Chapter Text
Davijaan woke to a warm hand on his arm. Not shaking, squeezing gently. He blinked, and found Vos looking down at him. He closed his eyes with a groan.
Vos laughed.
“On your feet, soldier,” said a flat, dry voice that was definitely not Vos, and then Fox kicked him in the side. He shot out of his pile of blankets with a yelp, the events of—yesterday?—morning coming back in a rush.
“Hey!” Vos sounded very indignant on his behalf. How nice.
Fox said something sharp in return, but he decided it was safe enough not to pay attention. He had no idea what time it was. He must have slept through the day. Maybe early evening?
He caught the ration bar Fox chucked at his head with one hand, rubbing at his eyes with the other. “When did you get off shift?”
“Eighteen hundred. Didn’t come straight down though. It’s closer to twenty-one hundred.”
He crammed the ration bar into his mouth and his feet into his boots, and considered his armor. The paint stripper had taken off what little orange he’d had on his helmet under the red, as well as some of the white finish. He’d had to go hunting for another can of that on his own. The patches he’d touched up before he’d collapsed onto his pallet were dry. He was going to pretend they weren’t for a little longer.
Fox and Vos were standing on opposite sides of the doorway, eyeing each other. From the set of Fox’s shoulders Davijaan could see he wasn’t angry or afraid, simply annoyed. Vos was the one still on edge.
“Careful,” he said, conspiratorial, moving to stand between them with a nod to Fox. “He bites.”
Fox punched him in the arm. Just over the spot he’d bitten hard enough to break skin in a fight four years ago. Davijaan hissed and rubbed at the sting.
Vos looked at Davijaan, and looked at Fox, and looked back to Davijaan.
“I'll keep that in mind,” he said, and led the way out of the storage room.
***
“Palpatine put me in charge of updating his security after the break in. It’s mostly in place. I did leave a few blindspots for myself, just in case.” Fox rapped his knuckles against the blueprints spread out on the makeshift table. “The problem with the Chancellor’s floor, is there’s no security inside the actual medical bay.”
Vos raised an eyebrow. “None?”
“None. It’s all focused on the halls. Entrances and exits, that sort of thing.”
Davijaan frowned at the blueprints. No security was almost worse than fancy complicated security. No cameras or audio or heat sensors or bioscanners or anything like that meant no way to tell if anybody was on guard inside, ready to hit a panic button at the first sign of an intruder. “It’s not CG in there?”
“It’s Palpatine’s personal bodyguards.”
“The red hooded bastards?”
“The very same.”
“Is there a way to get at their records?” Vos asked.
“I had their records, before this whole mess,” Fox grumbled. “Now their patrol patterns are different and I haven’t had time to either steal their schedule or piece it together.”
“Ok. Senate Guard patrol route and schedule.” Vos nodded once, as if making a note to himself. “What’s next?”
***
The hours passed, and Vos’ list of necessary information and equipment grew. It was extensive, but not intimidating. Getting into Grand Medical wasn’t going to be complicated, only time consuming. Like Vos’ first attempt. But this time Davijaan knew what they were looking for, and this time they had Fox.
The preliminary work was split between coordinating schedules and cracking security systems. Davijaan was handed most of the schedule related problems, since he didn’t need any kind of special training for that, only the ability to compile and analyze raw data. Pretty much exactly what he’d been doing for Vos.
Fox and Vos were the ones who had to figure out a way past Grand Medical’s security systems and what little security was set up on the Chancellor’s floor. Even with the ins Fox had left for himself, he wasn’t in charge of everything, and didn’t want anything traced back to him.
It had not been suggested that Davijaan join them for the actual break in. He was content to keep it that way.
Their planning session didn’t end until the early hours of the morning. Final details decided, Fox shut his computers down and Davijaan piled up the papers and datapads they’d spread over the table. He would help clean up this once, since Fox probably hadn’t slept in the last two days. He hid it well, but he was going to need every minute of rest he could get in the four hours before his shift if he wanted to be useful later that night.
“The longer this takes, the longer the war drags on. But we can’t rush it and risk getting caught either,” Vos said, soft, to himself. He sounded more tired than frustrated, gaze gone distant. “If you hadn’t broken in when you did…”
Fox tensed, but Vos shook his head, brow furrowing as he focused back on the room. “And you don’t have any idea how Palpatine knew someone had been in there?”
“No.”
“Pressure plates? Something infrared?”
“Whatever it was, it wasn’t wired to an alarm. I got in and I got out, and I thought I was clear. A day later he had some kind of appointment, and when he arrived back at his office he just knew. Called me up immediately to start investigating the breach.”
Vos raised an eyebrow. Maybe skeptical, maybe impressed. “He had no idea it was you.”
“None that he let on.” Fox hesitated. “The most likely explanation is that I moved something and didn’t put it back correctly.”
“Except you’re too practiced to make an amateur's mistake.”
Fox inclined his helmet.
Vos stood. “Well. We’ll keep our eyes open, but even if he does find out someone broke in, at least he won’t know it was us.”
Finished with his computers, Fox left without acknowledging either of them, apparently tired enough to trust Davijaan to get the Jedi out of his lair in his absence.
Vos watched him go. “Not very polite, is he.”
“No, sir.”
“Huh. I guess he doesn’t have to be polite to get his job done.”
That was exactly what Fox said every time Wolffe told him to be careful who he pissed off. Davijaan barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes. But when he glanced up at Vos to see how annoyed he was, he found the man smiling.
***
After a long day’s rest, Davijaan left a sleeping Vos in the storage room and wandered into Fox’s lair.
Fox’s shift had ended an hour ago, and he was probably submitting reports and checking in with his second and doing all the little things a CO had to do at the end of a shift, but Davijaan didn’t have anything he could work on until he got his ass down here and turned on the computers.
He spread the copy of Grand Medical’s blueprints across the table and idly traced the notes around the edges. He could read Fox’s handwriting fine, but Vos’ looked like somebody had taken the pen and repeatedly stabbed the paper.
For a time he sat on the cold floor, focusing on the blueprints and not the grey walls and the silence. Between one too loud breath and another he felt eyes on him. He looked up to find Fox sitting across the table, visor flat and blank and aimed straight at him.
He raised an eyebrow. “Can I help you?”
The helmet tilted, considering. “Why are you here?”
“Because Kote told me I had to be.”
“What are you here to do?”
“Spy on Vos.”
“And in the process you’re helping him spy on me, and on the Chancellor.”
“Behold,” Davijaan spread his arms wide, encompassing the room and their plan and their mission. “Kote’s genius.”
Fox rose smoothly to his feet and stalked over to the computers. Davijaan went back to his blueprints.
***
He still expected the tension between Vos and Fox to escalate into a fight—for Fox to intentionally escalate it into a fight—but during that second evening together they settled into something like understanding. They still watched each other, wary, when they thought the other wasn’t looking, but they also gave each other space to work. With supervision, Vos was even permitted to use one of the computers.
As he was mapping out a route through the building’s staff access only stairwells, Vos asked, “Do you get copies of Grand Medical’s building-wide maintenance reports?”
It took Fox a second to answer. Probably mentally separating the reports he was supposed to have access to from the ones he wasn’t. “No.”
“Last month’s would be handy, if there’s an easy way to get ahold of it.”
“I have a recording of the maintenance staff meeting held last week.”
“You don’t get the report, but you get a recording of the meeting?”
Fox shrugged.
Understanding manifested as a slow grin. “You have a bug in that conference room.”
“No. I sliced the cameras.”
Vos raised an eyebrow. “Show me.”
He sounded curious and not accusatory, so Fox came to stand next to him and pulled up the program he used to monitor the audio and visual feeds. Some were bugs, but many many more were simply making use of existing cameras.
Vos blinked as he took in the sheer number of feeds, neatly labeled and organized. Surprised, but more than a bit pleased. “This is good. This is really good. They taught you this on Kamino?”
Fox hesitated. “Theoretically.”
“Learning on the job, huh?”
He did not deign to answer that.
Vos hummed, turning back to the monitor. “What model are your bugs?”
“Standard GAR issue. With some… modifications.”
“I’ve got a case of my own I could bring up. They’re pretty high end, wider reach and better masking.”
“Mine get the job done fine.”
“Not to replace yours, just to have. For new rooms, or for when yours break, or for when the cameras reboot and kick you out of the system. You’d get better use out of them than I would, and that way you won’t have to worry about someone taking a second look at your requisition forms.”
Davijaan thought he was going to refuse out of hand, of course he was, why would he trust an offer like that—but after a moment Fox said, “Show me one first.”
***
Davijaan and Vos slept in the storeroom, and stayed there when Fox wasn’t around. Vos could sense when someone was coming down to collect something, and he would chide Davijaan up the side of the metal racks to lay flat on the dusty top shelf, out of sight of anyone on the ground. It was usually a rank-and-file or three sent on a collection errand by their CO. None of them lingered.
Vos made a few trips between his lair and Fox’s to bring up the equipment he’d agreed to provide and the necessary documents from his own computers, but once it became apparent they were going to be living in the CG basement for the foreseeable future he went down one last time to collect their gear.
He didn’t bring Davijaan. Which was fine, because Davijaan had no interest in being that deep underground ever again in the whole entire course of his limited life, but he felt… uncomfortable with the idea of Vos being alone with the contents of his pack.
There was no reason to be uncomfortable. There was nothing personal in there, and Vos had already picked out whatever memories he’d wanted long before Davijaan even knew that was something he could do. Still, he caught himself feeling along his wrist to make sure the woven band was wrapped around it. He was grateful the only time Vos had touched it he’d had gloves on.
Vos announced his return with a loud, “Hey, Oddball!” from the doorway of the computer room.
Davijaan startled, and turned away from his camera feeds to face him, wide-eyed.
“Well I can’t exactly call you both Commander.” Vos crossed the room in measured, purposeful strides and deposited a brown bundle in Davijaan’s arms. “Left your pack in the storage room, but I also brought this up for you.”
It was the poncho.
Davijaan shook it out and stared at it, not sure what to say.
“It gets pretty cold down here,” Vos prompted.
It didn’t get that cold, but unlike Vos, who wore layers, and Fox, who wore armor, Davijaan had spent the last three days in his undersuit. He stood and pulled the poncho over his head, and immediately felt warmer as folds of thick brown wool gathered at his knees.
“Thank you, sir. This is…” He cleared his throat. Smoothed out a wrinkle. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Vos swung a pack off his back and started unloading the contents onto the computer desk. A ‘pad, a handful of code cylinders, a portable scomplink. “That thing comes in handy. It’s been a blanket, a disguise, part of a temporary shelter. I keep it in my emergency pack. Used to be Obi-Wan’s.”
His shoulders tried to curl in and he forced them straight. “Is he going to want it back?”
“Ha. It’s been fifteen years, he probably forgot he lent it to me.”
“No he hasn’t,” said Davijaan, with the certainty of a brother.
Vos just laughed. “Keep it as long as you want to,” he said, and without looking tossed a bundle of wires over his shoulder to land perfectly in the center of the makeshift table.
With that reminder, Davijaan tactfully took over the job of putting away the equipment and respectfully maneuvered the Jedi out of Fox’s computer room, and then went back to his camera feeds. He hadn’t realized how cold he’d been until he could tuck his hands into the folds and huddle through the rest of his work.
That day he slept bundled up in the poncho. When Vos woke him, he was almost happy to see his stupid smile.
***
Fox was not nearly as appreciative of the poncho as Davijaan. Fox took one look at him sitting all bundled up in the corner of the storage room and spat— “Where did you get that?”
Davijaan maintained eye contact as he finished his bite of ration bar. “Vos,” he said.
“Why is he giving you things?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. He’s just—he’s being nice.” He took another bite.
“But why is he being nice? What does he want? What does he get out of being nice? He’s perfectly capable of threatening both of us into compliance, why waste time being nice?”
He shrugged the folds of the hood higher around his shoulders. “Leave me and my poncho alone.”
Fox’s eyes narrowed. He watched Davijaan finish his ration bar, intent and almost accusatory.
When he’d finished his meal and stuffed the crumpled wrapper into a pocket, he met Fox’s gaze, deliberate. “Do you need me for something?”
Instead of answering Fox sat on the floor next to Davijaan, set his helmet aside, pulled his knees up to his chest, and crossed his arms over them. Sitting like he had as a cadet in their common room.
“He’s doing it to me too,” he said, low. “All that ‘let me show you how to run your very illegal surveillance systems more efficiently’ and ‘let me give you some of my own expensive and valuable equipment so you can run your very illegal surveillance systems more efficiently.’ It’s strange. And suspicious. You brought a suspicious stranger into my building.”
As if Vos was in any way more strange or suspicious than Fox. He rolled his eyes. “Yes, I did all of this on purpose because I hate you and I want you to suffer.”
Almost absently, Fox punched him in the arm. Hard, but somewhat cushioned by the layers of wool. “Maybe that’s it. He thinks if he can make us like him, he can manipulate us better. Set us against each other.”
“That is not it! We’re all working together on this mission, we can’t be against each other or the whole plan falls apart. Why would he waste time on something that would do more harm than good?”
“Then what’s your theory?”
He hesitated, not really wanting to put this into words. But Fox wouldn’t let him get away with saying nothing. “I think he’s lonely.” He shrugged, looked away. “He misses his family. He’s been a Sith apprentice so long, I think he misses having people to be nice to. It’s not anything to do with us, it’s just. We’re here.”
Fox stared at him like he’d lost his mind. “That’s stupid.”
“It would sound that way to you, wouldn’t it.”
“He misses being nice? Do you hear yourself?”
“You wanted my opinion, I gave you my opinion.”
“No wonder Kote finally sent you off to die if this is the quality of your analytical skills.”
“This is not about you!” Davijaan straightened with a snarl, squaring his shoulders. “He doesn’t care about you, you self-centered ass! The only thing he cares about is making sure his family survives this war. Which should be a familiar mindset to you, actually, and just because he’s a Jedi and not a clone doesn’t make his motives impossible to understand!”
Fox did not respond. Davijaan got his breathing under control and slumped back against the shelves, scowling.
Vos hadn’t shown any signs of another suffocation incident. Then again, he hadn’t really shown signs before either. It had simply happened. But, he’d been steady these last few days. Movements measured in a way that was natural and not forced. Focused in a way that was anticipatory and not desperate.
Maybe something would happen and he’d go after one of them in a fit of magic induced paranoia, or maybe he’d simply needed to be around others to function properly. Even if those others were clones.
Fox rapped his knuckles against the duracrete. “You know he’s not telling us everything.”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“If you try to follow him back to his lair, or snoop around in his files, or anything like that, he will know. And he will kill you.”
“Not as long as I’m useful he won’t.”
Davijaan's attempted elbow in the side was skillfully fended off.
“I’m not going to, I’m just saying. We do have some leverage here.”
“We?”
“Clearly he finds you useful in some capacity.”
Davijaan grit his teeth. “You’re the one who made a deal with him. Forced him to make a deal with you. What are you worried about?”
Fox went quiet. “I wasn’t expecting him to be… like that.”
Letting his head fall back against the metal edge of a shelf, he breathed out in a long, slow sigh. “Me either.”
They let the silence settle. It was familiar, and almost comfortable, sitting on the floor with another clone and trying to assess a CO. He and Kote had spent several evenings early in the war discussing Kenobi’s angle, and he’d walked in on more than one conversation of 212th troopers trying to figure out how their Marshal Commander’s brain worked. It was important to understand what those in charge of you wanted from you.
As far as he could tell, the only thing Vos wanted was for his family to be safe. Davijaan and Fox were a means to that end, but he wasn’t the type of CO who caused pain or frustration for the fun of it. He was like Kenobi—or maybe Kenobi was like him—and preferred to be on friendly terms with his officers for the sake of an efficient working environment.
Maybe Faie would mock him for that assessment too.
“We’re already against each other,” he said, successfully elbowing Fox. Gently. “He doesn’t have to make us like him to exploit that, so your theory is out whether you agree with mine or not.”
“We should stop acting so—” Fox gestured vaguely between the two of them “—around him.”
Davijaan blinked. “Stop acting so what?”
“Like ourselves.”
It took a minute for that to register, and when it did, he had to choke down a laugh. “Are you serious right now. You want us to—what? Stop fighting?”
“Stop being obvious about the fighting.”
“So we can present a unified clone front?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“No, I understand.” He snorted. Shook his head, awed by the sheer audacity, something hot and angry settling in his chest. “Call a truce so the Jedi will stop being nice to us and freaking you out. I get it. Sure. Fine. We can do that. Whatever you want.”
***
“I'm going to drown you,” Fox hissed. “I'm going to fill a bucket with water and hold your head under until you die, and I'm going to tell Kote and Wolffe you tripped into it, and they’re going to believe me because you're a clumsy, useless waste of oxygen and always have been.”
As Davijaan opened his mouth, Vos stuck his head around the rack of shelves. “Ok, that's enough. Even I felt that in the Force. Can you two come out into the open so I can do my other job and mediate galactic unrest?”
Davijaan lurched, breaking Fox’s grip on his collar, and stumbled to Vos. Fox followed slowly, grumbling under his breath about being an officer and an adult and running a military police force single handed and not needing to be meditated at any time for any reason. But he did follow.
Vos settled back on the floor in front of his pile of bugs, picking up the one he’d been in the process of rewiring. Davijaan sat down beside him. In a rare display of restraint Fox ignored both of them, and stomped his way out of the storage room and to his lair.
After a moment of silence, wherein Davijaan rediscovered how to breathe, Vos asked, mild, “What did you do?”
He sputtered. “What makes you think I did anything?”
Vos gave him a look.
He scowled. “… I put salt in his canteen.”
“Ah.” A smile flashed across Vos’ face. “One time I stole a rice cake off Obi-Wan's plate and he told me my nurse should have smothered me as a baby. Both of us had to speak to our clanmaster. Good times.”
Davijaan tried to imagine that; tried to imagine Vos and Kenobi, cadet age, pranking each other and getting into fights in the mess. When he tried to imagine the clanmaster all he could think of was ‘17’s grim disappointment whenever he broke up one of Bacara and Neyo’s brawls.
Vos kept his eyes on his work. “You know he's going to get you back for that.”
“I know.”
“What if I were to suggest a preemptive strike?”
“You mean, prank him before he gets a chance to prank me back for pranking him?”
“Why not. It would be fun, a team building exercise. We could paint his armor orange or something.”
“No!” Davijaan sat up straight, his horror overriding his good sense. “You don't mess with anyone else’s armor, that's—No.” Armor was life-saving gear, and you didn’t mess with someone’s life. Especially not for something as silly as paint.
Not that putting salt in someone’s canteen was all that much better. Davijaan justified himself with the knowledge that the chances of Fox getting shot were significantly higher than his chances of being stranded somewhere without access to water.
Vos glanced up, concerned. “Ok, no armor. Got it.”
Fox hadn’t taken any part of his armor off in front of Vos since the three of them had started working together. Davijaan hadn’t put any part of his on. He would rather be cold than encased in that stuff when he didn’t have to be.
“It doesn’t have to be armor,” Vos added.
Davijaan picked at a loose seam at the hem of his poncho. “He’s not actually going to hurt me.”
“You keep saying that, but you don’t believe it.”
Early on Fox had learned whatever he did to Davijaan, Kote would do to him. That wouldn’t stop him from murdering Davijaan outright if he had a good enough excuse or escape plan, but after six years it had stopped being an active threat and started being a distant inevitability. If he didn’t get blown up in space, then Fox would knife him. At least he knew he had a quick death in store either way.
“He’s had it out for me as long as we’ve known each other.” He carefully pulled the thread free and wound it around his thumb. “That’s not going to change, but it’s not going to escalate in a way that endangers this mission.”
“How do you know him?”
Because Vos sounded genuinely curious and because Fox was probably out of earshot, Davijaan answered, “He's my brother's brother.”
“Your brother’s brother.” Vos repeated. “But not your brother?”
“No.”
“I thought all clones were brothers?”
Davijaan looked at him with utter disgust. “Absolutely not.”
There was a sense of responsibility among all of—or at least most of—the clones. They were a family of blood and battle, as ‘17 had often reminded his class. They were the only family they had. The only community they could rely on. They had a duty to stick together, and take care of each other. But that didn’t make them all brothers.
That faint smile was back. “So your brother has a brother who is not your brother, but is still family in a distant, obligatory way?”
Davijaan shrugged. Not really, but sure.
“I get it.” Vos was clearly amused. “Within the Jedi Order, we’re all a family, but you also have a lineage. The person who taught you, and the person who taught them. All the people they taught, and all the people you teach. You have your friends from the creche and your initiate clan and those relationships can be really close, but it’s different, with your lineage. Even if you don’t all get along, those are the people who are always there for you. Who you can always go home to.”
His hands never stilled as he spoke. Davijaan watched him expertly open one thumbnail sized piece of tech after another with nothing but a flick of his fingers, and swap out a threadlike grey wire with a bit of the red one from the spool next to him. That part did require help from a tiny soldering torch, also steadied and directed by the Force. The ease of the movement reminded him of disassembling and cleaning blasters.
Vos talked a lot about Kenobi, and Secura. He’d never mentioned anyone else. “So you’ve got your padawan and you’ve also got—your teacher?”
“My master was killed, early in the war.”
Ah. That… should have been easy to guess.
Davijaan winced, but Vos didn’t seem particularly upset by the reminder. “I was his only padawan, and I only have one padawan. My lineage isn’t very typical.” He set down the last of the bugs and sat up straight with a sigh, rolling his shoulders and twisting his neck, systematically working stiff muscles.
“It’s funny how things turn out,” he said, bending once more to tidy his patch of floor. “Master Tholme told me I’d better have half a dozen students to make up for his deficit. Aayla was very vocally opposed to the idea.” He smirked, winding the rest of the red wire back onto its spool.
“I used to tease her, say just because she was my first padawan didn’t mean she was going to be my favorite. She threatened to lightsaber off various bodily extremities if I ever tried to play favorites with her and her half a dozen hypothetical future siblings. But now, I don’t think…” The smirk faded into something small, and sad. He set the spool carefully into his crate of supplies. “It’s not going to be a good idea for me to teach, after this. I guess she’ll get her way. She usually does.”
Vos finished packing up his things. Tools in cases, unused parts in containers, rewired bugs into a bag. With everything neatly in the crate, he stood, taking it with him. “I’d better go check in with your not-a-brother, let him know I’ve finished with these."
And maybe because he hadn’t been trying to coax or maybe because he had been trying to understand, Davijaan blurted out— “Cody and I are the ones who are brothers.”
Surprise drew Vos up short. He turned away from the door and looked down at Davijaan, intrigued. “Obi-Wan’s Commander?”
“Yes. He’s—Yes.” He forced himself to maintain eye contact. “He and 1010 had a class together our first year of command track. They became brothers before the class was even over, I think.”
Vos set the crate down, and sat back on the floor. It felt a little easier to speak without the Jedi looming.
“I had a class with 1010’s other brother, Wolffe. We became friends. So. The four of us aren’t all close, Cody and Wolffe don’t talk much, but we’re… We try to keep in contact.” Vos nodded, absorbing that. And because Kote and Wolffe weren’t here to be annoyed with him, Davijaan added, “As far as I know, 1010 doesn’t have any friends. Cody and Wolffe are the only ones who tolerate him.”
Vos hummed, neither approving or disproving. “He has his charms.”
Davijaan scoffed. “He definitely has ways to make himself useful, that’s for sure.”
“Does he have a name?”
That question didn’t surprise him as much as it would have even a week ago.
“Not yet,” he said, because that was usually easier to say than trying to explain that the clone in question preferred their designation, or only used their name with close siblings and friends. “Just call him 1010. Or Commander. If he wants you to call him something different he’ll tell you.”
For a split second his brow furrowed, in confusion or suspicion Davijaan couldn’t tell before it smoothed out again. “Ok. And, Oddball’s still fine?”
“Yes, sir.”
Vos stood, hefting the crate once again. “You know, you don’t have to call me sir anymore. We’re more or less equals on this mission.”
Davijaan shrugged, and nodded, and figured it was easy enough not to call Vos anything at all.
Vos seemed to take that as agreement, and gave him a grin before he left.
***
“I didn’t even type it up wrong! I just didn’t type it up with your specific formatting!”
“Which means it’s wrong!” Fox thrust a threatening finger into his face. “If it doesn’t fit with the rest of the documents, how am I supposed to find it!”
Davijaan crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s one single document. Reformat it yourself.”
“Or you could do your damn job right the first time.”
“This isn’t my job! I’m a pilot, not an analyst!”
“So you admit you’re useless?”
“I’m not the one who got shuffled off to Coruscant before the war even started.”
Fox punched him in the arm.
“Ow! You—stop!” He rubbed at what was slowly becoming a bruise, scowling. “If you don’t stop hitting me—”
“You’ll what?” Fox sneered. “You’ll comm Cody and tell on me?”
Davijaan opened his mouth to say he just might, and comm Wolffe too while he was at it, when Vos stood abruptly from his seat at the computer. Something scalding wrapped around his waist and he saw Fox go rigid as both of them were yanked backwards, out of arm's reach of each other.
“Both of you, stop! I can’t believe I have to say this, but, no more hitting. And no more yelling.” Vos made a sound of disgust low in his throat as he released them. “Stars, you two are worse than Anakin and Aayla.”
“… General Skywalker and General Secura?” Fox asked, cautions, shoulders still stiff but hand moving away from his hidden sheath.
“Those two were menaces. Obi-Wan and I couldn’t take them anywhere together.”
“Skywalker can be kind of standoffish,” Davijaan informed Fox.
“Oh, no. Aayla used to bully him. Relentlessly. She would lock him in closets so he wouldn't follow her around like a lost puppy.”
Through the visor Davijaan met Fox’s eyes, both of them remembering the time Fox had locked Rex in the fresher.
Vos cleared his throat loudly. They returned their attention to him. “Oddball, how long is it going to take you to reformat the document?”
“… Three minutes.”
“Fix it please.” He turned to Fox. “If you’re going to have an annoying filing system then expect people to be annoyed.”
“Nobody’s supposed to use it but me,” Fox muttered under his breath. Vos pretended not to hear.
He removed himself to the second computer, where he’d been interrupted in his programming of two code cylinders. He was better than Fox at muffling his muttering, but Davijaan thought he heard ‘damn kids’ and ‘whose damn idea’ and ‘no damn wonder they drafted the Jedi.’
***
By the fifth day—or night, or however they were measuring time down here in the dark—everything was ready.
Almost ready. Mostly ready. Ready enough Vos vanished without a word halfway through their work session, sending Fox into a paranoid panic, only to reappear an hour later in the storage room with a bag of food.
“We’ve been working our asses off, we’re ahead of schedule, and we won’t have another opportunity like this once the break-in happens. So. We’re taking the rest of the night off,” he announced, empty crates sliding across the floor to arrange themselves in an approximation of a table and chairs. He set the bag down on the crate in the middle.
“You broke out of my building for food?” Fox grit out. Davijaan inched closer to see if he could read the label on the bag.
“I’m getting tired of those sawdust bars. I’ve had better slop in Separatist prison camps.”
“You could have been seen! You could have been caught!”
“Aw, were you worried about me? That’s sweet.” Vos flashed him a smile, and winked. “Worry not, Commander. I’ve been sneaking around this city since before you were born. The shadows are old friends.”
That shut Fox up long enough for Vos to finish setting everything up. Three paperboard containers of what looked like noodles and vegetables in a thick brown sauce, and another box of little round red bread things. They looked very soft. Davijaan had tried all sorts of civvy food on leave, but nothing similar.
He sat where Vos pointed him and accepted his container of noodles with thanks that was probably too eager, if Vos’ amusement was anything to go by. He could feel Fox’s glare and happily ignored it.
The first bite was too hot to taste, and he almost spat it out. Once his mouth adjusted he realized some of the heat was the spice in the sauce. It was rich and sort of stung his mouth, but not bad. Maybe even good.
Vos collected his own container, and glanced pointedly between the remaining one and Fox. “You should eat with us, 1010.”
“I know what you're doing.”
“Is it working?”
“I look just the same as any other clone.”
“Oh come on. Competent, intimidating commander like you? You've got to have some kind of scar to scare the rookies with.”
Fox huffed and took his helmet off.
Neither Fox nor Davijaan had made any attempt to customize their face. Next to each other they were virtually identical. No tattoos, no scars. Same regulation haircut and same bland expression.
Vos seemed very put out by this refusal to comply with expectations. “Both of you are boring,” he grumbled into his first bite.
Fox set his helmet aside and sat, and held his hand out expectantly. The container floated into it. He met Davijaan’s eyes over the edge and smirked, the corner of his mouth curving up in a way Davijaan’s could never manage, the lines across his brow that Davijaan didn’t have smoothing. Fox’s sweaty hair was a mess of frizz, a quarter inch too short to curl like Davijaan’s was starting to as it grew out.
Davijaan didn’t smile back, but for a moment he wanted to.
None of them talked while they ate, and for that he was grateful. He could focus on figuring out if he liked this new food without trying to manage a conversation.
Sitting and eating in the comfortable quiet made him miss the sounds of his squad like he missed the stars.
They had eaten together every meal, every day. For three years and through half a dozen deaths, reassignments, and promotions, the core of his squad of thirty-six had remained himself, Mitts, and Fiddle. He never felt like he had to manage moods, with them. Once he got Mitts going he could sit back and laugh with everyone else. Throw something in here and there to let whoever was telling a story know he was paying attention.
He shut down the flood of memories. There wasn’t any point in thinking about his squad. He focused on the shelf just over Vos’ shoulder. Medical supplies. Boxes and boxes of bandages, large and small, thick and thin.
His attention slid from the shelf to a bright spot of red in the grey.
Fox had set his helmet on the floor next to the crate Davijaan kept his unused armor in. The chestplate was the only piece visible, sticking over the edge enough the lid didn’t fit. He’d taken it out twice to clean, a habit more than a necessity. There was something soothing about removing dust and smudges until the white gleamed.
His armor had remained unpainted long after any other clone he knew. Paint was a quick way to tell troopers apart, and he’d eventually given in to Fiddle’s pestering and added some orange to his helmet for that reason, but the full-set designs that were so popular were impractical. He understood wanting to make it your own, wanting to make something standard issue into something personal. But, the armor would be damaged or the paint would chip, and the artist would have to do the work of differentiating themself all over again.
Fox’ helmet was red. A bright, bloody red. His armor was the brightest thing Davijaan had seen in these last weeks in basements.
There were no shinies in the CG. Every trooper from the scared kids straight off Kamino to the veterans of Geonosis kept their armor painted exactly the same. Only Fox and his officers broke the template. Fox didn’t paint his armor because he liked the way it looked, he painted it red like the bullseye of a target because that’s what it was. Davijaan could respect that.
He chewed slowly, no longer tasting the stinging sauce. His armor, neatly stacked in a crate, as white and shiny as it had been when it was first issued. Fox’s helmet on the floor. Red like blood, like a bullseye.
The clone he’d taken to Grand Medical all those months ago had been in white armor. A shiny’s armor. ARC-5555. Fives. The clone Fox had shot in the chest. He never would have known he was an ARC if Kote hadn’t told him.
Armor. White and red and empty.
“What happened to that ARC’s armor?”
As one, Vos and Fox went still.
“Well.” Fox placed his utensil back in the container, set the container down on the crate. “My squad took the corpse back to our morgue. I wasn’t there but standard procedure is to strip the body before cremation and reuse or recycle what we can. Undersuit was probably repaired and put in rotation. The chestplate would have been recycled, but the rest of the armor…” He shrugged. “Cleaned and shelved for the next trooper who needs it.”
Vos dropped his utensil on the floor with a clatter. “Fucking stars.”
“It would have been scrubbed and repaired. Probably re-painted,” Fox warned.
“You can’t wash off or paint over memories.” He shot to his feet. “Where.”
Fox was already sprinting into the aisles, Davijaan close at his heels.
***
In a frantic rush they gathered every piece of gleaming white armor from the shelves and piled them on the floor, and Vos knelt right down in the middle and tore off his gloves.
“Start with the pieces that rest against skin,” he ordered, and Fox gave him a helmet. He turned it around in his bare hands, wincing, and then shook his head and passed it to Davijaan, who started a separate pile.
One by one Fox passed helmets and gauntlets to Vos. One by one he grimaced his way through checking them, deemed them unhelpful, and passed them to Davijaan. One pile shrank as the other grew.
When they’d worked through all the helmets Vos ignored the gauntlet Fox offered him and staggered to his feet, breathing hard. Both clones tensed.
“Are you alright, sir?”
“I’m fine.” Vos waved away Davijaan’s concern. “I just need a moment. Most of that armor… It’s used.”
“You mean most of it had somebody die in it,” said Fox, flat.
Vos took a deep breath, leaning back against a shelf and meeting Fox’s eyes. “Your troops like it here,” he said, calm, serious, sweat beading on his brow. “They like you. Most of them are terrified of you, sure, but you take good care of them. They know that. They know there are things that happen that are out of your control. This—” he gestured to the dozens of scattered sets of empty armor, “is not your fault.”
Fox flinched, taking a full step back and almost dropping the gauntlet. Davijaan watched his expression shutter, and cleared his throat.
“How does that work?” he asked Vos.
Slowly, Vos turned his attention away from Fox. “It’s a Force thing.”
“Yes, but, you don’t get every memory, do you?”
“I can’t control what I pick up. I touch something old and a thousand years worth of memories force their way into my head.” His eyes slid closed, pained. “I know how to control what I focus on, what I pull out of the chaos and make clear.”
Must make everyday objects like cups hard to get usable data from. “Doesn’t sound… Nice.”
“Not really. But, they’re not my memories, so technically I only remember the ones I bother to remember.”
That made a certain kind of sense.
Another deep breath, and Vos lowered himself to the floor once again. A glance at Fox confirmed he’d regained his balance, though his expression was blank in a way that meant he was missing his helmet.
Vos took the gauntlet, and their assembly line started up once more.
“What do we do if some poor shiny is walking around in that armor,” Davijaan asked Fox, low.
“I sign off on every requisition form that originates in this building. We’ll find it,” he answered, grim.
They turned back to Vos in time to watch him drop the gauntlet, lurch forward, and vomit.
Davijaan was at his side in seconds, getting an arm around his waist and pulling him up and out of the mess. “Don’t lose that one,” Vos gasped, pointing to the limp white and black glove. “That’s the one. We found it.”