Chapter Text
If the Republic sent a squad to track a valuable kidnapped politician, Atin would have expected them to send soldiers trained for Mandalore's forests. But it’s very quickly becoming clear that these Coruscant Guards are…not that.
“Ow, kriff,” Fox hisses, batting a branch away. It almost hits Hound, who only just ducks in time. It does hit Thorn, who yelps, almost overbalancing as his boots slide in old leaves, and Atin has to grab him by the back of his armor and pin him on his feet.
“Commander,” Thorn says, aggrieved, as he fights his way back to balanced. “You're making the Original turn in his grave right now—”
“Let him spin, then,” Fox says dismissively, stalking forward without so much as glancing back. The intention is rather undercut by the way he steps on a low log only to have it disintegrate beneath his weight, and he pitches forward with an alarmed curse, only just catches himself in time. “Shit. And it reeks in here. What the hell is that smell?”
“The outdoors, sir,” Thorn says on a sigh. “You're smelling nature.”
“Horrifying.” Fox pauses, casting a glance back, and then says sourly, “You're not having any problems.”
“Three months deployed on a jungle world,” Thorn says. “I get to leave Coruscant sometimes.”
“But in exchange you have to babysit diplomatic delegations,” Fox counters. “I think I’ll stick to chemical spills under the Senate.”
“You have to babysit them too, Fox. You have to babysit all of them—”
“Why the hell are you smirking?” Fox asks Atin, deeply suspicious.
Atin snorts, raising a hand to ward him off. “You do not have much experience in forests, do you, Commander?” he asks.
“Urban warfare only,” Fox says, apparently unbothered by this fact. “Before they stuck me on Coruscant, my battalion was specialized in retaking cities. Didn’t have to deal with all of this…bantha shit. You're sure we’re going the right way? There's a city at the top of this, right?”
“There was.” Atin watches the sway of his kama as he pushes onward up the steep slope, still in the lead despite his struggles with the environment, and can't help but cast a glance back over the rest of the squad as they follow. It’s a small squad, not even ten men, and he turns his gaze forward again, quickens his step, and catches another branch before it can whip back. “Have you never been to Alor’a before, Commander? There were gardens in the center full of orchards, and the canal flowing through the city fed a waterfall in the middle of the gardens.”
Fox doesn’t hesitate, and neither do any of his men, even though Atin is watching for a reaction. “Hard to have been there if we didn’t even know it existed,” he says dismissively, but—it’s still not a direct answer, Atin thinks.
Ulic would do the same at times, especially when Atin asked questions about the Krath and Aleema Keto, and he learned to watch for such non-responses.
“Strange,” he says, and keeps it even, “that anyone would send a squad unfamiliar with the terrain and the area to rescue an important prisoner.”
Fox doesn’t look back at him. “I told you, our backup’s stuck behind a blockade. We weren’t supposed to be the only ones down here. Not even the generals can get through right now, so the Death Watch turned into our problem.”
It seems plausible enough, and if Atin were in command of this Death Watch, it would be a good way to shift the odds in his favor. There's just something strange about it, in a way that’s rooted more in instinct more than fact. Maybe Atin is just suspicious, because he’s always suspicious, because one of these men stole his hide, but—
“Why was a squad like yours deployed to begin with?” he asks, as mild as he can make it. “Surely a company or at least a few squads would have been better.”
There's a moment of silence. Thorn casts a quick look at Fox, who doesn’t turn his head even slightly, doesn’t acknowledge the pause at all when he says, “We were following a ship that shouldn’t have left Coruscanti airspace. When it landed, so did we.”
Secrets, Atin thinks, and it prickles down his spine like anger. Lies and secrets, and one of them controls him but they aren't even acknowledging it—
A black-winged fisherbird screams, furious at bodies beneath its nest, and Atin throws himself forward without even pausing to consider the motion. Even as a blaster cracks the air, he hits Thorn, drags him down, rolls back up to his feet as the impact of the blaster bolt registers. There's a shout in the same moment, and Fox surges up the slope, blaster pistols out, taking the lead in an instant. He throws himself right into the center of the squad of slim, stripped-down droids just emerging from the trees, and they spin, ready to fire.
Atin, just a step behind Fox, snatches the closest one, gets an arm around its throat, cracks its neck even as he reaches for its chest—
But that one blow turns it limp, sends it crumpling, and Atin is so startled that he almost misses the way another droid aims at him, fires. Ducks, but—confusion is still sharp even as he hits the ground, because that’s a stupid way to design a droid meant for fighting. A basilisk’s control center and power center were both hidden in separate, heavily-armored parts of its body, with no chance that a single blow could take one out. Even the Jedi had to carve away with their lightsabers for so long to get to them that it made them vulnerable. To create such a breakable thing and deploy it to fight seems like the most ridiculous sort of choice Atin can imagine.
It’s not a fluke, though. The other droids go down with a single shot, a body-blow, a hit from the butt of a blaster. The Guard fights like it’s familiar, even though they don’t have the high ground, even though they're greatly outnumbered, and the droids go down with almost insulting ease. The sheer number of droids seems to be the only obstacle; for every one Atin can get his hands on, it feels like there are twelve more, and he curses as one slams its blaster into the side of his head, as another’s shot just misses his shoulder. Kicks out hard, grabbing, and as the droid who hit him goes down with a sound of surprise, he flings it straight into the other, ducks around the tangle, drives his claws through the throat of another as it tries to shoot the massiff—
A body collides with him, drags him down, and a shot burns through the air where his head just was. Atin growls, spins, and Fox slams his back to Atin's, takes a shot at three advancing droids and then yanks a heavy knife from its sheath along his leg. He shoves it at Atin hilt-first, and says, with an edge of bloody amusement in his voice, “Don’t break a damn nail or you're a sitting duck.”
Atin snorts, but he takes the knife gladly. “Jealousy for a Taung physique? You wouldn’t be the first, Commander,” he says mockingly, and Fox huffs a laugh, taking a shot, then another. Both hit perfectly on-center, and Atin can all but feel Fox’s smugness.
“I don’t need a fancy pedicure to put down clankers,” he says. “Left!”
The knife is a little too small for his hand, but the balance is good, and Atin flips it up, catches it in a reverse grip, and lunges, colliding with a group of droids just approaching around a veshok. Red bolts pepper the earth, but Atin dodges around them, leaps. There’s a mechanical shout, a warning, but he hits the branches of the tree above them, twists over and around, drops down on top of one. A hard blow from the knife’s hilt knocks its head sideways, and Atin tears it off completely, surges up and into the second as Hound shoots the third, and slams his target back into the wood hard enough to dent the trunk. Something cracks, and when Atin lets go, the droid drops.
And then, in the darkness of the trees up the slope, there’s movement.
Not these slim, fragile droids, Atin thinks, taking a step back as his eyes narrow. Quicker, moving more like sentients instead of the simple, robotic motions of these ones. That’s—
“Something?” Fox asks, almost a bark as he collides with Atin's back again, three quick shots dropping droids as they emerge. “Or are you standing there like a victim for no reason?”
“I saw something moving up the slope,” Atin says curtly, and takes a step back towards the other soldiers, another. “Black-painted, and tall—”
Fox swears, vicious and furious. “Assassin droids!” he snarls, a warning shout, and grabs Atin's arm, hauling him back down the slope. “Bantha shit, why the hell are there so many karking Seps down here—”
His shot rebounds off black metal as something sinuous and quick ducks behind a tree, and when Atin looks up the mountain, into the deeper shadows, they're swarming.
Now, he thinks grimly, tightening his grip on the knife, would be an excellent time for whatever thief stole his hide to use it, to order him to change, to order him to fight.
But no order comes. There’s only Fox’s sharp, “Retreat to cover!” that sends the squad scrambling back, and Fox moves with them, dragging Atin along with him. His gauntlet is so tight Atin can't shake it, astonishing strength in a Human or Near-Human, and he surges over the uneven ground without any of the clumsiness of a few minutes ago, practically running flat-out as much stronger blaster bolts pepper the trees around them, putting craters in the bark. With a grunt, he throws Atin up behind a tree, flattens himself over Atin as best he can, and swears again, turning his head towards the rattle of blasters.
“Kriff,” he hisses. “Thorn—”
“At least twenty, Commander,” Thorn reports, and his voice is grim as he presses himself up behind another tree. “Bet they're trying to capture Palpatine, too. Seps wouldn’t pass up an opportunity like that.”
“Kark Dooku,” Fox mutters, leans out, takes a shot. He ducks back as dozens of bolts slam into the tree, rattling past them, shaking the leaves, and swears again. “Any way out of here?” he demands, aimed at Atin. “If they circle around and get behind us, we’re all dead.”
The idea of running from the fight makes Atin frown, offense prickling across his skin. For a moment he wavers, because right now none of them know, but—
A Taung showing up right after one of them found his hide? Whoever has it must have put the pieces together by now. There's no use in hiding things. Prioritizing survival in a fight like this is just logical, and the fact that they haven't used his hide is cowardice, outright and undeniable.
If they want to avoid Atin's attempts to steal his skin back, they shouldn’t have taken it in the first place. But since they did, since they married him, since they own him in every way that matters, they might as well use that theft.
“My hide,” he says, loud enough to carry to the whole squad, and digs his nails into the bark as Fox presses him up tighter against the tree. “Use it. Let me destroy them.”
There's a pause. Fox turns his head enough to give Atin a startled look, but behind his dark visor, Atin can't see any trace of recognition. “What?” he demands.
“One of you took my hide from its resting place,” Atin says, sharp, and doesn’t flinch as a blaster bolt grazes the tree bare centimeters from them, showering them with splinters of bark. “One of you stole my skin. Use it. Order me to destroy them and I will—”
Branches above them creak, and Fox wrenches back, throws Atin away from him as a droid twice the size of the first ones slams down right where they were. A long blade cracks the trunk, and the veshok trembles as another droid swarms down out of the branches, drops to the ground. Fox’s shot makes it jerk, but it doesn’t stop, lunges for them with more speed than any droid should have. All around them, more are dropping, falling from the trees like wretched fruit, and Atin grabs one as it slams into him, struggles as it bears down on him and bares his teeth.
“Order me!” he snarls, but the entire squad is back in the fight and no one is reaching for his skin, no one is saying anything, no one is doing anything—
Fox hisses a curse, shoulder-checks a droid into a tree, jams his blaster into its sternum and pulls the trigger five times without pause. Whirls, kama swinging, blasters raised, just as one of the other troopers goes down under a droid’s weight, and shouts a denial. When he tries to lunge, though, there are three more droids in the way, and he takes a blow across the helmet, knocking it free, and goes down. Atin kicks the droid trying to overwhelm him away, throws himself towards Fox, but another waylays him, grabs his hair and drags him back, and Atin drives the knife into its eye with a curse. When it tumbles back, sparking, it wrenches the blade right out of his hand, and then he has no weapon—
A hand on his hide, impossibly hot, impossibly close, and Atin lurches, a cry breaking from his throat even as a voice snarls, “Kill them!”
It hits like an axe to the chest, like a body-blow, vibrating through Atin's bones. Atin looks up, and the commander Fox was trying to reach meets his gaze from where he’s sprawled on the ground, helmet dragged free, eyes golden and wild, one bare hand pressed against a line of coppery bronze that’s just visible beneath the wrist of the black bodysuit he’s wearing. But he wasn’t the one who spoke.
The order ripples over Atin like relief, like fury, like victory, even as confusion rises right along with it. Because the one who gave the order that’s humming through his muscles wasn’t the fallen commander, but Fox.