Chapter Text
Fives awoke with a start.
For a moment, all he could do was stare in shock at his unfamiliar surroundings. Durasteel walls, a pair of bunks, one of which he currently laid on. His ARC training kicked in before he could even think straight, and he sat up in the bed, scanning his surroundings. Empty. A ship’s bunk, by the look of it, one entrance and exit and no possible weapons in sight. A blank clone helmet sat on the ground before him, matched to the armor he wore. What?
Then everything came rushing back. Tup. The chips. Nala Se. The Chancellor. He remembered going to the warehouse he’d told Rex and the General to meet him at. Then...nothing. Had the Chancellor gotten to him?
Footsteps sounded down the hall outside the door.
Fives shot to his feet, searching again for something, anything, to use as a weapon. The room was empty save for the helmet. His head was clearer now, thankfully, and he jammed it on, pressing himself to the wall beside the door just before it slid open.
A small figure stepped inside, and Fives didn’t waste any time aiming a punch to their face.
“Wh—“ The figure dodged in a blue and orange blur, faster than any normal reflex, backing away to the opposite side of the door. Her hands twitched toward her belt before she seemed to think better of herself.
“Commander Tano?”
Half of him wondered if he was still drugged. Ahsoka Tano had left the Jedi and 501st weeks ago, now. But if this was a hallucination, it was a very realistic one.
His Commander—former Commander—held up her hands placatingly. “I’m not going to hurt you, Fives. And it’s just Ahsoka, now.”
Just Ahsoka. Her sabers were noticeably absent from her hips, he assumed just as far gone as his pair of blasters. Besides a new outfit and some growth in her montrals, she looked exactly the same. She raised her eyebrows slightly as he looked her over. Acted the same, too.
I’m not dreaming. He needed answers.
“Comm—sir, what is this? Where are we?” Fives kept his fists up, not that it would do any good if she attacked. Her sabers were noticeably absent from her hips, but he doubted he was in any shape to take down a former Jedi, lightsaber or not.
“We’re in hyperspace, headed for Nal Hutta.”
Nal Hutta? Seeing Five’s confusion, she elaborated. “It was the first place I could think of where we could disappear.” She paused. “Rex commed me, told me what happened. I had to get you out.”
Rex. Rex had trusted him, believed in him enough to send Ahsoka. His vod hadn’t abandoned him. Ahsoka was outside the Republic. She had more power to help him figure out what the kriff was going on.
Unless this was all a lie. Ahsoka had left the Republic, yes, but anyone could be involved. She could have known about the chips. But it was Ahsoka. He’d trust her with his life under any other circumstance.
He gritted his teeth in frustration. “How much did Rex tell you?”
Ahsoka’s jaw tightened. “He told me what happened with Tup on Ringo Vinda, and how you went to Kamino. How you came back and apparently attacked the Chancellor.” She rushed on before Fives could interrupt. “He—we didn’t believe it. Something else had to be going on, so I got you out. But now you have to explain why the entire Republic thinks you’re a traitor.” She kept her voice measured, even, as if afraid he’d snap. He recalled the exact same tone in her voice when she talked down panicked shinies after their first battle. Great.
Well...he had a hazy memory of talking to Kix in 79’s, panicked and high-strung. So maybe the tone was justified.
And Ahsoka, Fives remembered, had been accused of treason too. Not that any of the veterans of the 501st had believed it—and they’d been right. But Ahsoka left the Jedi anyway.
“How do I know you’re not working with the Chancellor, or the Kaminoans?” he challenged. Give me a reason to trust you. A flicker of hurt passed over her expression, but maybe she felt his desperation, for it was gone within a second.
“Rex told me to tell you that the last thing he said to you was ‘bring him home, Fives.’ And I know what it’s like to be accused of a crime you didn’t commit.”
There was an edge to her voice as she described her own experience with accusations, slight enough that it almost went unnoticed. Convinced now, he put his fists down and removed the bucket from his head.
“You...might want to sit down for this. It’s a long story.”
He started with Tup’s strange behavior before Ringo Vinda. The words were halting at first, but as he went through Tup’s kidnapping and rescue, the story began to pour out of him almost of its own accord: how the Kaminoans had been acting strangely but he’d thought nothing of it at first, how AZ-3 helped him uncover the truth, how General Ti tried to protect him from Nala Se. Ahsoka’s expression darkened throughout his tale, and he could tell it was an effort for her not to cut in. He stopped before explaining what happened in the Chancellor’s quarters. It felt like he’d been talking for hours, though in the ship’s quarters there was no way to tell.
“I’m sorry about Tup.” There was genuine sorrow in Ahsoka’s eyes, and it made Fives remember late nights in the mess hall in the hours after battle, Ahsoka sitting beside his brothers as they told stories of those they’d lost. He remembered a younger Commander that used to sleep in the barracks when nightmares plagued her sleep.
Why did you leave? he wanted to ask.
“Me too,” he said instead.
Ahsoka chewed her lip, considering her next words. “What happened when you got to Coruscant?”
Fives shut his eyes against the onslaught of memories, the chilling feeling of helplessness. The way he couldn’t get himself to calm down, how Kix looked at him the way he looked at Tup when he didn’t remember shooting the Jedi.
“I—“ he inhaled sharply, and after a moment felt Ahsoka’s hand settle gently on his shoulder. Another breath. Two. Then:
“I remember waking up on the ship and feeling all wrong. I think they drugged me.”
Ahsoka’s eyebrows shot up, and she made some sort of high-pitched hissing noise.
“General Ti took me to the Chancellor, but she didn’t come into the office with me,” he continued. “And—I started to tell him about the chips. About the threat they posed.” Fives swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. “He just...laughed. And then—and then he said he knew. He told me he’d planned it all along, and when the time came he’d activate the chips inside every clone, strip every single one of us of our very selves to serve him. He told me that someday we’d come to our senses and see what we’d done to the Jedi, the Republic, and we wouldn’t be able to live with it. But we’d keep going anyway, because good soldiers follow orders. ” He spat out the last words, and slammed his fist into the bunk they sat on.
Shoulders trembling, Fives looked up and registered the shock in Ahsoka’s expression. With painstaking effort, he unclenched his fist and lowered his voice. He needed her to believe.
“I know it’s a lot to believe. But I swear it’s true. I would never betray the Republic. But I fight for my vode, too. And the Chancellor’s Republic would throw them aside.”
For a moment, there was silence but for the low hum of hyperspace around them. Then Ahsoka spoke.
“I believe you.”
Fives stared at her with a mix of crushing relief and surprise.
“I’ve known you for years, Fives. And it doesn’t make sense for you to lie about this—you know I’d probably be able to see through you with the Force,” she said. “Rex said Kix told him you sounded unhinged, before. But now you sound like you. That would make sense if you were drugged. And if Tup completely lost himself, that can’t be unrelated to a corroded chip in his head.” Her voice was angry now. “We have to stop it. You—all of you—deserve better than that.”
This was the Commander Tano that the 501st missed so badly. He almost smiled. It was only one more person on his side, but in this moment it felt like a galaxy’s worth of difference.
He wasn’t alone. And that meant everything.
Ahsoka grinned, but it was more like a baring of her fangs. The same thing she did in the middle of a firefight.
“Where do we start?”
Saving millions of people was easier said than done. Fives didn’t have his own chip anymore, so they had no proof and no way to find out more. Not to mention that Fives was presumed dead—Ahsoka had set the warehouse on fire as they left. It had been two days since then. Whatever drug that Kaminoan sleemo had slipped Fives was powerful.
She just hoped no one questioned the lack of a body at the warehouse. Rex was on their side, at least. Maybe he’d convinced the Guard not to look too closely.
That was a long shot, especially since Rex was a terrible liar.
It had been weeks since she left, but every thought about Anakin or Rex felt like a stab to the heart. Fives had definitely noticed. The question laid unsaid between them, and she couldn’t decide whether she was grateful or not that Fives didn’t bring it up. Why did you leave?
Ahsoka shoved away her churning thoughts, staring ahead at the swirling blue of hyperspace as they continued to plan.
“We need information, but we can’t just go asking around,” she said. “Lots of questions about a chip in clone troopers’ heads will inevitably get back to the Chancellor.”
The Chancellor was another question. The man was already arguably the most powerful person in the galaxy. Why did he need the clone troopers to kill the Jedi?
The only thing she could think was that the Chancellor wanted to become a dictator of sorts, and knew the Jedi would stand in the way. But if that was the case, there were easier ways to ensure no resistance, ways that the control of millions and the genocide of thousands more could not be traced back to him. The Republic loved him; if he wanted to gain absolute power, it wouldn’t be all that difficult. The Senate had already voted countless times to give him more “emergency powers.”
There had to be something else. The Force tugged at her, trying to show her what she couldn’t see, but anytime she tried to look it was as if the revelations were coated in fog. It was frustrating to say the least.
This plan had been years in the making. The clones had been commissioned more than ten years ago, before Palpatine was even Chancellor. He had no way of knowing that the galaxy would go to war. Right?
Maybe he was working with the Separatists. It was no secret that Dooku wanted the Jedi gone—maybe they’d brokered a deal of some sort: I’ll murder all the Jedi if you let me rule over the Republic and Separatist Alliance.
If that was the case, Dooku would kill the Chancellor the moment he reached his goal.
Ahsoka groaned in frustration, setting her head between her knees.
Fives glanced over at her from the copilot’s seat, and she could see his amused expression out of the corner of her eye.
“Shut up,” she grumbled.
He mock saluted in answer.
The speed at which she and Fives fell back into old habits surprised her. Then again, joking had always been easy. Trust was harder. She’d left them all behind, and all the joking in the world wouldn’t undo it. If she’d been there, maybe she would have seen that Tup was—
She dug her nails into her legs. No use dwelling on the past. All she could do now was save the clones, and the Jedi, and the entire Republic. Easy.
Ahsoka blew out a breath, straightening in her seat. She checked the chrono.
“We’ll be at Nal Hutta in twenty minutes,” she told Fives, and looked consideringly at the armor he wore. “Check the bunks or maybe the cargo hold. You’ll need something else to wear.”
Fives nodded to her blue jumpsuit. “You’ll pass as a civvie in that?”
“It’s a mechanic’s outfit. I should be fine.”
With that, he left the cockpit in search of a less conspicuous outfit, leaving Ahsoka alone with her thoughts.
Whatever lingering doubts Ahsoka had about Fives’ story, they had dissipated in the hours they’d spent planning. Nal Hutta was a long way from Coruscant, even at light speed. There had been plenty of time to talk. The more Fives shared, the faster the last bits of trust Ahsoka had in the Republic faded. Everything about his story was wrong, from the way the Kaminoans treated the clones to the Republic’s—and the Jedi’s—apparent acceptance of anti-aggression chips. She knew the Republic was willing to overlook a lot of wrongdoing. But this?
I shouldn’t be surprised, she thought bitterly. The entire Republic was corrupt. Which meant, again, another issue.
Even if Ahsoka and Fives found irrefutable evidence of the chip, they needed support. There was no way for the two of them to remove the chips from every clone in the galaxy. Which meant telling people. And they had no idea who to trust. Rex, yes, but that was only one battalion—and Ahsoka had her own reservations about telling Anakin.
One step at a time. First, Nal Hutta. First, find real evidence.
Ahsoka stared out the viewfinder, wondering how, exactly, they were to pull this off.
After Fives returned, Ahsoka couldn’t stop laughing.
“This was all I could find,” Fives said miserably. He was wearing a lime green pair of pants that were at least three sizes too large, with a baggy purple top and black jacket. He still wore his clone boots, but in his right hand was another pair. Bright red, with heels. Heels.
“At least whoever owned this thing was close to your size,” Ahsoka said, grinning. “You could have been stuck with a Lurmen outfit.”
“I’m no fashion expert, but even I know that this,” he gestured to the entire ensemble, “isn’t what most people look for in clothing. And there’s no kriffin’ way I’m wearing those boots.”
The ship console beeped behind her, and Ahsoka made for the pilot’s seat. Less than a minute to Nal Hutta.
“Well, you definitely don’t look like a clone anymore,” Ahsoka commented, lips still twitching. Fives glared at her whilst stuffing the red boots into a wall compartment.
The console lit up again, and Ahsoka set her hand on the hyperspace lever. 3, 2, 1...
Deep space appeared around them, stars and distant planets woven through the blanket of darkness surrounding Nal Hutta. Fives came up behind her, taking in the dusty planet and the atmosphere bustling with ships.
His unease flowed through the Force, matched by her own. This was where the work began.
Ahsoka just hoped their first mission wouldn’t turn out to be their last.