Author's Note: Just a little Rex/Ahsoka (not quite fluff so fuzz?) piece that I wrote on a whim. I just had the idea: Ahsoka gets mad at Rex for saving her and Rex refuses not to save her because he's in love with her in the would-die-in-a-hail-of-blaster-fire but wouldn't-so-much-as-touch-her (or let anyone else) way, Anakin approves. Hope you enjoy -Ember.

Darasuum by November Murray

"You should have left me," Ahsoka yelled at Rex, something she only ever did on the battlefield, but they weren't on the battle-field. Captain Rex's company of the 501st, those who weren't being unloaded from the transport on stretchers or doing the unloading, were lined up, heals together, heads straight forward, behind their equally attentive captain as their small commander paced in front of them. Her petite boots stamped and her hands gestured wildly. "I had everything under control! I gave you an order, an order Captain! We needed to be on that bluff before Master made his attack! You knew the plan."

"Yes, sir," Rex replied.

"Yet you still disobeyed a direct order and remained at the bottom of the hill."

"Yes, sir."

"While Master needed our help."

"With all due respect—"

"Respect? You haven't shown me one iota of respect today, Captain. I would think that I'd earned at least a passing consideration after all the scrapes we've been though."

"You have, sir."

"Yet when I told you to follow the mission you deliberately ignored me."

"I did, sir."

"Don't try to justify it now. You made your decision."

"I won't, sir."

"Don't let it happen again." She turned away but before she'd gotten even two steps Rex spoke again, and it wasn't the 'yes, sir' she was looking for.

"I can't do that."

Ahsoka stopped in her tracks. Slowly, arms shaking, she turned back. "What did you say, Captain?"

"I can't do that, sir."

"Oh," Ahsoka got a mock look of surprise on her face, "and why's that?" Her blue eyes were no less sharp though as they stared down the battle-hardened soldier. Rex found he had to look away, over her head, back toward the unloading transports of wounded men. His lips remained pressed together. He found himself wishing he'd left his helmet on.

Ahsoka practically vibrated with rage. Rex, the captain and friend she and her Master trusted their lives to had disobeyed her in the field leaving Anakin open to a deadly crossfire. Her team was supposed to be taking out one embankment of guns from behind so that her master could take the second. But halfway up the bluff they were attacked by the sword-wielding natives. Ahsoka had stayed behind to engage them and left Rex in charge of the men, but Rex had turned their company around and backed her up at his own peril. Meanwhile Anakin's forces were decimated in their initial attack. Anakin barely had enough troops to take the second encampment after Ahsoka and Rex finally arrived. His actions cost them men, good men, some of them Ahsoka had known personally. Now he was just standing there, face blank as only a clone could be and silent. It was enough to make her see red. Why? She kept asking, what was so important that it was worth risking his brother's for? She was too angry to think clearly.

"Ugh," Ahsoka threw up her hands and stormed off.

Rex watched her go as the men behind him visibly and audibly relaxed with sighs, physically feeling the tension ease. Rex couldn't relax though, he could only stare after the small figure disappearing out of the hanger doors. The answer to her question whispered past his lips.

"Jorcu ni kar'taylir gar darasuum," (Because I will hold you in my heart forever.)

He was still coming down from the terrible adrenaline rush of seeing his little commander in front of a dozen armed swordsman, their glowing vibro-blades charged with lethal amounts of energy and only her two little sabers against 12 of them. Rex knew he'd failed many of his brother's that day, they passed him on their way off the transports and he heard every groan and felt the stillness of those too wounded to even lift their heads. But he couldn't bring himself to regret the choices he'd made. Even watching Ahsoka face the deranged Jedi killer Grievous years ago hadn't caused the same alarm he'd felt on that battlefield. Grievous was one enemy that she could evade and run from.

Rex tried to rationalize his decision, his disobedience. No mater what had been the right choice, staying or going, he felt sick.

The heavy hand of a brother fell on his shoulder.

"You did the right thing, Captain," Fives said, "We were all ready to follow you."

Rex shook his head, "She's right, I failed my brother's today."

"No." Fives' gloved hand squeaked against Rex's armor as he gripped his Captain's shoulder. "All of us knew what we were going into from the beginning. All those men would have done the same as us, that's our job, protect the Commander. They wouldn't blame you."

"It's not that simple."

"Sometimes, with people like the commander, it is. We all love her, any man in this squadron would lay down his life to protect her."

"Yeah, but that's not what happened. They didn't get a choice. I made it for them."

"That's not the way I see it, sir."

"Thanks, Fives." Rex sighed, his brothers were just as stubborn as he was (most of them anyway). "Go get some rest," he told the trooper beside him and to his relief Fives agreed.

"Yes, sir."

The ARC Trooper walked away, Rex listened to his footsteps, hearing the slight pause when his friend glanced back. Finally Rex was alone with the repair crews, already busy on the returned ships. Other than them, the hanger was empty. Rex sighed and started walking slowly toward the mess hall. He wasn't really hungry but he didn't want to go back to the quiet blankness of his small cabin, he needed to walk and work out his thoughts, follow them to their conclusion.

Fives had hit the nail on the head, the whole company loved Ahsoka like she was their sister, one of them. She, even more than Anakin, was different from other Jedi. She listened to them and took interest in them. They had always been more than clones to her. And conversely she'd always been more than a Commander to him. When she first came to the battlefield she was young, head strong, book smart and bursting with excitement. But all that childishness was undercut by her open attitude, her willingness to learn and acceptance of the fact that she didn't have all the answers and she had to rely on her comrades, on Rex. In return she had taught him about the real world, the world outside of the army, the very society he was born to protect. It was funny, he was protecting a lifestyle he didn't understand and in all likelihood he would never know. It was simple things like old music she used to hear as a youngling, worn out jokes that were new to him, accounts of recent history that weren't tactics in a textbook. As clueless as she might have been on the battlefield, he was as clueless about the real world. So they traded knowledge.

He had watched her grow up and grow up too fast. She came to understand death, the pounding of a heart before the plunge into battle, the restless waiting that wore on the mind like nothing else and loss, too much loss. That little girl with bright eyes and an open mind was gone, replaced with a sharp eyed and experienced woman. She was beautiful, though his experience was limited Rex felt qualified to say that. He'd seen her covered in dirt, head to toe, bloody, bruised, battered, exhausted but always beautiful and full of life. On the battlefield she seemed to dance with her sabers, graceful and weightless. He'd watched her practicing her katas in the Resolute's gym, her movements tightly controlled and yet following from one to another. The purpose had fallen away as he had watched and it became something else. That was the first time he felt some understanding of the Jedi's strange religion.

Then her bright eyes had opened and caught him staring. She smirked with her dark lips. They had grown fuller since they first met. Her horns, montrals, she'd told him they were called, had grown taller and more pointed and her lekku, longer. Her chin had gotten, if possible, more stubborn, though that my have only been his interpretation. Her body had changed too. As much as he told himself he shouldn't notice, he did. She must have as well because she'd changed her usual outfit from the tube top to a more conservative dress, as if realizing she didn't have to pretend to have curves anymore. Though she was still short compared to the army of bio-engineered masculinity she was no longer a child. That was the problem. She wasn't a child and accepting that meant accepting the risks she chose to take on. He couldn't do that, not when he was right beside her. His first instinct had always been, and would always be, to protect her.

Rex's feet had brought him to the mess hall and the doors slid open automatically. The Captain's eyes found the dirty blond head of the General sitting at one of the long tables and his heart sank. He knew what needed to be done and there was no reason to postpone it any longer.

"Sir," Rex said as he came to a stop beside Anakin, "Sorry to bother you, sir."

"No, it's fine Rex," Anakin said with a weary smile. His tray of food was sitting untouched in front of him and he held a cup of the rancid Instant Caf that the army supplied. "You know, I think this stuff is growing on me." He turned the cup in his hand and took a sip. "Then again," he said with a grimace. Rex swallowed dryly.

"I am requesting a transfer, sir."

"What?" Anakin nearly dropped his caf. "W-why? When?"

"A transfer, sir," Rex repeated, "out of the 501st as soon as possible. I am no longer fit to serve under my current commanding officers."

"Rex?" Anakin was still staring at him in utter shock. "'Your current commanding officers'? That's me, Rex. You have a problem with me?"

"No, sir."

"Then who? Yularen, I thought you liked the guy. Ahsoka? I heard you had a fight down in the hanger but she'll get over it, Rex. She's just under some stress, you know, we all are."

"I don't have a problem with Commander Tano, General."

"You don't? Then who do you have a problem with so I can put it straight, because there's no way I'm letting you go. You're one of the best men I know, I want you at our backs, mine and Ahsoka's."

"Respectfully, sir, it's not that I have a problem with the Commander," Rex looked over Anakin's head at the ubiquitously gray walls of the mess, "it's quite the opposite."

"You don't have a problem with her and that's why you're requesting a transfer?" Anakin was a little slow on the uptake. "I don't understand why that…" A look of understanding dawned on him then he became very serious, as serious as Rex had ever seen his wise-cracking optimistic General. "No."

"No?" Rex's brow furrowed even as he relaxed a little. 'No' was a lot better than being run through with a lightsaber, which he'd half expected.

"No."

"Sir, on this last mission—"

"You did exactly what I would have wanted you to do."

"I endangered the mission, you, and your squadron because I was protecting her."

"Exactly as you should have been. I will not authorize a transfer. You belong here, watching her back when I can't. I need someone behind me I can trust, someone who cares."

"I can not be a soldier and protect her like that at the same time."

"Find a way, Captain."

"I have, I'm requesting a transfer."

"And I'm refusing." Anakin glared, blue eyes level and challenging.

"What's going on?" Her voice cut through their argument and both men turned quickly. Rex visibly stiffened when he saw her standing on the other side of the table with her own tray and steaming cup of Caf.

"Rex just wanted to ask me a question, Snips." Anakin said, adopting a calm and carefree demeanor that contrasted with soldier's utter stiffness.

"Oh," Ahsoka said, suspicious. "I already saved you the trouble of chewing him out, I don't think it did much though," She grumbled.

"Chewing him out for what?" Anakin sounded innocent.

"For disobeying orders."

"Oh, you mean for saving your ass? I think he deserves a medal."

"Master, we had a schedule. You needed us and we weren't there because Rex wouldn't get his shinny armored shebs up the hill."

"Look at it this way, Snips. It would have been a lot worse if those swordsman had gotten around behind us. Then we'd all be dead, gun en-placements or not."

Ahsoka just stared at her master, mouth agape and anger seeping off of her body like heat waves. "Are you serious? Those swordsman carry shield generators! Blasters were useless against them. It was a job for a Jedi. All Rex and his men were doing was making themselves targets." Her voice jumped in pitch on the last word and her hand tightened over the fork she gripped.

"There were twelve of them Ahsoka."

"I could have handled it."

"I'm happy with not knowing if that's true, Snips. I'm glad Rex was there."

Ahsoka glared at her master then at Rex. "Ugh!" She rolled her eyes and dug into her food, pouting. Stubborn, that at least hadn't changed since he met her. She had always been stubborn, particularly when people she cared about were in danger. Rex had to admit, it felt good to be counted as one of those people.

"Grab some food and sit down with us, Captain," the General offered, "unless you have somewhere else to go?" He looked up at Rex, the half veiled question lingering in the air.

"Thank you, sir. I think I will. No where else I'd rather be." He walked off to get his own tray. He wasn't hungry but he would shove it down to be close to her. He would stay just to be there at her back when she needed him. One day it might cost him his life, or worse, cost one of his brother's, but Rex would stay, if only to die the next day in a hail of laser fire, he would always stay. Because she lived in his bioengineered heart, the seven thousand six hundred and fifty seventh perfectly designed and fabricated circulatory organ. Jorcu ni kar'taylir gar darasuum. (Because I will hold you in my heart forever. Because I love you.)

Author's Note: shebs mean buttocks backside or the less polite term for the same thing in Mando'a. The title is also Mando'a and if you didn't figure it out it means forever or eternal (yes I'm a sap. A happy sap. As a lifestyle I suggest it whole heartedly.) –Ember.