Chapter Text
The orders came through exactly twelve minutes after Wolffe had finally decided to get some rack time.
Just long enough that he had time to remove his vambraces and elbow plates, and just short enough that he wasn't able to enjoy the new freedom of movement in his joints.
The impersonal ping of his wrist comlink signaling an incoming call from the General was accompanied by a file drop to his datapad that courteously detailed how his battalion would be heading into a death trap.
Wonderful.
He reluctantly strapped the armor back on, regretting the supply loading duties this morning that had led him to wear it today instead of the officer's cloth uniform.
He and the rest of the 104th had been stationed on Coruscant for the past week and a half. It wasn’t shore leave—at least, that was what the General kept insisting—but to Wolffe, the difference between an official shore leave and remaining docked on Coruscant for several days while the General took care of vague “Jedi business” was negligible. He wasn’t complaining. It gave his men valuable time to rest and prepare for upcoming assignments. Although, he reflected, was it really rest if most of them were out at the bar until the wee hours of the morning? He rolled his eyes. Some new establishment with a number for a name (rather like himself, he thought wryly) that had evidently seen a demand and figured they could make good credit by offering a supply. They weren’t wrong.
General Plo Koon’s serenely still form sprang up in rippling blue as Wolffe transferred the call to the Triumphant’s holocom display.
“Commander Wolffe.”
“General.”
“I trust you have found some time to rest?”
“...Yes, sir.” He didn’t exactly see why it mattered, especially to the General. He thought regretfully of the long-anticipated nap that had been snatched from his grasp.
“Good,” Koon said, and Wolffe did not miss the note of genuine satisfaction in his voice, clear despite the distortion of the antiox mask. He was still getting used to the Kel Dor master’s strange ways. “As you may know, there has been a series of recent attacks on Republic fleets causing unprecedented destruction. We suspect that the Separatists are using some kind of new weapon. The 104th has been chosen to track down the source of these attacks and neutralize the threat.”
They spent the next few minutes going over a brief outline of the mission, and the timeline for their departure. The 104th was to be underway in three days’ time. A crunch timeline, if Wolffe had not already been running continuous inventory and gear inspections the entire week.
“Oh, and Commander?” Koon paused before he ended the transmission. “Have you spoken to Commander Fox recently?”
Wolffe stared at his General for a moment, completely nonplussed by the change in topic. “Sir?”
“I assumed you might have had contact, seeing as you are currently stationed on Coruscant and he is Commander of the Coruscant Guard.” He almost sounded amused.
He wasn’t wrong. Wolffe had stopped by the Guard barracks only yesterday. Slowly, he answered,
“I have, sir.”
“How is he?”
Wolffe wondered briefly if he had ended up with a defective General.
He considered double-checking Koon’s meaning, but he knew his General did not ask pointless questions. How was he supposed to answer that? In truth, he had spent the first thirty minutes of his so-called “visit” following on Fox’s heels as he speed-walked from place to place and carried on brisk conversation with Wolffe in the spaces between barking orders. And then when he finally sat down, it was to an array of datapads that Wolffe found both unnecessary in quantity and disorienting in organization.
He settled for three-quarters honesty. “If you want my opinion, sir, I think he has had some difficulty with...time management.” It was a cop-out, a completely unfair assessment when worded that way, and he knew it. He mentally composed an apology to Fox he would never say aloud.
The General, however, nodded as if he understood the implications. “I suspected as much. I pity anyone who must fill out incident reports for Jedi. And that includes you, Commander.” The tone was...self-deprecating. Was that a joke?
After the General’s holographic figure had disappeared from the table, Wolffe stood for a moment with his hands clasped behind his back, reevaluating his assessment of his commanding officer. Hisseen taught him that Plo Koon was a competent fighter and strategist, and Wolffe had seen his piloting skills several times already. Before that, he saw glimpses of the Jedi’s compassion lurking beneath the surface during the Quarmendy mission, when failure was met with gratitude for lives saved instead of anger over objectives missed. But this—this was just downright odd.
He shook his head. Nat-borns.
Balmgrass. “No.” Megonite moss. “Definitely not.” Mallow. “They have that here?"
Violet swiped through entries in a botanical encyclopedia on her datapad, attempting to pass the time by identifying the small groundcover plant that covered the bank next to her. There was probably some fancy scan she could perform instead, but in this world, she was the equivalent of a granny when it came to technology. Better not to attempt it.
She swished her feet in the cool water of the pool, pausing for a moment to lift her face to the artificial sunlight that trickled down around her. It was a convincing replica, and most times she didn’t even notice the difference.
The Room of a Thousand Fountains at this hour was quiet, at least so far as man-made noises went. No youngling clans—always audibly recognizable—were about at the moment, and everyone else generally kept a respectful quiet for those meditating or enjoying the solitude. Her meeting with Plo Koon had been delayed by several days, so given the anticipation and the unspecified timing of their meeting, she had spent most of her day here so far. It couldn’t hurt to be ready. Anyway, she enjoyed spending time in the Room, and with several files from the Archives uploaded to her datapad, she could spend it researching. Aledi was training, though she had promised they would talk at dinner, so Violet was largely left to her own devices. As usual.
The water whirlpooled around her ankles as she moved them in circles. A bolt of excitement crackled under her skin at the prospect of actually doing something. It had been difficult to keep her mind focused on research when all it wanted to do was tangle in on itself trying to figure out what task he could possibly have found for someone as practically unversed in the ways of the galaxy as she.
A crunch of dirt indicated someone’s approach.
“Ah, Violet.”
She turned at the sound of his gravelly voice, scrambling to her feet. “Master Plo.”
He wore a tunic in dark colors. No robe. She noted with a smile the vambraces on his forearms, marked with the maroon wolf’s head of the 104th.
Wolf Pack.
“I hoped you had not forgotten our meeting, because I have a task for you.”
“You do?” Obviously. That was the whole point of their meeting. But she couldn’t help being a little incredulous that he’d actually taken her seriously.
“An assignment of sorts. You won’t be employed—I venture to guess the credits would be useless in your world—and so will be free to leave at any time.”
Violet nodded and shifted her datapad nervously from one hand to the other. “What is it?”
He didn’t answer her question directly, instead starting along one of the garden paths and gesturing for her to walk beside him.
“I assume you know how to use that?” He gestured to the datapad in her hand.
“...Yes.”
“Hmm. How much experience do you have in administrative roles?”
What?
Violet blinked. She'd worked on the admin staff for a kids' science camp the summer after high school. Did that count?
“Uh...some?" It came out less confident than she intended.
He nodded as if he had expected this answer. Violet eyed him, curiosity and confusion battling for the top spot in her emotions.
“Good. In fact, the less, the better."
"Okay..."
This made no sense.
"It has come to my attention that the Coruscant Guard is in need of some administrative assistance."
"Oh."
He looked at her sideways, seeming to sense her building apprehension.
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out, so she shut it again with a clack. She made a careful study of the pebbles at her feet, felt the edges of the datapad warm from use beneath her fingers, tried not to panic. It took her much longer to form words than she would have liked.
“I, uh...”
The prospect of facing down that cold, chrome-filtered gaze again gave her a nauseous swell in her stomach. Not only because their last interaction competed for a place among the most embarrassing incidents of her life, but because she knew everything.
No. Stop.
She thought of Cam, and of Striker, of units as familiar to her as the beat of her own heart even if she never met them. Orange, blue, yellow—it didn't matter because they all deserved more. Jedi deployed across the galaxy, military positions they should not have had to hold. All the people in this great expanse of stars and planets—one that she was now part of by some twist of fate—dying for a cause that, in the end, was all a lie. People who had not, until three weeks ago, been anything other than fictitious to her. She gathered her resolve.
Shoulders up, back, down.
Personal feelings locked away to deal with later.
“I want to do whatever I can to help.”
Even if it’s small. Even if I hate it.
“I thought so.” His face shifted ever so slightly, and though Violet was not by any means an expert on Kel Dor expressions, she thought it looked decidedly like approval.
“You what?”
Violet nodded, trying to force another bite of stew past the knot of anxiety in her stomach.
“I knew he was, well, odd for a clone, but not that he was rude. They’re usually very...” Aledi made several gestures obviously meant to convey “stoic” and “compliant” and “suspiciously uniform,” but mostly succeeded in looking like someone trying to act out an octahedron in charades.
Violet gave up on the stew and dropped her face into her hands, letting them slide upwards into her hair. It made her look frazzled, and she knew it. But at least it was an accurate representation of how she felt inside. “I can’t do it. I can’t.”
“You can always change your mind,” Aledi pointed out.
“No. I can’t do that either.”
“You can.”
“I really can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I just—I can’t back out now. I said I wanted to help. This is how I help.” She injected confidence into the words, hoping to convince herself as much as Aledi. She suspected that she failed in both aims.
Violet expected Aledi to protest further. She didn’t. In that space, Violet sensed an understanding of duty so intrinsic it could not be unlearned. Somehow it eased the rapid pulse in her throat.
Aledi dragged a piece of bread in circles through her stew, a frown on her face that Violet was learning usually preceded her better ideas. Violet waited. The bread turned soggy.
“You should join my meditation tonight.”
“Oh.”
“It can be useful, even for those who do not use the Force,” Aledi protested, taking her surprise as objection.
“And you think it would help me?”
“It is simply a way to clear your mind and calm yourself. Anyone can do it.” She shrugged. “But if your midi-chlorian count is anything to go by, it should be significantly easier for you than for most.”
Violet gaped at her. “How did you—”
“I told you spying on Masters is a favorite pastime of mine. Besides, I could sense it.” She winked. “You going to finish that?”
Violet grimaced and shook her head, pushing the half-eaten bowl of stew towards Aledi, although not before snatching a hunk of the bread to nibble on.
Thirty minutes later, Violet walked beside Aledi down the dimming halls of the Temple. Other Jedi still roamed the corridors, but the activity in the Temple was much decreased—footsteps echoing in the hush and voices lowered to an almost reverent volume. The light of the setting sun filtered golden through high skylights and windows in the above-ground rooms.
“There are dedicated rooms for meditation, and many use the Room of a Thousand Fountains, but I prefer the training salles if I can. I figure if I can meditate with all that noise, I can find peace in combat, right?” Her smile faded slightly as she added, quieter, “Not that I’ve had the chance.”
Seeing the frown on Violet’s face and misinterpreting it, she laughed and said, “Do not worry. By this hour, there will be at least one empty room.”
Why are you nervous?
Oh, shut up.
They entered one of the larger training rooms, and the vaulted ceiling drew Violet’s eyes immediately upward, following vast, carved stone ribs up and over to where they met the spectator seating that ringed the floor in ascending rows. Beams of fading sunlight shot through high, narrow windows, and Violet stopped in one of the long rectangles cast on the floor, momentarily hypnotized by the dancing dust motes. She breathed in slowly, and the writhing nerves in her stomach settled. Marginally. But it was something.
It reminded her of the way the afternoon light streamed through her apartment window, spilling onto her desk and turning the heart-shaped leaves of her devil’s ivy translucent. For a few seconds, standing there in a different sun and the same peace, she couldn’t tell if she missed it.
“See, you are already getting the hang of it,” Aledi said. Even her lowered voice was magnified by the solid space. Violet shook herself back to the present and made her way to where Aledi had settled cross-legged on the floor. The emptiness snatched her footsteps and tossed them back and forth across the room in cascades. She mirrored Aledi’s posture, straightening her spine and setting her hands on her knees.
“Close your eyes,” Aledi directed. Her own eyes were already closed. “Let thought and emotion pass through you. Do not let them settle in you, nor try to resist them.” She sounded as if she was reciting something. Perhaps a mantra repeated to her so many times that it was as natural as if the words were her own.
Violet obediently let her eyes fall shut. She imagined her mind opening up, allowing everything through. She counted each breath.
One.
The floor was cold and very hard. She shifted her weight back and forth, resisting the urge to roll forward onto her knees.
Two.
I can’t face all of them again. I’ll die of embarrassment.
Three.
Why couldn't he have given me any other task?
Four.
Murderer.
Five.
But inhibitor chips.
Six.
Killer. Deep down. Rotten.
Seven.
This will all be destroyed. Soon. Everyone here will die and the Temple will burn.
Eight.
And you’ll know you could have saved them.
Violet's jaw clenched involuntarily and she opened her eyes. Aledi sat tranquil as ever. It was more difficult than it looked. Heaving a deep, irritated sigh, she tried again.
After several more failed attempts, she adjusted her angle of attack.
This time, she let her mental gaze fall inward: herself the eye of a whirlpool, each thought and emotion debris in the swirling water, sucked down and down and down until it vanished into the void. All transient. But she remained.
And then suddenly there it was. As if it always had been.
In the center of the void, a small, twisting light, invisible to both her eyes and her mind’s eye, but no less tangible for it. As warm and real as her own blood. She felt it pulsing in her veins and crackling outward like roots into the floor and arcing into the ceiling above and there, in front of her, like a living beacon—
Aledi.
She reached out, bending her mind around the shape of it. Winding, oscillating threads connected with the energy core across from her, and the resulting burst of color behind her eyes was mind-piercingly bright, like simultaneously seeing and being seen more wholly and painfully than ever before.
The threads of her consciousness ricocheted out in rays, reaching like plants reach towards the sun. For one perfectly, blindingly clear instant, she was a part of everything and everyone all at once.
Then it was gone with a chest-rattling rush like a pressure valve releasing, and her eyes snapped open with a gasping intake of breath.
It was echoed by Aledi, who was staring at her with an odd, unreadable expression. Violet let her eyes fall to the fabric of her trousers, away from Aledi's unnerving gaze. The other girl's voice was barely above a whisper when she asked,
“Who are you?”
She knows. Somehow, she knows. Violet could see it in her eyes, could feel it in the residual vibration left by their recent connection.
“I...”
There was nowhere to hide, no careful wording or convenient excuses to save her now.
And so Aledi listened with an attention borne of quiet, everyday discipline while Violet let all the words she’d been too afraid to say spill over.
When it was all told, Aledi didn’t brood in silence, didn’t demand she reveal everything she knew, didn’t get up and leave.
Instead, her quintessential pointy grin crept slowly across her face. “I knew there was something strange about your Force signature.”
The relief hit Violet like a bucket of ice water to the face, and she let out a long, shuddering breath that was halfway to a laugh. She hadn’t even noticed the adrenaline until its absence left her hands trembling in her lap.
She offered a small, tentative smile back, but it faded quickly when she remembered how much of her life was simply not here. Just gone. She looked down at her hands.
“I don’t know what I’m doing. But at the same time, I know everything, and I--I hate that.”
How could you forget them?
Despite the nights spent tossing and turning, despite the days spent scouring the Archives, her life here was still becoming more terrifyingly real with each passing day, and her real life fading into the background.
“My brother—he would’ve loved—” her voice caught in her throat.
Aledi said nothing, only reaching out a hand to rest on Violet’s knee. Violet swallowed hard, trying to regain her voice.
“I will work with Master Nu whenever I can. We will find a way,” Aledi said.
Volet could feel Aledi's steady presence, and the deep hum of the Temple and all the Jedi within it. It was as if some dormant sense had been awakened, and now that she had once felt it, she could not stop being aware of it, hovering at the edge of her mind like a shadow caught in her peripheral vision that disappeared when she looked straight at it. Comforting, in its own alien way.
She smiled despite the tears that stung her eyes.
So it was that, two days later, Violet wove through the bustling pedwalks toward the Coruscant Guard headquarters, imbued with a fragile sense of confidence. The Force hummed steadily in the back of her mind, a presence to which she was slowly becoming accustomed. She felt like a cobbled-together mosaic, and in a way, that was heartening. A real tunic borrowed from the Temple supply, boots that actually fit from a Mirialan crèche-mate of Aledi's who had outgrown them. The satchel slung across her torso that held her datapad and stylus was worn leather with a growing hole along one seam and had once belonged to a Temple Archivist. A few credits Aledi had managed to pester out of Fyr before they departed on mission rattled in the pouch on her belt. She ran her fingers over the stone clutched in her palm, a round grey thing that was aesthetically worthless and personally priceless.
In spite of the looming duty ahead of her, she couldn't quite suppress a tiny skip of joy.
This is way better than cosplay.