Archive of Our Own

Soulmates are way more common than the universe would like anyone to believe
           
Most people have a soulmate; that isn’t the complicated part of it.
 
No, what’s complicated is that a lot of bits and pieces of the universe have to shift and realign for someone to meet their soulmate and, most of the time, people aren’t so lucky.
 
In a galaxy as great as theirs, a lot of sentients never find the soul that matches their own, because they aren’t in the right place at the right moment, because they were born on two different sides of the expanse of stars, or because their ages are so vastly different that one of them dies before they can meet.
 
The universe has an odd sense of humour.
 
It does. Especially when it comes to the clones. Perhaps, the universe simply never foresaw that, at some point, it would need an army of identical men to protect it. And it really didn’t know what to do when it happened.
 
Not that any of them should have time to worry about soulmates, but they’ve all been teenagers, though for a briefer moment than most.
 
The only insight on the outside world they ever had, before the war began, a few weeks ago, was from the bounty hunters hired to train them. Despite their disdain of everything except a good sum of money, they certainly liked a good story.
 
Reason why, by word of mouth, pretty much everyone knows about soulmates, to their creators’ chagrin. The long-necks always seemed to find it an unnecessary source of distraction.
 
Especially when the clones began making sense of the letters written somewhere on their body (the first words your soulmate will ever tell you), across their skin, realising that no, they didn’t all have the same words, that their soul was their own and so their soulmate. Another proof that, try as they might, the Kaminoans couldn’t deny them their individuality.
 
What had almost sent the cloners into aneurysm, was discovering that most clones have another clone as their soulmate, with due exceptions. They couldn’t be as efficient as they were meant to be, if they were too busy falling in love.
 
Ah, the horror.
 
As a solution, past their fifth year of life (ten in nat-born years), when the training becomes more and more intense, every clone has to get their tattoo removed, so they’ll not forget their duty. It feels like a violation of their own self, but no one ever fights against it, because being decommissioned is worse.
 
It’s quite ridiculous, too, because some vode have very basic words on their bodies, which anyone could have said, making it extremely difficult to understand who your soulmate is. And there’s still two million of them on the facility, which makes ever crossing paths unlikely.
 
Well, there were two million of them on Kamino, but the war they have so long talked about has finally arrived. There’s an odd sense of freedom in knowing they will soon leave, finally see something more than the ocean and white hallways, and finally taste something different than brine and synthetic food. Secretly, they all hope they’ll find their soulmate, with no one holding them back, be it the Jedi they were made for, be it a vod they have not yet met.
 
CC-5212 (Mayday, aptly named so because of a mishap in the training room he refuses to elaborate on) isn’t certain what he wants. Sometimes, he doesn’t think it matters. Of course, he wants to leave that wretched place, where they’re considered less than a weapon, where they’re nothing but an expendable asset.
 
He doesn’t know if things will change, once him and the rest of his squad leave Kamino, but, at least, he’ll see the rest of the galaxy, or some part of it. The Jedi aren’t that bad, it seems. Shaak Ti is gracious, and treats them with respect, which might be basic decency but it’s more than they have known for a long time.
 
About his soulmate—well, he’s not supposed to be thinking about it. There’s still scarred, slightly raised skin on his forearm, where his soulmark used to be; they’re particularly nasty to remove, the words attempting to cling onto skin for as long as they can.
 
He’s not supposed to remember what it said. He still does. He’s carved it into the side of his cot in the barracks the night before they removed it. Four words. Which really mean nothing at all.
 

 
It’s something so—forgettable. One would imagine a soulmark to be show-stopping, breathtaking, but it is, most of the time, extremely mundane. Anyone could say something of the sort. Even more than that, he’s not certain he hasn’t heard it already (alright, that’s a lie; he would definitely remember anything even remotely similar).
 
He’s the lucky one, in a sense. Some of his brothers had much worse, vaguer things written on their skin.
 
Breach only had the word di’kut, which is not reassuring to say the least; they used to make fun of him, telling him there’s nothing more fitting for him than that.
 
Sortie had watch out, which is something one definitely won’t hear a thousand times during a war; his soulmate could be anyone, as, counting, this has already been said to him about forty-seven times, by as many people.
 
Eavesdrop (who won’t explain how he got his name, thank you very much) had a more enlightening you can call me Akia; a name, at the very least.
 
None of them seem to particularly care about it, and they often tell him he shouldn’t, either. They have bigger fishes to fry, after all. It won’t be long until they’re deployed somewhere and they will all (but especially Mayday) be too busy to think about something so trivial.
 
But Mayday refuses to let go of yet another part of himself for the sake of a war they never even asked him whether he wishes to participate in. Even though love is something their creators don’t want them to have, they cannot take this from him, as well. Not that having a soulmate and love are necessarily the same thing, obviously. A soulmark is always there (even when it’s not), but love takes work.
 
And, something else they don’t tell you is that you can meet your soulmate before they even speak a word to you, which he had never considered. He never thought that would happen to him and will only realise years later, when he only has flesh and bone left.
 
It happens on a day like any other. At this point, his entire squad is growing impatient. They know they’re ready for the battlefield, but Shaak Ti thinks they still have some work to do and she’s not someone they can argue with.
 
Eavesdrop is complaining, loudly, as he always does, when they leave the training room. The rest of them are barely listening, used to his moaning and huffing. Then, out of sudden, someone bounds at full speed from around the corner, colliding with Breach and almost sending him sprawling on the ground.
 
 “Hey, watch out!” Breach exclaims, earning himself a glare from Sortie. Mayday looks up at the commotion, from where he’d been thoroughly analysing the floor. Time seems to tilt and shift the moment his eyes focus on the odd clone in front of them; waves of something crashing against him he cannot find an explanation to.
 
The cadet is standing stock-still, not unlike a cornered animal searching for an opening to bolt. He’s definitely younger than them, probably around fourteen years old, but he’s taller than anyone else his age, taller than normal. He’s rather skinny; not in a sickly way, but enough to be noticeable. His knuckles are bloodied and there’s a bruise slowly blooming underneath the skin of his cheekbone, like he got into a fight. His dishevelled hair is a light-grey, so bright it’s near-shocking; it doesn’t look dyed. There’s something proud about the line of his jaw, the way he’s biting onto his own teeth; it almost feels like a challenge. His eyes—his eyes are harsh, accusatory, dark in a way he’s never seen. They’re a centre of gravity, pulling in anyone who dares glance too deep.
 
Mayday can’t look away. He doesn’t know why; he doesn’t know what there is about this clone that makes it impossible to.
 
The stranger’s gaze shifts, ever so slightly, in the wavering time. As if he can feel the weight of Mayday’s curiosity. Their eyes meet in the space between them and Mayday loses his breath. He cannot escape that gravity. Something, akin to an invisible thread binding them together seems to tense, take physical form for a moment.
 
And Mayday realises, with surprising clarity, that this boy’s fate is tied to his own. Whoever he is, he’ll mean something to him; neither of them can escape it. But it’s much too soon.
 
He can solely stare, right then, falling into his irises like they’re a collapsing star, listening with half a mind to the things they’re whispering without a word.
 

 
It nearly makes him sick, how much he wishes he could. It’s a feeling that scares him and sends odd sparks to his fingertips, at the same time. He knows speaking would be foolish and yet, something deep within him wants to scream, when the boy tips his chin higher, towards him, like he wants to tell him he doesn’t care what he thinks about him.
 

 
He doesn’t say it. After a few more beats of intense stare-down, the stranger shrugs with one shoulder, huffing towards Breach, with no intention to apologise.
 
Then, he dashes away, ripping the string between him and Mayday to pieces, nearly sending him tripping forwards. Time slithers back into its usual flow.
 
“What’s his deal?” Breach mutters, wiping inexistent dust off the front of his uniform. It’s certainly strange to slam into an elder and not apologise, all with that harsh glare of defiance, but, then again, there was nothing regular about that young clone.
 
Sortie elbows their brother in the stomach with a chuckle.
 
“At least he didn’t call you an idiot.” Breach doesn’t dignify that with an answer, merely rolling his eyes. For people who claim not to care about soulmates, they seem to think about it a lot, Mayday muses, but knows it better to keep that thought for himself. He’s not even certain he could speak, right now, seeing how shaken he is. Eavesdrop snorts.
 
“Well, something definitely was wrong with him. Did they drop him as a tubie?” Mayday feels an odd need to defend him, even though they don’t know each other. While admitting that he is curious about him, because it’s entirely true that, for a clone, he looks nothing like the rest of them; he wonders how he’s never noticed him before.
 
Breach and Sortie break out into uncontrollable snickers, to which Mayday pushes them forward, grabbing them from the shoulder.
 
“Move it guys, I don’t want there to be no food left when we get to the cantina.” He’s lying; he couldn’t care less. But he loathes hearing them speak on that boy that way. Not because of any particular reason, really. He’s a brother, like the rest of them; he doesn’t deserve this disrespect. No one does.
 
Still, he cannot cease thinking about the intensity of his eyes. The way he’s certain he could have glimpsed into the future, had he looked long enough; known what they’re meant to be, to each other. Those words which make no sense, whispered over and over again in his head.
 

 
He will, he knows it. Perhaps, he already does. Perhaps, their souls have recognised each other.
 
The string between them will lead them back to each other, one day.
 

 
It’s not until years later, after the end of the war (that war they never ever considered could end; because how do you make peace with knowing that your usefulness could run its course?), when Mayday has lost near everything, that he finds a meaning in that chance encounter.
 
Though he has forgotten all about it, by then. Fate and strings and soulmates tend to lessen in importance when you’ve seen friends and brothers collapse one after the other on the battlefield, when you’ve waved through rivers of blood and cried in the silence of the night for the uncertainty of it all.
 
When living becomes nothing more than surviving.
 
When your skin feels stretched thin upon your bones and you’ve misplaced all hope of a better future, a future where all you’ve lost means something, in the cold wind of a planet forgotten by most. When you are forgotten by most.
 
Mayday knows this. He knows that he’s tired; that everything about him feels brittle and he wants softer things he cannot have. That he has no trust in this new Empire. And he shouldn’t have it, either, because he’s not blind to how the clones have been discarded like debris and replaced, like everything they’ve sacrificed wasn’t worth a thing. Like they always were nothing more than a weapon.
 
He knows that something happened the year before, something vicious and wrong and consuming. His Jedi had not survived long enough to see the end of the war (in a way, it’s a near blessing); his men had already been scattered, displaced to other battalions. Even so, he’d felt it: a sharp shock of pain running down his spine from his head. Not unlike getting a blaster shot through the brain, he’s certain. Then, there had been whispers, of treason, of execution; and the Jedi had been wiped off the galaxy, almost as if they’d never been there in the first place.
 
His thoughts had been flooded with voices, reminding him, over and over again, that orders were to be followed without question. He’d spent sleepless nights with a harrowing headache, face pressed against his knees, trying to chase those voices away, to little to no avail.
 
It’d subdued, with time, until they’d finally bled away. The memories of it have stayed and he doubts they’ll ever leave him. It had felt like hands tightening around his neck, holding him down, trapped; fingers searching and scratching into his brain, attempting to remove every thought that was his own. It’d been violating in a way that still chokes him, when he thinks about it.
 
Safe to say, during the three years of war and the odd, suspended year afterwards, he has had bigger worries than finding his soulmate. All the more because he has seen the ways it can go wrong. It leaves more bruises and wounds than it ever should, for something meant to be extraordinary.
 
Sortie had found his soulmate in the midst of an active battlefield. Watch out had been thrown his way like many times before but, his brother would tell him months later in the dead of night, tears on the precarious edge of his lashes, he had known that was the person he’d been meant to find. The string of fate had stretched in between them, intertwining their souls with breathless stillness. It’d still not saved him. Sortie’s soulmate had pushed him out of the way of a cannon blast he had not seen coming. And had been blown to pieces before they could tell each other anything else.
 
Breach had not been luckier. He’d had some time with his soulmate, at the very least, but he had not known it until it was too late. He had fallen for a clone who had been scarred into silence; his vocal cords had been undamaged, but he could not push words past his lips. They had died together, in the end, so keen in protecting each other (perhaps the long-necks had been right about their efficiency, though he loathes to even consider it). Breach’s soulmate had spoken for the first time, while they lay bleeding one beside the other; he’d called him an idiot for trying to save him.
 
Not even Eavesdrop had not been spared such a fate. He was different, only in the sense that he’d found his soulmate in their Jedi (Akia Niviran). She’d died after less than two years of war. And Eavesdrop could not bear a life without her.
 
Perhaps, Mayday is the lucky one, in the end.
 
Never finding his soulmate has been a mercy.
 
Even though he cannot cease wondering what could have happened. He cannot cease wondering who they are and what happened to them. Finds solace in thinking that they’ll be spared the pain of a soulmate, at the very least; if they cannot be spared the pain of everything else.
 
Until the bitter snowstorms of Barton IV bring something more than mere cold. Not soon enough to save what’s left of his men. Not soon enough for him to deceive himself into thinking someone cares.
 
The Imperial officer walks in with a look of utter disdain on his face, seemingly unable to believe he’s fallen into such squalor. Mayday finds it quite amusing, in a miserable sort of way. Look at the consequences of your own neglect, he wishes he could say, but knows it better to keep his sarcasm to a minimum and only send small jabs his way.
 
Distractedly, he notices the man standing behind the Lieutenant with the sort of posture of someone who wants to be anywhere else. He’s wearing an armour he has never seen before, so black he nearly blends with the shadows of the outpost; it looks worn.
 
He’s not busying himself with something, with the equipment that has been left there for far longer than it makes sense. He’s just—here, trailing after the Lieutenant like a chained animal, like a guard dog not remember what it ever meant to have freedom. Something within his fractured heart shifts, poking against his flesh in an uncomfortable way. This man’s as lonely and as forgotten as him. Little more than a ghost; he feels like that, sometimes, in the ice-cold nights of that hellish place. He hates thinking anyone else knows that kind of pain. No one should.
 
A sudden, terrible longing to discover what hides beneath his helmet takes hold of him, but he chokes it down, to push against the officer’s indifference. It doesn’t change a thing.
 
The Lieutenant scurries off with a huff of contempt, one breath away from rolling his eyes, and something tells Mayday he can’t believe he has to deal with such audacity.
 
He doesn’t let his thoughts linger on him, though, noticing that the clone (because he’s certain they’re the same; there is a sense of familiarity about him, which he would never feel with nat-borns) who came with him is still there, buried in the darkness, as if afraid even a tinge of light could wound him.
 
He’s so odd. Hurt, there’s no doubt; he doesn’t need to see him to know. It’s in the way he’s standing, tense, prepared to flee given the chance. There’s wariness in the line of his spine.
 
He can’t pretend he doesn’t see this.
 
He can’t pretend he doesn’t see him.
 
And he certainly cannot leave him alone any longer.
 
Without much thought, Mayday drags the heater towards him, flooding his dark corner with what he hopes is warm light. Cold is the worst of things, when it wishes to be. Ignoring his dry mouth, the inexplicable nervousness that’s coursing through his veins, Mayday attempts an approach.
 
“What did you do to get stuck with this mission?” He cannot kid himself. He knows precisely how miserable his own situation is; he wished he didn’t. Being sent here cannot be anything else than a punishment.
 
But the reason loses meaning when the stranger gives him an answer and the world is pulled from underneath his feet. And he falls and falls and falls. Time tilts and shifts, steals the air from his lungs, drowns him in a thousand different things he cannot name.
 
It can’t be.
 
It’s not fair.
 
“Just lucky, I guess.”
 
The words shock tears to the edge of his eyes.
 
He never asked what it felt like, to meet your soulmate. It hadn’t seemed important, after the first time; it’d almost seemed insensitive.
 
His heart is sent into impossible frenzy, a dissonant hammering against his ribs. The thread that binds them together tightens around his soul and he’s nearly overwhelmed by the weight of it all.
 
Swallowing around the tangle of emotions in his throat, Mayday forces every fibre of his being back into compliance. The other man has not shown any sign of recognising the words he told him, not even a breath of hesitation. He could be mistaken. He has to be mistaken. Still, how can he not be curious about him? He already was, after all.
 
Mayday stays still a moment longer, hoping the stranger will believe he was merely attempting to warm his hands. Speaks again, hoping he doesn’t sound too eager.
 
“Name’s Mayday,” he’s foolishly proud of himself for how casual he managed to make the words sound. Blinks at the other, waiting. He finds it harder to breathe.
 
It takes a few, near heartbreaking beats for the stranger to answer. It makes him wonder how long it has been since someone cared enough to ask for his name; it makes him wonder what he’s been through, that has ripped his name away from him so violently he can barely remember it.
 
He bites on his tongue, holding back words he fears would not be welcome. He doesn’t know what’s running through his head, after all. He wishes he did; and not solely because this man is his soulmate, he realises. He just wants to. Were he not his soulmate, it wouldn’t change a thing.
 
Were he not his soulmate, he would still die to know him. To take his helmet off with trembling hands, finding eyes so his own and yet which have seen different things; read a story in the lines of his face, in the scars drawn on his skin. To feel someone else’s breath and make sure he hasn’t faded, make sure he hasn’t already died and this is nothing more than a delusion of his desperate mind. To whisper everything he wishes he could say (everything he wishes someone would tell him).
 
I’m sorry.
 
This Empire has failed you.
 
You deserve better than this.
 
After everything you’ve lost, you’ve sacrificed, you’ve suffered.
 
You deserve better than to be mere debris in the wind.
 
He collapses back into the moment from his thoughts when a name tumbles out of the stranger’s lips, in an unsteady breath.
 
“Crosshair.”
 
Mayday takes the name with careful fingers, cradles it against his chest, over his heart. A name is a precious thing, when everything else has been taken away from you; it should be cherished. He breaks it apart, places it back together, attempting to find everything it hides. It’s bittersweet, to finally give a name to someone who had been nothing more than words for years; someone he’d thought would remain nothing more than words until mere minutes before.
 
He sends a glance his way, hating that helmet, like a wall between them, making Crosshair so unreadable. Although he suspects it would not change much, were he to see his face. But he wants to talk about it, in desperate measure; about what they are to each other. He refuses to ignore it, for how painful it might become. He wants to know he’s not going crazy; that he’s not the only one who knows.
 
He tells himself there’s no time. A mission’s a mission, even one so miserable. After everything is done, perhaps they will; but he cannot risk bringing punishment to someone who already seems on the edge of something dark and unescapable.
 
And then, another attack drags everything that was left of Mayday’s old life away from him; blows it up to pieces. He falls into even greater despair and bitterness and exhaustion. He cannot deal with this anymore. It’s not fair. His men deserved better than this.
 
Oh, he wishes he could burn that wretched Empire to the ground. He wishes he could sob his lungs out. He wishes he’d never been sent there. He wishes he’d never left home (what a stupid words, for a place that had only ever used them). Wishing changes nothing.
 
He can only grieve.
 
(It’s not fair it’s not fair it’snotfair).
 
Like he always does.
 
He places their helmets beside the others. An unworthy tomb, perhaps, but everything he can give them. He wonders, for a moment, who will bury him, when he dies. There’s no one left.
 
Every fibre of his being is in such turmoil that it takes him longer than it should to look at Crosshair; to truly look at him. He’s still standing in the dark corner he seems to have claimed as his own, but he’s removed his helmet.
 
When he turns towards him, it collides with him. Not solely that he’s different (which perhaps he should have known; he’s taller than any other clone he’s ever met). But that he’s seen him before. The realisation is nearly painful. And yet, he’s felt the same as he did that first time, ever since Crosshair landed on Barton IV.
 
It’s you.
 
It’s been you all along.
 
That kid with bruised knuckles and grey hair and a proud mouth and eyes like a supernova. It was Crosshair. He met his soulmate years ago and he didn’t even know.
 
He’s changed. Of course he has.
 
War spares no one.
 
He’s older, twisted into an adult by time and circumstances. He’s grown even taller, towering at least four inches over him. His hair is shorn close to his skull; there’s an ugly, terrible scar on the side of his head, the old remainder of a burn. The line of his jaw is no less proud, but in a different way. It doesn’t seem like a challenge, anymore. It’s defensive, avoidant, like a warning; a warning that he will bite, if provoked. It edges on upset.
 
He should have known, he imagines: his stance is somewhat the same. A cornered (wounded) animal searching for an opening to escape; but there’s a weariness lying underneath, which makes him wonder whether he would merely accept his fate, the killing blow, although his being still wants to escape.
 
And his eyes—he cannot even begin to describe his eyes. They’re still a centre of gravity, but a fractured one. Still harsh, still dark. But there’s so much hurt in them; wounds which cannot be healed; injustice and betrayal; an overwhelming thing. It nearly makes him physically sick.
 
He feels a violent need to wade through those turbulent waters and discover every little thing his eyes hide. He wishes he could read every single one of his thoughts, erase all the hurt he has gone through. Someone which such intense eyes must have gone through hell and back.
 
For a moment, he wonders what Crosshair can see, when he looks into his eyes. Mayday knows he has scars of his own, but he doubts they can be seen so openly. This must be an unspeakable hurt, so crystal clear even though every attempt to conceal it. His irises still whisper the same thing, after all these years.
 

 
It all makes sense, now. How he felt back then. The universe had tried to bend to bring them together, when it knew they wouldn’t speak a word to each other. That sense of foreboding.
 
Their thread of fate has brought them back together, after all.
 
Perhaps, what most people say is wrong. No matter what, the stars will always shift to make certain you find your soulmate. Or even more than that. Your soulmate isn’t the other half of your soul, not truly. Your soulmate is merely a person you were always meant to meet, someone bound to change your life. It’s not destiny which makes them your soulmate, but it’s the circumstances. You don’t meet because you’re soulmates; that’s nothing more than a byproduct. In every life, in every timeline, you’re meant to find each other.
 
He doesn’t know why he was meant to find Crosshair, but he’s glad he has.
 
He wishes he could speak. He wishes he could tell him.
 
He wishes he could read what he hides.
 
He wishes he could reach for the red string between them and pull him closer; talk about it. For the pain it could bring, he cannot pretend he doesn’t know.
 
But they’re sent to retrieve the stolen equipment and they can’t argue about how foolish of a thing that is with a man who couldn’t care less whether they live or die. Crosshair has barely spoken a word since he’s arrived, but he follows along orders without question. A little resigned, like there’s nothing he can do. A mission’s a mission after all.
 
Mayday should feel the same.
 
Yet, he’s tired of losing people for the sake of meaningless missions.
 
Yet, he feels worn down to the bone.
 
And the moment they step into the ice caves, a coil of dread wraps around his throat and he can’t breathe. Something tells him that he’ll find nothing but death, if he goes down that path. Like he’s been here before.
 
He refuses to.
 
They still need to talk about them, their intertwined souls.
 
He cannot ignore it any longer.
 
“Crosshair,” he calls out, in a reverential near sigh; tasting the way his name feels against his lips. He feels so foolish he fears the other man won’t listen to him, because there’s hardly any time for this, is there? But Crosshair halts his steps, the line of his spine tensing minutely.
 
He turns around, carefulness written all over the movement. Mayday shatters the distance between them, ripping the helmet off his own head and letting it fall on the ground.
 
“You’re my soulmate.” It’s not a question and it’s not trying to be; it’s a breath of astonishment, because he’s here, he’s real, he’s not a figment of his imagination. Crosshair is his soulmate. There’s no denying that.
 
The younger clone chuckles, something near derisive in the sound. He doesn’t need to see him to perceive the severity in his glare.
 
“I know,” at least, he’s admitting it, instead of allowing Mayday to think he’s going insane, has misinterpreted every sign the universe has been giving him. But he’s quick to dismiss it. “It doesn’t matter. No one wants a soulmate; they’re nothing but a distraction.”
 
It hurts more than it should, to hear him speak so, when he knows he’s right. He’s seen it, he’s seen the pain it can cause. He was just as disillusioned with the concept as he is with everything else. Yet, he can’t ignore it, now that they’re here. He can’t ignore the surging wave in his chest, begging him to move closer.
 
Crosshair turns away from him, with a sharp movement, which makes him wonder what he must have seen in his eyes. A yearning he didn’t even think he had left, perhaps.
 
Either way, Crosshair shakes his head. “And you don’t wanna be mine,” his voice has fallen lower, close to a whisper and Mayday could swear there’s a hint of vulnerability to it; it feels like a bruise, one he understands it’s better to leave alone.
 
“I thought so, too, but—” he feels so foolish for it. He thought he wouldn’t care, that meeting his soulmate wouldn’t matter, wouldn’t change him. Look at him now. Desperate for a sign of anything. There’s hesitation in his own voice and he doesn’t like it. “Perhaps there’s a reason why fate brought us here, now, together.” He sounds so naïve, so hopeful, when he knows he’s in the most miserable situation one could be. It’s the wrong thing to say, he knows it; easily misread.
 
Crosshair snorts, likely rolling his eyes.
 
“That’s ridiculous and you know it.” There’s harshness there; some bitterness. He didn’t mean it like that, didn’t mean that they met because they’re soulmates. That would have happened, either way. But this can’t be a coincidence. “You think fate brought us here?” he looks down at the ground, like the ice beneath his feet has personally offended him. “What a bastard it must be, then,” to have made us suffer this way, he doesn’t say, but it’s implied. “And you don’t even know me,” he adds after a beat of silence.
 
“I want to,” Mayday answers without thinking, because it’s the unabashed truth. He’s wanted to know him ever since he met him that day on Kamino, even before knowing he was his soulmate. He’s wanted to know him from the moment he first caught sight of him, standing behind the Lieutenant. It’s not something he can, or wants, to hide.
 
Crosshair looks at him once more, without a word. It makes him feel like a prey, fearless before its hunter; being unable to see his expression makes it even more frightening.
 
“You want to know me,” he seems stunned, near doubtful. “You want to know me?” he’s repeating himself, but the emotions are entirely different. A growing rage, wrapping around him like a suffocating coil.
 
Crosshair steps closer to him, something so intense about the lines of his body that Mayday finds himself moving away, until his back collides with the wall of the cave. His heart is hammering so fast against his ribcage you’d believe it could take flight. “Well, Commander, I’m a soldier of the Empire. I’ve hurt, I’ve killed, I’ve stripped my bones bare for them.”
 
Bitterness, bitterness, bitterness. So much it overflows, threatens to drown him. Crosshair is trying to push him away, at a safe distance; he’s trying to tell him he’s a beast he should stay away from. Mayday must have lost his mind, then, because he wants nothing more than to reach out, take his helmet off, touch his fingers to his cheek.
 
He’s ripped out of his thoughts when the other moves back, glances down. “I don’t regret it. I’d do it again,” there’s no trace of emotion in his voice; makes it easy to understand he’s lying.
 
Mayday doesn’t think when he grabs his arm, to stop him from moving further away. The touch, even through layers of armour, sends a spark down his spine.
 
“That’s not who I see when I look at you: I don’t see someone who’s proud of who they’ve become,” he can lie all he wants, but a ghost recognises a ghost. “You’re a wretch, like me.”
 
Crosshair’s words twist into a snarl, when he answers before Mayday can even finish speaking; his hand, curled into a fist, collides with the wall, close to his head. There’s the weight of a thousand things in that gaze he can’t see. Mayday squints in the darkness, ever so slightly, searching for the glimpse of an emotion behind the green-tinted transparisteel covering his eyes.
 
“Don’t ever say that,” a bleak whisper; it’s a reprimand, though he cannot tell of which kind. Whether he thinks himself better or worse than him. “I’m nothing like you,” he bows his head and he’s so close to Mayday he nearly touches his shoulder. The Commander knows it’s foolish, to be so impossibly drawn to someone he doesn’t know and yet—he’s dying to see his face. But he cannot dare so much, because he would only be bitten.
 
He’s brought back in the moment when horrible, painful words collapse out of Crosshair’s mouth. “I deserve this,” he sounds so, so small; like it’s an irrefutable truth and yet he’s afraid to speak it, afraid he’ll seem pathetic. Mayday tightens the hold he still has on his arm. He loathes to think about what he must have gone through, to feel this way.
 
“No one does,” he replies, his voice on the edge of breaking. No one deserves to be so alone. No one deserves to be so forgotten. No one deserves the kind of pain he can hear in his voice.
 
“Stop.” Crosshair is still fighting; he refuses to let himself be seen, be known. But he’s tired, he can tell. He’s been on the edge of breaking as well, this whole time. “Stop trying so hard,” it comes out like a sob. He shakes his head. “Is this one not enough of a lost cause?”
 
Oh.
 
Something within him has known it the whole time, despite his pretending. Mayday read bits and pieces of the woven threads of his soul the moment he looked into his eyes, but this is so heartbreakingly open, raw. This man is no loyal soldier of the Empire. He’s merely someone who has nothing left, who lives because he can’t die; he has nothing but orders which do not care about him. It isn’t that he doesn’t want to run. He thinks he can’t. That he’ll be forever chained.
 
Crosshair spits out, venom on the edge of his teeth: “Not everyone needs to be saved. Not everyone wants to.” But it’s clear that Crosshair, Crosshair does. He’d never say it, because he is proud and stubborn, but if he could crawl out of his own skin and leave solely an empty shell behind he would. Mayday can only save him if he’s honest, as well.
 
“Maybe I do,” Mayday wants something more than this. He wants to be saved. Crosshair lifts his head, enough for him to know he’s listening. “I’m so tired,” down to his bones. “I’ve lost everything,” he has; until a few hours ago, he had almost nothing but the little meat on his bones and the ice beneath his feet. “You are someone I had thought I’d never find and yet everyone I have left.”
 
Don’t leave me here.
 
Please, don’t leave me here alone.
 
Crosshair shakes his head, near feverish, after a moment of hesitation.
 
“I’m sorry. I can’t help you,” he sounds genuinely grief-stricken for it. “I can’t be who you want me to be.” It hurts to know, him thinking Mayday would want to change him. Or that he’s idolised the idea of him for so long he’ll never be anything but a disappointment. In the meantime, Mayday is starting to wonder whether he’d care this much, was his soulmate anyone else.
 
Did I already love you, in another life?
 
“Crosshair,” this time, he says his name like a question, and the younger clone understands what he’s begging him to do, without him needing to speak the words. It looks almost physically painful, for him to remove his helmet. And it lingers on his fingers for a moment, before collapsing to the ground, close to Mayday’s own. “I don’t want you to be anyone else.”
 
Crosshair looks at him without a word, eyes still like a supernova (dark, drowning, dangerous). Wavering with a vulnerability he seems to despise. A thousand questions he can’t answer shimmering beneath. He can’t believe the words he’s speaking, not truly. But something tells Mayday he wants to, in a starving sort of way. He can’t believe Mayday would want him for who he is, the way he is, but he craves to be seen, to be known; like his eyes have been whispering ever since their first meeting.
 
Mayday can’t help but wonder, once more, what he must have gone through to feel so worthless. Though he knows it’s difficult to feel anything else, surrounded by people who don’t care.
 
“This Empire has wanted us to be someone else for too long;” gutting them of all the things which made them their own people, stripping their personalities and free-will from their skin, “it has tried to rip our identities away from us.”
 
Crosshair bites his bottom lip, worrying it between his teeth, hearing the truth of his words; he avoids his gaze.
 
“I’m not asking you to change. I want to know you as you are.” In a rush of boldness, their closeness making him forget all his reservations, Mayday reaches out and takes hold of Crosshair’s chin when he notices his lip has started bleeding.
 
He merely wants him to stop, but the effect his near devastating. For himself, because the contact with his bare skin is a lightning strike that almost kills him, even through his gloves. For Crosshair, it’s so much worse: his eyes widen, ever so slightly, and every fibre of his being seems to freeze. Mayday wonders, for a terrible second, whether he’s averse to touch and he’s crossed a boundary.
 
But then, the younger clone melts against his touch, eyes falling shut and mouth lightly parted, barely holding in a stifled whimper. Like he’d been dying to be touched. He asks himself how long it’s been, from the last time someone was soft with him, someone touched him without any intention of hurting.
 
“I’ll only let you down,” Crosshair says, eyes still closed, voice so feeble he almost misses the words. He sounds so certain of something he cannot know. Yet, Mayday knows it won’t happen, not when he’s so worried about it. He doesn’t understand why Crosshair is so adamant he must make his own life hell. “You can’t trust me when—” he swallows the mere air he’s breathing, before sighing, “—when I don’t even trust myself.”
 
Is it so wrong, that he does?
 
That he feels down to his marrow that there’s no one he can trust more than him?
 
“Yet, I do,” he replies, simply. “Because I see you. You’re hurt; in ways I don’t understand and will not ask you about.” He won’t ask, he will solely wait, until Crosshair trusts him enough to speak about his wounds on his own.
 
This isn’t love, not yet, and maybe will never be, but he’s still willing to work for it. Work to survive when they feel like the only souls in the universe. They only have each other.
 
Crosshair blinks his eyes open, looks at him for a long moment, until Mayday gets the feeling he’s reading his very soul. Then, he raises his hand, tentatively, and presses it against Mayday’s cheek. Mayday almost collapses. The touch is a warm balm against the cold. He had not known he’d been dying to be touched, either.
 
“Like you,” it’s a breath, a frightened wavering thing, but it means more than he can speak. They have so much of each other already, are already so intertwined. The realisation should be somewhat terrible, but it’s healing, instead.
 
You are mine and I am yours, and so we’ve always been.
 
Mayday chuckles, his hand leaving Crosshair’s chin to shift up, grabbing onto the hand still on his cheek, fingers resting over each other in the softest way.
 
“We’re soulmates, alright.”
 
Two broken, miserable, wretched creatures, alone and forgotten; what a pair they make.
 
Still, the comment draws a bittersweet smile from Crosshair. In the few minutes they have spent in these caves, he’s gone through more changes than he thought possible. The line of his jaw has softened and his defensiveness has bled away, like it’s done from his words; but there’s a slight tremble, caused by tears he’s struggling to hold back. He’s frowning, such turmoil in his irises he doesn’t know how to take it; wishes he could steal it from him and keep it for himself.
 
His eyes are suddenly so wide and so pleading. Mayday wants to give him everything he has left. His bones. The promise that better times will come.
 
Something tells him he should be glad, satisfied. They have talked about it and it was everything he wished for. But now, what is he supposed to do? He cannot possibly continue with the mission, like not a thing has happened. Like he doesn’t know that there’s nothing for them to go back to. The words that forced their way into his mind years ago, during their first meeting make their crawling way back to him.
 
Don’t run, they say. And they’re for Crosshair, because he doesn’t want him to leave again; they’re for himself because he cannot ignore the painful truth any longer.
 
He refuses to die for this Empire.
 
He moves closer, softly presses his forehead against Crosshair’s; feels his breath against his skin, wonders how it’d feel to kiss his lips.
 
Don’t—
 
“Run,” is the only word he says, though it makes no sense, not alone. But little things do, when they’re alone.
 
His other hand clasps onto Crosshair’s shoulder, giving a slight pressure through the armour. “Away, with me.”
 
He hears a hitch in the younger clone’s breath, nearly a sob. Unable to believe what he’s asking of him.
 
Crosshair pushes himself back, looks at him for a long moment, trying to understand whether he’s speaking in earnest. His fingers slide away from his cheek, curl into a first by his side.
 
“I can’t,” he still feels chained; he doesn’t understand Mayday would break those chains with his bare hands, tearing them to shreds, to help him free. He shakes his head. “I don’t know where we could go. I—we don’t have anyone left,” Mayday wonders what must have happened to his unit, because the utter loneliness in his voice is suffocating. He doesn’t hesitate, when he answers.
 
“We have each other,” he wants Crosshair to understand how completely his he already is. Their souls are made of the same matter. “We’ll figure it out,” they don’t need to know everything, not right now. This is already a foolish thing, to desert, and so much could go wrong. As long as they have their life, their freedom, everything else will come. “We deserve better than this.”
 
Crosshair stares, a moment longer, looking at him like he can see him. Like he’s already learned to know him. Many unreadable things flash through his eyes. And then, finally, he nods, with a small sigh of relief.
 
Mayday doesn’t wait for him to change his mind.
 
He grabs his hand and they run.
 
Eventually, they will learn more about each other.
 
They will talk about the things they have gone through, and the brothers they have lost, while on the run on their stolen ship.
 
They will learn each other’s scars by heart, mapping them out on each other’s skin while lying among tangled sheets in a dingy motel on a less than respectable planet.
 
They will begin to heal, with time, with care; being there for each other through every nightmare and terror.
 
They will find their way back to Crosshair’s brothers, on a beautiful island which smells like peace and tastes of freedom. It will take time for Clone Force 99 to trust Crosshair again and he will not blame them for it. But he will tell Mayday about everything that happened, all that he has done and every way he has been hurt and felt abandoned by them. And Mayday will find so many pieces of the puzzle he was missing about him.
 
Mayday will tell Crosshair about the first time they met; he will speak about how drawn he’d felt to the younger clone without reason and how it felt to realise he’s been his soulmate all along. Crosshair will be embarrassed, unable to remember this ever happened and Mayday will poke fun at him for the rest of times.
 
They will learn that having a soulmate doesn’t always hurt.
 
Sometimes it means love. Sometimes it means change.
 
Sometimes it means finding yourself when you thought you were lost.
 
But they don’t know a thing of it, not yet. Right now, the only certainty they have is their linked hands and their linked hearts. Their determination to leave this Empire which doesn’t care for them and never has behind.
 
Each other.
 
And that’s enough.