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Chapter Text

PROLOGUE:

Caluula Sector, 1023 days after Geonosis

Bly's chrono blared shrill and unwelcome from his vambrace on Aayla's bedside table. He huffed a long sigh as he stirred. Gingerly, his shifting slow so as not to disturb Aayla in her face-down slumber on his chest, he reached over to turn the damned thing off.

Heavy silence flooded the room in its absence, the only sound the thrumming heartbeat of the Intrepid’s engines. He sighed again and tipped his chin down onto his chest to watch her.

They woke up this way most mornings now- her lekku unbound, the bright blue of her naked skin glowing against the deep tan of his- but even a year into ‘them’, the sight never failed to leave him breathless and humble.

She gave a tiny mumble and shifted against him, the lek stretched across his midsection curling into a lazy spiral. His free hand raised to stroke the length of it with the back of his knuckles. He chuckled under his breath as she shuddered and snuggled closer to him in response.

"G'morning." His voice was rough with sleep, a stark contrast to the gentle hands that held her steady as he shifted out from under her and onto his side. He spooned against her back, carefully smoothing one lek to the front of her and the other behind his shoulder to keep from squashing it. Unbound and free to move at will, the one behind him curled up to cradle the back of his neck. He rumbled contentedly at the touch and twined his legs with hers.

"Bly..." She melted into him as he stroked his calloused palms up and down her side. "We don't have time."

"I know," he rumbled, burying his face between her lekku and bringing one hand up to lightly cup a breast. "Just..."

He trailed off, feeling her affirmation in his mind. She knew. They both knew. Battle mornings were different. Reverent. A time for final touches and gentle affection. When it came to campaigns, they had to step into different roles- not Aayla and Bly, not ryma ¹ and buir ² ,as the last few batches of too-karking-young shinies had started to call them, but a Jedi General and a Marshal Commander, clinical and war-worn and utterly devoted to the fight. The 327th may approve, but the Jedi Council would not, and neither would the GAR at large.

It had to be like this, but kriff was he growing to hate it.

The morning trudged on without regard for his opinion. They combined their hot water rations and cleaned up quickly, then spent the remaining time letting the warmth beat down on overworked muscles. There was a quiet triple-tap at the main door to the quarters as they were toweling off- while he was putting on a fresh set of blacks, Aayla threw on one of his spare undershirts and went to fetch the two trays of mostly-edible breakfast rations that had been left in the corridor for them.

They settled into comfortable silence as they ate, Bly poring over a datapad with updated troop assignments, Aayla confirming requests on her own device as she perched comfortably on her chair, knees up to her chest under the oversized shirt. The neck of it hung off-center, exposing her collarbone and one lapis-blue shoulder- halfway through her breakfast, she looked up to find him staring with quiet satisfaction over the top of his datapad. He smiled at being caught.

---

As per the Kaminoan's contract, Bly could go from blacks to battle in less than a minute. But in the privacy of her quarters, there was nothing but time- they took every possible second to grasp at their illicit domesticity, and that included the slow, gentle process of girding themselves for war. It was a ritual, not a race.

He started on his lower armor, working from his boots up as Aayla slid into her leggings. He stopped and moved to help her as she wriggled into her top, only hesitating for the briefest moment to sneak a squeeze. She snorted a laugh and he grinned. "I'm helping," he teased, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind and pulling her close.

"Is that what you call it?"

"Mmhmm." He held her there for a moment, then nuzzled a kiss between her lekku and stepped back to secure the fasteners on her top. "See? Helping."

"Oh, arni’soyacho, freeta anoon." ³ She couldn't hold back a grin as she smoothed her headwrap on over her cones. His hands met hers behind her head as she went to fasten it, and she relinquished control of the task to him.

"Ba'gedet'ye," ⁴ he quipped back, smoothing out the straps of her lekku harness between his fingers before starting the meticulous process of binding them. Lekku were talkative and extremely mobile- she preferred them bound and still unless she was in private, but it had to be done just right or they would pinch, strangle, or generally be uncomfortable. In the months of hiding their trysts, he had quickly become a master at the process. He could do it under pressure and in the dark- and had, more than once.

Her left lek curled itself gently around his wrist as he worked on the right- he let it stay until he was done, then paused to kiss it in apology before unwinding it. He didn't have to look to know her eyes were closed, basking in the gentle contact.

"Done," he murmured. She gave a subtle shimmy that settled everything in its place, much to Bly's silent, unguarded approval, though he stifled that thought with a strong mental image of her in proper karking armor, all bright beskar plates in the Mandalorian style. She projected back the equivalent of a rude gesture- he chuckled under his breath. "Can't blame a man for trying."

"On that note," she laughed, "turn around."

Shaking his head fondly, Bly turned his back to her and felt her meet him halfway with the plates as he attached the armor of his midsection. She was as adept at armoring him as he was at re-dressing her, for much the same reasons. Piece by piece, she secured his armor- not in the order he would have done it himself, but he understood the ritual and let her work. Rerebraces, vambraces, then around to the front- he turned himself around without being cued as he felt the last one settle into the gription fasteners. She was waiting for him with his cuirass in hand- she paused and pressed a kiss to his blacks before fastening it in place. His heart twisted in his chest, just like it did every karking time she did that. Fett's sake, he loved her.

Pauldrons, kama, belt, holsters- she deftly finished her work, then handed him his gauntlets. Once they went on, he knew they likely wouldn't touch skin-to-skin for the entire length of the campaign. He didn't hesitate to slip a bare hand under the side of her headwrap to cradle her face as he kissed her, deep and long and needy. She pressed herself into the rigid plastoid of his chest, held firm by the hand around her waist, tangling her slender fingers in the just-grabbable curls at the back of his head.

They broke apart, breathless and resigned. He felt the hand against his neck tighten and he followed the pressure downwards until his forehead met hers. She knew the significance of the keldabe- it made his damn chest ache.

With a sigh, he pulled back and slipped on his gauntlets. She stepped away with a brush of a hand on his vambrace to take their breakfast trays back out to the hall, and he went to secure their weapons. His big deece was down in the armory, but his pistols sat on the nightstand with her lightsaber- he picked up both of them, testing their heft as he had a hundred thousand times before, then spinning them deftly into their holsters. He smoothed his gloved palms against the texture of their krayt dragon pearl grips to bring himself back into the right headspace. Focus, Bly.

Clipping his helmet to his belt, he reached up and down and across his body to give his armor any final adjustments- then gently, reverently, he took Aayla's lightsaber from the table. He smoothed his leatheris-clad thumb over the ridges just below the emitter, briefly enjoying the warm, welcoming heft of the weapon in his palm. She said the blade had a strange way of speaking to her- he had no idea if it bothered to entertain the opinions of simple men like him, but he still took a moment to silently entreat it to keep her safe as best it could.

He smoothly flipped the saber in his hand so the polite end was towards her as he met her halfway across the room, giving a slight nod as she took it and secured it to her belt.

"General."

"Commander."

"Let's go."

Translations:

1: Ryma- Mother (Ryl) [ ▲ ]
2: Buir- gender neutral parent (Mando'a) [ ▲ ]
3: arni’soyacho, freeta anoon- oh, (super sarcastic) thank you, brave commander (Ryl) [ ▲ ]
4: Ba'gedet'ye - you're welcome (Mando'a) [ ▲ ]

Chapter Text

Caluula, 1043 days after Geonosis

All things considered, the campaign was going well at the twenty day mark.

In the shade beside one of the tanks, Bly had a small holo-projector set up on a rock and was in conference with Twelve and Deviss, as well as a pair of captains from Trill and Nen Companies. Aayla had balanced herself on the muzzle brake of the tank's dorsal cannon with a pair of scopes, letting the discussion below make its way up to her through the filter of Bly's perspective. It was nothing they hadn't discussed already, or she hadn't picked up from everyone else.

"Anything new up there?"

"No," she called out in response, lowering the scopes and peering down at Bly from her precarious perch. "It’s hazy. The horizon's close today. Not much to see."

"The forward squads should be back shortly, then we can let the warbirds play with their new toys."

She smiled- since the 327th had taken delivery of its brand new Y-wing bombers several months back, there had been a distinct lack of opportunity to use them. The pilots had been positively itching for a fight- and who was she to not give them the opportunity to scratch it when the need arose? "They're going to be thrilled."

"Hopefully they stop buzzing the bridge during exercises now," Bly muttered. "Last time they made the admiral spill caf all over himself. He still won't shut up about it."

She let out a laugh- she could feel Bly smiling back at her, even behind the expressionless mask of his helmet.

Something tickled at the edge of her senses, and she quickly turned back to her scouting- and sure enough, a group of LA/AT-i gunships came into view from the valley below them, the muggy heat of midday blurring their outlines. "They're inbound. I see two. Now three."

"Should be five."

She refocused her scopes and squinted. Behind the main group came two more, both nose-down and clearly in a bigger hurry than the ones ahead of them. Then- she caught a blossom of smoke from a distant treeline against the base of the mountains. A deep boom rumbled its way to them a few seconds later.

"They're taking fire," she shouted down.

She heard a clatter from below and saw Bly clambering up the front leg of the tank. He tucked a boot into the hinge of a joint and gripped higher up with one hand, reaching to snap his macros down with the other to follow her sightline. "Marked. We'll get the location to the flight commanders, they'll-"

"One's hit."

"Ah, kriff."

They lapsed into silence, absorbed in the scene- Aayla realized she was holding her breath as the stricken gunship canted to the side, one engine trailing black smoke, heading straight towards the steep walls of the canyon. It banked hard at the last second, spiraling back onto its flight path before it could crash into the rocky wall at deadly velocity. It was enough to slow it down, but not avoid the impact entirely- the ship hit the wall tail-first, then rolled sideways down the slope. It dropped below the height of the trees between them, blocking their view, but no explosion followed the crash.

"Survivable impact," called Bly. "K, can we get a RIT squad on standby?"

"On it, sir."

"And someone get a bolo-ball up for me, I need to get a closer look and the kriffing trees are in the way."

---

Bly clicked his back teeth together to bring up the menu of his HUD, and flicked through the functions with rapid movements of his eyes.

He hated losing their boys- hated it more than anything- but dammit, pulling a rescue out of his shebs ¹ always meant things were going to get messy. Better a hard crash and a quick death than a rescue going south and losing two squads for the price of one.

To top it off, he knew his general like he knew his own kit, and he could make an educated guess as to exactly how this was going to play out.

His audio input adjusted itself as the incoming larties roared low overhead, and he caught movement in his split-screen as Aayla dropped off the business end of the tank. Even if his ears hadn't been at 20%, he wouldn't have heard her- she was predatory grace personified.

The air now clear of traffic, one of the captains came running back with the 'ball'- a round recon drone that looked, as one would expect, just like a bolo ball. The captain gave it a light toss and the sphere settled into a hover a meter or so off the ground- Bly confirmed his connection to the drone's controls.

"Up we go."

The drone shot skyward with a tinny whirr, and Bly had a brief hit of out-of-body disorientation at the sight of himself receding below. He felt Aayla's hand press to the flare of his pauldron to steady him, and his chest tightened a bit at the image of the bright blue of her skin against the scarred yellow paint.

He heard someone clear their throat through the comms- Deviss, he was sure- and quickly switched the view.

The drone shot across the rocky valley and into the tightening canyon. Reddish stone and scrubby trees blurred dizzyingly by. It topped a small crest and rose again to get above the trees, and Bly swept it in a circle to get his bearings. He spotted a haze of black smoke to the left and jolted towards it like a massiff on a scent.

"I've got it. It's high, looks like it's wedged into the canyon wall. About 10 meters up."

Smoke obscured the wreckage as he roved over it- nothing, nothing, then a flash of white. Survivors.

Aayla's hand pressed harder against his shoulder. "How many?"

"At least three troopers." He fell silent, still scanning the smoking mass. "And the pilots. They're up and moving."

"They're about to have a bad time. Look to 2-3-8." came Deviss' voice through his comms. Bly shifted his focus to the coords in question and cursed under his breath.

"What is it?"

"They've got about half a battalion of clankers inbound, about seven hundred meters out. At least two tanks, some spiders, and a mess of B's."

"Let's go. They'll need the support."

He nodded, stifling a sigh. Jedi. Reckless, bleeding heart kriffing Jedi.

"K, is the RIT ready to fly?"

"Yes sir," came the sharp reply, a roar of a gunship's engine in the background. "Waiting for you."

"Glad we're predictable," Bly muttered, and he felt a familiar blossom of affection rise in his mind.

---

There were old pilots, and there were bold pilots, but very few pilots survived being both. Fitz, though- he was one of the few that met those criteria, and his steady hand and courage under fire meant Bly and Aayla rode in his beloved Oola Gida ² with fair frequency. The man flew like a scalded gundark, but his safety record was impeccable- and with the short average lifespan of the GAR's flyboys, the fact that he'd been flying since Geonosis was a statistical anomaly. It was one Bly was definitely willing to exploit.

He shot a wave up to the cockpit as he ran to the open side doors, and saw it returned with a saucy two fingered salute.

They jumped onboard, grabbing the overhead handles as the doors slid shut. Bly looked over the nine man squad- he knew them all, save an unpainted helmet in the back he didn't recognize offhand. He clasped the captain's forearm in greeting. "Sweep."

"Good to have you with us, commander." The chevron-painted helmet bobbed in respectful greeting to Aayla. "General."

"Wouldn't miss it," Bly replied. "Did you get the recce video?"

"Yes, sir. I've got a plan."

The squad circled up as best they could in the rocking gunship, all eyes on their captain. Bly and Aayla turned their focus to him as well, stepping back to give him the floor. They understood how to back off and let their teams do their job, and knew their own roles in this: The RIT squad was there for the survivors- the Jedi and her commander were there for them.

"All right," Sweep said, raising a hand and activating the holo of the land layout. "Here's the sitrep."

---

"Thaaank you for choosing the 'Gida, we hope to fly you again in twenty minutes or less."

Bly couldn't stop a grin as they piled out of the larty- Fitz never failed to have the last word. "We'll see you in ten."

"Going for the record this morning. Oya ³, commander."

With a pulsating roar, the ship banked hard to the side and scudded off down the canyon- out of range, out of danger, but close enough to drop back in at a moment's notice to pull them out.

They fell into formation- Aayla on point with Bly at her six, the weapons men fanned out on either side. Behind them, well defended and able to concentrate on their task, were Sweep and Reel, the comms man. The pair of medics followed behind them, and a third gunner and the equipment man brought up the rear.

They moved off at a brisk jog. No one said a word- the comms were open, but Reel was adjusting his equipment, fishing for a signal from the wrecked crew while transmitting the familiar beep-ping, beep-ping over the short- and mid-range com frequencies. Every trooper knew that sound- it meant we hear you, we're coming, start talking.

And sure enough- as they cleared a small rise, Reel made contact.

"Sounds like good news," Sweep relayed to the team. "Pilot got his bell rung and there's at least two pretty banged up, but I think they all made it. They should have them out of the ship by the time we get there."

"Beautiful," Bly replied. "Let's get it done."

---

The larty had started to properly burn by the time they arrived. Wedged tail-first into the cliff wall, its nose was tipped precariously downwards towards the rocky canyon floor below. A thick line hung from the open side door from where the troopers had fast-roped down after the crash. The squad still crowded around it, setting a solid defensive perimeter, though it broke as a few of the men ran to greet their rescuers. There was a clatter of plastoid as they clasped forearms and knocked helmets together.

The RIT squad set to work triaging the men with rapidity- the pilot was the worst off, his pupils uneven and blood trickling from his ears and nose, but he was still conscious and mostly making sense. One trooper had a shattered ankle and another what was probably a broken shoulder and collarbone, but a solid splinting job had them both mobile enough to self-ambulate with a little help. At least they wouldn't have to stretcher anyone out- that always made tactical extractions difficult, especially under fire.

"I'll take him," Bly said to the medic finishing up the spray-splint on the trooper with the leg injury. The injured trooper looked up at him- his armor clacked slightly as he moved. Even though he did have a thin stripe of 327th yellow down his arms, proof of surviving a prior engagement, he wasn't any more than an 8th cycle shiny, and his armor was slightly too big for his frame. Bly's jaw clenched. They were sending them off Kamino younger and younger, and it ate at his soul.

He slung his deece across his back and crouched down to get his arm around the trooper. "Come on, kid."

"Yes, commander sir."

He even sounded young- his voice a bit high, a bit thin. Part of it was pain, he was sure, but he sounded like a kark-damn child.

"For today, I'm just Bly. What's your name, trooper?"

"Tota, sir."

"Tota? They teaching Ryl on Kamino now?"

"No, sir. I- I was OhThree on Kamino, but I liked it better when I heard it here."

Bly smiled in the privacy of his helmet. "Good name."

"All right," came Sweep's voice through the coms. "Form up, let's move out, I want the-"

"INCOMING, GET DOWN!"

An artillery blast shrieked into the crashed wreckage of the gunship above them. Every head snapped up to stare as the empty hulk went up in a superheated bloom of flame and stone that rained down directly overhead. The coms filled with shouts of alarm. Instinctively, Bly dropped Tota and fell to a knee over him to shield him from the debris- but as all her men fell flat, Aayla rose up, arms stretched skyward, her face a twisted snarl of concentration. The deadly shower of boulders and flaming shrapnel glided to a graceful halt above them.

"Get them out of here," she ground out, her voice a taut cable fraying with the strain of her effort. Bly's head swiveled, taking in the tableau for a heartbeat, then he surged into action. He grabbed Tota by his chestplate and shoved him at Sweep.

"Go!" he roared over the shriek of incoming shells. "Get them to the evac, I'm with the General."

His command broke the spell. The canyon filled with the sound of scrambling boots and plastoid on stone as the squad and survivors gathered themselves and fled.

Not a moment too soon- A blaster bolt exploded at Bly's feet, and he reached back to swing his deece free and take a knee in front of Aayla, becoming both her sword and her shield as she held the world above their heads. He took aim and fired into the mass of droids, scoping shot after shot into their ranks as the artillery shells pounded into the debris above them.

There was something surreal about firing without cover, the spiky metallic stab of adrenaline through his veins that narrowed his vision and told him to run, you idiot, but Aayla was exposed and unarmored and his mind overrode his sense with its own demand of stand your ground, protect your general. He saw the distant SBD fire just before he could target it- He didn't so much as flinch as the first bolt ricocheted off his vambrace into his pauldron, but the second hit him square in the chest and sent him careening back into Aayla’s legs.

And then the world moved. He had the disorienting sensation that the two of them had been propelled backwards- but no, they weren't moving, the debris obscuring the sky was flying forwards as if it had been shot out of an airlock. The incoming blasterfire stopped, swallowed by a cloud of gritty red fog, and after the last screaming explosion of artillery- overshot, too far, landing behind them- the canyon echoed into silence.

Which was a relief, to be sure, but kark it all to hell, it would be nice if he could breathe.

He felt firm hands gripping into the gaps on either side of his backplate. Kark. He couldn’t breathe, it felt like all he could do was inhale and his lungs were at capacity, screaming to release. His vision greyed out.

No, not like this, not like this, kark no no no-

And then- a tiny hit of fresh air. He struggled, his body fighting to pull him into fetal position as the imminent-suffocation claxon clanged frantically in his brain. Then another tiny breath. And another. He opened his eyes to the sight of trees overhead.

He was being dragged.

Sensations came back in pieces- suddenly he could hear himself groaning like a blown engine over the rising shriek of alarms going off in his helmet. And Aayla's voice, pitched with concern, saying his name over and over. The hands in his armor released and he fell hard onto his back. Aayla’s face came into view through his forward HUD cams. She looked distraught.

He was fine. Fine. Really, he was. Air flowed back into his lungs and sense back into his brain with every struggling gasp. The armor had taken the brunt of the hit, at that range, but still. It had been like getting kicked in the chest by a bantha.

"Fine," he wheezed. He tried to move his left arm and was puzzled that it didn't respond. "m'k. Win- winded."

Relief flooded across her face. And then his vision went blue, full of her as she leaned in to press her forehead to his, buffered by the dusty pane of his visor. Little gods, she was beautiful. Even sweaty and grimy and hazed with ruddy dust, she was glorious. She'd have taken his breath away if the karking clanker hadn't done it for him.

He might have thought that a bit too loud- she shook her head and grabbed for his hands. "Hush. Breathe. Breathe, Bly. Arms up, give me your arm, here-" She paused, feeling the broken plastoid of his vambrace shift in her hand, and let it go like she'd been burned. "Just be still. It's all right. Breathe."

Laying flat helped, though he could feel himself fighting against the press of her hands on his shoulders even as he willed himself to lay still. He forced one deep breath past the seized resistance of his stubborn diaphragm and let it out in a shuddering moan.

That seemed to put him fully back into his head. He let go of the one-handed death grip he had on his deece, letting it clatter to the ground beside him, and grabbed clumsily for Aayla’s forearm. “I’m ok. I’m ok.”

“We won’t be for long,” she replied, rocking back onto her heels to look around. “They’re following the retreat. We have to move.”

“Right,” he panted. The breathiness of it grated at his nerves. He pulled himself into a sitting position by sheer force of will, feeling his ribs grind agonizingly at the movement. He wheezed shakily for a moment, letting the pain subside, then squeezed her arm to let her know he was ready. “Up.”

“No, here, I’ll-” she ducked sinuously under his arm to lever him to his feet as she stood. His chest screamed at the pressure, and he wavered, his boots scrabbling clumsily in the gritty dirt as he fought for balance. She paused when she had him upright, waiting for him to stop swaying in her grip. The pain subsided after a few more shallow, frantic breaths.

"Deece," he mumbled, shifting in her grip to try and see the damn thing where he’d dropped it.

"Leave it.” She adjusted her hold on him with a grunt. “I don't need it and you can't hold it."

The hell he couldn't. He looked down at his arm- and abruptly wished he hadn't.

The plastoid of his vambrace had shattered and large chunks of it had fallen away as she’d moved him, and the missing armor gave no question that his arm was broken, all twisted at an unnatural angle. He didn't want to even imagine what it looked like under his blacks. Blood and gore hardly gave him pause, but exposed bones touched some part of his brain that made him-

Ok, kriff, ok, so no deece.

Swallowing down nausea, he shuffled through the functions of his HUD to distract himself from the sight of his mangled limb and the indignity of being hauled like a supply crate. Nothing on thermal, no new priority alerts from the command team back at HQ, no-

"Szu’tak ⁴, you're like dragging a power droid."

He tried to laugh, but it came out as a rasping cough. "You’ve never complained about it before."

The expected banter didn't follow. He'd have glanced over to judge her expression for a hint, but he didn't want to upset the precarious hold she had on his belt to keep them both upright- instead he concentrated and thought questioningly at her.

No response.

Oh, shields up. She wasn't happy with him. And he had no doubt of why.

Their battle-dance was one of balance- his pure offense following the lead of her reflecting defense, the choreography telegraphed through her instinctive trust in the force and his unwavering trust in her. They rarely trod on each others toes, but sometimes-

"You saw that coming, why didn't you move?" she seethed, limping his sorry plastoid-covered ass into the deeper cover at the base of the canyon wall.

"What was I supposed to do, let it hit you?" He still sounded annoyingly breathy- he hoped his scathing tone was mentally apparent, her shields be damned. "Maybe if you wore some karking armor-"

"I don't want to have this fight right now," she interrupted.

"When would be a good time? The next time I get shot?"

"I can't move in armor."

"Clearly I can!"

"Clearly not."

"You'd rather have taken that hit? Off a Super?"

"You forget what I can do with the force."

"The force was karking preoccupied," he spat. "If you won't wear it, I'll be it."

They struggled along in prickly silence until they hit a bend in the canyon wall that put at least a small amount of stone between them and the artillery battery. Aayla aimed for a downed tree against the sheer rock face and guided him to sit, sliding out from under his arm and crouching in front of him. His good arm free, he drew one of his pistols to cover them while she looked him over.

“Put that down, I need to take all of this off.”

He bumped at her prodding hands with the side of the weapon, careful not to aim the muzzle at her. "Leave- leave it. No point taking it off. Can’t fix it here. Just... splint this." He paused, then pointedly added, "Someone has to wear it for both of us."

She sighed heavily. He couldn't feel her reassuring touch in his mind- she must still be shielding, holding herself back from him, and he found himself agitated on principle. He was just doing his kark-damn job.

He felt her digging through the pouch on his belt that held his small medical kit- a roll of bandaging, styptic gauze, some spray-splint, and a few bacta patches. The stims were gone, used yesterday in the field and not replaced. She came out with the bandages and splinting and started to gently, so gently, remove the fragmented remnants of his vambrace.

He turned his head to the side and switched off his peripheral cams, distracting himself by dealing with their evacuation plan. By his HUD readout, the RIT squad and the rescued crew were almost back at the 'Gida. He marked the distance, started plotting a path from their location to the RV point, sent an updated ping to Sweep, and-

White hot pain seared up his arm, and he stifled a roar of pain. His mouth filled with blood- kark, he'd bitten the inside of his cheek hard enough to crush it. He felt his arm move in a sickening way that should NOT have been possible- then pressure, agonizing pressure, and his vision went totally grey for a few heartbeats. He fought his body's instinct to writhe and pull away- hold still, comply, deal with it- then kriff, the pressure stopped and his helmet was being pulled off and cool hands were cradling his face.

"Bly, you're all right. You're all right."

"Am I?" he gritted out. "Kark."

"I'm done, love. There was a piece of-"

He shook his head hard between her hands. "I don't- I don't want details. Please."

"All right."

He unclenched his eyes and looked up at her. He must have looked a mess, panting and sweating like a winded fathier, but it didn't seem to deter her from smoothing his hair back down and pressing a lingering kiss to his forehead. He leaned into it.

"Thank you."

"It's all right," she murmured against his skin, kissing his crown again before pulling back. "Let's get this in a sling."

"Only if I get you in armor."

Her predatory growl of agitation was worth it. He knew how to push her buttons- he might have earned his nickname of Bly'buir ⁵, but he came from the same batch as Fox and Ponds, and the opportunity to be an absolute shebse ⁶ was not one he was quick to pass up. He grinned lopsidedly up at her.

She returned it with a haughty glare. He'd have laughed if his damn lungs hadn't been on fire. And damn, did they hurt. Now that his arm was disguised in a mostly-straight casing of hardened foam, he could inspect himself without gagging.

His breastplate was a wreck. The yellow and tan paint was charred beyond recognition from edge to edge, melted and blackened like he’d held it just off-center over a blow torch.

He was damn lucky, and he knew it. The only thing that had kept him from being the ex-marshal commander of the 327th Star Corps was the sheer range on that shot. The energy of a blaster dissipated into a wider area over great distances- less able to pierce armor, but packing a blunt-force punch in exchange.

The plate looked like it would hold, at least- no cracks, just heat damage and Fett knew what else underneath. Sitting still for a moment was easing the spasming agony of broken ribs and struggling lungs. He dreaded moving again.

“You wanted to replace it anyway,” Aayla said, reaching for the roll of sturdy bandage she’d set on his lap.

“I think I’ll keep it,” he replied, his faded grin refreshing at her commentary. “It’ll buff out.”

Shaking her head with a snort, she tied a loop in the material and draped it around his neck and under his pauldron, gingerly tucking his splinted arm into the wide band and snugging it against his chest. It throbbed, but the screaming pain of splinting was fading to memory, thank kark. He holstered his pistol and palmed his helmet with one hand, shoving it back over his head.

“Stay here for a moment,” said Aayla. She pressed a firm hand to his pauldron. “I’m going to scout back.”

“Not by yourself, I’m fine, just-”

“No, catch your breath. I’ll be right back.”

He ground his molars as she slipped off into the trees, saber casually unignited in her hand. Banthashit. He wasn’t staying here, he wasn’t dead weight to be left behind, he went to stand-

- and at least managed to salvage his dignity by sagging to his knees instead of faceplanting into the dirt as the movement blinded him in pain from his chest.

He tried to struggle around to pull himself back up on the log, but lifting his uninjured arm that high was an exercise in agonizing futility. He shifted onto his hip, trying to kick a leg out far enough to brace up onto- and only managed to get his boot caught in his kama. He was… stuck.

Ridiculous. This was ridiculous.

"Have you caught your breath, commander?"

She had reappeared without him noticing and was staring down at him, her hands planted firmly on her hips and her lekku swaying slightly behind her shoulders. He knew that look.

"Yes, sir," he replied with sarcastic formality, sending her bait right back at her. Neither of them had slept in two days- they were both under-stimmed and testy and on the downswing of an intense campaign. Casual snark was practically a love language. That being said...

He looked down at himself, still kneeling in the leaf-litter with his arm strapped to his carbon-scored chestplate, and swallowed what little pride he had. "Could you help me up?"

---

"You all right down there, you two?"

"Good to hear your voice, Fitz," Bly replied back through the hissing com line. Hearing the evac larty's pilot was a relief- it meant they were in mid-range comms distance. "Almost to you."

"Want a pickup? We can be skids-up and over your location in a minute."

"That..." he cut off the audio to cough, not missing the look that Aayla sent back at him. "That might be good."

"You got it, sir. Move out to the open and we'll scoop you up."

"Clear, Bly out."

He paused to take a few breaths to clear his head- talking required a bit more oxygen than he was able to manage with the shallow, rib-sparing breaths he'd been taking for the last ten minutes of their hike.

"Are you all right?"

He barely turned his head to catch her in his peripheral cams. She looked worried.

"They're coming to us," he replied, pointedly ignoring her question. He was not all right. Probably had a karking pneumothorax building and his heart felt like it was pumping mud, but dammit, he was still upright and mobile and they had to get out of this mess before he could even start to think about it. Press on regardless, and all that. But then her fingers were on the edge of his helmet to tip his face towards hers, and she was giving him the eyes. "I'll be fine," he added, just loud enough to trigger his helmet's output.

She let out a rolling 'hmm' and let her fingertips slip under the sling to rest against the blackened mess of his chestplate. He forgot himself for a moment and let his hand come to rest against her waist, not pulling at her, just steadying himself. Then-

Oh. That- that felt nice.

It felt like she’d poured warm bacta into his blacks. The pain in his arm and chest faded away to a murmur of its previous scream, and though he couldn't breathe any deeper than before, it didn't hurt to try now.

He huffed a sigh and gently wrapped his hand around her wrist, dwarfing her arm with his dusty gauntlet. "Thank you, love."

"There isn't much more I can do, but-"

The thrum-thrum-thrum of the incoming gunship turned their heads. "Let's go," she said firmly, sliding her hand free. "I'll flag them down."

She took off at a jog towards the edge of the treeline. He followed at a steadier walk, focusing on his breathing. Better. A bit better. He could manage this until he could get some stims in his system onboard the gunship. Almost done. Oya.

Aayla had reached the edge of the trees and was stepping out into the open when a warning light started to blink in the corner of his HUD. Her head snapped around, sensing the same.

Fierfeck.

The unmistakable shriek of artillery rounds caught his hearing behind the sound of the gunship.

"LZ's hot, Fitz, watch it-"

"On it, sir, it's coming from a ways off, I can-"

The comm traffic cut itself off and Bly watched with his heart in his throat as the ship pitched upwards, dodging the first two blasts. Then a third. Then more. The 'Gida rose and fell, nimble as a dancer, engines screaming in protest at the throttle input as Fitz guided her around the incoming fire. He banked upwards and drew the fire high, then dove down again (practically sideways, the madman) to try and get close enough to them to get the doors open. He hesitated a moment too long at a low point- a blast hit the side door and bent it inward with a resounding boom.

Bly's heart sank, thinking of the men inside.

"Get out of here!" Bly yelled through the coms. "Go, that's an order!"

"Sir-"

Aayla spoke up then, her wrist-comm raised to her face- all Bly could see was the fierce glint of her eyes over her arm. "Get them to safety, Fitz, we'll be fine."

There was a pause, and the ship hovered indecisively for a moment- then it rotated to avoid yet another incoming round. "I'm sorry, General, Commander. I'll be back. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," Bly said, straining to keep his voice steady for Fitz's sake. "Go."

The gunship rose rapidly, still darting in and out of fire with almost impossible grace. That pilot could fly.

But that left them right where they'd started- on the ground, a good handful of klicks from the forward line. At least they weren't dragging wounded (he pointedly left himself out of that category, thank you), but still. It was a lot of ground to cover.

Better get at it.

He looked down at Aayla, standing calmly defiant with her hands on her hips, staring out at the smoking floor of the canyon. He reached out to rest his hand against the small of her back. "We need to get moving."

"Yes," she murmured, looking distracted. "Though it doesn't seem that they know we're here. They stopped firing when the ship moved out of range."

He reflexively checked his pistols in their holsters with his good hand and a downward glance. "Let's not give them a reason to come looking."

"We can follow the canyon wall until we clear the crest. They may be able to get a ship to us there. Does Deviss know?”

“I’ve been keeping him updated on Campaign Priority. Nyze is holding back the bombers until we get clear. There’s already been an argument about advancing the forward line again.”

“No, they need to hold. We’ll get back.”

“That’s what I told them. Better to get back quietly than make them realize we’re here. Just stay out of sight and keep moving.”

---

And that plan worked well- until it didn’t.

One second he was concentrating on keeping one boot in front of the other, letting Aayla's mesmerizing sway guide him on the path, and the next she was stopping him with a firm hand on the armor over his stomach. Smooth and silent, feeling her steady tension reflected in his subconscious, he drew a pistol and switched his HUD to thermal.

Fierfeck. Probe Droid.

He felt the tingle of confirmation in his mind from Aayla. He reflexively signaled gun-handed battlesign in her general direction- he didn't need to with her tapped into his head, but old habits clung hard. [One contact. 10'oclock. In range.]

{More,} came the intrusive, blue-tinged thought. {Down the slope, off your scopes. At least ten. Hold fire.}

Force love the damned Jedi. He would have happily slotted the sentry without even knowing the patrol was there and brought death down on their heads.

Adrenaline flowing hard, he leaned his injured shoulder against a tree to steady himself, gritting a breath through his teeth as Aayla slunk off into the underbrush like a prowling nexu.

Something clattered beyond the droid he'd marked as his- it whirled its main camera to scan the anomaly. Bly knew a force-trick when he heard one and didn't budge. Aayla had slipped past its heat scanners undetected.

{On three.}

He took as deep a breath as he could, held it through the burning tightness in his chest, then let it out slowly as he stepped clear of the tree, sighted instantly through his targeting system, and rapid-fired as Aayla finished the count. The whirr of her lightsaber joined the echoing report of his pistol, and his mark crashed to the ground with a snap of underbrush.

When Aayla materialized back at his side, he was shoving the downed droid over with his foot to expose the sightless black eye- he put a clean shot through it, destroying the data storage core that held its last moments. He looked up at Aayla as she clipped her saber back to her belt.

"That bought some time."

"Only a few minutes," she murmured. "We need to get moving and stay off the comms. Once they realize that squad is offline, they'll know we're here."

--

Their walk was quiet for a time- no speaking, just the crunch of his boots in the leaf litter and the rattle of warm wind in the trees above them. Aayla had dropped from walking point to staying just half a step ahead of him- he knew she was keeping an eye on him. A half hour before he’d have chafed at that, but now? He was silently grateful. His mind felt unsettled, his feet uncertain. Her closeness gave him a point to focus on, and it kept the creeping edginess at bay.

“How much further?”

He checked the ref points on his map- not far, maybe half a mile. He huffed a deeper breath to reply-

- and Aayla grabbed him by his arm and slung him violently sideways a split second before the tree to their right exploded in a blast of laserfire. He rolled twice, tucking himself in around his broken arm to control the momentum and find his feet, but before he could draw his weapon and get a bead on whatever the kark had just tried to blow them up, Aayla had him firmly by his elbow again and was dragging him after her.

They could fight droids. They couldn’t fight artillery.

"Run, just run!"

He hauled himself into a sprint. They fought through the underbrush, canon fire falling short behind them. Adrenaline whipped him onward, but even that couldn't make up for a lack of oxygen- they'd only made it about 50 yards before his vision started to narrow down around the edges.

{Come on!}

He ducked his head down and pushed blindly forward, trying to shut out the ringing in his ears. Push. Go. Don't stop. And then everything was spinning. His shoulder must have clipped a tree- he was crashing down in a drunken heap of plastoid into the underbrush. His chest lanced with fresh, blinding pain.

His tactical brain did the math in a millisecond, and-

Well. In short, he was karked. But he would be damned if anything would happen to Aayla, and he could guarantee her at least a good head start. Mission success.

{Go. You go.} His mind blocked in a defensive fire strategy as he fumbled for his pistol- last man holding the line until they fell. {I can take them.}

"No you don't," he heard her hiss. He hadn't even realized she was back with him until then. Everything was distorted and shiny in his narrow field of vision. It was kriffing cold, even in his blacks. Had it suddenly iced over?

She was heaving him up, or trying to, when another artillery blast hit the trees. Close. Too close. He coughed and his vision went totally black for an instant- panic gripped its talons into his higher functions.

{You need to go.}

"We need to go."

He opened his numb lips to respond when her voice in his helmet cut him off-

"Air command from General Secura. We're pinned down. Requesting a bombing run just south of our location, transmitting coordinates now."

It was brilliant- or it was suicide. He wasn't sure of which, with his star-pocked vision and and his lungs on fire, but at this point he was in no place to argue.

The intent had been to blow the whole canyon to dust to start with- that was the purpose for pulling the advance squads back in the first place. The issue was that the two of them were still in the dangerous no-man's-land between the opposing forces, which was definitely within the original target zone.

"Come on," she said as she wrapped a steadying arm around his back. "We need to get to cov-"

Another explosion turned the trees immediately to their left into shrapnel that peppered his armor and stabbed through his blacks between the plates, though he hardly felt it. What whipped him to madness was Aayla's rough cry of pain.

He surged forward, tripping heavily over his leaden toes and driving hard in what he hoped was the direction of the cliff face. They had to get there. They had to take cover until the bombers passed over and one of the larties could get to them. He wouldn't let her fall on his account- as long as his heart kept beating, he would never fail her so completely as that.

She was right there with him, her arm around him guiding his blind charge, when the whole side of the canyon wall exploded. They were consumed as the sky fell and the world turned to stone around them. All he could do was pull her close to shield her with his body-

- then everything went dark.

---

When Aayla managed to open her eyes, she jolted in shock. Darkness. Stifling, close, smothering darkness, and a complete absence of sound. She tried to move and felt nothing but crushing weight- her shallow, shaking breaths had to fight to expand her chest. The silence gradually gave way to a shrill rhythm, the tone rising and falling in the silence. She realized after a moment that it was her own keening gasps tearing from her throat on every inhale.

She was trapped.

She wriggled hard, the ringing in her head fading into the distinct staccato of gravel on plastoid, and she froze.

Wait.

She fought for a deep breath of stale, chalky air, then held it, closing her eyes pointlessly against the darkness.

Center. Pause. Calm. Reach out.

Someone was holding her down.

She felt a stilled hand against her lekku, fingers pressing into the tender skin around her harness. The arm was crossed behind her head, keeping her off of the gravel that stabbed into her back, and a hard, painful weight was crushing her pelvis. Her legs were almost numb, but they could still flex a little. Something smooth and unyielding was jabbing into her forehead. And in her mind, a heavy presence smothered the flames of her panic.

Bly. She was pinned underneath Bly.

She wheezed his name out of her lungs as she struggled beneath him, trying to free her hands to feel in the crushing darkness. He didn't respond. Fingertips found the flared edge of his pauldron and gripped it tightly, trying to shake him awake. Dirt cascaded around them at the movement and she instinctively froze, squeezing her eyes shut, holding her breath. Silence swallowed them again.

Silence.

Why was it so quiet?

Silence was wrong. She should be able to hear him breathing. Feel his armor shift as his chest expanded against her.

No. No no no.

She clutched for his presence in the Force with graceless hands. The weight of his mind was there, heavy and unmoving against her probing touch, but it didn't stir even as the pressure of her query built and built.

Desperate, unrestrained, she flooded into him.

The normally warm, welcoming framework of his mind was unrecognizable. It was as if a bomb had torn through the familiar landscape, rending walls asunder and flinging their memories across the endless confines. Every landmark she knew was blown to rubble, grey and colorless and scattered like broken pottery.

She flowed through the fading destruction, seeking the core of him. And then-

There. There he was.

She caught the white of armor in the sea of distorted grey and surged towards it.

{Bly, look at me.}

- then suddenly, brutally, his kneeling specter dissolved into golden mist. She shrieked and grabbed for it, clutching frantically even as it dissipated into nothing, revealing a seething black void in its absence. The rubble of his mind rushed inwards into the wailing, windblown darkness even as she fought to stop it. Her own presence started to tear apart at the seams- shards of herself seemed to splinter off, piece by piece, occupying the empty space that their minds had taken up moments before. The air went dark and still for a long, heavy moment- Then it all slammed inward, collapsing into the center of a black hole.

She was starkly, terrifyingly alone. And then…

In the void, a presence looked yellow-eyed into her soul. She felt it draw a rattling breath, pulling the cold poison of the dark into her boiling lungs.

Fear.

Panic.

Anger.

Rage.

The physical world around her exploded into blinding light and flying rubble.

All that existed was pain.

Translations:

1: shebs- Ass (Mando'a) [ ▲ ]
2: Oola Gida- Blue Warrior (Ryl), the name of Fitz's gunship [ ▲ ]
3: oya- Many meanings: literally 'Let's hunt!' and also 'Stay alive!', but also 'Hoorah!', 'Go you!', 'Cheers!' Always positive and triumphant. (Mando'a) [ ▲ ]
4: Szu'tak- Shit (Ryl) [ ▲ ]
5. Bly'buir- a mix of Bly's name and the Mando'a word for father- a fond nickname like 'papa Bly' (Mando'a) [ ▲ ]
6. Shebse- asshole (Mando'a, humbly borrowed from Project506's Soft Wars series) [ ▲ ]

Chapter Text

Fleet Staging, Perlimian Space Route, 1064 days after Geonosis

Even without his distinctive knock at the door of her quarters on the Intrepid, Aayla would have recognized the arrival of the 327th’s chief medical officer- his presence in the force always preceded him, all grit and caf and curse words that he tempered down to a dull roar in her presence. It matched flawlessly with the harsh gravel of his voice, worn to a permanent hoarseness from shouting over battle-loaded medbays without the aid of a helmet’s output to amplify it. Medics were a different breed, even at the top of the food chain.

She waved her hand to trigger the door panel from across the room, only looking up from her datapad as the footsteps stopped in front of her desk. “Good morning, Sharp.”

And sharp he was, as always- greys in perfect order, the jagged lines of his meticulous haircut freshly trimmed, his ever-present bright red datapad in hand.

“Sir.” His pointed stare at her half-full breakfast tray didn’t go unnoticed- he was wasting no time in harping at her today, then. “Good morning.”

“I’m not finished with it. I’ve been-” her communicator buzzed to life from somewhere in the perilously stacked datapads crowding the small surface. It managed to ring twice before she found it buried under the pile and rejected the incoming call. “Busy.”

“Still dodging Vos?”

She sighed and tossed the comm back into the mess. “I don’t have time for the conversation he wishes to have.”

That excuse was mostly true. Bly had given every waking hour to his command, and often ran himself so hard that she had to rein him in lest he break with exhaustion- and even though she had delegated his tasks out throughout the corps’ command structure in the last few weeks, a number of his less paperwork-centric roles fell to her. While Aayla was known as the spirit of the 327th, Bly was unquestionably its heart, with his reassuring but no-nonsense style of command and his open-door policy for their men’s problems and concerns. Without him here, she had to do her best to shelve her own grief and be there for their troopers.

The first few days after the campaign had been utterly overwhelming. She was already unbalanced, both by the loss of Bly’s steadying presence in her mind and the introduction of a cold, unsettling darkness in its place. The constant stream of worry-sick troopers had nearly driven her to a breakdown. Sharp had been witness to that mortifying evening- she knew that his daily status check since then were hardly about the reports he insisted on personally delivering. She would never turn away any troopers in need, but right now all of them were in need- and she was more overwhelmed than she was willing to admit. She had, in the end, resorted to a sort of informal battle meditation to help settle her troops and focus her own mind away from the darkness that spread like noxious smoke through her defenses the second she stopped consciously keeping it at bay.

The tension in the ranks died down, especially after the relief mission she had spared a Venator to handle. Her mind had steadied. But she was still pointedly avoiding Quinlan.

He had no doubt felt both her anguish and her alarming submersion on the battlefield, because his three month silence had turned into a daily check-in that she was guiltily ignoring. She loved her master, she truly did, but for all his own shadowy dealings and familiarity with the dark side, he had an obnoxious tendency to hold her to a different standard than he held himself. She was not in the mood for his aggravatingly casual hypocrisy. He would push, and question, and dig, and she was maintaining precarious control without him ruining it all with his insatiable desire to break things apart to see how they worked.

Sharp stared her down. One eyebrow slowly, skeptically, crept towards his hairline.

“Nor do I have the energy,” she admitted. “The time does not feel right.”

His mouth quirked in dubious judgement before he smoothed back down to his trademark neutral coolness. “I don’t pretend to know how Force stuff works, sir. I’m happy to listen and nod, but it’s all Shyriiwook to me. Wouldn’t it help to talk to someone from the order?”

“Perhaps,” she sighed. “But my situation is... unique, and the list of Jedi who might be sympathetic is short. Right now, Quinlan is the last person I want to talk to.”

“Any particular reason? Or should I not press?”

She weighed her words. “He does not share my fondness for Commander Bly.”

Nor would he have the tiniest shred of sympathy for what happened...

“But he was your trainer, wasn’t he? Your master? Shouldn’t he...” Her expression must have broadcast her feelings on the topic- he held up both hands in a gesture of surrender, one still holding his datapad. “Disregard. I’ll stick to trauma. It’s less…” He wiggled the fingers of his free hand in her direction. The ridiculousness of it tripped a snort of laughter from her. She shook her head and reached out to straighten a stack of flimsi on the desk.

“I’d much rather get a call from Master Ti, if I’m being honest.”

“You and me both, sir. But if you’re not careful, Vos is just going to show up uninvited and make sure you’re not in a tank with a hole in your head. On that topic…” He turned to his datapad and tapped a few times- a chime sounded from somewhere on her desk. “The twelve men on the critical list should be arriving back from the medstar within the hour.”

She looked up at him, eyes creased in concern. “Twelve? I thought there were fourteen.”

His lips tightened into a hard line. “We lost two.”

“Send me their reports,” She sighed and leaned back hard in her chair- Bly’s chair, really. She’d reset the height, but the arms still sat a little too high for her and she hadn’t been in the right headspace to adjust them. “I need to get them added to Shaak’s database.”

“I will. I pulled them for you before I came.”

“Thank you.”

He nodded in return, holding her eyes for a searching moment before looking back down to his datapad. “He’s still in bacta. So you know.”

A tense breath huffed through her teeth. “Still?”

“They’ve pulled him twice for surgery, but he’s still in as of last night. I haven’t had a more recent update. They’ve had him conscious at least once, though, so that’s positive. The labs they’ve entered have looked good. My sources there are keeping an eye on him for me. I don’t think we’ll need any… data correction.”

Data correction. More like tactical number fudging. Though with Bly already being a Marshal Commander, there wasn’t a number they could change that would afford him a better chance.

Something was very not right in the medical system set up for the clones. Classified as they were- non-sentient genetic property to the Kaminoans, expensive line items to the Republic- the clones were entirely at the mercy of the system that owned them. Several of the GAR’s commanders had noticed something wasn’t adding up as the war progressed- as the fighting dragged on into its third year, entire transports of men were simply disappearing after being sent to medical facilities after campaigns. The commanders had compiled their data and sent Bly to talk to Aayla. Aayla had turned to Shaak Ti, who herself was incredibly concerned- her efforts on Kamino to save underperforming or defective cadets from termination had been significant, and she understood the cold, data-driven mindset that drove the Kaminoans to cull. If grown troopers were meeting the fate of their first or second cycle brothers, something larger was going on.

Their suspicions were deepened when Master Ti began to investigate- and the medical stations promptly added strict censorship to all outgoing transmissions. Alarmed, she took her information to the Jedi Council, though the response was lukewarm at best, apathetic at worst, as they claimed that their hands were tied and they held no investigative powers into the Kaminoans’ policies.

They pointedly did not prohibit their investigation, but had made it clear that any Jedi who chose to look into it were on their own. Quinlan had called her a fool. It only steeled her resolve to dig deeper.

Though the communications from the medical stations had been cut off, the men hadn’t stopped disappearing. After one particularly brutal campaign, Bly’s patience reached its end and the two of them traveled with the medical frigate to deliver their critically injured in person. Their casualties went down exponentially compared to previous campaigns, and they received a majority of their men back. Bly had broken down in the privacy of her quarters that night, his face buried against her neck, and she’d felt her heart ache in a way she couldn’t put words to.

After that, Bly's cellular-level distrust of the Kaminoans had flared to a height that threatened to suffocate her with its intensity, though his tactical mind had quickly channeled his rage into determination rather than vengeance. Shaak Ti developed her database- Sharp made sure that clone medics in the stations were given safe routes to sneak information out- and the commanders watched their casualty lists like shriek-hawks.

Whether it was the Kaminoans’ greed or some more sinister directive, they didn’t know. Early in the war, it had seemed that when the cost of repair exceeded a clone's value, they were discreetly terminated. Most medics started making a point of promoting the wounded in their reports- the more a clone was worth, the better his chances of returning. But recently, the casualties had started to veer from the trends they’d seen earlier on in the war- ARCs, captains, even a newly promoted commander had disappeared. No one was quite sure of what was going on anymore. It ate at her every time she closed her eyes.

“You did everything you could, you know.”

Sharp’s voice shook her from her unfocused distraction- she hummed in question and met his eyes.

“For the commander,” he explained. “When he makes it back, it’s because of you.”

She shook her head and busied herself with her datapad. “I seem to recall heroics on the part of your medics, Sharp.”

“Yes, but you kept him going long enough for us to get him stable for transport.” He tipped his chin down and drew her gaze back to him, looking at her with a slightly softer expression than she was used to seeing from him- for a second, the tightly wound CMO looked startlingly like Bly, and her throat tightened. “They won’t shut up about you in the middle of that crater, working his code like a medic, sir. He was salvageable by the time we got there. You saved him.”

Something dark seeped through the cracks in her composure, and for a moment her own heart stuttered at the raw memory of Bly’s ribs splintering further under her hands, his dull and dusty eyes staring at nothing as blood flowed from his mouth, all over the distant noise of her own furious screaming. She closed her eyes and took a deep, steady breath, then released the memories to the ether- the tarry blackness recoiled back into itself and hid away out of sight. She shook her head and met Sharp’s eyes. “It doesn’t feel like it. Not yet.”

“It will when he’s back, sir. I promise.”

Her tiny smile was a bud of grateful hope under the snow. “Thank you, Sharp”

He returned the sentiment with a curt little nod. “If you could, sir,” he added, “I do need you to do one thing for me.”

She held out a hand, waiting for his datapad to land in her palm.

He smacked a ration bar into it instead.

“Eat.”

She nailed Sharp with the side-eye that usually made Bly reconsider his life choices, but the Chief Medical Officer of the 327th was somehow more immune to it than its Marshal Commander. He stared cooly right back at her without a blink.

She shook her head with a huff that tried to be more annoyed than amused, but fell short of the mark. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“You’ll need to do better than that, sir.”

“I will.” She spared the ration bar a skeptical look. “What flavor is it?”

“Calories.”

“You are not selling me on this.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Thank you, Sharp.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Thank you, Sharp.”

He nodded his respect to her in lieu of a salute as he turned and made his way to the door. As he pressed the controls, a sharp ding sounded from his datapad. He stopped in the doorway and brought it up to review.

“Sir?”

“I’m eating,” she singsonged back.

“You might want to take it with you, sir. I just got an update. Commander Bly’s out of bacta and his status has been downgraded.”

Kark the ration bar. Aayla was on her feet and rounding the desk before Sharp had even looked up. “Can we get him out of there?”

“He’s at a level we can handle in our onboard facilities.” He turned his datapad to let her see the screen, his voice lowering. “Let me make some calls. They won’t be happy about it, but I bet you could spring him.”

---

"Eta-class shuttle on approach to Lothal Medical Station, please transmit your clearance codes."

She blinked herself back to focus- she had been lightly meditating for the duration of the journey, and she had to consciously bring herself back to the confines of the cockpit.

"Jedi Shuttle 628, transmitting codes."

She hadn't realized how much she'd missed the stark coziness of the tiny ambassador shuttle. Before the war, she and Quinlan had traveled extensively in one. It had seemed homey and familiar then, but now it felt like a relic of another age. It lacked weaponry and significant shielding, and she wondered- not for the first time- how easily she had girded herself in the defensive comforts of war.

This wasn't her first time at the medical station, but without Bly at her side, she felt... well. Perhaps it was their last nightmarish visit there, perhaps it was his seething hatred of the Kaminoans bleeding into her feelings, but her lekku hadn't stopped writhing in their harness until she had forced herself into calm through meditation. She had a raging headache.

The radio clicked into silence. She waited, stroking the tip of a lek with both hands to fill the dead air.

"General Secura," came the echoing voice of the clone controller through the line. "We weren't expecting you."

"I'm not scheduled. I'm here to visit my commander."

"I'm sure he'd appreciate that, sir." There was a hint of a smile through the static. "Proceed to hangar bay 6.

"Jedi Shuttle 628 to hangar bay 6," she acknowledged, taking the yoke and flicking the shuttle out of autopilot. "Thank you."

---

It shouldn’t have felt like a tactical extraction from an enemy vessel- it really shouldn’t've- but still, relief lifted a weight she hadn’t known she was carrying when no one was there in the hangar bay to greet her as she disembarked. She paused to discreetly plug Sharp’s datastick into the terminal port just through the hangar’s door into the corridors beyond. It beeped a quiet confirmation. She mentally thanked whatever slicer the CMO had found to make that particularly useful little program. Bly’s request for transfer had been moved into the database. The Kaminoans could argue, but they’d have to fight paperwork instead of just telling her no outright.

With her mind whirring through contingency plans, she padded silently down the grey and white corridor towards the nurse’s station. If she were lucky, she wouldn’t run into any of the doctors themselves. She knew each medical station usually housed at least one or two of the Kaminoan scientists, and the chances were significantly higher with Bly being here. A kama usually brought in the big fish.

The corridors were quiet and empty- the first being she saw was the clone at the small nurse’s station at the conjunction of corridors. He snapped upright, brushing his greys off and dropping into a sharp salute. “General, sir.”

She smiled, indicating for him to be at ease with a wave of her hand. “Hello, trooper. I’m here to pick up my commander- could you help me?”

“Uh, yes, of course, sir,” he fumbled, his face darkening slightly under her friendly attention as he turned to his terminal. “CC-5052 of the 327th, correct?”

“Marshal Commander Bly, yes, that’s correct,” she murmured, leaning against the counter to try and sneak a glimpse of the screen. The cursor stopped moving for a few seconds, and she drummed her fingers against the desk in mild impatience- when she looked at the clone, she found his eyes staring straight down her top. She stifled an ungraceful snort- she often forgot how well mannered Bly demanded the entirety of the 327th be in her presence- and pointedly cleared her throat. The poor man coughed in reply and went back to typing.

“Right, he’s- ah, he’s on this wing, on Denth level. Room 57. End of the corridor, down four levels, turn right out of the lift.”

She beamed at him, reaching over the desk to pat his arm in thanks as he stood. “Thank you- what’s your name?”

“Ah,” he stammered, flushing even damn darker. She tried not to look amused. “CT-8824, sir.” He paused, then wilted a little under the questioning lift of her brow. “Kit. Kit, sir, but here we go by numbers.”

“Kit. I have a dear friend named Kit,” she reassured. “It’s a good name.”

“Thank- thank you, sir. General, sir.”

With a warm smile over her shoulder, she headed off towards the lifts, repeating the directions he’d given her to set them to memory. She was reaching out to tap the button when her luck ran out. A voice behind her turned her lekku to straight points.

“Master Jedi. We were not expecting you.”

Aayla closed her eyes. Goddess damn it all to dust. She took a deep breath and plastered a neutral expression over her agitation before turning around to face the Kaminoan.

“Nala Se. A pleasure to see you.”

The Kaminoan doctor glided towards her from the nurse’s station, all long angles and stark white skin under her crimson robes. The dispassionate grey galaxies of her eyes loomed down at Aayla. “Indeed. Your men were sent back to the fleet this morning. Were they found to be insufficient?”

“No, not at all,” Aayla said casually, letting her accent thicken slightly. She cocked a hip and casually rested her hand on the hilt of her lightsaber. “I’ve come to pick up my commander.”

Nala Se’s long, sinuous neck angled slightly sideways, as if she were examining Aayla’s face from a different aspect. “CC-5052 has not been released from care. You are of course entitled to visit-” the tiniest flash of annoyance pinged as a footnote in the clinical air of the Kaminoan’s presence in the force- “but he is not cleared to return to duty.”

“His reports seemed positive enough for CMO Sharp to submit a transfer request. It was approved, as well,” she added. She tried not to get a sadistic sort of satisfaction from watching the Kaminoan process the layers of meaning behind her words- that Bly’s restricted reports had made it out through their bureaucratic data blockade- that a clone medic was able to submit a patient transfer report and have it approved- that plans had been made around her without her knowledge- her face, gaunt and colorless like weathered flesh stretched over bone, stared blankly back.

“I... am sorry, Master Jedi,” she eventually started, clearly weighing every word, “but CC-5052 has not been cleared to return to duty. I must insist that he stay under our supervision until he passes all of his assessments.”

“I can assure you he won’t be returning to duty- Our Chief Medical Officer would just prefer that this part of his recovery be under his supervision. He is quite capable of passing his assessments back with the fleet. Your people have ensured our medical facilities are quite sufficient to handle this.”

Nala Se blinked slowly in reply, her lipless mouth slightly open beneath the vertical slit of her nose. The ridge down the middle of her face creased in agitation.

The urge to salt the wound of her annoyance was more than Aayla could resist.

“CMO Sharp is quite insistent. And I do not disagree.”

“I will verify the transfer documents,” came her cool reply. Aayla smiled, all warm pleasantness. Behind her back, the tips of her lekku swished like a tooka’s tail. She held the eye contact until Nala Se turned and strode away towards the nurse’s station.

The lift dinged its arrival. Aayla stepped inside and pressed the button for Denth level. She huffed out a huge sigh as the doors slid closed between herself and the cold, angry eyes of Nala Se.

-------

Room 54… 55… 56… 57. There.

She paused at the door, reaching in with her mind. He… wasn’t there. The room beyond felt silent, still, devoid of anything alive or familiar. Despite it, she tapped the door controls and went inside.

The room was white and sleek like everything else on the medical station, containing nothing more than a data terminal, a small side table, and a bed (though it lacked pillows and blankets, she noted with gritted annoyance.) The sheets were rumpled- he had slept here, at least, and the lack of medical equipment indicated that he was likely well on the better side of injured- but there was nothing else to give a hint of where he was.

Even without her master’s gift of psychometry, her habit of centering herself through touch was a familiar habit from years under his tutelage. She brushed her fingers across the thin bedsheet and closed her eyes. For the first time since the battlefield, she felt for the glow of their connection and flowed into the channels of it, as surely as a stream emboldened by rainfall.

He was guarded. Uncertain. Alone, and a touch defensive. The bright length of a corridor came to her mind’s eye- he was not with anyone, not being examined or tested. The whirring gears of his thoughts spun by with focused rapidity. Plans, situational analysis, schedules, scores, all the vestments of control worn to hide his wavering uncertainty- a powerful man in a powerless place. Confident, she reached out to brush the clockwork of his mind.

{Bly.}

And everything screeched to a halt. Silence echoed back through the connection- then the rattling of a breath from lungs that were simultaneously hers and not hers.

{... Aayla?}

{I’m here, love.}

{You’re here?!}

She caught herself smiling at the churning excitement that flooded at her. She projected back the image of his empty room, her hand brightly blue against the drab linens. His response was a jumbled mix of relief and five languages’ worth of curse words strong enough to peel paint off a gunship.

She backed slowly out of his headspace, not wanting to disorient him, and headed for the doorway. He was close- she stopped in the middle of the corridor, looking in the direction of the lifts, not sure from which way he’d come. Then-

"Aayla!"

She whipped around at the shout of her name, lekku swinging over her shoulder with the movement. And there he was, down the wide white hallway- whole, grinning, looking so different in his red and black medical uniform with his hair shorn down to nothing, but still so unmistakably Bly in his stance and the bright softness of his signature in the force. She broke into a run towards him, laughing with relief.

She stopped herself short of leaping into his arms and wrapping herself around his waist, settling for folding into the crushing press of his embrace. This was not the time or place- the cold grey eyes of Nala Se may have been watching from the security feeds, and for goddess' sake, the man had just come back from death. The shuddering trauma of that memory crumbled to dust at the firm, gentle hand cradling the back of her head. She felt as much as heard him take a deep, shuddering breath into her lek.

"I didn't expect you for days. They wouldn't tell me a kriffing thing," he mumbled into her headwrap. He pulled her smotheringly tight against himself for a moment, then stepped back and gripped her shoulders as he looked her up and down. "You're all right?"

She would not cry. She would not cry, even if the look on his face made her eyes sting. "I'm fine." She reached up and cupped his face in her hands, stroking her thumbs over the splashes of golden tattoos on his cheeks. "You took the brunt of it."

"Good." He stopped himself at the indignant shock that must have hit his mind from hers. She didn't bother to shield it. "I mean, not good. But I'm glad you're not hurt. I haven't been able to get news since they pulled me out of bacta. I... ah." he stopped himself and dropped his hand to the swell of her hip- she unconsciously leaned into him at the pressure, and the flash of hunger across his face suddenly went skittish. "Come on, in here." He lowered his voice, glancing up and down the hallway before grabbing her wrist and pulling her after him. "Prying eyes."

They ducked into his room. He stopped to close the door behind them, refusing to let go of her hand, then-

Oh.

Oh hello.

He was everywhere, all at once- kissing her fiercely, hands clutching at her, the hard planes of his body pressing tight to the curves of hers with unyielding pressure. Her noise of surprise faded into a moan against his lips, and the sound only seemed to drive him harder.

It gave her pause.

He was rarely this aggressive- passionate, yes, but typically canted towards pleasure with the mind of a confident tactician. This was frantic and grasping, desperate for reassurance- she dropped smoothly from the kiss and held his face between her hands. He stood panting, eyes still closed, trying to catch his breath, and she reached through their bond and touched inquiringly.

{May I?}

{Please.}

With a tiny smile, she closed her eyes and flooded into his mind with a slow, persistent pressure. He let out the tiniest of whimpers, but she felt the suppressed emotion yield immediately to her touch, going supple under the waves of peacecalmstrength. The tension in him shuddered and fell slack- his whole presence gentled under her hands.

{Better?}

She opened her eyes to find him staring. She smiled as he dropped his forehead down to meet hers. "Yes. Kriffing hells, I missed you."

"I missed you too," she murmured, pressing a chaste but lingering kiss to his lips. She trailed her hands from his face to his arms and stepped back slightly to look him over. His sleeves were rolled up above the elbows to show the bright golden tattoos over the thick muscles of his forearms- almost certainly in intentional defiance to the Kaminoan doctors, she mused- though it also left on display the fresh scar where jagged bone had torn through his skin. "How are you feeling?"

"Better. Came out of the tank yesterday. Upright and self ambulatory. I'm not back to where I was, but I was above standard in all assessments to start with, so that gave me some leeway."

She ran an inquiring hand across his midsection and he answered by hooking a thumb into the waistband of his pants, tugging them down just enough to bare his skin to her, and lifting his shirt with the other hand.

She hissed in a breath between her teeth. Thin white dashes of a surgical droid's work peppered his lower abdomen as far down his groin as she could see, and a longer scar, wide but flanked by the dotted evidence of absent staples, disappeared upwards under his shirt. The severity of his injuries hadn't ever been in question- she had read the medical reports Sharp had been able to access- but to see the aftermath, clean of the grime and blood and adrenaline of battle, struck a dissonant chord in her mind.

“Oh, Bly.” Her fingers started to follow the large incision upwards- goddess, they'd had to crack his chest, it looked horrible and something about it felt wrong- but she stopped herself as her heart began to pound an alarmed cadence in her skull. He reached up to envelop her hand in his and draw it away from the line of scarring. His shirt fell back into place, hiding the damage from view.

“Hey,” he said, tipping her head up with two fingers under her chin, all big eyes and steady reassurance. “They had to do a lot of work. Lots of new parts. You always tell me to trust the medics.”

“I trust the medics. I don’t trust the Kaminoans.”

He laughed wryly, a rumble deep in his chest. “That makes two of us.” The timbre of his voice, low and resonant, took the edge off of her agitation- he wasn’t struggling for breath, he didn't look pained, he sounded fine. She shook off the residual anxiety with a shuddering twitch of her lekku.

“I’m getting you out of here.”

He blinked hard. “... Now?”

“Yes,” she replied, unable to hide a smile at the burst of excitement that radiated through their bond, bright and warm as sunshine. “The transfer’s been accepted.”

“I thought you were just here to visit.” He grinned like a lothcat and grabbed her head with both hands to press a kiss to her crown. “You’re incredible.”

"And you’re going to need a touch up," she murmured, distracting herself by stroking a teasing finger over the broken line of tattoo on his forearm.

"Don't say that too loud. Nala Se isn't a big fan of my... customizations." His eyes glinted with mischief. "Pretty sure she considered setting me on fire at one point."

"Nala Se can shove it up her ass"

She heard him chuckle under his breath as he pulled her back into his arms. The warmth of his face nuzzled its way across her headwrap and cone to settle against the base of her lekku, and she practically melted into him as she heard him breathe her in. A warm, steady balance she'd been missing for the last three weeks nestled into the core of her. It felt like she could breathe again.

She reached up behind him to skim over the sad, buzzed remains of his hair. It had just been long enough to tangle her fingers in before, and she let out a huff of disappointment as he pulled back. Her fingertips found his face and stroked across the golden streaks on his cheeks.

"It'll grow back," he murmured, catching her hand as it traced over his jaw. He pressed a kiss to the back of it, and held it to his lips for longer than was polite. Aayla couldn't hold back a grin.

"It had better."

He turned her hand over and closed his eyes as he kissed her open palm, slowly dragging his thumb along the length of hers. His eyes were dark and tantalizingly feral when they opened to stare into hers again.

"How long of a jump to get back to the fleet?"

"About nine hours."

"Perfect."

Behind her back, her lekku tried to curl into tight spirals. "They told me you need to take it easy."

"You need to take it easy on me-" his smile quirked into a wicked, hungry thing, and she flushed a little. "I have no intention of taking it easy on you."

She giggled as his thick hands spanned her waist and pulled her into his chest, then lifted her as if she weighed nothing. Her legs wrapped around him on reflex. "Bly!"

He could only play the rogue for so long before his grin went wide and cheeky, backing them towards the bed. "I've been floating in a kriffing tank having drugged-up fever dreams about you for weeks. Can't help it. Just let me kiss you for a minute."

---

Cocooned in the shuttle by the sapphire blur of hyperspace, she had let everything go- the violence and unpredictability of war, the anxious risk of discovery, the unsettling draw of the force that had been pulling at her for weeks, the conflict the Order had instilled in her heart- and lost herself in the reassuring weight of Bly's sleeping form. He was face down between her bare breasts with his arms wrapped heavily around her middle, the rest of him trailing down the bed between the valley of her legs. She had one arm draped across his back while the other stroked gentle patterns in his short-cropped hair. He was exhausted- they had loved each other languorously, but the effort had drained what little reserves he had left after weeks in bacta. Now he slept, and every line and crease the war had carved into his face softened away to nothing. He looked so incredibly young like this. Her heart ached at the sight of him.

But now, even with him here, she was alone again with her thoughts. The coals of her agitation smoldered dangerously under the reassuring blanket of his presence. Her mind jumped back and forth from introspection to extrospection, trying to grasp their place in the larger theater of the war. The galaxy. The Order. All of it.

When his heart had stopped and his mind ripped away from hers, the maw of consuming emptiness had almost devoured her- as seasoned of a knight as she was, she had no way to comprehend the magnitude of what the breaking of a force bond would do, nevermind the charring horror of being in his mind as it happened. The squads sent for rescue found her at the center of a massive crater of her own making, screaming like a madwoman as she fought death itself for possession of her commander. Even after he was shuttled away to the medical frigate and she could feel the fluttering pulse of his presence again, the phantom pain left behind by his momentary absence in her mind hid around corners and rustled dangerously during moments of silence. Days later, after the campaign had wrapped up and the last dregs of the 327th had returned to the fleet in orbit, she had wandered the corridors of the Intrepid like a ghost, checking on their men for hours until Sharp had sedated her.

The thought of losing him burned in her gut like a brand. She understood now, intimately, nauseatingly, why the Order held its strong stance on attachments. It wasn't the act of attachment itself that lured in the cold fingers of the dark side- it was the consequences of the inevitable loss, and the lengths one would go to protect oneself from the soul-rending grief and pain. A force bond in-and-of itself wasn't a bad thing, she knew; most masters bonded with their padawans, and some Jedi kept tight friendships with each other that transcended distance and time. It was a lifesaver in battle, for certain, but for the benefits of that livewire of connection to outweigh the risk of destruction, you had to keep your souls from being utterly interwoven and be willing to let the other person go, and that... she felt her stomach drop at the thought-

- And the cold rise up to greet her. She shuddered and closed her eyes, then opened them as the darkness once again stared back. Bile surged in her throat.

Bly mumbled in his sleep and nuzzled his face deeper into the softness of her body. She stroked up and down his spine in apology at her projection- even without a direct connection to the force, he could feel what she failed to shield, though she was guiltily relieved at the distraction. Breathing herself back to calmness, she turned her focus to him instead, fingers fixating on the golden patterns etched into his skin to center herself away from the treacherous maze of her thoughts.

She loved him.

Goddess smite it all, she loved him. It was not a passionate, consuming thing- not the sharp burn of jealous infatuation- but a steady, warming glow that steadied her mind and brightened her days. There was not a place she didn’t want him- strong at her side, stalwart at her back, unrelenting above her, supple beneath her. She loved every fatal flaw of him, and knew now the answer to what had been a silent query for the last few years.

How far will you go for him?

To death, she now knew. She would fight death, the Force, the wills of fate, whatever was in her way, to keep him safe and with her.

I’m just one of millions, he had said to her on so many occasions. I’m nothing.

But he was everything, and she had never found a way to put that into words convincing enough to sway him. He had doubted her until she, in a fit of pique, brought him into her own mind and showed him. The experience hadn’t gone quite to plan- he had been struck speechless and ataxic for half an hour, and she had panicked, terrified she had somehow broken him with the overwhelming flow of the living Force. She had been on the verge of calling Sharp, Quinlan, Master Yoda, anyone, but his trembling hands had just drawn her down to him, laid in the inverse of how they were now, and steadied himself against her warmth until his senses returned. He had never questioned her feelings on the matter again.

What the two of them had felt right in a way neither of them could fully describe- peace born of war, love born of suffering, a bond born of shared loss. The Force sang in her veins when he was with her, and her hands never felt guided by anything but the light. But for as easily as the justification came to her when they were together, she knew there was no chance of it being defensible to the council. It sickened her, but she felt as though the council’s will was growing less rooted in the guiding light of the force, and more by the overreaching needs of the republic and the chilled hands of political whims.

And that was the crux of it, wasn’t it? War had changed her. War had changed them all, not least of all the Order itself. Or… had it? Had the council always been this backwards, this capable of hypocrisy, this disconnected from its teachings? The council had sent her master off to sell his soul for the cause, had armored their negotiators and sent them to initiate conflict instead of resolve it, had accepted an army of slaves without hesitation. It ate at her like a hungry gdan.

This was no longer the Order she thought she knew, that she had defended with her life and convictions. What she wanted, what she was, no longer seemed to align with what she was expected to be.

If she were a true Jedi, a knight worthy of her station, she would disentangle herself from the steadying warmth of him. Set him aside. Focus on the task of the war, and on the keeping of the peace beyond its final truce. She would shun the darkness that strangled at her heart and become a picture of serenity and balance. That was what the Council would insist she do, should they find out the extent of this. Of them.

But she was not the perfect Jedi.

If the order had wanted perfection, they should have placed her under the tutilage of someone less volatile, less prone to passion and impulse. She rose from the lineage of Tholme and Quinlan Vos. What did they expect?

She was Aayla Secura. Her fire had always been her own, even if she had allowed the torch to be held in the service of the Order. Perhaps it was time to take it into her own hands and step into the darkness of the unknown.

She was bemused to realize that the thought didn't scare her as much as she expected it to.

It was going to require a lot of thought, and risk. And paperwork, most likely. Bly was technically property of the Republic, though the thought made her bones itch. It would likely have to wait until the end of the war. She would need to get a feel for the politics of it all- her nose wrinkled in disgust. That was the arena of Skywalker's badly kept secret, not hers. She'd have to consult Padme.

She was going to need help.

If this war didn't destroy them first, their love ran the risk of doing the same. They were going to need guidance from someone outside the status quo.

Padme, and Quinlan. She needed to talk to Quinlan.

He was going to kill her.

Chapter Text

Fleet Staging, Perlimian Space Route, 1069 days after Geonosis

Aayla couldn’t really put off her call to Vos any longer.

It had been a busy morning- Bly had gone through all of his physical and cognitive assessments and passed with klicks to spare, but now he’d disappeared off to the freshers to wash away the sweat of the morning’s exertions and change into a fresh set of blacks, and she had about 20 minutes alone in her quarters before she was needed by anyone.

Might as well rip off the bandage, no matter how sick of a feeling she had about it.

She set her holoprojector on Bly’s armor crate and punched in Quinlan’s frequency. It rang a few times, then connected- clearly on a wrist com unit, as she could only see him from the chest up- lightly armored, dreadlocks tied back, his eyes tired but wide with curiosity.

“... Aayla?”

“Is this a bad time?”

“No, not at all,” he replied, sounding surprised and a little breathless. He was clearly on the move. “Let me get to somewhere private.”

“I can call back-”

“No, it’s fine, just-” the bobbing image of him flickered out, then flashed back to life in much higher quality. It looked like he’d commandeered a strategy room on his cruiser. “There.”

For a few seconds they just stared at each other, taking in the details of someone deeply familiar but unseen for months upon months. She wondered briefly what he saw, looking at her.

“Well at least you aren’t dead.”

The breath she’d been holding loosed itself in a deep sigh. “Quin.”

“Aayla,” he mocked gently back, parroting her tone. Then his brows lowered. “Are you all right? I’ve been worried.”

“I’m fine. Just preparing for the next campaign. I’ve been busy.” He hmph’d, crossing his arms over his chest and staring hard at her. She fought the urge to grind her teeth. She knew that look. “Whatever you’re thinking, just say it.”

“Did you enjoy your little dance with the darkness?”

She stared in silence, biting back the snarky commentary that flashed impulsively across her thoughts. “I don’t have the affinity for it that you do.”

“From anyone else I would take that as an insult.”

“Perhaps you should take it as one from me as well.”

“You’re spicy today. Been sampling the tiingilar ¹?"

Her head tipped skyward. The veiled jabs about Bly were exactly why she had avoided this conversation for weeks. She needed him, needed his advice and council- she just had to survive his scathing judgement to get to the meat of it.

“I called you for advice, Quin.”

“I have plenty, you just have to be willing to take it.”

“I’m serious.”

“I’m all ears.”

She suddenly found herself lost for words. The questions she’d prepared no longer seemed right, the phrasing of them a finger on a feather-light trigger that would set him off.

He took her silence as an opportunity to guess, and crossed his arms over his chest. “If it’s about your clone-”

“Quin-”

“Your clone commander-”

“Please be reasonable.”

“Please be smart, Aayla. You’re one of the finest Jedi I’ve ever known- a damn sight better than me- and to watch you throw it away for some ridic-”

“It’s not-”

“It is, and you know it. This-” he gesticulated with one hand- “thing with him will get you killed-”

Her hands settled firmly onto her hips. “Khaleen. Ventress. You don’t get to lecture me about attachment.”

“And despite them, I’m still a Jedi, aren’t I? I chose the order-"

“You didn’t choose anything, they died. You don’t. Get. To lecture me.”

He stared for a moment, then uncrossed his arms and leaned his fists onto the edge of the strategy table he was transmitting from.

“What happened to the padawan who used to school me about duty?"

Her hands on her hips tightened, and she broke eye contact with Quin’s holographic form to stare with gaze unfocused at the transmitter base. “She went to war, Quinlan. And she survived. Nothing is the same as it was five years ago, and I need your help.”

“You don’t love him.”

His words took her aback. Her expression turned fierce as she stared him down. “You don’t get to tell me who I do and don’t-”

“You can’t love a weapon, Aayla.” His voice was the taut recoil of a bowstring, sharp and bitter. “That’s all he is.”

“He’s a man.”

“He’s a copy of a piece of Mandalorian trash. If he dies, just grab the next one-”

Her hand slammed down on the holorecorder, cutting off the image. Her shoulders heaved as if she’d just finished a rough spar.

Dammit, Quin.

This war. This force-forsaken war. For all his passion, Quin had been a patient and loving master. That conversation would never have happened in her padawan days. She should have been horrified. Instead, she just felt… numb. And sadly unsurprised.

His long mission to assassinate Dooku had changed him. And now that he was back in the good graces of the council, commanding his own troops in the outer rim, just as she was…

Well. The war had changed them both. He hadn’t been wrong in his jab about her blind idealism in the past, trying to guide him back towards the light. If the war had taught her one thing, it was that the light of the force and the teachings of the Jedi weren’t always casting the same shadows.

Her comm buzzed with an incoming call, interrupting her train of thought. Quinlan. She rejected it with a press of her thumb and turned the damn thing off. She had no desire to go another round with him today. Maybe tomorrow. Absolutely not again tonight.

She headed to her closet and picked out her warmer winter robes, settling them on over her usual top and leggings and cinching them with a wide belt. She clipped her saber to it and slipped her silent comm into one of the many voluminous pockets. Then she popped open the lid of the armor crate and checked its contents one more time. Bly’s helmet, repaired and scrubbed clean of the medics' triage marks, stared blankly back up at her, nested on top of the rest of his armor. Tucked beside it was his new vambrace- she picked it up, turning it over in her hands, and on impulse slipped it over her arm and tugged the sleeve of her robe over it to hide it from view. The plastoid sat cool against her skin, a welcome distraction from the nausea that Vos had left behind in her gut. She sighed and shut the lid of the crate, activating the repulsorlifts and guiding it alongside her with a brush of her hand.

Almost back to whatever sort of normal we can manage, she mused, heading out the door and making the turn towards the medbay.

She’d encouraged Bly to hold off on having his evaluations done until today, in part so he could get back into the rhythm of life back with the fleet, but mostly because the 327th wouldn’t receive its next set of marching orders until the next day. She knew he needed a few days to get back into fighting shape. Three weeks in bacta had set him back a bit more than he liked to admit- she couldn’t tell by looking at him, not really, but she felt his disquiet through the force at his subtle tells of weakness, and knew he needed a pause to himself back together before throwing them all back into the fray.

All he had left to do was his timed armor donning, and that was more of a ceremonial procedure than anything else- part of the Kaminoans’ contract with the Republic- but it was still required.

The medical suite was devoid of its usual bustle of activity as she walked in with the repulsocrate gliding steadily at her side, and she took a good look around, surprised at its stillness. Even in the grateful lull between campaigns, there were always medics around organizing supplies, finishing reports, treating minor bumps and scrapes and the results of whatever mad shenanigans the men got up to when they were idle. But tonight every bed was empty, and the room felt pulseless and quiet as she leaned on an exam table. Well, not truly pulseless- the entire ship vibrated in the Force, restrained and quivering with anticipation.

Tonight was the Tal'Evaar ² .

New Blood, Bly had translated for her, years before. Brotherhood was everything to the clones, and the acceptance of new vode ³ into the tightly knit ranks of the 327th brought something out in the men that changed the whole atmosphere of the fleet. Every corps was different about it, but most had some kind of ceremony for when they received new soldiers from Kamino. The Star Corps would clear as much space as possible in the hangars, requisition all the food they could, bring out whatever wickedly strong drinks they had squirreled away from campaigns and brewed up in the secret little still they kept aboard the Freedom, and have a veritable feast. It was too big to have on one ship- there were just too many men to fit aboard one, so each vessel had its own separate function- but the one aboard the flagship Intrepid was the biggest, and typically the wildest.

It was a real mando kind of affair, she supposed. Their very genetic code called for things like this- she never felt the men happier or more at peace than they did on the Tal'Evaar nights. There were sanctioned matches between squads, most of which were often still reeling from the loss of their comrades. The shinies were taught marching songs and shanties and casual slang that campaigns had brought into their corps culture, ate things they’d never dreamed of tasting, and a good many picked or changed their names over the spicy food and strong liquor.

It was completely foreign to her, so different from the effortless peace of the Jedi, so raw and joyful. There was no word for it in basic, nor in Ryl- Bly had called it shereshoy ⁴ . Whatever it was, she found it fascinating and addictive. She was no Nautolan, but the air in the hangars would be so dense with adrenaline and testosterone that her lekku would tingle. It was beautifully overwhelming.

Some jedi likely didn’t find the concept as enthralling as she did- Quinlan certainly didn’t, she mused, then banished the thought with a twinge of pity for his men.

The metallic snick of the medbay door shook her from her introspection. Bly looked tired but content as he joined her, the deep creases across his forehead that he’d been brooding for the last few days smoothing away to something resembling average. He was relieved to be back, she knew. He took a quick glance around the empty medbay before he pressed a kiss to her forehead. She splayed a hand across his chest, stroking her fingertips across the smooth fabric of his blacks.

“Thanks for bringing it all down for me.”

“Of course.”

“Did my new plates come in?”

“Mmhmm,” she replied, opening the crate with the tap to the control panel. Bly peeked inside, looking for all the galaxy like a crecheling on Life Day.

He reached in and busied himself with sorting through his armor, and she stepped aside to give him room. She felt a ping of query from him and glanced over to find him looking sideways at her, holding his newly requisitioned and freshly painted cuirass up questioningly. She smiled warmly back at him with an almost imperceptible nod.

She had cleaned and repaired and repainted all of his gear in his absence, and then purposely kept it the hell away from him until he was cleared to wear it again. If he’d put it on and it felt loose from losing muscle, he’d have had a high-speed come-apart and worked himself to exhaustion in the gym. If she was being honest with herself, though, it had been just as much for her own benefit. Working on it on the nights she couldn’t sleep had brought her back to balance, giving her hands a tangible piece of him to heal in his absence.

“Thank you,” he said, sending her a small half smile of gratitude. She returned it with her own as he pulled each piece out one by one and placed them in meticulous array on the table in front of him.

“It gave me something to do that wasn’t flimsi and datapads. I was happy for it.”

“Couldn’t have done it better myself.”

“Oh,” she remembered. “And there’s this.” She reached into the roomy sleeve of her robes and slipped her arm free of the oversized vambrace she’d been casually concealing. She held the body-warmed armor out to him, a bit flustered with anticipation in a way she hadn’t felt since her padawan days.

“I know how much of a ritual painting is, but Deviss swore it would be fine. He helped me with the patterns. It all matches your old ones, but-” she rotated it, letting the glaring lights of the medbay illuminate the inside of the piece. “- I improvised a little.”

Secura Blue, the men in procurement called it- they used it to paint her visage on the side of the gunships. She had added a tidy streak of it on the inside of the armor, tucked away to sit right over his pulse point. Painting the outside of another person's armor was considered a declaration of trust- she had helped him with his on more occasions than she could count- but to paint the inside was an altogether different level of intimacy.

When he took it from her and turned it over in his hands, distracting himself with tracing the sharp lines of fresh plastoid and 327th yellow, she snuck in her afterthought. "... and I thought you might help me paint mine."

“It’s perfect…” he trailed off. Ah, he’d caught it. “... but. Wait. Yours?”

So he had been paying attention. “Yes. Mine. It’s not as much as you’d like-” she interrupted him before he could even start to ask questions- “but I want your help with it. With the fit. And combat testing it.”

His whole face split into a grin. She let out an undignified squeal when he scooped her up around her waist and spun her around, kissing the daylights out of her right in the middle of the damn medbay. When he pulled back, his whole face was alight with glee.

“Could you do this later?” came Sharp’s unamused rumble from the doorway. Neither had noticed- or cared- that they suddenly had company. “I’m starving, the whole karkdamn ship smells like food. I’m not getting paid to watch you two flirt.”

“You’re not getting paid at all,” Bly muttered, finally tearing his eyes away from her, still grinning like a fool. She stroked her hand over his cheek and landed lightly on her toes as he set her down.

“Well I’m not getting fed, either.”

“Our apologies, Sharp,” she said, patting his elbow as she moved the armor crate out of the way with a light shove. “I told him about the armor.”

“Well I’m not going to act like a twit over it, but count me in the ‘happy to see you wearing it’ category, sir.” Sharp allowed himself a crooked half-smile. “I don’t like patching up nicks and scratches that a bit of armor would prevent. Plus he worries like a nuna-hen over you. The last time you ended up in bacta, I almost had to drug him.”

“Sharp.”

“Oh get off it, commander.”

“I’ll beat you bloody.”

“And then you’ll have to write off a very expensive line item. CMO’s don’t come cheap.”

“It might be worth the investment.”

Aayla huffed and planted her hands on her hips to get their attention, and both clones stopped their bickering and looked at her- Bly had the courtesy to look a tiny bit sheepish, but Sharp’s gritty annoyance flickered to confusion.

“You’re… wearing robes. Sir.”

“Mmhmm,” she hummed, holding her arms out slightly from her sides and looking down at herself. She rarely wore anything but her usual top and leggings, but she had gone out of her way to find the softspun tan robes she kept onhand for colder climates. Sharp looked puzzled.

“Why?”

“Last Tal'Evaar, they opened the ventral hangar doors. It was so cold I could barely stand it. I’m coming prepared this time.”

“I’m sure he’ll more than keep you warm, sir,” Sharp muttered, looking down at his datapad.

Both Aayla and Bly stopped dead to turn and look at Sharp. She choked out a startled laugh.

Sharp felt eyes on him and looked up. “What?”

Bly’s voice sounded sterner than his posture belied- he was defensive on principle. “Watch your mouth, Sharp.”

“What! You two’ll go at least two rounds in the ring before the night’s up, and that rotgut from the Freedom will have everyone sweating through their blacks. That-” he stopped himself. “Oh kriff, that’s not what I meant.”

Aayla’s stunned look dissolved into laughter behind her hand. Bly was trying desperately (but failing) to look unamused. Sharp’s cheeks darkened as he drummed his fingers around the edges of his datapad.

“I didn’t mean it like- that.”

“I know,” she managed to get out, patting him comfortingly on the sleeve of his greys to soothe his prickling embarrassment.

“Well, ah- erhm.” He cleared his throat. “Can we get started?”

Bly shook his head in exasperation and turned back to the table, laying the new vambrace in perfect symmetry to its mate in the organized array of armor. “Let’s get this over with.”

Sharp turned to his datapad, bringing up the program he needed as Aayla moved to his side to get out of the way. “Are you ready?”

Bly gave a curt nod. “Ready.”

“Time starts.”

The troopers she had seen perform this exercise in the past had lunged into the test like they were being chased- Bly moved like he was walking into the mess hall, steady and calm, his presence as settled as if he were meditating.

Boots first, stepping into each without bending down to fasten them. Cod and skid followed, then cuisses, snapping the front and back pieces together to make the solid, seamless armor over his thickly muscled thighs. He bent down then, snapping his boots tight as his greaves slotted over the ankles. He reached for the wide plates of his lower abdomen next, connecting one edge of them together before stretching the fastened clasps out wide to fit his torso in the opened gap. A quick snap of his arm swung the backpiece around his side to connect to the opposite edge with perfect accuracy. He shuffled it down slightly, tucking it behind the edge of his lower armor until the gription clicked into place.

Lower half completely girded, he grabbed up his breast and backplates. He usually kept them in separate halves when they were in private, but for today they were connected into a single piece by the shoulder straps- he hefted it over his head and let it fall into place over the expanse of his chest before fastening the sides of it over his midsection plates. He paused to flex himself side to side, testing the fit. Apparently satisfied, he set to securing his arms- the cuff-like rerebraces snugged over his biceps, then the longer more shapely vambraces over his forearms. His smaller underpauldrons came next, the convex caps settling over the broad slope of his shoulders.

A trooper, at this point, would be all but done- but with rank came clutter, he always said, and he reached for the heavy tan kama on its sturdy belt. He snapped it out to loosen up the stiff new fabric before securing it around his hips. His duty belt came next. This took more fiddling- the buckle had to be secured and then adjusted tight, the holsters had to be strapped to the center ring to keep them in place, and his pistols, sitting rail-to-rail in opposing L’s on the table, snicked firmly into their holsters with a twirl that Bly somehow made look utilitarian rather than flashy.

The yoke of his rank-pauldron came next, settling over his head and onto his shoulders. The table had been cluttered seconds before, but now it sat empty save for his gauntlets and helmet. He slipped each gauntlet on with steady speed, then picked his helmet up, tossed it to face the right way and grip it one-handed by the chin, and flipped the heavy mass of plastoid over his head as casually as a deck officer might slip on his cover. The visor gave a subtle flicker, the blank black shifting instantly to a lighter shade of grey-

- and the datapad in Sharp’s hand gave a sharp triple-beep. “Endex, commander. Very nice. Point-oh-three short of your record.”

The whole thing had taken less than a minute. She blinked rapidly. She didn’t realize she’d been staring quite that hard.

Years she’d been at his side- years - and she’d never had the opportunity to see him try his hand at this particular evaluation. It was... oddly impressive. She’d certainly seen how fast he could do it in the other direction, but...

“Well,” came Sharp’s grating rumble over the top of his datapad. “I can officially declare you fit to return to service. Welcome back to the shitshow, sir.”

“Nowhere else I’d rather be,” Bly returned back, pulling his helmet off and clapping a hand against the CMO’s shoulder. Sharp returned the gesture with a firm double-tap on Bly’s vambrace. They knocked foreheads lightly before moving apart.

“Thank you, Sharp,” she smiled. The medic returned it with one wider than she’d seen in months.

“Any time, general. Just glad to have him back.”

“As am I.”

She felt something nudge her hand and looked up to see Bly moving to stand next to her, looking fond and settled. “We’d better get going.”

Sharp dipped his head in parting and headed towards his office as she and Bly moved towards the doors- she glanced back over her shoulder at him as he went. “You’re coming, aren’t you?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” he shot back at them. “But if there’s going to be a Dha Werda ⁵ , I’m not walking in without my hardshell.”

“Oh come on, Sharp,” Bly grinned back at him as the door to the corridor whooshed open. “What’re some bruises between brothers?”

-------

The corridors were empty so far from the hangar, but as they made their way through the labyrinthine halls of the flagship, following the tantalizing smell of anything-but-rations, they found themselves running into larger and larger groups of their men. Bly was practically tackled by an enthusiastic batch of pilots as they rounded a corner, and she shared a fond chat with Fitz while the commander tried to extricate himself from the whooping mass of flightsuits. The older pilot was rarely one for the wild shenanigans of his fellow flyboys, but she found him delightful all the same. She teasingly abandoned Bly to his fate and walked arm-in-arm with Fitz towards the hangar.

“Ready for a wild night, sir?”

“Oh always. For as much as the war weighs on me, Fitz, these nights give me hope.”

“Not really a word in my vocab, sir, but I know what you mean. A few drinks in and you can almost do something other than survive.”

She squeezed his arm tight to her side and gave him a fond smile. “Almost.”

“Karking hells, Fitz,” came Bly’s panting voice from behind them. He looked distinctly rumpled. “Those boys of yours are rabid.”

“I don’t have the spots to make them my problem, commander,” came Fitz’s all-too-innocent reply. “I just fly with them.”

“Convenient,” muttered Bly. He readjusted his pauldron from where they’d knocked it off-kilter.

She politely disentangled herself from Fitz’s arm and he snapped her a quick salute. “If you need me, they’ve turned the ‘Gida into a bar again.”

“I’m sure we’ll see you, then,” she laughed. The pack of pilots they’d left behind caught up with them with a cacophony of laughter and friendly shoving, and Fitz was swept away in their rush to the hangar.

She and Bly weren’t far behind- the massive blast doors grew larger and larger as they drew closer, and goddess, was the place packed solid. The crowd at the doors parted as they approached, letting them pass steadily side by side through the disorganized ranks. The view quickly shifted from a sea of blacks and greys to a muster of richer color as they made it further into the hangar. She recognized flashes of armor designs- the ARCs with their tan and gold kamas, Sharp’s distinctive sawtooth-painted cuirass in the mix, Deviss’ single stripe down the center of his plates, newly promoted Pike’s unmarred pauldron, fleet commander Nyze with the black-shaded gold on his breastplate that his pilots all shared- all gathered in the center of the crowd. The command staff all in one place only meant one thing. She smiled and looked up at Bly.

“They’re wasting no time tonight.”

He shifted his helmet out from under his arm. “Could you-”

She was taking it right out of his hands before he could finish the question. He grinned down at her- a bright, wild thing in the uneven light of the hangar- and she felt his unguarded burst of fierce joy in her mind like a firework.

His hands free, he took off at a slow jog. The men parted when they saw him coming. Excited shouts erupted from the thickest part of the crowd- when her serene walk through the mass of soldiers got her close enough, she saw Bly at the center of a gleeful group embrace from his command staff.

Their troopers shuffled her to the front of the open space that was forming in the center of the hangar with a friendly chorus of ‘sir’s and ‘general’s. The large group with Bly were organizing themselves into close ranks- it was a sea of ARC pauldrons and heavily painted armor, brutal years of experience lined up in an orderly grid of helmetless men. It was the biggest Dha Werda she’d ever seen- easily eighty troopers participating in even ranks of ten.

Bly looked up and down the rows forming beside and behind him, then let loose with a shout that silenced the voices of thousands.

“Verrrrda!" ⁶

Every trooper in the bay pounded their boots, their fists, whatever they could into three resounding booms- the entire ship shook as if it had been struck by incoming fire. Then one of the battalion commanders responded in an answering cry, and the hundreds of men gathered to watch started up a steady hammering rhythm on his lead. It felt like the Intrepid herself had awoken from slumber with a heart thundering for war.

And then Bly started the chant.

Taung-sa-rang-bro-ka!

The lines of men followed him into the breach, identical voices joining him as they held their positions, steady but poised to strike.

Je-tii-se-ka-'rta!

They all began to drum a complex counterbeat onto their own armor, striking between words of the chant. Then as one sinuous unit, they all moved, turning to hammer the rhythm on the armor of the man to their left with brutal force. It was a dance- elegantly precise, but raw with ferocity.

Dha-Wer-da-Ver-da-aden-tratu!
Cor-u-scan-ta-kandosii-adu!

The rhythms built onto and over each other, layering into a galloping cadence. They turned again, a single step to slam fists into the cuirass of the man beside them, then back to center to bring blows against their own chests and thighs.

Duum-mo-tir-ca-'tra-nau-tracinya!
Gra-'tu-a-cuun-hett-su-dralshy' a!

The chant stopped for a few bars, but the rhythm intensified. A captain in the second row mis-timed a turn and bloodied the nose of the ARC beside him- a raucous cheer went up from the surrounding crowd, but the ARC kept up as if nothing had happened.

They turned again, facing forward, and Bly made eye contact with her at the front of the press of men- she stood with his helmet against her robes, one palm thudding the simple crowd-rhythm onto the hollow plastoid. A white hot flare of pride seared through their bond, and she rose to meet it, undaunted. His next swing was sharp and fierce.

The chant started again.

Verd-e-Se-cu-ra-troch-nyn-ures-adenn!
Dha-Wer-da-Ver-da-aden-tratu! ⁷

- wait.

What did they say?

She may not be fluent, but she knew the words to this chant specifically, and that was decidedly not how this verse began. When the choreographed movements turned the front row to face her again, his expression was wicked.

It was definitely her name she'd heard.

Oh, Bly.

She didn’t realize she had stopped her drumming on his helmet and brought it up to cover the bottom half of her face, the macros pressing against her lips. She was flushed dark to the tips of her lekku.

She heard the alteration of the verse again and again, confirming it- Secura’s Warriors, they called themselves. Striking without mercy. They kept going, verse after verse, the overpowering rhythm of a full regiment’s worth of men shaking the ship until her feet were numb in their boots. Her humbled fondness quickly washed away in the atmosphere of the hangar- she lost herself in the beat again, surrendering her shields to the throbbing cadence and amplifying it in her mind like battle meditation. She was everywhere, then- in the keen, aggressive focus of the men around her, in the brutal tattoo of fists against armor, in Bly’s galloping heartbeat alongside hers. She was everywhere, everyone, and it filled her soul with a dangerous swell of hope.

She didn’t hesitate for a second when the chant crescendoed to a halt and Bly looked at her like his soul was on fire- he held a palm out, flat and low beside his leg, a familiar question that she answered without pause. She closed the space between them and, light as a dancer, used his hand as a step to hop up onto the broad expanse of his pauldron, still holding his helmet. One gauntleted hand gripped her thigh to steady her as they swayed into a shared point of balance. He reached up for his helmet- she handed it down to him, then reeled slightly as he punched it up into the air with a shout that cut through the noise.

“VERDE SECURA!”

The entire hangar roared in reply.

-------

Bly’s return to wakefulness was a piecemeal thing. His senses came back online one at a time, clicking into place in sequence like tumblers in a lock.

Warmplushdeepcomfy

Bed. He was in bed. Their bed. Aayla's quarters.

Face down. Sinuous softness moving across his bare back.

Lekku. Aayla. She was awake and sitting leaned up against his side.

He shifted in the deep mess of pillows and felt every muscle in his body twinge. The groan that grated out from somewhere in his guts sounded like it came from both miles away and way too close, all at the same time. His head throbbed. The previous night came flooding back.

Five rounds in the ring with an eager list of contenders. Then three with Aayla. It would have been two if he’d showed his belly in the second round, but no, he’d eked a tapout from her and they had to go one more.

She was dizzyingly brutal. He felt every hit in his bones today.

That was before he’d started drinking, and after the Dha Werda Verda ⁸. New blood be damned. His blood felt ancient.

He felt her hand brush the back of his head, then settle into the knotted muscles of his neck. He didn’t bother to stifle the moan the pressure dragged out of him. Then warmth, delicious kriffing warmth, spread down his spine and into his limbs from the touch of her fingers. The relief turned his thoughts to mush.

“Nnnnnnh. Best.”

Her breathy laugh chased away the throbbing in his temples. He dragged his face across the pillow to look at her.

Fett’s left nut, she was gorgeous. The faint glow of the dimmed day-cycle lights behind her lit her in shining relief, and the elegant lines of her profile kept glowing in his vision even when he blinked, burned solidly into his sleep-fogged retinas. She had clearly been up and taken a shower, as she had on a light tank top that he knew she hadn’t fallen asleep in. The cut on her cheekbone had a thin smear of bacta on it, as well, and the patch over the nasty mat-burn on her shoulder had been replaced. She had a datapad propped up against the smooth durasteel muscle of her thigh.

It took him a second too long to realize she was staring back at him, her lips quirked in silent amusement.

“Goddess, Bly, you look like a tooka kit.”

He harrumphed. “If it got splatted by a speeder, maybe.”

That got an undignified snort out of her. “Cruel.”

“You’re the one who beat me.”

“There was quite a line of those who wanted to beat you.”

“And you were the only one who managed it.”

“Twice.”

He huffed a laugh and reached a hand back to cradle her calf. “Twice.”

She smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes. He instantly sobered.

"What is it?”

Any pretense of disguising her concern disappeared- her whole face went serious. His heart dropped before she even spoke. "I've been recalled to the temple."

His brows furrowed. "They say why?"

"No. Just a notice of recall."

He shuffled his aching body onto its side with a grunt, curling around her. His free hand found her lek and stroked the last few inches with the backs of his fingers. "That usually means a solo mission."

"Mm. Yes."

"Do you think they'll make you go undercover again?"

She sighed and powered off the datapad, tipping her head to look down at him. "I hope not. Last time was... unpleasant."

"Understatement,” he grumbled. “I never want to do that again."

She smirked. "What, spend a month without me?"

"No. Have you disappear into a slaver's den and have to work with kriffing Vos to get you back without blowing the op." He didn’t bother to hide the disgust in his tone, nor the brief highlight reel of unamused memories that flickered to the forefront of his mind.

Aayla shook her head. "You really don't like my master."

"I don't trust him,” he countered. “He doesn't care about anyone but himself."

Her chin tipped down with false sternness. Her lekku swayed like a Nexu’s tail, the one that Bly had been stroking finding his wrist and wrapping around it. "That's not true."

"Well he has a karked up way of showing it. He gives me a bad feeling every time I see him, and I've never had that feeling be wrong."

Her expression darkened. “He’s probably doing that on purpose. He doesn’t like you.”

“Well the feeling is mutual, I just can’t shove my way into his head to show it.”

“Eswo…" ⁹

“No, it’s rude. You’ve told me it’s rude. He doesn’t get a pass.”

She shrugged, deflecting his annoyance, and rested her hand on his bare thigh. “He’s a law unto himself. I don’t like it either. I’ve told him to stop.”

Bly grumbled under his breath. He felt her fingertips tracing the deep creases of muscle above his knee, and he shifted into the touch. "Somehow Kenobi and Skywalker and Fisto get combat missions. They only ever seem to turn you into intel-bait.” He sought her eyes, and she looked down at him again, her gaze softer. “It... bothers me. They're quick to put you in a dancer's kit and send you unarmed into danger."

“It goes with being twi’leki, I suppose.” Her lekku swished absently, a shadow of sensuality. “Humans are a bit more… subtle.”

“I’ll show them subtle,” he growled.

“Well you’re not subtle. You looked like murder when you walked in. Quinlan is subtle.”

“Vos has that retro- retra- that touch thing.” He wiggled the fingers of the hand pillowed under his head to illustrate. Aayla snorted. “I apologize for being a blunt instrument.” Her eyes looked suddenly troubled. He must have struck a nerve- he knew she’d spoken with Vos the day before, but they hadn’t discussed the gist of the conversation. He could only guess. He paused, then slowly snuck his hand around her side and gave her waist a playful squeeze. “Next time he shows up, we’re fucking on his bed before he gets here.”

She rolled in his grip, the datapad falling forgotten into the pile of pillows, and grabbed at his bare sides. He tucked defensively, laughing and bringing his arms up to protect his face.

“Absolutely not!”

He grinned with wicked glee. “Oh come on, he’s already insufferable, we may as well give him reason.”

“No!!”

“What if I just dragged my-”

She snatched up a pillow and thwacked him hard across the head with it, scowling at his laughter as he rolled onto his stomach. “Don’t you even finish that sentence, that is vile.”

“His face! Can you imagine his face?”

“No!”

-------

The rumble of chatter in the war room faded to silence as Bly entered, fresh from seeing Aayla and her fighter escort off in the hangar. He approached the holotable, his helmet in one hand and a datastick in the other, and took stock of his gathered command staff, noting a few black eyes and split lips from the previous night’s festivities- his gaze lingered on the ARC captain who smirked back at him from beneath the stitched gash across his eyebrow, courtesy of his own ruthless headbutt in the sparring ring. Satisfied that everyone was present and mostly intact, he wordlessly plugged the datastick into the table’s main port and leaned his fists onto the smooth surface as the briefing loaded.

“Let’s get started. General Secura may not make it back before we go planetside, so Strategy made some adjustments for tactics.”

Blue light flamed upwards into the shape of a planet, then lines and lines of text started to flow upwards. A groan rose from the crowd.

“Felucia? For kark’s sake, not again.”

“How many times are we going to retake that skughole?”

“I just got the mold out of my helmet filters from the last time.”

“Settle,” Bly warned, glancing at the gathered men. “This is preliminary. The good news is we know the territory well. And we’ve softened it twice now. We’re not going in shiny or blind.”

A chime sounded from his vambrace amidst the hum of chatter from around the room- incoming message. He shared a quick look at Deviss, who stepped up and took the reins of the meeting. He slipped his helmet back on and switched his audio settings to keep the input and output private. “s’Bly.”

“Commander, we have a Coruscant Guard shuttle inbound,” came the voice of the fleet control officer. “Requesting a landing bay and an immediate meeting with you.”

He blinked hard, puzzled. “Any idea who?”

“No, sir. They have priority clearance.”

“Send them up,” he said brusquely. “Let them know I’m in a strategy meeting. I’ll see them when we’re done here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Odd. He’d have to harass Fox about this later- his batchmate was normally efficient at giving him a heads up to expect company. He slipped his helmet off again, clipping it to his belt, and dropped back into the meeting.

The oddness only increased when, a scant few minutes later, the doors to the war room slid open and the tromp of booted feet crescendoed over Deviss’ voice.

The atmosphere in the room instantly chilled. With his hands on the table and his back to the door, he watched the gathered command staff shift subtly in his peripheral vision. Threat, their body language whispered. Abnormal. His mind spun into high gear. He consciously kept his movements slow and calm as he stood up from the table and turned to evaluate the intruders.

Nine. Full squad. Big fuckers. No rank markings. Generic Coruscant Guard redjob kit. Standard issue deeces with some subtly swanky upgrades. A fireteam with a stick up their shebs ¹⁰

“Control must not have passed it along,” he called out, a bit louder than was necessary. His typical calm demeanor was there, but honed to an edge. “This is a campaign briefing. We’ll be done shortly. You'll need to wait outside.”

He expected them to at the very least stop advancing, but the middle three troopers didn’t even break stride at his command. Annoyed, he squared up, dropping into a formal parade rest that brought his shoulders back with a threatening flex of armor. He felt more than saw the men around him bristle defensively.

“You-”

"CC-5052,” one of the red-armored troopers barked, grabbing at Bly’s arm and pulling it forward. Bly yanked it back in utter shock- the bastard had popped two of the fasteners on his vambrace, quick as a blink. “You are hereby relieved of your command and remanded to custody under-"

The room erupted into chaos, drowning out the helmeted guard's modulated voice. Bly stood stunned as rough hands unfastened his vambraces and dropped them to the ground, replaced by the smooth press of binders. He went unresisting and supple as his arms were pulled behind his back, the stun-cuffs digging hard into the outside of his wrists as they snapped shut. His helmet, his belt, his kama, his pistols, all the symbols of his command were stripped away and dropped unceremoniously to the floor. The room was thrumming with the chaos of twenty-something shouting clones. He took a deep breath. This was going to be a mess.

"That's ENOUGH," he roared, and the room fell deathly silent. The guardsman stopped talking with the rest of them, looked around, then started right back into his speech.

"Under the-"

"For kark's sake, read the room," Bly snapped. "Tell me the charges in the shuttle."

"No, we want to hear them," shouted a voice from the back of the room, followed by a chorus of affirmative shouts. "Why the kark are you taking our commander."

"Let it go, Pike," he intoned, lowering his voice to bring the tension down to his level as he watched the squad of CG tightening their grips on their weapons. Kark, these redjobs were big- What was Fox feeding them? "All of you. Drop it. We'll get this sorted on Corrie and I'll be back in a rotation."

"Sir this is sleenshit-"

"I said. Let. It. Go." His lips pressed into a firm line, echoing the deepening creases around his eyes as he scanned the faces of his men. Some looked bewildered, others enraged. A deck officer, he noted, was discreetly recording the entire scene from the main holotable. Smart man. He angled his head, looking behind him at the red-armored clones at his back. "Let's get this over with. Deviss, come with us."

Firm hands locked onto his elbows and guided him towards the doors. The clone in charge- Thire? Stone? He wasn't sure, he didn't recognize the paint but it had to be a CC- took the lead and opened the doors, directing them out into the corridor. He heard jogging footsteps behind them, and Deviss' shaved head bobbed into view beside him as they piled into the main lift down to the hangar. "Sir?"

"Deviss, you're the highest ranking officer without the general here. All of my datapads are in-" he paused, thinking of a discreet way to say Aayla's kriffing quarters, "-the secondary strategy room." Deviss barely registered the discrepancy before nodding. He got the hint. "My backup security key is in my armor locker, top shelf under my cover."

The hands on his arms gave a firm tug as they stepped out of the lift, and he shuffled to keep his balance. He'd lost sight of Deviss- he tried to crane his neck around and saw two of the guardsmen stopping him at the lift doors. His second in command looked absolutely horrified. For the first time in all of this, Bly felt panic start to squeeze at his chest.

"Desk, top drawer, look for a com," he shouted back. "Contact Command Priority, ID yourself, and issue a 411. Cody. Contact Cody.”

---

There had almost been a firefight in the hangar bay.

One of his captains had made a break for the barracks when he saw what was happening in the war room. Sounded the alarm. Spread the word. And spread it did- when the blast doors to the hangar opened, it was packed with easily an entire battalion's worth of clones- his men. Their men. The contrast to the previous night’s festivities was kick in the gut.

The sight of them choked his breath in his throat with pride. Hundreds of bewildered faces, all in stages of interrupted routine, were blocking their path to the shuttle. Those who had been armed and in full kit when they'd arrived had set up in a line in front of the doors, forming an impenetrable barrier of white and gold.

The Corrie boys had dropped into a defensive diamond, weapons out, the officer on point.

He could say the word. His men would take on the guard without hesitation, at his command. Mutiny. Chaos. Victory.

Death.

Decommissioning.

Aayla.

No.

He shouldered his way through the diamond. "Stand down, boys," he called, stopping a few feet short of his men, setting his feet under his shoulders and taking as calm and collected a stance he could with his hands pinioned. "Udesii ¹¹. Stand down. It's all right."

The ARC in the center of the line- Torque- stepped forward, pulling his helmet off with his free hand and tucking it under his weapon arm. He looked livid. "Sir, why are they doing this?"

"I don't know. It's all right. We'll get it sorted out." One by one, his men lowered their weapons. He clenched his jaw. He loved every damn one of them, and their despair and confusion made his chest ache. "Let us through."

Torque stepped into his space and reached a hand behind Bly's neck to pull his head forward, lightly knocking their foreheads together.

"K'oyacyi ¹², sir."

Bly leaned into the contact. The knot in his stomach tightened even more. "You keep Aayla safe," he whispered, his voice low enough for only Torque to hear. When he stepped back, Torque's eyes were narrowed and his jaw was set tight. Bly dipped a quick nod to the ARC, who slipped his helmet back on and stepped aside as he waved for the rest of the gathered troopers to move.

"COMMANDER ON DECK!" came a shout from the middle of the throng, and the entire mass of men parted for him and fell to attention in a cacophony of boots on durasteel. Bly gritted his teeth and started towards the shuttle. No hands on his arms, no Corrie redjobs to force him- he went under his own power, of his own free will, his head high and his eyes burning. He owed it to their men to be brave.

-------

Command Priority Message:

CC-Bly: ATTN ATTN ATTN 411 411 411

CC-Wolffe: Bly what is going on

CC-Cody: I'm getting a call from Rex, stand by

CC-Neyo: What in the hell

CC-Cody: Fox what in the HELL is going on

CC-Cody: Fox

CC-Cody: FOX

CC-Wolffe: Will someone tell me what in the kriff is going on?

CC-Cody: Bly's been arrested. He's in custody of the CG, which is why I would like FOX to tell us what in the kark-damn hells is going on.

CC-Wolffe: Bly's been WHAT

CC-Fox: This did NOT go through me. The guard does NOT have him.

CC-Cody- the kark they don't, I have a holo of your boys dragging him off the Intrepid in stun-cuffs.

CC-Fox: and I'm telling you they didn't. Every damn one of my squads is accounted for, I have no one off-planet that isn't directly supervising a senator. You think I wouldn't tell you if my kriffing batchmate had an arrest order?

CC-Wolffe: I just got the holo, it's definitely guard armor, Fox.

CC-Bacara: This is absolutely karked. What kind of banthashit is this, Fox?

CC-Fox: I don't know what the hell is going on. This isn't my men. This didn't cross my desk. Send me the holo and let me dig. This isn't us.

CC-Fox: is he all right?

CC-Cody: I don't have the first idea

CC-Fox: There's an arrest order in the system. It's timestamped ten minutes ago. This doesn't make any sense, I don't recognize the entering terminal.

CC-Wolffe: Who has him, if it's not your men?

CC-Cody: I need to make some calls. This might be above our pay grade.

CC-Neyo: What other unpaid pay grade is there?

CC-Bacara: Intelligence. Republic Intelligence.

CC-Cody: Or Zey's boys. Special Forces. Though I can't think of any reason why the Jedi would pull this.

CC-Fox: I've got the arrest info. He's been charged with conspiracy and treason, amongst a mess of other things. This is a multijurisdictional clusterfuck.

CC-Cody: Where is General Secura?

CC-Fox: That's the problem. There’s a fraternization charge on here.

CC-Cody: oh, force

CC-Neyo: Are you shitting me

CC-Wolffe: KARK

CC-Bacara: Well this is bad

CC-Neyo: General Windu has been in private conference all evening

CC-Cody: As has Obi Wan

CC-Wolffe: Plo too. Has anyone had contact with Secura? Does she know?

CC-Fox: Pretty sure that's why they're all on holo calls. She's at the temple, she arrived about an hour ago. Bly's under orders to be brought straight into custody, awaiting further instructions.

CC-Cody: seeing as you didn't even know about it and it's not your men, how much control do you have over this?

CC-Fox: I'm putting an alert on all incoming craft. They'll have a welcoming committee on the landing platform, whoever the kark they are. I have to go, I'll keep you advised on whatever I find. By the 327th's current location, we have at least 6 hours. Whoever has Bly's com, open a private channel with me. I need info on what you saw and any security footage you have of them or their ship.

CC-Bly: this is Deviss, acting commander of the 327th. Awaiting instructions.

CC-Cody: Sit tight, Deviss. Just stage. There isn't anything you can do at the moment. Just try to keep your men under control. I have enough of a mess on my hands without half a sector army going rogue.

===

1: tiingilar- a blisteringly spicy mandalorian dish- Quin is calling Bly a whole-ass meal, and a spicy one to boot. (I mean, he's not wrong) [ ▲ ]

2: Tal'Evaar- new blood (mando'a). A trooper-culture celebration of my own creation. [ ▲ ]

3: vode- siblings, comrades, brothers- a fond collective term adopted by the clones for each other (Mando'a) [ ▲ ]

4: shereshoy- lust for life and much more - uniquely Mandalorian word, meaning the enjoyment of each day and the determination to seek and grab every possible experience, as well as surviving to see the next day - hanging onto life and relishing it. An understandable state of mind/ emotion for a warrior people. Closely related to the words for live, hunt and stay safe. (Mando'a) [ ▲ ]

5: Dha Werda Verda- Literally 'Warriors of the Shadow'- a Mandalorian war chant and ritual dance adapted by the Mandalorian commando instructors on Kamino for the clones as a link to their heritage. (Mando'a) [ ▲ ]

6: Verda- warriors/soldiers (Mando'a) [ ▲ ]

7:
The ash of the Taung beats strong within the Jedi's heart.
We are the rage of The Warriors of the Shadow,
The first noble sons of Coruscant.
Let all those who stand before us light the night sky in flame.
Our vengeance burns brighter still.

Secura's warriors strike without mercy.
We are the rage of The Warriors of the Shadow,
The first noble sons of Coruscant.
Let all those who stand before us light the night sky in flame.
Our vengeance burns brighter still.
[ ▲ ]

8: Dha Werda Verda- Literally 'Warriors of the Shadow'- an ancient Mandalorian war chant and ritual dance adapted by the Mandalorian commando instructors on Kamino for the clones as a link to their heritage. (Mando'a) [ ▲ ]

9: Eswo- beloved, a shortened form of Aayla's nickname for Bly (Ryl) [ ▲ ]

10: shebs- Ass (Mando'a) [ ▲ ]

11: Udesii- calm down, easy, steady (Mando'a) [ ▲ ]

12: K'oyacyi- stay alive- a Mandalorian goodbye (Mando'a) [ ▲ ]

Chapter Text

On approach to Coruscant, 1070 days after Geonosis

Fraternization.

There had been other words in the charges. Objectively worse words, more terrifying words- treason, dereliction of duty, conspiracy, gross misconduct- but as he sat in the shuttle, cuffed and shackled and surrounded by Coruscant Guardsmen, the one that kept surfacing in the roiling ocean of his mind was that.

The others were symptoms. The first was the cause.

They knew about them, then- about him and Aayla. Kark knows how much they actually knew- maybe, he briefly considered, they only knew peripheral things. Maybe they didn’t truly know. But then the rest of the charges weighed back down on his train of thought, and he felt himself folding forward under the strain of it. He could turn every action he had taken in the last two years over and over in his head, but there wasn’t a single one outside of a textbook, GAR-issue response. He was a man who followed the rules and got the job done-

- except for Aayla. That was his singular disobedience, the one thing that tainted every other decision he made and turned love to treason, passion to conspiracy. That unforgivable dereliction had created every other charge levied against him. And it was utterly indefensible.

He huffed out a shuddering breath and bowed his head.

He was not a man to think much about himself. His men, his command brothers, Aayla- they were his reason for living, the drive behind his every move, the justification for every drop of his blood spilled since Geonosis. He had long accepted that the outcome of the war was far beyond his control, but he had the direct ability to affect the lives of those above and below him. He existed almost solely for others- but for once, he allowed himself a few breaths of selfish fear.

There was a good chance he wasn’t going to make it out of this alive. And for the first time in his short, brutal life- a life bred for death- the thought of dying terrified him.

At least Ponds had died at the hands of the enemy, as ignoble as his marching-on had been. He had been helpless and unarmed, on his knees without a blaster in his hands, but he had grasped what little agency he had and went down teeth-bared and utterly defiant. The chance that Bly himself might not even have that- that he might die by the guns of his brothers, or a Kaminoan's needle- brought on a wave of nausea and guilt beyond comprehension.

The transport shuddered. He knew they'd dropped out of hyperspace a few minutes before, heard the engines wind down and felt the brief hit of deceleration in his gut. They must be breaking atmo on Coruscant.

The guards had kept their helmets on and not spoken a single word to him in the hours they'd been stuck together in the shuttle. He couldn't even tell if they were chatting under their buckets- it was eerie, how still they all sat. He shuffled slightly, making the shackles holding him to the bench clatter against his greaves.

None of them even glanced his way.

Karking weird. Fox's boys were never anything but chatty with him.

The ship banked. That got their attention for some reason- all the guards' helmets turned towards the cockpit. From the cant of their leader's head, he was talking vehemently to someone.

Bly bounced his leg. Being out of the loop was making his brain itch.

The leader stood up and walked briskly to the front of the ship. In the brief moment the door to the cockpit slid open, Bly caught a sliver of Coruscant's endless skyscape. Then the door hissed shut again.

Where the hell were they landing?

The ship banked again, pitching him forward against the yoke of the safety restraint over his shoulders. He tried to lean backwards against the momentum- all he managed to do was slam the back of his head into the wall when the ship rolled sharply the other direction, then downward.

“Sith spit,” he snarled, shaking his head to clear the sparks from his vision. “Who’s flying this crate?”

That earned him a look. He returned it with a glare of his own, lip half curled in annoyance. Kark them all. His arms had been left cuffed behind him for the whole trip. His hands had transcended beyond numb. His upper back was screaming and now his head stung like a bitch to boot. If he was channeling his more chaotic batchmates, the redjobs had earned it.

He felt the ship drop forcefully onto its landing gear. The door to the cockpit opened again and Captain Asshole came out in a rush, striding down the main ramp before it finished lowering. The rest of his men stood in an awkward, unorganized mass in the center aisle of the shuttle, watching him as he went- Bly peeked around them to try and see what the hell was going on.

There was a squad of Coruscant Guards already on the platform, and, as he watched, a trio of patrol bikes glided in for a landing just on the edge of his line of sight, flanking the shuttle.

This… this was odd.

The arrest squad’s leader turned back into the ship and pushed through his own men.

"Stand," he barked, pressing a button on a panel across from Bly. The yoke lifted, and the shackles around his ankles popped open and retracted back into the wall.

His muscles screaming at the stretch, he did as he was told.

Hands gripped his elbows again and brought him to the top of the ramp. The leader and two other men descended ahead and approached the squad on the platform.

“We’ll take him from here,” said the striped helmet at the center of the platform guards. “We have orders to hold him until further notice.”

“Orders from who?”

“From the top. He is a prisoner of the Grand Army of the Republic and is to be held under its custody. Stand aside.”

"We were under instructions to hand him over personally."

Captain Asshole’s temper was starting to rise, and Bly’s eyebrows made a break for his hairline- if he was right, that was a commander on the platform. What the hell was going on in Fox’s ranks?

The commander’s voice stayed cool and steady. "Those instructions have been amended.”

The arrest team and the commander stared each other down for a long, silent moment. Some kind of internal conflict was being fought, Bly realized- but he was utterly confused as to why.

The leader of the arrest team gave an abrupt wave of his hand, and the two men flanking Bly shoved him sharply forward. He stumbled off the end of the ramp onto the platform, almost going to his knees- firm hands caught him by his cuirass and steadied him back upright, then hustled him towards the door off the platform. He looked hard at the commander’s helmet as they passed- Thire. Definitely Thire. Even in their obnoxiously identical regulation paint jobs, he could catch the subtle patterns of scuffs and repairs in the men he saw often. This was Fox’s second in command.

“Come on, sir,” one of the men muttered, guiding him with subtle pressure. “Let’s get scarce before they change their minds.”

There was a rev of a speederbike engine, and he looked back to see the shuttle ramp sliding shut and the bikes discreetly moving to cover their retreat. Thire about-faced to follow them.

“Looks like your men need a refresher on policy,” Bly said quietly, glancing over at the other commander as he caught up.

"Those weren't my men." Thire’s head turned a few degrees towards him. His voice barely triggered his helmet’s output when he spoke. “What the hell kind of mess did you get yourself into?”

-------

The detention center wasn’t unfamiliar to him- he’d sprung more than one pack of troopers after a rowdy night at 79’s, and had even ended up in the drunk tank himself after a night of shenanigans gone wrong- but he’d never made it past booking, and his life hadn’t been actively flashing before his eyes at the time, either. The guardsmen were taking pity on him, as well- once they’d hit lockup, they’d popped his cuffs to let him undo his own armor and strip out of his blacks without manhandling him. While he’d have understood completely if they’d felt the need to do it for him, he was silently grateful that Fox’s boys weren’t interested in salting his already-stinging humiliation.

They’d taken his prints, scanned his tallies, verified his arm-code- he’d even laughed with them as they'd given up on puzzling out the correct descriptors for his vast web of abstract tattoos. They’d ended up just taking pictures and writing ‘see images’ in his file before handing him his prison fatigues.

It had gone too quickly- just as he’d started to get his blood pressure down to something vaguely resembling normal, they’d finished up and escorted him to the detention block. He hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Fox. He hadn’t asked.

And then he was put in his cell and left alone. They’d been polite enough to dim the lights for him, but seven karking hells, did they really think he was going to be able to sleep?

He sat on the low, wide bench at the back of the small cell, feet set well apart, elbows on his knees, his hands dangling limply between them. His mind spun in exhausted circles like a lartie with a blown engine, doomed to crash but fighting for altitude all the same.

Aayla. Kark, this whole thing was a karking setup. They’d recalled her to get her out of the way so they could take him without having to go through her. He considered whether or not she even knew- sometimes she'd go radio-silent for shadow missions, with no transmissions in or out for weeks. But if she did, he didn’t even want to imagine how she was handling the news- he hoped like hell she wasn’t taking it out on Fox, because that had potential to be a catastrophic clusterfuck without him there to referee. His brother took no guff from anyone, even Jedi, and Aayla was a force of nature.

He didn't know. He just didn't know. It was enough to make him nauseous.

The arrest itself kept playing through his mind on endless loop. His brain kept picking out details, obsessing with eidetic certainty over each arresting trooper’s armor, weaponry, body language, markings- the more he dug at it, the less sense it made. His pulse pounded in his temples, and he scrubbed his hands over his hair in agitation.

There was a muffled tromp of boots outside his cell, and he looked up just as the lights ramped up to full brightness. He didn’t need much more than backlit shadows to tell who it was- the inverse-colored CG armor, white across the chest and red across the midsection, told him exactly who it was.

Fox.

His shoulders drooped in relief as he stood from the bench. Aayla hadn’t used his vod for sparring practice, then, and he’d be able to give him a solid sitrep.

Then Fox deactivated the ray shield and came down the steps two at a time, ripping off his helmet, and Bly stopped dead in his tracks.

His brother looked terrible. Even at his most caffed-out and worn down, he'd never looked this gaunt, nor had the circles under his eyes looked so much like bruises across his jutting cheekbones. His tanned skin held an unnaturally sallow pallor. The short regulation haircut he lived and died by was longer than Bly had ever seen it, his greying temples matted into ragged, flattened curls. Bly was horrified.

"Fox, what the kriff’s happened to you?"

"To me?" Fox's lip twitched upwards in a snarl. "You’re in a cell."

He swallowed a retort. His first instinct had been to grab his vod up in their usual clashing of armor, but despite his obvious exhaustion, Fox looked practically electrified. If Bly touched him, he was afraid he’d explode. He changed the topic to try to defuse him.

“Is Deviss doing alright? They- it happened so fast, I didn’t have time to get him properly briefed-”

“It’s been seven hours,” Fox spat. “How much trouble could they get into?”

“They’re not Rex’s brood, but… plenty.” He stopped himself before he sunk too far into that memory, letting the lift doors shut on Deviss’ horrified face and turning his mind to other topics. “Is Aayla here? What’s she saying?”

“I don’t know if she even knows what’s happened,” Fox muttered. “Cody and I’ve both been trying to comm her, she hasn’t been answering.”

Concern spiked in his mind- not good. She always answered her comms unless she was on a mission, it had been hours since she’d left, she was always a call away, this made no sense. “Do you think she’s all right?”

“How the KARK would I know if she’s all right?” Bly flinched back as Fox’s face twisted with fury. “Anyone else you’d like a status report on? I’m not fine, thanks for asking- and why are you even asking? I could step out and suck-start my deece and you couldn’t do anything but watch.”

Bly was dumbfounded. “... Kriff’s sake, Fox, I’m sorry.”

“You kriffing should be. This is bigger than me. Those weren’t my men that brought you in, you know.”

“I noticed. Thire told me, too. I know your boys eat well, but they didn’t get baked longer than mine. Those looked like special forces.”

“I’m almost certain they were. I pissed in their rations by landing them here. They weren’t expecting to be caught.” Bly blinked, his head tipping slightly. He wasn’t connecting the dots. Fox huffed in frustration. “You weren’t being arrested. You were being disposed of. We forced them to land where they did.”

The cell echoed into silence. Bly stared hard at the ground beside his brother’s boots, running the numbers in his head, trying to make sense of the scattered shreds of intel, while at the same time actively avoiding the obvious conclusion. “They… couldn’t have been. I’m a bit too high profile to-” he paused, swallowing the reflexive take-out-in-an-alley-and-shoot comment- he’d read the reports on the rogue ARC trooper that Fox had put down. “-to make disappear. Aayla would go spare. There’ll be a trial.”

“That’s best case scenario,” Fox said, almost too quiet to be heard. “Did you consider that maybe she’s involved?”

“She’s not.” Bly’s tone was stern, a cold warning to his brother’s line of inquiry. “She wouldn’t.” He caught the bitter skepticism in the lowering of Fox’s chin, and he changed his approach- Fox worked on facts, not feelings. He lowered his voice. “We’ve been making plans. It wouldn’t make sense.”

“Yeah, well nothing’s making sense anymore.”

Bly’s brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

The shake of Fox’s head was almost too subtle to be caught. Bly knew what that meant- don’t ask, we’re being watched. Bly nodded, looking distractedly around the cell while his thoughts crashed around his head like waves in a Kaminoan storm. He snapped out of his own head when Fox sighed.

His brother’s rage had passed over them like a squall. The man left in its wake looked thin and worn, a mountain beaten down to gritty peaks by unending rain, and Bly was folding him into a crushing hug before he could even process the impulse. Fox’s arms wrapped around his back. They felt distressingly light.

He pulled him in even tighter and the armor under his hands shifted, loose and hollow, desperately needing to be tailored down. Bly’s heart clenched. He wanted to say something, lovingly harass his vod for not eating, not sleeping, not maintaining himself the way he should- but the guilt of being a contributor to that stress clamped a stifling hand over his mouth. He couldn’t fix it. Couldn’t undo it, couldn’t unmake his choices that led him here- all he could do in this moment was hold his brother tight. It would have to be enough. He tipped his head slightly to rest against Fox’s, and felt the pressure returned. The tiniest hitch of breath huffed against his shoulder.

It almost broke him.

Teeth gritted, eyes squeezed shut, he clung to Fox and willed his words to reach through the silence without being spoken. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, vod, I’m sorry...

-------

Aayla woke tossing and disoriented in an unfamiliar bed, hands clutching the sheets, her legs firmly snared in the blankets. It took her a solid 10 seconds to settle her mind enough to recognize where she was.

The temple had never felt so foreign.

And her dreams…

She let the tumbling fragments of them flicker across the forefront of her mind- the cold grip of fear, crushing grey confinement, a ragged voice crying for help- then closed her eyes and let the glow of morning burn them all away like fog. She willed it to take the ache of tired muscles along with it- the brutal rounds in the ring with Bly, followed by a long flight back to Coruscant in her cramped little fighter, had left her body feeling like duracrete. It didn't comply.

She took a deep breath, resettled the high walls of her mental shields, and headed for the fresher.

The temple was no longer a place she felt at ease. Since her formative years it had never been anything but her home, her sun, the steady thrum of the Force in the very walls of the place steadying her soul- but the longer the war dragged on, the more alien the temple had begun to feel, and harder it had become to conceal her unease from her fellow Jedi. Her shields had grown complex- both muting her link to Bly and keeping Jedi who knew her well from catching on to her shifted point of balance. It was an exhausting farce- she tried as much as possible to avoid long stays, though as the war had limped into its third year, skirting the temple had become an easier and easier task to accomplish.

As the hot water flowed down her body, she concentrated on releasing tension from each limb, each digit, each cell, drawing herself into meditation to still her mind into calm focus. She would need to be centered to meet with the council.

Toweled off, clothed, her saber at her hip and a ration bar in hand to eat on the way, she paused at the door to her quarters to check her shields one more time before stepping out with her head held high. She had learned to guard her mind by the best. Quinlan was a master at it. If he hadn’t been fit to kill her, he’d have been proud.

The white and gold masked temple guards at the doors to the high council chamber converged their collective gaze on her as she exited the lift, then reached in tandem to open the doors ahead of her. Pulling in a deep breath, she stepped into the room beyond.

The bright light of morning glowed in reds and yellows across the swirling patterns of the council chamber’s floor. It backlit the ring of seats around the edge of the room, most of them empty or filled with blue-tinged holos of their usual occupants- the only masters in physical attendance were Yoda, Windu, and Kolar. She turned to scan the ranks and saw with a tinge of disappointment that Shaak Ti and Kit were absent, in addition to the empty seat between Kolar and Kcaj.

She dipped her head in a shallow bow. “Masters. Good morning.”

“Knight Secura,” came Windu’s reply, his voice oddly cold.

She folded her hands respectfully in front of her and straightened back up, eyeing the ring of gathered masters. An uneasy tightness coiled in her gut. “Do you have a mission for me?”

Windu looked to his right at Master Yoda, and then further down the line at the holo of Kenobi. It was finally Kenobi who broke the silence. “Ah… no,” he said, the projected crackle of his Coruscanti accent cutting the tense air of the council chamber like a saber igniting. “We… have recalled you to discuss other matters.”

“Concerned, we are,” continued Master Yoda, “of the nature of your relationship with your commander.”

She stopped breathing.

Master Windu picked up where Yoda had dropped off. “There have been whispers for a year or more. Master Zey came to us after Saleucami with concerns. Now Vos has come to us as well, as have the Kaminoans. We were willing to turn a blind eye to the matter until the situation on-”

Her mind had grabbed onto one name in Windu’s list, and the disbelief tore from her control before she could rein herself in. “Quinlan? Quinlan came to the coun- what did he say?”

Kenobi’s glowing form shifted, uncrossing his legs. “I don’t think that-”

“What did he say?!”

“Control yourself, Secura,” Mace warned, all sharp eyes and sternly folded hands.

She stared him down, unblinking and cold, her lekku quivering in their harness. “I would know what accusations are being laid against me.”

“Formally? Fraternization. With a subordinate.”

Obi Wan stepped in again, playing the negotiator to Windu’s scolding bite. “The issue is the nature of the complaints, and who they’re from. We received… footage. From the Kaminoan representative.”

The two masters exchanged a look, clearly coming to some kind of unspoken agreement. In the center of the room, a recording flickered to life, and she stepped back to get a better look at it. The angle was strange, clearly high and in a corner, but-

"They told me you need to take it easy."

It took her a moment to recognize her own voice from the recording, but when she did, her heart kicked into a frantic stutter in her chest.

"You need to take it easy on me. I have no intention of taking it easy on you."

Oh no. Oh no.

It was from the medical station. Bly’s room. His back was to the camera, but she could see her arms wrapping around his neck, his hands moving to span her waist, and then she was wrapped around him as he backed the short distance to his sparse bed- he’d sat down, bringing her onto his lap- oh goddess, no, please stop, don’t let them see, don’t let them see-

The recording froze just as she had started to grind down onto his lap, his hands firmly around the swell of her ass as he pressed kisses under her jaw.

The room went deathly silent for far, far longer than was comfortable. The holo blinked away, leaving her standing stunned and numb in the middle of the council chamber.

It was Kenobi’s voice that broke the frigid stillness. “Dalliances are not an issue, Aayla, but this has gone from toeing the line to a blatant, dangerous disregard for it.”

Her hands balled into fists at her side. When she replied, it was low and guarded. “He was killed in front of me-”

“- and you abandoned your teachings because of it,” Windu cut in. “You gave in to your fear and attachment to this clone, and reacted with violent emotion.” He shook his head. “You're a better Jedi than this, Aayla. We gave you control of an entire corps because we trusted your judgement and your commitment to the order and the code. We clearly should have stepped in sooner to put an end to this.”

Kenobi’s holo leaned forward in its seat, brow furrowed. “We allowed it because we empathized with the isolation we knew you must feel. We are all feeling the strain. But this has gone from a distraction to a disruption, and is at odds with both the will of the order and the needs of the Republic.”

Windu’s eyes studied her, picking apart her reactions, probing at her defenses. She pushed back in silent defiance. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his seat. “We have not yet decided how to proceed with this situation. Until we have, you are to stay within the temple complex.”

“My men-”

“-are entirely capable of managing themselves for a time. We’ll be assigning them a Master in your place.”

For the first time in the meeting, Plo Koon unsteepled his hands from in front of his rebreather and leaned forward to speak. “We do not wish to revisit the tragedy of Umbara, Aayla. Even if their tenure is short, they will be chosen with great care.”

The room lapsed into silence. A knot tightened in her throat as she scanned the circle of gathered masters. Their faces were stony and unwavering. “Am I to be allowed to speak on this?”

“No,” Windu said, his voice a cold blade.

“Not today,” Kenobi clarified, far gentler. “We all need time to think on… all of this.”

A nagging spike of anxiety prickled over the roar of panic in her mind. “What’s going to happen to Bly?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Kenobi, stroking his beard. “At this time, the only people aware of the situation are ourselves, the Kaminoans, and the Chancellor. I assume there will be an inquiry.”

“They’ll decommission him over this.”

“That is a consequence of the actions you chose to take,” came Mundi’s reproachful bark.

“He isn’t safe-”

“We will do what we can, Aayla,” Kenobi said, looking distinctly mournful. “But in matters like this, our hands are tied. We command these men, but they are not truly ours.”

Master Windu’s firm voice put an end to the discussion “That will be all.”

-------

Sleep? Not a chance. But for lack of anything to do but stew in his own mind, Bly had drifted into an agitated sort of meditation. It felt… strange. To do it without Aayla at his side, that is. He had been the grounding point for her own meditation for a large portion of the war (even if he had no karking idea how it all worked), and had learned from her gentle instruction how to steady his body and clear his own mind, even without the force to guide him as it guided her. But here, alone in a barren cell and with the nightmare of the last hours still raw and unprocessed in his mind, it felt less like freeing his soul to the cosmos and more like barricading himself for a siege.

Aayla. Kark. Kark it all to hell.

He had reached for their bond a few times, a blind man fumbling in an unfamiliar room, but felt nothing in return. He knew she shielded herself from him when she was around other Jedi. He didn’t expect a response. But he would have done anything to feel the brush of her contact from the darkness.

He should have expected this. And in a way, he had. Had since it started. For as many battles as he’d seen, as many men as he’d lost, he knew that on any day you woke up, you might not have the same number of brothers as you'd started with the day before. You might lose one. Might lose ten. Might lose a thousand. Hell, you might lose them all- Wolffe had, almost to a man, and it had all but shattered his pod brother beyond repair. Bly hoped he never learned how he survived it.

You had to bank your memories. Take each and every one and hold them dear, because a blaster bolt could hit home or a transport could go down or a whole venator could be lost, and you’d never see them again. He never took an interaction for granted- even with Aayla.

Especially with Aayla.

He was in love, not stupid. He knew- had known from the start- that what they had would almost certainly not end well. Cody had called him an idealist. Fox an idiot. Ponds would have scolded him, had he survived long enough to see it. Wolffe had been the only one to understand- likely because he had lost so much- but even he had shaken his head and grumbled under his breath. Bly was one of the few to hold on to hope, even as he set a course for tragedy- for the worst.

Now the worst was here. If he was being honest with himself, he would have taken a quick death over this- the grinding anxiety, the loss of control, the frantic whirling of his mind, all verged on torture. If he was going to lose everything, at least the manda ¹ could see to it that it was quick and painless.

It suddenly occurred to him that he might have outlived his chance to ever see her again. GAR inquiries were typically private. Internal. Quick. And with their history, they may seek to keep her away. He didn’t know what would be worse- never seeing her again, or seeing her distraught, panicked, enraged. His mind tried to fill in the blanks. He stopped it in its tracks, redirecting it away from fantasy and into memory. There was no use in chasing scenarios. He had to stay in the present- or in the past- or else he’d go insane.

If he centered himself, he could put himself back to the night before. Alone in her quarters. Warm, aching, exertion-worn and dizzy with drink and contentment from the Tal'Eevar. She had helped him out of his armor. He could feel her fingertips in the gaps between the plates, soft over his blacks.

And when he’d been bare in the half-lit room, he’d turned his attention to her and her robes. Taken his time. Cupped her curves through the fabric, slipped worshipful hands under layer after layer to find the bright jewel of her body underneath. Murmured reverence into her skin and carried her to their bed.

They hadn’t even done more than that, too weary and too satisfied with just the reassuring pressure of skin on skin. He’d fallen asleep with her pressed into his chest, an arm twined under his to cradle his shoulder, their legs tangled together, a lek wrapped around his arm. He’d heard her whisper something, hadn’t caught the words as sleep took him, but he’d felt the bloom of her emotion in his mind, a glowing bliss of warmth that filled every sense with the tender touch of her.

He didn’t know if he was ever going to see her again. He would hold that moment, though, as he’d held her- gently, solemnly, for as long as he could. It would have to be enough.

He played it over and over in his mind. For how long? He didn’t know- time was subjective in a prison cell. But it was the sound of the ray shield deactivating that dragged him back to the present. He sat up from where he’d been leaning awkwardly against the wall behind the bench-cot, rubbing his dry eyes into focus.

“Up.”

One of Fox’s boys, by the armor. Worn but clean. No one he knew by kit or voice. He obeyed, standing stiffly and offering his hands as the trooper came forward with cuffs. Just one guard, he noted. Nothing critical, then. Perhaps an interview or something to be redone in booking.

“Let’s move,” the guard barked, stepping aside for Bly to ascend out of the cell.

The guard led him with a hand on the sleeve of his prison fatigues, taking turn after dizzying turn through the identical grey corridors of the detention center. They finally ended up at a bank of lifts- the trooper picked one at the center of the line and ushered him inside. They hadn’t seen a single other soul. It struck Bly as odd, but who was he to judge. He was just a prisoner- a dead clone walking. He closed his eyes as they began to ascend.

The lift was silent as a tomb- for about ten seconds.

He jolted almost off his feet when it whooshed to a stop mid-floor, the lights snapping into darkness for a moment before the emergency backups flickered on.

"What the kar-"

"Shut up and listen to me," came the barked reply as the red-armored trooper reached up to rip his helmet off. Bly's heart clenched.

"Fox."

"We've killed the power in this sector for the next three minutes. There's a bike waiting for you in departure bay 18. There's a secure com in the saddlebags along with a change of clothes." Fox pressed a button on his vambrace and the binders snapped open. "Rough me up, take my armor, and get the kark out of here."

Bly was completely dumbfounded. He opened and shut his mouth once, twice, then stammered. "No, that's- that's a terrible plan."

"It'll get you out of here."

"It'll get you decommissioned." He shook his head, his expression tight. "I'm not trading your life for mine. They'll know. Your boys aren't stupid enough to let me get away with that."

Fox gripped his arm and gave him a firm shake, his teeth bared. "I'm trying to save you."

He yanked his arm back. "Kark no, I won't let you take the fall for this. I made my bed." Bly stared hard back at his batchmate, jaw set and eyes cold. They glared daggers at each other before Fox shoved him roughly back. Bly closed his eyes, fully expecting the bright clarity of pain from a fist to his jaw. When it didn’t come, he peeked his eyes back open to see Fox’s back to him, his hands curling and uncurling in agitated fists against the durasteel walls.

"You idiot." The anger in Fox's voice grated hoarsely in the silent lift. "You absolute idiot."

"Fox, I'm sorry."

"If you cared you wouldn't have fucked your general. And if you were sorry you'd get the kark out of here."

"Hey," he all but whispered, his voice low with unbroken resignation to try and draw Fox back towards calm, reaching for a best case scenario to cushion the hopeless fall he was plummeting towards. "They're probably sending me to a penal battalion. I'll find my way."

Fox whipped around, his eyes burning in the dim glow of the emergency lights. "You’re just so karking sure of that, aren’t you. I told you you were being disposed of. No, the request came in this morning. They dropped all the charges, they're bypassing the entire disciplinary system and shipping you back to Kamino."

Silence.

Bly's stoic mask slipped. His eyes flicked around the lift, looking but not seeing, trying to grasp at something in the freefall of his nightmare. His lips mouthed words that failed to resonate.

Fox grabbed him by his shoulders again and gave him a firm shake. "Bly."

He stared up at his brother, wide eyed. Fox’s expression wavered like someone had gripped a claw around his stim-tempered heart. He was staring back in time.

Don't let them take me away. I'm not deficient. I'm almost big enough. I can keep up. I'll be good. I'll be the best tomorrow. I promise. Just let me try again.

They were back in his sleep pod on Kamino, cold and stark and utterly alone, trying to make sense of the disappearance of a command brother who had failed to measure up to specifications.

They were back in his sleep pod on Kamino, both still smeared with 411's blood from live fire.

They were back in his sleep pod on Kamino, Fox blind and terrified from a nightmarish training exercise, Bly's nails digging into his back as they held each other and hoped the morning would spare them.

They were in the detention center’s lift, but he could still feel the press of Fox’s hands around his back. They clung to each other like cadets in the dark.

And then the lift shuddered and jolted as the power turned back on.

Fox pulled back. Bly's arms trailed off of his armor and fell awkwardly back to his sides. He stood like a man broken- head bowed, shoulders hunched, eyes locked to the floor. He took a deep breath, barely repressing a shudder as he did, then opened his mouth to speak. No sound came out for a few long seconds.

The right words bubbled under the surface, unspeakable and scattered. He fumbled through a few syllables and trailed off into a whisper, inaudible over the whirr of the lift.

"What?"

"I said-" His voice cracked. "There is one good thing."

Fox stared back, blank-eyed and silent.

"The Council will forgive her if I'm gone."

Completely speechless, Fox's face twisted into a mask of grief and disgust. He stared his brother down. Bly held on for a few seconds, the weight of Fox's bitterness breaking him down until his eyes dropped back to the floor and he slumped forward. He heard rather than saw Fox snatch his borrowed helmet up and shove it back over his head with unnecessary force.

He stood limp as his hands were re-cuffed in front of him just as the elevator dinged and slid smoothly to a halt at their floor. The door swished open to reveal two more guardsmen standing at attention. They looked between Fox and Bly, clearly confused at the presence of both of them. This wasn't the plan.

"Orders for the prisoner... trooper?"

"Take him to medical, as per orders," came the hollow, toneless voice from Fox's helmet. His iconic commanding growl was entirely absent. It felt like someone had kicked the inside of Bly's ribcage.

As the two troopers took his arms and guided him out of the lift, he looked back at his batchmate. The lift doors started to slide shut. The last thing he saw his brother do was raise a hand to tap his bracer twice.

Bly felt the last dregs of fight drain from him.

He was a dead man.

-------

Aayla’s hands shook as she pressed the key code to her quarters and let herself inside.

Heavy-footed and adrenaline drunk, she stumbled her way to her bed and sat down with not a shred of her typical grace. She stared into the mid distance for a moment before pressing a trembling fist to her lips.

They knew.

Everyone knew.

She bit into the soft skin of her finger hard enough to bruise.

------

They were talking under their helmets. He couldn't hear them, but dammit, he knew.

A left. A long corridor. A set of blast doors. And with every step, his feet grew heavier.

He wasn't alone in that- the guards weren't keeping standard cadence, either. Their hands on his arms had become less firm, their booted footfalls quieter on the echoing floor. It felt like all of them were walking upstream and tiring from the effort. By the time they reached the medbay with the red sigil of the medical corps on its frosted doors, momentum broke even.

They ground to a halt.

Neither guard moved to open the doors. The grip on his right arm squeezed slightly.

"I'm... sorry. Commander. I don't want to do this."

"Neither of us do," came the voice from his left.

"It's all right." How did his voice echo like it was someone else talking? How could he sound so calm when his mind fizzed and sputtered like rain on a hot engine? "Don't blame yourselves."

-------

Plan. She needed a plan.

Sitting and letting her panic get the best of her wasn't going to fix a kriffing thing. She had to talk to Bly. They could compare notes, make some kind of strategy, and move forward. The council's concern about her brush with the dark side was warranted, she knew- the temple was probably the best place for her right now, though accepting that fact didn't temper the anxiety clawing at her mind. The 327th was so centrally placed to so many vital fronts, so crucial to the war effort- a turnover of leadership at such a critical juncture could mean massive casualties, especially if control was handed over to someone without the best interests of their men in mind.

She had consoled Anakin almost nightly for weeks after the 501st's ill-fated campaign on Umbara- even with Plo’s calm assurances, the thought of anything even vaguely similar happening to Bly or the rest of their men made bile rise in her throat.

On top of that, the knife of guilty fear in her gut twisted at the thought of what fate would befall Bly if she didn’t fight like a rancor for his life. She’d heard whispers and rumors from her men as to what happened to decommissioned soldiers. She’d heard more than just rumors from Shaak. Goddess, did Bly even know what was going on? He had assumed- just as she had- that the recall was for a mission, not… this. Her pulse pounded in her cones all over again.

She needed to talk to Bly. Just hearing his voice would settle her frantic mind, but she had to warn him. Goddess, maybe he could get away- desert, run, hide, something to save himself from the coming storm. She snatched up her comm, already set on their private frequency from her messages to him from the day before. Shaking fingers tapped in the familiar code.

It rang. And rang. And rang. Her heart rate quickened even further- it never, ever took him this long to answer, no matter that he was doing. Something was wrong.

Then it connected. The hazy blue shape of an armored clone flickered into existence above her wrist. But- no. It wasn't right.

"General Secura?"

The clone pulled off his helmet. Shaved head, scar tweaking his lip into a perpetual half-frown- the horror of realization crackled like lightning across her mind. "... Deviss. Where is Bly."

-------

The doors to the medical center whooshed open with a hiss of pressurized air without any of them pressing the controls.

A male Mirialan in the neutral uniform of the medical corps stood just inside the doors, eyeing them coldly. "Is this the one going into stasis for transport?"

The guard on his right cleared his throat. "Yes. Yes sir. Coming from lockup."

"Bring him through. In there." The Mirialan gestured towards the far side of the lobby. A discreet door slid open to reveal a starkly lit exam room. A medical corps technician stood inside, face masked, beside an unsheeted exam table.

Bly's legs stopped working. The guards went to step forward, and his feet simply failed to comply. Everything else stopped existing- the bright lights of the room, the hands shifting on his arms and pressing into his shoulders to goad him forward, the astringent stink of bacta, the sound of his ragged breathing- all gone, lost in the point of light reflecting off of the metal exam table he was being dragged inexorably towards.

Something feral, all cold beskar and cabled durasteel, stirred in the base of his skull. Jango would never have walked to his death like livestock. Bly was an echo of the Prime, a shade of the Mand'alor. Modified and conditioned to obey, yes, but-

There was a sharp, cold stab in the side of his neck.

Everything rushed back in. Roaring, Bly snapped his head back into the unprotected face of the medic behind him.

Kark them all, he was not going to go quietly.

-------

She had never run so fast in her life.

It seemed like she’d only taken ten strides and she was back in the lift to the council chambers, panting and unsteady and practically vibrating with unrestrained emotion.

The lift doors slid open and she stepped out into the foyer, her steps long and fast. The pair of temple guards, so quick to let her in this morning, stood stalwart at the doors.

"I need to speak to the council. Now."

"Knight Secura, you do not have an appointment and the council is-"

"I am aware,” she spat, her temper flaring to dangerous heights. “I am the discussion at hand."

"You do not have th-"

The temple guard stopped mid-sentence, abandoning words to move in flawless synchronization with the second guard. Their saber-pikes erupted to life, marking a golden X across the doorway to bar her path. She froze, startled at their response, until she looked down. She hadn't been aware that in her frustration, her hand had dropped to her belt and unclipped her saber.

She stared at it, heavy and unlit in her palm. The fear and betrayal that had flared high a heartbeat earlier had tempered down to glow as a smoldering coal, but it still spread warm to her fingertips.

She had not come for a fight, but if a fight was the way through the clouded darkness that filled her lungs, the air, everything around her- then so be it. She took a breath and let the anger flow away, leaving her saber hilt cold and sleeping in her practiced grip.

The doors slid open.

"Aayla." Master Windu's eyes were sharp as blades as he stared her down. She didn't move a muscle, even as the temple guards deactivated their weapons and dropped back to their posts on either side of the doors to the council chambers. "Inside. Now."

-------

"Get control of him!"

The lobby of the medical center was in chaos. One red-armored guard was writhing on the floor, having been thrown skid-over-bucket through the nurse's station by a well aimed shoulder-check after slamming his rifle butt into Bly's face. The other had taken up a defensive position in front of the main doors, blaster drawn and set firmly to stun, though his aim wavered- enough medical staff were crowding around the edges of the room that he couldn't get a clear shot without someone else downrange.

Bly stood unsteadily in the eye of the hurricane he had fought into existence. The sedatives coursing through his blood were smothering his panic, leaving him heavy limbed and half-blind- he swung his binder-locked hands wildly into empty air as if he could fight his way through the fog swallowing his brain with every stuttering heartbeat. The movement sent him careening off-balance into a row of chairs and he went down hard.

The room spun with sickening speed as he tried to find his feet again. Then there were hands on him- weight, pressure, contact from all sides, loud shouts fading in and out. He grated out a string of garbled curses and fought. Without plan, without even knowing which way was up, he swung and kicked and bit. There was a voice- just noise, words didn't make sense anymore- and suddenly he was free.

-------

The council was still in session, though the spot she had stood in earlier was now glowing blue from the holographic presence of-

The robed figure in the holo turned to look back at her as she entered the chamber at Mace's side. The Chancellor's sunken gaze fixed on her, and behind her back, her lekku snapped taut. His narrow lips turned up in a smile that did not spread to his eyes.

Nausea clutched at her gut.

"General Secura, my dear, I'm glad you could join us. We were just discussing the situation of your former commander."

"He was arrested." Her voice cracked on the word, and her eyes broke from the holo to stare in frantic reproach at the masters seated around the edge of the room. "You said this was about me. You said he was safe. I've just spoken with my men. They arrested him right off of our command ship. In front of all of them. They charged him with treason."

"While that must have been quite disheartening, those charges do not extend to you, my dear. There is no-"

"Not me,” she interrupted. “I don't- I'm not talking about myself, what have you done with Bly?"

"Hold your tongue!"

"No, it's quite alright, Master Mundi. The general is upset, she should be allowed to speak her feelings on the matter."

"Thank you. Chancellor. Sir.” She clenched and unclenched her hands at her sides, shaking them in place like she was preparing for a spar. “He’s been taken. Masters, you said he would be safe, you said-”

“We did not guarantee that,” piped up Kenobi, though his tone was troubled. “There are consequences for this, Aayla. And the council is not truly in control of them. This is a military matter.”

“If anyone is to blame for this, it is myself,” she called, turning in place to address the entire gathered council and the Chancellor. “Bly is under my command. I-"

She stopped herself, struggling for words. Goddess, this felt wrong. How many nights had she and Bly sat and talked circles around this point, peeling back the layers of complication one by one to get down to the root of it? Could he truly consent to what they had? He had been bred and trained for service to a higher cause, to fall into place under a Jedi’s orders. Was he a free being making a choice of his own will? They had never really settled the matter, mutually deciding to live in the moment and communicate with free, open honesty. They’d opened their minds and hearts to each other. It had worked. But to put it in words? It… didn’t.

The thoughts had flowed easily between them, embellishing the stark black linework of language with the colorful brushstrokes of emotion- now that she was alone in the spotlight, expected to explain why and how, she felt like a stammering crecheling being asked to recreate a grand mural with a pencil. Her thoughts felt unfinished, all half-baked and impotent.

It stole the words from her mouth. And words were what she needed.

“I love him,” she said, finally, finding no other way to define it. “Dearly and completely, I love him. I won’t see him killed for this. I will not. If it means I’m to be expelled or court marshalled through the military courts, so be it. But he is not at fault.”

It was the voice of the chancellor that broke the silence that followed her admission. “Oh, my dear. You are a true Jedi. So selfless. So noble. But not all battles can be won by sacrifice.”

“I’m not seeking to sacrifice,” She gritted out. “I want to open talks. I will speak at his trial. There has to be a solution to this.”

"While I'm sure you would speak a heartfelt defense for him at trial-” the Chancellor paused to rustle his hands in the wide sleeves of his robes. “As I was telling the council, I'm afraid it's rather out of our hands. CC-5052 is no longer the property of the Republic or its army. He was decommissioned this morning, and is being transported back to Kamino for review as we speak. They requested him to be returned, and not even I had the authority to stand in their way- he is technically their genetic property."

The weight of it all slammed down on her mind with a crushing shock.

He would not get a trial.

He would not be given a chance.

The black reptilian eyes of Nala Se flashed in her mind. She could practically taste Bly’s bitter fear of her, all but feel his roiling distrust. It stole her words away before she could put them in order to be spoken.

“No.”

“I’m afraid there is nothing more we can do about the matter. He’s already out of our hands.”

The room fell silent enough that the hiss of audio crackling from the gathered holos filled the void of sound.

“Will all of you do nothing?”

She stared around the room at the circle of masters. Yoda had his head bowed, eyes closed, the cant of his ears showing disquiet through his mask of serenity- Windu's jaw was clenched- Kenobi's hand was clamped firmly over his beard, no longer stroking thoughtfully, but held tightly in place. The only one who so much as moved was the holo of Plo Koon, whose clawed hands shifted to grip tightly over the arms of his seat aboard his command ship. None would meet her eyes.

“You,” she gritted out, shifting her weight like a cornered predator. “All of you. You hold the greatest powers of the universe in your hands, but won’t raise a finger to defend an innocent man? You know what the Kaminoans will do to him. Master Ti has brought this to your attention over and over again and nothing is done under the guise of not having enough evidence, and now when the evidence is overwhelming, you refuse to give aid? They’re going to murder him!”

“Aayla,” came Windu’s quiet voice. “Please calm-”

“No,” she shouted out, her voice rising to a battle-pitch. “I will not. None of you deserve a peaceful discussion. How the Order has fallen. How all of you have fallen.”

-------

Hands. Knees. Find the floor. Don't look, eyes are liars, just push. Get up. Get up. Get UP.

He opened his eyes as he struggled to his knees and immediately regretted it. The world was white, blinding white.

Then something rose in his vision. Dark. Silhouette. Red.

Vod. One of the guards.

Then his eyes focused on the barrel of the rifle. He blinked heavily. Dragged himself upright. Set his swaying shoulders.

“D’nuni jate kyr’m,” ² he slurred.

Then with a pulsing flash, the world went blue.

Blue.

-------

"Aayla?"

She blinked rapidly, Windu’s voice snapping back into her own head. Breathe. Breathe, remember to breathe, what was that?

She’d forgotten herself, her shields dissolving at her distress, and she had felt him. Saw through his eyes for a moment. Bly had been fighting, struggling, she’d seen him staring down a rifle before everything had gone dark and still. He was close. The trooper who’d turned his blaster on him had been in the red and white armor of the Coruscant Guard.

The chancellor had said he was already gone, out of their custody and in the hands of the Kaminoans.

None of this made sense.

“My dear, are you all right?”

From the holo projection, the Chancellor’s blank eyes stared through her.

“I’m sorry, masters,” she said, her voice quieter and not bearing the stern bite of her proclamation a moment before. “This is wrong. I can’t. I can’t stay.”

“Chancellor, we will continue this later,” came Windu’s sharp command, and the holo quavered, then disappeared. The council chamber fell utterly silent.

She looked around to each master in turn, examining their faces, centering herself more and more with each breath as she turned. And then, just past Kit’s empty seat- the doors. She closed her eyes for a moment. None of this felt right- not a single second of this nightmare of a day had felt guided by the clear brightness of the force. But the doors… it felt like the thinnest bit of fresh air flowed from beyond them. The smoke was lighter. And though the decision lacked pure clarity, it felt as if the force was reaching back to nudge her in the right direction.

“I’m leaving.”

And then… she did. She didn’t remember taking a last look, or meeting anyone’s eyes- she came back into focus with her forehead against the cold grey of the wall beside the lift doors in the vestibule outside the council chamber.

She dragged in a deep breath. Focus. Breathe.

“Aayla, wait.”

She turned her head, the leatheris of her wrap squeaking faintly against the smooth surface. The stern creases of Master Windu’s brow had shifted towards concern as he stared her down.

He looked for a moment as if he’d place his hands on his hips, then stopped himself short and twined his fingers together between the wide sleeves of his robes.

“It shouldn’t have ever come to this, Aayla. We are aware of the failings of this council. I’m sorry.”

She laughed, a bitter, grating sound, and pushed away from the wall. For a moment she stood with her shoulder bladed to Windu, head turned away, fighting back the emotion from her face. He waited out her silence until she pinned him with a tight-lipped stare.

“Do not make this choice quickly or in anger,” he said, his tone low. “You’ve been dealt a blow. I understand that. But if you leave, you’ll lose access to everything the Order has to offer.”

Behind them, the doors to the council chamber swished open again. She didn’t see who had exited until the wizened form of Master Yoda appeared at Windu’s side. Windu did not pause to acknowledge the intrusion. “You need to see a mind healer, Aayla.”

“Surrounds you, the darkness does,” added Yoda. The stark acuity of his words somehow rang with empathy, like a comforting hand on her shoulder in the throng of battle. “Clouding your judgement, we fear it is.”

“Everything is clouded, masters,” she admitted, shaking her head. “Even the light. But letting this go without a fight seems… at odds with everything I’ve ever been taught. And that path is shrouded in darkness.” She paused, waiting to see if they would argue with her. They stayed silent. “It’s wrong,” she finally added. “All of this, it’s wrong. I have to try.”

“You heard the chancellor,” said Windu. “He’s already gone. Leaving the Order won’t bring him back. You need to put your own feelings aside and open your mind to the greater plan. This is a critical juncture in the war. We’ve lost so many Jedi. You’re one of our best. We can't afford to lose you, too.”

She felt like his words should have done something- turned some key in her mind, gusted away the smoke of uncertainty that burned at her eyes, felt right. They just rang hollow, distant, as if they were meant for someone else.

She shook her head. Her hand closed over the saber at her hip, and she briefly wondered if she should surrender it to them. It felt warm in her hand. Reassuring. An echo of confirmation. No- it was hers.

“You've already lost yourselves,” she said firmly. She looked from Master Yoda up to Master Windu, shaking her head. “I will not follow the Jedi down this path. The Order is no longer my home.”

She didn’t give them time to reply, though she doubted they would have tried. She pressed the button to call the lift and stepped inside the moment there was enough room for her to slip through the doors.

They watched her go. She caught Windu’s eyes and held his stare as the doors closed. Defiant. Determined. Resolute.

She had to find Bly. Everything was wrong, twisting into surreal shapes, laughing bitterly in the darkness. But she had felt him. The Chancellor was lying- he wasn’t gone. Not yet.

She had to find him.

1: Manda- the collective soul or heaven - the state of being Mandalorian in mind, body and spirit - also supreme, overarching, guardian-like (Mando'a) [ ▲ ]

2: Dinu ni jate kyr'am- give me a good death (Mando'a) [ ▲ ]

Chapter Text

Coruscant, 1071 days after Geonosis

 

CC-Cody: Talk to me, Fox.

CC-Fox: He's gone.

CC-Cody: Tell me what happened.

CC-Fox: I tried to get him out. He wouldn't do it.

CC-Cody: It's not your fault, Fox. This isn't on you. Not at all.

CC-Cody: Where is he now?

CC-Fox: Medical. In stasis. He fought like a rancor. Broke a CT's shoulder, smashed up a couple medics. Other one had to stun him and he's a mess over it.

CC-Cody: Kriffing hell

CC-Cody: So what's going to happen now?

CC-Fox: They're shipping him back to Kamino as soon as the shuttle can be scheduled. Tomorrow.

CC-Fox: Probably.

CC-Fox: Cody they're going to kill him

CC-Fox: They're going to kill him and cut him apart

[incoming call from CC-Cody]

[call rejected]

CC-Cody: Fox

CC-Cody: Fox talk to me

CC-Fox: I have to get him out of there

CC-Cody: Fox

CC-Cody: You have to be smart about this

CC-Cody: You can't go in there and break him out. They'll decommission you as well.

CC-Cody: I can't lose two of you over this. Not when we're so close to winning this war.

CC-Fox: He's my karking batchmate

CC-Cody: I know. I know he is.

CC-Fox: He's all I have left.

CC-Cody: I know.

CC-Cody: Answer my call, Fox. I have some ideas. I think we both have favors we can call in.

[incoming call from CC-Cody]

[call rejected]

CC-Cody- Fox. Pick up. The comm is secure. We need to talk. Whatever you’re planning, you need to run it by me. I can help.

[incoming call from CC-Cody]

-------

So that… that was it.

Everything. Gone.

From the moment Quinlan had brought her to the temple as a child, every single facet of her existence had orbited the gleaming sun of the order. Her home, her resources, every person she knew, every experience she’d ever had...

Gone.

She had let her determination carry her back to her rooms, kept it stoked as she packed what little she had there into a bag. Then she had stripped the clothes from her body and stood naked in the cool air, desperately reaching into the force for guidance. It burned- burned everywhere, and even as her passion cooled to numbness, the temple felt as if it was up in flames around her. What had felt so clear minutes before suddenly felt muddied, lost in smoke and embers and distant screams, and when she lowered her shields and reached for her bond with Bly, all she could hear were the deadened echoes of fear and violence and-

- the bile rose in her throat faster than she could process the sensation. She sprinted to the tiny fresher and lost her breakfast into the sink.

She clutched at the edges of the countertop, staring blindly into the sick-spattered bowl as her mind reeled and her body fought to catch up. She was lost. Adrift. Like an engine sheared off of some great ship hurtling through hyperspace, she was suddenly rudderless, weightless, burning as she spiralled into uncharted nothing as the rest of the world continued on its endless charge.

One thing at a time, she heard Quinlan’s voice murmur through the filter of her memory. Progress is a ladder. Start with one thing.

She needed to put some clothes on.

The old set of sparring clothes she'd found in the bottom of a drawer would have to do- she couldn’t bear to put on robes again, not now. Likely not ever again. The fabric was smooth and soft, but held creases of disuse- she used to wear them under her padawan robes on colder missions with Quinlan. They would suffice for now.

It shocked her how loosely they fit. She had always been toned, but the war had turned her body to cabled durasteel. Slipping into them felt strange, like she was borrowing them from another person entirely.

Perhaps she was.

One thing at a time. Find the next rung.

Her eyes scanned the spartan little room and found her com resting upside down on the table from where she’d dropped it in her earlier rush. It hit her as strangely anachronistic- a piece of the war in a timeless space. She could look around the room and easily pretend it was ten years ago- nothing stuck out as evidence to the contrary, save her jutting hipbones and the stifled light of the com’s ‘received message’ alert blinking steadily against the polished surface.

She picked it up and switched it from her private channel to her main frequency. There was a pause, then it chimed and turned green- she pressed her thumb into the button along the edge to play her messages.

All fifty seven of them.

Kriff.

The tiny figure of a clone popped up- helmetless, no kama, no pauldron, but so clearly a commander by his stance. The scarred sunburst design on his armor clicked his identity into place.

“General Secura, this is Marshal Commander Cody of the 212th. Please contact me as soon as you can.”

“General, this is Cody again. I need you to contact me as soon as you receive this. It’s about Bly.”

“General, Cody. Please respond. We have a situation.”

“General, this is Commander Wolffe of the 104th, the general asked me to comm you. You need to talk to Fox. Or Cody. It’s about Bly.”

The next message was just audio, an angry voice on an encrypted line- definitely a clone, but not one she recognized immediately.

“Secura, you-”

And then the com shut off.

The kriff? She tapped it against her palm. Nothing. She powered it down, turned it back on, and it stayed just as silent and blank as before. The realization came slowly.

They’d cut off her comms.

The consequences hit her all at once. She was isolated. She didn't have anyone's frequencies memorized. She had no idea how to contact Cody- or Anakin- or Plo- or anyone who would have the first idea of where to go from here.

One step at a time, Quinlan, but where do I go if the ladder breaks?

The overwhelming panic started to rise again, spiky and unwelcome, and her hands tightened into fists. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe, reaching out into the force. She needed its guidance. Needed to draw from the strength of the light. But it hovered just out of reach, spreading her thin as she stretched for it.

A tapping sound broke into her concentration, and she slowly opened her eyes, still half-trapped in her moment’s mediation. The room around her seemed to swirl, shapeless and timeless, as if the light from the window was showing different times of day all at once- the clear brightness of dawn, the harsh glare of noon, and the burning swirl of smoky sunset fading into darkness. Her brow tensed.

tap-tap-tap-tap

She snapped out of the fog and back into focus. The door. Someone was at the door.

There were words being spoken- she knew the pair of temple guards still stood vigil outside, waiting to escort her out when she had finished, but it took her a moment to recognize the third voice.

She waved her hand at the controls from across the room. As if she’d been expecting the timing to the millisecond, Master Jocasta Nu glided through in mid-stride.

Aayla opened her mouth to speak- Jocasta’s wizened fingers raised as if to silence her, but the door swished shut instead. She curled her hand slowly back down into her sleeve and settled her silent gaze on Aayla.

It was the first she’d seen of the elder master in more than passing since the start of the war. It was a thin comfort that Jocasta looked just as she always had- starched, prim, sharp as a vibroblade but with a promise of clever humor in the deep crows feet around her eyes. As a Padawan, Aayla had spent long hours exploring the labyrinthine wonders of the temple archives- she had all but lived there for the first few years of her apprenticeship, curled up with tomes and holopads while Quinlan did his research. On the rare occasion he went on missions without her, the archivist had taken her under her wing. She had seen ancient relics, incredible texts, and gleaned priceless knowledge at Jocasta’s side- and now those memories threatened to suffocate her.

She crossed her arms tightly under her bust and lowered her head under Jocasta’s stare, jaw clenched. Neither said a word until Aayla’s resolve broke. Her voice grated rough and low.

“Word travels fast. Does everyone know?”

“About your commander, or your leaving the order?” Jocasta fixed her with a sardonic tip of her head, the gilded hairpins securing her stark white bun glinting in the light from the open blinds. “Of course I know. It's my job to know everything. I watched it straight from the feeds as it was recorded.”

The heady guilt of disappointing a mentor made her hands clench and her throat squeeze shut. “Have you come to scold me?”

The archivist regarded her for a moment, the glint of reassuring humor leaving her eyes, replaced with something almost mournful. “No, dear child.” And when she stepped forward, placing wizened hands on Aayla’s folded arms, the reassuring contact paralleled in her mind. She closed her eyes into the touch and let it flow over her- it was the way a master would guide a padawan into meditation when they were too young to center themselves.

“You're not the first to leave for love,” Jocasta murmured. “Many have left for less compelling reasons than you. What’s being done to him goes against everything you are. I’d have been surprised if you’d chosen to stay.” Her hands squeezed lightly at Aayla’s elbows. “I’ve come to offer you what help I can give”

Help? That was the last thing Aayla had expected, and it jostled her from the tentative bloom of peace Jocasta had helped take root.

“...Why?”

The archivist fell silent. Her thin lips pursed, poised on the edge of surrender. Aayla knew the look well, from her years alongside Quinlan.

She was a woman with a secret that burned.

Aayla didn’t say a word- but she reached out with light fingers, as gentle and unjudging as a youngling asking for a crechemaster’s comfort, and she felt the brittle warmth of Jocasta’s hand wrap around hers in return. For a moment they stood in silence, drawing from each other’s contact, girding themselves against the bitter winds of shared heartbreak. Jocasta closed her eyes for a moment, drew a breath, then spoke in a voice much softer than Aayla had ever heard from her.

“I stood at this crossroads myself, many years ago. In love with a man. In service to the order. And I had to choose.”

Aayla held her breath. This… was not a story she knew.

“I imagine the gossip never made its way to your generation. You’ve only ever known me as a master well past her prime. Before I was the chief librarian, I sat on the High Council. I trained to be a Consular, but before that, for a time, I was a Shadow. If you can imagine that,” she added at the surprised tip of Aayla’s head. “And at my side was one of the greatest Jedi I have ever known. I’ll spare you the details, child. Suffice to say we loved each other… how did you say it? Dearly and completely. But like you, I was given a choice. And I chose the Order.”

Jocasta stopped. Her eyes were unfocused, staring at a point just over Aayla’s shoulder. She didn’t bother to follow the librarian’s gaze. She knew there would be nothing to see but the invisible play of memories. Aayla gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

“I have long since come to peace with my decision,” she began again, slowly, letting each word linger in the air like fog. “Even as I have watched the consequences of that choice set into motion the horrors of this war. I settle my soul with the understanding that he may have made the same decisions without me at his side. That with or without me, he would have fallen to the darkness. But that doesn’t change the fact that I am, by my actions, responsible. In a roundabout way, I am to blame for the entirety of your heartbreak.”

Aayla’s eyes creased, tumbling over the hints she’d been given, running through the possibilities. Who would- what would- how could Jocasta be-

No.

Her lekku stilled their pensive swaying. It couldn’t be him-

No, it couldn’t be anyone else.

Dooku.

Her realization must have projected itself. Jocasta’s introspective grimace turned to a wan smile. “For there to be a fall from grace, there must first be grace.”

Aayla’s mind flashed with a brief image of a man, tall and noble and beautiful, and a stab of emotion that felt both familiar and foreign clutched at her heart. She felt his dark gaze burn into her- through her, into someone else- and her own mind echoed with the warm golden glow of Bly’s as he laughed.

Jocasta squeezed her hand so tightly she thought it might break. She blinked herself back to the present, the pain of grinding tendons breaking the tenuous thread of memories. When she looked to Jocasta, the librarian’s stare was steely and hard with determination, but grief gleamed in the corners of her eyes.

“If you love him, find him. Save him. I will help you however I can.”

Aayla dragged in a shuddering breath. A wave of grateful desperation flooded her. "A… a comm. I need a comm."

Jocasta smiled- a sly, conspiratorial thing- and reached into one of the pockets of her voluminous robes. "I've bought you that and more, child."

-------

It almost felt like waking from a drunken dream, when her new comm beeped from her pocket.

Jocasta’s embrace at the top of the temple steps had been both comfort and a cover for whispered instructions- she’d told her to make for the commercial sector and wait for contact, to keep her movements random, to be watchful and unpredictable and see whose turns matched hers. Aayla knew she was a prime target- alone, compromised, a wealth of intel and a potential bargaining chip. Her capture would be a feather in the cap of the separatists, and she would be a fool to think the news of her scandal would stay unreported.

She had descended the stairs alone, Jocasta’s old mission-scarred leatheris pack over her shoulder, feeling more as if she was preparing for a shadow op than walking away from the only life she could remember. The reality of it would sink in eventually, she knew. Her years had taught her the stark reality of time: that the true grief of change wasn’t in the act of losing. It was in the days and weeks and months after, in the tired sleepless nights of emptiness before the new became the usual, the crushing ache of reminiscence and comparison. The moment of loss itself was a terminal anticlimax that fell into place with all the fanfare of passing through a doorway.

Or, in her case, taking the last stride from the sun-warmed tan stone of the temple steps to the gritty duracrete of the Coruscant sidewalk below.

She had wandered then, every step an observation, a paddle’s stroke speeding her downstream in an inexorable current. The noise and energy of the midday streets threatened to overwhelm her in its cacophony of sensation- The force flowed unrestrained, chaotic, swirling with the emotions of a million sentients going about their lives. Whether she was simply out of practice at shielding from so long surrounded by clones, or the trauma of loss had shaken her off her foundations, she didn’t know, but she found herself feeling far more affected by the presence of the world than she remembered being in years. She had a powerful urge to hole up and hide. Meditate. Seal herself away behind her walls. But no- she had to be on her guard, feeling for any disturbances or ill intent.

All she felt was exhausted and alone.

The comm sharpened the haze of the last few hours into sudden focus. It was a message, not a holo- the source listed as unknown, its identifier scrambled nonsense.

[Are you secure?]

She typed back a quick affirmative. The message pinged back almost instantly.

An address. The name of a bar. Nothing more.

She hefted her pack higher and set a course.

-------

The bar wasn’t quite what she expected.

Missions with Quinlan tended to frequent busy local dives, and her own assignments usually led her into seedy strip clubs and gambling dens, but this one was…

A good word was innocuous. A better word was boring.

The time of day was awkward, a bit late for lunch but too early for the evening bar crowd. A few holo screens around the half-lit room showed a mix of last week’s bolo-ball games and off-world speederbike races. There were booths around the edge of the room and tables on the evening’s dance floor. She scanned the thin crowd. All eyes turned briefly to her as she took a seat a few stools down from the nearest diner, close to the end of the row. Most of the patrons only shot her a passing glance. A few focused their intent as well as their eyes on her.

She mentally started gauging her marks.

“What can I get you?” the bartender droid said as it wheeled up to her, the menu activating in the bartop at its proximity. She barely paid its cheerful query any mind, instead continuing to scan her surroundings.

“Appetizer? The grill’s closed, but we can make you something small.”

She opened her mouth to brush the droid off- food was the absolute last thing on her mind right now. Then she all but heard Sharp’s predictably stern disapproval at her eating habits, and her gut clenched in grief. Goddess. Sharp. All of them, her men, their men- she swallowed, taking a tense breath to center herself. When she looked up at the droid, it was with a tight, false smile.

“What’s popular?”

The droid started rattling off options, and she closed her eyes, letting the energy of the room wash over her.

A slender human male walked in the door, locked eyes on her, and took a seat a few spots down the bar.

His focus burned red like a signal flare. Another mark.

The two men in the corner booth shifted edgily at his presence. She all but eye-rolled at them- depressingly unsubtle, especially considering that one of them was a force user and was trying to shield them both from her. All he’d managed to do was leave a big blank space in the swirling flow of the force around them. It was clumsy, like scribbling out an error on flimsi.

“That last one, that’s fine,” she said quietly as the droid stopped its chatter. It chirped confirmation and wheeled off to the kitchen, leaving her alone.

Well. As alone as a disgraced former Jedi being tailed by half a bar’s worth of occupants could be.

And then the swinging half-door from the back hallway opened, and the man who came through sidled right up and took the stool beside her.

His intent glowed bright. Focused, purposeful, not wary or observing- this was clearly her contact.

He was also, despite being sandy haired and green eyed, a clone.

It was astounding how coloring affected outward appearance- a holo of him would have shown a Corellian pilot, maybe a mercenary, tall and broad and discreetly armored under his leather jacket. His skin was a few shades paler than any clone she’d ever seen, and smattered with a haze of freckles over his nose. At a glance, she might have been fooled. But the clever quickness of his mind and the sharp glow of his aura in the force gave him away as a vod, and the force-muffled recognition from the pair in the corner booth confirmed it. He was the contact, they were surveillance, and there was a driver outside with the engine idling.

“Well hello, beautiful. What’re you doing in a dive like this?”

“I’m meeting someone.”

“Well then. Could I buy you a drink in the meantime?”

“I think quite a few people here would like to buy me a drink.”

His voice, resonant and flirty, dropped low. “What makes you say that?”

“Half the room can’t take their eyes off of me.”

He paused, keeping his face aimed at her but letting his eyes wander around the bar. “... How many?”

“Five. One is your vod, in the corner booth with the force sensitive doing a terrible job of masking himself. The Rodian by the door. And the green shirt four seats behind me.”

“That’s four.”

“One is you. Or should I count the mando in the taxi outside, as well?”

His smile quirked into a pleased half-grin. “I hadn’t noticed the Rodian.”

“I have a feeling our transmission wasn't as encrypted as we thought. Word travels fast.” She shifted on her stool and shot him a hard look, not bothering to reflect his advances. “Are you ready? I’m assuming we’re not talking business here.”

“That would be correct, but first let me buy you that drink.”

“I don’t drink.”

“Let me. Buy you. A drink. We’re convincing an audience right now. You need to disappear.”

“And why is that?”

He rested an arm on the bartop a hair’s breadth from hers and leaned in close to murmur just beside her head wrap. “Because our plan to get your commander back will have you wanted in four separate systems if we aren't discreet about it."

She took a deep breath and drummed her fingers against the bar a few times, contemplating, then swiped them across the surface to bring up the drink menu. Selected something that looked alcoholic but decidedly wasn’t. Then leaned back to give the man all but breathing her air a steady, unwavering look. “What a very specific pickup line.”

The slow, sly grin that spread across his face made her heart clench- even with his hair dyed and his eyes a barely-natural shade, his expression was still a mirror of Bly’s.

“Only the best for my nerra’s ka’ra." ¹

“Mm. You speak Ryl.”

“How else am I supposed to charm the ladies of Coruscant’s nightlife?” At the unamused narrowing of her eyes, he tipped a hand palm-up in apology. “I have a twi’lek sister-in-law. No other reason.”

She huffed a laugh as the server droid slid her drink across the bar with circuited precision. She curled her fingers around the glass of starcherry red nectar, sitting back on her stool and swirling it in slow circles before taking a sip.

“Bly’s a lucky man.”

And that prompted her to toss back the entire drink. The droid immediately began preparing another. “I think he would argue that point at the moment,” she murmured, delicately swiping a drop of saccharine sweetness from her lips with the tip of her tongue. “If he could.”

The clone’s eyes followed the movement, flirtatious and intentional. He worried his own bottom lip with his teeth the tiniest bit. “He can argue it with me all day long once he's out of their hands.”

“Hmm.” She took a moment to look at the clone- really look at him. The eyes and hair and skin were clever forgery, just iris dye and hair color and smoothly applied makeup. He was clearly command stock, as well- a touch broader, a hair taller, better fed and well conditioned with a bit more presence than the average trooper, both physically and mentally. He radiated cocksure confidence in a way that she’d never quite felt from any other clone, even the ARCs and commanders. Bly was the furthest thing from a ladies man and kept their boys on lock, and not a one had ever fought it, all out of respect for her. She somehow doubted this one had that kind of hesitation.

She gave him a slightly exaggerated look up and down. His face lit up at the attention. “Special Forces?”

He abandoned politeness to dip a finger into the dregs of her finished glass and delicately took a taste. For a second his eyes went wide with childlike delight- then the seducer’s mask fell back into place. “Of a sort. Kriff, this is delicious, I’m getting one.”

The sweet tooth must be genetic, she mused, forcing herself to smile as if he’d made a joke she found witty. “How many of these will make me seem drunk enough for you to get us out of here?”

The clone flashed her a bright grin, then tapped his fingers once, twice- a pause- then twice in quick succession on the bartop. It got her attention. She looked down at his hand to see him casually forming the battlesign for ‘advance- interrogative?’ “So ready to get me alone?”

“Get you alone?” Her hand came down next to his, shaping ‘affirmative’ with deft fingers. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Well let’s fix that.” He leaned in beside her headscarf, brushing a hand lightly- a smidge shy of sensually- over the top of hers, hiding her signing. “Mereel Skirata.”

---

The plan, despite only having had hours to come to fruition, was surprisingly more complex than just getting picked up in a bar. She excused herself to the freshers on Mereel’s instruction and promptly ran into his aforementioned sister in law. Laseema was a Rutian like herself, conveniently, but with rounder cheeks and a sweet smile, and she had laughed as they swapped outfits in the privacy of the largest stall. Aayla had confined her lekku into an interlocking twist around the back of her neck and put on the headscarf Laseema had unbound from her own. They spent a moment adjusting each other’s clothes, and then, unexpectedly, the other woman pulled her into a tight hug. Aayla hadn’t realized how close she was to falling apart until the choked noise escaped her clenched throat despite her frantic attempts to maintain her composure. When Laseema had pulled back, she’d thumbed away the tears at the corners of her eyes, all sisterly concern.

And then she pulled her forehead to hers into a firm keldabe. “You’re going to get him back,” she’d promised, the determination in her swelling like a storm into the raw glow of the force. “And you’re going to be ok.” And then Laseema was gone, headed back to the bar where Mereel waited to pick his tactical flirting right back up where he’d left off.

Brilliant.

Aayla turned the opposite way out of the freshers and slipped out the back door unnoticed. The service alley behind the restaurant was empty, save for an overflowing dumpster and some discarded shipping crates. She paused, letting the flow of the force color the world with overwhelming sensation, bathing her in intent- she felt the taxi’s driver before it rounded the corner.

The battered old cab glided to a stop right beside her. The front passenger door squealed open, revealing an older human man in a leather jacket leaning across the seat, arm still extended from popping the door for her.

“Well,” he said, sitting back to give her room. “Get in.”

She slipped into the cab and shut the door behind her with a slam. The blurred cacophony of Coruscant’s daytime bustle muffled out almost entirely, and she let out a hard breath that echoed in the relative silence.

The taxi didn’t move. She turned to find the man staring hard at her.

They regarded each other for an awkward moment, like two predators having crossed paths on a hunt. His grey hair was buzzed short in a military style, and his face was lined deeply from sun and years and hard living. She felt his mind, sharp and tactical, marking her saber at her hip and checking every plane of her outline for the imprint of other weapons. She could sense the body-warmed plates of beskar under his loose fitting shirt and sturdy leather jacket.

He held a hand out towards her.

A mess of responses warred in her head. The Jedi greeted with bows and handshakes and embraces. Twi’lek typically placed both hands around the offered hand. But mandos, and soldiers, and her men-

She turned in her seat and clasped his jacket-clad forearm. Strong fingers gripped her arm in return, and the old man’s expression split with a warm smile that smoothed the grimness from his face. His eyes glinted with boyish humor.

“Well, Mereel was certainly right on target about you. Welcome to the op, Secura.”

“Aayla, please,” she murmured, releasing his arm as he let hers go and returned it to the steering wheel. “Just Aayla. And you are?”

“Kal Skirata. I’ve heard a lot. Good to meet you.”

He shifted the cab into gear and guided them carefully out of the alley and back into a skylane. Rising above the first set of buildings made her feel strangely exposed. She purposely avoided looking to the west, where she knew the spires of the temple would be rising like blades into the skyline.

"Do I need to cover up?"

“No, no. From the outside, we look like a Sullustan cabbie without a passenger, lights out and headed home after a shift." He rapped twice on the window with the back of his knuckles. "Anti-surveillance gauze with a twist, courtesy of an associate of mine. You might know him, actually.”

“Your Jedi friend in the bar?”

“Perceptive. Yes. Bardan is-”

“Bardan Jusik?”

The mando cooked an eyebrow and glanced at her. “I take it you do know him, then.”

“I do," she mused. "He was just a year or so younger than me. We came up together through training, but..." she paused, trying to rein in her memories before they found their way down her face. “I lost track of him. As the war went on. I heard he’d left the order.” A long, low breath- a meditation breath, a centering breath- escaped her lips. “I’m glad to hear he’s safe.”

“He’s just fine,” Kal said, all steady reassurance. “He’s made himself invaluable. He’ll be happy to see another Jedi, I think. He’s had-” he stopped himself hard mid-sentence, weighing his words- “limited contact with anyone since he left. Mostly just been him and the boys since then.”

"I'd love to see him. It's been too long." She sat back in her seat, trying to click all the scattered pieces of information into place. "So- Mereel, is he-"

"My son," Kal said, firm and final. "Adopted, obviously. Him and his brothers. I was a training sergeant back on Kamino." He snuck a sideways glance at her. “You and Bly, eh? I never trained him, but I knew him. He was a hell of a cadet.”

Aayla swallowed hard. A day before and she’d have been elated at the prospect of new stories from Bly’s cadethood- but today, it felt like reminiscing at a wake.

If he noticed her distress, he gave no indication. “My boys were… a bit of a law unto themselves. They used to torment the command class. And Boba,” he added, looking almost fond. “But no, Bly was a damn good soldier. High marks in everything. A hell of a strategist. Though he cared about his brothers as much as he cared about the fighting. He watched over everyone. That always made him stand out to me.”

“That never changed,” she said, her voice rough with grief. “That’s… him.”

“Some things even war can’t kill,” he replied. He didn’t look away from the bustling skylane, but he caught her hands rubbing distracted tracks on the seat in his peripheral. “Pardon the hair, our usual driver has a shedding problem.”

She hadn’t noticed- the movement had been self-soothing, another of Quinlan’s tics she’d adopted as her own- but she’d inadvertently stirred up the long brown strands and felted them into long tufts under her fingers. Wookiee, she noted distantly, fitting the knowledge into yet another box she couldn’t bear to open. She attempted a laugh. It came out as a single strangled ‘heh’.

Kal dared to take his eyes off of traffic to fix her with a look. She could feel a distinctly paternal shift in his presence. When he spoke again, his voice was low and steady.

“If you need a moment, I’m as good as not here. Better to get it out. I know you’ve had a bad time.”

“I’m fine. Thank you, though.” The last words trailed off into a whisper. Frustrated, she gritted her teeth and turned her face away. She pressed her temple against the cool transparisteel of the window and let her eyes unfocus to the blur of passing traffic.

He took her weak attempts at deflection at their deeper meaning and let her be for a long while. And if he noticed the tears that streamed unbidden down her face and into the soft floral print of Laseema’s shirt… he didn’t mention it.

-------

She had herself dry-faced and mostly under control by the time they coasted into a garage a few levels down, near the top of a tall, narrow apartment building.

The place was half lit and dingy from disuse, and the faint smell of mildew hit her as she opened the cab door. Kal pulled a duffel from the trunk and shut it with a hollow slam, then motioned with a jerk of his head. “Come on. Time to meet the boys and get the sitrep.”

She followed numbly as he opened the man-door into the rest of the building. A hallway glowed golden beyond, and she could catch the faint rise and fall of voices from somewhere further down.

Kal noted her wandering eyes. “CSF safehouse,” he explained, shutting the door behind them. “The head of their anti-terrorism unit is a good friend.”

They headed down the hallway, Kal’s boots a heavy tromp to the counterpoint of her light, almost silent steps. The place felt full of echoes besides noise- the force swirled green and grey and loud around her, and she tried to pull a lung-filling breath as they turned into a door halfway down the hall. It missed the mark.

Focus. Stay centered.

The room itself was set up perfectly for a center of operations- it was small, nestled deep within the center of the structure with no exterior walls, and well soundproofed. The sight of a trio of clones in drab civilian clothing huddled around a shabby desk brought her back to both shadow-missions with Quinlan and campaign planning with the command staff of the 327th. Both gripped at her heart, but something clicked- it was like someone had entered coordinates into a hyperdrive. Her head fell right into mission mode. She took a deep breath and felt it fill her chest completely.

“Gentlemen.”

“Who’s that?” came a thoroughly encrypted, distorted voice through the com on the desk.

“Buir’s back from the grocery run,” said one of the clones. He was leaning on his fists, holo-transmitter between his hands, but looked back over his shoulder to eye her with a soldier’s cold formality and none of the flirtatiousness of her contact in the bar. “Found what he was going to pick up.”

The voice from the com fell silent. Kal grabbed a folding chair from the stack of them against the wall and popped it open for her, motioning for her to sit before disappearing off into a side room.

“Are you karking proud of yourself?” Even the modulation of the secure connection couldn’t filter out the disgust in the speaker’s tone. “You’ve probably killed him, you-”

“Let’s keep it mission-focused, all right?”

That was the voice on my com from earlier, as well, she mused, her mind flicking through the options.

“Do we have a timeframe on departure, or a pilot schedule?” The next clone to speak was one leaning against the wall, arms folded over his chest and legs crossed. Beside him sat yet another of his brothers, a pair of datapads in front of him on the desk, clearly listening but working at the same time.

“Pending,” said the com. “The earliest he’ll be moving is tomorrow. I’m watching the outbound schedules in case they try to pull a trick like they did with his arrest. I don’t think they’ll try to hide it this time, but anything could happen. Can we get our pilots here tonight?”

“That won’t be a problem,” came Kal’s voice as he walked back into the room, two steaming mugs in his hand. He handed one to her- she curled her fingers around it, taking in the warmth, and let the smell of well-sweetened, creamer-cut caf fill her senses. “We’ll have them looking regulation and dropped off at the contact point. They’ll make their way to you before curfew. Just swap them onto the roster, but know that whoever’s tallies you use will be taking permanent leave after this.”

“I have spares that I keep for this kind of thing. Will they fit into standard pilot kit?”

Kal turned a critical eye to the man against the wall and his seated counterpart with the datapads. “I’ll make sure they skip dessert.”

“How’s the chatter been?” asked the first clone to speak. Aayla had picked that he was likely the leader of this odd little squad just by the way he shared glances with Kal and braced himself on the desk with both fists, shoulders set, back slightly arched. It reminded her of Bly in a strategy meeting.

“Significant. Especially out of the temple. Some back and forth from the Chancellor’s office to Kamino, but I don’t have the right specs to get those unencrypted.”

“Send them here, if you can. We’ll take a crack. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

“What’s being said?” Kal pulled a chair up next to hers and lowered himself down with a creak of aging joints. He’d left his leather jacket in the other room and stripped off the loose overshirt he’d been using to hide his beskar- the armor was sandy gold, well cared for but scored with hard use and age, a reflection of its wearer.

“They’re scrambling to find someone to take over the 327th since they’re gearing up to deploy to Felucia.” Aayla bowed her head behind her mug and tried to steady herself. Felucia was a mess- they had taken it twice now. Casualties had been high both times. To not be there for her men was a thought she could hardly bear to consider- but the encrypted voice kept on. “Vos has been in conference with the council for a solid hour and it has been very entertaining. I’m getting the play-by-play from my contact. He’s holding the siege at Boz Pity and is having a bit of a mid-field meltdown. Faie is trying not to slot him where he stands.”

“I’d throw him a party,” Kal muttered under his breath. Aayla side-eyed him. Vos inspired love from very few- confusion, distrust, and downright hatred tended to be the default responses to his brash and uncomfortable personality. She’d adored him for it, excused it, cradled it in her heart and kept him aimed towards the light as best she could, and a year ago she’d have had the old mando apologizing for his turn of phrase- but now? Her reserves of empathy were drained, replaced with the bitter dregs of betrayal, and she couldn’t bring herself to say a word in his defense.

“Keep us posted if you hear anything of interest. Otherwise we’ll run as we discussed. We’ll be waiting for your word.”

“Oya, vode.”

The com beeped as it disconnected. The leader looked back at her over his shoulder, sizing her up, then turned around and leaned in. He extended a hand just as Kal had.

“Ordo Skirata. Glad to see you’re out safe.”

“Thank you,” she said back, leaning in to grip his forearm in greeting, her voice caught between strategy-meeting-strong and too-quiet.

“And these are Prudii and A’den.” The one with the datapads nodded in greeting- his brother against the wall flicked a hand in a small wave and fixed her with a little smile. “You’ve already met Mereel. We’ll be handling the op.”

“Yes, I met Mereel. And Laseema. I appreciate you all,” she said, voice barely holding steady. “Let me know where you need me. I’ll do anything I can.”

“We may not need your particular skillset- we made this plan without you in mind. Cody and Fox contacted us this morning, so we didn’t know how you’d fit in or where you’d be. But it never hurts to have a Jedi around for this kind of thing. We won’t have Bardan, he and Corr will be watching Laseema.”

“Was that Fox on the com?”

Ordo nodded, cocking a hip to sit on the edge of the desk. “He’s not happy with you.”

“He and Bly are very close.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “I don’t blame him at all.”

Kal stirred in his seat, stretching an arm back to drape casually on the back of his chair. “Well, we’ll be doing our best to get him back in one piece. He’ll forgive you.”

A laugh from the other side of the room turned everyone’s heads. A’den- the one with the datapads- had a wicked grin on his face. “Oh, Fox wasn’t kidding, Vos is pissed. These transcripts are gold.”

“Not to speak ill of family,” Kal said, eyeing her carefully, “but your master is a piece of garbage.”

She took a sip of her caf to buy her a moment to put her words in order. “My feelings on him are a bit conflicted at the moment.”

Kal shifted in his chair, his expression softer now that the cards were on the table. “Well, if you need instructions on how to foster a lifelong hatred towards a father figure, an old associate of mine wrote the field manual on the topic. You’d love him. He’s... charming.”

The gathered clones chuckled darkly.

On any other day, she’d have followed that trail, building a rapport with the men around her and easing casually into her role. But today, she had no interest in smalltalk or the subtleties of the game. She needed intel, and she needed it yesterday.

“I’d like to be filled in on what’s happened in the last day. I know what I was told by the council, and what the chancellor said, but I have no idea where Bly is or what’s happened. Can you tell me what you know?”

Ordo’s lips pressed into a firm line, and he nodded. “Start with yesterday. Tell us your side. We’ll fill in the gaps.”

1: nerra's ka'ra (Ryl)- brother's girlfriend/lover. The term is actually ka're, referring to a male pronoun- I took the liberty of swapping the trailing vowel to make it feminine. [ ▲ ]

Chapter Text

Coruscant, 1072 days after Geonosis

She hadn’t remembered falling asleep.

The evening had burned away quickly- Kal had disappeared with Prudii and A’den, both of whom had switched their civvies for off-duty reds like two pilots coming back from a day out on the town. He’d returned an hour or so later with generous helpings of takeout from a local eatery. She’d managed to choke down something- Ordo needed no encouragement to finish off anything she didn’t get to- but Kal didn’t miss the tells of her exhaustion, and without prompting showed her to a back room where a few military cots had been set up. He’d apologized for not having blankets or bedding. She was beyond caring.

She’d laid there, overwhelmed, struggling to shield herself from the passive blowoff of thought and emotion from every sentient nearby. The force was loud around her now- the serenity of her teachings, the desire to be calm and feel the ebb and flow of the Force with the dispassionate serenity of a Jedi- that was gone, replaced by a mess of blurred signatures, raw and distracting in their intensity. She felt like a massiff in an abattoir, a predator deafened by the smell of blood.

It hadn’t felt like her mind slowed down enough to break with consciousness, but it must have- when she opened her eyes and stirred, she found her hands bundled in the soft lining of Kal’s jacket. She hadn’t sensed him coming in to check on her, which left her with a strange, self-conscious feeling of disorientation, but the heavy warmth of the leather and the graciousness of his gesture smoothed away any ripples of uncertainty.

Now properly awake, she unfurled herself from the cot and sat up, letting the jacket fall away. She regretted it immediately- the room was colder than she’d expected. She slid her arms into its sleeves as she stood and wrapped the front of it around her like an oversized robe.

She was alone in the makeshift bunkroom. The steady presence of other beings in the vicinity nagged at her awareness, but most were sleeping- the family a few floors above, the tooka lazing on an empty bed in the apartment below, Ordo and Kal down the hall. There was a singular waking presence; a clone, one she vaguely recognized, quiet and alert but at ease. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well ground herself with someone else’s company.

She hadn’t been given a full tour of the damp, empty safehouse- it spanned an entire floor of the towering apartment complex and was a warren of domesticity converted into a tactical stronghold. She didn’t feel up to exploring. She followed her feet down the only familiar hallway and peered inside the door of the makeshift strategy room she’d been briefed in earlier.

Ordo had dragged a cot into the room and was curled up asleep with a spare shirt draped over his head. Kal was snoring lightly in a chair a few feet away, his chin tipped down onto his chest and his arms folded over the breastplate of his beskar. His legs were stretched out in front of him with his boots crossed at the ankles. He looked as if he could pop up at any noise, ready for action. At the moment, though, he was completely at peace, and she had no intention of disrupting that.

She left them both to their rest.

She passed a few more open doors- a dingy bathroom, another bedroom that had clearly been used as a sniper’s nest at one point, and a small kitchenette that opened onto a balcony. The curtain over the sliding door was rustling, as if the door beyond it was open to the outside air. She scuffed her boots a little on approach to give a warning, then brushed the curtain lightly aside to peer out.

Mereel was already looking back at her, silhouetted by the scant glow of the level’s artificial night-cycle. She met his smile with a wan one of her own and joined him on the balcony, mirroring his pose as she braced her crossed forearms on the railing and turned her eyes to the blank façade of the building across the way.

His voice was a smooth baseline to the chorus of noise from the streets of Coruscant above and below. “Everything all right?”

She nodded, shrugging the jacket higher over her shoulders. “Just can’t sleep.”

“Mm. Well, I’m happy to keep you company.”

She regarded him discreetly- he had shed the street clothes and washed the adopted persona from his face and eyes, though his short-cropped curls were still unnaturally light. Here in the dim light and sporting blue-striped beskar, he was hardly recognizable as the man from the bar. Her thoughts drifted to the meeting, to the gentle kindness of her sister twi’lek before she’d been smuggled away.

“Is Laseema all right?”

Mereel smiled, still staring out over the balcony. “Oh she’s fine. Got herself settled in at the safehouse. Bardan and Corr are with her. A day or so and she’ll disappear without a trace. Just like you.”

“I’m very appreciative of her. She didn’t have to do this.”

“Honestly, I think she was excited to help. She’s been watching us take missions for as long as she's known us, and never had the chance to be in on one. She’s having a great time pretending to be a Jedi.”

Aayla huffed, the barest ghost of a chuckle. “And I’m sure Bardan is enjoying himself. I knew him well, before the war.”

“So he told me.” A subtle tip of his chin was the only indication that Mereel had shifted his gaze from the buildings across the street to her. “He’s glad you’re out, by the way. Said he was thinking of comming you because he’d heard rumors about you and Bly, but...”

She finished his sentence for him with a wry twist of her lips. “The war.”

“Yep.”

They drifted into companionable silence. Aayla smoothed a lek forward over her shoulder and idly stroked the tip, lost in thoughts.

“So have you and Bly said vows?”

Her attention turned sharply to the commando- she returned his curious gaze with her brow creased in question, her supple lek gone still in her palm. “Have we what?”

“Said vows. Are you married?”

“No,” she said quietly. Regret curled its claws deeper, wringing just a little more grief out of a heart already bruised, and her lek twisted itself between her fingers. “We’d spoken of it. But- how would we? Obviously the Jedi lack any sort of custom for it. Twi’leki marriage requires a clan and a priestess, and I have neither. The clones don’t even have a concept of it in corps culture. And Bly has little more than a passing knowledge of Mandalorian traditions. How can you marry when you don’t know how?”

“Fair point,” Mereel returned, leaning his elbow on the railing again. “Well, osik.”

The lek still behind her back swished heavily in distant question.

“I just lost a lot of credits to Prudii.”

A genuine laugh struggled through her tight throat, and she shook her head. “Everything is a competition.”

Mereel shrugged a shoulder, his half-cocked smile a bit conspiratorial. “Soldiers born and bred. Can’t turn it off.” He stared back out over the street below, but his expression didn’t release its curiosity. She waited. “So, you’re not wed,” he began after a moment. “When we get him back, are-”

“If.”

“When. Have a little faith in us.”

“It’s not a lack of faith. I promise. Bly taught me many things, but the one that has seen me through this force-forsaken war was to not to be too assured in victory. Always have backup plans. Expect the best, the worst, and everything in between.”

“Solid advice. So what is your plan?"

She cocked her head- her lek slipped through her fingertips to freedom. “The plan is Ordo and your father’s, not mine.”

“No, for after. Your plan. With Bly.”

“Oh.” She shrugged, at a loss for a solid explanation. Her eyes searched for it in the darkened windows of the building across the way. “It was nothing we’d nailed down. Too much was uncertain. We’d spoken of leaving, after the war was won. I could simply walk away from the order. But for him, it wouldn’t be simple. There’s no way it could be. I’d been speaking with…” she paused, picking her words with caution. “A sympathetic senator. Whatever the war would lead to for Bly and myself, it was always my intention to fight for our men. All the clones. I… just… I’d hoped that it wouldn’t turn out like this.”

“Well. Here it is.”

“Here it is.”

Something about her train of thought had piqued the commando’s interest- he had turned himself to face her while she’d been talking, one elbow on the railing, his face neutral but his presence in the force pinging with inquisitive attention. “So what would you do as civilians?”

The question felt discordant- its answer both impossibly out of reach and so close to home that it stung. Her distracted stare went unfocused. “Both of us wanted to help with healing what the war destroyed. Reconstruction efforts. Humanitarian aid. ” She fiddled with the too-long cuff of Kal’s jacket, and when she started again, her voice was low and strained. “When I was young, this galaxy was so big. I could close my eyes and reach out to every corner of it, and feel the pulse of it reaching back. After the war started, I had to make my world very small, or else I’d drown. I’m tired of hiding. I want to help people again. I’m a-” The word ‘Jedi’ died on her lips, though its intent hung in the air like dust. “Was.” She felt the recognition echo back from him- he knew what she’d implied. She realized her hands had been wringing themselves, her mind spinning eddies of anxiety into a sucking whirlpool of dread- she took a deep breath to calm the waters and lightly shook the tension from her fingers, but it still left her feeling like a cable strung too tight. “The Jedi were peacekeepers. I was raised and trained as a peacekeeper. This war…”

She lost her momentum and trailed off into silence. The sounds of the city seemed to crescendo to fill the empty space- then a heavy hand came to rest on the loose sleeve over her forearm. She closed her eyes and tried to center herself with Mereel’s gentle reassurance.

She had expected to feel entirely alone in this. But she had found herself with support, and a plan, and the kind acts of strangers-turned-allies. And while the deep-seated ache of loss and betrayal still lingered, the acute panic she’d felt leaving the temple had faded to something she could manage. She wasn’t alone, and she wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

The war had given, taken away, pruned away the lush beauty of peace and seemingly infallible values the order had propagated in her and left her a bare, unrecognizable stalk in its place. It had reaffirmed sharply and brutally who she was at her core- but every loss cut at her like a blade.

“I think if anyone could turn a clone into a peacekeeper, it would be you.”

She hadn’t realized her eyes were glassy with unshed tears until she looked up and found Mereel’s outline blurred- she blinked rapidly and turned her head away.

It was a long moment before either of them spoke again.

“Just because you were made for war doesn’t mean you can’t find peace.” She paused to clear her throat, swallowing hard to shoo away the tightness that had settled there. “Aren’t you tired of fighting?”

“It’s all I’ve ever known.”

“But it’s not all you could know.”

“True.” His hand squeezed, finding her arm in the loose drape of leather, then slipped away. She followed the contact with her eyes and found him still watching her- though his inquisitive expression had gone surprisingly fond. “You know, you’re all right. For a Jedi.”

She snorted inelegantly. “Former Jedi.”

“The best Jedi I know are former Jedi.” There was a predatory flash of teeth in his grin. “Still all right.”

“Hey.”

Both of them turned at the deep voice from the doorway behind them. Ordo stared back at them, a hand on the doorframe, looking perfectly composed and not at all like he’d just woken from a soldier’s sleep. “Intel just came back. Time to fly.”

She and Mereel exchanged a glance- he tipped a hand at her, telling her to go on ahead. She took a last breath of stale Coruscanti air and followed Ordo back into the safehouse.

-------

“You sure you’re all right to fly her?”

Aayla cracked a small smile but didn’t look away from the controls of the Traffic Interdiction Vessel- a TIV in pilot’s jargon- as she ran the small craft through preflight. Outwardly, it carried the deceptive shape of an anonymous civilian utility vessel, indistinguishable from a thousand other small single-pilot craft on innocuous business over Coruscant that day. But the panel before her gleamed with a decidedly military array of weapons systems and flight controls- a deadly soul in an unassuming body. She rather liked it. And the fact that it had been obtained via the discreet courtesy of Commander Fox of the Coruscant Guard, Bly’s beloved batchmate- it felt like a tiny bloom of hope.

The steady tromp of Kal’s boots stopped just behind her seat. She spared him a backward glance. “The instrument setup is similar to our gunships. Nothing I’m not familiar with. It’s obviously… modified,” she added, turning her attention back to her checklist. “But I’ll more than manage.”

There was a chuckle from behind Kal- the old mando gave way for Mereel, all six feet of blue-streaked beskar, to slide in beside him at the other side of the pilot’s seat.

“Oh don’t doubt her, buir, she will. Have you seen her flight scores?”

She didn’t have to look back to see the disapproval- Kal’s voice sounded like a tired father. “Didn’t Jaing tell you to stay out of the-”

“An-y-way,” Mereel said, voice pitching up with defensive dismissal. “This ship has some of my favorite recon tech. This-” he leaned over her shoulder and tapped a screen with two fingers- “Compares transponder codes to the hull shape and engine output of a ship to catch discrepancies. Have a freighter listed as a pleasure barge? It’ll ping it. Makes it easier to spot people up to things they shouldn’t be, like dodging tax requirements. Or selling stolen explosives to the seps.”

“That last one sounds like it comes from experience.”

“You’d be right.”

“And what’s this?” She grazed a fingertip over the small gauge cluster above her head. It looked to be a weapons system, but its format was foreign to her trained eye. She caught Mereel’s grin as he opened his mouth to speak, but it was Kal’s skeptical voice that turned her head.

“Ordo can pilot if you’re not sure.”

She felt her unbound lekku start a slow, heavy sway behind her, a sinuous hint of annoyance like the stirring of a tooka’s tail.

“I led the Star Corps for a reason, sergeant.”

Kal’s hand patted her shoulder lightly, then let it linger with a reassuring, apologetic squeeze. “Well, then. I’ll leave us in your hands.” She was hit with a spike of emotion- a kind of fierce paternal fondness that felt startlingly like Quinlan, yet foreign- a saber of beskar, not plasma. The distraction rattled her a little, and it wasn't until Kal’s voice echoed behind her again that she snapped out of the disoriented reflection it had left her in.

“Run us through it once more for good measure, Ord’ika.”

She swiveled the pilot’s seat around, pulling a deep breath in- she hadn’t felt the commando come back onto the ship from where he’d been doing the external preflight checklist and loading the last of their gear, nor had she heard Kal take a seat on the bench against the hull. She’d kept catching herself pulling back from her connection to the force out of unconscious self-preservation. It eased the drowning of overstimulation, but it numbed her senses and left her feeling both stranded and a tad out of sync with the world around her. She had to get herself centered- get her bucket back on, as Bly would say.

It was so much harder than it should be without him here.

Ordo closed out his comlink with a tap and glanced across the three of them- she didn’t miss how his body was turned to her and Mereel, but his words- and his eyes- were aimed towards Kal.

“It should be a simple op, especially with the flight plan they’ve sent us. The shuttle is a Nu-class attack-transport, set to depart in…” he paused to check his chrono. “Ninety eight minutes. Just the pilot and copilot onboard- it’ll be a droid minding the stasis pod, not a Corrie guard squad. No escort fighters noted. We’ll be at the hyperlane junction when they drop out to adjust course onto the second leg of the route. A’den and Prudii will set the charges, we’ll get them all onboard the TIV, blow the shuttle, and be halfway to Mandalore before anyone notices it’s gone.”

Mereel nodded, looking satisfied. “Sounds solid, unless the intel changes.”

“How will we know if it has?” she asked, looking between Ordo and Kal. “Will we be able to verify any of this in-flight with your men?”

Kal sat back in his seat and folded his arms across his chest, stretching his shoulders back stiffly. “No. They’ve had to go comm-silent. Everything is monitored. We won’t hear from them again until they come aboard.” Kal caught her uneasy look and returned it with a subtle shake of his head. “Leave it to us. We’ve got it covered.”

She barred her concern behind tightened lips. “Do you think he’s safe?”

Kal’s brow twitched up a questioning fraction. “In stasis?”

“Yes.”

He drew a slow breath to reply, but Mereel beat him to the punch, tapping the back of his boot against the beskar over his own shins.

“Have you ever dealt with stasis?”

“Not personally, no.”

“Has he? Has he ever been chilled down?”

“Not since I’ve known him.”

“No reason for him to be,” said Kal. “Commanders aren’t Commandos.”

“Lucky shabuir,” muttered Mereel under his breath.

“So you’ve been put into stasis before?”

“Exactly once,” said Ordo firmly

“And never again.”

“Udesii, boys.” Kal warned, though Aayla didn’t miss the pride that flared bright in the force like a signal rocket. “He’ll be fine. They chill down the ARCs between missions.” The weathered crease beside his mouth deepened a fraction. “Typically. “

Mereel snorted.

Some flicker of concern must have breached her controlled neutrality- Ordo shifted his weight with a subtle clink of beskar and fixed her with a look. “It won’t be a clean wake-up, especially if it’s his first time. He’ll be cold. Nauseous. Disoriented. Can’t thaw him out and shove a blaster in his hands right off. And from what Fox told us, he fought them the whole way down.” His stoic expression turned almost gentle. Sympathetic. Ordo lacked Mereel’s extroversion, but the break with formality felt as if he was offering her a warm mug of his own comfort-blend of logic and control. She didn’t have to force her small smile- he returned it with a wolfish curl of his lip. “He's gonna have a riot of a headache.”

“And we’ve got his commando cocktail all ready for happy hour,” Mereel said, holding up a small medical corps-emblazoned box and giving it a teasing wiggle. At the curious sway of Aayla’s lekku, he tossed and caught it with a grin. “Warm fluids and stims. He’ll be fighting fit.”

“So, bring him onboard, thaw him out…” Kal paused mid-sentence as Ordo’s comm went off. Aayla’s eyes trailed after the null as he stepped away to answer it. She heard Kal’s voice start back up again, but it was a wordless drone at the fringes of her senses.

She felt the darkness swirl before Ordo had turned back around.

Something was wrong.

She was out of the pilot’s seat before the null had cleared the cockpit door again, relinquishing the controls. His face was stony as he brushed past her.

'We have a problem.”

Kal was on his feet instantly, bracing one hand on Ordo’s pauldron and the other on the wall. “What?”

Ordo’s hands flew through the last steps of pre-flight, his voice rising louder as the engines kicked to life with a low whine. “He's not on the shuttle. They can't find him. Mereel, patch in.”

Mereel’s voice came through with the tinny resonance of his helmet’s vocorder. “Already done.”

“What do you mean?”

“The corries got down there to move the stasis pod to the shuttle and it was gone. Fox is-”

The words leapt shrill from her mouth. “He told us they were monitoring everything!”

“Mistakes happen. So does deception” The battlefield was starting to come out in Kal’s voice, all coarse Mandalorian grit. His hand closed again on her shoulder and squeezed it. It did nothing but compress her panic. “Doubt it was an oversight. Come on. Strap in. Let my boys work.”

-------

“Commander, sir, I don’t- I have no idea what happened.”

The echo of rapid bootfalls jarred in syncopated counterpoint to the hammering of Fox’s heart. He could feel it building in his head, the thudding pressure ratcheting higher with every word out of his lieutenant's mouth. “Control or surveillance,” he gritted out. “Have they been contacted?”

“Sir?”

The syllable exploded behind Fox’s temples like a mis-timed det. When the smoke of it cleared, the lieutenant was pinned to the wall of the corridor with Fox’s gauntlets gripped crushingly around the edges of his chestplate and his helmet a millimeter from the poor bastard’s bare face. Fox could feel his own ragged breath refracting back, sucked back into burning lungs before it could hit his helmet filters.

He didn’t remember- he hadn’t done that. Fuck.

His brain ached from the inside out.

Fox swallowed. Set the trooper back down on his heels, ignoring how his forearms shook with the effort to release his grip. He heard his own voice through his audio input like it was being spoken by someone else.

“I want a review of anything and everything with data recording. Helmet cams, surveillance drones, security from every drug store and food cart in a three klick radius of the detention center- pull memory banks from the sweeper droids, everything. I want to know where every last droid and sentient in this compound was at every hour for the last twelve. Use those damned null ARCs we’ve got on loan.”

“Yes, commander. We’ve got-”

“Just - just do it. He can’t be off-planet yet. Go.”

“Yes, sir.”

The harried clone sidestepped with a scrape of armor against the wall, slipping the tightening snare, and all but bolting down the corridor.

Fox was left panting in his wake.

It was a threadbare comfort that he had the best intelligence on triple-zero at his disposal. This was his brother, his steadfast comfort since cadethood despite being systems away for most of the war, used and manipulated like all of them were- tools of a conflict they were never intended to survive. Bly’s carnal contentment in the 327th didn’t do a damned thing to change that fact. Fox had told him over and over that it would be the death of him, but the motherless fuck didn’t have a crumb of self preservation when it came to his pretty blue Jedi. He’d forgotten who’d be left behind when it all went to terminal, inescapable shit.

Not that Fox himself had a better chance of surviving him. He was one illegal slugthrower shot from biohazard disposal and a requisition order himself. How many hundreds of them had he signed his number to since Geonosis? They were all dust in the end, every last one of them. Carbon to seed the stars.

He could tell himself that every damned day, but the thought of losing Bly burned like a shot of overproof whiskey anyway.

It didn’t register that his boots were leading themselves to the patrol bike hangar until he was scanning his tallies at the blast doors. He absently switched his helmet filters to ambient air- the astringent tang of fuel filled his sinuses, purging the fog from his mind like oxygen from an airlock. He breathed it in deep and let it out in a shuddering blow.

The parking lines of BARC speeders stretched out in steadfast array, their heavy fairings slashed with the deep red of the Coruscant Guard. He moved past them without a glance, long-strided and fierce, to the next row. Thire’s BARC sat on the end, its engine cover removed and a diagnostic box snaking its wires inside. Beside it was Thorn’s bike- she was polished and patrol-ready, her red-winged paintjob immaculate and utterly untouched since her master had left for Scipio. And just past it, rawboned and beskad keen, sat his 74-z. She was a fathier amongst orbaks, a race-tuned swoop engine with a seat tossed on it, and he was throwing a leg over and flipping through the startup sequence with rapid familiarity.

Tamer comforts would give him no peace today. He needed to hunt.

She woke from her slumber with a rising keen, shaking off the damp morning air with a shudder he felt through his armor. She wasn’t even warm before he caught movement in his peripheral cams. A squad of patrolmen stood in a ragged line, armor akimbo, just outside the open door of the climate controlled hangar lounge. They’d been caught napping. Their leader got his shit together long enough to blurt out the first thing that came into his head.

“Orders, sir?”

Fox stared back, for the first time putting thought to his impulse to search for control in the gut-dropping course of Coruscant’s atmosphere. He gave the throttle a pull and let her howl.

“Mount up. You’re secondary?”

“Yes sir, on standby.”

“Call for tertiary to report for standby, you’re with me.”

“Yes, commander.”
.
He taxied her through the lines of parked bikes, waiting for the scrambling troopers to start their own bikes and arrange themselves behind him- she burbled raggedly, her tuning protesting the snail’s pace. He was just clearing the blast doors when the lower, smoother rumbling of the BARCs added their baseline to her higher whine. As the hangar platform opened before them, he came off the throttle entirely and took a moment to look past the sheer edge that plummeted into open air. The lower skylanes were packed with commuter traffic. Beyond them, spreading like the canopy of a leafless forest, were endless lines of ships heading both into and back from hyperspace lanes. They glinted in the clear light of the upper atmosphere like metallic insects.

Bly could be on any of them.

He didn’t know where to start. His mindless rage faltered for a moment, stumbling like the warming engine between his cuisses.

And then his comm gave an incoming chime. He fought to unclench his jaw enough to accept the transmission.

“Fox.”

The voice was harried but strong. “Commander, we’ve got confirmation from security footage. Stasis pod was moved at 0650, it’s on a transport-”

“Send the details to my HUD.”

It flashed across the screen in pieces, more coming in every few seconds. He mentally cross-referenced the backgrounds, recognizing pavement patterns and backgrounds, picking a direction of travel by morning shadows and the gleam of sunrise on the transport’s hull. East, then. He knew the sector and its hyperlanes. He sent the data to the patrol squad as the stragglers caught up to him on the edge of the platform.

A lead, good atmospheric visibility, and ungoverned thrust between his legs- he didn’t need a damn thing else. Without another word he raised a hand from the controls and flashed battlesign to the men at his back- three fingers clawed into a talon, presented with a fierce, efficient flourish.

Oya.

—

“Are they saying they have a ship description?”

Mereel set his boots apart slightly and grabbed at the back of the pilot’s seat, fighting the sway of the ship as it rose and banked sharply. Aayla watched him press a gloved hand to the side of his helmet. “A-firm. And we’ve got a timeframe. I’m cross-referencing planetary departures- kriff, I’m getting a comm from Prudii, buir can you take it?”

“I’ve got it-”

“Do we have any idea-”

“No, we don’t even-”

Aayla closed her eyes. Took a breath so deep she felt the snug bite of Laseema’s shirt into her ribs and the seat's harness into her shoulders. She let it out with aching, mindful slowness. And at her unspoken command, the chaos of the TIV dropped away.

The force, earlier so overwhelming and choked with confusion, greeted her with brightness as clear and blinding as dawn over a moon.

She reached reflexively for her connection to Bly, but as it had been every time she'd idly gone for it in the last day, there was no response. It felt like a rope extending into infinite fog- not cut, not as it had after Caluula, but simply stretching into hazy nothingness with no tug in return.

The ache at its absence felt like a hole, carved rough and hollow in her chest. The desire to pull away, to cut short the pain and recoil as if she’d burned herself on her saber, was reflexive.

She held firm.

This is a sensation, like any other. Like hunger. Like cold. Like pleasure. Lean into it. Open yourself to it. Let it wash over you. Let it fill you.

The air in her lungs went completely still.

It felt as if water, clear and fresh and flowing bright, began to pool behind the pain. And then… something golden-warm began to blossom through the cracks at the epicenter of the ache.

Show me where he is.

The warmth hesitated, pooling but not rising. She skimmed her consciousness across the surface of it, feeling for clarity.

Show me hope. Show me love.

It was subtle- a warmth on her cheek, like the sun shining through Felucian foliage on a cool, damp morning. She turned her face into it.

When she opened her eyes, it felt like waking from sedation- there was no sound, no feeling, just the cockpit window of the TIV with the Skiratas moving in silent half-speed in front of it, like actors on a stage. All she could see was a single dazzling flash on the distant horizon.

“There.”

Ordo glanced back, noted her sightline, and squinted back out the viewscreen. “You’ve been able to track him this whole time?”

“No.” Mereel’s helmeted head dropped down beside Ordo’s, rangefinder lowered, a bladed hand marking him towards a distant skylane. “Mark to five eight-”

“Don’t have my buy’ce on, save the coords.”

“There. Up the wing of that green hulled freighter, see it?"

Ordo’s eyes went fierce as he gunned the TIV’s throttle. “Kriff’s sake. I know that bike. It’s Fox.”

-------

The freighter’s red rear airlock doors flashed in Fox's vision like a jackrab’s tail. He could see it. Fuck them all, he could see it, four fuckdamn ships up the exosphere-bound skylane from his current location, and like his namesake, Fox was in hot pursuit as it fled.

“Commander!” The call through the comms crackled with static, the trooper’s voice pitched high with adrenaline and thin air. “Pull up, sir, we can’t keep pace.”

“Drop back,” he snarled. “It’s mine.”

The 74-Z wasn’t designed for this- it was a low-altitude swoop, its repulsors designed to top out around twenty five meters from the ground- but the pearlescent-red racing stripes were far from the only modification Fox had made to his beloved bike, and there was a reason he was the sole author of the Advanced Tactical Vehicle Operation curriculum for the Coruscant Guard. They had tried to introduce it to the bluejobs, but it turns out that Kaminoan-specced reflexes and testicular fortitude were prerequisites for the class.

So, it also seemed, was rage.

Fox had always taken the bike to her limits, but now he was pushing his armor’s life support systems to the brink of failure as well- as he ramped her off the wing of a yacht, the oxygen supply alarms in his helmet hit a fever pitch. He unclenched his jaw enough to manage to click his back teeth together. The warning silenced. The bike’s repulsors caught the fuselage of the next ship up, bottoming out with a scrape against the rusted hull.

He still had eyes on it. Two ships up. He could make it. He could catch it.

He was running out of atmosphere.

—------

Aayla couldn’t stand it.

She’d unbuckled her safety harness and joined Mereel at the back of the pilot’s seat to have a better look out of the front of the TIV.

“What’re the specs on that ship?”

“Correllian, should be a big triple-engined flare-bodied cargo vessel, like-’

She cut him off, reaching to point just ahead of the patrol bike’s wavering trajectory. “There!”

Ordo banked the ship to follow her gestured course. “I see it, I see it. Commander, stand down, we’ve got it.”

There was a garbled return of comms traffic- Aayla couldn’t catch a word of it, but the tone was frantic. Ordo grated out a sigh. “Tracking beacons loaded. Mereel-”

The statement took a moment to break through her perception. “Tracking- I thought we were going after him?”

“We’ll have to tag it and follow. We can’t board it in Coruscant atmo in the middle of the damn day.”

“So we’re going to lose him again?!”

“Easy,” came Kal’s murmur, along with a heavy squeeze on her shoulder. “We’ll get him. It’ll just take-”

The touch was too much. She shrugged it off with a breathy grunt and strode for the back of the ship.

The nulls exchanged a glance, Ordo’s expression as blank as the face of Mereel’s helmet. Their buir turned back to them with a shake of his head. “Just don’t lose sight of it, Ord’ika. Let’s get it tagged.”

“She’s not happy about that,” came Mereel’s low murmur. Kal offered a one shouldered shrug.

“It’s not her op. She-”

He was kept from finishing that particular thought by several things happening at once.

The panel in front of Ordo started up a crimson-pitched shriek of alarm.

Kal glanced back after Aayla and found nothing but an empty passenger area.

Fox’s voice rasped its breathless rage through the comm. “Jedi!”

Mereel’s helmet swiveled, taking in the controls, trying to find the source of the alert. “Inbound ordinance?!”

Ordo shook his head firmly, one hand on the stick, the other skittering across the control panel. “No, open airlock.”

Mereel whirled around as the realization hit home. It clicked with Kal a split second later- he let out a blistering stream of mando’a as he raced after his son towards the back of the TIV.

“Kriffing shit! Aayla!”