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Commander Tano was more than a Jedi. Vaughn had seen Jedi, served under many before being cycled into the 501st, watched each one march into battle with their lightsaber swinging at their waist. He had watched each one run past injured clones as if they were nothing but the very droids they faced, leaving Vaughn behind in the dust to bloody his hands and whisper futile condolences. He had seen each one borne from the field on a stretcher, taken to be buried in their heavenly temple as his clone brothers burned in the incinerator.
And Vaughn had still stood loyally by their sides, because he was a clone, and what was a clone without loyalty? Vaughn had called them Commander without really meaning it, referred to them as his superior when a whole list of Huttese and Mando’a curses would just as easily suffice, bowed and did his duty like a soldier because that was what he was bred for -
After Felucia, Vaughn had thought he would never call a Jedi Commander again. The word would never mean as much to them as it did to him, and he wouldn’t honor them with it’s usage.
Then Vaughn was taken from the shattered remnants of his battalion and thrust into the 501st, hastily blue-painted armor wrapped around his body like a defensive blanket so that his brothers on the ship wouldn’t turn and wonder at this new clone. Then Vaughn had met General Skywalker and his apprentice Commander Tano.
At first, he didn’t call her Commander. He called her nothing but sir, as he called General Skywalker, as he called all the other troopers and Jedi who outranked him. But then he had watched her charge ahead as so many Jedi had done before, twin blades blazing like starlight in the dusky Ibarr evening. Vaughn still remembered the red bolt that had torn through the air, striking a clone next to him in the chest and throwing him to the ground. Wearily, he had crouched next to the fallen trooper, removing his helmet, wiping away the blood that bubbled from his lips. Vaughn remembered how he had sobbed, because this clone, this brother that he had never known was about to pass into the void with only another helmeted soldier to comfort him.
Suddenly, there had been another presence at his side.
Vaughn had wiped his tears away, turned to look, and Commander Tano was next to him, crouching in the dust. Her hands softly grasped those of the dying trooper, and as the explosions shook the ground next to them, Vaughn felt at peace. The trooper gasped and Vaughn realized that his blood had soaked her hands, painting them red like his had been so many times, like they were now. The clone’s head fell back with a slump, and she had gotten up, gave him a glance half angry, half mourning, and turned to face the droid army.
Once, while serving in the Outer Rim, Vaughn had heard a story from a clone about his trip to Tatooine. Vaughn went back to his barracks with the words Krayt Dragon in his head, and on his datapad, saw a picture of a proud, dangerous, magnificent hunter. He saw it again now as his Jedi, his Commander chased their enemies from the field like so many frightened Loth-rats, hands red with the blood of her men.
On the field of battle, she was a warrior, a Krayt Dragon in the full - but when she returned to the hangar and made straight for the medbay to check on the injured clones with such stubborn determination that even General Skywalker dared not attempt to sway her from her path, all Vaughn saw was an angel.
Vaughn had known Jedi, and he had never met one that was a being of light and dark at the same time. It was true - the darkness touched her in the madness of battle, and when she turned to offer him a bloody grin, it touched him too until he wanted nothing more than to crush the armies of the droids into scrap metal with the force of his passion.
And so when she had left the Jedi order, Vaughn understood. But he had missed her presence like one of his brothers, and when Vaughn crouched next to the most recent dying trooper in a long line, he couldn’t wipe away his tears.
Then she had come back, and Vaughn stood nervously in the hangar, the orange and white painted helmet weighing heavily on his head. Vaughn had spent hours painting the helmet, carefully, accurately, because he had spent a year of his short life just looking at her face. Some of the men teased him about it - but he had kept it, because how else was he supposed to tell his Commander that he would gladly follow her to the icy gates of whatever afterlife awaited them?
Rex stopped the teasing as quickly as it had started, and the next day, Rex’s helmet carried the telltale orange and white.
Commander Tano arrived with General Skywalker by her side, and Vaughn stood a little taller. Rex and Commander Tano exchanged words, and Rex held out the helmet reverently, like it was a holy idol in his hand instead of a war-scarred standard issue piece of equipment. Just as she had stroked the face of the dying trooper a year before, she ran her hand over the orange and white marks, his marks. Vaughn saw the corners of her mouth lift in a slight smile, and his chest burned with pride.
“Glad to have you back, Commander,” Rex said. The word carried so much weight, weight that only the clones of the GAR would understand. Vaughn felt it press down on him like the galaxy itself, and he knew that with her Force abilities, she would feel it too.
Commander Tano smiled sadly at Rex. “You don’t have to call me Commander any more.”
“Sure thing… Commander,” Rex replied blithely, and Vaughn felt a rush of affection for Rex. Out of all of his brothers that made up the 332nd, Vaughn thought that only Rex felt about her the way he did. Only he had seen the Krayt Dragon and the angel, powerful and caring, always touching the border between mortal and goddess.
~~
The tunnels under Sundari were gloomy, malevolent, and so force-sworn cold. Vaughn felt uncomfortable in the Mandalorian capital’s subterranean maze of tunnels, even with the yellow lights to his sides and the icy, cold blue of Commander Tano’s lightsabers ahead of him.
He had promised Commander Tano that he would help her find Maul and bring him to justice once and for all, no matter what it took. He shivered at the thought that the Sith lord was stalking these never ending tunnels alongside him, but the conviction of his promise and the memory of clones falling in the streets kept him steady. The horned chakkar was going to pay for the bodies of the clones that even now were being loaded into the ships and prepared to be thoughtlessly burned.
Vaughn felt uneasy - there were too many junctions, too many places where they could be ambushed -
The whoosh of a Mandalorian wrist rocket echoed in the hallway. “Get down!” Commander Tano yelled, and Vaughn felt the telltale warping of the world around him as Commander Tano reached for the rocket. It was too little too late, and she only managed to push it to the side. The blast sent her sprawling to the ground, the breath leaving her body as she hit the floor.
She scrabbled for her lightsaber, hands scraping the metal floor. She looked so broken - so far from the powerful Krayt Dragon that stalked the battlefield alongside him, avoiding death and dealing it with exhilarating energy - that he realized how much leaving the Order had cost her. Vaughn felt a surge of anger rush through him and he ran at the Mandalorian, wanting nothing more than to blast the head from her shoulders and hear her armored body thump to the floor.
“Vaughn, wait!” came Commander Tano’s voice from behind him, but Vaughn was never one for following orders like his brothers - even for his Commander - and he chased the Mandalorian woman with all the energy the Kaminoans had bestowed upon his body.
A flash of red bolts and the men next to him dropped to the floor, but all Vaughn could do was run and run and run -
For a brief moment the tunnels opened up and he was out, into a more open space, and around him he could see dark openings. The yellow visor of a Mandalorian helmet gleamed from every one of them.
Sithspit.
Something punched his chest hard and he staggered. Another object crashed into his shoulder, and it took all Vaughn had to stay on his feet. Once more a bolt hit his knee, and he crashed into the metal floor.
Vaughn knew the wounds were supposed to burn, burn like nothing he had ever felt before, but they didn’t. All he felt was the whole weight of the galaxy on his chest, pushing down and down until every breath was a herculean effort.
She was by his side in a couple seconds, as he knew she would. He saw the look on her face, had seen it many times before, back when he was the one that crouched with her. Her sad blue eyes locked with his brown ones through the visor. Did you think you were invincible, ner’vod? I’m supposed to be the one who goes in front, her eyes seemed to say. It was a rebuke without malice.
“I’m sorry…” Ahsoka. Her name danced on his tongue, but he yanked it back with whatever scrap of discipline remained in his mind. He had not earned that honor, because no mortal made in a cloning vat should dare speak the name of a goddess -
“Commander,” he finished, and he felt her warm hand slip into his. As his eyes fluttered shut, all he could wonder was if there was a place in the afterlife for a man made in a laboratory - and if his Commander could reside there too.