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The official surface of Coruscant is contested by a number of sources. Speaking with its denizens will provide an even wider array of opinions:
"What level?" a citizen might ask. "Ground Zero - where the buildings reach towards the sky above? The dome of the Senate building dominating the skyline? The well-to-do, the ones who have made it? Those with windows that gaze across the city planet's skyline?"
"Is it a certain level? Where homes are carved from rock and stone and soil? The crumbling decaying remains of previous abodes being made livable again? Where the natural light just about touches the cobbles and puddles?" another might suggest.
Some citizens - harder to speak to as they slip into shadows and dart around corners - whisper, "Perhaps it is far below the dark, thousands of levels down, the numbers only increasing the further you descend? It's impossible to see without artificial light down there. The water must be transported or dug from wells that sink even deeper below shuffling feet."
Commander Fox of the Coruscant Guard, finds himself farther down than the wildest citizen speculation or crazed academic researcher. Dying. There's no-one else around as he lies there gasping for desperate breath - aside from his fellow Commander, who he grips in his hand like they're both drowning in Kamino's deepest ocean currents.
Beneath the surface? Perhaps.
It doesn't matter as he feels the warmth seep from their bodies; slowly, sluggishly, his breath stolen with every drop spilled. Fox drags Thorn's limp body closer, fervently wishing that if only his warmth would transfer to the cooling skin of the other. Fox would sacrifice himself to save another.
"Would you?"
Of course he would, he thinks, his fellow clones deserve to live.
"And you?"
Fox huffs at the voice in his head. Does it matter? He's dying. A clone knows how to die. They were made for it. Trained for it the moment their tiny hands could hold a blaster far too big for them to wield, let alone fire upon their target.
Surely he knows what it feels like, to die over and over. To lose everything that you care about. To witness a brother be stolen from you - to never be seen again. To hold another as they bleed out beneath your praying fingers, calling out to all the little gods and goddesses who would never listen to a clone's pleas.
"In that case, surely, you deserve to live alongside them?"
Fox isn't entirely sure why his brain is debating philosophically with itself as his breathing slows. Shallow, like Thorn next to him. It should be deep and full, and brimming with laughter. With care and love - and those fucking awful cups of caf that only the GAR is capable of fueling its soldiers with - as they bleed and scream and die for a Republic they were created for.
His eyes slip close between one slow blink and the next. Though in the darkness they're ensconced in - are they wrapped or trapped in? - that hardly matters. Thorn's face, his painstakingly detailed armour, the armour of his vode; his brothers, a kaleidoscope of colours - of red and gold and blue and maroon and green and yellow and the grey of mourning - spin and warp and shatter.
"Well, Commander Fox," the voice says, echoing in his skull, burning through his veins. "Then you and your people belong above the surface and amongst the stars."
Fox exhales.
Fox inhales.
Beside him, Thorn breathes.