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Kamino had not changed without him.
They had docked in the rain, Colt and his Rancor men, with their General and one more notable addition.
Neyo crossed his arms, shoulder propped on the door to his room. Colt wouldn’t say he’d been keeping an eye on his brother, but he had made sure Neyo hadn’t been left alone without Colt or one of his Rancor command with him since they’d landed. According to the comms his Rancor men sent to keep him updated, Neyo had checked on the troops he’d be sending out into the field for the 91st, and been kept surrounded when Colt couldn’t be with him.
After checking on the shinys ready to head out, they’d spend most of the day around the holotable with Shaak, followed that with a meal together in the room Rancor used for their command meetings. Eventually Colt sent Neyo off with Blitz and Hammer to burn off some energy in the training room He knew how difficult Kamino was for Neyo, so he was willing to be patient.
“Shouldn’t you be in a bunk?”
Colt probably should. But, a long day was doing its best to become a long night, and the list of items demanding his attention was barely shorter than it was when he’d started.
“Enjoyed your workout?” Colt returned his attention to the datapad in his hands.
Neyo snorted. “Blitz isn’t too bad, but the vod’ika, Hammer? Should let him on a longer leash,” Neyo said it mildly, like he wasn’t trying to instigate. Like he’d just happened to land on a topic that was most likely to result in a fight.
“This it, huh?” Neyo began to pace, picking up a datapad off one pile, putting it down on a different one, poking at the discarded half of Colt’s armor where it was neatly stacked on the rack. “ This what you do with your day?”
He loved his brother. Colt set the ‘pad down, and did his best not to sigh. That didn’t mean he didn’t want stickyplast him to a chair sometimes.
“This is what I’ve done with my day today .” Colt would not be baited so easily. He gave his brother a perfectly placid smile Shaak would have been proud of. “I have over four hundred troopers to maintain, a facility to secure, and no shortage of small disasters.”
“You’re a soldier.”
“And what?” He couldn’t keep the smile in place. “I didn’t ask for the job, but it’s mine.” Colt also liked to believe he had proven he was at least decent at it.
“Data pads, and every night looking at the same four wall.” Neyo had been on-planet for less than a day and he looked ready to climb those walls. “These or a different four.” Neyo pretended to drop his voice, though it was still perfectly audible.
“Okay, enough.” Colt put the ‘pad back down on the desk with a slap, and regretted it as he saw Neyo go still. “You’re right. It’s been a long day.” Colt’s tone was the one he used with the little cadets, in hopes that his brother’s shoulders would relax again. “I’ll stop for the night, but we have one more thing to do.”
He waited for Neyo to turn his attention toward him, to not-ask what was left to be done. The look he got was guarded, but curious. Colt draped an arm around his brother’s shoulder casually enough it didn’t look obvious he was being careful not to spook him. “Got some friends I’ve been meaning to see since we landed.”
Neyo didn’t make a face exactly. There was some combination of tiny shifts that suggested Neyo would rather do a lot of things than go see some of Colt’s friends.
“I want you to meet them.” That was direct enough that his vod couldn’t directly argue with.
“Sure, why not. Spent the day with Rancor’s first and second shift. Why not,” Neyo grumbled along, but Colt was already steering him out the door.
It was a long walk, and Colt kept himself close to Neyo’s side. He would have asked some of his command staff along, but that would be more likely to spook his brother. Still, it was hard to guess who would walk the halls of Tipoca City at night, and Colt would not risk his brother’s well being on a chance encounter with his former trainer in a hallway.
“You just wander the halls now, vod?” Neyo griped. “Thought you had better places to spend your nights.”
It was a good thing Colt loved his brother.
He tapped in the passcode and the door slid open.
“Fuck.” Neyo’s eyes went wide.
“Not around the ik’aade!” Baar snapped as he wrestled with a vod’ikaade wriggling in each arm.
This time, Neyo sputtered, but didn’t curse.
“Sorry, Baar, came to see the little ones.” Colt half-dragged Neyo into the room.
Things had changed while they were gone. It had only been a month on Coruscant, but the room had been nearly completely redone. The gear crates now ringed the edge of the room, a large square of practice mats and blankets filled the center of the room.
“Catch that one, sir?” Baar nodded towards them, and it took Colt a moment to spot the vod’ikaad moving towards them.
“Karking Hells.” Colt rushed forward, and gathered the little in his arms with a gentleness he once used to aid injured troopers. “Is he hurt? What was he doing?”
The ik’aad, hells, more like a tiny cadet now, had only been out of his tube for three months, but they were bigger, certainly heavier. Colt went to check him over for injury, and the ik’aad laughed.
Colt froze and looked around to the others.
“They do that now, sir.” Havoc confirmed, tucking another ik’aad back into his crate. “Laugh. Crawl, or pull themselves up on the sides of their bunks, Try to talk, too.”
“Talk?” Colt repeated dumbly as the ik’aad began to climb on him, using the edges of his armor plates as handholds. “Easy, vod’ika, don’t hurt yourself.”
After far too long a moment, Colt realized Neyo hadn’t made fun of him yet. He looked over to where Neyo was already stripped down to his blacks, wedged next to Baar as the junior medic walked him through the basics of the ik’aad.
“You can set him in the middle, sir.” Havoc pointed to the mats. “That one’ll be a scout for sure. Made it ‘cross the room half a dozen times today.”
Before Colt could agree with the assessment, he felt the little arms wrap around his neck for a hug.
What if he wasn’t a soldier at all?
The thought stunned him. Colt held onto the vod’ikaad and forced himself to breathe. If they left, no, when they left, the cadets were coming with them. All the tubes were coming with them. That was the plan, and Colt would not accept anything less. Cody would not accept anything less.
That meant after, whatever incomprehensible after followed, the vod’ikase would not be cadets anymore. They would not grow into troopers. They might be children, like the natborns are. Then they would grow up to make their own decisions for what their lives looked like.
Who would teach them those things?
Who would teach them all the other things the vode knew nothing about? They didn’t know how to be anything but soldiers.
A whisper in Colt’s mind reminded him Shaak would help. Shaak might have been raised a Jedi, but she had lived among her own people, lived in the structure of her tribe. But he couldn’t ask Shaak to help them, couldn’t tell her about the plan. Not yet.
“Sir,” Baar called, from far closer than Colt had realized he’d come. “I can hold him while you remove the armor.”
Colt snapped back to the present. “Thank you, Baar.”
He grudgingly unwound the vod’ikaad from around his neck and passed him off, not missing the moment the little reached to come back to him. He would, in a moment.
Colt removed his armor in moments, and Baar was waiting to pass the little back. “I didn’t know that was Commander Neyo, sir. Do you think he…”
Colt bit back a grin, bouncing the vod’ikaad in his arms until he started to laugh. “Don’t worry about him. Just needs some downtime.”
Downtime like laying on a mat, propped up on one of the pillows with four ik’aad around him as he drummed his hands on the mats to make muted thumps the littles tried to emulate. Colt gave Baar’s shoulder a squeeze and went to join them.
Items had been made for the vod’ikaade while he was gone. Soft rags tied into knots with tooka faces drawn on them, something knitted into something like a vine snake, but brightly colored and soft, a lopsided ball that looked like it was made from an spare set of blacks.
Colt rolled the ball towards Neyo, and that sent the pack of vod’ikaade after it. Mostly after it, until two of them tangled up as they crawled, and became distracted sorting their limbs from one another. Neyo carefully detangled them with the kind of gentleness Colt hadn’t seen from his brother in a long time. That was enough to gather a lump in his throat, but he could think about that later. Neyo sent the ball rolling back towards Colt, setting off another chase.
One of the vod’ikaade sat up on his own, clapped his hands and looked at Neyo expectantly. Neyo hesitated for a moment before clapping back, and the ik’aad giggled. There wasn’t a better sound in the galaxy, Colt was sure.
Neyo clapped again, this time following it with a soft “oya!” and the ik’aad clapped in return.
They certainly hadn’t been doing any of this when Colt had left a month ago. He picked up one of the rag tookas and shook it, drawing the attention of two of the others. As the first one grabbed for it - and immediately put it in his mouth, which might be a concern - Colt pulled the toy snake over for the next ik’aad.
Colt made a mental note to up the staffing in the creche. He’d thought they’d been busy when all of their little brothers needed bottles and diapers, but clearly things were going to get even more demanding.
Things had gone much quieter on Neyo’s side of the mat. One of the ik’aade contented himself tugging himself along Neyo’s sleeve to reach up and carefully trace the tattoo on his cheek. The other had already slumped over on Neyo’s thigh, not quite asleep, but close to it.
Colt watched his brother relax by inches, surrounded by his own brothers, until Neyo drifted off to sleep curled up around the vod’ikaade.
One was sound asleep on Colt’s chest, little hands curled under his chin, and Colt didn’t dare move from where he was stretched out beside Neyo. He would have fallen asleep himself if it wasn’t the sound of the door sliding open.
Neyo roused himself, but little enough that Colt could get him back to sleep with a low whisper of “Udesii, vod.”
Colt didn’t move, but he watched as Shaak entered and spoke to Baar. It was so late, she ought to have been in bed hours before. Instead, she said something that made the young medic duck his head with a smile, before he pointed to one of the crates. Shaak went in that direction, stopping to look in on one vod’ika here and to adjust another one there, before scooping out a fussing little and cradling him close.
Colt’s heart was full enough at that precious tableau, but then she began to sing gently, his little brother in her arms.
Stars, how he loved her.
The thought should have been jarring, shocking, but it wasn't. They were so true, so fundamental they rang in his bones. He loved her, and just thinking the words felt like hitting hyperdrive, like going weightless, but they felt right.
And they changed nothing.
He was allowed to love her. Karking hells, it was probably encouraged . He and his brothers were made to serve the Jedi, designed to respect and admire them. Love was only another step. Colt could tell himself all those little lies to feel like this was just part of his programming, but he loved her in ways that had nothing to do with what he was.
He loved her kindness, her respect, her judgement, her laugh. It was intoxicating to consider how many ways he loved her.
Colt could love her with everything in him. He just couldn’t tell her.
They had agreed, no promises, no attachments. There were clear rules of engagement, and he would follow them. He would not hold her from her duty, and he would not stray from his. The future of his brothers, from his Rancor men to the cadets right down to the vod’ikaad in his arms and the others in the tanks, that future dwarfed the thought of his own happiness.
But he could love her. He would love her.
Shaak was still singing, sweetly in her own language, a song he’d never heard, swaying the ik’aad in her arms. Finally, after a long, still moment, she pressed a kiss to the ik’aad’s head and eased him back into the crate he slept in.
That was when she turned to meet his gaze from across the room.
He loved her.
Shaak paused, gathering a blanket that someone had clearly nicked from medical. They were far too big for the crates but maybe some were used as padding at the bottom? Colt wasn’t sure, and he was too pleasantly floating on happy brain chemicals to disturb the sleeping little on his chest to ask.
Instead, Shaak crossed over to where he and Neyo lay and shook out the blanket.
They weren’t really cold. It was probably fine, except maybe his toes a little bit. And yet, Shaak draped the blanket over the two commanders and the littles before crouching down beside him. Colt knew she was shielded, but aware of him, that was her usual choice, but he sent a rush of gratitude towards her anyway. If things were different, he’d have shifted so she could fit against his side, sleep beside him, but that wasn’t possible here.
Shaak pressed a kiss on his forehead, just like the one she’d given his little brother, and brushed a hand through his hair.
“Sleep well.” She stood and returned to checking on the vod’ikaade.
Colt had never felt so well loved.