The captain was screaming.

Not aloud. Aloud he was calmly issuing rapid-fire orders to his men to clear the area for any droids that had survived the explosion of the fortress.

Inside, he was screaming so loudly that it reverberated in Obi-Wan's head, in his sense of the Force.

Terror and grief, and a desperate sort of resignation.
Guilt started to tug on Obi-Wan.

He could probably have taken a bit longer to explain to the Captain, but when he'd felt the explosives going off prematurely behind them he'd just shouted "Rex, jump!"

And the Captain had.

No questions, just action; flinging himself off the cliff edge hundreds of feet above the ground where they had left most of their force encamped while they had scaled secretly before dawn to plant the explosives that hopefully meant they would not face pitched battle to destroy this facility.

It had been a breathtaking display of trust that nearly knocked the wind out of Obi-Wan as he jumped after the Captain.

He'd been expecting the scream on the way down, honestly. Not everyone routinely flung themselves off of things, and trusting someone to catch you was different from knowing you could catch yourself.

What *had* surprised him was the way the screaming continued even after he slowed them to a gentle landing, not even a puff of dust rising from their feet, and the realization that it had been mental the entire time.

When Rex was finished, Obi-Wan stepped up to him, closer, voice lowering.

"I *am* sorry for the abrupt shortcut, Rex," he said. "I would have given you more warning if I could, but time was of the essence. Thank you for trusting me to catch—"

The quickly stifled bark of bitter laughter caught him by surprise, cutting him off.

"No problem, General." Rex said. "Not the first time. At least you warned me, and didn't just fling me off. Thanks for the catch. "

*Fling* him? Why? Thanks for the catch? Of course Obi-Wan intended to catch him!

"Rex?" Obi-Wan asked, concerned. The Captain was *trembling*. Faintly, on the edge of imperceptible. He reached out and laid a hand on the skin-tight blacks that they had both worn for the sake of stealth for the night op.

The contact strengthened the sense of the Captain's lingering terror, Obi-Wan's sense of him stronger than ever before, as open and raw as the Captain was feeling.

Geonosis.

A wall, hundreds of feet tall.

Rollies.

Have to save the General and the Commander.

Explosions around them.

Weightlessness, the feel of the force around him, raising him and flinging him without warning off the wall.

Falling.

Falling, falling, falling to his death like so many before him.

Jinx and Kipper on Cristophsis, his Jedi right there, but still they screamed as they fell, bodies splintering below him.

Grip and Yuck Yuck, Batch and Jumper, Rico and Setter and Wrenches.

How many brothers had he watched fall away from him, fall and fall and die?

Death approaching, nothing he could do to stop it.

A sudden stop.

"Next time, just tell me to jump."

Give him some indication that they meant to catch him, not just let him fall, like so many others.

"What would be the fun in that?"

Laughter above him while his brain still screamed, stuck in disbelief that he still breathed, wasn't a bloody pulp in the dirt.

Obi-Wan's hand froze on the Captain's shoulder, the input so strong, so immediate that he couldn't pull away until the memory finished.

Obi-Wan was going to murder his Padawan.