Chapter Text
Today is a very big day. Today is the day that Ahsoka Tano starts third grade. Her older brothers are both getting ready for school, Anakin is starting his first year of high school and Obi is starting his last year of high school. She had tried helping him study for his exams, but even reading the back of his flashcards was hard.
Obi is so smart.
But he can’t braid hair for beans.
“Obi, no!” Ahsoka cries, pouting at her reflection. “You have to put the ribbon in the braid.” Their bathroom is small and yellow. She is standing on her little green stool that is the perfect size for her so that she can watch Obi braid her hair in the mirror, but he is doing a terrible job.
He sighs and pulls apart his work. “‘Soka, I’m afraid I’m not that good at braiding.”
“ Please , Obi! It’s my first day!” Her hair is black and curly and doesn’t match her outfit at all . She is wearing her favorite white leggings, a denim skirt, her favorite light blue hoodie, and her super awesome glittery sneakers. The ribbons have to go into her hair. The look will not be complete without them.
“Okay. I will try once more. If I don’t get it, then you’ll just have to have regular pig tails.”
She folds her arms across her chest and glares at him in the mirror. “Then you better get it right.”
Anakin runs by the bathroom. “Obi-wan, have you seen my lunchbox?”
“In the fridge with your lunch. I hope you don’t mind PB&J.”
“Did you cut off the crusts?”
“I always do.”
Anakin flies down the hall. He likes to wear black, Ahsoka has noticed. He used to like wearing lots of color like her, but recently he has been wearing lots of black and scary looking shirts.
She looks at her oldest brother. “Did you make me PB&J, too?”
He smiles, but doesn’t tear his eyes from her hair. “I did, but I used the strawberry jelly for you.” He ties off one braid. “ And I cut it into dinosaur shapes.”
She rolls her eyes. She isn’t really supposed to do that, but this situation warrants it. “I’m not a little kid anymore.”
He finishes the other braid. “You’re probably right, but dinosaur PB&J is the superior sandwich. I even packed one for myself.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He pats her shoulders and asks, “How did I do?”
She pulls her braids around to her chest. “They’re perfect!” She turns and throws her arms around him. “Thank you, Obi! You’re the greatest!”
~
They all walk to the bus stop together, like they always do. Anakin stands, nodding along with his music playing in his headset and Ahsoka holds Obi’s hand while he reads a book that he has folded up in his other hand. Ani and Obi are both getting picked up by a different bus, having both been accepted to a school for gifted students. Ahsoka would go too, but the youngest students at the school are in sixth grade.
“Whatcha readin’?” Ahsoka asks, swinging Obi’s hand a little.
“Hmm? Oh, just a book for one of my classes.”
“You have homework already ?” Maybe she doesn’t want to go to this gifted school after all.
“Kind of. We had to read the first third of the book over the summer, which I did, but I’m reading ahead since I have to work tonight.”
Ahsoka grimaces. “You have to work tonight?” When Obi works, that means Anakin cooks and she hates Ani’s cooking. Microwaved hot dogs and undercooked mac and cheese? No thanks.
“Don’t worry, I put together a lasagna last night, just remind Anakin to put it in the oven and you guys should be okay once dad gets home.”
Ahsoka bounces on her toes as her bus arrives. She bounds up the three steps only to realize that Ani and Obi aren’t following her. She rushes back down the steps and gives them both a hug.
“Have a good first day without us, Snips,” Ani says.
“Do try not to get into trouble.” Obi squeezes her tightly before she turns and sprints back up the stairs and into the bus.
~
Today has been a great day. She had gotten to tell her class about her super awesome family—which is her favorite thing to do because she loves her brothers and her dad more than anything—and she got to hang out with her bestest friend, Barris. For lunch, she traded her pudding cup for Barris’s strawberry milk. She loves strawberry milk. Today was perfect. Now, she gets to go home and maybe convince Ani to teach her how to skateboard.
Ahsoka smiles to herself as she bounces on her toes. She is waiting in the parking lot on bus number five’s designated line. Now that Anakin is in middle school, she has to wait by herself which isn’t scary. Not at all. She’s not a little kid anymore.
“Hey, what’s wrong with your face?” A voice from behind her asks. She takes a steadying breath. She knows this voice and she definitely doesn’t like him. He used to be in Ani’s grade and would be awful to him, or would try to, anyway. Ani has a bit of a temper and would always get in fights with this sleemo. But now that he has been held back, that means he gets to torture her without Ani’s protection.
She turns around and faces her bully. He is tall and lanky and has yellow-gold eyes. “It’s called vitiligo and nothing is wrong with my face.” She puffs out her chest with pride. She happens to like her markings, thank you very much.
“Yeah? Well you look stupid. Between your splotchy face and your hair,” he sneers as he yanks on her long braids.
“Ouch! Hey! Stop that!” She swats at his arm.
“Make me,” he growls and pulls her other braid, jerking her head in the opposite direction.
Suddenly the kid is sprawled out on the ground and another tall boy is standing next to her. The first thing she notices is that he is wearing a blue t-shirt that is almost the same shade as her hoodie. “Hey Grievous, why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” the boy snarls.
Grievous says nothing, just clambers to his feet and scurries off to his own bus line. The boy turns to her and looks her up and down. “You okay?”
She nods. “Thanks. He’s such a sleemo.”
The boy snorts a laugh. “I think so, too.”
“My name is Ahsoka Tano. What’s your name?”
“Rex Fett,” he says, pushing a hand through his blonde curls.
“I like your shirt, blue is my favorite color,” Ahsoka says, running her hands down the blue and white ribbons wrapped in her hair.
“Thanks. Blue’s my favorite, too,” he says, looking down at his shirt before noticing her sneakers. “Cool shoes.”
Ahsoka gasps and strikes a pose so that her sneakers capture the most light, little rainbow fractals sparkling onto the asphalt. “Thank you! They’re my favorite!”
The bus pulls up and they both climb the stairs. Ahsoka follows Rex to the middle of the bus and sits down across the aisle from him. Rex looks over and arches a dark eyebrow at her. “Did you, uh, need something, kid?”
She shakes her head. “Nope! But I think if I stick with you, I’ll be okay.”
He nods slowly, eyebrows scrunched together. “What grade are you in?”
“Third. And you?”
“Fifth,” he answers and turns to look back out the window.
Ahsoka peers over at the bus driver before leaping across the aisle and into his seat. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
He looks at her the way Anakin looks at her when she is being annoying and he answers, “I have a lot of brothers.”
“How many?”
“Five.”
Ahsoka’s eyebrows shoot up into her hairline. “That is a lot of brothers.”
“That’s what everyone says,” he mutters. Their bus pulls into the public middle school lot and Rex straightens. “Hey, kid, not that I don’t like you, but my brothers are all going to be coming on the bus and we normally sit together…”
“Can I sit with you all?”
“I-uh—”
The bus lurches to a stop and the door swings open. Three nearly identical boys jump on the bus and rush towards Rex. “There he is! Our little ankle-biter!” The one who with an unruly mop of curls reaches across her to rough up Rex’s hair before falling into the seat behind them.
“I told you to stop calling me that,” Rex grumbles as another brother—the one that has a slightly reddish color to his already dark curls—reaches across her to tousle Rex’s hair.
“Just embrace it,” the third brother, who is bald, does the same and falls into the seat across the aisle from them with the second brother.
When they are all done messing with his hair, Rex grumbles and tries to smooth it down, his blonde curls going every which way.
“Who’s your girlfriend?” the first brother asks, sitting up and hanging over the back of their seat.
“She is not my girlfriend,” Rex protests immediately.
“I’m Ahsoka Tano!” she chirps, turning to the one behind her. “Who are you?”
“Wolffe Fett, over there is Bly and Ponds. How’d you meet our ol’e boy Rex?”
Beside her, Rex groans and slouches in his seat.
“He saved me!”
“A true knight and shining armor.” Wolffe grins, looking very much like a wolf. She thinks he would be one of those all black ones with scary amber eyes, like the one that terrorized the three little pigs.
She giggles in agreement, ignoring both Rex’s groan of protest and the laughs of his brothers, and launches into the tale of how he defeated the infamous schoolyard bully. The brothers listen to her intently the entire way home.
~
Rex sits at the top of the stairs and can hear his mother and oldest brother, Fox, talking from downstairs. His stomach rumbles, but he just curls further in on himself and drinks more water as he listens. He doesn’t want to go into the kitchen because one: they are down there and two: he already knows there isn’t going to be any food in the pantry.
“Don’t worry, mom, I’ll get a job. The mayor needs an intern. I heard he pays ten dollars an hour.”
“Fox, I cannot ask you to sacrifice your childhood to make up for your father’s lack of consistent income.” His mother’s voice is always so smooth and normally makes him feel safe and warm, but he can hear the harsh edge in her tone tonight. If Fox were smart, he’d stop this argument now.
No one ever said he was.
Out of all the notoriously stubborn Fett boys, Fox is probably the worst.
“We can’t ask the boys to give up sports,” Fox counters. “It’s the only thing keeping them out of trouble. You know if Wolffe didn’t play football he’d be in juvie right now.”
His mother falls silent.
Cody plops down next to Rex at the top of the stairs. “Are Mom and Fox talking?”
Rex wraps his arms around his knees. “Yeah, Fox is telling her he wants to get a job so that we can keep playing sports.”
Cody scoffs. “Self-sacrificing idiot.”
Rex doesn’t quite catch the meaning behind his words, but he knows enough to know that Cody doesn’t agree with Fox. As they get older, Cody and Fox tend to disagree more and more.
“How was your first day of high school?” Rex asks.
“Fine. Kept getting asked if I was Fox’s younger brother. I heard you got a girlfriend.”
“I do not have a girlfriend.” Rex squeezes his knees tighter.
“Well it’s okay if you have a boyfriend, too.”
Rex looks at him, appalled. “I don’t have a boyfriend or a girlfriend and I don’t want one either! You all are the worst!”
Cody grins. “So what happened, then?”
Rex glances at him out of the corner of his eye. “Some asshat--” Cody shoves Rex’s shoulder as a not-so-gentle reminder to watch his mouth. He can’t help it, Fox curses like a damn sailor. “Some guy was pulling Ahsoka Tano’s braids while we waited for the bus. She… she kinda looks like mom? The face thing.”
“Vitiligo,” Cody offers.
“Yeah, well, this kid, Grievous , was picking on her so I told him to cut it out.”
“I heard you also laid him out.”
Rex shrugs. “That’s what he gets for picking on little girls.”
Cody smiles and tosses his arm around Rex’s shoulders. “You’re a good kid, Rex.”
Rex allows this tender display of affection because this is Cody and Cody is always an exception to the rule. “Thanks,” he says and nestles in a little closer.
~
After months of being in the third grade, Ahsoka thinks she is finally getting the hang of things. And then her dad dies.
Her heart is aching. It feels like that moment when she swings across the monkey bars and misses the next rung—that moment right before she falls and her eyes go wide and her stomach lurches into her chest. It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to love someone so much and then just have them ripped from your life.
It doesn’t help that all of these people are gathered around her father’s dead body. She can’t bring herself to go up and look. Instead, she keeps herself pressed against the floral wallpaper in the back of the room. Obi-wan had called it a funeral home, but it smells nothing like a home. The air is heavy with pungent chemicals and sadness. Homes are supposed to smell like spices and love.
She peers between the heavy, wooden chairs and has to look away. Her father is just laying there and he doesn’t look anything like himself. He always wears his long hair half-up and half-down. Right now, his hair is parted down the middle in a truly horrifying manner. He never wears his hair like that. It doesn’t look anything like him.
“Hey,” Obi-wan says from beside her. His eyes are ringed in red, making the blue seem more vibrant. That is one thing they will all have to remember their father by, his blue eyes.
“Hey,” she greets, and looks down at the patterned, grey-green carpet. It’s the short prickly kind that hurts when you crawl across it.
“Did you want to go up and say goodbye?” he asks.
She shakes her head. “No. I’m okay back here.” Back here away from all the weeping people and creepiness of the dead body.
He kneels in front of her. “Are you okay?”
She nods and runs her fingers down her braids. Obi had still braided the ribbon in her hair, even though she hadn’t asked him to.
“You know it’s okay to cry and mourn him,” Obi explains while Ani meanders over to them. “We were fortunate enough to love him while he was here with us. Now that he is gone, we can still celebrate his life and talk about him. He had such a wonderful life with so many stories.”
“Yeah, a wonderful life that was robbed from us,” Ani grouses.
“Anakin,” Obi-wan chides.
“Look, just because you have ‘legal-guardianship’ of us now, doesn’t mean you get to talk to me like you’re my father.” Anakin runs off, leaving Ahsoka and Obi-wan standing there, in the middle of the funeral home, absolutely flabbergasted.
“I’m okay,” Ahsoka says again, even though she isn’t sure if she is okay or not. Obi-wan gives her a reassuring nod and abandons her to chase after her brother. She waits for a moment, looking at all the people that are probably related to her in some way, and darts out of the funeral home to go sit on the curb outside.
~
Rex’s mom had been good friends with this guy, Mr. Jinn, before he passed, which means all of the Fett boys get to pile into her white mini van and spend all day with a bunch of sad old people. It is the last thing Rex wants to do on a Saturday night.
The worst part is that he didn’t have anything to wear, so he had to borrow one of Pond’s old suits. It’s way too big and more than a little stuffy even though the weather is starting to cool.
He and his brothers all leap from the van and follow their mother into the funeral home.
Correction.
The worst part about today is the absolute odor of the funeral home. It smells like old people and death or maybe both. His mom had said that Mr. Jinn wasn’t all that old and that made his passing tragic , but if he smelled like this when he was living then he probably deserved to croak.
Everyone is wearing black and sniffling and Rex looks around, already bored out of his mind. “Cody,” Rex pulls on his brother’s sleeve. “Can we go outside and play?”
“Not yet, Rex’ika, we gotta pay our respects first,” Cody answers and ruffles Rex’s hair.
Rex harrumphs and looks to his three less-older brothers. Bly shrugs and shoves his hands into his pants pockets. His eyes light up.
“Guys,” Bly whispers to them, “look what I found.”
It’s a folded up football, the kind that they make out of notebook paper and flick at each other at the lunch table.
“That looks more fun than this snooze fest. Let’s go,” Wolffe says, nodding towards the door. They all know well enough not to start playing games where all the grown-ups are loitering. No, they walk out into the hall and find a lovely table to crowd under. Heedless of their dress attire, they all crawl under the table, making sure to shield themselves as much as possible under the ivory tablecloth.
“How do we want to play?” Bly asks.
“For minimal chaos, we should probably do 2-v-2,” Ponds suggests.
“Minimal chaos,” Wolffe snorts. “You’re starting to sound like Fox.”
Ponds glowers. “Say that again, Wolf’ika, if you want your ass beat.”
“Now you really sound like Fox,” Bly snickers.
Ponds shoves Wolffe into Bly and they both start laughing. “Rex,” Ponds says, “You’re my favorite now. Don’t mess up.”
Rex smirks. He won’t ever say it aloud, but he’s pretty certain he’s everyone’s favorite, anyway. He’s the baby; all of his brothers are fiercely protective of him.
“Okay,” Bly sprawls out on his tummy. “Since it’s my ball, I challenge Ponds first.”
They all nod in agreement and settle on their bellies as well. Ponds holds up his goal post with his index fingers and thumbs and Bly shoots and scores. Ponds settles in to flick the football back to Bly when Rex sees a pair of glittery sneakers running down the hall and out the back door.
He only knows one person with glittery sneakers and his gut urges him to go and check on her. As annoying as she can be on their bus rides to and from school, she’s always nice and someone has to look out for her, right?
“Guys, I’ll be back,” Rex says and scrambles from under the table and follows her out the back door leading to the parking lot. It is surrounded neatly by trees and shrubs, but the asphalt is weathered and cracked. He scans the lot, thinking she may have run off into the bushes when he spies Ahsoka Tano curled up on a parking block, sniffling. She is wearing her sparkly shoes, a black dress, and leggings and if her crying isn’t enough to shock him, it is the lack of color in her wardrobe. Ahsoka loves wearing colors, but she mostly loves wearing blue.
“Hey,” he says as he sits. “What’re you doing here?”
“My dad died.” She rocks her feet back onto her heels so that the light catches the glitter on her shoes.
Rex sputters at the casualness of her delivery—like she was reading the lunch menu. “I see you’re wearing your cool shoes,” he says.
“I thought they would make me happy but… it’s not really working.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he says because that’s what everyone around them has been saying all day.
She shrugs. “My dad is dead. Ani won’t talk to me and Obi is worried. I just feel sad.” She puts her chin on her knees.
Rex suddenly has an idea. The only thing that ever cheers him up when he is sad is his family, and they happen to all be here right now. He jumps up from the block and Ahsoka looks up at him, a question already forming on her lips. “Hold that thought,” he says and darts inside.
Rex finds Cody easily in the crowd of adults. Both he and Fox like to stand with the grown-ups now and it makes it so much harder to tear them away. “Cody,” he hisses.
“What is it?” Cody asks, kneeling down to be closer to Rex’s eye level.
“We need an emergency rover session. Now.”
Cody eyebrows shoot up. “Who’s crying?”
“Ahsoka Tano.”
“The girl you ride the bus with?”
Rex nods. “The dead guy is her dad. Come on.” Rex grabs Cody’s hand and starts tugging him.
“Alright, alright. You find the other three, I’ll try and get Fox.”
“Get Fox for what?” They both freeze and turn to the oldest standing there in his fancy suit with his arms crossed.
“Emergency rover request,” Cody says. “We have a crying kid somewhere.”
Fox eyes them. “I don’t think I need to tell you, but we are at a funeral , people are mourning . There will be no rough housing at the place for people to pay their final respects. Grow up, both of you.”
Cody bristles and stands up to match Fox. “Who died and made you dad? Huh? Last time I checked we still have a mother and she doesn’t look all that much like you.”
Fox glares at him.
“Continue to stand there with a stick up your ass and your fancy government job. Rex and I are going to go take care of Ahsoka Tano because right now, she needs to remember that the world isn’t so scary.”
Cody grabs Rex’s hand and practically drags him across the olive-patterned carpet.
It isn’t hard to find the other three brothers, they are still crouched under a table in the hall, taking turns flicking the folded triangle.
“Emergency rover game, let’s go,” Cody orders and the three clamber up.
“Who’s crying?” Wolffe asks, falling into step easily with Cody and Rex.
“Ahsoka Tano,” Rex answers.
“The girl from the bus?” Bly asks.
Rex nods and they exit out the back door where Ahsoka is still sitting on the parking block. “Ahsoka,” Rex says as he approaches.
She turns around, her braids whipping over her shoulders. “Hey.”
“You know Wolffe, Bly, and Ponds,” Rex says pointing to each of his brothers. “But this is Cody.”
Cody waves and kneels down beside her. “I’m really sorry about your dad,” he says.
She sniffles and wipes her eyes. “Me too.”
“If it’s okay, we were wondering if you’d like to play a game with us?”
Her lips split into a massive grin and she nods. “I’d like that.”
~
Ahsoka, Cody, and Rex stand on one end of the parking lot and Bly, Wolffe and Ponds stand on the other. Cody had explained the rules to her and it seems easy. One person calls ‘red rover, red rover, send somebody over’ and whoever's name they call has to run across the parking lot and try to crash through the other team’s joined hands. If they don’t, they get assimilated into the team.
Cody goes first. “Red rover, red rover, send Bly on over!”
Bly skips across the parking lot and spins into his brothers to try and break their hold. He doesn’t, but Ahsoka giggles.
That is another rule, Ahsoka remembers. They get style points. The game is ultimately ended by whoever ends up with no players, but the true victor is whoever comes up with the craziest way to break the hold.
“Red rover, red rover send Rex on over!” Wolffe shouts. Rex lets go of Ahsoka’s hand and charges at the team across from them. Just when he is about to collide with their arms, he jumps over them.
“That doesn’t count!” Wolffe cries. “He didn’t break our hold!” He holds up his and Ponds’ joined arms.
“He’s right, Rex!” Cody shouts.
Rex shrugs and grabs Ponds’ free hand.
Cody turns to Ahsoka, “Who should we ask for?”
“Wolffe!” Ahsoka smiles.
So, Cody calls for Wolffe and he runs across the parking lot howling like his namesake. Rex, in turn, calls for Ahsoka and she cartwheels down the parking lot and into their arms. The game continues like this for a while, one person calling for another with increasingly silly methods of getting from one side to the other until Obi-wan emerges from the funeral home.
“Ahsoka!” he calls.
She spins around to face him. “Yeah?”
“It’s time to go,” he says with a nice smile.
Ahsoka takes a few steps towards him, but turns back to the boys. “Who won?” she asks.
They all look at each other but it is Cody who answers. “You did, kiddo.”
She beams.
“We’ll see you on the bus Monday?” Ponds asks.
“Yep! I’ll bring gummy bears! See you!” She turns and runs up to Obi-wan.
“Who are those boys?” he asks, putting a gentle arm around her.
“My friends,” she smiles.