Chapter Text
After their whirlwind tour of the Archives, Madame Nu led them to their berthing. It was two sets of rooms located side by side in the same quiet hallway as her own quarters, connected to each other by an interior door. Each set had a fresher, three bedrooms, and a combined living and kitchen area with a holoterminal in one corner. It was an absurd amount of space for five people used to living within arms reach of hundreds of other bodies at all times. Madame Nu apologized for the lack of amenities, which Eight-One slowly gathered to mean that there wasn’t all the cooking gear she deemed necessary for civilized life—not that any of them had any experience with cooking or where to even begin learning.
The windows were huge things that looked out into an enclosed garden on the other side of the wall. The boundary between the living area and the garden seemed ephemeral, due to the thick array of potted plants covering the windowsill. It was bizarre to see actual plants, to be able to run a cautious finger over velvety leaves and pliant stems, to feel the yielding firmness of a clump of moss, to breathe the rich foreign tang of soil.
Sunlight streamed through the windows. Somehow, that was the strangest detail of this whole strange new place.
In theory, Eight-One knew what sunlight was. He’d seen it in the training sims, knew how to adjust for the hazards caused by it, be it blinding glare or excessive heat. He even knew, hypothetically, how to deal with a sunburn. He’d even seen it on a training mission once, but that Manda-forsaken moon had been a frozen wasteland perpetually overshadowed by the bulk of its parent planet—the days were brief, the nights long, and the weak sunlight did nothing to warm anyone.
He hadn’t known that sunlight could feel like the physical weight of a caress on bare skin.
Eight-One was jarred out of his perusal of the windows by Madame Nu handing out datacards. The cards were keyed to both sets of rooms, as well as her own, and all the public rooms in the Temple. Apparently the datacards they would need for access to the Archive systems wouldn’t be ready until the next morning.
“I have to leave for a moment, but I’ll be back in an hour to show you to the refectory for dinner. There are snacks in the cupboards and the conservator if you get hungry before then,” Madame Nu said, and excused herself.
She left them all hovering uncertainly in the living area of one of the suites. Three-Five sat gingerly on one of the sofas, then sprawled out more when it proved sturdy and comfortable. He looked up at the rest of them, standing around like idiots, and said blankly, “What the actual kark.”
Yeah. That about summed it up.
Six days ago, they were all reporting to an ominously bland room in Tipoca City, waiting to be sent off to die. Now they were in a place they couldn’t have imagined in their wildest dreams, and their new CO was apologizing—apologizing!—because there were not enough spices and oddly specific pots in the kitchen. Eight-One felt like he was suffering emotional whiplash.
“So, how do we divide up the rooms?” Seven-Oh asked hesitantly.
“I guess we just each pick one?” Eight-Five hazarded, and went to look more closely at a bedroom. The rest of them slowly drifted after Eight-Five. Eight-One detoured to the fresher, but had to pause a moment on the threshold to blink at the luxury. The shower stall was tiled in an intricate pattern of blues and greens. There wasn’t even a sonic set up, just water, and no regulators or timers to govern usage. Towels, thick and soft and a warm gold color, hung on pegs on the wall, and matching woven mats lay on the floor. Sturdy cabinets held more towels, an array of soaps, neatly packaged hygiene kits, odds and ends that Eight-One didn’t recognize.
There was a large mirror above the sink, set in a frame made of tile that matched the shower. The sink looked like it had been carved from a single solid block of creamy stone, buffed slick as blaster oil. There was a subtle spiral carved into the basin; when he turned the tap on, the water followed the lines of the spiral in hypnotizing loops before it swirled down the drain.
Why would anyone waste the effort to carve something so frivolous into something that should be functional? he wondered. It was...interesting, and pretty, he supposed, but...he didn’t understand the point of it. All he knew was that it made his chest ache for some reason when he watched the water spiral around the basin and ran a careful finger over the mirror frame.
He tried to shake off the strange feeling as he peered into the bedroom where the rest of his new squad had gone. It held a freestanding bed, with crisp sheets and three colorful blankets, along with a mound of pillows. There were shelves on each wall, half full of datapads, and even more potted plants in a dizzying array of greens and blues and purples lined the windowsill. A desk and a tall cabinet stood in opposite corners.
Three-Five was sprawled on the bed, arms and legs going every direction, while Oh-Nine sat on the edge in a clear space and cautiously poked a pillow. Eight-Five sat in the desk chair, and Seven-Oh perched nervously near the edge of the desk. Everyone had varying degrees of bewilderment on their faces.
“What the hell are we supposed to do now?” Eight-Five finally asked.
Oh-Nine shrugged. No one else said anything.
“Scout,” Eight-One offered. He didn’t mean to say anything else, but every one of his new brothers looked at him like he was holding out the only lifeline they could see. “Treat it like a scouting sim, yeah? It’s unfamiliar territory, but we’re trained for that. Observe, catalog, report. Just—this time we’re not looking for hostiles or terrain hazards.”
“What are we looking for?” Three-Five propped himself up on one elbow.
Eight-One thought for a moment. “Rules and regs,” he said, slowly sorting through what might be important. “Resources we can make use of. General lay of the land. Threats,” he finished with a grimace, “if we can recognize them.”
There was a murmur of agreement and some of the tension leeched out of the room.
“Pool our observations at the end of the shift?” Eight-Five suggested, and Eight-One nodded.
"Kamino didn't want us," he said quietly. "But the Jedi do. Maybe we can find out why."
*****
Jocasta had spent the hour since she dropped her new charges off at their quarters making hurried comm calls and scribbling notes to herself. She had done her best to follow the will of the Force in bringing the clones here, but unfortunately, the Force wasn’t concerned with mundanities like making sure they had nightclothes and a well-stocked conservator. Nor had the Force been all that helpful in coming up with a cohesive training plan for them. She needed them trained, common sense told her that, and that was the one thing the Force was also insistent on, but how she was to go about it—no help at all was forthcoming.
It had to be a custom plan, there was no getting around that. Every other librarian she had trained had been Temple-raised, and generally familiar with the Archives from childhood. There was a massive difference between a Temple raised Jedi and clone soldiers plucked from the executioner’s grasp, and Jocasta was under no illusions that she knew even a quarter of what separated them. She would simply have to find out what she didn’t know as she went along, and hope that she didn’t misstep in some irreparable way. She rubbed at her temples to stave off the oncoming headache. This wasn’t her forte: she had trained two Padawans, yes, and routinely taught classes, but again, there was shared culture to create lines of communication and understanding. She would have to build those bridges from scratch with her new charges.
Most of the journey to Kamino to pick them up had been spent in cobbling together a training plan, but it was still a very rough draft. She had a slightly better idea of some, but by no means all, of their strengths and weaknesses after the return journey, but there were so many gaps in her knowledge that six days in stilted conversation and close quarters hadn’t begun to fill. Part of the problem was that they were still very reserved, with good reason, given the circumstances they had come from. Part of it was the cultural divide. She would just have to adjust as things came up, and hope for the best.
Stars above, she hoped this would work. Shaak had told her a little more about what she had learned about the army the Jedi now commanded at the behest of the Republic. It was entirely possible that, if someone on the new Military Oversight Committee decided it was needful, her new librarians would be remanded back to the army. Unless she could provide incontrovertible evidence that they were already providing a vital service to the war effort, they would be thrown into the fray as nothing more than cannon fodder, especially given their records as troublemakers already.
She couldn’t bear for that to happen, not to anybody, but especially not to those five boys who had looked at her with such fragile hope. So she needed to train them, and train them quickly, on more than just the skills necessary to an Archivist. She needed to make them irreplaceable, to make them something that no one could afford to throw away.
She dashed off another few ideas on her pad, and punched in Cin’s comm code. She would need a great deal of help for this to succeed.
*****
The door chimed. The squad had spent the rest of their allotted hour thoroughly exploring their new lodgings, getting familiar with base camp, as Eight-One had suggested. The other set of rooms was equally as luxurious as the first, though the decorations were a little different, and that one had an entire tree growing in a pot in the corner of the living space. It was a small tree, just about head height, but still—a tree. Inside the room.
Eight-One was beginning to think the Jedi were a little bit strange.
Oh-Nine opened the door and Madame Nu stepped into the room. She glanced around the room—ever so slightly disarranged from their explorations—and smiled briefly at the squad. “If you would all be so kind as to follow me, we can go to the refectory for latemeal.” They nodded and followed her out into the hallway.
She led them briskly through a confusing array of corridors, none of which were clearly marked. The Temple had none of the order of Kamino; short flights of stairs appeared at random, doorways were spaced unevenly, smooth plastered walls gave way to cut stone and intricate brickwork. And yet it somehow gave an impression of great centeredness , of a harmony within itself that was unruffled by such trivialities as conflicting décor.
I live here now, Eight-One thought, and felt such a strong surge of unreality that he missed a step on the latest random staircase. Oh-Nine, once again bringing up the rear, caught his arm and cocked a worried eyebrow. Eight-One shook his head, and tucked the thought away to examine later.
They arrived at the refectory a few minutes later. Eight-One once again strongly wished for a map. It would take a while to learn the lay of the land here, although at least there were distinctive landmarks, as it were.
The refectory was a large room, but much more welcoming than the mess halls of Kamino. They must have gotten there a little early for the meal, as it wasn't crowded at all. It held a mix of different seating areas and kinds of tables; some were low to the ground, surrounded by cushions, while others were of a more familiar height and had benches or stools. There was a group of tables near the far wall that were nearly head-height—one was occupied by a silver-furred Wookie and a tiny child of indeterminate species who could barely see over the edge of the table, despite the mound of cushions it perched on.
Madame Nu walked them over to the serving area along one wall. They each took a clean tray and a plate from a stack and followed her over to a dizzying array of food. She pointed to a sign on the wall and said, “Pay attention to the symbol on the labels. Some things are easily consumed by multiple species, but some are strictly not for human consumption. Please ask if you have questions; the healers will have my hide if something is mislabeled and you accidentally try it.”
Eight-One checked the sign—there were four symbols that signified items for human or near-human diets—and looked at the food laid out on trays. There was a whole wall of cold foods, a table of hot food in steam trays, and cases and cases of things he had no name for. It was a little overwhelming.
“How do you know if you’re eating an optimized meal?” Seven-Oh ventured timidly.
Madame Nu paused in spooning something runny and orange over a heap of fluffy white stuff and quirked a smile. “In my opinion, a meal is optimized if it tastes good and makes you happy. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand, after all.” She replaced the ladle in the runny orange thing and scooped up some colorful cubes. “If you want, we can consult with the healers tomorrow about a diet plan. But for tonight, I think you should be free to sample whatever you wish.”
Free to sample anything. No rules, no regs, no carefully regimented portions of protein powder and green veggie glop. Unreality swelled and threatened to swallow him again. Eight-One closed his eyes and focused on his hands, just for a moment. The tray was smooth under his fingers, with beveled edges that pressed into the meat of his thumb. He squeezed it a little harder, grounding himself in the sensation until reality steadied again.
He opened his eyes. Most of the squad was following Madame Nu’s example, choosing the same foods that she had for themselves. Eight-Five was poking at a tray full of something blue and jiggly with morbid fascination. Eight-One took his time looking at the labels, checking the symbols and trying to decipher whether the contents of the dish had any relation to the food he was used to.
The fluffy white stuff Madame Nu had chosen—apparently it was steamed rice—seemed like a good place to start. He put a careful spoonful on his plate, surprised to discover it was actually a whole bunch of tiny ovoids sticking together instead of a continuous mass like he had thought. He looked at the orange sauce, but as he was trying to decide whether he wanted to try it, a serving droid trundled past him and set down a tray full of brown slabs that were still sizzling like rain on a hot blaster barrel and smelled divine.
He hadn’t known food could smell so good it made his mouth water.
He quickly added two slabs of the brown thing to his plate. Nerf steak, the label said. He knew what a nerf was, he’d seen holos, but he had no idea what ‘steak’ was, and he had no idea if the nerf on his plate had any connection to the animal in the holos.
He chose the rest of his food—some orange gazar cubes, green nangu semicircles, and shreds of something translucent and purple called sokh—by how good it smelled, and finished the plate off with a cup of red sauce that burned his nose when he sniffed it. He’d heard Mandalorians liked spicy food; he wasn’t sure if it was genetic or not, but the sauce was very appealing.
He joined his squad and Madame Nu at a circular table of normal height. A slow trickle of beings had begun drifting into the refectory, casting curious looks at their group, but Madame Nu ignored the looks, so Eight-One did his best to follow her example.
“Alright, gentleman,” Madame Nu said as Eight-One took a cautious bite of the white fluff. “The next few days are going to be quite busy, for which I apologize. We have a good deal of mundanities to get squared away before we can proceed to more interesting things.” She pulled a datapad out of a pocket somewhere in her voluminous robe and consulted it while Eight-One tried an orange cube. It was a little sweet, a little savory, a little crunchy. Definite win. “Tonight after the meal we will need to visit the quartermaster to collect your clothes and the things that were not adequately stocked in your rooms.” Eight-One ate a green semicircle—very tasty— and a bite of the purple sokh (interesting texture, softer than expected).
“Tomorrow,” Madame Nu continued, “I have arranged for the battlemaster to assess your combat training, so that we can create an accurate plan to continue honing your skills.” Eight-One wasn’t sure what to think of that. On the journey to Coruscant, Madame Nu had briefly outlined what their duties might entail, and had mentioned that although the Temple was obviously not a combat posting equal to the front lines, it was not unreasonable to expect to see combat regardless. He had gotten the impression there was a lot she wasn’t telling them about that subject; whether she had something specific in mind and was holding it back, or whether she didn’t know about the likelihood of the fighting reaching the Core, he wasn’t sure. Coruscant was in the heart of the Republic; the thought of the war penetrating this far was just depressing.
To distract himself, he cut a bite of the nerf steak and popped it in his mouth.
…Prime's bones, nerf steak was the best thing he had tasted in his life.
*****
After they finished in the refectory, Madame Nu took them to the quartermaster. Instead of the endless rows of armor and gear the quartermasters of Kamino presided over, they were led to a small but comfortable anteroom where a droid assistant took full body scans of each of them. That seemed somewhat redundant; they were clones, after all.
Madame Nu introduced them to the quartermaster, a Gand with purple-brown skin and an intricately embossed breathing mask, who blinked his huge silvery eyes several times before quickly herding them through a different door and into the most bewildering storeroom of Eight-One’s short life. He couldn’t name more than a quarter of the things on the neatly ordered shelves, nor could he parse their function.
The quartermaster consulted a datapad, paying no attention to their astonishment, and scuttled briskly to a section of shelves that held folded piles of fabric. He tapped the control pad and the shelves rotated smoothly down, bringing the items near the ceiling into easy reach. “These should be in your sizes, goodsirs. Please choose enough items to fill out a standard kit. If you require more, add it to the inventory request.”
Eight-One glanced at his squadmates. They didn’t have any idea what a standard kit was either.
Madame Nu stepped smoothly forward and produced a list on a datapad. The standard kit was apparently clothes for ten days, plus accessories, sleepwear, and formal robes. “I think we’ll skip the formal robes for now,” Madame Nu said, a touch dryly. “But everything else would be useful.”
A porter droid trundled over carrying a stack of empty crates. His squadmates each took a crate; the droid beeped politely for each crate removed, but didn’t move away, though Eight-One doubted they would need more than one crate apiece.
He had to revise that thought as he looked through the shelves to fill his crate. There were so many pieces of clothing, in a wide array of colors and textures and fabrics. It was like the clothing version of the food in the refectory, except he couldn’t decide on his selections based on how appetizing they smelled. Pity, that; it would have been easier than trying to choose ten shirts he liked from the bewildering multitude on offer.
“If you don’t like something you choose now, you can exchange it at a later date,” Madame Nu remarked as she watched the slow way he and his brothers were poking at the shelves. That...helped, somewhat, Eight-One supposed.
“Indeed,” the quartermaster hummed. “Anything you find that is not to your liking, send it back via the laundry droid with a note on what you would prefer as a replacement.” He reached out and tapped a stack of pants. “These may be more to your liking. That style is much better suited for beings who have no thigh muscles to speak of,” he told Eight-Five, who was frowning at a pile of leggings.
“Um, what is this?” Three-Five asked uncertainly, holding up a tiny scrap of fabric.
Madame Nu looked over at him and visibly suppressed a smile. “Underwear,” she said gravely, the humor hovering around her eyes nowhere in her voice.
Three-Five gave the supposed underwear a dubious look. “How is this underwear? It wouldn’t cover anything.”
“Some people prefer that style,” Madame Nu responded.
“Why?” Three-Five blurted, aghast, and her eyes crinkled like she was trying hard not to laugh.
“Maybe you should try some and see,” Oh-Nine suggested innocently.
“How about no,” Three-Five retorted, pointedly putting the underwear back on the shelf.
Eight-One snickered and turned back to the shirts. He slowly sifted through them, marveling at how different the fabrics all felt in his hands, wondering what they were made of. To his mild bemusement he found himself gravitating towards shades of blue as he chose his new clothing. The rest of his squad picked out a wider range of colors than his predominantly blue selections. Three-Five had a veritable rainbow.
Eventually they were all loaded down with three crates each, full of more kinds of clothes than he had ever seen before. Sleeping clothes, jackets, a sash, an abundance of socks—Madame had added an armful more than what the standard kit called for to everyone’s crates, because apparently socks slowly disappeared no matter how closely you kept track of them and even the Jedi had no solution to the problem. Once everyone had filled their crates and the quartermaster keyed in the codes that would assign the contents of the crates to each person in the inventory system, he brought a hoverpad over and began loading the crates onto it.
“Your uniforms will be delivered in a few days, when they are done being fabricated,” the quartermaster said offhand as he worked, as if it was of no consequence. Uniforms. Eight-One was so off-kilter from the utter newness of everything around him that he didn’t even know how to feel about the prospect of having a uniform again. On the one hand, he was used to wearing a uniform, had been doing it every day of his life that he could remember. On the other hand, he was quickly coming around to the idea of his clothes expressing his individuality, now that the ordeal of choosing the clothes was over.
He wondered what the uniform would be like. A version of Jedi robes, maybe, since the squad was going to be working in the Temple? But the Jedi didn’t really have a uniform look, not from what he had seen so far. There was sort of the same general idea of robes, but even within that idea there was a great deal of customization, and the variations didn’t even seem to run along species lines.
The Jedi were nothing like the rumors had led him to expect.
The quartermaster finished loading all the crates on a hoverpad, then led the way out of the storeroom. There was another hoverpad with several more crates waiting in the room, and Madame Nu took both tethers. She bowed to the quartermaster. “Thank you, Master Diion. Your expertise is, as always, invaluable.”
The quartermaster buzzed a laugh. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Madame. I know you’re trying to soften me up for pazaak night, and it won’t work.”
Madame Nu flashed a grin at him, wide and brimming with mischief. It was startling, how much younger she suddenly looked. Eight-One was not good at judging ages of anyone older than him, but he thought Madame Nu was probably at least middle aged for a human, though he wouldn’t dare to guess an actual year. But with that smile—she looked like she could be of an age with him and his vode.
“Hope springs eternal,” she said, and the quartermaster laughed again.
“Out out out,” he said playfully, flicking his clawed hands at them.
The group wound their way back through confusing halls to their berthing (map , Eight-One yearned despairingly), and Eight-One wasn't the only one trying not to droop. It had been a long day, and immensely full of change. He felt like he'd stopped processing anything about three hallways ago.
Madame Nu brought them to their door and helped them guide the hoverpads inside. They unloaded the crates quickly, then sent the hoverpads back out the door.
Madame Nu paused on the threshold as she was leaving. "I will come get you tomorrow morning before firstmeal, and we will discuss the day's schedule at that time," she said, surveying everyone. Her bearing softened, gentled, and the smile she graced them with was small but warm. "Get some rest, gentlemen. I know that today was difficult, but you have all handled it admirably. I am proud of you."
Then she was gone, leaving startled glances and rising warmth in her wake.
In silence, they unpacked the crates. It was one more strangeness to add to the day’s count that they each had several crates full of their own clothing, things they had chosen, things that weren’t uniforms. The crates full of things that were not clothes were left by the door by unspoken agreement. No one had the wherewithal to deal with them tonight.
Eight-One took his crate back to his bedroom. It was beyond weird to think that he had an entire room to himself, weird and a little unsettling. The silence pressed all around him—even the noises the rest of the squad made were muffled by carpets and curtains and blankets, utterly unlike the acoustics of Tipoca City. He changed into his sleeping clothes quickly and went back out to the living area.
He was the first to sit on the couch, but his brothers quickly gathered and chose seats on the furniture. “Report?” Three-Five suggested, a bit muffled by the colorful blanket he had swathed himself in. He looked like a rainbow-colored ration bar.
“Didn’t get much of a feel for any rules or regs,” Eight-Five said thoughtfully after a long moment. “At least, nothing solid that I could use to say ‘do this’ or ‘don’t do that.’”
Eight-One grimaced. That was true enough. Really, the only rule they had been told was ‘don’t eat the non-human food’.
“Maybe we could ask Madame Nu?” Three-Five suggested. He tugged a fold of his blanket away from his mouth. “She's been good about answering questions so far.” He sounded cautiously hopeful.
He was right, too. Madame Nu had spent the entire six day flight from Kamino either piloting, sleeping, or answering their questions. None of them had asked many the first day, still shellshocked by the day's events, but as the trip progressed they had all become a little bolder. Not once had Madame Nu acted like she found a question anything but welcome.
She hadn’t seemed to be a very expressive person; her somewhat stern, upright bearing hadn’t changed much during the trip. Not that she was unkind—she never seemed angry or annoyed or unhappy with him or his brothers, no matter what they had asked, or how confused they were when she was explaining what they might expect from their future duties in the Archives. She wasn’t at all like any of the trainers he knew on Kamino. She had just been...reserved, he thought, especially compared to how she had acted with the quartermaster.
It slowly dawned on him that she might have been feeling as out of her depth as they were about the whole situation, and now that she was back on familiar ground, back in her home, she was relaxing.
But even when she had been anxious or uncomfortable, she had been kind to them. Not overly solicitous, but...patient, informative, and welcoming of any interaction with them. Not autocratic, not arrogant, not tyrannical.
Just...kind.
“I think that’s a good idea,” Eight-One said quietly, and the rest of them nodded. He looked at his squadmates, and saw in their faces the same thing he felt: battered, exhausted, fragile hope.
*****
Seven-Oh sighed miserably. He was exhausted, weary down to his bones, but he couldn't sleep, even though he was trying so hard to follow Madame Nu's order, even though this bed was the softest thing he had ever laid on.
But he was trying to sleep alone for only the second time in his life, alone in a room without his brothers, and he couldn't do it. Not when the memory of the first night—the night all his squadmates had been sent away, and he had curled in his bunk, miserable and alone, knowing with certainty that he was going to die in the morning—threatened to strangle him every time he closed his eyes. He hadn't died. He was here, alive , far from the decommissioning labs of Kamino. But it was hard to remember that in the dark and the silence. The fear still clutched him, made the past day seem like a bewildering dream and his nightmares seem like reality.
Seven-Oh didn't want to go back to Kamino. He never wanted to go back to Kamino, never wanted to go anywhere near Kamino ever again. Six days removed from it and he still felt the choking panic of waiting in that room to be decommissioned whenever he thought about Kamino. The Jedi Temple was arguably a thousand times better, the way they were fed and housed and clothed was the height of luxury, no one had sent him off to be killed or yelled at him or even looked at him unkindly, and yet—
At least he had known what to expect on Kamino. Here, there was only overwhelming uncertainty. He couldn't predict anything, not the rules, not what was expected of him, not how anyone would react. He couldn't even identify his food, no matter how good it tasted. He didn't even have the words to ask about what he didn't know! All the unspoken rules and communication and culture he used to rely on to navigate his life had been erased and replaced with an entirely different code that he didn't have the key to decrypt, and he had no idea where or when or even if he would ever understand enough to try, much less succeed.
And his squadmates— Seven-Oh flinched. His new squadmates. Still strangers, for all they shared the same face. They were just as lost as he was. None of them knew anything about this new life they had been dumped into. There were no other vode to ask, nobody who knew answers that they could pass along on the sly. Just the five of them, dropped into a completely foreign culture with nothing but each other.
He couldn't do this. He had to move, had to remind himself of what was real.
Seven-Oh crept out of bed, still half certain that doing so was forbidden, that he would be caught and punished, but he had to move. He carefully slipped out of the door, intending to go to the fresher—because at least it was a valid excuse for being out of bed—when he saw light pooling on the floor of the living room. He peered around the corner of the hall.
A brother was sitting on the couch, head in his hands, misery in every line of his body. Seven-Oh's chest clenched. He wished he was less familiar with that pose, but he knew it intimately. He crept over to the couch and settled next to the brother, close enough to feel his warmth but not quite touching.
“Hey.” Seven-Oh didn’t ask if he was ok. That was karking obvious. He just tried to let the brother—he couldn’t tell who it was in the dim light—know he was there. That he wasn’t alone.
“Couldn’t sleep?” the vod said hoarsely. Oh-Nine, Seven-Oh thought, hearing his voice.
“Too quiet,” Seven-Oh said, pulled a knee up to his chest and curled around it.
“Yeah,” Oh-Nine breathed, rough. There was a world of pain in that simple word.
Seven-Oh considered the pain, the fear that ran underneath it, and gambled. “Who’d you lose?”
Oh-Nine huffed a laugh devoid of humor. “I don’t know.” His hands curved around the back of his neck, laced together, and he curled into himself further. “I don’t know. It wasn’t—I never expected that I would be the one sent away.”
Seven-Oh didn’t say anything. Just shifted a little sideways, leaned a little closer, so their sides touched, their knees knocked. So he was there, and present, and hopefully more immediate than the grief Oh-Nine was drowning in.
A shudder ran through Oh-Nine; something in him seemed to break. The night air was sharp and jagged in Seven-Oh’s lungs. Oh-Nine had been the steadiest of them today, firm and watchful, taking everything in stride in a way that seemed effortless. It ached to see him curled around a bleeding wound that no bacta could touch.
“My squad—” Oh-Nine’s voice cracked. “They have blue eyes. All three of them.”
Three, Seven-Oh thought with creeping horror. Three, where there should have been four.
Three visibly different clones, already down a squad member, and with the only brown-eyed one of the bunch sent away. Sent away, Seven-Oh remembered, because Oh-Nine put himself between bullies and those blue-eyed squadmates. Which meant that their protector was gone.
Seven-Oh’s squad had been broken up, but for everyone except him it was for specialist training. That was no guarantee they would survive the war, but at least they were more likely to make it to the war, instead of dying on Kamino because they had a cosmetic mutation.
No wonder Oh-Nine was so afraid.
There was nothing Seven-Oh could do to help Oh-Nine’s squadmates; he wasn’t on Kamino. Not that Seven-Oh had been able to do much to help anyone on Kamino regardless. But somehow the vast gulf of space between the heart of the Republic and the Outer Rim made his helplessness feel even more heavy.
He couldn’t help Oh-Nine’s squad. All he could do was try to help Oh-Nine.
“Wanna bunk in my room? It’s not much, but you won’t be alone,” Seven-Oh offered quietly.
Oh-Nine shrugged. Not in negation, Seven-Oh thought, but despair. Seven-Oh placed a careful hand on Oh-Nine’s shoulder and squeezed. “C’mon. Let’s go lay down.”
“Can I come too?” Seven-Oh looked up to see Eight-Five standing in the doorway, looking as exhausted and awful as Seven-Oh felt.
Seven-Oh looked at Oh-Nine, but didn’t get any response, so he nodded. “Sure.”
“Thanks,” Eight-Five breathed out, rubbing his face.
“Should we get the others?” Seven-Oh said, half joking, but Eight-Five nodded.
“Good idea. I’ll go check if they’re awake.” He slipped next door to the other set of rooms.
They were going to need more room if it was all five of them. “We should get some more blankets if everyone’s bunking together,” Seven-Oh said.
Oh-Nine slowly uncurled. He still looked like death, but he wasn’t hunched over himself anymore, so Seven-Oh was going to count that as a win. He drew Oh-Nine up and gently herded him into a bedroom. Seven-Oh grabbed a blanket, then paused and said, “You know, we might as well just grab the mattresses too.”
Oh-Nine shook himself like he was surfacing from deep water and nodded. By the time Eight-Five arrived with the other two, everyone loaded down with pillows and blankets, Oh-Nine and Seven-Oh had pushed all three mattresses together on the floor of the biggest bedroom, nearly filling the space. With five pairs of hands they quickly had a nest set up.
Oh-Nine made a move like he was going to lay down closest to the door, but Seven-Oh was having none of that. The last thing Oh-Nine needed was to spend all night on guard. Seven-Oh snagged the back of Oh-Nine’s sleep shirt and pulled him back towards the middle of the nest. When Oh-Nine resisted, Seven-Oh clasped his forearm and tugged him into Keldabe.
“We’re in the Jedi Temple,” Seven-Oh said quietly. “Right now, we are the safest vode in the galaxy. Let someone else guard for once.”
Oh-Nine wavered, exhausted habit warring with sense, then ducked his head in acquiescence and threw himself down in the middle of the mattresses. The rest arranged themselves around Oh-Nine, with Eight-Five taking the edge by the door. Seven-Oh curled up next to Oh-Nine, hand still curled around Oh-Nine’s forearm. Just before Seven-Oh dropped off to sleep, finally soothed by the sound and feeling of brothers around him, he felt Oh-Nine squeeze his hand, and he smiled.