Chapter Text
CORUSCANT
The Coruscant Guard barracks were not originally barracks, but a set of corporate offices for Coruscanti billionaires to pack-in and surveil their thousands upon thousands of underpaid cubicle-fillers. When the war broke out, many of those companies got buy-outs from the senate to pack up their call centers and move their workers into newer, shinier corporate prisons. The Guard was moved into the resulting space; it came complete with harsh overhead lights that wash the color and soul out of everything and anything, windowless rooms, rows upon rows of bunks where cubicles clearly used to sit, and bathrooms that offer not a shred of privacy (nor hot water).
As a Commander, Fox has been treated to a rare single—one of the old executive offices. It boasts a single sliver of a window no more than five inches wide with the stunningly unremarkable view that is the smoggy, stinking depths of a plunging Coruscant alleyway.
Back on Kamino, they had all fantasized about what privacy might look like. A room of one’s own was unthinkable but also coveted. Fox’s double wide bunk is not even deserving of the name of “bed”, as stiff and unyielding as it is. Now that Fox has spent a night in Kenobi and Maul’s bed, he knows better.
Knowing the sheer gulf of distance between what is Fox’s and what is actually comfortable makes the trudging walk back to his solitary bunk even more depressing than usual. They’d all dreamed of rooms of their own; Fox has yet to meet a single vod that actually likes sleeping alone.
“Surprise,” an achingly familiar voice drawls the moment Fox’s door slides open. He nearly drops his bucket on his own damn feet.
“You bitch,” Fox hisses without any heat at all, nothing but genuine relief flooding his tone.
Cody grins up at him lazily from Fox’s own damn bed, pleased as a tooka with a fresh kill between its claws.
Fox asks, “Who let you in here?” He’s already palmed the door shut and locked it behind him and now scrambles clumsily to pull his armor off at record speeds.
Cody scoffs, putting on a mask of affrontedness for all that his body screams nothing but leisure and greed twisted up in Fox’s sheets as he is.
“You think so little of me, vod? I let myself in.”
Let himself in and made himself comfortable, too. Cody’s armor is neatly racked, leaving Fox to pile his own kit up on the floor. If Fox weren’t stupidly, ridiculously, overwhelmingly relieved to see him, he might bitch about that. As it stands he is all of those sappy things, so when Cody opens his arms and waves him forward Fox goes willingly.
He tucks his face into the curve of Cody’s neck and worms a leg between Cody’s own, pressing them chest-to-chest, heartbeat to heartbeat. The smell of him is the same—GAR standard soap, GAR standard deodorant, and all Kote underneath it . Fox takes a deep breath with his nose mashed uncomfortably tight to the space behind Cody’s ear like he’s taking a hit off of the deathsticks he pretends he is not addicted to.
“Su cuy'gar, vod’uur,” Cody gifts him. The rhythm of his Mando’a is as familiar as the beat of his heart. Fox missed him like a limb.
“Cyar'ika,” Fox returns without lifting his head. Cody always squirms when he says it and does not disappoint him now.
“Haryc?” Cody asks, nails scratching just this side of too-rough at Fox’s scalp—just the way he likes. He could melt into a puddle right here and become one with the Force.
It’s a stupid question with an obvious answer, so Fox just grunts. Of course he’s tired. He’s always tired—he’s halfway asleep already. He had one foot in REM-sleep the second he took his first deep breath of Cody.
(Maul had warned him that he’d still likely be fatigued, coming out of whatever fuckery the Sith had done in his mind. Maul had said… a lot. Fox is trying very hard not to think about any of it.)
“Too tired to hear about my date with Obi-Wan?” Cody teases.
Fox sits up so fast he makes himself dizzy. “You son of a whore,” he says, slapping a hand over Cody’s smug fucking smile. Cody licks his palm. If he really wanted Fox to let go, he’d bite. Fox keeps his hand right where it is and says, “I can’t believe you. He’s married.”
(And that’s not stopping you, is it? Some much-loathed inner voice of Fox’s whispers.)
“Don’t talk about our incubator like that,” Cody retorts. “Obi-Wan and I had a lovely time.” A bare hand creeps its way under the hidden seam separating Fox’s upper bodysuit from the lower—his touch is warm and familiar and Fox aches down to his bones with it . “Would have been better with you there.”
He snatches Cody’s hand away by the wrist and holds him there in the air, hand flexing weakly in Fox’s haphazard grip. “Well, while you were flirting with the only person committed to helping our collective sorry shebs, I was getting a crash course on Sith mind-rape. I’ll be sure to not double-book next time,” he snaps uncharitably.
“What,” Cody asks without asking.
His expression folds into something severe—more severe than usual, at least—and deathly serious in a moment’s notice. He’s sitting up, which means Fox is getting dragged along for the ride, slumped as he is practically in Cody’s lap.
“Din'kartay,” he demands, Marshal Commander hat firmly (figuratively) on his perfectly-regulation-cut hair.
Fox knows the encryptions in his room—in this building—like the back of his hand; he practically wrote the GAR barracks’ security codes himself. There are so few spaces of true refuge on Triple-Zero. Fox never spared any effort or resources into making their barracks as much of one as it could be.
Cracked open and soft on the inside from the past forty-eight hours (or lifetime, depending on when Fox wants to start tallying the banthashit up), he can’t ignore the raw concern that Cody expresses like he expresses all his emotions: a scowl. His telltale possessive grip on Fox’s skin, betrays him, his grip fierce as if Cody could press answers out of him with his fingertips alone. Those brown eyes of theirs seem to probe physically at Fox’s hesitations.
So Fox just opens his mouth and tells him, like any ol’ miserable sitrep.
“There’s a Sith on Triple-Zero and they’ve been in my head. Kenobi’s ex-Sith sniffed it out. Someone’s been taking memories from me, making me do shit I can’t remember. I don’t even fucking know, Codes,” he confesses, each word feeling like scratching at a scab just to watch it bleed again.
“I assume we don’t have an ID on the Sith?” Cody asks. His nails are starting to sting. Fox leans into it, grounding himself with the sting.
“Negative. But, we do know it’s the same Sith that trained Kenobi’s husband. Maul said it felt the same—that he had no doubt it was the same individual.”
"Species? Age? Gender?"
"No," Fox sighs. "It's… snippets, like from a nightmare you've already forgotten most of before you even woke up. They're… cold. I remember being cold and being terrified and how much it kriffin’ hurt—"
"Fox—"
"But nothing actually useful. And now I'm compromised—Cody, I'm so compromised I don't even know how badly I'm compromised—"
"Stop talking," Cody says and crams two of his fingers into Fox's open mouth. "If you were compromised, you wouldn't have come here. You must be reasonably certain that you’re safe to be around your men. What did Obi-Wan and Maul say?"
Fox bites him yet Cody remains unphased. He only slips his fingers out from between Fox's teeth only when he's decided he's done. Fox is content to wait. It lets him gather the words he wants (and set aside those he doesn’t). There are some things Cody doesn’t need to know.
"They helped me build shields and Maul is on the hunt for the Sith," he says when released, which is true, but not complete. And then Maul volunteered to camp out in my psychic-backseat for extra protection.
"And the shields will stop that from happening again?"
And Cody, I said yes; I invited him into my head. “If they’re good shields.”
Cody raises a brow. “Are they good?”
Fox sits back on Cody’s lap and arches his back, grinding a slow circle against Cody’s not-entirely-soft dick. He fixes his expression into a decent scowl and aims it down at Cody’s stupid face. Another wordless grind and Fox dips in close, face-to-face.
“They’re great; I’m a prodigy,” he tells him.
With a hum, Cody tilts his face up and their lips brush—a deliberate tease as Cody’s hands splay out on either side of Fox’s spine, encouraging his bent back into an even more dramatically bowed shape.
“Who told you that?” Cody muses. He sucks Fox’s bottom lip hard between his own, killing any reply on formation. Fox’s eyes screw up—the rhythm he had going with his hips falters.
“Maul,” Fox blurts unthinkingly when Cody releases him.
(And he had, just hours prior, his too-warm hand cradling the side of Fox’s face, fingerprint to temple, both their eyes closed as Maul coaxed him through building strong psychic defenses in the Force. The way that Maul had felt then—the way that Fox had felt him— was like being back in Tipoca City with a bunkmate snuck into your pod at night for the first time. Together, they’d not just made Fox’s shields, they’d made a path between their minds: a door in Fox’s head behind which lies that feeling— Maul’s burning-hot attention, fingerprints to temple, pressed tight together in a space that’s only theirs , unbearably intimate.)
Cody’s hands have slipped down the length of his spine, finding bruise-tight purchase at the top of Fox’s ass, fingers digging into flesh and muscle. They’re both fully hard now, doing the bare minimum between them to facilitate a slow, dirty grind through their undersuits. The neoprene fabric is growing damp as they build and build the tension between them, sweat and friction and precum accumulating on the thin fabric.
“Yeah?” Cody says on a heavy breath, a slow smile creeping across his face that screams trouble. “Did he call you a good boy, Fox’ika?”
It rolls through him like an electric shock and Fox squirms, trapped in place, thighs spread wide around Cody’s waist, gasping senseless up at the ceiling because fuck. He loves to press buttons and unfortunately (fortunately) for Fox, Cody has had their whole lives to memorize Fox’s.
(“Consider Force-bonds to be a psychic neighborhood, of sorts. You establish a path to your neighbor’s home—you become familiar with their front door. The more you visit, the stronger your bond becomes. You don’t hear from your neighbors unless they’re being very loud or trying to get your attention. Polite neighbors knock or ring the bell. Some barge right in. Passing by, you might catch a thing or two through the door,” Maul had explained. “The connection can be as open or as closed as you make it.”)
“Oh, you liked that,” Cody purrs. He releases Fox’s ass in favor of winding one hand through his hair, gathering the not-insignificant length in the back into a fist and pulling back, hard.
“Kriff, Cody,” he whines. The pull lights up his brain with sensation.
Fox can’t afford to be thinking about Maul right now. He can’t afford to pay any attention to that door in his head, lest anything leak through. He doesn’t want to be overheard.
“Getting real long, Fox,” Cody pulls on his hair for emphasis, tipping his head this way and that. “Looks real pretty, vod.”
Another pathetic, whimpering noise he can’t strangle scrapes out from between his tightly clenched teeth. Cody rewards him with a hand on his cock—sliding now-wet fabric up over his head, twisting with a burning friction that has his legs kicking uselessly with pleasure.
“Oh,” his worst (favorite) vod coos. “Pretty and good? Maybe Maul shoulda’ called you his good girl, Fox’ika.”
For a heartstopping moment that feels far, far too real for comfort, Fox thinks he sees movement in his periphery—black, red.
“Fu-uck,” he hiccups, clenching his eyes shut and steering his brain forcefully away from Maul. “Touch me, mir'sheb!”
“You love my smart ass,” Cody says as he rolls them, Fox’s back connecting solidly with his cinderblock of a mattress. The hot, unmistakable weight of Cody on top of him makes it worth it. Fox would fuck him on a bed of nails and still see stars. Together, they peel off their bodysuits, shucking them without a care to the floor. “So damn skinny, vod,” Cody grumbles, digging thumbs into the lean (maybe too lean) muscle around Fox’s ribs.
He snorts and replies, “With tits these giant, I see how you could get confused.” Fox squeezes a generous pec harshly to punctuate, watching Cody’s nipples harden visibly with the attention.
“Ride you?” Cody offers, tugging just enough on the heavy drag of Fox’s balls. He just came this morning— in Maul and Kenobi’s shower— but it doesn’t matter.
“Yeah, wanna’ watch your tits bounce,” Fox tells him.
Smiling with all his teeth, Cody grabs for another handful of hair and presses tight and hot against the exposed flesh of Fox’s neck, lips wet and hot, “Gonna’ be my good girl, Fox?”
And oh, this is a power Fox should never have given Cody. It shivers through him, lighting up nerve endings he did not know he had. He’s desperate and aching and all for what? Some words?
(Cody’s always been able to pull him apart like this, take nothing but his words and unspool every bit of Fox until there’s nothing left, like it's his mission to dry-clean the interior of Fox’s skull and wax the floors on his way out.)
Cody must have prepped himself beforehand—little fucker—because Fox gets no warning before Cody lines up and slides down, down, down—
When he bottoms out, sat flush and heavy on Fox’s hips, Fox shouts.
“Missed you,” Cody breathes in an awed tone as he rocks back and forth ever so slightly. “Favorite seat in the Republic,” he sighs, squirming wet and tight and so fucking hot and Fox is going to kill him.
“Stop moving,” he bites out, hands scrabbling for leverage Cody isn’t going to give him, grabbing handfuls of impossibly thick thighs.
Cody does not stop moving. He lifts up half an inch before sinking back down, a delicious, short slide that keeps Fox mostly pressed deep while still providing the friction his body is screaming for. Blissfully, Cody sighs, “Who do you think tops?”
“What,” Fox pants. On Cody’s next rock down, Fox snaps his hips up to meet him, earning a delicious punched-out ungh of yes, more.
“Obi-Wan or Maul, who tops?” Cody asks, clenching vice-tight around him.
(Fingertips on Fox’s temple, his eyes are closed but Fox’s aren’t, and Fox is asking, “what’s your bond with Kenobi like?” and Maul is replying, mouth folded into a quiet little smile, “everything.”)
“I’m not entertaining that,” Fox forces out. He’s not going to think about Maul or Kenobi while balls-deep in Cody. Absolutely not.
The hand in his hair grips tight again, pulling a moan from deep in Fox’s chest as Cody bends down to bestow biting, bruising kisses up and down his throat. The arch of his neck over the edge of the bunk brings Fox’s little office chair into view upside down—
It has a perfect view of the bunk and their bodies, that chair. It would be so easy, so natural to picture an audience in that chair.
“Did you sleep in their bed, Fox?” Cody whispers into his ear, voice dripping with temptation.
“Maybe,” he bites out—doesn’t want Cody to think he’s getting to him. The chair is not full. No one is here. It’s just him and Cody, just him and Cody—
And Maul, maybe, for a fraction of a fraction of a second, leaned forward, elbows on his knees, watching and saying—
“Go on,” in that kriffin’ voice but Fox—
Clenches his eyes shut, buries his face in Cody’s neck, and confesses, “Jerked off in their shower.”
And Cody, hot and tight and perfect , says, “Oh? What’d you think about?”
And Fox tells him, “both of them fucking me.”
“And are you good for them?” Cody says, bouncing with every word, the sound of their sweat-slick bodies colliding as brutal punctuation.
“Yeah,” Fox cries, pleasure spiraling higher and higher, digging his fingers in, breathing in deep and tasting Cody on his tongue. Tears are pricking at his eyes with the force of the pleasure building inside him. “I’m gonna—” he tries to warn, but Cody is yanking him out of his hiding spot by the hair, bringing them eye-to-eye.
“Not until I’m done,” he demands with patented Marshal Commander authority—the only vod on Kamino Fox would ever get on his knees for. It makes Fox go cross-eyed and stupid, that voice. “You’ll be good for me and come inside when I say, yeah? Fill me up when I’m nice and ready for it?”
“Yeah,” he whines, and holds on with everything he’s got while Cody bounces away to an efficient orgasm, shooting rope after rope of white cum across Fox’s abs and chest with big gasping sighs. It’s breathtaking—it always is. Cody looks drunk on Fox’s cock and Fox wants nothing more desperately in this moment than to see his own spend running down the insides of those thighs— “Cody,” he begs, because he’s only human.
“Olaror,” Cody commands, and the fucked-out purr of his Mando’a hooks deep into Fox’s gut and doesn’t let go. “Good girl, Fox,” he soothes as Fox works his hips fervently with every aftershock, mouth open and dripping pitchy little moans.
After a moment, Cody pulls off Fox's gradually softening cock with a hum, and drops a kiss to his lips before heading for the fresher in search of a cloth to wipe down with. Fox throws an arm over his eyes and hides there, unwilling to look at the chair he knows will be empty. Tentatively, he prowls around the “door” in his mind—the place where he and Maul are bonded, where Fox can call for help under any circumstance, where Maul can keep him safe from being puppeted by a Sith. It’s closed and quiet. Inactive.
Fox yelps when a lukewarm washcloth hits his chest with a loud, wet smack. He forgives Cody for the rude surprise only because Cody uses it to clean Fox off. Depositing the rag back in the fresher, Cody crawls back into the bunk and atop Fox’s body like a living blanket until they’re pressed chest to chest and sharing a damn pillow, noses only a hair’s breadth apart.
“Sleep, cyar'ika,” Cody coaxes, his hand once again finding its way to Fox’s curls, scratching at his scalp.
“I’m on duty in three hours,” Fox protests, though he was meaning to take a nap even before he knew Cody had arrived dirtside.
“So sleep now and I’ll wake you up in time for a sonic before you have to go.”
“Blow me.”
“In the sonic? Sure, but sleep first.”
And that’s not what Fox meant but he’ll take it. He’s no fool. For now, he buries his face in his vod’s armpit, puts all thoughts of Maul and Kenobi firmly out of his mind, and sleeps.
Public reception to the motion ranges, as Obi-Wan had anticipated. Truthfully, selfishly, Obi-Wan is glad for his earlier meeting with Commander Cody, as the good company provided an emotional buffer for the banthashit-storm on the near horizon. The Republic populace seems split along lines of anti-war sentiment more broadly with those in favor of the conflict largely in favor of some form of compensation and equal treatment for the clones as sentients.
Though it is certainly not as black-and-white as that; some in favor of the conflict still find the suit frivolous and a distraction from the larger war effort. Obi-Wan scoffs aloud when he reads an op-ed calling the lawsuit “a political stunt” and laughs outright at the theory that he himself is a Separatist agent working to sow discord among Republic leadership.
Many of those harboring strong anti-war sentiment have used the allegations of misconduct and abuse in the motion to critique the war as a whole. Some prominent anti-war voices have already published essays comparing clone troopers to historically over militarized Republic police forces, arguing that providing “the full political benefits of citizenship” to “the ruling class’ tools of state violence” sanctions said violence.
What is notably absent from the news coverage, writing, and public discourse is any real reconciling with the abuses outlined in the motion. But still, Obi-Wan waits for the right moment.
He waits for the initial judgment to come down.
341 F. Supp. 201 (22BBY)
Clone Troopers of the Grand Army of the Republic , Plaintiffs,
v.
Ledo Arar, as Secretary of Defense, his successors and assigns, et al., Defendants.
Civ. A. No. 3232-N.
Galactic Republic District Court, M. D. Coruscant, N. D.
22 BBY
Esq. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Melidaan, for plaintiffs.
Tycho Marchon, Atty. for the M. D., Coruscant, G.R. and Asst. Deonor Cthedsard, Jaa Horne Jr., and Dredarr Brandolph, and L. Lin Corren Asst. Atty. Gen., Civ. Div., Dept. of Justice, Coruscant, G. R., and Civ. Div. Attys., Rena Grandolph and Myn Cyone, for defendants.
Before RIVES, Circuit Judge, and TILLES and KORRAY, District Judges.
An Act of Republic Congress carries with it a strong presumption of constitutionality and places the burden upon the challenging party to prove the unconstitutionality of the statute at issue. The Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, on which this challenge is based, bars federal legislation embodying a baseless classification. Indeed, it seems sound to say that if a statute comports with notions of equal protection it also satisfies the requisites of substantive due process. And in at least two cases the Republic Supreme Court has tested federal statutes in terms of the standards made applicable to state acts through the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus, in determining the constitutionality of the statutory scheme which plaintiffs attack, this Court must ask whether the classification established in the legislation (natural-born versus synthetic, cloned organisms acting as servicemen in the Grand Army of the Republic) is reasonable and not arbitrary and whether there is a rational connection between the classification and a legitimate governmental end. In making that judgment, the statute must be upheld "if any state of facts rationally justifying it is demonstrated to or perceived by the courts."
In the area of economics and social welfare, a statute does not violate the Equal Protection Clause merely because the classifications made by its laws are imperfect. If the classification has some "reasonable basis," it does not offend the Constitution simply because the classification is not made with mathematical nicety or because in practice it results in some inequality. The problems of the government are practical ones and may justify, if they do not require, rough accommodations illogical, it may be, and unscientific. A statutory discrimination will not be set aside if any state of facts reasonably may be conceived to justify it.
In summary, the law is well-settled that a statutory classification, challenged as an unlawful discrimination, should be upheld if it has a rational basis.
The defendants contend that the statutory provisions here at issue do no more than establish a conclusive presumption that any natural born member of the Grand Army uniformed services has an established Constitutional right to due compensation and benefits of such service to which a synthetic, cloned organism does not. This distinction does no more than take account of facts which the courts and statistical studies evidence in no way discriminates [sic] against synthetic, cloned organisms, as such. It seems clear that the reason Congress established a conclusive presumption in favor of natural born servicemen was to avoid imposing on the uniformed services a substantial administrative burden of requiring actual proof from some 1,000,000 clones of legitimate citizenship and dependency. The question presented here then is whether the price for enjoying this administrative benefit fails to justify the different treatment of natural born versus cloned uniformed services.
Congress apparently reached the conclusion that it would be more economical to require synthetic, cloned organisms to prove actual dependency than to extend the presumption of dependency to such members. Such a presumption made to facilitate administration of the law does not violate the equal protection guarantee of the Constitution if it does not unduly burden or oppress one of the classes upon which it operates.
Having concluded that the statutory scheme contains a rational basis for the different treatment accorded to natural-born and synthetic, cloned organisms in the uniformed services in the narrow context of their attempt to claim due service benefits, we are compelled to the conclusion that the challenged statutes are not in conflict with the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment and that they are in all respects constitutional. The motion is therefore denied.
Obi-Wan swallows a mouthful of coppery blood—he’s chewed the inside of his lip badly while reading. He had anticipated an initial denial, of course. None of this is unexpected or even particularly shocking. Obi-Wan knew what the courts were likely to try and argue.
But to see it all written out… Affirming a legal distinction between “natural-born” and “synthetic, cloned organisms” as if the “organisms” in question are not people, no different than their “natural-born” counterparts? To lean upon a lack of explicit constitutional precedent—and even administrative convenience!—to justify such a gross distinction? It’s blood-curdlingly despicable.
It is everything Obi-Wan hates most about the Republic.
He will appeal, of course. All of the associated documentation is ready to be filed at his say-so. He’ll be meeting with a few friendly senators—Organa, Chuchi, Amidala—in the coming days to drum up additional political support.
But before he files, there is a data package he must share on the holonet. Having touched base again with the authors of said package’s contents to be absolutely certain they were ready to have their words shared, Obi-Wan feels confident that the moment is right. If they are ready to be heard, he is ready to make that happen.
The dissent asserted that the current “administration of the law does not violate the equal protection guarantee of the Constitution” as it “does not unduly burden or oppress one of the classes upon which it operates”; this is an egregious oversight Obi-Wan is more than happy to correct on behalf of the vode.
SOMEWHERE ON THE HOLONET
The following text is unedited and appears in the original format and style as the author intended. The names of individuals and any identifying information have been anonymized for their safety. Text obtained from the personal comm data of Esq. Obi-Wan Kenobi.
<Trooper 1, Anonymous>
I’m not sure how I should address you.
<REDACTED> gave us your name and your code, but not your title. He told us you’re a lawyer and that you want to help get us rights. I think a lot of the men didn’t believe him. I want to believe him.
My brother died last week. His name was Dev. He always dreamed of being a musician, ever since we were cadets. He was a good soldier... you don’t make it this far if you aren’t a good soldier.
But he didn’t want to be a soldier. He wanted to play the keys and he wanted to sing. Dev had a really good voice.
Some B1s shot his lungs full of holes.
I want Dev to be remembered by someone other than our squad. I want him to be remembered as who he wanted to be, not what he was told to be. Dev died a good soldier, a loyal soldier to the very last, but he wanted to play the keys. He wanted to sing.
I miss him every day. I wish I could have given him the chance to do all the things he wanted to, even though I know it’s impossible.
It’s deserter talk, but I want the brothers that come after us to be able to choose. I want brothers like Dev to get to play the keys. I think that’s what Dev would have wanted, too.
Is that so wrong?
<Trooper 2, Anonymous>
The way we were trained, older brothers took care of the little ones. I loved working with the littles. We didn’t get any exposure to natborn family structures or anything, we just had each other and the hierarchies our batches gave us. I didn’t have words for how badly I wanted a family until deployment.
Us clones are sterile by design. Our genetic material itself is patented property. It would be bad business to have your product diluted on the market. It would be troublesome legally. Would the child of a clone even be a person? Clones aren’t people, so how could their kids be people? Would a clone having a kid with a nat-born make a half-person? So they just did away with the possibility altogether. I understand. What kind of life would I be able to give a child? All we were made for is fighting.
Except that I met this natborn kid on <REDACTED> after we saved her <COMMUNITY REDACTED> from Separatist capture. She called me “brother” in her language. She felt safe with us. She was safe with us. I know I can’t have kids of my own, that’s not in the cards for us. Clones don’t get a lot of choices and that’s just one that got made for us. But maybe if I live through the war, I can go back to <REDACTED> and I can see her again. I can still be a brother, even if I can’t be a parent. But that’s only if I live through this thing.
I don’t know if I’ll live through this thing.
<Trooper 3, Anonymous>
We were cloned from a Mandalorian man, Jango Fett. He was a male human. I know cloning is imperfect because I’m not even a man.
Clones learn through flash trainings which is something I can’t really explain in natborn terms because I don’t know how. It’s like a download for your wetware. That’s how we’re taught the basics. I remember being small still—still in cadet reds—when we learned about pronouns. I knew I was a “she” and not a “he” that day, but I just learned the word for what I am today.
They didn’t bother to teach clones about gender identity. They taught us how to shoot guns and break droids. I’m trans. There’s a word for me, there’s been one all along. It just wasn’t a word I was given. No one thought it was important. Now there’s this whole world I’m learning about through the holonet and for the first time in my short life I don’t feel like a mystery to myself. There are people out there who have written whole books about how this feels. I can read them now. I can see myself in them. Do you know how important that is? I didn’t.
Natborns can get access to all sorts of tools that help them transition and live in the bodies they want. And I thought the freedom to grow my hair out was radical! Of course, clones don’t get access to the same stuff. But maybe someday, if you succeed, we can be people. If we’re people, maybe we can get the things that people get: hormones, surgery, even cosmetics.
I’m going to try and see if I can’t source some cosmetics of my own through the contraband pipelines. (Should I be writing to you about that?) I heard a brother over in <REDACTED> got ahold of some mascara. I’d want that or lipstick, maybe. Not anything with glitter. Glitter would be hard to clean up. GAR-issue soap sucks.
CORUSCANT
Podracing is a lot like dogfighting in planetary orbit except when the pods crash, the drivers don’t usually die. Ahsoka loves podracing. Rex… not so much.
Ahsoka didn’t know it was even possible for a clone to get motion-sick—you’d think with all the specialized anti-grav training and whatnot that they’d have stronger stomachs, but apparently they’ve found the one thing that makes Rex incapable of keeping his dinner down (besides getting Force-lifted): podracing.
“I’m so sorry,” Anakin says for the millionth time. Ahsoka had demanded a ride after he conclusively—and impressively—won his race and Rex had insisted on joining, the three of them making an absurd silhouette in the painfully-small cockpit. Ahsoka didn’t mind balancing on the back; it was karking awesome. Rex threw up over the side of the car not once, but twice.
He’s still gagging now while Anakin frets. Ahsoka would laugh if it weren’t actually very pathetic and kind of sad.
“I’ve never seen anyone react so badly,” Anakin tells them apologetically. Does he realize he is making it worse? Ahsoka stifles a laugh and continues to rub Rex’s back as he dry-heaves into a gutter.
“Thanks, that helps a lot,” Rex deadpans.
“Right, sorry. Let me buy you dinner?” Ahsoka meets this grown-ass-man’s stare with her own and tries to communicate: really? Food? That’s your suggestion right now? Rex’s bile sits reeking on the pavement beneath them.
“Okay, maybe not food? I don’t live far, I can take you to my place to get cleaned up before you head back to the— to, uh. Your home. Wherever that is,” Anakin stutters awkwardly. So, maybe their not-a-Jedi-padawan and not-a-clone-trooper disguises weren’t awesome, but they clearly didn’t need to be infallible.
“Right, our home where we live in one big, happy nuclear inter-species family,” Ahsoka chirps.
“I’m fine,” Rex says forcefully as he stands, shaking off her hand. He is extremely sweaty, which betrays his words.
“You look bad, Rex,” Ahsoka tells him genuinely, because really, he does— he looks pale and sick in the way he gets after Ahsoka or Master Vos uses the Force to throw or levitate him—
She whirls on Anakin, pointing and hissing, “He’s Force-motion-sick! You have the Force! That’s how you made that turn without crashing! I knew that you couldn’t make it at that angle with three passengers, the weight is too much!”
Rex’s eyes go wide and Anakin goes sheet-white, waving his hands around frantically between them and making desperate shushing noises. “Not here,” he begs.
“You aren’t even denying it,” Ahsoka points out. Rex is still staring at Anakin looking baffled, betrayed, and woozy. It is similar to how he stares at Master Vos when he forgoes a plan in favor of “following the Force”.
“And I will continue to not deny it elsewhere,” he says through clenched teeth and an awkward smile. He offers Rex a hand up which he does take, swaying only slightly when he’s upright again. “Let me make it up to you, alright?”
The night—or, well, technically early-morning—isn’t over yet and Ahsoka won’t be required to check-in with Master Vos until mid-day tomorrow. She has no clue who Rex is reporting to on leave, but she doubts Cody will care what he does so long as he doesn’t end up detained, dead, or riddled with STDs.
Rex is communicating with every iota of his person that he does not want to follow Mr. Not A Jedi back to his home. Ahsoka turns her attention back to Anakin and says, “Lead the way, Skyguy.”
It’s a decent walk up at least ten levels before Anakin starts pointing out landmarks he knows.
“That noodle stand is kriffin’ fantastic, can’t recommend it enough” and “my friend’s uncle owns that repair shop. They do great work on speeder bikes but don’t bring anything bigger than a two-seater to them” and “This place does a great Meiloruun boba tea; you ever have boba, Rex?”
“What the kark is boba?”
“Like, sticky tapioca balls. They’re sweet and you add it to drinks,” Ahoska explains as Anakin buzzes them into a multi-story apartment complex that’s seen better days.
“What’s tapioca?”
“That’s…” she trails off, unsure. “A plant?”
“Pudding?” Anakin offers. But he’s pushing open a door to the most expensive-looking apartment Ahsoka has ever stepped foot inside, so she loses the thread immediately in favor of gaping open-mouthed at the sheer depth of the couches—plural!—in the large sitting room.
“Kark on a cracker, you’re rich,” she breathes, darting forward to greet a big beast of a tooka splayed out on the couch. “Hi, baby,” she coos and kisses, beaming when the big beautiful fluff ball rolls onto its back and presents its little chicken feet to her for fawning.
“I’m not, really. My dad is, though,” Anakin tries to wave away, looking sheepish. The big tooka’s fur is soft and dense—Ahsoka’s fingertips disappear into its fluff when she scratches at its warm belly.
“Creature likes you,” a deep voice says as a man—shorter than Anakin—appears silhouetted creepily in a doorway with a view of the couch.
“That’s my dad,” Anakin offers up as the single most intimidating person Ahsoka has ever encountered steps fully into the orange glow of the living room lights. He is a zabrak with stark coloring, geometric markings, and faintly luminescent gold eyes. None of this is cause for alarm except for that every atom of Ahsoka’s being is screaming danger, danger, that man is dangerous.
“Greetings. I am Maul,” the zabrak says in that Voice that makes Ahsoka’s limbic system tremble. She has no words for the unsettled feeling deep in her stomach. The man just emanates bad vibes.
“Where are you goin’?” Anakin asks him. There’s a large black bag slung over one of Maul’s shoulders and he looks dressed to leave—dark clothes, dark jacket, dark boots perfect for stomping on innocents, probably.
“Out,” Maul says, aiming a not-insignificant look at Ahsoka and Rex that feels judgemental. “I have an errand to run. I’ll be back before the week is out. Lock up after your… friends.” He walks soundlessly across the carpet, approaching Anakin who obediently ducks his head down for a tap of Maul’s fore-horn to the crown of his head. Ahsoka has the absurd instinct to tell Anakin to run—that’s his dad; he’s probably fine.
“Obi know where you’re going?” Anakin asks.
Maul grunts a noise that could either be “no, fuck you for asking” or “yes, obviously, fuck you for asking”, but Ahsoka has no idea which. Anakin clearly does. He just nods and waves his creepy dad out the door.
“So… Can I get you some water? Caf? Something stronger?” Anakin offers awkwardly in the silence that descends in the wake of the door shutting behind his short, angry father.
“Water’s good,” Ahsoka replies, disengaging from the adorable purring beast that has captured her fingers. “I want you sober for my questions.”
Anakin laughs, unbothered. “Rex? What can I get ya’?”
“Booze,” Rex says. “Intoxicants. I need—intoxicants.” His back is to them as he stares pointedly at a photograph displayed on an overflowing bookshelf. “Kenobi is your other parent, isn’t he,” Rex deadpans.
“Kenobi? As in the lawyer that’s suing the Republic for clone rights?!” she clarifies, rushing to his side to snatch up the photo in question. Against a beige desert background, three adults pose for the camera: a woman with dark hair and kind eyes, Maul, and the famed lawyer—a decade younger and way more sunburnt than Ahsoka has ever seen him in the news.
Sheepishly, Anakin says, “Yeah, that’s Obi. Why don’t you guys sit down? I’ll go get us drinks.”
“Intoxicants,” Rex emphasizes.
“Right,” Anakin confirms. “Intoxicants. I got you.”
Ahsoka kicks her feet up on the coffee table and sinks into an absurdly comfortable couch. When Anakin disappears into what is presumably the kitchen, she turns to Rex and mouths soundlessly, “New best friend.”
“I hate you,” Rex returns, equally wordless.
SOMEWHERE, MID RIM
It is rare that Ventress receives orders from anyone other than the Count. She is aware of the existence of another Sith Master—Count Dooku’s Master—but has never had the occasion to make the individual’s acquaintance. Until now, that is.
Even over holocall, the sheer gap between Count Dooku’s apparent strength in the Darkside and Darth Sidious’ strength is obvious. Enormous, even. She can practically taste it in the air, even for all the distance that must be between them.
The holographic figure is hooded and shrouded entirely in shadow—Ventress could not identify their species with a blaster to her head. Still, she remains kneeling in front of the blue shimmering visage, head down, eyes down. It would not serve her to make enemies of Darth Sidious.
“Darth Sidious, to what do I owe the honor?” she defers.
A low, masculine chuckle drags across her ears like gravel against sandpaper. “I’ve heard promising things from my apprentice about you, Ventress. Now it is time to put your skills to the test. There is a thorn in my side that needs to be removed expediently and permanently.”
Sidious’ hologram dissolves, displaying instead the still image of a human male in its place. “Your target is Obi-Wan Kenobi. Bring me his head.”