Chapter Text
There was so much sky on Pantora.
It was so close, you didn’t even have to be in the air to brush your fingers against it. It was vast the same way an ocean was vast, the same way space was vast. Stretching taunt across the mountain peaks and curving beyond the horizon, never ending and all consuming. Blue, blue, blue. Davijaan got the feeling sometimes that if he tripped over his feet he’d fall into it and float away.
***
Davijaan dragged Kote along for the trip down the mountain and across the tundra to Kyurem so he wouldn’t have to travel under the cavernous sky alone. Knowing his brother was just outside made walking into the licensing office feel less like flying blind into enemy territory.
The written test was laughably easy– question after question about the technical aspects of piloting, and the galactic and planetary laws that governed spaceflight. He’d known most of the answers since he was seven, and he’d memorized the planetary laws he hadn’t known before he’d even considered moving to Pantora. Out of curiosity.
The flight test was a little more stressful, but after Mrs. Yang it was impossible to be intimidated by the instructor, a Mr. Feng who couldn’t have been that much older than Davijaan.
“I know I’ve got a babyface, but I swear I’m fully qualified,” Mr. Feng joked as he strapped himself into the copilot’s chair, datapad in one hand. “Been flying since I was walking, my ma likes to say.”
He hadn’t been allowed to fly real ships until he was in command track, but he still remembered the awe and joy of his first simulated lift-off when he was barely four years old. When he glanced over at Mr. Feng (“Oh, call me Aron, we’re the same age I bet.”) Aron, as he leveled out after take-off, there was a good bit of that familiar awe and joy hiding in his eyes as he took notes on the datapad. And after that, Davijaan relaxed into the relief of going up and up into the open sky as everything else fell away.
His license was a piece of laminated flimsy a bit too big to hold comfortably, and he didn’t let go of it all through returning the rented speeder, buying a used one, and the trip back up the mountain.
***
Three days a week Davijaan woke up early– not before the sun, it was impossible to be up before the sun on Pantora– got dressed and ready, scrounged around the kitchen for something edible, and then took the speeder to work.
The trip took all of five minutes, and they were the most fantastic and uncomfortable five minutes of every day. He’d never spent so much time outside in his life, and he had to get used to it again every morning. Glancing up to find the bright sun hovering just overhead made him feel exposed, achingly aware of how much open space surrounded him. The occasional pine tree that grew along the road between his house and the village didn’t offer any substantial cover. He could see for miles in every direction, and that meant he could be seen. He had to remind himself every day as he traveled to work that it didn’t matter who saw him anymore.
There was always wind blowing, cold and sweet against his face.
***
Davijaan had been well and truly terrified his first day of work, but if the Yangs had noticed they hadn’t said anything, and once he was in the air everything was fine.
It was a pretty simple job, compared to literally everything else he’d ever done, and his days quickly fell into a pattern. Drive to the Yang’s hangar. Say hello to Mr. Yang, nod to Mrs. Yang, tentatively wave to Mrs. Maraso if she was around. Load up Glimmer with everything being shipped out of Amaura. Fly down to Kyurem. If Aron was working at the warehouse instead of the office he usually tracked Davijaan down and said hello. Unload the Amaura goods. Load up whatever was being shipped out of Kyurem.
And then Davijaan and Glimmer spent the rest of the day flying between the villages tucked into valleys and perched on cliffs and nestled into canyons all throughout the sister mountains, delivering food and water and miscellaneous goods.
He had a specific route and timetable he stuck to. He was always expected. He got to know the shape of each village from the sky, and the names and faces of the people who met him at the hangar to unload the cargo and sign off on the delivery. Mx. Shao at Lapras, who signed the datapad with intense concentration and the tip of their tongue sticking out; Ms. Zhou at Walrein, an overly polite woman who’d caught him by surprise when she shook his hand Coruscanti style; Mr. Liang at Darumaka, who bounced on his toes as he entered the cargo hold like an eager cadet. Some villages were so small they didn’t even have a hangar, just a flat stretch of cleared ground for a landing pad, and there was always a crowd around the edges, waiting for him.
Not him specifically, he knew. Just the cargo. But still. It was nice.
***
He wasn’t sure what Kote did all day when he was at work, but he would come home each day to find things cleaned or rearranged or fixed. Sometimes the remains of a cooking attempt. When he suggested they spend a day checking over the roof for the damage Mrs. Chen had mentioned, Kote said he’d already taken care of it.
When Davijaan was home, Kote spent a lot of time sitting on the porch, in the sun. Not doing or saying anything, just sitting. Davijaan supposed that was better than lying in bed in the dark.
***
Davijaan was paid every tenday. Not a great deal of credits, nothing compared to the huge lump sum every clone vet had received as their severance pay and back-pay. Even after buying a house and a speeder he and Kote had more saved than they knew what to do with.
But for all they had saved, when he finally got around to doing the research and buying furniture and kitchen supplies and pre-made food, Davijaan preferred to spend the credits he’d earned working for the Yangs. They’d been earned with sweat, not blood.
***
He’d been given a comm for work purposes along with the standard safety gear. He still carried his personal comm everywhere he went. Mostly because of Kote, but also because of the hellos and how are yous he received randomly throughout the week from Loren.
***
He didn’t go down to the village often. Mostly because people would stop him and ask him if he was the boy living up at the old Lin place, and how he liked working for Dhanse and Ereno, and how he was settling in, and if his brother was looking for work, and where they’d lived before, and–
Davijaan didn’t spend more time there than necessary.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about being recognized by civilians as himself and not as a clone. And he wasn’t sure how to navigate conversations with civilians about himself that weren’t centered around being a clone. And maybe with Kote beside him it would have been easier, but Kote hadn’t really left the house yet and Davijaan wasn’t sure what to do about that or if there was even anything he could do, so. That option was out.
The Yangs were easier to deal with.
Mr. Yang was a talker. He could ramble for hours about life in the mountains, local gossip, everyone in his family from his children to his distant cousins. Davijaan learned more about the village, Pantora, and Loren’s childhood than he’d thought it was possible to know.
Unfortunately he had the same annoying habit as his daughter of asking questions he seemed to genuinely want answered– and what was it with everyone in these damn mountains and questions– about how Odd Ball and Cody were settling in, and how they were eating, and if they needed help with anything. Davijaan’s answers were usually stilted and designed to deflect. Mr. Yang stopped asking as often, but never stopped entirely.
Mrs. Yang didn’t talk much, but when she did it was to offer bits of piloting advice or quiet praise. Mrs. Maraso usually worked in the office in the village, but she came up to the hangar often enough to become familiar. She had her mother’s calm presence and her father’s warm smile, and all in all Davijaan found her the easiest of the family to be around.
Mr. Bereth and Mr. Evreth came around to help load and unload cargo on their days off. The twins were young men even taller than their mother, funny and focused and loud. Identical except for their hair styles and facial tattoos– and wasn’t that a fascinating distinction to see on natborns. They worked at the quarry over the summer and usually stayed at the barracks there.
The Yangs were… interesting. Curious, but not pushy. Friendly, but not always because they wanted something. It was fascinating to watch them interact with each other; the open affection they had for one another, the rhythm they fell into when working together. It wasn’t all that different from the way a platoon or a squad functioned, just. Odd to see in a natborn family. He thought it was something he could get used to.
He could see a bit of Loren in all of them– in Mrs. Yang’s steady gaze and steady hands, in Mr. Yang’s stubbornness, in the whole family’s propensity for teasing and easy laughter. Or maybe it was them he’d seen in Loren.
***
The Pantoran sky was so quiet. Empty. Nothing but Davijaan and Glimmer and mountain peaks and blue, blue, blue.
Peaceful.
***
Davijaan and Kote had moved to Amaura in the middle of summer, and summer was short and sweet in northern Pantora. They’d lived there about two months when Davijaan started to notice a chill in the mornings. The mist lingered in the ditches along the road, and the wind in his face was biting and smelled faintly of rot. The sun started to set earlier, and rise later.
At the end of a work day, after he’d gotten Glimmer checked over and shut down for the night, Mr. Yang approached as he was putting away his flightsuit and collecting his jacket.
Something was off in his smile, but Davijaan didn’t know him well enough to know what, yet.
“Good work today, as always,” he said, tone light, the lines around his eyes deeper than they’d been that morning. “My wife says you’ve caught on to the tricks of these mountain currents quick as anything.”
It was easier to pay attention to things like current fluctuations when you weren’t being shot at. “Thank you. It’s been… an adjustment.”
“I can imagine,” he chuckled weakly. “Not nearly as exciting as what you were doing before.”
Davijaan smiled. “Do you need something, sir?”
Mr. Yang’s smile fell away as if it had never been there. “I have a favor to ask, son,” he said, soft, shoulders slumping. “You see, Loren is coming home.”
He blinked, frowned. “To visit? In another three weeks, right?”
“She’s not coming to visit. She’s moving back.” He cleared his throat. “It’s all rather sudden. Usually Ereno picks Lo up in Kyurem herself, but she has a passenger flight scheduled tomorrow, and it’s too long a trip for Lo to make by speeder with her luggage, and I know you have the day off, but I was hoping you’d be willing–”
“Absolutely,” he said, some of Mr. Yang’s concern settling in his own chest. “What time should I leave?”
The smile Mr. Yang gave him was small, but real.
***
Loren was waiting on the edge of the landing pad, standing straight and stiff next to a stack of crates taller than she was. She smiled when she saw him, but it was tight and distant the same way Mr. Yang’s had been.
They loaded the crates into the cargo hold in silence; strapped themselves in and took off in silence. The flight was all of twenty minutes, and the first five were spent in silence.
Finally Davijaan cleared his throat and opened his mouth to say something, to make a joke or ask a question, to get her laughing and talking and focused on anything other than whatever was putting that look of frustrated defeat on her face, and–
“Please don't do that.”
He coughed; tried to cover it up by clearing his throat again. “Do– do what?”
“Try and make me feel better.”
Her voice was low, resigned. He didn’t speak again for the rest of the flight.
As he circled Amaura’s peak in preparation for landing, Loren spoke up, eyes straight ahead and grip tight on the bag in her lap– “Do we have to go straight there?”
Wordlessly, Davijaan brought Glimmer up high over the mountains. They could drift for a half hour at most before Mr. Yang would start comming him, wondering about the delay. He engaged autopilot and leaned back in his chair, keeping his own gaze firmly on the console.
Sometimes Kote would let himself be talked out of his head and sometimes not. Either way, Davijaan had gotten used to sitting quietly and waiting for a bad mood to break.
The engine hummed under his feet. Lights blinked at him, gauges flickered. A cloud floated past the viewshield. Davijaan breathed.
Loren said, “I don’t want to go back.”
He gave it a few seconds before he looked over to her. “Back to Amaura?” he asked, cautions. “Or to your family?”
“Both. Neither. Back to my old life, I guess.”
“Your old life?”
Her face was hard, the stubborn set of her chin familiar. “Amaura will always be home, but I don’t know… I’m not the same person I was when I left. But that’s who my parents expect me to be.” A bitter laugh clawed its way out of her throat. “My parents. They’re going to be so– they’re going to be–” She threw her hands up, furious. “They didn’t believe I could do it! And I couldn’t! They were right and I was wrong and they’re going to be insufferable about it!”
He shrugged, as casual as he could make it. “Your pa was really upset. I don’t think they’ll go the whole I-told-you-so route.”
She stared grimly out the viewshield, silent once again.
But if she was willing to talk, it was just a matter of asking the right questions.
“Why did you leave?”
“... Because I couldn’t stay.” Her expression softened, and she turned to him with the barest hint of a smile curving her lips. Davijaan felt his face heat.
“My ma used to tell me stories about living in the city,” she continued. “My pa was born here, his family’s lived in these mountains since before there was a village, but my ma grew up in the capital. She was a pilot for an intersystem passenger flight company. She told me all about the people she met and the stories she heard, and I always knew someday I was going to leave the mountains and live in the city and meet people and hear their stories.”
“Huh. You seemed really happy, in the mountains. Picking tea and hiking.”
“I love Amaura. Leaving was hard, but... Inevitable, I think? Ma says I’m pa’s girl, because I’ve got rock dust in my blood. But pa says I’m ma’s girl, because I’ve got stars in my eyes.”
He leaned forward despite himself, to get a better look at her face. “Look more like suns to me.”
She smiled, small but real, yellow-gold eyes glowing in the afternoon light. “Well that’s all a sun is, right? A star close enough to touch.”
“Makes sense.” He swallowed hard. Time to redirect. “Why– Why Coruscant? Why not a city on Pantora?”
She heaved a sigh that morphed into a groan, slumping back in her seat. “Because that’s where everyone goes. If you want to make it big, you go to Coruscant.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You wanted to make it big?”
“I wanted to matter,” she said, soft. “I wanted… I wanted my work to matter.” She hugged her bag to her chest, running her hand down the worn strap.
“When I was a kid I read the local news every morning with pa. He took us to the library every week and all I ever read were biographies and histories and essays. Fiction is fine, I guess,” she shrugged, and her bag jangled. “But it’s always been real stories that mattered to me, you know? Like the ones my ma told me. The ones that truly happened. And I thought, since I didn’t have stories of my own, I could write down other people’s stories for them. But that’s not–”
She sat up straight all of a sudden and turned back to him, eyes flashing, fury in every line of her body. “That’s not how it works! On Coruscant, that’s not how it works. Coruscant News Network isn’t a news network, it’s a business. Reporting isn’t about telling real, true stories, it’s about making money, and I just– the way people talk about the war– I just couldn’t do it anymore.”
And Davijaan remembered the month he’d spent on Coruscant, after the war, and all the civilians who’d said, “Thank you for your service,” with a sneer or a simper, and Loren coming home made a lot more sense, because he hadn’t been able to do it anymore, either.
“But it’s not like I was any better,” she continued. “That’s what makes me so– So–” She threw her hands up again, almost tossing her bag out of her lap. “Because I wasn’t any better! I have no right to be upset! Because the war wasn’t real for me until I was sitting in that damn cell, watching you bleed on the fucking floor!”
Davijaan flinched.
Loren froze, and shrank back into her seat. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up, I didn’t mean–”
“No, it’s alright.” He shook his head sharply. “You were there too, you’re allowed to– I just don’t want–” He cleared his throat. “That was when you were crying?”
For a moment he thought she was going to push, but she just regarded him evenly for a few seconds and said, “Yes.”
He tried to force his body to relax, tried to sink back into his chair and listen. It was hard to look at her all of a sudden, so he turned to the sky.
“When I started at CorNN the war was just something happening in the galaxy far away,” she continued, hesitant, but with a lingering edge of frustration. “Things never got closer to me than the blockade on Pantora, and on Coruscant… It was wrong of me not to– not to think about it, I know. But it just seemed so far away. I talked about it and wrote about it and kept up with it on the news, but war was something that happened to other people. And then I got arrested, and met you, and suddenly war was happening to me.”
Davijaan was quiet for a long time, staring out at the blue.
Finally he said, “Maybe it was wrong of you, maybe not. There are a lot of things I don’t let myself think about until they’re happening to me. Until they’re right in my face and won’t let me look away.”
“Isn’t that cowardly? To not face something until you’re forced to?”
“Maybe.” He breathed in, breathed out. “Or maybe it’s the only way to face all the evil things you have to face without going mad.”
She didn’t respond, and they lapsed into silence once again.
He tried to imagine, for just a moment, not having to think about war. Not the “don’t think about it” rule, not waking up every morning and wondering what kind of pain awaited him that day, not the constant distraction away from memory after memory of fear and resignation and loss, but... Existing without those memories. Existing without being trapped in a cycle of remembering and reminding himself not to remember.
He couldn’t. But that was the point, wasn’t it?
Davijaan glanced at the chrono. Their time was up. He brought Glimmer out of autopilot and circled back around towards Amaura.
“Did you feel like it mattered?"
He startled badly, but years of experience kept his hands steady. “Did–” He glanced over to Loren, her head tilted as she studied him. “What?”
“Fighting in the war. On Umbara you seemed so… I mean.” Her brow creased, her tattoos scrunching as she frowned. “I want my work to matter, but I think everyone wants that. Everyone wants their effort to make a difference, or to find fulfillment in what they do. And I just wondered, if…”
He’d saved Mitts’ life, once, during a dogfight across the purple sky of a planet he no longer remembered the name of. Shot down the vultures tailing him and covered his limping flight back to base. Mitts had been crying when he finally climbed out of his cockpit. Badly shaken, but breathing.
“Sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes I felt like it mattered.”
“What about being a pilot?”
Breathe in, breathe out. “It feels like… a dream.” Except it wasn’t something he would have even dared to dream, before.
And then the Yang’s hangar was right beneath them and he had to put his focus into the landing procedures, and it wasn’t until he and Loren were unbuckling themselves and standing to stretch that he realized he’d forgotten to ask– “What are you going to do, now that you’re back?”
“Oh,” she shrugged. “I’ll probably help around the office or the hangar. Give Maraso a few days off.”
“If you… If you don’t want to be here, you don’t have to stay,” he offered, meeting her gaze intently, because realizing that for himself had probably definitely saved his and Kote’s lives.
“I know.” She smiled. “It’s good to be back to– to–”
“To re-group?”
“To re-group, exactly. I don’t know where I’m going next, but I do know I’m not going to stay. But thank you, for the reminder. Goddess knows my parents aren’t going to bother with one.” She rolled her eyes. It looked forced, but at least she was making an effort.
She took two steps out of the cockpit and then turned back to him, guilt and embarrassment clear in her expression. “I’m so sorry, for breaking down on you. Again. That was a lot to– to throw at you, all at once.”
“It’s alright.” He waved away her apology. Really, he’d been more or less asking for it.
“At least I didn’t cry this time.”
He gave her a wan smile, and she snorted into the back of her hand.
“It hardly seems fair– I talk a lot about me, but you don’t talk a lot about you.”
He rocked back on his heels and shrugged. There was plenty he could talk about, he supposed. But not much about himself. Not much he thought she’d want to hear. “Nothing to say.”
“That’s not true.” She planted her hands on her hips. “You get this look sometimes like you’re going to say something, and then you don’t. Like just now. What were you going to say?”
Davijaan blinked, and then just stared at her, consciously keeping his face as expressionless as possible. “Um. I forgot.”
“Oh.” She seemed genuinely disappointed. “Well, if you remember, I’m happy to listen.”
“I’ll… keep that in mind.”
They left the cockpit together, but she stopped again before he could open the hatch, and this time her expression was all hopeful determination.
“Is it ok if– I have to go home tonight, and let my family fuss over me, but would it be ok, if tomorrow…”
He hesitated, and then said, slowly, “I have the day off. Would you… show me another hiking trail? And maybe afterwards we can go somewhere to eat? I can pay this time.”
“That sounds perfect. Thank you.” Her smile was bright with relief and genuine happiness, and Davijaan had to smile back.
She pulled him into a quick hug, tight and cold and a little awkward with her bag in the way, and something in his stomach fluttered.
Huh.
She turned and opened the hatch herself, and walked down the ramp and into the arms of her impatient parents, and Davijaan stood just inside the hatch and watched the careful reunion, mind racing.
He had no trouble admitting he was attracted to Loren. She was very beautiful, and she’d been kind to him. But that didn’t mean anything, because he was attracted to lots of people.
He’d taken two steps off Kamino and realized all in a rush that of the millions and billions of different faces in the galaxy, a disconcerting number were terrifyingly beautiful. Almost every leave had been marked by the server, club goer, or sex worker he met at a bar and found himself sweet on. The fluttery feelings were nice, but always faded after the end of leave. Out of sight, out of mind.
Kote had listened to him gush over each respective sweet in baffled amusement. As far as Davijaan knew– and if anyone would know, it would be him– Kote had never been sweet on anyone. That was fine. Just meant Kote had plenty of material to tease Davijaan with, while Davijaan had nothing. Totally fine.
(To Kote’s continued delight and his own never ending embarrassment, he’d been infatuated with General Kenobi for the brief span of time between the General saving his life and Kote pointing out the next morning that Kenobi was constantly humming under his breath– a fact which proceeded to drive Davijaan mad whenever he was in the same room with the man.)
But the thing about being sweet on terrifyingly beautiful strangers was that there were clear rules for engagement. A pattern of sorts, a rhythm he fell into along with most of his siblings with similar interests. You went to a bar, paired off with whoever caught your eye, and spent the evening drinking and flirting. You went back to their place and had sex if you hit it off; went back to the barracks and nursed your hangover if you didn’t. It was casual, and rarely allowed for follow-up, which suited Davijaan and his ever fading feelings just fine.
(It was rare, but occasionally an encounter on leave turned into something more. The day after he'd saved Mitts life, Mitts had shown him a holo of his daughter and partner, and thanked him again on their behalf. Davijaan had wondered sometimes if he’d like something that, if he met someone who would like it too.)
So, while being sweet on Loren wasn’t surprising, all things considered, she wasn’t a stranger. She was a friend…? It didn’t matter. The important thing was there were no rules for engagement, so there would be no engagement. Which was fine. And shouldn’t be a problem for long, because he was never sweet on anyone for long.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Except, he realized with dawning horror. They were spending most of tomorrow together. And Loren lived here now.
Well. Fuck.