Chapter Text
Davijaan made it to the basement with no memory of the journey.
He checked the computer room first. The broken table and overturned crates hadn’t been touched. In the storage room the congealed remains of the fancy noodles had been left out for anybody to find.
He couldn’t bring himself to throw the food away, so he ate the rest of it, the remains of all three boxes along with the red dough lumps. It tasted like dust.
Fox wasn’t around. Or if he was, he wasn’t showing himself.
Davijaan’s poncho was folded neatly on top of the rest of his bedding, where he’d left it before their meal. He pulled it over his head and sat in the corner he usually slept in, and waited.
***
He woke to warmth, and a hand on his shoulder.
“Oddball?”
Vos.
Davijaan forced himself to uncurl, to sit, Vos backing away to crouch across from him.
“Yes, sir?” he said, throat dry and sore. He wasn’t ready to meet the Jedi’s eyes.
A sigh. The scuff of boots against duracrete as Vos settled. “1010 and I are getting ready to leave.”
He blinked. “Leave?”
“We’re doing the break in, as planned, to see what we can pick up about contact with Separatists, and Sith. We decided…”
At the hesitation, cold curled in his chest. They hadn’t woken him up for whatever discussion they’d had, so. They’d decided they didn’t want his help.
And, really, they didn’t need his help. His pre-determined role had been to monitor comms and cameras, and with nothing to monitor once they actually got inside the medbay his involvement had been a precaution more than anything.
Liability started echoing around in his head.
He swallowed. “I understand, sir.”
Vos sighed again, and this time he sounded annoyed. Davijaan tensed, concealed by folds of thick brown cloth.
“Listen, Oddball, I understand your fear over the surgery—”
No you don’t.
“—but none of us know what this chip is capable of. We don’t know—”
“You do know,” Davijaan cut in. The words came out harsher than he’d intended but he abruptly did not care. “You said it was mind control. What do you mean you don’t know?”
Vos rocked back on his heels, but his surprise at the interruption was quickly erased by frustration. “We don’t know the full extent of what you could be ordered to do, or not do. Palpatine implied there was no limit, but I’m having a hard time believing him, for some reason. We don’t know—”
“Why does it matter?”
“Why doesn’t it?” Vos demanded. He reached out, and before Davijaan could fling himself away Vos caught his chin in a grip like a vice; forced Davijaan to meet his gaze. “Can you not imagine the ways you could be manipulated? The lines you could be ordered to cross?” His eyes were hard, but there was something almost pleading about them, too. “I can.”
Davijaan jerked his chin free. “You don’t want us to turn on you. That’s the only reason you care that this chip doesn’t do what you thought it did.”
“I care because I know what the Sith are capable of. I lived that hell for years and I know how they use their power.”
“And the Jedi are so different?” Kenobi had always been polite to him, kind even; had saved his life once. Skywalker had a GAR-wide reputation as protective. Wolffe respected Koon enough not to gossip about him. None of that changed the fact that Davijaan had spent the last three years flying straight into enemy fire. “Being ordered to die is being ordered to die.”
By now he trusted Vos wouldn’t kill him, but there was still some part of him expecting cold, invisible pressure around his neck. He breathed, and watched the Jedi’s face carefully.
Not a flicker of yellow. Only brown eyes, boring into Davijaan. That same sense from the exam room of being looked through.
“You’re saying if a Jedi ordered you to kill yourself, you would?” Vos asked, even. “No hesitation. No protest.”
Davijaan smiled. “I jumped when you told me to jump, didn’t I?”
Vos flinched. “You did,” he said, heavy, and looked away. Davijaan wanted to be satisfied by that admission.
But, then, Vos said again, “You did.” He sounded thoughtful. He looked back to Davijaan. “And immediately afterwards you hit me, and told me not to touch you. Not to fucking touch you, actually.”
“I—”
“You say no to me all the time.”
Davijaan managed to bite back his first instinctual no I don't, but from the way Vos smirked the bastard could see it all over his face. That's what he got for not wearing his helmet.
“You told me in no uncertain terms not to hurt 1010. Not to mess with his armor.”
“That was just—That wasn’t—”
“On the ship, when I cornered you.” Vos raised an eyebrow, and recited: ‘“Fuck you. I am not a fucking traitor.”’
Every molecule in his body ignited with fury. “Fuck. You.”
The damn fucking Jedi had the damn fucking audacity to grin. “There you go,” he said, cheerful. “That exact glare.”
He levered himself up, briskly dusting off his pants and stomping his feet. He met Davijaan’s eyes again, and said, “You wouldn’t have jumped if you hadn’t trusted me to catch you.”
With that, Jedi General Quinlan Vos strode out of the room.
***
Davijaan couldn’t move, he was so angry. He sat on the cold grey floor and shook and shook and shook until he couldn’t stand to sit anymore and shot to his feet, body moving without conscious thought, simply needing to be far away from this corner and this storage room and far away from the site of that—that.
He wasn’t the kind of idiot who talked back to his superiors. Except apparently he was, when he didn’t have anything to lose.
Vos wasn’t in the computer room, which was good because he had no idea what he would say or do when he saw Vos again and didn’t want to find out yet.
Instead, Fox was in the computer room, removing his armor. The bandage was still in place, a patch of white almost lost in his dark hair. He glanced up as Davijaan stomped inside and then back to his armor. “Vos told you,” he stated, mildly disgusted.
Davijaan came to a stumbling halt in the middle of the room. “You weren’t going to?”
He made a sweeping gesture at the computers. “Don’t touch any of that. If you do, I’ll know.”
“You weren’t going to tell me before you left?”
“You’re not a stupid as you look, Davijaan,” he sneered, all but shoving his cuisse into the crate at his feet, “but you’re a coward.”
Davijaan opened his mouth but could not form words; everything angry inside him crawling up his throat and threatening to choke him, to kill him when so many other things had not.
“I thought the way you followed Kote around was a good survival tactic,” Fox continued, “but turns out, you won’t even risk your skin to save your skin.” He slammed his greaves into the crate and slammed the lid over them. “I don’t want you anywhere near my operations.”
“This chip isn’t going to kill me.”
“Might as well be dead if you won’t choose to live.”
Davijaan wanted to shake him the way a trainer might shake a cadet. Shake some sense into him. “Maybe if you’d spent a single day of this war actually fighting it, you’d understand none of us can make that choice.”
Fox stiffened, but he didn’t stop whatever he was doing; kicking the armor crate under the computer desk and drawing a second crate out with his boot. “I chose not to kill you,” he said. “I chose to kill every reporter and politician and activist whose name Palpatine put on my desk. I chose to kill that ARC.”
“That was following orders.”
“That was choosing to live.”
“So, what you’re really worried about is being forced to stop killing people to save yourself? Forced to stop killing other clones?” Davijaan laughed, bitter. “If I’m a coward, you’re a selfish murderer.”
Too fast for him to react, Fox was across the room, a hand fisted in his collar. “My selfishness is the only thing I have.”
He gave Davijaan one good shake, teeth bared and eyes wild, and then abruptly released him. Took a step back. “You think I’m trying to end this war because I care that clones are dying in it? Because of that clone solidarity shit Kote and Wolffe go on about? Fuck no.” Fox turned his back and kicked the lid off his crate. “Every clone in the galaxy could drop dead tomorrow and I wouldn’t care.”
Davijaan pressed a hand to his throat and breathed.
That was a lie. Davijaan knew it was a lie because Fox had held a knife to his throat twice now and hadn't so much as nicked his skin. Because he let himself be called by a name Wolffe had given him six years ago. Because of the way he’d gone still when Vos told him the deaths of his troops weren’t his fault.
It was a lie, but it was a kind of lie Davijaan recognized. A lie you tell yourself over and over hoping one day it will be true.
“I’m doing this because I want to get off this rotting planet alive,” Fox said. “I want to see the stars. And if the only way I’m going to get that chance is if I end the war myself, then I’m going to damn well end the war myself. And I’m not letting you or any other clone get in my way.”
The crate was full of civilian clothes. Davijaan watched Fox swap out heavy GAR issue boots for a pair in soft synth leather. Perfect for climbing, for walking soundlessly. A brown jacket with a high collar. Gloves.
As he pulled on the gloves Davijaan caught a glimmer of silver at his left wrist. There was an alert when a battalion commander’s tracker went offline, but even as panic rose he pushed it down. Obviously Fox had tampered with the alert, if he hadn’t done something about his tracker signal years ago.
The telltale white GAR utility belt was replaced with a black one. Davijaan watched Fox carefully fill the black belt’s pouches with the contents of the white ones, and said, soft, “We’re already dead.”
Fox stilled. Davijaan couldn’t see his face but he could see the way he turned something thin and silver around and around in his hand. A knife.
“No,” he said. He flipped the knife into the air, and caught the blade between two fingers. “We’re not dead. Not yet.”
The memory of terror when he’d thought Vos was going to toss him out the airlock came back to him; the way he’d planted his feet and said no. It felt like a betrayal, now, the way his body had fought even for those few seconds.
“Do you have a weapon?”
Davijaan blinked back to himself. “What?”
“Do you,” said Fox, pointed, “have a weapon on your person?”
“No.”
Fox grunted, and Davijaan watched him slide knives into sheaths inside his boots, at his belt, up his sleeves.
When Fox was dressed any clone would be able to tell what he was under the civilian clothes, but Davijaan could admit that in the dark, from a distance, without the armor silhouette, it would take a few seconds.
He replaced the lid on the civvy clothing crate and shoved it under the computer table, next to his armor crate, and finally turned to face Davijaan. But he didn’t look at Davijaan, he looked past him, to the door.
Davijaan turned and found Vos leaning in the doorframe, arms crossed loosely over his chest, glancing between them with concern. A second of silence, and his gaze fell heavy on Fox. “Ready?”
Fox gave a sharp nod, and strode across the room. As he brushed past Davijaan he pressed a sheathed knife into his hand and said, “If all you see yourself as, is a walking corpse, that’s all the use you’ll be.”
Before Davijaan could find a way to respond to that, he was gone.
Vos straightened, but lingered in the doorway. “You’ll be alright, by yourself?”
Davijaan swallowed, set the knife carefully beside the computer. He forced out, “Yes, sir.”
“Shouldn’t take more than an hour and a half, at the most.”
“I know.” He’d been a part of the planning. He hadn’t forgotten any details simply because he wasn’t involved anymore.
“I know you know. Just—” Vos rubbed the back of his neck, seemed to realize what he was doing, and let his hand fall loose. “We’re so close. This is almost over.”
“I know.”
***
Vos and Fox left, and Davijaan stayed.
For a time he paced, walking a circuit through the computer room, into the hall, to the storage room; back through the hall, back through the computer room. When he got bored of walking he sat in his corner in the storage room and tried to sleep.
He wanted to be angry with Kote for being the reason he was here, for being the reason he’d had to survive everything he’d survived in the last weeks, but all his anger had sputtered out when he’d been left behind. Now mostly what he wanted was to not think.
He wanted to sleep, but after an indeterminate span of time spent laying on the floor he realized was too scared to sleep. He wasn’t sure when Vos and Fox would get back, wasn’t sure what else about his world would change when they did, but he wanted to be awake for it this time.
With that realization, he dragged himself to his feet and made his way to the computer room.
They weren’t back yet. He hadn’t noticed how concerned he’d been that they would come back and not come find him until that concern was alleviated.
With nothing better to do, he moved the broken table to the side and stacked the crates neatly. The crates were all uniform, sturdy, the Republic cog pressed into the plastoid sides. Probably re-purposed from supply deliveries.
That done, he started pacing again. Might as well keep moving, if he couldn’t sleep. Focus on breathing, on taking one step after another. It was boring, but it was a good way to not think.
As he passed the computers he glanced at the chrono next to the monitor, and his heart skipped a beat.
It had been almost three hours. Vos and Fox had been gone almost three hours, and he hadn’t noticed.
Firmly he set aside both his disgust with himself and his panic. There were all sorts of complications that could have caused a delay. Surprise locks or cameras, staff staying late, even speeder trouble.
The comm originally designated for his use was on the computer table. Next to the knife. He fiddled with it until he found the frequency they’d decided on.
Static.
He checked a handful of frequencies. Nothing but static.
Unease curled cold in his stomach. Resigning himself to Fox’s wrath, he started up the computers.
There were three entrances to Palpatine’s fancy private medbay: The landing pad for the surgery suit, the main hall, and a staff stairway. Each covered by cameras and sensors, with their own complicated accompaniment of locks and alarms. Fox and Vos had decided to use the stairway. Fox had stuck that camera on a loop, and the feed was still dutifully looping the same five minutes of empty stairs.
The landing pad was deserted, so was the main hall. Davijaan played back the footage of the landing pad in sped-up increments, searching for any hint of activity behind the heavy black doors. Nothing.
He switched to the hall. Back five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, and—
Davijaan watched, frozen, as the door slid open and a squad of CG troopers marched out of Palpatine’s medbay.
Well. That would certainly explain the delay.
He didn’t know for sure they’d been caught. Maybe they’d been discovered, but escaped, and this squad was sent to track them down. Or maybe Palpatine randomly had a headache and needed to go all the way to his medbay in the middle of the night and took CG with him because he could. The squad leader had been a commander, from his personalized paint. Wings on the helmet. Maybe Fox had recruited some of his trustworthy troops to help with the break in and hadn’t bothered to warn Davijaan. Maybe—
A small red alert appeared in the lower right corner of the monitor display.
He didn’t allow himself to hesitate, just opened the alert. A new camera feed showed a slice of hallway and stairway, the flat grey of the CG building. A squad of CG in full kit had reached the stairs. He watched them march down.
They were moving… oddly. Platoons drilled for thousands of hours to march perfectly in step. It was muscle memory so ingrained it might as well be instinct. Marching was as natural as breathing. The sharp, precise steps of this squad were certainly uniform, but not smooth enough to be natural.
He switched to the next feed, and—in the front right, the commander had wings on his helmet. It was the same squad that had left Palpatine’s medbay fifteen minutes ago.
Marching down the stairs.
Definitely caught, then. Fuck.
He shut down the computers. Standard protocol was to destroy them, but he didn’t have time. It was possible they were looking for Fox’s lair and not for a co-conspirator. Either way, he needed to not be in the basement when that squad made it down.
The squad had come from ground level; the level with the hangar. They had two barracks levels to get down to the storage rooms. Fox’s little alert system had given him about three minutes.
They were marching. He grabbed the comm and the knife, and he ran.
As he flew through the hallway he yanked the poncho off and bundled it up around the comm, around the knife, clutching it to his chest. The long grey hall passed in a blur. The thud of his boots made him wince but it was too late to take them off.
He took the stairs three at a time and stumbled as his feet found the small landing. He punched the door controls and didn’t wait for it to slide open fully before wedging himself into the gap and shoving his way into the lower barracks.
Another long grey hall. The wall to his right was set with three wide openings. Three barrack entrances. An identical stairwell door to the one he’d come through marked the far end of the hall. As he watched, the door began to slide open.
With careful, deliberate nonchalance, he slipped into the first barrack entrance as the winged commander stepped into the hall.
It was dark. The high ceiling allowed for dozens of rows of bunks stacked six high, and most were empty. The third shift barracks, then. In the far corner, illuminated by a carefully angled bucket lamp, a squad off-duty were playing sabacc. One glanced up at him, and then back to his cards.
He didn’t go to the first empty bunk. He picked one halfway down the second row, not too close to the squad, out of sight but within hearing distance of the entrance. He toed off his boots and threw himself down on it with a sigh.
On his back in a strange bunk, Davijaan forced himself to relax. If anyone from that squad got a good look at him, they would be able to tell if he was tense. He had no idea if the CG was large enough a stranger would go unremarked on, or if bunks were assigned or shared depending on shift schedules. He tried not to think about all the ways he could be caught, and instead listened.
The squad marched steadily down the hall. Davijaan breathed in time with their rhythm. When they reached the barracks entrance his breath caught in his throat, but then they were past, and then he heard the faint hiss of the door sliding open, and then the hall was quiet.
He lay there for a handful of heartbeats, waiting for the door to hiss again, for the squad to come charging in and drag him out of the bunk with a blaster to the back of his head.
No hiss. No squad.
Finally he sighed, and sat. Put his boots back on and adjusted the rolled up poncho under his arm.
“Not much of a nap, brother,” called one of the card players.
Davijaan laughed, and threw over his shoulder— “Half a minute out of those damn boots is all the break my shift allows,” and as casually as he’d wandered into the barracks he wandered out again.
He couldn’t run anymore, now that he was out of the basement. There were CG troopers around who would see, who would make note of his lack of armor and his bundle of brown wool. The only thing that reassured him was the silver bracelet around his left wrist, hidden under his woven band and his sleeve. That was one way he could not be found out.
That squad may or may not be looking for him. He doubted Fox or Vos would have given away his involvement, but he didn’t know for sure, and it was safer to assume the worst. It was safer to get out, as fast as possible.
He walked with purpose, up stairs and through grey hall after grey hall. It was third shift, too early to be morning, so the building was all but empty. When he did pass the odd trooper he nodded, face fixed in a bland smile that gave nothing away. Evidently there hadn’t been any kind of alarm sounded. Yet.
He made it all the way to medical and didn’t let himself feel the relief of that until he had Fox’s CMO by the wrist, dragging him out of the chaos and into the hall.
“Yes?” said CMO, annoyed, looking not at Davijaan but behind him; looking for Fox. “Can I help you?”
“Exam room three. Is it empty? Can I go in there? Only for a few minutes, I need—”
“Slow down, soldier.” The CMO twisted his wrist out of Davijaan’s grip, annoyed. “Yes, it’s empty. Yes, you can go in there if you need to.” He glanced suspiciously down either side of the hallway. “Where’s the Commander?”
Davijaan smiled. “Confidential, sir.”
The CMO scowled, but from the way the corners of his eyes creased Davijaan knew he was worried. “Hm. Fine.”
He turned on his heel and led Davijaan through the crowd right to exam room three, pausing before the open door with a scowl that was distinctly less worried and distinctly more annoyed. “When you see the Commander, tell him covering for him is one thing, covering for all his little friends he wants to sneak in and out is another. Got it?”
“Got it,” said Davijaan, cheerful, and all but slammed the door in his face.
He went straight to the window. Just as he’d thought, the alarm was still disabled.
He kicked off his boots and stuffed his things in them, wrapped the poncho around them. Clambered up onto the sill, eased the window open as quietly as he could. Medical was half the third level, so there weren’t many windows close to this one, but if he made a stupid mistake now Fox would have his kneecaps. If and when Fox was in a fit state to remove said kneecaps. But he wasn’t thinking about that.
The wrapped up boots hit the ground with a muffled thump, and he allowed himself a moment of satisfaction as he climbed out after them.
It was hard to shut the window while clinging to the frame, but he managed. It’d been a while since he’d climbed down the side of a building, but he managed that too. He was only three levels up and the wall was stone and mortar, plenty of holds to be found in the gaps. His body remembered the careful shifting of balance, even if he was slower than he wanted to be.
Davijaan jumped the last four meters to the ground, shoved his feet into the boots, and kept running.
***
He was out. He was under a sky again for the first time in almost a month, even if it was as false as the simulated battlefields on Kamino. All that mattered was that when he tilted his head back and looked beyond the neon glow of Coruscant nightlife, he saw a black vastness that could have been space.
He was out, and he had no idea where to go next.
Davijaan didn’t stop moving because standing still was an easy way to die, but he was starting to shake. He slowed enough to tuck the comm into his waistband and the sheath into his boot, to put the poncho on properly, and that didn’t help but it didn’t hurt either.
Vos and Fox had been caught trying to break into Palpatine’s private rooms, and Palpatine was in league with the Sith. If they weren’t already dead they would be soon.
Officially Davijaan was still dead, he still had his signal jammer, but this whole captured by a traitor to the Republic situation went way beyond the original mission objective and parameters and with Vos out of commission who cared. He didn’t care. He needed help and he didn’t care.
He couldn’t break into Grand Medical to stage a rescue. He could probably figure out how to get in, but it would be a useless effort with the CG and the Senate Guard and the Red Guard all standing between Palpatine’s prisoners and what minuscule threat a single clone posed. He needed to find someone who could break in, and fast.
He could go to ‘79’s and see what battalion was on leave this month, see if someone would lend him a comm so he could contact Kote. Kote would know what to do. But if the CG was looking for him, the clone bars were the first places they’d check. He couldn’t go to the barracks for the same reason. That squad would know to check all the usual places a clone would go to find other clones, to find help.
When he was on leave he kept his distance from civilians, unless they were in the same bar looking for company. He knew some clones had friends on Coruscant, but he definitely didn’t and definitely wouldn’t be able to make use of anyone else’s.
Or maybe, he realized, catching a glimpse of brown wool poncho in a storefront window: Maybe he didn’t need someone to help him break in. Maybe he needed someone who could walk right through the front door.
The Jedi would rescue Vos. They would rescue him if Davijaan could convince them Vos was still a Jedi and not a traitor, and if they rescued Vos they’d have to rescue Fox, too.
He needed a Jedi. And—he looked up, through a gap between the skyscrapers to the pale temple towers that could be seen from hundreds of miles in any direction—he knew exactly where to find one.
***
He pulled his hood up and kept his head down, and stuck to the shadows as he wove through narrow streets. The poncho would hide him from civilians, but there were CG patrols on the main roads, and any clone would be able to tell what he was.
He ran when an alley was isolated enough he could get away with it. He couldn’t pay for a taxi and he couldn’t risk stealing a speeder, but the Senate—and by extension the CG building, and Grand Medical—were close to the Jedi temple, and he covered the distance fast.
Clones didn’t go to Jedi for help. Not with internal problems, or incidents with civilians. Clones went to other clones for help, and if the issue couldn’t be resolved among themselves then a delegated officer would get a trusted Jedi involved.
It wasn’t that the Jedi wouldn’t help, they usually did when they were asked, it was just… You could never be sure the Jedi would take your side. Especially when it came to civilians.
But this wasn’t an inter-battalion squabble or anti-clone sentiment boiling over, this was a Jedi spy who’d been captured and needed rescue. Davijaan simply had to explain. They’d believe him, because who could make up shit like that? And if they didn’t believe him, then they could read his mind and see for themselves.
Either it was already too late, or it wasn’t. Panic would not change anything.
He didn’t try to get to the main doors, because he didn’t know how. He ran until he was in the shadow of the temple, and kept running. Eventually the crumbling Coruscant buildings gave way to an empty expanse of stone paved street, and across the wide street, the temple wall cut into the sky.
Davijaan turned left for no real reason and picked up his pace, following the wall. Golden light shone from a handful of windows set high above street level, spilling over on the dirty stone. Likely entire floors higher. Surely there was more than one entrance to the temple. If he followed the wall long enough—
Rounding a corner, his attention snapped to a recess in the wall a bit further down. Relief was instant and brief. He’d found a way, but he wasn’t inside yet. As he got closer he saw the recess held metal doors, tall and heavy and ancient in design, guarded by masked figures.
Davijaan slowed to a walk, observing the two guards shadowed by the doorway. They stood in something like a relaxed attention, facing outwards, ignoring him. Oh, they’d noticed him, from the way the shorter of the pair’s hand twitched on their weapon—and that was definitely a lightsaber of some form, they were definitely Jedi—but they expected him to pass by.
He swallowed, pushed his hood back, and marched right up to them.
The white and gold masks were less expressive than a clone’s helmet, but their gaze lay heavy on him as he came to a halt directly in front of the two guards. He tried to mirror their relaxed posture with hands loose and empty at his sides, visible, free of the folds of his poncho.
He smiled, and hoped they couldn’t feel what he was feeling the same way Vos could. “Hello, sirs. Slow watch?”
The shorter one, the one on his right, shifted slightly. In training maybe, unused to standing still and impassive for so long. Neither of them spoke, or gave any further sign they’d heard him.
Well then. “I understand, you’re on duty, you’re busy.” He cleared his throat. “Speaking of. Any chance you’ll let me through that door?”
The taller one spoke, and he barely managed to keep from flinching. “This is not an entrance, this is an exit. If you would like to enter the temple we suggest you go around to the front.”
Another endless stretch of time running around the foundation, plus stairs, plus however long it took to talk his way past the front door—
Panic would not change anything.
“It’s an emergency, sir.” He let some of his desperation bleed into his voice. Maybe he did want them to feel some of what he was feeling, if it would speed things along. “I don’t have time. I need to speak to…” Yoda and Windu, Vos had said. And Kenobi. “General Yoda.”
Silence.
“Can you at least tell me if General Yoda is on planet? Or General Windu? I’ll even take General Kenobi.”
The taller guard didn’t move, but there was a sudden sense of being disapprovingly loomed over. “We are not at liberty to give out information of that kind to strangers.”
“Stranger?” He glanced down at himself and back to the guards, disbelieving. It wasn’t that dark, not on Coruscant. “Haven’t you seen a clone before?”
The shorter guard scoffed. “Not dressed like that.”
Davijaan wanted to scream. “Please, I need to see—any one of them. All three of them. I need to get a message through if nothing else.”
With a note of resignation, the taller guard asked, “What is your message?”
He opened his mouth, and instead of screaming he said, as calm and controlled as he’d been trained to be— “I know where Quinlan Vos is.”
The shorter guard visibly stiffened. “Master Vos is dead,” they spat.
“Not yet.” Either it was too late, or it wasn’t. “He’s alive, he’s here on Coruscant, he’s been captured.”
The sense of disapproval from the taller guard increased. They straightened, making use of the full breadth of their shoulders, formal and foreboding. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you—”
“Please.” His voice cracked, his half step forward only stopped by the shorter guard’s tightening grip on their lightsaber. “Please can’t you—touch my arm or something, and see I’m telling the truth?”
The shorter guard scoffed. “That is not how the Force works.”
“What? Yes it is?” Well. Now that he thought about it, he had no idea if Kenobi could do the ‘pulling memories out of objects’ thing. “I’ve seen at least one Jedi do that.”
“Jedi don’t waste time on party tricks,” they sneered.
“And as it happens,” said the taller guard, measured, but with an edge of surprise, “Master Vos was one of our few true psychometrics.”
The younger turned to their elder, their own surprise visible in every line of their body until a firm hand on their shoulder reminded them that they were still technically on duty. They both relaxed back into their formal posture, and then two empty masks turned simultaneously to Davijaan.
The hair on the nape of his neck stood on end. He breathed, and let them study him for seconds that lasted an eternity.
He was getting tired of being looked through. But, maybe every Jedi did this to everyone.
Finally, the elder let their hand fall from the younger's shoulder, and said, “You certainly know something. Very well. I will pass on your message.”
***
Beyond the metal doors—held open for him by an increasingly grumpy and increasingly obviously padawan-sized guard—was not the courtyard he was expecting. Instead, a tall and narrow room bisected by a tall and narrow hallway. The thick stone walls were hollow, apparently. At least at this level.
Windu was waiting at the center of the room, the elder guard who had gone to get him standing off to the side. Davijaan came to attention and saluted, as precise as he could manage when out of armor.
He’d never met General Windu, but he’d seen him from afar a handful of times. He didn’t look like he’d been woken up too early to deal with a crisis, he looked like he did on the battlefield—intense, focused, steady. A point of reference, and he held himself as if he knew it. As close to a monument as any living being could get.
Without preamble, Windu said, “You know where Quinlan Vos is?”
“Sir.” Davijaan spoke clear and clipped, as if giving a formal report or issuing orders. “I last saw General Vos almost four hours ago, when he left the CG basement to attempt to break into Chancellor Palpatine’s private wing in Grand Medical. I suspect he succeeded in getting inside, but was caught and captured. I have been unable to contact him. He missed his return time, was not observed leaving Grand Medical, and an hour ago a CG squad was dispatched to search their building’s basement.”
Windu raised a single brow. Davijaan could not begin to guess if that was a gesture of shock or of skepticism. He kept his chin up, and met Windu’s eyes. “What can I do to make you believe me?”
“I believe you,” he said.
“Wait, really?” Davijaan blinked. “Just like that? You’re not going to read my mind or anything?”
“Now I definitely believe you’ve spent time with Quinlan Vos.” For a split second, Windu’s perfect posture slipped, revealing worry and exhaustion. A split second, and then gone. He gave Davijaan a considering once-over. “Commander Oddball, I presume?”
“Yes, sir. That’s me.”
Brows slowly drew together into a frown. “And you didn’t have any role in the break in?”
“No, sir. He had another clone with him. For backup. A CG commander.”
If Palpatine was going to hurt either of them, it would be Fox. A Jedi he could sell to the Sith, or even, if he thought he could get away with showing his hand, ransom back to the Order. A clone? And not only a clone, but one of his own officers, who had betrayed him?
He’d been trying not to think about that.
He shook his head, shook those thoughts away. “I don’t know how often he reports back to you, but—”
Windu cut him off with a raised hand. “I haven’t heard from him since that show he and Obi-Wan put on.” He was still frowning. It was a little menacing, even if it wasn’t directed at Davijaan.
“Broke into the Chancellor’s private rooms…” A deep, full body sigh. “Palpatine is well within his rights to arrest Vos. I can request he be released into Jedi custody, but that would require Palpatine to make the arrest public. Which, if he chooses to do so, could take days.”
It was hard to breathe, all at once, for the cold in his chest.
Davijaan fought to keep his face under control as Windu’s frown shifted to worried contemplation. “You would not have come to us in this way if you did not have cause for urgency.”
Urgency was one way to put it. “We—” He coughed. “That is, General Vos has reason to believe Palpatine is playing both sides of the war.”
Windu did not look surprised by that. He looked resigned, and Davijaan would be a lot less angry about the last three years if Windu looked more surprised by that.
“Playing both sides of the war, how?”
“Sir. After investigating the Chancellor’s cover-up of the chip incident, General Vos speculated he had made a deal with Separatist leadership to ensure the war dragged on as long as possible, to enable him to expand his power over the Senate. And…” Carefully, measuring each word, he said, “there were signs he’d been in contact with a Sith.”
Windu did look surprised by that. Somehow, the surprise was worse.
“Signs of what nature? And is that truly speculation, or is there proof?”
“Sir—”
“I’m not asking because I doubt you,” said Windu, firm. “I’m asking because I need evidence before I can accuse the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic of treason.”
Davijaan needed to tell Windu about the mind control. He knew he needed to. It was evidence. He needed to give a complete report. Windu needed to know the situation in full.
But, he did not know what Windu would do, when he found out the Sith intended to use clones to kill the Jedi.
He didn’t have time. This was urgent, he could feel this was urgent, even Windu could. Something about the static, about the way the CG squad had marched so perfectly and so wrong, about how every piece of evidence they’d found in their investigation could be traced back to Palpatine.
Vos could spill the whole plot to Windu and Yoda and Kenobi and all the other Jedi after—after. It was Sith stuff anyway, it wasn’t relevant to rescuing a Jedi from a traitorous politician.
“There’s a file,” he said. “Evidence gathered against Palpatine by the CG. That’s why their commander got involved, he made a deal with Vos to make the file public through the Jedi after Vos’ investigation concluded. I know where to find a copy.”
Fox kept those computers where they were for a reason. Even if the CG squad had found them, had wiped them or destroyed them, copies would be hidden all over the building. If you knew Fox, and knew where to look.
Windu nodded, grim. “That will do.”
Sweeping relief almost sent Davijaan to his knees.
Over his shoulder, Windu addressed the guard. “Send a message to Master Yoda and Master Drallig, tell them to meet me at hangar three.” Turning, he strode into the hallway. “You’re with me, Commander.”
“Yes sir,” said Davijaan, rough, and fell in three paces behind and to the left of the General.
***
Windu let Davijaan fly. He didn’t even have to ask, Windu simply waved him to the cockpit of the Eta-class shuttle and told him to get them to Grand Medical.
“There is a chance he won’t be there,” Windu admitted as he strapped himself into the co-pilot’s seat, as General Yoda and General Drallig settled in the passenger area. “But at the very least, we have reason to believe he is, and we can use that excuse to look for Vos and his commander. Though, I have a feeling…”
The artificial dawn had not yet begun. The ship lanes were blue-lit, and he directed the shuttle up into the bright night. He’d flown low over Coruscant a handful of times on ferry duty, but he’d only flown to Grand Medical the one time. The route was burned into his mind.
It was a flight of minutes—silent, tense minutes—and then he was bringing the shuttle down on the landing pad beside Palpatine’s Nubian skiff.
The docking codes had not been changed from three months ago. That was just sloppy.
Windu took one look at the skiff and nodded, suspicion—feeling?—confirmed.
“Wait for us here, have the shuttle ready to leave,” he ordered, standing. “If something goes wrong, go back to the temple, and find Master Billaba. I informed her of my errand, and of your identity.”
“Yes sir.”
“Do you have some way to communicate with us?”
Davijaan opened his mouth to say no, and then thought better of it, and fished out the comm in his waistband as unobtrusively as he could manage. The knife in his boot shifted with the slight shuffle of feet.
Windu adjusted the comm to a frequency and returned it. “I’ll have my own on that frequency when we’re inside. I’m anticipating…” He frowned, and did not clarify what he was anticipating.
The three Jedi left without another word.
Davijaan sat and breathed and listened to the grey crackle of static. He filled his mind with it. Either it was too late or it wasn’t. Either they were fine or they were not.
He surprised himself, with how much he wanted them to be fine. It would be awkward to explain Fox’s death to Wolffe and Kote.
Static. Static and his own heartbeat. Static and the way the comm dug into his palm, the way the knife pressed against his ankle.
He didn’t know why he’d taken the knife. He’d wanted a weapon when he ran, but Fox was right, he didn’t know what to do with it. He was going to have a bruise on his ankle. He—
—Static crackled into echoing footsteps, and his breath caught in his throat.
Footsteps, and more footsteps, and the tap of Yoda’s stick. A murmur as they passed someone.
The Chancellor did not own the only private wing, only the largest. He had his own surgical suite, with its own landing pad, where Davijaan had ferried that wayward ARC. Probably Windu and the others were aiming for the office. He tried to visualize the blueprints so he could locate them, but all he could think of was the way Vos and Fox had taken turns marking them up.
More footsteps. And more footsteps, and—a door hissed open, and than a faint, aged voice said—
“Master Windu. Master Yoda.”
A voice he recognized from newsreels and radio and Senate approved messages. Chancellor Palpatine.
He shivered.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this invasion?”
Windu didn’t hesitate. “In the name of the Galactic Senate of the Republic, you are under arrest, Chancellor. Commander, you and your men are ordered to stand down.”
A clone squad was in there?
For half a second he was surprised, and then the thrum of a lightsaber sent every thought scattering, his heart pounding.
“Are you threatening me, Master Jedi?”
“The Senate will decide your fate.”
Silence. Painful, aching silence as he listened, every muscle in his body tense, for the scrape and clack of trooper armor.
Palpatine broke the silence with a sigh. “I must say, it has come to this sooner than expected,” he said, and if his voice was not so faint Davijaan would have thought he was disappointed.
“Commander Thorn, Execute Order 66.”
A burst of blaster fire, a scream, and Davijaan’s body abruptly became distant.