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The flat is bigger than he expected, nearly half the size of their barracks aboard the Peace of Chandrilla, bigger than he felt they needed, even. There were only three of them now, after all. Five rooms—three individual bedrooms, a bathroom, and a common room with attached kitchen—and it was too much, too big, too-the hand on his shoulder, knowing and trembling, grounds Art in the now and not the “what if” that should have been. Menace Squad shuffles awkwardly into the common room, each set of eyes wide in the same expression of wonder and fear; the three soldiers lost in each other’s thoughts barely even registering the already furnished place, just how they always dreamed it.
“Just like he said…” Hak, bag still slung over his shoulder, whispers in a voice that says he almost expects someone to pop up from behind the loveseat, or from the ‘fresher newly clean… “…Yeah…” Burn’s higher-pitched voice squeaks, raw with the emotion they can barely keep in, and it hurts in their chests equally at hearing that, at the absence. Art doesn’t say anything, his every ounce of considerable attention drawn to one of the walls leading to the bedrooms. It’s a mural, the mural, every brush stroke and dot forever sketched in undying ink inside Art’s head—he’d made them all, after all. The beautiful, looping lines paint the four of them—Him, Hak, Burn and Andi—in a perfect snapshot of soldiering domesticity, cuddled up around the Republic flag planted in dirt before a broken open Separatist vault, arms lovingly draped across the others and-and-
“Stars, it’s yours, it’s-“ Burn’s hand clenches, almost painfully, on Art’s forearm as the tears evacuate from their ducts. All any of them can do is stare in wonder, bewilderment, awe—this shouldn’t be here, it was gone along with the Peace, along with their whole lives… But it was here, with them, for them.
“Ni su’cuyi, gar kyr’adyc, ni parayii, gar darasuum Andi…”
Three voices, three hearts, three minds missing their whole, their remembrance whispered in reverence as the three remaining members of Menace Squad cuddle close, grip tight in the hopes that it will make up the difference, trick them into thinking he’s still there, still holding them all together. Andi’s ear-splitting grin flashes out at them from the transposed mural, done by hand and from memory in secret in the hopes for a better future that never came. Art’s the first one to slump, knees weak, to the floor but isn’t the last.
Three clones, having finally liberated themselves from their bondage like Andi always pushed them to, huddle broken and mending on the carpeted floor of their secret apartment in Coronet City. The New Order may think them dead, but they would live on, for themselves, for Andi. They had to.