fic: and a peaduck

[whereyourplaceis]

And a Peaduck

As they break atmo, the old frighter pilot asks him for the tenth time whether he’s absolutely sure about being abandoned on a planet where people haven’t even learned how to produce an electical charge. He sounds worried, like he’s somehow invested despite the fact that they’ve known each other for less than three hours. Rex looks out of the windows from the passenger seat in the cockpit, watching as they sail past treetops, across vast mountain areas. He can see rivers flowing far beneath them, the water reflecting the sun back towards the sky.

He checked the coordinates exactly once earlier as he boarded the ship from the nearby star system, Rugat, before affirming that yes, this is indeed the planet. He doesn’t need to check twice.

His fingers itch against his sides. His civilian clothes always make him feel like someone’s stolen his skin.

He doesn’t need to check.

Though honestly, as they descend through the trees towards the forest floor below, he has to force himself not to, to trust his eyes and his senses and what’s left of his faith in rationality. In experience. Experience tells him that General Kenobi wouldn’t give him faulty coordinates, not even - well, he wouldn’t. Experience tells him that quite often, associating with Jedi tends to land you in unforseen circumstances. Experience tells him that this planet is as good as any other if what little info he’s managed to gather before leaving Coruscant is true.

He swallows. The pilot is glancing at him askance, clearly wondering why he’s getting nothing but silence for his trouble but honestly, Rex is working hard enough to convince himself as it is.

Once landed, he unstraps himself, picks up his few belongings and heads outside. The ship’s old engines roar to life and it takes off, the trees in the clearing trembling. Rex looks up towards the tree crowns, then around, before producing a map of the area.

The Capital is about an hour’s walk from here.

He sets off, igoring the voice in his head that screeches in confusion.

What the hell would General Skywalker ever do on this godforsaken rock?

*

The Capital opens up where the forest ends, the trees and undergrowth petering out into dusty roads. He follows them until the gravel beneath his boots become blocks of stone, laid in functional patterns all the way towards the city gate. He’s here early enough that the sun isn’t too harsh and it doesn’t take long before he’s got company in the shape of merchants with heavily-loaded horse-drawn wagons, taking advantage of the coolness of early morning. Keeping his gaze down and his pace steady, Rex heads for the gate further up ahead, passing through without any trouble. He frowns. Clearly a town not particularly concerned with intruders coming in from the north - that could mean a number of things that he won’t be able to verify at this point in time.

He saves it for later.

If necessary.

As he enters the Capital, most of the buildings single-storey, some with gardens and greenery growing from their terasses and roof-tops, he does see patrols here and there, the soldiers dressed in tunics and carrying swords and spears. Nothing electrical, nothing capable of launching any type of projectiles. His own blasters are well-hidden beneath his poncho-like overshirt and though he doesn’t quite fit in on a visual level, people spare him only passing glances if anything. Passing by a small local market, he buys some water and something that looks like a pastry, though it turns out to be filled with spicy meat and a sauce that makes him feel warm on the inside, too.

This place, he thinks, is nothing particularly new after years of visiting planetary systems in the Outer Rim territories. The Efithians aren’t space-faring, which isn’t as rare as people in the Core Worlds might believe. They get by without electricity or any of the advantages associated with it and that might be rarer but it’s hardly unheard of. No, as he makes his way down the broad streets leading towards the city center, Rex takes note of the sheer normality of the place and it seems downright absurd, imagining a Jedi - and his Jedi, even moreso - spending any prolonged amount of time here when he could be pretty much everywhere and anywhere else.

Near the city center, the topography of the Capital’s outline changes. Rather than the relative flatness of the surrounding districts, in the middle of the town the buildings rise and the sungold sandstone walls are replaced with white marble and travertine. Some of it looks religious, some of it more like government - Rex very quickly decides that it doesn’t matter what’s what. He’s not playing that game here, not in any capacity.

Instead, he finds a seat in a small cafe close to one of the many mid-town parks where he settles down to take a break and grab a drink. The heat is starting to feel brutal. As he watches people come and go, he realises that finding General Skywalker in this place won’t be feasible unless he starts asking questions. A part of him doesn’t want to. Another part can’t seem to stop doing it and maybe that’s where the issue truly lies. He’s getting sick of listening to himself.

And just like that, he’s back outside the Chancellor’s windows, watching the most powerful politician in the galaxy point his hands at the General and unleash a storm of lightening from the tips of his fingers. He’s fairly sure Anakin had been screaming - he’d certainly been smoking enough to warrent it - but it seems like the situation has somehow become muted in his memory, reduced to the mental click of his training taking over, asking Jesse to turn on the camera and shooting the Chancellor exactly five seconds later. Perfect aim. Perfect timing.

Just one man, down on the floor, the scorching blaster wound through the back of his head oozing smoke.

Just one more man.

He blinks. Shakes his head and swallows against a sudden wave of nausea and pushes his drink aside. He’s not here for any of that. It doesn’t matter what he did or didn’t do, why or how, not here. Not now. Behind him, a group of young men mostly tumble into their seats by the window, talking loudly enough for everyone to overhear - one of them, in particular, is excited enough for his voice to carry out into the cooking area, the man by the counter shooting him irritated looks from across the room. Rex leans his elbow against the table and sighs, considering the bite-sized sugarcake that came with his drink.

“I tell you, the proposal was perfect - I’d gone over it twice with Arestes and you know what a pain he can be!” The young man slams his cup down on the table. Around him, the rest of his company make affirming noises, lots of sympathetic hmming.

Rex picks up the sugarcake and turns it between his fingers. His neck prickles slightly.

“But what the hell, right? You make the prep, you ask the right people, you lick the correct amount of arse -” Someone shushes them from a table further back. “- and regardless, if you’ve somehow managed to miss the one, stupid arse that apparently matters in the whole fucking Senate… ”

“From what I hear, that wouldn’t get you anywhere with the grand Legislator these days anyway.”

There’s a pause. Rex turns a little for a better listening angle, his whole back tingling at this point with an awareness that usually belongs on the battlefield. The Jedi have the Force, right, that’s their whole gig. Rex has intuition and sometimes, it serves him pretty well too, even if it isn’t nearly as obviously cool.

“Okay, do I look like I give a single fucking fart about whatever idiot Sarica’s currently fucking because in that case -”

“People are saying that he came from space!”

“ - I feel I need to issue a moratorium on all conversational inputs that serve to derail or otherwise negate my experience, I’ve had a fucking shitty day, Antonius and you’re being really disingenius -”

“Do you know, Sarica’s buying him jewelry, like he’s gonna marry him or something? It’s pretty ridiculous.”

“- did I fucking stutter? Have you gone deaf?”

“Around you, friend? Constantly.”

Rex sits frozen by the table, his sugarcake crumbled between his fingers. The conversation behind him doesn’t get any less loud as the man who’d had a horrible day proceeds to get into a shouting match with Antonius who sounds like he’s wearing a shit-eating grin all throughout. All Rex registers, however, is an echo of their previous conversation ringing in the back of his mind along with the rushing of his own blood.

The Legislator. Sarica.

He came from space.

The Chancellor, dead on the floor. Anakin Skywalker, not-quite-unconscious, smoking from his shoulders and his neck, his eyes wide with terror.

With a grunt, he gets to his feet and leaves.

*

It takes him no time at all to find out what he needs (and a lot that he didn’t) about this Sarica, a man who works in the Senate and apparently, the most powerful man in the Capital. Even the most random of people - say, the glass-selling merchant on the great market close to one of the temples - seem to know about him, both things related to his profession and his personal life. Try as he might, Rex can’t seem to weed those latter details out; they come with the territory, the glass-merchant claims. You can’t speak of Sarica the Legislator without speaking of Sarica’s many orgies and clandestine habits.

The more he hears, the more concerned he gets.

They’re well past midday when he finally gets the last detail he needs. He’d naturally assumed that it wouldn’t be easy, making somebody share the private address of a man so evidently prolific but as it were, he’s mid-conversation with a baker when some random old lady passes by and throws out the address like they’re talking about the weather.

So, he could’ve just asked, it turns out.

Roger that.

The baker throws him a knowing look as he excuses himself and Rex has learned enough about Sarica to realise what he’s thinking. The mere implication makes him haunch his shoulders a fraction before he remembers his posture and straightens right back up. Apparently, the man is… for want of a better word, a… slut. Incredibly, impossibly sexed up. Rex, who hasn’t really thought much about sex for the past three years, is doing all that he can not to draw any conclusions regarding the man and his… his connection with the General. It’s nothing, probably. It’s business. It’s… strictly… professional…

Scratching his cropped scalp, Rex heads for the villa. It’s not a long walk, just an hour or so but all the same, when he gets there, he feels completely, mentally exhausted. He pauses by the entrance, wondering whether he ought to just… wait. Observe, for a bit, maybe sneak around a little, just to…

To do what, exactly?

Not for the first time since departing from Coruscant, Rex considers the possibility that General Skywalker doesn’t actually want to see him at all. It’s not like they’re strictly friends and he’s done nothing to stay in contact since leaving for Efith. Ahsoka hadn’t managed to get hold of him either, before she left (finding out about the Chancellor had made the Torgruta visibly discomfited and Rex never managed to figure out all the whys behind that, either - like last time, she’d been gone too quickly).

He did shoot the man’s closest father figure dead and Rex doesn’t know what having parents feels like but he’s fairly certain watching them murdered before your eyes is complicated.

Even if they’d been trying to murder you, first? Presumably.

Ugh.

And now, General Skywalker’s chumming it with a guy who fucks everybody so often that even the beggars on the streets feel entitled to the latest gossip.

A guy who happens to be as powerful as to have the one arse in the Senate that matters.

Rex leans against the wall surrounding the perimeter of the grounds. The villa itself is single-storey like most houses in the Capital but made of granite. The wall is crawling with flowers and vines and the air smells faintly of something fruity and fresh, mixed with the smell of animal manure from the stables.

Something bumps into him at knee-height and he glances down sharply.

It’s not a duck. But it isn’t not a duck, either.

For a moment, Rex stares comically at the round, bird-like creature as it waddles forward again and again, bumping its beak against his legs, its long, colourful tail dragging against the ground. It makes a disturbed sort of quacking-sound every time it makes impact. It’s very nearly hypnotic.

He’s probably procastinating a bit, here.

Lucky for him, he’s saved from trying to collect his wits and his courage because suddenly, the duck-not-duck floats into the air as if grabbed by some invisible force. It keeps quacking at the same, stupid intervals as earlier, even though its no longer colliding with anything solid. It doesn’t seem to notice that its floating at all.

Rex follows the thing as it floats past the entrance and into the gardens beyond because what else is he supposed to do at this point? He walks past the stables, meeting no one on the way. The villa, too, seems relatively empty, though there are sounds coming from what might be the kitchen-area, the tell-tale metal clinks of pots and pans being moved around. The garden is large lined with patches of flowers and fruit trees that he doesn’t recognise. Native to this world, probably.

He comes to a halt as he rounds the next corner. Anakin’s seated cross-legged by the pool, wearing a light-coloured tunic and trousers in the same cut as everybody else Rex has met throughout his day. The bird-creature, still quacking, sails over his head all the way to the pool where he dumps it, none-too-gently, with a loud splash. Rex stays still, back straight but not quite at attention because he doesn’t know, does he, whether he’s supposed to be here, whether he’s even still…

“Rex?” The other man’s looking over his shoulder at him, twisting to make eye-contact.

From the front, he looks exactly the same as ever.

Exhaling a little bit too quickly, Rex says, “General,” and Anakin Skywalker smiles with his whole face, including his eyes.

*

It turns out that the birds are peaducks and so dumb that Anakin - who insists on being on first-name basis with Rex which is obviously mortifying - has taken to using them as focus points whenever he meditates.

“They don’t even notice,” he explains as they meander down the street. As always, Rex has no idea where they’re headed and the thought is so weirdly comforting that he probably ought to be worried. “I’d use, I don’t know, something more like rocks or immaterial things under normal circumstances? But they’re actually, somehow, dumber.” He shrugs. “Don’t ask me why but it works.”

Rex, who has no intentions of asking how the Force works when he’s sober and utterly out of his element to boot, just nods.

“Anyway,” says Anakin (what the hell, what the kriff) and gives Rex another smile, fainter this time but no less friendly. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

It takes him a moment to swallow past the lump in his throat. Now that he’s here and they’re actually talking, he can’t think of anything except how quiet it is around them. No sounds of gunfire, of starfighters falling from the sky. No sounds of his brothers, shouting and screaming and dying. Just the quiet district a good hour away from the center of the Capital, no roaring traffic, no noise.

He could’ve used at least a little.

“I, uh.” He wets his lips, then plunges straight ahead. “I wanted to talk to you about - about what happened back on Coruscant.”

Anakin’s smile has definitely vanished now. He looks away from Rex, his expression hardening.

“I don’t.” Pause. “Want to talk about that, I mean. Not now.”

Rex frowns. “But at some point?”

“Possibly.”

They continue in silence for a while. The air between them has darkened, as if the heat of Efith has been somehow dialed down to something that feels cold, sharp, full of dangerous edges. Rex is fairly certain that a Jedi would’ve felt it more profoundly but regardless, it sticks to them, to Anakin in particular, for at least another hundred metres before it starts to dissipate.

At that point, he’s not really in the mood to do anything except walk. Anakin seems to feel the same.

So they walk.

*

Eventually, they make it to the outskirts of the city, exiting through the northern gate. Anakin takes him to his own ship, an old model that he works on every day, making sure that it’ll take off when he wants it to. He tells Rex about being stranded on Efith more than a year ago, alone. About Sarica, offering him hospitality and materials to get his fighter back into space.

Rex listens, the cold feeling in his stomach growing all the while.

It’s not news to him that Anakin prefers to keep his hands active at most times, during mostly all activities. Today, he realises that this goes for talking, too, and he wonders how the man’s ever managed to socialice properly within the temple or outside the cruiser hangar. Then again, he can’t remember Anakin ever really… hanging out with people who weren’t General Kenobi or Ahsoka so maybe that’s his clue to shelve that thought before it runs away with him.

(his brain does insist on adding that he’d been hanging out a lot with the Chancellor too which feels progressively worse, the more he considers it)

Anakin tells him about Sarica whilst he works on the engine of the ship, most of him out of sight except for his feet and a few inches of his shins.

“To begin with,” he says, his voice slightly muffled, “I thought he was trying to, I don’t know, make a trade? The kind of trade that’s, you know.” His feet waggle a bit. Based purely on gossip as well as the need to prevent Anakin from putting any of that into words, Rex decides that he does, indeed, know. “I’m pretty sure that’s all he wanted, then, but afterwards…” He pauses. Rex can almost hear him pursing his lips in thought.

“General.” He forgets to use his name on purpose because he really cannot get used to that, not this quickly. “Do you, er… ” What he wants to ask is, do you have a type but he isn’t sure that he truly wants to say it, let alone acknowledge the implications of it. He settles with, “... trust him?”

That’s the crux of it, anyway, as far as he’s concerned.

“Absolutely.” The answer comes promptly.

Rex releases a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, his shoulders lowering visibly. Around them, the shadows have grown longer and it’s cooler, now, out of the sun.

*

They head back to the villa early in the evening, stopping for food on the way because Anakin’s alone tonight, apparently, and hasn’t asked the kitchen staff to prepare anything for him. Rex isn’t certain he likes the implications but he also isn’t going to worry about his eating habits on top of everything else he worries about. The way Anakin talks about Sarica, about their relationship it becomes progressively obvious that he’s very disinclined to entertain any negative or sceptical thoughts about the other man.

He’s a shady, political geezer with enormous power within the small context of Efith and yet, Anakin can’t seem to mention any of the many, personal reasons he ought to have for being on alert.

And he still ”doesn’t want to talk about it, Rex” so there’s really no way to bring up the parallels without souring the mood.

As it were, Anakin takes them to a great place with excellent food and a vine that tastes like the gold coins he keeps throwing on the table. When Rex asks - because he’s got a bucket list at this point, basically, of awful hypotheses that he needs to have disproved - Anakin tells him that he’s earned the gold himself by helping out a merchant who trades in metals, copper in particular. He also tells him to stop worrying which is pretty infuriating but at that point, Rex has emptied his glass and the annoyance doesn’t quite top into an actual reaction.

It hits him later on in the evening, around the fourth glass of vine (Anakin’s on his third but working valiantly to catch up), that the man hasn’t asked about anyone back on Coruscant, except one stray question about Ahsoka’s whereabouts that Rex couldn’t answer. Rather, he asks about Rex - about the 501st, about the military ramnifications of the war coming to an end.

“What are you gonna do, once they clear you?” Anakin watches him intently, the light from the oil lamp on the table flickering over his features. In the darkness of the restaurant, his blue eyes seem to glitter an odd, toneless gold.

Rex shrugs. “Don’t know that they will, General. It wasn’t just another clanker, after all.”

“Might as well have been!”

A moment of silence. Rex stares at him, at the harshness of his outburst and Anakin, in turn, looks away from him, his gaze gliding sideways aimlessly.

“Sorry,” he says, his jaw tense and his eyes still hard. “What I mean is, you shot the Sith Lord who’s been pushing a war on the galaxy for years, unhindered. They aren’t going to prosecute you.” His voice darkens. “If anything, they’re probably going to come for the Council.”

“What, the Jedi?”

“Sure.”

They sit in silence. Rex watches him over the rim of his glass. The establishment isn’t even close to clearing out, people coming and going seemingly without stop and that part, at least, isn’t all too different from Coruscant when he thinks about it. People, seeking out others. Dining, laughing, fucking, maybe, if that’s your thing. Maybe, he thinks as he waits for Anakin to elaborate, the Jedi aren’t all too different from all those other people who seek things at night that they don’t necessarily mean or keep.

And maybe, sometimes, like everybody else, they’re fooled into overlooking what actually matters.

“They should have sensed him,” says Anakin, drawing out his s’ses, seemingly one step away from slurring. “I should have - I’ve been around him since I was nine, Rex. How could I not see? Why did nothing ever feel wrong?”

Oh.

Rex downs his wine. Then, with a sigh, he leans back and crosses his arms over his chest. “Remember Umbara?”

Anakin’s face scrounches up in thought for a moment. “Uh, that thing with - with Master Krell.”

“Yeah, that thing.”

“Mm.”

Rex waves his hand at him a little too loosely. Gets a refill more or less by accident but that’s fine, he’ll take it. “Thought I knew what loyalty was worth, before then. Thought I knew what the world was like. What the rules were.” He downs his glass in one go. Anakin is watching him carefully now, his eyes a lot sharper than you’d expect from how he’s been drinking.

“Then, suddenly, I was shooting at my own brothers because my own commanding officer had tricked us.” He lowers his voice when someone off to the side turns around to look at him. “And in the end, we had to deal with him ourselves because no one were going to believe that he’d betrayed us. That he might’ve done so before and gotten nothing but admiration for it.”

Anakin’s eyes have widened in the darkness. But Rex, who’s now on the fucking track and a little bit lost, consequently, a little bit more than usual too, plows on because he doesn’t know what else to do. That’s why he’s here, isn’t it? Because Anakin Skywalker always does, his General always has a plan, even if it’s godawful and crazy and full of people, usually Rex, falling from the kriffing sky - until suddenly, just like that, his General is on the floor and the man he calls Your Excellency is burning him to death and they’ve been fighting a war for that monster, a war that they lose and have lost, even when they’ve won.

“Rex!”

He stops talking.

Because apparently, he was. Talking.

Shouting.

Rubbing his face with one hand, he shrinks in his chair. Opposite him, Anakin gets to his feet and heads around the table, shooting an irritated look at the neighbouring tables. The talk slowly resumes around them and Rex wants to tell him to get back in his chair but then again, why would he? What would be the point?

A hand lands heavily on his shoulder. It’s a familiar weight and Rex allows it as he’s always done, his gaze still locked on the empty wine glass on the table. Anakin’s fingers - flesh, not metal - dig into his shoulders a little, just enough to make him feel present.

“You know what I think we should do?” he asks, his voice casual. He’s craning his neck downwards slightly and his voice carries across the remaining distance easily, as easily as if they’d been mid-gunfight and surrounded by clankers.

Rex can’t really come up with an adequate answer.

Anakin gives his shoulder a squeeze. “Come on, Rex,” he says and steps back, empting his own glass quickly. “Let’s get out of here.”

*

Back at the villa, they end up hanging out outside in the gardens. Anakin sleeps out in the orchard sometimes when Sarica isn’t home (implying that he sleeps somewhere else when he is and fine, Rex is trying to resign himself to the awful truth that is his General, the Hero With No Fear, fucking some crazy, power-hungry politician and living under his roof without a care in the world). Tonight, they’ve borrowed blankets and pillows and built themselves a camp in a small clearing beneath the orange trees. There’s a nice view of the stars, visible in clutches between the treetops and every now and then, a horse whinnies from the stables.

There’s a peaduck sleeping by Rex’s left foot.

Anakin insist that the animals think they die everytime they go to sleep, waking up to a brand new life every single morning.

Though he wouldn’t ever say so out loud, there’s something a little bit appealing about that thought, about that stupid little animal and the world it belongs to, even as it scares the crap out of him. Anakin, on his part, simply lies down on his back and stares up at the stars, nudging Rex’s shin with his foot briefly, like that’s been a thing between them forever.

Perhaps it would’ve been, in a different life.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” he says, his voice quiet and completely devoid of its earlier slur. “Really. Thank you.”

Rex glances sideways at him briefly before he looks back up at the stars. “I wasn’t sure.”

That you’d still want to see me. That you might’ve been as confused as me. That maybe you weren’t as fooled as I was, maybe I couldn’t really trust anyone in the world, not even you.

“No, I don’t think I was, either.” Anakin shuts his eyes. Breathes in deeply, his chest heaving with it. “It’s hard to be sure, you know, with everything…” He waves his hand in the air, his metal fingers gleaming. The glove’s off for the night and Rex hasn’t asked about the jewelry.

He’s heard the gossip, after all.

Instead, he shuts his eyes as well and shifts just close enough to rub one shoulder against Anakin’s in the dark.

The other man doesn’t move away so that’s that.

~