Chapter Text
The flight to Coruscant took twenty-one hours. Davijaan spent most of it in his cabin. He wasn’t avoiding Vos, exactly. He was simply staying out of the way.
After being threatened with the brig one day and then given apology caf the next he wasn’t sure what to expect from this General. He was used to dealing with the mercurial moods of the natborn officers he worked under, but none of them had the power to freeze his limbs solid and choke him to death on a whim.
Vos spent most of his time in the cockpit, as far as Davijaan could tell. Now that he was trying to be nice, or maybe even friendly, he called Davijaan up to help with the jumps. He kept his head down and ran the calculations and nodded along as Vos tried to make small talk, not sure what kind of response was expected from him and determined to play it safe.
He didn’t get slammed into more walls, but he didn’t get more caf either.
There were moments, as he worked, when silence fell, and he felt a chill on the back of his neck. He would glance across the console, not sure what he was looking for but always surprised to find Vos staring resolutely out the viewshield.
***
They came into atmo on the dark side of the planet. Vos dived through the glittering skyscrapers and Galactic City traffic and took them down a ventilation shaft and into the undercity. The grimy metal walls of the shaft, broken up by branching shiplanes and valves and eerie blue lights, stretched down and down into clouds of steam. Something about sinking down into the grey made him shiver.
Davijaan had only ever flown over L5127, with its artificial blue sky and yellow sun, the Senate Dome and the Jedi Temple dominating the skyline, but he’d never been lower than L4577 either. Clones weren’t welcome on the upper levels, and they didn’t have much time to explore the lower levels.
They passed L4500, and Davijaan tried not to squirm in his seat. L4000. L3500. L3000. The blue lights were gradually replaced by dim yellow and white, rust staining the grey metal brown. L2500. L2000. L1500. He knew there were people living on every level—there was steady traffic up and down the shaft and through the shiplanes that opened into it—but the glimpses down those dark openings through steam and iridescent gas were not reassuring.
After L1000 the ships dwindled to droid staffed maintenance transports and the odd privately owned transport or freighter that looked one hyperspace jump to away from shaking to pieces. At one point they passed a limping Dynamic-class freighter. He almost broke his neck twisting to follow its path, eyes wide.
Vos chuckled. “All sorts of relics down here. Used to bring Aayla down, and we’d sit in a tunnel mouth and I’d quiz her on the class and model of passing ships. Good way to get familiar with outdated tech more common in the Outer Rim.”
Davijaan hummed an acknowledgement, trying to figure out if he was supposed to know this person. Aayla. Probably a Jedi, if Vos spent so much time with her…
Bly called his General Aayla, sometimes. General Aayla Secura.
He chanced a glance at Vos. He wasn’t great with natborn ages but he was pretty sure Vos was older than Secura, he had thin lines around his eyes the same as Kenobi. If he’d been quizzing her, maybe he’d been in charge of teaching her? Like Kenobi and Skywalker. And Tano, before. Maybe General Secura had been his padawan.
He hadn’t thought about what Vos meant when he said was doing this for his family. He didn’t need to know why an order was issued to follow it. But now he thought of every rule ‘17 had quietly broken and every rule he had steadfastly enforced for the sake of his cadets, and maybe he understood some of Vos’ desperation.
Finally, they reached L500. The ventilation shaft came to an abrupt end and they plunged through the last billows of purple steam and into the purple glow of the power grid, in the foundations of modern Coruscant.
Vos pulled the VCX out of its dive and skimmed over the whirring generators, weaving between the vast pillars that supported the thousands of levels above. The heat was oppressive, even within the temp controlled ship, and Davijaan wished Vos would let him do something to help fly.
A gap in the duracrete along the top of a pillar led them back up into L501. The shiplane they emerged into was empty, hot and loud from the generators below but cloudy with dust stirred up by their engines. The flickering overhead lights were the red of a dying star.
They flew for miles down the shiplane. Vos ignored the many lanes that diverged from it, until they came to a tunnel entrance. It was dark, but Vos confidently steered them in and set them down gently, well back from the entrance and any lingering red light.
“Pack your bags, Commander,” he said, cheerful, powering the console down. “We’re going for a hike.”
***
He put his armor on. It’d been nice to walk around in his undersuit for a few days, but he wasn’t stepping foot outside this ship without it. He knew he wasn’t any safer wearing it than he was without it, but he still wanted something solid between his skin and the dark.
Technically he was required to wear his armor when he was on duty, but Vos hadn’t exactly given him time to grab it when he’d been dragged to the cockpit the first time, and hadn’t said anything when he’d arrived without it the second. And it was always a relief to be out of armor; to be able to move with just that little bit less weight and restriction.
Vos was waiting for him at the hatch, a heavy brown cloak over his robes and a second in his arms, handed wordlessly to Davijaan.
The cloak turned out to be more of a blanket with a hole in the middle. Poncho? Whatever it was, it was huge. It would have been long even on Vos. It hung past his hands and past his knees, and covered every inch of gleaming white armor except his boots.
“That thing have air filters?” Vos gestured to his helmet. He adjusted the seals carefully while Vos put on his own mask, and did not ask how often the air scrubbers were repaired down here.
The air outside of the tunnel was dry and heavy. Dust puffed up with every footstep. Breathable, but only barely. He watched Vos set the ship’s alarm system and cloaking and did not think about being miles deep in this city with no way to fly out. He was sweating under his armor and poncho, but as he marched away from the VCX he felt cold down to his bones.
Space was fine because he was inside a ship. Water was fine as long as he was inside a ship. Deep dark tunnels that led nowhere? Would be fine, if he was inside a damn ship.
He kept his breathing even and followed the blue glow of Vos’ lantern into the dark.
The tunnel wandered, narrowing until Davijaan’s shoulders brushed both sides, and he had to hold a memory of stars in his mind to stave off panic. After a time the thrum of the generators receded, and the only sound was the muffled thud of their boots.
Finally Vos came to a halt, and set the lantern down to fight with a rusty grate. It shrieked its displeasure, but did open, and at last they climbed out of the tunnel and into—a storage room?
It was huge, as big as one of the warehouses that had been converted into clone barracks. Grey duracrete floor and grey duracrete walls and grey duracrete ceiling, the white lights now the dim grey-green of an evening storm.
The whole room was stuffed with stacks of trash. Just, rubbish. Piles and piles of dry-rotted wood and cloth and rusted metals and shattered glass and plastics. Some of them had tipped over, mounds of dust blocking grey entryways that probably used to hold grey doors.
Vos tugged his mask down around his neck and took a deep breath of the filthy air, releasing it in a contented sigh. He clapped Davijaan on the back and gestured expansively at the mess. “Behold, the heart of our Republic! Or, its basement, at least. One of its basements.”
Huh. Senate building basement. Presumably not accessed at any time within the last few centuries. Was it even on the blueprints still? Fox would know. And if he ever wanted to get his face chewed off, Davijaan could ask.
“I know the view’s lovely, but the hike’s not over yet, Commander.” A firm hand on his shoulder steered him forward into the mess.
They picked their way through the trash and to the back wall, their cloaks now more grey than brown. As they got close Davijaan realized Vos was aiming for the doorway high overhead, the only one that remained unblocked. Though not necessarily accessible. Red-brown rust marks on the wall were complimented by a twisted pile of orange-red metal struts on the floor.
Vos bounced on his toes and glanced over with a grin, and it was a grin Davijaan had received from several of his siblings and meant Vos was about to be a huge show off.
Vos sprinted down an empty stretch of floor, and jumped, and just—flew. Thirty feet straight up in the air like it was nothing, like gravity let go of him for just that moment. He did a flip and landed lightly inside the doorway, cloak fluttering around him, not even breathing hard. Still grinning.
And, Davijaan had heard stories. He’d watched vids, back on Kamino. He even got glimpses of Ahsoka Tano in action on that chase through the Industrial District. But seeing it in person was so much more…
He stood in the middle of the floor, gaping, until Vos laughed, and leaned over the edge with his hands braced on his knees. “Want to climb, or can I give you a boost?”
… What the hells. Climb on what? “Um. Boost, please?”
Nothing happened for a second, and then the same warmth that had lifted him out of the sea wound around his torso, and Vos drew him up off the floor with an outstretched hand.
It’d been a very long time since he’d last flown with a jetpack, but it felt a little bit like that. Rising swift and steady into the air, the weight of his body of no consequence. He stumbled as he was set down, not quite muffling his gasp as the warm pressure suddenly ceased.
Vos steadied him with a hand on his arm. “Dizzy?”
“No, sir.” He cleared his throat. “Just felt… Different, from before.”
“Yeah, you were pretty disoriented coming out of the water.”
In his silence, Vos’ good humor faded. “Ah. You meant in the cabin.” He let go of Davijaan’s arm and took a step back. He smiled again, but there was something forced about it Davijaan recognized. “Well, good. Feels different because it is different. Means I’m not drawing on the Dark.”
He had no idea what that meant, but it sounded… Not good.
Vos lit his lantern and led the way down another dark and dusty tunnel, this one at least a consistent width. Just a nice, spacious, void-black hallway.
The silence only lasted until they were out of sight of the entryway, and then Vos asked, “What do you know about the Force? About Jedi and Sith?”
He'd attended lectures on the Jedi since he was a cadet, but he'd realized early in his passing acquaintance with General Kenobi that the lectures had been heavy on the power and politics but light on the philosophy.
“The Force is what gives you both your powers. Jedi have blue and green lightsabers and fight for the Republic, and Sith have red lightsabers and want to kill everyone.”
Vos tipped his head back and laughed, and Davijaan felt some of the tension ease out of his shoulders.
“That’s actually not a bad summary,” Vos said, once he’d regained his breath. “Most of the galaxy would give similar answers.” He didn’t stop walking, but his pace and his tone shifted to something measured and calm.
“The Force doesn’t give us ‘powers.’ It’s an energy field—literally a force—that connects everything in the galaxy. Force sensitivity is simply sensitivity to the way the Force moves, through us and through our surroundings.”
Not very creative with names, the Jedi. Though it wasn’t like Oddball could say much.
“It’s a bit more complicated in reality, but both Jedi and Sith philosophy conceptualize the Force as Light and Dark. The Jedi draw on the Light, the Sith draw on the Dark. It’s not some kind of—‘two halves of the whole’ situation. The Light is the Force as it exists naturally, and the Dark is a corruption of it. So, when you draw on the Dark, eventually it corrupts you.”
The quiet resignation of those words sent a chill down Davijaan’s spine. Vos stiffened, and glanced over his shoulder without breaking his stride. “I got out before my insides started to rot. I’m fine.”
Perfectly fine. Of course. Absolutely.
“I’m not telling you this to scare you.” He dropped back to walk next to Davijaan, their shoulders brushing, brown eyes serious. “I’m telling you this so you understand what we’re up against. This war isn’t about the Republic and the Confederacy, it’s about the Sith and the Jedi. And, you weren’t wrong about the Sith wanting to kill everyone.”
The Sith hadn’t come up much in their lectures. Davijaan knew the Jedi and the Sith were historically on opposite sides of galactic conflicts, and that was about it. Maybe Vos was overstating the importance of this philosophical clash.
Or maybe the Jedi who’d spent two years successfully convincing everyone in the galaxy he was a Sith—including all the other Sith—knew what he was talking about.
“The Separatist leadership had some good talking points at the start,” Vos continued, “but as soon as a Darth Lord took over their army the goal changed from a clean split to destruction. There were cracks, before. Fissures. But after three years every support structure, every treaty, every bond of faith, has been shattered.”
The blue glow of the lantern revealed a sharp corner ahead; the hallway branched. Instead of starting down either path, Vos came to a halt, and turned to face Davijaan fully.
“The Dark is fear,” he said, some of that fear bright in his eyes, “and it gives you a taste for the fear of others. Your own pain drives you to inflict pain. If this war goes on much longer it is going to break the galaxy to pieces.”
As a cadet Davijaan had soaked up everything his trainers had told him about defending democracy and restoring peace to the galaxy and serving the noble Jedi. In command track he’d realized none of that mattered. He’d thought if the GAR had been commissioned by the Sith instead of the Jedi nothing would be different about his life except the types of ships he flew.
Maybe he’d thought wrong.
“You said… After Kamino you said this mission would be over soon. You said you were close.” Close to what?
Vos heard the unspoken question, and smiled. The same grim smile he’d seen from Kote, from ‘17, when they were right about something they’d desperately wanted to be wrong about.
“Close to figuring out how the Sith plan to kill the Jedi.”
***
It took almost an hour of long dark halls to reach their destination. Another duracrete box that probably used to be some kind of maintenance storage room, from the sink in the corner that miraculously still worked. The room had been outfitted with a cot, a generator, a work bench, and a console. And a very thorough security system.
“Welcome to my humble lair.” Vos shook the dust off his cloak and tossed it carelessly over the cot. “It’s not much, but it’s going to be home for a while.”
They spent what remained of that first day checking the security system, making sure nobody had come poking around in the two or three or however many years it had been since Vos last visited. Once he was satisfied nobody had bugged his lair, Vos got the computers running and did much the same with his network.
Once he was sure Vos was absorbed in the computers and wouldn’t need him any time soon, Davijaan took his helmet off and stashed it with his pack under the cot. He ate a stale ration bar and drank from the sink, and then sat on the floor to watch Vos work.
He kept his gloves on, even while typing. That had to be uncomfortable.
Vos hadn’t asked for the poncho back, so Davijaan wrapped it around himself and leaned against the wall, careful not to scrape his armor.
There was a contained intensity to the way Vos held himself that reminded Davijaan of Wolffe. Even sitting, every movement was deliberate, confident, precise. He didn’t fidget when he was focused. Maybe the drumming fingers in the galley had meant he’d been relaxed. Or maybe it’d been for show, to get Davijaan to relax. That was something Wolffe used to do, when he would realize that everybody else was on edge because he was on edge.
He fell asleep like that, leaning against the wall, watching Vos and missing Wolffe.
***
He woke to metal screeching against metal and sat up straight in a panic, prepared for a hull breach or damaged equipment, and found himself locked in combat with the poncho.
He didn’t realize he’d been moved to the cot until he fell off it. When he finally managed to wrestle the thick cloth off his head Vos was leaning against the now open doorway and smirking at him. “Light sleeper, huh?”
Davijaan stood stiffly and brushed the dust off his armor. “Are you coming or going, sir?”
“Back from poking around the Senate proper.” Vos closed the door with another screech, and tossed a datastick to Davijaan. “Couldn’t get inside the Chancellor’s medical bay, not without more planning, but I did get the security vid feeds for the last three months.”
Davijaan blinked down at the datastick. Vos picked the poncho off the floor and shook it out. “Get that downloaded, and I’ll show you how we’re going to sort it.”
As he started the download Vos came up behind him and draped the poncho over the back of his chair. “This would probably be more comfortable to sleep in than that plastoid stuff,” he said, and then sat next to Davijaan and opened a facial recognition program.
Patiently and clearly he explained how to run the vid through the program, and what they were looking for in the dataset. He didn’t get frustrated with Davijaan’s hesitation or questions. He seemed like he was used to explaining things, or maybe used to coaxing people along as they figured things out.
Davijaan thought of General Secura—ruthlessly competent and terrifyingly beautiful, one of the few Jedi known and celebrated by the public, with a campaign record that rivaled Skywalker himself—and tried to picture Vos quizzing her on ship models.
***
The days fell into a pattern. In the evening Vos would travel up through the thousands of levels of basements by some means he never disclosed to Davijaan, and make preparations to break into the Chancellor's private wing. In the early morning he would return more determined than when he’d left, with security vids or financial records or call logs for Davijaan to sort through.
He never explained straight out what he thought he was going to find in the medical bay where ARC-5555 had tried to assassinate Chancellor Palpatine. Or explained what exactly his theory was on the virus, and the inhibitor chips, and the assertion of a Separatist plot. If this was really a Separatist plot—Sith plot—Davijaan thought they’d have better luck with the original mission of breaking into a Seppie base.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just ask for a meeting with the Chancellor?” he’d asked on day three, and Vos had looked at him like Davijaan was the crazy one.
“He probably has our fatality reports gathering dust on his desk. Right now four people in the galaxy know I’m alive and I’d like it to stay that way.”
In command track they’d had a series of lectures on how to work with Jedi. Most of the advice could be reduced to ‘stay out of the way.’ If all Vos wanted was someone to do the grunt work, then he could shut up and do the grunt work.
Analyzing data wasn’t the worst thing he could be doing. It wasn’t like he wanted to be back-flipping his way through dusty basements with Vos. Sitting in front of a computer monitor was similar to sitting in front of a ship console, just different kinds of math. He was fine.
So Davijaan stayed out of the way, and did the grunt work without complaint. Vos made it clear he didn’t care about SOP as long as he got what he wanted out of the data, and also made a point of telling Davijaan he was doing a good job. After a week passed without any incidents Davijaan started to relax.
On the seventh day, he finally gave up on wearing his armor to sit at a computer and type for a twelve hour stretch. Vos didn’t say a word.
On the ninth day Davijaan decided he would indeed survive Vos. He was so relieved to come to that conclusion he even decided not to be mad at Kote for being right.
By the tenth day, he was confident there was not going to be a repeat of the cabin incident.
***
Davijaan flinched at the sudden cold on the back of his neck. He went utterly still, the click of the keys cutting off into silence.
Vos wasn’t due back for three or four hours. He would have heard the door screech if he’d arrived early. Nobody else was supposed to be down here. His pistols were with his armor in his pack under the bunk. Fifteen feet across the room.
Slowly, he stood, hands hanging empty at his sides, and turned.
Vos was standing in the open doorway. He was tense and intent, balanced on the balls of his feet, studying Davijaan. In the stark white light his yellow eyes glinted.
“He knew,” said Vos, soft and accusing. “Two weeks of work, wasted. He knew I was coming.”
Davijaan blinked, and Vos was across the room, one ungloved hand around his neck.
He didn’t squeeze; there was none of the feeling of being frozen from before. He just tipped Davijaan’s head back and studied his face, palm cold and dry under his chin.
Davijaan stayed still, blank. He breathed. Vos wasn’t going to kill him. Vos hadn’t killed him last time and he wouldn’t kill him this time.
Seconds stretched into a minute. Vos glanced away from Davijaan to the computers, and his eyes flickered brown.
“No,” he said, something amused breaking through fury and fear. “You’re not a traitor, are you?” He let go of Davijaan’s neck and took a step back. His hand flexed.
“You should leave, Commander. Take the evening off.”
Davijaan did not run until the door slid shut behind him.
***
When he finally burned through his fear he walked. When he thought he was far enough away, he wandered.
Vos’ rooms were somewhere between L515 and L517. Davijaan hadn’t been paying attention anymore by the time they’d arrived. He was pretty sure it used to be an office building some several hundred years ago. The hallways were laid out in a neat grid, with ten rooms opening off each. It was all so precise and utilitarian it would have reminded him of Kamino, if it hadn’t been so achingly empty.
Enough of the lights worked to cast the grey halls in grey shadow. In his tenday down here he’d never bothered to explore, just traveled the ten steps between Vos’ computer lab and the fresher set up in an adjacent room.
Vos had said to leave, but there wasn’t anywhere to go. He was trapped down here, drifting in the grey.
He poked his head inside the few open doors, looking for a distraction. He discovered the remains of ancient pieces of furniture and piles of dust to rival the ones that had blocked the doors in that first basement. He walked for hours down identical halls past identical room after identical room full of identical trash and slowly felt himself go numb.
When he found a room stacked floor to ceiling with modern, intact crates, it took a moment to register they were real.
He nudged the lid off one, cautious. Nothing jumped out at him. It was full of expired packs of field rations, the kind that could be reconstituted with water. From the dates they couldn’t have been sitting here for more than twenty years. Maybe something Vos had stashed and forgot about.
He opened crates until he found ration bars similar to GAR issue, and ate two standing up, coughing on the second one. There was no sink in this room, but a crate near the back held hundreds of shriveled water bulbs and two bottles of high-end Corellian brandy.
Davijaan contemplated the brandy. It took a lot to get a clone drunk. This probably wouldn’t be enough. And he didn’t like drinking by himself, either. But drinking definitely counted as a distraction.
It was cold in this room, away from the heat of the computers. He hadn’t stopped to grab the poncho when he’d left. It was thicker and warmer and softer than the blanket from the cot, than any blanket he’d ever used in his life. He wanted that poncho.
He sat down in a gap between two stacks crates, and opened the first bottle.
***
Davijaan tried to open the door quietly, but it was heavy and rusted and his hand slipped off the handle. He stumbled and smacked his shoulder against it. He cursed under his breath, and then the door was sliding against him—being opened from the inside—and he took a step back just as Vos appeared in the doorway.
He looked exhausted, but settled in his skin. The same way he had in the cockpit when he’d asked for Davijaan’s name: like he’d gone ten straight rounds on the mat and won every round, but still wanted nothing more than to sleep for a week. Davijaan tried to look over his shoulder to see if anything was broken.
“Welcome back. I was starting to think you’d gotten lost,” Vos said, a strange roughness in his voice.
“No sir.” Vos stepped aside to let him in while he was still trying to think of how to explain what he’d been doing. “I…”
Vos hadn’t been breaking things. He’d been cleaning.
There was not a single speck of dust left in the room. Everything had been scrubbed and shined and reorganized—the crates of rations stacked where the computers used to be, and the computers and desks and other accompaniments reconfigured along the far wall. The cot was now to the left of the sink, made up with military precision, their packs tucked underneath and the poncho folded at the foot. The only things out of place were the datapads and keyboards and other electronic odds and ends laid out in a neat circle on the floor.
He gaped at the state of the room for a good long while. Vos closed the door, and nudged him further inside with a careful hand on his back. When he stumbled, Vos caught his arm. “Are you—”
Davijaan tried to pull away but Vos was bigger and stronger, and he was… maybe closer to drunk than tipsy. Maybe. Maybe sitting in a bottle in the dark for twenty years increased the potency of brandy to clone levels. He’d have to ask if ever got to see another clone again.
Vos’ exhaustion was rapidly exchanged for surprise, and then he laughed. “Found Obi-Wan’s stash, did you? I’d forgotten about his siege rations. Would have dug that stuff out earlier if I’d remembered.” He let go of Davijaan’s arm, only to take his shoulders and steer him to the cot.
It was easier to let himself be manhandled, so Davijaan let himself be manhandled into sitting down, and having his boots removed. The poncho was draped over his shoulders. Both of Vos’ hands were bare. He had a gold ring on one thumb.
After being saved from the sea he could have forgiven Vos for not being one of his brothers. In this moment he hated him for it, in the dull distant way he let himself hate a lot of things when he was drunk.
The hands finally released him, and Vos retreated from his field of vision. He hunched into the poncho.
The sink turned on, and off.
“Here.”
A cup of water floated to hover in front of his face.
“I'm not that drunk.”
“No, but you wish you were,” said Vos, cheerful.
Davijaan cringed, and drank his water.
Vos reappeared to sit cross legged in the center of the odds and ends, his back to the cot. His shoulders straightened. As one, the datapads and keyboards and code cylinders rose into the air to form a ring around him.
Davijaan sipped water and watched, wide eyed, as little specks of dirt and dust detached themselves from metal and plastoid and gathered in a cloud over Vos’ head. The ring started spinning slowly, and every once in a while something would dip low and Vos would reach out to run a bare hand over keys or a screen or a handgrip.
Vos had never taken off both his gloves before. Sometimes he would slip one off for a few minutes, but he was careful of what he touched with his bare hand. He always waited until Davijaan had touched something—a cup or a chair or a keyboard—to touch it himself. Like he needed someone to test it first.
Davijaan watched Vos trace the keys he’d been typing on earlier, and thought of the cold hand on his neck. Maybe the gloves were to keep the whole room from frosting over.
As he downed the dregs, Vos sighed. The cloud raced to deposit itself in the trash chute, and the electronics floated sedately back to their places on the computer desk and workbench.
Davijaan’s cup drifted out of his hand and into Vos’. He stood, turning the cup over, contemplative, and then sent it drifting back to the sink. Davijaan almost asked Vos to pick him up too; wrap him in some of that remembered warmth. Being lifted out of the basement during their trek up here was the closest he’d gotten to a hug since he’d said goodbye to Kote.
He definitely wasn’t drunk enough to let that slip.
“I’m sorry.”
Davijaan blinked and found Vos had sat down again, this time on the floor in front of him, something sad and ashamed tempering his calm. “What?”
“I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to deal with me while I’m dealing with this. That wasn’t the job description.”
He was pretty sure the whole entire clone soldier job description was to do whatever the Jedi needed them to do. Specifically fight the war, sure, but not limited to that. If Vos needed to terrify someone every few weeks as a side effect of almost getting his insides rotted by corrupted magical energy, well. It wasn’t like Davijaan had signed up to fight the war either.
“It’s fine, sir.” He cleared his throat, sat up straight. “You don’t need to apologize. You didn’t hurt me.”
“Driving someone to drink is generally considered having an adverse effect on their health.”
“That didn’t have anything to do with you.”
“No? It had nothing to do with being transferred out of the 7th Sky and declared dead and spending a tenday holed up in here with me while I slowly went mad?”
... Maybe it had a little to do with Vos.
“I…” He shrugged, not wanting to put this feeling into words. “I miss my brother.”
Vos glanced at his left wrist. Davijaan resisted the urge to stick the whole hand behind his back, wishing Kote had given him something like that bright woven band, wishing they’d given each other something to hold on to besides memories. Wishing he’d bothered to keep a pack of Wolffe’s stupid, useless cards.
“Well. That I understand. I miss mine, too,” Vos said.
And that shocked Davijaan out of his own head enough to blurt, “You have a brother?”
He may have been under the impression that Jedi simply appeared in the aether.
“Guess I wouldn’t call him a brother, exactly, but I have an Obi-Wan. He’s been my friend for—Stars, must be almost thirty years now.” A grin broke through the regret. “Our beds were next to each other in the initiate dorms.”
Davijaan remembered curling up with ‘38 and with Tapper and with Kote in their too small pods, and suppressed a smile.
“Obi-Wan and I found this place together, back when we were senior padawans, sneaking around the lower levels doing stupid shit. Spent almost a year setting it up. Getting the right equipment, hauling it all down.” He shook his head, fondly amused. “Obi-Wan was worried one of us would get trapped down here and starve to death, hence the entire room of rations. He’s also the one who insisted on the cot. I’m older, but he had more field missions under his belt at the time, and never let me forget it.”
“It’s a very nice lair, sir.”
“It is.” Vos looked around at the results of his cleaning spree, satisfied, and then turned a careful consideration to Davijaan. “You and your brother ever do anything like that?”
Davijaan bit his tongue hard enough to taste blood.
He knew what this was. When Bolts had been transferred to his squad Davijaan had spent weeks attempting conversations just like this, trying to coax Bolts out of his head and into the group. It had worked, eventually.
“No,” he said, firm. Maybe it would work on him too, eventually, but right now he was not willing to be coaxed. “You didn’t have to tell me all that.”
“Maybe not. But it helps, when you’re dealing with—” Vos gestured to the room, the crates and the computers and the sink in the corner “—this, to remind yourself that somewhere out there are people who love you.”
“If you say so, sir.”
Instead of getting annoyed, Vos grinned, a flash of teeth there and gone. “When I agreed to the undercover mission I agreed on the condition that Obi-Wan be involved. He ended up becoming… Not my handler exactly. My anchor. If I ever felt I was slipping too far, I had a secure comm, and I could contact him. Very important in this kind of work. I probably should have used it more than I did. But, the more often you break character the harder it is to get back in.”
Right now he couldn’t care less about Vos’ damn undercover mission, but an opportunity to switch the topic was an opportunity to switch the topic. “Who else knew? Knows?”
“Master Windu. Master Yoda. I report directly to them.” Vos exhaled in a slow sigh. “Aayla, my former padawan, she suspected. She knew I did Shadow work, though I never told her the full extent. Some of my old friends probably suspected. It’s hard to lie about who you are to people who’ve known you your whole life.”
Some of his exhaustion came creeping back onto his face. Davijaan abruptly felt awkward, listening to Vos’ woes. Maybe he wasn’t trying to coax Davijaan into talking about himself. Maybe he just hadn’t seen his family in so long he was desperate to talk to somebody, anybody, even his not-so-randomly assigned clone commander.
“Mostly, I had Obi-Wan,” he said, soft. “He is the reason I didn’t Fall.”
Huh.
“I thought… You did?” Faie wouldn’t have lied to him.
“Not quite.” He laughed, hollow, and stood. “Not yet, at least.” He stretched with a groan, carefully rolling out the tension in his neck and shoulders from sitting so straight for so long.
“To Fall is to surrender completely to the Dark.” His hands fell limp to his sides. Instead of floating them over, he walked slowly to the desk and picked up his gloves, brushing his thumb over the black leather. “There are ways to draw on the Dark for a time. Use it, or let it use you, and then let it go. But it never wants to be let go. I keep thinking I’ve let it go completely, and then…”
“And then you think somebody is about to stab you in the back,” Davijaan finished, bitter, and too tired to care if it showed.
Vos glanced over with a grin; a grin like weeks ago in the briefing room. Like when Fox grinned. Bared teeth. “Something—or someone—tipped off our dutiful Supreme Chancellor that a break-in was imminent. The security systems have been completely reset, the guard shifts swapped around.” The grin became a grimace. “I would have known if you’d left, or tried to tamper with these computers. Sorry that didn’t save you from suspicion.”
“Are we starting over tomorrow, then?” His limbs were heavy. He wanted to roll over and bury his face in the pillow and sleep and stop having to listen to Vos talk. He settled for pulling the poncho more securely around himself.
“I could start over, but he’ll be on guard now.” He pulled on his gloves with practiced care, gaze distant the same way Kote’s got when he was trying to puzzle something out, and was starting to think faster than he could speak. “I’ve read the reports a hundred times over. Master Ti told me everything, even let me see her memories. Obi-Wan was able to question Anakin and his Captain for me.” He started to pace, stalking back and forth in front of the computers.
“That damn doctor is never in her damn office. If she has a partner off Kamino she doesn’t contact them from in there. She’d already wiped all the documentation from the system by the time we sliced it. If it was ever there to begin with. I’m running out of leads.”
“The guards?”
He gave Davijaan an approving nod. “I did think of that, actually. The two guards who were inside the medical bay with the Chancellor were both dead within a week of ARC-5555. A riot in the lower levels. Very tidy. Though…” He stilled.
Davijaan watched the idea hit Vos like a physical blow.
“I haven’t been giving the CG it’s due, have I?” He turned to Davijaan, eyes gleaming. “It’s not much of a lead, but it’s something. Get some sleep, Commander. We’re breaking into the Coruscant Guard building bright and early tomorrow.”