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There is an explanation of how my calendar works and a list of helpful translations for my commonly used Star Wars words in 'Flame of Hope - Everyone' if you're curious.

Annnnnddddd... For those of you who pay attention to the dates in my made up calendar you'll notice that this version of the story now takes place just before the Rise of Maul arc. This is done very much on purpose, as you'll see if you read all the way through to the end of the story. :D :D :D

A/N: This is more or less the original concept for my other story, 'He's Gone', which took on a crazy life of its own and became an entirely different story when I decided to upgrade this one to my new writing style, so I figured I'd post a quick (ha) one shot of the original story since about 12,000 words were already written and were never going to get used otherwise, and that would just make me really really sad. :D

Of course, I've somehow managed to rewrite nearly all of it anyway (rolling eyes at myself) and the story looks like it's going to be more like 30,000+ words by the time I'm done, so I'm not calling it a one shot anymore and am posting it as story with who knows how many chapters. (I'm hopeless.)

He's Not Allowed To Be Gone!

Warning:

D37/20 BBY, Kestos Minor, Kwymar Sector.

I am Ahsoka Tano, Jedi Padawan to Anakin Skywalker, the kriffing Chosen One, and what am I doing? I'm once again playing bodyguard to his mate while watching a bunch of ridiculously overdressed senators argue about the moral ambiguities of squeezing even more credits from loyal Republic tax payers' pockets.

The teenage Togrutan huffed under her breath and shifted her weight to her other foot, letting her eyes trail off of the assembled senators gathered in the huge dining room of Ivor Drake's marble enshrouded castle, delicately picking at their ninth course of a meal that had dragged on for three hours already. Ignoring the rumbling of her own stomach at her own delayed dinner, Ahsoka instead turned her focus in the general direction of her Master, which happened to coincide with the view out the huge bank of windows across the room from her position behind Padmè Amidala's chair.

She didn't see the rich city surrounded by white tipped mountains, nor the stunning purple sky decorated in gold, pink, and blue sunset hues. No, her blindly staring eyes saw the flash of a blue lightsabre, the sleek ballet of a master swordsman, the determined advance of a thousand identical warriors, and the crumpled forms of another ten thousand or more battle droids slowly being covered by the shifting sands of Seelos' plains.

And what is my Master doing? He's having the time of his life cutting droids up into fun little pieces only one solar system over. I can feel him laughing right now, that lucky bastard. I should be with him. Him and Obi-Wan and Rex. Doing what I've been training my whole life to do. Not standing here, holding up a wall, and needlessly guarding my Master's mate when she clearly doesn't need it.

Ahsoka huffed silently again, only just managing to stop herself from crossing her arms over her chest in disgust. She dug her blunt nails into her palms instead.

This is stupid. No one is going to jump out of the walls to attack Padmè here. Not bounty hunters, or assassins, or Grievous, and most certainly not Maul and his oversized brother.

Why?

Because no one knows she's here, that's why. We made sure everyone and their mooka heard Padmè say she was bound for Naboo to visit her family for a week.

Anakin is being ridiculously overprotective of his mate, even with the new threat of Maul and Savage.

Although... I suppose I would be just as overprotective of my mate if I had one.

I wish I had one.

Jedi or not.

If Anakin can have a secret mate, then why can't I?

There's just the itty bitty problem that the only person who makes me think about mating at all still thinks of me as a child.

But I'm not!

I'm sixteen now! That's considered an adult on more than half of the planets in the galaxy and is at least the age of consent in the other half.

And who is he to talk? He's technically just a very smart boy in a man's body.

But what a body... Yummmm.

Ahsoka's core clenched in appreciation as she happily recalled the last time she'd caught Rex without a shirt on in the training gym of the Reckless (the Resolute's successor). He wasn't as thickly built as some of his brothers, but he had lickable muscles covering him from the neck down without a single ounce of extra fat on him. He was literally a perfect specimen of a male Human, mouth-watering scars and all, and all she wanted to do was jump on him and have her wicked way with him.

And his eyes. Those golden brown eyes like a hawk's. They were so beautiful and so full of intelligence. It didn't matter to her that he supposedly had the same eyes as a few million of his brothers, to her, Rex's eyes were unique to him. She wanted to drown in them.

Kriff, I'm so gone on him, it's pathetic.

But I don't care.

One day, Rex will finally see me as a woman, and when he does, I'm going to make him a very happy male. Very happy.

Ahsoka let herself succumb to her fantasies, the drone of voices in the background fading away.

Six hours later...

Flashing red.

Headache inducing noise.

Nauseating motion.

Hundreds of pounding footfalls.

And then obsidian blackness. Swirling blackness. Chaos filled blackness. Soul stealing blackness.

Ahsoka sat up, swallowing a cry of fear, looking around her dim bedroom frantically, anxiety coursing through her sweat soaked body as she gasped for air through a chest that felt like a nerf was sitting on it.

Seeing nothing amiss in the small room attached to Padmè's, she sent her senses sweeping out towards her charge, only finding the peacefully resting Force signature of her friend in the room next door. Reassured that nothing inimical was going on in her vicinity, Ahsoka worked on calming her heartbeat and breathing.

As the perspiration cooled on her skin, she lay back down and stared up at the ceiling. What the frag was that? Was that a nightmare?

Or a vision?

The possibility that it was the later kept her up the rest of the night, constantly checking her bond with Anakin to make sure everything was still all right in his world.

Space, fifteen hours later...

Rex caught himself on the wall yet again just as Anakin appeared around a corner, running down the hall towards him, Cody, and General Kenobi, who'd all been together with Admiral Yularen on the bridge when the space anomaly had suddenly appeared directly in their path. The Jedi's dark tunics and tabard were more than slightly crooked and his wavy dark blond hair was sticking straight up in places. Despite the dire situation, Rex almost cracked a smile to see Anakin looking so out of sorts. If I didn't know better, I'd say that Amidala had been in his quarters with him again.

His General had been off duty, attempting to catch up on some much needed sleep after a three day long battle on Seelos (which Anakin hadn't stopped for more than a ten minute nap the entire time), while the Reckless carried them towards Kestos Minor through a tricky bit of space that didn't allow for lightspeed unless you liked being nothing more than a smear on the backside of the galaxy. The rest of their fleet were trailing behind them somewhere, hopefully not also getting dragged into their latest mess.

The whole area between the Seelos System and the Kestos System was a mine field of asteroid belts and dead spaceships, not to mention a favourite feeding ground for spaceship hating Purrgil due to the gas giant that passed as the area's only claim to a planet-like object.

And apparently, now also the home of a pissed off baby wormhole.

"What the kriff is going on?" Anakin yelled over the sound of the 'abandon ship' sirens to Obi-Wan as he about-faced and joined them in their run towards the escape pods. "I was having a rather pleasant dream for once and then all of a sudden I was thrown out of my bunk and now we're abandoning ship?!"

"Some sort of wormhole hurricane," Obi-Wan yelled back. "Never seen anything like it, but as you can probably sense, the Reckless is stuck in it and being shredded."

"Yah, I got that," Anakin said rather dryly even as he paused, turned, and grabbed Rex before he was thrown into a wall, using the Force to hold them both up. "It feels like we're spinning in circles while being shaken by a very mad rancor."

Rex laughed as Obi-Wan grabbed Cody too when the ship bucked twice as hard as before. "Excellent description, Sir. I'll be sure to add that one to the report."

"You do that, Rex," Anakin said with a hint of a smile. And they all took off once more, taking advantage of smoother running as the ship settled down for a moment.

"Please tell me you're on your way, Captain," Fives' voice suddenly said inside Rex's and Cody's helmets. "I've packed the last of us into the final escape pod in this sector of the ship. And the computer is reading that the other sections of pods are rapidly ejecting."

"We're almost there," Rex reassured the ARC trooper who served as his second in command.

After only another half minute of running, the little group made it to the hallway of escape pods. The last pod was stuffed full with clones from the 501st in their white and blue armour. Fives paused in his pacing just outside the hatchway of the pod when he saw the Generals and his brothers running towards him. "Thank the stars, you made it, Sirs. We were getting worried."

Anakin smiled in at his men, feeling the waves of relief from them to see him and Rex even as he noticed there was no possible way all five of them were going to fit in the pod as well. He exchanged glances with Obi-Wan, both of them thinking the same thing. They would Force push Rex and Cody into the pod and stay behind. They could run like lightning to another section of the ship and hopefully catch another pod.

Rex and Cody had also come to the same conclusion, and being the men they were, it never even occurred to them to take the place of safety before their Generals. They also knew exactly what the Jedi would do in the situation. They exchanged the smallest hint of a nod with their helmeted heads and palmed their blasters, flicking the switch to stun with their thumbs.

As Anakin and Obi-Wan turned around to grab their friends and forcibly shove them in the pod, they found themselves shot instead, not even leaving time for a cry of disbelief.

Fives caught their falling forms by their tunics with a hand each, his inherited clone reflexes excellent, as usual. Helmeted heads exchanged stares as Rex told Fives to pull the Jedi into the pod and go!

Fives wasn't pleased about leaving Captain Rex and Commander Cody behind, but he knew how to obey orders from his commanding officers, brothers or not. He nodded once and dragged the unconscious Jedi into the pod, placing them on the feet of his brothers already lining the small space.

Rex smacked the button to close the pod door and hit the next one to eject it from the ship. May the Force be with you, my brothers, he thought solemnly as he watched the pod disappear into the pitch-darkness of space.

As if he had read his mind, Fives' voice came through over the comms in their buckets. "As our Jedi would say if they weren't out cold; may the Force be with you, Sirs, and good luck. I promise we'll come looking for you after you get off that flaming ball of death. You keep your shebs alive until then, you hear?"

Rex held the vibrating wall as his chest tightened with all of the emotions that were catching up to him. "We hear, Fives. That goes double for you too, vod."

"Understood," came back the barely audible reply of Fives. And then the comms went to static as the Reckless was pulled even further into the wormhole and the escape pod joined the fleet of little pods valiantly flying away from the space anomaly.

Meanwhile, back at the Drake Castle…

After listening to the senators blab about the same political issues for three days, Ahsoka thought she just might go stark raving mad if she heard the word 'credit' one more time. So she tuned them all out.

Whilst portraying the appearance of holding up yet another wall, the teenage Jedi closed her eyes and stretched out her senses into the Force, drawing comfort from the familiar currents of power and life. The area surrounding the castle was calm and peaceful with nary a ripple of ill intent. Not that she expected there to be any trouble; none of the senators had received any death threats for almost two straight months. But here she was anyway, guarding them.

Blah.

Expanding her focus, Ahsoka's mind brushed over the busy city life and then turned away, back up to the top of a mountain, where the surroundings were cool and quiet. Imagining herself there, sitting cross-legged on a flat rock that had been windswept of its snow, Ahsoka let herself drift in the Force for a few minutes, just being.

She couldn't imagine not being able to connect to the Force like this. It was empowering and humbling and helped her control her inherently predatory and overenthusiastic nature. Her ancestors had been some of the most feared hunters in the galaxy, before they were tamed into slaves for their looks and other 'skills', which meant there were times when this war had brought out her usually suppressed instincts that would have alarmed her Master if he'd been anyone other than the unconventional Anakin Skywalker.

She would forever be grateful to Master Yoda for pairing her with him.

Thinking of Anakin inspired her to follow her bond with him to check on him yet again, still a little disturbed about her strange dream or vision from the night before. She knew he was on his way here to escort Padmè and the other senators back to Coruscant (and steal some alone time with his mate), but she still had to check.

Fortunately, if he wasn't battling a droid army, sleeping, or exchanging words or bodily fluids with Padmè, he always welcomed having her mind brush his with a mental hug. They both needed those mental hugs more than they would ever admit to anyone else, just to reaffirm that no matter what the Jedi Council said, they would always be connected to each other.

Ahsoka heaved a mental sigh when she brushed up against Anakin's sleeping mind. He'd been sleeping the last time she'd checked, too. I wish he'd wake up already. I'm bored. And I want to talk to him about my vision. But he's been busy or asleep ever since.

Grrrrr.

Wait. What is that?

Ahsoka frowned as a sense of danger and a disturbance in what should have been the calm emptiness of space seemed to surround Anakin. What's going on?

She reached for the slightly weaker bond she had with Obi-Wan and found him mentally unresponsive as well. They're almost never asleep at the same time when travelling, taking turns overseeing things. What the kriff is happening over there?

Now really worried, Ahsoka went for her last resort when it came to hopefully getting answers, since her bond with Rex was very much one sided and he didn't know that she could sense him if she really tried. And because it was only one-sided, she'd never mentally talked to him like she did with Anakin or Obi-Wan, but she could sense his emotions and get a pretty good sense of his wellbeing. Her frown increased as she felt that Rex was even more embroiled in the sense of danger than her Masters were and that he was quite anxious and maybe even a little afraid.

Rex is never afraid. Not for himself anyway. What in the galaxy is wrong?

Frag, I wish I could make him hear me.

What if… What if I could? I've never actually tried, have I?

So Ahsoka poured every ounce of power she had into yelling into Rex's naturally shielded mind, determinedly battering at the imaginary wall that blocked his thoughts from everyone. (His proximity to mind reading Jedi had inspired him to build upon what genetics had already given him.)

" REX! REX! CAN YOU HEAR ME?! PLEASE, REX, LET ME IN!"

She nearly sobbed with relief when she felt his shield weaken a little and his emotions spike with surprise.

" Ahsoka?"

Rex staggered for the hundredth time in the last ten minutes as he ran beside Cody, but his time, it had nothing to do with the pitching and rolling of the ship.

A familiar voice had just whispered across his mind, he'd swear it. One that haunted his fantasies at night and inspired in him a new level of dedication to his purpose in life that he hadn't felt until he met her, because he wanted to make the galaxy safe for her again. And considering the current situation and how close they were to Kestos Minor, he wasn't too terribly surprised that the girl had somehow managed to contact him mentally. He found it amusing, though, that she'd completely forgotten that they had perfectly good comm systems that would have done the same without the mental intrusion. Or maybe they aren't working because of the wormhole?

So, giving her the benefit of the doubt, he consciously imagined himself letting a Force user into his mind for the first time since Ventress had mostly managed to mind trick him back on Teth, because it was HER, and he could deny her nothing.

" Ahsoka?"

" Rex! Thank Force. You let me in! Thank you, thank you, thank you! What the frag is going on over there? Why does it feel like my Masters are both out cold and why does it feel like the area around you is having a temper tantrum of epic proportions?"

Rex winced as he and Cody ran for the hangar, having already accessed the ship's computer and seen that all of the escape pods had been launched. They hoped to find a working shuttle or LAATi or even a fighter that they could escape the dying war ship in. "Nothing to worry about, Commander," Rex lied as he bounced off a wall and skidded around a corner. "Just another day in the war."

"So everything's going to poodoo and you're about to die. Without me. Again," Ahsoka thought back, sending him a healthy dose of amused disgust.

Rex pictured himself grinning. "That about sums it up."

Ahsoka sent him a picture of her eyes rolling around in her head like loose marbles, eliciting a mental laugh from the clone. "Do you need me to send help? Or come help? I can be there in an hour, I think, based on what time you were supposed to arrive."

"That's actually a really good idea," Rex admitted as he and Cody all but fell through the door to the hangar. He suppressed the urge to groan as they found what used to be an orderly row of gunships and shuttles now little more than a jumble of smashed parts against one wall and then winced some more as the ship changed its tilt and the pile of debris started sliding across the hangar towards the other wall. Anything that brushed the openings to the central runway fell out through the faintly glowing blue shields and was instantly sucked up into space."You could send a rescue team to retrieve the escape pods. The generals are in one."

" Will do. I'm going to interrupt the senators' blab party now. No, wait. You know, you haven't actually told me what's going on yet."

"Because I disn't want to worry you," Rex thought back while exchanging looks of resigned acceptance with Cody at the hopelessness of the available ships on this side of the hangar. They ran for the hallway at the front of the hangar that would let them get to the other side without getting sucked up into space. The other half of the hangar had all of the starfighters, most of which were docked to the walls and wouldn't be anywhere near as damaged, if at all.

"Just tell me." Her tone left him feeling like he didn't have a choice. So he did.

" We're stuck in a very temperamental newborn wormhole."

" Well, kriff. That explains the strange vision I had last night. You stay alive until I can get to you, you hear me?"

Somehow, Rex wasn't surprised that Ahsoka had had a vision about their situation. Of all three Jedi that he was close to, Ahsoka had more visions than Anakin and Obi-Wan combined by almost double. "I'll do my best."

" Good. NOW I'll be right back."

Rex cracked a smile as they ran, and then a few moments later, it widened even further as a little silver and blue droid careened out of a turbolift doorway towards them, beeping frantically about finding his master.

Ahsoka dashed over to the table full of senators, startling them into silence. Stopping by Padmè's chair, she didn't bother to keep her voice down when she said, "The Reckless just flew right into a wormhole! We need to send them help ASAP!"

Padmè leapt up from her chair, nearly sending it crashing to the ground, eyes wide with alarm as everyone else at the table also stirred and gasped. "Anakin?"

"In a pod, unconscious. I don't know why."

"Kriff," the woman muttered under her breath, before she turned to Senator Drake. "We need to mount a rescue party. Now!"

"Of course," the strawberry blonde headed woman replied, already pulling out a commlink.

Ahsoka left them too it and returned the majority of her focus to Rex, the man who could have been her perfect soulmate already if their situations weren't what they were.