sighed, frustrated as she dug her nails into the palm of her hand. "I would never purposely invade your mind like this. It's driving me up the wall."

She wasn't lying. Though she was likely more familiar with having other beings rummaging about in her thoughts and feelings than the majority of sentients, Ahsoka had never experienced this level of complete lack of privacy before, even with Anakin.

Rex chuckled quietly, but his relief was a tangible thing, and she knew he could feel her sincerity-regret-confusion.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I was calling on the Daughter for help like she told me to, but she never said this would happen. She didn't speak at all, actually."

"The Daughter? From Mortis?" Rex asked, bewildered. His actual voice was oddly loud after their telepathic conversation. "What does she have to do with this?"

Ahsoka forgot she had never told him about her hallucination-like meditation session and kriff, was she too tired to explain it all.

But Rex more than deserved an explanation.

"Remember when I told you I had a really weird meditation a couple days ago after everything with Fives?"

He hummed, rubbing a thumb across her hand.

Ahsoka scoffed, still disbelieving of the entire encounter. "Well, apparently, it's possible to commune with the dead."

Not only did his silence speak for itself, but his confusion-uncertainty-disbelief rang through with overwhelming clarity. She didn't wait for the verbalization of his unspoken concerns.

"I know it sounds crazy – I'm not sure if I even fully believe it myself – but when I was searching for your chip, I was going in blind. I had no clue what I was doing, but then something in the Force just... clicked. You might not remember – you might not have even felt it. I'm not sure, but there was a phrase that guided me. 'I am –".