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Sorry, this one lacks all the flavor

ilyena_sylph brings to the table, but I just had to get it down on electrons.

Fives Saves the Galaxy (Redux) (2568 words) by Sharpest_Asp
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars: The Clone Wars [2008] - All Media Types
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: CT-27-5555 | ARC-5555 | Fives, CT-7567 | Rex, Ahsoka Tano
Additional Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, Mando'a Language (Star Wars)
Summary:

A Force Thing shoves Fives to his Commander... right after she faces Vader.

Fives Saves the Galaxy (Redux)

This place was enough to spook Fives right back into feeling like a cadet, once the world stopping spinning counter to his balance, and he could think past the taste of colors from the world going awry.

How in all the galaxies had he gone from covering Echo's six to this place — oh wait. He shook his head to stop the ringing, which worked exactly opposite of the intent, and glanced at the hand not currently holding a blaster.

Damn. This was some kind of hallucination, Force Thing, or he'd cracked his skull when he tried to catch the weird glowing tube. It was in his hand, but it was not glowing, and he was alone.

Completely alone in a hell-scape littered by dust and ash and debris.

A noise like a hunting raptor brought his head up to see a white bird, one he thought he'd seen on other worlds. He tracked its motion and it swooped toward… a person? His helmet let him zoom, and he saw a Togruta, making them the second living thing he'd found in this place, struggling down a path.

Might be dangerous, but Fives needed answers, and this was his only lead so far.

His fast jog in that direction alerted the person, making them stop and turn, though they did not attempt to make it to him or draw weapons. Just as Fives had almost gotten close enough to make out details beyond 'tall' and 'probably a woman', a ship of a configuration he did not recognize at all, adding to the weirdness of the day.

She — definitely feminine curves — tracked the ship, and he thought she looked very resigned at its leaving. Was it someone leaving her behind on purpose? Had that been her ship?

Who was she? Those were lightsaber hilts next to something like a kama, and armor over her chest as well as on her arms and legs. Something about her looked very familiar, and yet alien to him all at once.

"Well. This is not the kind of ghost I am used to seeing from the Force," the woman said once he was in view. "Nice touch, making the armor look right," and he could tell she wasn't talking to him, so much as about him, and… those marks on her cheeks really brought home why she looked familiar.

He didn't much care for the rest of her coloring — washed out, faded, a sure sign of injury — and she was so tall, so mature, but she had to be his Commander!

"Commander Tano?"

"Not in a very long time, but then… you marched far away even before the end."

Fives should not have let those words spill from his mouth, a rejection of the very idea and adding in all the things he felt about this creepy dead world, even as the bird thing came to alight upon her — his commander's! — shoulder. When he stopped blistering the air, he reached up and swiped the helmet off, so she could see him with her eyes, the real him, not just the bucket.

He wasn't sure that was the best idea as her eyes went all white, and he could almost feel the energy in the air around her. Even as he took a step back, the white faded, and she moved to reach for him, only to stumble.

Instinct had him there, steadying her, and he realized she was injured, probably severely from the marks he could see, and how pale she was. He cast about, hunting for shelter, saw a small portal leading into darkness and not much else.

"Help me get there, Fives, and then we can talk," she said softly.

"Sir, yes sir," he breathed, getting his helmet back on as he felt that she had accepted him for who he was, even if all of this was a karking holo-drama with a bad sense of humor.

Fives won the argument of 'first aid then talking', without actually having to insist all that much. He was noticing how much quieter his Commander was and really not liking it at all. Finally, satisfied all of his kit had been exhausted on her injuries, he settled beside her at her insistence.

"Got a droid popper? I need to show you a trick with it," Ahsoka said, making his curiosity light up. He found one, handing it over, then leaned in as she opened a side to recalibrate it. "This frequency, for this duration," she said, making certain he could see the settings.

"Doesn't look like that would penetrate much more than plastoid, let alone work on any droid I know of," Fives told her dubiously. "But yes sir, I won't forget the settings," he added at her very searching look.

"Good. And Fives? I'm sorry." She thumbed the switch then, and Fives felt a piercing pain in his temple, one that felt like fire inside his skull, making him grab for it. What in all of space had she done — no. What had the longnecks done that a droid popper worked like that on him?!

"Back with me, Fives?" the woman that his Commander was in this bad place was asking, every few seconds, it seemed like, or maybe time was just looping in his head.

"Yes, Commander." He brought his face up and met her eyes. "All of us?"

The sadness in her eyes said far too much, and he had to get up, walk away, just walk and move, though he didn't leave the small chamber they had found. He just kept moving.

Ahsoka Tano was an adult with montrals and lekku to rival General Ti's. There were no vod'e on her six, no one with her. She carried herself with precision, contained in the same way that older clones who had been through harrowing losses were.

There was a chip in their heads, and she had not only known about it, but short-circuited it before giving him a sit-rep.

The math was adding up to an ugly story, one he didn't want to hear, but one he knew he had to. Only… was there any good in hearing it, if he was here-now?

"How many died?"

"Too many. Vod'e and Jedi alike," she told him, voice soft and hurting. "I've rescued the ones I could, Fives. But… it doesn't help me deal with the pain anymore than it helps Rex to know he saved me."

At that, Fives came back to her, squatting in front of her, eyes lighting. "The Captain made it?"

"Yes. Him, Wolffe, Gregor — you wouldn't know him. They escaped the initial order that turned the chips on and took all of you from us." She reached out, a slender finger tracing his tat on his forehead. "You made it possible for Rex, but we lost you in that terrible mess. He told me the story, when we were hiding together.

"But now, with you here? Maybe — Maybe the Force can undo it all."

"How?" he asked her. "I mean, I want to. I'll do anything to save my brothers and the Jedi. But… how?"

She smiled. "I tell you a long story, with all of the details I know. Then you go back. I should be able to figure that much out, or the Force wouldn't have brought you to me."

Fives really took stock of her again, seeing a woman whose early confidence was now backed by fire-annealed skills. If she could make the Force do what she wanted it to —

— he wasn't going to argue. Any chance to save his brothers and the Jedi was to be taken.

"Fives?"

Echo's voice was overriding the taste of color and the sound of odors. All that Fives had learned burned in his head, written in a script he couldn't read on scavenged flimsi inside his blacks. He could feel it there, pressing against his skin like the mission he now had.

One way or another, he was going to save them all. He couldn't bear the thought of failure.

"I'm fine," he told his batch-brother, making certain that he hadn't missed any time — the commander had said he should flit right back into the moment the thing had taken him from. "Thought I saw something, but it's gone now." Not quite a lie, which made him feel better. Echo deserved truth, always, but at the same time, he couldn't bog his brother down with the weight of what was coming.

Tarkin was definitely a dead man if they wound up going on that mission, though.

He just kept his eyes focused ahead, working on clearing this sweep mission, as the need to save everyone burned in the back of his mind. He was going to need to win the Captain over, to get him to Wolffe, but Ahsoka had given him enough pieces to know how to do that.

It almost amused him, to know she had never let go of that deep bond with Captain Rex, and he wondered if it had grown to something personal, just to keep himself from going crazy.

While Fives hated bothering the Captain in his off-time, it was also the only way he was going to talk to the man alone. He saw Jesse and Kix were occupied, ruling out the rare comfort the Captain would take with their medic, and headed through the ship until he got to the cabin Rex had conceded was closer to the bridge and offered privacy for counseling soldiers in need.

He was let in to see the Commander — looking short and baby-plump cheeks with short montrals like she ought to — in with the Captain and debated how to go about this. He knew he could not involve their General, but he hadn't been warned about Ahsoka herself.

"Fives," Rex said, sitting on the edge of the berth while Ahsoka sat on the small desk, swinging her feet a little. She was searching Fives' face which felt a little unnerving after being with the older version for several days.

"I wanted to show you something I found out about the droid poppers, sir," Fives began, deciding that the first move in this was an exact copy of the Commander's with him. He settled on the Captain's side, trying not to fumble under those intent looks from Ahsoka Tano, or just the sheer physicality of invading The Captain's space. Rex leaned over when Fives opened the droid popper, and just frowned a little at the reset of the parameters.

"Doesn't look effective for much, from what little I can remember about them," Rex said.

"Only, it will help us, sir, with a persistent problem," Fives told him, before thumbing the switch for immediate use. Just as he'd done, Rex raised a hand to his temple, eyes wincing shut, face in a grimace… and Ahsoka all but teleported herself to Rex's other side, eyes not on the Captain but on Fives, even as she used instinctive Force-healing on the spot paining their captain.

"The nightmare."

Ahsoka's flat voice on those two words made Fives' eyes go wide. He knew she was Commander Vod'ika, considered more one of them than Jedi sometimes, but she knew?! Who had —

She trilled something, a familiar sound that had been used as whistle code among the cadets, a sound that meant comfort and safety and protection.

"I… you… yes, sir. The Nightmare." He set the expended popper down, and got an arm around the Captain's shoulders as Rex was bringing himself under control.

"What. The. Kriff."

"I told you I dreamed about those years again, of seeing all of you, of feeling your worries," Ahsoka said patiently. "Apparently Fives is now a part of whatever it is tying me to all of you in this."

"You don't know the half of it, sir," Fives said fervently.

"Knock off the rank stuff in here, Fives," Ahsoka told him. "I came to talk to Rex about it, he said it started for him on last sleep and he decided to go do target practice, so I wasn't channeling it off of him… which means some of the other first years probably are having it again.

"If you can help us understand, starting with what you just did to Rexter, we can start fixing it."

"The longnecks put a chip in us, to make us perfectly obedient… to the correct orders, when the time came," Fives said quietly, hoping these quarters were shielded enough to keep the General from appearing. The color Ahsoka turned, and the absolute wretched look on Rex's face said they had followed the right thought-paths… and Fives breathed out. "We can stop it.

"Because the Force decided to show me a future. One we're going to send to haran now," Fives said with all confidence.

"Trying to become a jetii now?" Rex said, dark humor flavoring the words, before he looked at Ahsoka, who had not left his side. "General?"

"No," she and Fives answered in one breath, before she tipped her head to Fives.

"He's got the Force-equivalent of the damned chip in his head, because the order can only come from one man," Fives whispered, ready to defend the truth he knew if he had to. "I don't like it, but… I can't disbelieve, not after having the chip fried in my head when I had no idea about it."

Several long minutes passed, and this time it was Rex putting an arm around Ahsoka, letting her turn into his shoulder for comfort, before Fives got to outline what he knew, and the plan that the adult Ahsoka had helped him work out.

The 104th got assigned to a long joint mission with the 501st on the 'front line' furthest from Coruscant. Every emergency designed to pull Anakin Skywalker back to the center of things was diverted by another Jedi or unit. Naboo's Senator was rumored to have two Jedi Sentinels in her bodyguards.

A mysterious headache swept through the Grand Army of the Republic but had no discernible cause. A handful of high-ranking Fleet officers had malfunctions during evac drills. And several Senators suddenly had all of their funds frozen, pending investigation from the Security Council, based on anonymous tips.

Fives never got close to the cause of it all, but the holos of CorSec attempting to arrest the Chancellor on charges of bribery, mismanagement of funds, and inciting riots let he and his brothers see their own people take down a Sith. Too many died… and yet. It was a tiny fraction of the deaths that would be, that had already happened, because two Sith chose to play a dejarik game with the prize being the destruction of the Jedi and the Republic.

Sometimes, after, Fives would swear that he heard that strange bird of the Force, or saw a white light centered on his Commander when there was no explanation for it. He tried to push it away, tried to just be grateful she wouldn't have to be that stately woman carrying the pain of the galaxy on her shoulders.

And no one but she, Rex, and Master Plo Koon had to know he'd had anything to do with unraveling it all, something he was glad of, as Fox and Thire became the Faces of their people for their part in it all. Fives was content to face a new future with Echo at his side.

Books 869-872 of Complete Tang Poems is 谐谑, xiéxuè, banter/repartee—IOW, poems of humor and mockery. Do I want to dive deep into this? Yes—yes, I do. Duh. But for now, instead, here’s translations of a random handful that caught my eye.

I have even less standing to do this than I did the ghost poems. I can tell I’m missing wordplay and am even weaker on cultural context—and indeed, I failed to get anywhere with more than half the poems I tried. IOW, don’t make much of how three of the four are one specific genre—these were the easiest to make sense of, and Chinese humor ranges well beyond these examples.

Still, these few were fun.

In Praise of the Hedgehog, Li or Zhu Zhenbai
Walking, he seems a shifting pin-cushion,
At rest, he’s curled like a chestnut-burr.
He can’t be bullied like us big folks:
Who dares to casually punch the guy?

( There’s three more where that came from, including two more praising animals )

Yyyyeah, there’s reasons why I didn’t do more of these. Much harder to understand, let alone render well, than even the ghost poems and children’s rhymes.

Index of Chinese translations

Subject quote from Catwings, Ursula K. Le Guin.

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	254	8,303	no
Monthly	9,554	217,636	5 days

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	383	8,148	no
Monthly	9,191	209,157	5 days

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	298	10,874	no
Monthly	8,808	200,788	5 days

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	772	8,601	no
Monthly	8,510	189,547	5 days

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	643	11,057	yes
Monthly	7,738	180,870	5 days

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Remixing my own fic: Fives Saves the Galaxy (redux)

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