Chapter Text
Jedi refectory caf was like nectar compared to the stuff that was supplied to the Grand Army of the Republic, and yet General Mustang downed it without even tasting it. Too many sleepless nights lately – too many blurry dreams that he could never quite see the end of – had left him with an exhausted tension that stretched across his shoulders and crept up into his temples.
His fellow Jedi Knight and breakfast companion Alex Armstrong gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder that knocked him sideways and poured him another cup of caf.
“What’s going on? I’m assuming you didn’t ask me to meet you just to watch you try and give yourself a caffeine-induced heart attack.”
Mustang tossed his second cup down the hatch and poured a third. Alex’s eyebrows raised in concern, and he casually snatched the coffee pot with his ridiculously long reach and plunked it down on the next table over. Sighing, Mustang resigned himself to sipping this cup of coffee as he marshalled his scattered thoughts.
“I can sense disaster brewing, Alex. It’s fuzzy – I can’t see what it is, exactly,” Mustang said, teeth gritted in frustration. “– but I know that it comes from Coruscant. And I can’t be on Coruscant, because the Council keeps shipping me off to the- Whatever. Anyhow. I know they placed you with Clone Intelligence after Umbara.”
Alex nodded, reddening slightly. “They’ve decided to have me in a non-combat role for the rest of the war. I said they should put me in the creche, but there was something about ‘accidentally crushing a youngling’ that they were worried about.”
An image of Alex’s giant hands swinging tiny younglings through the air crossed his mind. Mustang snorted. “Can’t imagine why they’d be worried about that. But, back to the issue at hand: if I can’t stay on Coruscant, one of my men can. Hawkeye’s out of the question, I need her with me, but I’ve got someone else in mind.”
Mustang fished in his robes for his datapad and pulled up the page he needed, then slid it across the table to Alex. Alex’s hand dwarfed the datapad as he scanned the personnel file, mustache twitching in consideration.
“Captain Maes, huh?”
“He’s resourceful, capable, an excellent soldier and an even better person. He’s got the creativity and initiative to be a good intelligence officer.”
“And he’s loyal. To you, not just the Republic.” Alex gave him a knowing look, and Mustang shrugged. There was no point in denying it, not when Alex already knew his end goal and was backing him.
“That certainly doesn’t hurt,” Mustang agreed. “So?”
Alex smiled. “I’ll start on his transfer papers today.”
—
“So, Maes,” Mustang said, legs dangling over the streets of Coruscant as he spoke. The view from the Jedi Temple’s roof was hard to beat – and, more importantly, hard to be overheard from – so the two of them had climbed up here with a bottle of koja-rum on the premise of catching up with each other. “How are you liking your transfer to Clone Intelligence?”
Maes took a swig from the bottle Mustang offered him. “Gotta say, sir-
“Roy,” Mustang interrupted. Maes shot him a look of surprise, only for Mustang to wave it off. “I’m not your commanding officer anymore. Might as well use my name.”
“Well, Roy,” Maes said, emphasizing his name in such a way that Mustang already regretted his decision, “I prefer this work to getting shot at all the time. Though I gotta admit, I do miss the crew. These guys are good, but it’s not the same as our little team with the 73rd. How are they doing, by the way?” Maes added, his casualness just a little too strong to be real.
Mustang could feel the real question underneath his standard inquiry – who have we lost? – and answered that one instead.
“Still pretty intact, although our last victory had a higher cost than I would have preferred.” Mustang winced as he recalled how fuzzy the future had been when he’d looked at it, the guesses he’d had to make, and the losses they’d faced because of it. “Eighty-nine men died. I’ve still got our command crew, but it’s the costliest victory we’ve had yet.”
Maes tilted his head, studying Mustang in a way he wasn’t sure he was comfortable with, eyes piercing behind his narrow rectangular glasses. The clone’s intuition had been part of the reason Mustang had chosen him to be his man in Clone Intelligence, but right now, Maes looked dangerously close to reading what he was feeling.
His next words, spoken almost gently, confirmed that.
“It’s not your fault.”
Yes, it is. Mustang laughed, the sound coming out more bitterly than he’d intended. “Eighty-nine good soldiers, Maes, because I missed an ambush. What good is it being able to see the future if I can’t see it accurately?”
“We’ve consistently had ridiculously low casualties in the 73rd because of what you could see,” Maes insisted. “You’re one man, Roy, you can’t save everyone.”
Mustang said nothing, just stared silently out at Coruscant’s nightlife – speeders moving through the streets, lights in people’s apartments, streetlights along the levels where you could walk, the neon of storefronts. All those people, going about their lives, most of them with no idea of the daily sacrifices made by the clone troopers they couldn’t even differentiate from each other.
He hoped they were grateful.
Maes nudged him, shaking Mustang out of his thoughts. “Here. I got something that’ll cheer you up.”
The light of a datapad shone between them, a holophoto appearing in the darkness. Mustang squinted at the two people sitting in the grass, one blonde, one brunette, both smiling. The terrain was familiar – they’d spent weeks on Cen’Tral, first in battle with Separatist forces, then training the locals to keep the Separatists out – and the faces seemed to ring a bell.
“Is that-”
“Gracia and Elicia?” Maes grinned widely, angling the holophoto so Mustang could see it better. “You bet. I tell you what, Roy, first thing I’m doing once this war is over is getting on a ship back to Cen’Tral and asking Gracia to marry me.”
Mustang blinked. “Maes, you knew her for a month.”
“Initially, yeah, but you have heard of this little thing called ‘sending a transmission’, haven’t you? We’ve been chatting back and forth ever since we left Cen’Tral.” Maes swiped the screen, and a new photo appeared, this time of Elicia with her hair in pigtails and a doll in her arms. “She sends me updated pictures of Elicia, too. I swear, that girl gets more adorable every time I look at her.”
Mustang smiled at the adoration on Maes’ face. It seemed so at odds with the soldier he knew, the level-headed fighter who’d kill without hesitation if necessary, but perfectly in line with the man he’d become friends with.
“What do you think you’ll do when all this is done?” Maes slipped the datapad back into his pocket and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and glancing over at Mustang out of the corner of his eye.
Mustang leaned back, palms flat against the roof as he looked up at the stars. “Well, my first goal is to make the rank of Master. Second goal is to get a seat on the Jedi Council. Once I’ve got that, I can work towards greater accountability within the Jedi Order.”
Maes raised an eyebrow. “Sounds awfully…”
“Ambitious?” Mustang finished wryly. “So I’ve been told.”
Maes grinned and took another sip from the bottle before passing it back. “Nah, I can see it. You’re an idealist. Of course you want to fix things.”
Idealist. Huh. This was not a word anyone had ever used to describe Mustang before, and yet somehow it felt right. Mustang narrowed his eyes at Maes – who had a tendency to just call things as he saw them, which Mustang figured made him a realist – before shrugging and taking a drink.
“And what about things that aren’t the Jedi Council?”
Maes’ question came out of nowhere and made him choke, the liquid going down entirely the wrong pipe and burning both on the way down and again when he coughed it back up.
“What do you mean?” Mustang managed to wheeze in between coughs, wiping his mouth and trying to get his breath back. Maes pounded his back and sighed in exasperation.
“You know, things in your life that aren’t just being a Jedi.”
Mustang saw where this conversation was heading and tried to cut it off. “Maes, my whole life is being a Jedi. That’s kind of how it works.”
“See, you say that, but I’ve seen the way you gaze at Hawkeye.”
Yep. I knew this was what you were getting at. Mustang leveled Maes with his darkest look and spat, “I do not gaze at Hawkeye.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” Maes held his hands up innocently, giving Mustang a look that said he did not believe him in the slightest. His earlier thought that Maes called things as he saw them drifted through his mind, and he shook his head violently to dispel the thought.
After a couple awkward minutes, Maes took pity on him. “Wanna see another picture of Elicia?”
“Yes.” Mustang agreed a little too quickly, earning him an amused shake of the head from Maes, and tried to redirect his thoughts to the onslaught of photos.
—
Hawkeye did not want to be where she was at the moment: standing guard in a dingy cantina, fingers frozen and toes numb, itchy poncho draped over her shoulders in a halfhearted attempt to disguise her armor as her General made a long-distance transmission.
Of course, General Mustang had not asked if she wanted to be there when he’d decided they needed to find a place in the nearest town to call Maes. He’d simply called her, Havoc, and Fuery over and announced that they had one last mission to complete before they boarded the shuttle.
It had only taken Fuery moments to create a secure line in the cantina, and then he’d gone to wait with Havoc outside, both of them watching to make sure no one from the GAR had followed them here. Which left her inside with Mustang, whose increasingly flirtatious chatter had aroused a number of curious glances from nearby patrons.
Said patrons’ eyes had normally stopped at her before ever reaching General Mustang, and lingered in what she unfortunately suspected was appreciation. Hawkeye let out a disapproving huff, which crystalized into a tiny cloud hanging in the frigid air.
“No, baby, you know how it is. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
Hawkeye rolled her eyes. Surely, there must be a better way to let Maes know that we’re not returning anytime soon.
General Mustang appeared at her side, his grin far too convincing for her taste.
“If you’re not careful, sir, you’ll end up with a worse reputation for flirting than General ‘Negotiator’ Kenobi.”
General Mustang burst out laughing – though whether it was from her statement or her unamused tone, she couldn’t be sure. Raking his dark hair out of his eyes, he caught her gaze in a way that made it hard to look away.
“Do you really think so? Commander Hawkeye, you flatter me!”
“It was a warning,” she said flatly, making her way towards the door with small, efficient strides. Right on her heels, Mustang dodged a customer, tripped, and would have landed flat on his face if Hawkeye hadn’t snagged his elbow on his way down. They slipped through the door – it had frozen open, which was probably why it was so cold in there – and out onto the street.
Hawkeye turned to face her General, arms crossed and wearing her best stern expression. “If you insist on using that manner of coded language, you could at least do me the favor of getting a couple of encrypted comm units, so I don’t have to stand here in the cold while I listen to it, sir.”
“You might have a point there. It would arouse less suspicion if we didn’t have to track down a civilian location to make long-range transmissions.” General Mustang frowned, rubbing his arms vigorously, wisps of breath condensing and drifting up into the sky. “Stang, it’s cold. Let’s get Havoc and Fuery and head back to the shuttle.”
“Havoc, Fuery, report.” Hawkeye forced her teeth not to chatter as she spoke into the comm. There was static as they waited for a response. When it didn’t come within a minute, Hawkeye repeated her message.
“Great.” Mustang stamped his feet impatiently, presumably trying to warm himself. “I’ll go right, you go left. Circle the cantina and meet in the back. If we still don’t see them, we’ll go from there.”
Can’t you find them with those Jedi tricks? Hawkeye wanted to ask, not eager to go on a wild goose chase if they didn’t need to. Then she noticed the tightness in his jaw that she’d come to recognize as a sign he’d overdone it in their last battle, and her heart softened. “Yes, sir.”
So Hawkeye headed around the back of the cantina, scanning for Havoc and Fuery and trying to ignore the raucous laughter pouring from the open back door. Blocking out the drunken men stumbling into the street, and the way they leered at her – not a soldier in their eyes, just a woman alone – until one of them sidled up to her, breath fetid and laced with booze.
“Hiya, Toots.”
Hawkeye barely spared him a glance before she continued on her way. He must not have liked that, because he lunged forward to grab her arm, his other hand heading for her rear end. A vibroknife was in her hand before she even had time to think, and just as she adjusted her stance to put this man on the ground and teach him how to respectfully address a woman, there was a crackle of energy, and a lightsaber flared to life between them.
Hawkeye looked over to see her General, with murder in his eyes and a startled Havoc and Fuery at his back. The drunkard let go of her arm with a yelp and tumbled to the ground, prompting several of his friends to turn up at the door in shock and outrage.
“Aw, come on, Jedi scum! Can’t we get a little fun around here?”
General Mustang flicked his lightsaber closer to the throat of the idiot on the ground. Havoc and Fuery were both shooting her their ‘Do something, Commander!’ looks as they moved in to flank Mustang. Hawkeye considered stepping in, saw the fear on the man’s face, and decided that this would make a good lesson for him and his buddies.
“Let’s make one thing abundantly clear,” Mustang growled, voice menacing in a way Hawkeye hadn’t previously known he was capable of. “You do not lay hands on my Commander. You do not lay hands on any of my soldiers. Not unless you want them removed from your body.”
The man on the ground nodded frantically. Mustang raised the lightsaber and pointed it at the men in the doorway, who all began talking over each other in their hurry to agree. With that, Mustang extinguished the lightsaber, spun on his heel, and began stalking back towards the shuttle.
Hawkeye lengthened her stride to catch up to him, leaving Havoc and Fuery trailing behind them as they marched through the dirt roads that lead out of town. Anger was still pouring off of General Mustang, so Hawkeye chose her tone carefully.
“Sir,” she said, under her breath so only his Jedi hearing could catch it, “You do recall my having five weapons on my person, correct?”
Her General glanced down at her, the rage in his shoulders fading slightly as she raised her eyebrows and motioned to the vibroknives sheathed in her greaves. Add that to the fact that she was a highly trained member of the military, and in reality, she’d been in very little danger.
Even if it had been unsettling. Even if a small part of her buried deep within was glad Mustang had stepped in.
General Mustang looked away, color rising on his cheeks. “I may have slightly overreacted.”
“And they say chivalry is dead,” Hawkeye teased.
—
Maes was dead.
That was the main thought that had echoed through Mustang’s mind over the past four days, circling back and interrupting every other train of thought until his brain sounded like an orchestra that was out of sync.
Submit the field report and check to make sure we’re still scheduled to go back to Coruscant and Maes is dead. Request for your men to get two days of shore leave and ask Hawkeye to join you on the investigation instead of taking her leave and check the requirements to have her join you and Maes is dead. Eat something and Maes is dead and drink some water and Maes is dead and go to sleep-
And lie there in the dark and remember that Maes is dead and that it’s your fault? Let’s not do that, Roy.
So here he was, in what passed for the middle of the night during space travel, replaying Maes’ last message over and over again, searching for any information he could glean from the audio recording. Not that he needed to listen to it again, since he could recite it word-for-word at this point, but because it was better than thinking about how he’d put Maes on Coruscant in his place.
“Sir.”
Mustang jumped, just about knocking over the cup of caf sitting on the crate next to his bunk. Steadying the cup with a barely bitten back curse, he raised his eyes to see Commander Hawkeye standing in the doorway.
“Kriff, Commander. You startled me.”
“So I see, sir.” Hawkeye was dressed in her blacks, but had somehow rigged a pistol holster to her thigh nonetheless. Her eyes were red, as though she’d been crying recently, and her arms were folded as she learned against the doorframe. “I suspected you might still be awake. Thought I’d inform you that we arrive on Coruscant in about seven hours.”
“Seven hours,” Mustang muttered, gathering his scattered notes into a pile on the bunk so that there was space for his Commander to sit. She perched carefully on the edge of the bed, poised as though she were prepared to leap into combat at any moment.
“Yes, sir. Enough time to theoretically get some sleep.”
“I don’t need sleep, I need answers,” Mustang muttered, picking up the notes, only for Hawkeye to pluck them from his hands and set them down on the crate.
“With respect, sir, you need the sleep. You’ll be no use on the investigation if you’re too tired to think straight, and given that you haven’t slept in four days…” At this, Hawkeye raised her eyebrows, and Mustang rubbed his temples as exhaustion hit him like a brick.
“Has it really been four days?”
“Yes, sir.” Hawkeye stood, staring down at him reproachfully as he cast a longing look at the cup of caf. Staving off the sleep that would inevitably bring nothing but troubled dreams and guilt that wrapped around his heart like a snake was a temptation that was hard to bear.
It was quickly made easier to bear by Hawkeye resting two fingers against her pistol. “Do not make me stun you, sir.”
“Okay, okay. You win, Hawkeye.” By this point, it was all he could do to keep his eyes open. It was as though his body had just been waiting for the slightest deviation in focus to sneak up and drag him into sleep. Hawkeye gave him an approving nod and turned to leave, pausing in the doorway.
“I’ll let you know when we approach Coruscant, sir.”
And she did, several too-short hours later, waking Mustang from a dead sleep as they were entering the atmosphere. He had just enough time to make himself look semipresentable before boarding the shuttle for the surface with Commander Hawkeye at his side; she’d at least had the presence of mind to collect his scribblings to give to Alex Armstong.
Alex met them when they stepped off the shuttle, his typically upturned mustache drooping as he must Mustang’s eyes. His eyes were shadowed by lack of sleep, the same way Mustang was sure his own were, and his shoulders sagged as he walked them over to the morgue.
Maes’ body was laid out on the table, a sheet covering everything but his head and neck. In the back of his mind, he heard Hawkeye’s choked gasp and Alex’s gentle apology as he pulled the sheet over Maes’ face. And that should have made it easier, except it was like Maes had been silenced all over again, just like he had been on the night that he died.
Mustang hadn’t been able to get it out of his mind, no matter how hard he tried. Seeing that his secure comm, the one he only used to talk to Maes, had just recorded a message. Sending a transmission back, in hope of catching Maes to talk in person, only to be answered by gasping breaths and then a horrible, final silence.
Trying in vain to push the noise of Maes’ final moments out of his head, Mustang cleared his throat and asked the question that had been plaguing him since that night.
“What happened?”
Alex gestured for the two of them to take a seat at a lab table on the opposite side of the room. Mustang slumped into one of the seats, taking the stack of bound flimsy that contained his information from Hawkeye in preparation for taking notes. Hawkeye practically dropped into one of the chairs, setting one of her blaster pistols on the table and starting to field strip it as Alex explained.
“Officially, Captain Maes was found dead in an alley on Coruscant’s lower levels. He’d sustained several blaster wounds and had died in a matter of minutes after being shot. He appeared to have been chasing a lead regarding spice smugglers who offered to help clone troopers desert if they joined the trade. Supposedly, these smugglers caught wind of it and had him killed.”
Alex Armstrong was generally an expressive man, but right now both his voice and facial features were carefully blank. Mustang noted his choice of words – “officially”, “appeared”, “supposedly” – and read between the lines.
There was more to this than met the eye, but Alex wasn’t at liberty to discuss it. Hawkeye’s hands stilled in the middle of reassembling her pistol, then twitched up and to the right. Mustang slid his eyes in the direction of her movement and spotted a camera, perched high in the far-right corner of the morgue.
He’d have to watch his words carefully too, then. Looking Alex directly in the eye, Mustang asked, “All because of an investigation, huh?”
Alex nodded. “Captain Maes is well known in our division for his thorough research. It’s no surprise that he stumbled onto something that others missed.”
So Maes was investigating something on his own. Something outside of his current assignments. And whatever it was he found was so dangerous, he felt the need to warn me immediately – only they got to him before I could do anything.
“Is there any way I can be of assistance to your investigation?” Mustang asked, subtly sliding his transcription of Maes’ message out from underneath the flimsy where he’d been taking notes. Alex’s eyes widened and he shook his head slightly – meaning it wasn’t safe to have a record of what Maes had told Mustang in the case file – so Mustang slid them back under and continued smoothly, “I was a good friend of his, so if there’s anything I can help with, please let me know.”
“The same goes for myself, sir,” Hawkeye said softly, holstering her pistol and resting her hands on the table. “Maes was my brother.”
Alex gave them both a sad smile, then produced a small package from within his robes and slid it across the table to Hawkeye. She opened it and, with a nod from Mustang, emptied its contents out onto the table.
There wasn’t much, because clone troopers owned virtually nothing of their own. A thin, woven bracelet that matched the charm on the hilt of Mustang’s lightsaber – it had been made by Elicia when the 73rd had been on Cen’Tral. A pair of glasses, one lens cracked through the middle. A holopuck, which revealed a holophoto of their little crew from the 73rd when Hawkeye turned it on.
“You should have it,” Mustang told Hawkeye when she tried to hand it to him. There was a moment of silence, then she slipped it into an extra pocket on her utility belt.
“He also left me with this.” Alex handed Mustang a folded sheet of flimsy, sealed with a piece of bonding tape and with a single word written on the outside: Gracia. “He said you’d know what to do with it, if it came to this.”
With shaky hands, Mustang tucked the flimsy into the pocket of his robe, his mind flashing forward to what he instinctively knew was a few weeks ahead.
Himself and Hawkeye, stepping off the shuttle onto Cen’Tral. Elicia, playing in the grass, squealing with delight when she saw them and running back into the house. Gracia, bursting through the doorway, drying her hands on her skirt, with a smile that spread across her entire face. Her smile fading when she saw that Maes wasn’t with them.
He’d follow her into the house while Hawkeye stayed outside with Elicia, trying to distract the girl with a rock tower she was building in the grass. Gracia would sit in the living room, Mustang would sit next to her, and he’d deliver the news as gently as she could.
There were no words that could make up for the fact that Maes was never coming back.
When he returned to the present, both Alex and Hawkeye were giving him looks of concern – which, to be fair, was warranted. It was a testament to both his exhaustion and his grief that a vision that far out in the future had pulled him under without warning. Mustang waved them both off, grimacing against the tang of blood in his mouth from where he must have bitten his cheek.
His voice was hoarse as he asked, “Will there be a funeral?”
“A cremation later today. They’d have done it sooner, but they needed to complete the autopsy for the investigation. The investigation which is now closed,” Alex added, a note of warning in his voice.
Anger sparked behind his Commander’s eyes; Mustang sensed that it came from the Republic’s casual dismissal of her brother’s death. But because it was Hawkeye, she maintained her composure as she always did, her voice perfectly pleasant through her gritted teeth as she said, “Thank you for letting us know, General.”
“I’m only sorry I couldn’t do more.” Alex’s blue eyes were glazed with tears as he pushed his chair, both Mustang and Hawkeye scrambling to do the same as General Armstrong saluted them. “I’ll follow you both up in a moment.”
“Sir,” Hawkeye said reflexively. She swept the sheets of flimsy into her arms and started up the stairs, careful to avoid looking at Maes’ covered body as she went, but Mustang lingered for a second. When Hawkeye was out of sight, he uncovered Maes’ face and looked it over one last time.
“Goodbye, friend,” he whispered. Alex threw a sympathetic, horrendously heavy arm over Mustang’s shoulder and gave him a squeeze. Mustang glanced up at him. “Thanks for doing what you could, Alex.”
“I wish it could have been enough.” Alex stared down at the body, cold and lifeless and so far removed from how Maes had lit up the world that he walked through that it almost didn’t feel as though the body could belong to him. “I hope it’ll be enough for you, when it comes down to it.”
A chill ran down Mustang’s back at those words, the Force pricking at his mind in a way that meant those words would come to mean something more in the future. He shivered, reached up to pat Alex on the back, and maneuvered out from underneath his arm. He’d left Hawkeye waiting for him long enough.
“May the Force be with you, Alex.” Mustang had to tilt his head back to look his friend in the eye, where he found a solemnity at odds with Alex’s usual warmth. Farewells had come to mean something different in this war, especially now when they’d both been reminded of just how permanent a farewell could be.
“May the Force be with you, Roy.”
Alex wrapped him in one final, bone-crushing hug. Mustang dragged himself up the stairs and out of the morgue. Hawkeye was waiting for him just outside the door, the brisk breezes of passing speeders rippling her short hair like grass in a field. Her tumultuous emotions, buried deep below the surface, were not betrayed by her placid, professional expression.
Never before had Mustang wished more fervently that he could do the same.
Maes is with the Force, now, he reminded himself, taking a deep breath and allowing the anger and grief to pass over him and through him. Their echoes would always be heard, he knew that, but he could not allow the emotions to rule him. He will be there when you meditate, when you draw your lightsaber, when you look forward to find the answers, and when you bring yourself back to the present.
He glanced across the Coruscant skyline towards the roof of the Jedi Temple, where he’d sat and talked with Maes what seemed like an eternity ago. His best friend, his loyal ally, who’d been able to look at him as he confessed his shortcomings and said-
“It’s not your fault, sir.” Hawkeye’s voice was quiet, her presence at his elbow steady even in grief, her tone sure in that way it was when she knew his thoughts. “We both know Maes would be furious if you blamed yourself for his death.”
Mustang smiled despite himself. “He would be, wouldn’t he?”
And yet...
A drop of water landed on his hand. He looked down at it in surprise – he didn’t remember seeing any clouds when the shuttle had landed. All the same, he could feel the drops on his face now, too, cold and wet as they slid off his chin. “Huh. Would you look at that Hawkeye? It’s raining.”
Hawkeye looked down at the perfectly dry ground, then back up at Mustang, her voice soft and sad and understanding as she whispered, “If you say so, sir.”