#stormtrooper rex

[taylorswiftscar]

obsession of the week: sith ahsoka and imperial stormtrooper rex

[anarchomando]

Imperial stormtrooper Captain Rex

Imperial Rex

(not my image )

After the battle of mandalore and the crowning of "Mand'olar the exiled" Rex had very little to actually do, the Republic military decided that mandalore was pacified

And the sent most of the troops back (after order 66),

and so he returned to find a broken man named Vader, and while Appo what's the one who informed Rex about the regime change, Rex quite frankly didn't see that much of a difference,

Other than aesthetics, still sending people to die on a whim it didn't matter, the only difference now is they're adding more and more humans. And creating their own army, and turning the newly minted Stormtroopers into it's on corp(the galactic Marines)

Rex remained loyal vader just as much if not more as his loyalty to Anakin, for while the latter was a train wreck, a hot bead of emotion and rage, Vader (Rex recognized) needed a friend more than anything else. not a genocidal monster who groomed him into a perfect pet, but a genuine friend that would stick with him even in tough times.

It was also a good chance for Rex to if not cause devastation then at least minimize it to the targets and not civilians. And for the first 5 years he remained doing quite that.

Until he met an an old friend.

and of course that day had to be Empire day

[letitrainathousandflames]

Stormtrooper Rex AU

He chooses his brothers’ side.

Commander Rex looks at the rows of clone troopers dressed in white armor, their helmets painted with the togruta padawan - Ahsoka’s - face markings, and, unlike any other clone commander faced with Order 66, he chooses to obey it.

He doesn’t know if it’s out of cowardice or mercy, but he tells her to walk up to Jesse as if he is going to follow her plan, only to then raise his blaster in a shaking hand from behind her. He cradles his grip with his other hand, steadying his aim and squeezing the trigger. Be it by instinct or her keen Force-guided senses, Ahsoka dodges a few inches to the left, and the bolt only grazes her shoulder.

Her pained scream echoes loudly, and in his trained soldier brain, every following second seems to unfold in slow motion. She stumbles forward, hands darting to the lightsabers concealed at her lower back, and Rex follows his training, eliminating the threat before it becomes more dangerous.

It’s all in the manuals. Drilled into him from the moment he was able to understand words. Head, heart or stomach. Shoot to kill.

The next blaster shot meets the spot between her shoulder blades, at her heart’s height, and the blaster’s kickback shakes Rex’s to his core just like it had the first time he fired one, in Kamino. Ahsoka gasps, more shocked than in pain, and collapses forward on her chest with a dull thud.

Jesse makes a sharp gesture with two fingers pointed forwards, and the men follow his command fire at the small fallen figure on the floor that had once been their commander. The electric-blue bolts are reflected upon Rex’s dark visor as they meet her collapsed form over and over, making her body jerk and jolt until it no longer moves.

Rex can barely hear anything past the loud ringing in his ears even after the shooting has long ceased, but he assumes he hears Jesse ordering the men to take every ship and escape pod available to flee the carrier that is now reaching what will be undeniably a crashing course, pulled in by the gravity of the nearest moon.

The entire ship shakes and groans  as it dives down, and the men march like a stampede, seeking the exits to make their way out with their lives, and Rex walks, falters, stumbles until he reaches the lifeless body on the floor and dropping to his knees close to it.

He gingerly reaches for her - Ahsoka’s - shoulder, flipping her on her side and then on her back. To his dismay, her eyes are open, staring right at him, wide with pain and betrayal.

“How could you?... How could...” she coughs, pain deepening her scowl “I trusted you. We were friends.”

Her words send a shard of cold into his heart, tearing its way through. Rex pries his helmet off, dropping it carelessly next to them; he shakes his head, reaching for her hand and taking it between his. It feels so small, impossibly so. Unlike him, she is a child in the body of a child, only seventeen and looking even younger, despite the tool the war had taken on her.

For some reason, his mind goes to Dogma, forced to take a choice no one would understand. Forced to kill a jedi to keep his brothers safe. Played like a pawn in a game he could never win. Damned if he made a choice and damned if he didn’t.

“They’re all I have.” he whispers, voice breaking; his sight becomes blurry with tears, and still he can see the contempt, the anger in Ahsoka’s face. She tries to pull her hand away, but he holds it tighter.

“They’re no longer who you think.” she grits out “They were wiped clean. You’re choosing to save something you can’t save.”

Rex sniffles, feels the hot tears trailing down his cheeks, his face burning with shame and guilt and despair.

“I’m so” the air in his lungs seem to not be enough, regardless of how much of it he is gulping with each breath “so sorry! But I have to try! I have to!”

He frees her hand, reaches for a device in his belt, a small hand scanner which he trails over Ahsoka’s torso, blinking his tears away and paying close attention to its readings.

“Y-You can still make it. I’ll smuggle you in, put you into a bacta tank-”

Ahsoka bats the device away with surprising strenght, clenching her teeth. Her breaths are shallow, cut off by the shivers that wrack her body.

“I’d rather die than become a prisoner of the Sith.”

Rex’s eyes widen at the cold resolution in her blue eyes. The pain and shock of the blaster fire had made her sunny, red-tinted orange skin fade into an ashy dull shade drenched in a sheen of sweat, her nostrils flared and the tendons on her neck jutting out in her unwavering tension.

“Ahsoka-”

“I hope you’re proud of yourself, commander Rex.” she all but spits it, but her voice breaks at his name

Her irises are surrounded by reddened veins, and tears suddenly bud at the corners of her eyes, trailing down her face; now, more than ever, she looks like what she truly is – a child, scared and in pain, thrown by adults into the battlefield to lead armies and take lives, never being allowed to be anything other than a soldier.

“Sir!” Jesse calls him from the blast doors much farther ahead “I’ve secured a ship for us! We should leave!”

Rex looks at his friend – his brother – over his shoulder. He turns back to Ahsoka, holding out his arms to try and lift her up when he notices the lightsaber in her hand.

“Don’t.” she snarls “Leave me here to die in peace.”

Rex’s eyes widen, and he notices her thumb grazing at the ignition button of her saber.

“You made your choice.” She grits out, swallowing down thickly “Better be able to live with it.”

Rex hesitates, takes several small instants to lower his hands, to pick up his helmet and get up to his feet. He turns to see Jesse waving urgently at him, nodding at the nearby craft. With one final look to Ahsoka – general, commander, friend, little sister, jedi, enemy – he places the helmet in his head and rushes away to Jesse, boarding the ship and following his fellow troopers among the stars.

-

Ahsoka closes her eyes and waits patiently for the moment she’ll be joining the force, free of all pain and torment of the war. A man clad in black robes walks up to her, stares at her wounded form and thinks back to the day he, too, was left behind, betrayed and with a broken body in need of healing.

He senses the small padawan general still clinging to her life, stubborn and wounded by the betrayal of those from whom she expected protection. The man’s tattooed arm shoots down, hand gripping tightly at the neck of her robes as he drags her unconscious form up to and into one of the nearby fighters. He places her on the back seat, carefully taking her lightsabers. Can’t be too careful.

“Betrayed by your master and abandoned to die.” Maul mutters to himself as he sets his course to Dathomir “I believe this will help you make up your mind… apprentice.”

[letitrainathousandflames]

Stormtrooper Rex - Part Three

(First) - (previous) - (next)

When Ahsoka comes to, the only thing that assures her that she is still alive is the blinding pain in which she is in. All her teachings said that joining the Force is meant to be a blissful, painless experience in which one’s spirit flows back into the endless pools of energy swirling across the universe.

But right now, everything is pain and darkness.

She is too weak to open her eyes. She feels the ground under her, cold and unforgiving, rough feeling of stone digging into her arms where her skin is exposed. There is something – a needle – embedded into the fold of her arm, and just as she notices it, it is yanked out of her without a single hint of care, but all she manages to let out is a low groan.

“Weak machines and their healing can only go so far…” a voice, low and silky mutters above her.

A voice she knows. A voice she’s learned to fear.

She reaches for the force, but her connection to it is frail, as if it hangs from a thread. Her inner sight is blurry, lost. Even so, she doesn’t fail to notice the dark vibrations gnawing at the edges of it. It’s cold, sending shivers down her spine. A shadow she had been taught from infancy to despise and fear, and above all else, to keep at bay.

She feels that same cold, dark energy moving about her. It feels as if there is icy water being poured over her chest, running rivers down her torso. It numbs her in the same measure it burns, like stepping on thin ice and suddenly being engulfed by deadly freeze. She writhes in place, gritting her teeth.

“Yes, it is not pleasant.” The voice muses above her, sounding mildly entertained “But it shall keep you alive.”

The darkness wraps around her body like a living cloud of mist. It reaches into the depths of her mind, demanding to be allowed. To be embraced.

They left you to die

Ahsoka kicks at invisible enemies, scowling. No. No, they wouldn’t.

They betrayed you

The darkness attempts to seep through. Ahsoka clings to the warm light that still resides in her, desperately begging it to keep her afloat in the ocean of cold. The light is dim and frail. The cold numbs her some more.

They took you from your people and turned you into a pawn

She shakes her head. The fogginess subsides some and she sees herself, the wounded, broken thing she was turned into. Her skin is burned, charred on her back, there are bolt scars all across her arms and shoulders, her shin, even at the edge of a lek. Her heart leaps in her chest, without rhythm, thrumming painfully under her sternum.

Ghastly green mist swirls over her wounds, cold and painful. The wounds lose the dark, burnt appearance, easing into yellowed, deep wounds that then subside into blemished scars on her limbs and appendages. The same dark power converges towards the large burn on her back, at her heart’s height, but she refuses it, fights it.

The silky voice speaks again, irritated and impatient:

“Electricity and fire have damaged your heart, little one. You will die unless it is fixed.”

Ahsoka shakes her head again, more vigorous this time. She feels her consciousness slipping away. She knows this is her last chance, her final moments. And she prays. She prays with all her spirit to the Force. The Force that always guided her. The Force that gave her strength. The Force her Master had taught her to harness.

Shining bright, blindingly so, like a star becoming a supernova right before its extinction, the force within her nestles itself in her chest, right behind her heart, healing the wound as best as it can. The accelerated beating of her heart subsides as her back arch off the floor for an instant before she collapses back down, immobile, mouth hanging open and eyes rolling back in her skull.

After a few instants of absolute silence, a long, pointed claw pokes her at her shin. Ahsoka kicks in reflex, and the voice above her chuckles darkly.

“So you live. Very well, rest, young one. Your training starts tomorrow.”

[letitrainathousandflames]

Stormtrooper Rex AU - Part Two

Jesse sighs heavily in the pilot’s seat, ordering the men to fly in formation towards the nearest outpost.

“We’ll need to refuel before we head back to Coruscant.” he says, watching the pilots aligning their ships and fighters in formation like a singular, precise machine “We should also notify the chancellor-”

“No.”

Jesse frowns at that, turning to Rex in the copilot’s sit, the commander’s face hidden behind the jaig eyed helmet.

“Sir, we are expected to inform-”

“You did a good job as my temporary replacement, Jesse.” Rex says it in a strange, strangled tone “But I’m back in charge now, and as your commander, I’ll take the decisions.”

Jesse opens his mouth, stills, and then nods.

“Alright then. I’m... glad to have you back, Rex. For a moment there I thought you had decided to side with... the Jedi.”

Rex doesn’t answer right away, and Jesse busies himself with the controls, pressing buttons and pulling levers on the dashboard. Then...

Rex leans forward, pressing the comm button and effectively cutting them off from the others, ensuring they won’t be listened to.

“She was our general.” Rex sounds pained, sounding like he’s speaking between gritted teeth “She was... our friend. What have we done, Jesse?”

Jesse raises an eyebrow. What in the hells is going on with his captain?

“She was a Jedi. The Jedi betrayed the Republic, Rex. It was our duty, per Order Sixty-Six, to terminate her.”

Rex removes his helmet, and Jesse’s eyes widen under his at the sight of Rex’s distraught expression.

“You don’t remember the battles we fough with her? Everything that she’s done for us?!”

“What is your point?” Jesse asks earnestly “She betrayed us! She was going to kill us, hells, she killed some of our men in that ship!”

“She was defending herself!”

At that, Jesse rips off his own helmet, eyes wide and angry.

“You’re sounding like Slick! He bombed out weapons depot, tried to kill you and Commander Cody and dared to say he was doing this for us, for the republic! You had no qualms with doing the right thing and locking him up, why is that Jedi traitor any different?!”

Rex stares at him with wide eyes, golden-brown irises lost in an ocean of white shock.

“She- We were her men. Her soldiers! We couldn’t have-”

“She let out that deranged sith assassin to mow us down while she planned her escape!”

Rex’s mouth hangs open, moving in half-words that make no sound. Jesse turns his seat, leans close to pat Rex over his knee pad.

“Sir, I know you must be shaken. That wasn’t an easy decision, but it was the right one. You should be proud.”

Rex just stares at him, gaze hollow and lost.

“I shot a teenager in the back.”

Jesse presses on:

“You saved the lives of this whole battalion.” he point at the windshield, at the many ship lights outside in the starry dark skies “Every single one of these men is alive because of what you did.”

Rex just keeps staring at him with the same lost gaze.

“How can you be so...” he scowls, and for a moment Jesse thinks he’s going to insult him “so calm, and sure, and- and okay with this mess?!”

Jesse doesn’t really laugh, but he lets out a small huff of breath.

“Good soldiers follow orders, sir. That’s all there is to it. That’s all there is to us.”

He pats Rex on his knee once again before taking his own helmet off his lap and putting it back on, the crest of the republic proudly adorning it. Rex seems to be less out of it, mechanically taking his own and putting it back on as well.

Jesse turns the comm lines back on, and the humming of the ship’s engine fills the following stretch of silence between the two soldiers.