Chapter Text
“Kenobi, you in here?” Wolffe nudged the door open with the tip of his gun, eyes squinting in the dim light. He stepped forward, boots crunching glass underfoot, eyeing the dark rooms carefully.
There was no sign of life. Wrecked furniture was scattered across the room, jagged edges pointing dangerously from the ground. Glass and smashed household items littered the floor. There was water, too, puddling in spots around the room. It made the room smell sour as it mildewed the carpet floors.
The only illumination came from the opened door. The windows were heavily boarded. Wolffe walked blindly to where he thought the lightswitch should be and felt along the wall with his free hand until he found it.
The lights buzzed on. Tiny red spots filled Wolffe’s vision as his eye slowly adjusted. White fluorescent light spilled across the room, brightening the mess in color. Papers stuck together in mostly-dried clumps on the floor. Books had their spines torn open and half-dismembered as they laid strewn on the ground. Bookshelves and desks were smashed over each other. Televisions and laptops were cracked and broken on the ground. The couch, which was the biggest piece of visible furniture, was torn stuffingless and pressed up against the staircase.
Everything looked horrifically waterlogged, though most of the water had dispersed with time. It was not a good sign.
Wolffe breathed out harshly through his nose. They had known from the beginning that finding any remaining Jedi was beyond unlikely. The ones that weren’t dead were likely to have left the planet altogether. For as much as the Empire tried to convince people otherwise, it was despairingly easy to hijack or sneak aboard their flight vessels. Any competent Jedi with the ability to leave would have gone.
That the water had dried in a mostly enclosed area meant that much time had passed. Years, probably, with how deep the floods had gotten in the rest of the area. Maybe even decades.
Still, Kenobi had been their greatest hope. Their damn-near only hope with how things had been getting on the ground, frankly.
It wasn’t that hard to sneak aboard a shuttle or to stay hidden until that shuttle docked with an orbiting craft. Wolffe wasn’t the first brother who had done it, even if he had been the first one to go willingly back down to Earth. It could be done, but no one wanted a clone on their ship. People would go to great lengths to keep Vode out.
The Jedi, the Empire said, had worked with the clones before their subsequent betrayal. Despite their apparent elimination, they had remained the only real possibility for Vode survival.
Kenobi, Fulcrum had said, lived here. It was becoming very likely that Fulcrum was not an honest figure. Wolffe wouldn’t be surprised if the Vode’s only ally aboard the KA31N0 orbiter had been stringing them along and secretly harboring anti-clone sentiments. It had happened before.
Humans did not like clones. Hated them, more often than not, for the space they took up and the futures they had ruined. Clones were meant to be their saviors. They were made, millions of them, on the KA31N0. They had been made to grow to adulthood within years. It was said that once they reached maturity they were meant to return to Earth and begin reforming the planet. They were trained specifically for environmental conservation and restoration. The Vode had been made as a last-ditch effort to keep Earth from falling apart.
They had been informed, however, that Earth’s condition had been far better than the truth of the matter. By the time they had arrived, already unprepared for the extent of damage, it had been too late.
Earth had become unsalvageable not because the damage was too much but because humans had become unwilling to try. There could be no recovery without human cooperation. The Jedi had been that cooperation until the Empire decided that saving Earth was less profitable than making people slave to live in the stars. There had been no recovery.
Instead, every living and unborn clone had been summarily kicked out of their home, the KA31N0 space orbiter. Humans had taken it and built it to expand and expand. They threw poor workers into building the upperclassmen’s new homes and gave those workers exploitative contracts and repugnant living conditions. Those workers had been given the same choice as the Jedi: join the Empire or die.
The clones had not been given such a choice. They were left on Earth’s corroding doorstep and placed under strict Empirical conditions with the threat of absolute compliance or the deaths of their youngest brothers. They were made to slave across the Earth, tracking and hunting down those who refused to sign their lives away to the Empire.
People aboard the KA31N0 held no love for clones because they knew the clones had failed. The people of Earth hated the Vode because of their alignment with the Empire.
It was not really surprising that this ‘Fulcrum’ had not truly held any goodwill for the Vode.
But Wolffe had been so careful this time. The opportunity had seemed so real when it had been made. Find Kenobi and he will give you a choice. Your lives for those of your brothers. Wolffe would do it. Any vod older than three would do it. Ensuring the safety of their youngest was paramount. It meant everything.
It seemed an unattainable goal, but Fulcrum had made it seem possible.
Behind him, Gregor sighed from the doorway. It was a sharp, cutting noise. “I don’t think he’s here,” he said, and disappointment could hardly cover the enormity of this failure. It was nothing short of agonizing, to be so close to salvation and yet so impossibly far from it.
Wolffe dragged his knuckles across the stinging of his eyes. Fuck.
Clones were not made to cry. Exhibiting emotions had not been their purpose. In front of the Empire and most other humans, it was a punishable offense. Punishments for clones rarely aggregated as minor injuries.
Vode did not tell secrets. The lapse of emotional control was always a secret. Clone-only spaces were not safe, but they were far more so than those that weren’t. There were no humans in this area.
The sound of someone moving for him shook him from his thoughts. Wolffe looked up as Rex pushed his way past Gregor and through the door.
“No,” Rex said obstinately, “No, he’s got to be here.”
They weren’t technically sure that this Kenobi was a he, but most Vode generally assumed that terms like pronouns were easily interchangeable. It didn’t really matter because humans rarely talked to clones. Ordered, yes, and yelled at or condemned. But spoke? It didn’t happen.
“He isn’t,” Wolffe growled, and it was a wet and throaty sound. He wiped at his eyes again.
Rex glared. He had always been the most stubborn, the most adamant in their search for change. It was the fault of his trainer, who had been a similar man. Most of the Jedi had not been trainers nor ever stepped off the Earth, but Anakin Skywalker had been an exception. He had taught many Vode, and despite the unconventional nature of his teachings, every clone under his command performed exceptionally well.
He had joined the Empire, under the threat of his Earth-living wife. Rex had never forgiven him for that. Still, because of Skywalker, Rex was the most stubborn shit on the planet. Even reconditioning hadn’t changed that.
“He is,” Rex insisted with a fold to his arms, like he was months old instead of five. “He’s here. Someone sent that message, and you and Gregor and I are the only ones around.”
Wolffe let out a breath. Something snapped in the background. “Rex,” he said.
Rex wasn’t listening. “He’s got to be here. You haven’t even looked upstairs and you’re already giving up!” Rex moved toward the stairs as he spoke. Wolffe heard another, louder snapping sound.
“Rex!” Wolffe snapped, but Rex only yelled back.
“You never listen to me! I’m not stupid , you know! I know how to think! Stop treating me like a kid, Cody!” Rex breathed heavily, his chest heaving with the effort.
Wolffe knew that his little brother hadn’t come back from reconditioning unscathed. Rex, who was barely matured now , had come back as a scraggly cadet with nearly every wire crossed. It hadn’t helped him at all, and barely changed the demeanor of his that the Empire had been so concerned about. It hadn’t made him forget about Cody as it was meant to, though Wolffe’s own three iterations had for a time.
What it had done was jumble his memories, shred his associative thinking, and utterly annihilated his emotion-control responses. Hence, yelling at Wolffe about Cody treating him like a kid. The last time any of them had seen Cody, Rex had been a kid.
For Wolffe, reconditioning had always left sensory processing issues and sudden bouts of anger. For Gregor, hallucinations. Fox had lost time and blacked out constantly. Bly had to wear a mouthguard to stop him from biting through his tongue when his fits of panic started. Cody, before he’d been killed, had gotten paranoid.
Behind Rex, another snap sounded. Rex and Gregor both moved to look where Wolffe was staring.
At the top of the stairway, a blonde-haired little boy snapped a rubber band against his wrist.
“Hi,” the little boy said with another snap, “are you looking for my dad?”