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Archon is decanted wrong.
It’s nothing overt, nothing that gets him decommissioned straight out of the tank. He’s just… different.
Just a little bit faster in some ways, a tad slower in most. He’s not flagging at the bottom of the command class, like the poor bastard from Delta squad, but he’s nothing like the rest of his batch either.
He’s just lacking. Somehow. Demonstrably. And even though his batchmates are kind to him, care for him and watch out for him and try to include him, he can’t seem to fix it either.
And not for lack of trying.
But while clones— Vod’e, like Cody and Fox and Wolffe, make up for their strangeness in dry wit and brilliance and sheer boneheaded bullishness, Archon just—
Doesn’t.
Fordo finds him after Geonosis.
“You can’t stay,” he says, apropos of nothing. Archon blinks, sets the previously squabbling cadets back on the floor, and waves them off with an absent hand. The boys disappear down the hall hand in hand, steps remarkably silent, and they don’t look back.
Archon stares after them for a long moment. Fordo sighs, drops a heavy hand on his shoulder, and pulls him across the hall towards the wide window set into the outer wall. It’s storming again; great, swollen clouds broken only by the lightning cracking across the sky, but even through the gale Archon can make out flashing transport lights.
Not everyone who left with General Yoda made it back. Archon eyes the rain-smeared shape of the transport, disappearing into the gloom, and doesn’t ask Fordo which of the CCs have shipped out on it.
“I haven’t been assigned,” he admits, finally, as the silence stretches on into discomfort. Fordo shifts, snorts, and grips Archon’s shoulder just a little tighter. “Nala Se is re-examining my file for deployment.”
That’s the party-line, anyway. Archon doesn’t actually expect to leave Kamino.
“I don’t care,” Fordo says simply. “There’s a spot on the next transport, the 68th will take you.”
Archon frowns faintly. He’s seen the roster, the way the Generals are dividing up their units. The 68th isn’t expected to last, a temporary posting for a yet nameless Jedi and an older CC, but—
Well.
It’s better than anything Nala Se will have planned for him.
“Understood,” he says, soft, and ducks out from beneath Fordo’s arm.
He doesn’t thank him. And Fordo doesn’t watch him leave.
Commander Ensign is one of the oldest CC’s Archon has ever met, closer to Cody’s batch than to his own, and he’s got eyes like a nexu, dark and predatory.
He’s also built like a brick shit house. Which feels utterly unfair, all things considered.
Archon blinks, long and slow, and wonders, faintly, just what they put in his growth tube.
“So you’re Fordo’s brat,” the Commander snorts, approximately half an hour after Archon had first dropped into the stiff-backed chair in front of his desk. Archon twitches, glancing away from the blank expanse of durasteel behind Ensign’s head, and frowns faintly.
“Captain Fordo handled my assignment, sir,” he agrees, flat. Ensign shrugs, shuffles a handful of datapads off to the side, and kicks his heels up on the corner of his desk.
Archon curls his fingers in his lap and swallows the impossible, insane urge to bite him.
“That he did,” Ensign says, cool and disinterested. “Suppose there’s no accounting for taste, where the Alphas are concerned.”
Archon scowls before he can catch himself and weighs the pros and cons of dragging the older clone out onto the mats.
“It’s not like that,” he says as the silence stretches uncomfortably between them. Ensign scoffs and Archon grits his teeth. “It’s not,” he repeats, insistent, because Fordo hadn’t dragged Archon through his training modules out of love. Not even out of grudging affection. Archon isn’t a diamond in the rough, like Cody’s little CT tag-along. He’s just—
He’s Fordo’s pet project because he’s useful. Because he’s a crack shot with a blaster and too gods-damned stubborn by half. Because Fordo caught him sneaking into the training halls after lights out one too many times and decided to skip straight from indignant to drill sergeant.
But he’s not sure how to explain all that to Ensign without sounding like a sulking tubie.
“I’m useful,” he blurts, pressing his shoulders back against the chair and fisting his hands in his lap. “I won’t slow you down. Sir.”
“...We’ll see, kid,” Ensign sighs, drops his feet back to the floor, and scoops up a datapad. Archon’s knuckles pop. “Well, I’ve got a company waiting for you on D-deck, Captain. It’s not quite what you’re trained for but Fordo didn’t give us a lot to work with.”
Ensign frowns, faint, but Archon is already nodding, on his feet before he can blurt out something insurmountably embarrassing.
An entire company. It’s more than he expected, honestly, and the thought sits, hot and tense, knotted up in his chest. 144 men and Archon is their Captain. It’s—
(It’s terrifying.)
“Well,” Ensign says, brows creeping up. “Someone’s eager.”
Archon stifles a flush.
War, Archon thinks dully, is good for little. Save, perhaps, generating an absolutely mind-numbing amount of flimsiwork.
Someone whistles, loud and close to his ear, and between one breath and the next there is a hand on his shoulder. Archon jumps, twists, and gets a fistfull of blacks and a bright, wild laugh for his trouble. “Dynamo,” he hisses, aggrieved, and drops him. The lieutenant grins, loose and easy, and all but collapses onto the bunk beside him.
“CC,” he greets, craning his neck to peek at the pad in Archon’s hand. He whistles again, long and low, and Archon scowls and tilts the pad away. “Jeez, sir. Are you filling these out in triplicate or what?”
“It certainly feels like it,” Archon mutters, glancing away from Dynamo’s bright pink curls and narrowly resists the urge to shove him right off the bunk. Dynamo’s a pain in the ass but he’s a solid trooper. Loyal to a fault. Vicious on the mats. And—
Well. He’s the friendliest of the lot, kind and unexpectedly steady, and his personal squad follows his lead. Archon is loath to drive him off just yet.
(Even if the brat drives him to drink, most days.)
Dynamo hums, eyeing the members of his platoon scattered around the room, and tips his head back to meet Archon’s eyes. “Need some help?”
“You don’t even have clearance to read these, Lieutenant,” Archon sighs, dragging a hand down his face, but—
It’s tempting.
“Sure, but between the two of us I think it evens out, Commander,” Dynamo shrugs, eyes shining, and Archon rolls his eyes, reluctantly amused. Which is, perhaps, a sign that he really should go to bed. “Besides, you took a hell of a hit planetside. My batchmates would kill me if I didn’t help such a venerated elder.”
“I’m only four cycles older,” Archon snaps, every ounce of goodwill evaporating. Dynamo nods, grave.
“Yes, sir,” He says, perfectly polite. “Age is such a burden. But you wear it so well!”
Archon kicks him clear off the bunk.
Kaasha Lybra is a Jedi Master, a respected General, and a consummate pain in the ass.
“General, please,” Archon grits out, positivity itching to reach out and scruff her like an unruly cadet. “You cannot infiltrate a Separatist base on your own. That’s why we’re here.”
The General blinks, long and slow, and her eyes are still strikingly blue even if the brilliant hue of her skin is hidden beneath a fine layer of swamp slime.
“Commander,” she chides, her lekku curling, and Archon really should have paid more attention to the minutiae of togruta body language in his lessons. “I have told you to call me Kaasha. I know you can do it. I believe in you. Besides, this is what I’m trained for. I’ll be fine.”
“That’s not the point, sir,” he reminds her, gesturing to the rest of the squad scattered amongst the undergrowth and blithely ignoring her complaints. Again.
General Lybra tips her head back, trailing vines catching on her montrals, and her eyes go flat and distant in a way that Archon has already come to associate with Jedi Bullshit.
“No, it’s not,” she agrees softly, plucking a bright red flower off the vine. “But I’ll not risk you or your squad for naught. The Force will provide.”
She pauses, turns, and tucks the flower into the gap between his chest plate and his blacks.
Then she spins and throws herself off the edge of the cliff and into the wide chasm of the valley below.
Archon lurches after her, swears, and swipes another smear of mud off of his visor. Dynamo reaches over and pats him, somewhat awkwardly, on the back.
“At least you tried,” the bastard says, entirely condescending, and Archon shakes him off without a word and stalks back into the trees. Someone has to have a suitable grappling hook. Or a jetpack. Or—
(The Commander is going to kill him.)
Dynamo and his squad are stuck behind enemy lines.
Archon blinks, eyes burning, and reads the report again. Like it will change anything. Like they won’t be dead by morning.
“Sir,” the soft shell manning the comms murmurs, voice soft and a little stiff. Archon blinks, dragging his eyes away from the cracked pad in his hands, and inclines his head. His neck aches. “Shift change. Should I… call anyone for you?”
Archon shakes his head. Pauses. Presses his palms over his eyes and wishes, dimly, for a spar. Or a firefight. Or—
Or anything, really, because his Company is in shambles and his best friend—
Dynamo is stuck behind enemy lines. And Archon doesn’t know how to help him.
“No,” he rasps, dark and aching. “There’s no one else.”
He doesn’t look at the man as he leaves.
“You,” Archon snaps, dire, and Jazzy yelps and falls directly on his ass. Which is quite the feat, considering he’s all but hog-tied to a post.
“Captain?!” He hisses, disbelief and furious hope all wrapped up in that one word. “What the kriff are you doing here?”
Fritz gapes, tacky blood still drying on his cheek, and Archon wishes, inanely, that he’d ripped out that last droid’s processor.
“Rescuing you idiots, obviously,” he snarls, reaching for the cuffs on Atmo’s wrist. He scans them for a moment, scowls, and snaps them right down the middle. Atmo blinks, dumb, and scrambles for the lock between his ankles as Archon steps past him to scowl directly down at Dynamo.
The moron smiles, both eyes black and swollen, and he doesn’t even have the decency to act surprised.
“Took you long enough,” he wheezes like his ribs are broken. Because he’s an ungrateful little bastard. Archon is going to kill him.
“I,” Archon says, with all of the dignity a man can possess when he is staring down the barrel of the proverbial blaster. “Am going to get decommissioned for this.”
“Nah, you’re not,” Dynamo grins, teeth bloody. “Knew you wouldn’t leave us behind.”
He holds his bound hands out.
Archon scoffs, drags him up, and pulls Dynamo’s arm over his shoulder. He tightens his grip on his blaster as he turns, blithely ignoring the gasping little wheeze against his neck.
Just wait until the medics get a hold of them.
“My batchmates were right,” he sighs as he shuffles past the rest of the squad, bloody but upright, and turns back towards the tree line. “I am an idiot.”
“Don’t worry, Commander,” Dynamo laughs, light, as they hobble towards cover. “We won’t let Ensign eat you. Will we, boys?”
There’s a smattering of laughter in answer, whisper-soft in the shadows, and Archon smiles beneath his bucket.
Archon’s been with the 68th just shy of eight months when Commander Ensign finds him in the gym, stripped down to his blacks with his ruined armor spread across the mats. Archon glances up at him as the door closes, catches a flash of the hall beyond, dark and silent, and turns back to sand a stubborn scuff on his vambrace.
For a while, that’s all there is. Ensign, leaning against the wall by the door. Archon, cross-legged on the floor, a bucket of murky pink water sloshing at his side and the gentle shff-shff-shff of the rag against pitted plastoid.
The ship rumbles beneath them, the subsonic hum of the hyperdrive shivering in his bones, and Archon replaces his vambrace with his backplate and stubbornly ignores the tremor setting into his hands.
Ensign sighs, long and low, and Archon’s fingers tighten. There’s an urge to unbend, to straighten his spine and meet his Commander’s eyes, but Archon bites his tongue and keeps scrubbing. There’s a gouge in the chest plate, a smear of melted plastoid and flaking rust along his left greave, and maybe he can scrub it off or buff it back out or—
“C’mon, kid,” Ensign rasps, hoarse and exhausted, and Archon pauses. “Don’t do this.”
“... I don’t know what you mean,” Archon says, halting. Ensign scoffs, pushes off the wall to cross the mats in two long strides, and drops down beside him. Archon flinches when their knees knock together, when their shoulders brush, but Ensign doesn’t call him on it.
Instead, he rests his forearms on his knees and tips his head back against the wall. “It’s not your fault,” Ensign says, grim and final. There’s a smear of dark blood high on his throat, the shadow of an impressive bruise blooming on his cheek, and Archon drops the chest plate and fights the urge to bury his hands in his lap like a cadet. “Archon, kid, it’s not your fault.”
For a moment, the mats on the floor are hard beneath his knees. His lungs burn. His eyes. And there’s screaming in the distance, high and thin and terrified and dead.
Archon’s squad was responsible for infiltrating the base. Archon chose to set the charges. To blow the lab. And Archon—
Archon survived.
(He’s never regretted anything more.)
“It is, though,” Archon manages, lips numb, and he can still feel Dynamo’s slack pulse beneath his fingers. The way his bloody curls felt, matted beneath his helmet when Archon tore it off and tossed it blindly into the rubble. And he regrets that now, too, because he couldn’t find it again. Just like he couldn’t find Jazzy or Fritz or—
Archon sucks in a breath that rattles in his chest and finds he can’t stand the compassion on Ensign’s face. But when he glances down at the plastoid in his lap it gleams, impossibly fresh and red, and there are slick, dark handprints smeared across his vambraces. Archon blinks, eyes burning, and picks up a fresh rag.
Ensign’s hand catches his, pulls the stiff cloth from his grasp, and his fingers curl gently around Archon’s wrist, tugging faintly. Archon bows his head.
“It’s my fault,” he repeats softly, mindlessly, and Ensign sighs and shuffles closer, a wall of heat to ward off the persistent chill of hyperspace. He doesn’t let go of Archon’s wrist. “It’s all my fault.”
“No, it’s not,” Ensign says and it’s too quiet out in the training hall that used to hold his hustling squad mates, Jazzy’s ugly, hacking laugh and Atmo’s junky little subspace radio. Dynamo’s sly little smile, his scruffy cheek on Archon’s shoulder and his elbow jammed in his ribs. Archon shivers and shuts his eyes. “I sent you there. Or the General did. Or the damned war. And you did everything you could. You tried, Archon.”
“But it wasn’t enough,” Archon gasps, voice cracking. He doesn’t know how to make Ensign understand. Archon’s company was small, and it wasn’t what he’d been trained for, but it was his. Iron squad was his. Dynamo was his. And they’re dead because Archon was too rash. Too inexperienced. Too slow to catch the trap before its jaws snapped shut around them. Before the ceiling crashed down and crushed them all.
They’re dead because Archon was decanted wrong, because he’s one of the few CC’s who can’t be trusted with a battalion of his own, and—
(And maybe, he thinks dully, the Kaminoans were right about him all along.)
“It never is, kid,” Ensign admits, uncharacteristically gentle, and Archon hates him just a little bit. “Gods, it never is. But you’ll— well… You get used to it.”
It sounds like a nightmare. Like a lie. Like something to tell the tubies, too afraid of live fire to pick up a blaster. Archon swallows painfully and turns away.
“I don’t want to get used to it,” he croaks, low enough that Ensign can pretend not to hear him. The Commander hums and knocks his head back against the wall.
Beneath the thick swath of bandages under his blacks, Archon’s traitorous heart beats in his chest. The shadows crouching in the corners of the room look dark and inviting and Archon wants to curl up in them. Wants to drown in them. Wants, for a moment, to be anywhere else in the galaxy, away from his armor and the War and the dead and his elder brother’s bitter sympathy.
He tugs his wrist out of Ensign’s grip, picks his vambrace back up, and keeps scrubbing.
Archon doesn’t go back to Kamino.
Though, to be fair, he doesn’t go anywhere, really, even as the 68th bounces between engagements and across entire star systems. He doesn’t take leave on Coruscant the way the rest of his batchmates do, holing up together in 79s between deployments, and he forgets to return Monnk’s comms even when they’re on the same side of the galaxy.
He trains hard, the skin of his knuckles always split and bleeding sluggishly beneath the bandages he hides under his gloves. He knows he’s worrying the General. The Commander. Knows, perhaps, that his newfound ruthlessness in the ring isn’t precisely endearing himself to anyone, least of all the shiny new recruits that stumble aboard to fill in the gaps left behind by their vod’e, now marching ahead.
Still, he thinks, dodging a sloppy kick from a particularly overconfident CT, better they learn a hard lesson in the ring than on the battlefield. Which is why he has no qualms about dropping, spinning, and kicking the kid’s other leg out from under him. The younger clone goes down with a shout, head smacking the mats, and Archon is on him before he can blink, knees pinning his arms to the floor and Archon’s hand hovering dangerously over the kid’s throat.
“Dead,” Archon says, flat, and the idiot gapes at him for a long, quiet moment before his mouth snaps shut. He glowers, furious, and his jaw clenches exactly twice before he tips his head back against the floor and shuts his eyes.
Archon doesn’t try to help him up. Instead, he pushes himself to his feet and the vod’e crowding around the ring pull back one step, two, their eyes wary. Archon lets his gaze sweep past them, eyes the chronometer on the wall, and snaps his neck with an absent hand.
“Your footwork is atrocious,” he advises the younger clone, still laid out on the mats. “Fix it.”
The kid wheezes, rolls over on his side, and flips him off.
Bastard, Archon thinks, a whisper of fond disapproval curling in his breast.
He’ll be fine.
(He has to be.)
Archon is, perhaps, a year and a half into his deployment when Ensign stalks down the corridor, grabs him, and bodily hauls him back to his office like an errant shiny.
He’s mildly flummoxed. He’s also halfway to stabbing his Commander in the neck with the spork he’d tucked in his pocket at breakfast.
“You son of a bitch,” Ensign growls as soon as the door slides shut. Archon scowls, twists out from beneath Ensign’s biceps of karking beskar, sweet Force, and slams his elbow into the gap between his chest and backplate for good measure. Ensign snarls. “I should’ve drowned you in the swamp.”
“You could try,” Archon agrees pleasantly, one chair and half the desk between them as he edges away. “What did I do this time?”
Ensign opens his mouth, pauses, and promptly ages ten years. Archon hesitates, half-reaching for Ensign, because he was joking and he doesn’t know what he’s done to make his brother look like that but he feels like a heel all the same.
“Okay, no, seriously, what did I do?” He demands. He also seriously considers wrestling his brother into his hideously uncomfortable desk chair. Is he having a stroke?
“Nothing,” Ensign sighs, waves him off, and buries his hands in his hair. It is, Archon thinks grimly, uncharacteristically disheveled, just long enough to tangle his fingers in the short curls and pull. “Everything. Kark, kid.”
Archon blinks, nonplussed.
“Should I call a medic?” He finally asks, fingers tapping out a staccato little one-two on his comm. Ensign snorts, sits back, and pushes a pad across the desk towards him.
Archon picks it up, wary, and gets as far as ‘CC-2267 to be reassigned’ before he collapses onto the hard backed chair Ensign reserves for his guests.
Archon’s breath shudders out of him all at once, loud in the stillness of the office, and it feels precisely like the floor has dropped out from under him.
“The 13th lost their Commander last week,” Ensign says quietly, something soft and terrible in the slope of his brow. “I couldn’t keep you.”
Archon swallows painfully and looks away. He eyes the transfer in his hand for a long, quiet moment, and nods because—
Because there’s nothing else he can do, really.
“Your transport leaves in the morning,” Ensign murmurs and the pad pings in his hand. Archon ducks his head and lurches out of the chair. It scrapes across the floor, loud enough to set his teeth on edge, and there are deep, unhappy lines around Ensign’s eyes, the corner of his mouth, that Archon doesn’t know how to apologize for.
“Yes, sir,” he breathes. It is, he decides distantly, a minor miracle that his voice doesn’t shake. “Thank you, sir.”
His knees feel unsteady as he makes for the door, the relative safety of the hall. There’s a staircase around the corner that leads down past the training deck, to the near-abandoned drill hall that Archon has always preferred, and—
“Archon,” Ensign calls as he steps out. Archon blinks, turns, and Ensign’s lips purse, ashen, as the light from the hallway spills across the floor. “... Congratulations, Commander. You’ve earned it.”
“Charges set, Commander!” Dynamo calls, wry and amused. Archon scoffs, hip checks him out of the way, and peers down the adjoining hall. Jazzy laughs, tense, and tips his head.
“Leave the Captain alone, LT,” he chides absently, fingers flexing against his blaster as the metallic clamor of an approaching droid squadron echoes off the walls. “You know how touchy the CC’s are.”
“Yeah, well, I think ours got an extra dose of bastard in his tube. I— SHIT, ARC, MOVE!” Dynamo’s shout rings in his ears just as the stone above their heads shakes, cracks, and gives. “ARCHON!”
Archon turns, numb all the way through, and lets the door slide shut behind him.
Archon dreams of oceans. White foam and dark clouds and the distant cry of the aiwhas. Red smears on white plastoid. A dusty radio tucked in a foot locker. Ruined pink curls, lank and matted beneath his hands, and wide brown eyes.
He screams himself awake just before shift change, slumped against the training room wall, and his hands don’t shake when he shoulders his pack. When he hands his company off to a grim-faced CT. When he boards the transport, the warmth of the General’s hands framing his face and Ensign’s gaze hard and heavy across his shoulders.
The ship shudders beneath his feet. Archon tips his head back against the wall and turns his face away from the viewport.
He doesn’t look back.