Whumpuary… 2024?
Mar. 2nd, 2025 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
biofreak659Finally finished my Whumpuary prompts from 2024… better late than never?
Chapter 1: Captivity
Chapter Text
You can't keep me here forever."
"Door's right there," Gregor didn't bother looking up from his project as he thumbed over his shoulder.
Wolffe's gaze flicked to the AT-TE exit. He didn't get up from the bed.
"That's what I thought." Gregor said. "Let's get one thing straight, heh: I'm not keeping you anywhere. Rex isn't either. You want a ride to the spaceport, you just ask."
Wolffe remained silent.
"See? We both know you don't have anything better to be doing, aside from, what? Sucking down a DC-17?"
Wolffe rolled over.
"Ooh, hurt your feelings?" Gregor clicked his tongue.
"Gregor." Rex growled from the pilot's seat. "Lay off him."
"I'm just saying what we're all thinking."
"Oh, you a mind reader now?"
Sticking two commanding officers and a SpecOps clone in a confined space was doing absolutely nothing for the collective attitude. Wolffe had come out of the gestation pod prickly, Rex lost the last of his patience after burying two thousand brothers, and Gregor…
Everyone knew that there was something wrong with commandos. There had always been something wrong with commandos, from ∅-class right up until the end of the production line.
"Yeah," Gregor snarked, "Jedi must have missed me. Good thing."
Wolffe flinched. "Fuck off."
"Big words for a man who only gets out of bed to piss."
"Gregor." Came Rex's voice, low in warning.
"Gonna take a swing at me, captain?" Gregor tilted his jaw, tapping his scruff with his hand. "First one's free. We all know you won't manage a second."
It was Wolffe, not Rex, who broke his knuckles on Gregor's face.
Gregor was wrong for once, because Wolffe managed to knee him in the groin. Gregor yelped in pain, but so did Wolffe when his knee hit cup instead of flesh. Wolffe swung again. He felt Gregor's hand close around his wrist, and then his face was crushed into the anti-skid plate. Gregor had Wolffe's arm twisted up behind his back, just below the stress of breaking.
"Enough!" Rex shouted. "What the hell are you two doing? That's your brother, not a droid!"
"Piss off, Rex, and let the CCs handle this." Gregor hissed between his teeth.
Wolffe closed his eyes, and slapped his free hand twice against the deck. He felt, rather than saw, Gregor and Rex's stunned expressions, and the pressure on his arm abruptly ceased.
"You… alright, Wolffe?" Rex's voice came hesitantly.
"Yeah." Wolffe said automatically. "I'm going out for air. Gregor twitched slightly, like he was going to try and stop Wolffe, but he settled back in front of his disassembled blaster.
Wolffe stepped out into the blazing heat and let the exit hatch slam shut behind him. He propped his arms against the welded railing and stared out into the endless expanse.
It wasn't Gregor or Rex keeping him here. It wasn't a sense of camaraderie, or revenge. It was an unspoken promise, a covenant on whatever souls that clones had: you aren't expendable .
And he was here, marching endlessly onward.
Chapter 2: Collapse
Chapter Text
"Are you alright, Commander?" Plo Koon's voice was deep, resonant, and distant. Wolffe shook his head. The world swam through his visor, then slowly straightened.
"Fine." He grunted, with the absolute knowledge that he was not fine. The internal display on his HUD marked his temperature at 38°, and even if he wanted to ignore that, his armor's climate system was turned so cold that it kept shorting out and resetting itself.
He locked his knees and leaned over the holomap projector.
"If we position two Juggernauts here," he pointed to a mountain pass, "we should be able to control the droid advance long enough for Hunter Squadron to begin a bombing run on the main force." He had to pause to inhale.
"Wolffe."
"Once we've limited their forces," Wolffe ignored the concern in Plo Koon's voice, "we can begin the advance towards—"
He paused to exhale and clear his throat.
"We can begin the advance…"
The command tent tipped sideways. EARTHQUAKE flashed in neons across Wolffe's vision, before his legs went out from under him. His chin slammed into the command table, knocking his head backwards, before he crumpled to the ground.
Sir, get down! He tried to shout, but his entire body felt pinned. His mouth lolled in the confines of his helmet. Just inflating his lungs felt like breathing in a vacuum.
"Wolffe." Plo Koon knelt beside him and lifted Wolffe's upper body onto his lap. He felt the Jedi's fingers press against his throat, searching for a pulse. Wolffe tried to smack him away, but he only managed a twitch of his hand.
"Wolffe, I need you to remove your helmet."
Wolffe tried to look left, towards the sensor that would pop the seals, but he could barely keep his eyes open. Plo Koon's talon slipped between his neck seal and the duraplast of his helmet. It took barely a twitch of his finger to tear the mechanism out of the helmet. The helmet blared that the air filter was compromised, and the climate control shut down. Instantly, Wolffe felt like he was melting inside his blacks.
Plo Koon pulled his ruined helmet off and discarded it to the side.
"Wolffe," he said, his deep voice urgent, "look at me."
Wolffe's eyes rolled, trying to focus on the orange blur in front of him. Plo Koon pulled his eyelid open with the same claws that had torn apart armor not a second before.
"General?" Wolffe managed, although it came out as a mumbled whisper.
"You're ill, commander." Plo Koon pushed the sweat soaked curls off of Wolffe's forehead. His cool hand was the best thing that Wolffe had ever felt. He unconsciously turned his neck to press closer.
"I'll call Diego."
It took a second for the words to make sense, but when they did, Wolffe struggled to sit up.
"The briefing—"
"Will be done by myself. You are feverish, Wolffe."
"I'm fine." He managed. "Let me do my job."
"You can't command if you're dead." The words came out harsher than he'd ever heard from the General. Some of the hurt must have shown in his face, because Plo Koon looked cowed. He pressed his hand back over Wolffe's forehead and brought up the Medical Corp on his wrist mounted holo comm.
"Sir." The orange markings on Diego's armor were flattened to blue in the holo projection.
"Commander Wolffe is ill." Plo Koon said, ignoring Wolffe's breathless protests. "He's collapsed in the command tent."
"I'll be there right away, sir." The holo clipped out, with Diego's usual curt attitude.
Plo Koon repositioned Wolffe so he was lying flat on the ground, then took off his outer robe and tucked it under Wolffe's head.
"I don't need that."
"I think you have a skewed perspective on what you need, Commander." The hard edge was back in Plo Koon's voice.
"'M delaying the mission."
"There will be more missions. There will not be another Wolffe."
"There are eighteen million of me."
"You know I don't believe that."
Wolffe didn't have anything to say to him, so he let his eyes slip shut, losing himself to the feeling of soft wool below his head and a softer hand on his brow.
Chapter 3: Used As Bait
Chapter Text
"It was Ventress who took your eye, wasn't it?"
Metallic steps clattered in the gloom. It was that exact eye that cut through the darkness, and watched General Grievous stalk across the prison, in the flat grey of infrared.
Wolffe didn't answer him.
"You don't need to answer." He continued in his metallic rasp. "It was before my time, but our files are extensive."
He stopped in front of Wolffe's cell. Wolffe felt very small, and very naked, clad only in his black bodysuit. Even his greys would have been more substantial against the burn of Grievous' looming gaze.
"Do you think anyone is going to come for you?"
Wolffe eyed him balefully.
"I think you do." Grievous continued. "There is an inherent flaw in turning monks into military. We are more alike than you realize."
"I doubt that." Wolffe rasped. His lips cracked and bled as he spoke. No comfort for the prisoner. He'd be drinking his piss if he was making any.
"Do you?" Grievous continued pacing. "Deep down, you know it. We were made for the battlefield. We wouldn't know what to do with ourselves without it. What happens to you when the war ends?"
"What happens to you?" Wolffe shot the question back at him.
"If the Republic is victorious, then I die. If the Confederacy is victorious, then I live. I doubt that you are as certain as I am."
Wolffe watched him.
"The Jedi are not military. They are warriors, certainly, and it pleases me when they challenge me, but they don't have the spine for war. That is why I know they are going to come for you, when both you and I know that you should be left for dead. You will never break under torture, which is why I have not tortured you. There are thousands of clone commanders that could replace you. You have no information for them to hide, you have no uniqueness as a commander, and yet, the Jedi are going to come save you. Do you think any of them will die in the attempt?"
"I think you have a strong opinion on your own skills."
Grievous watched him, that bone mask gleaming in the shadows. "I know you don't believe that either."
Wolffe stared past him.
Bait.
If it wasn't him, it would have been some other clone. But if it wasn't him, there wouldn't be a rescue. It would hurt him, but Kenobi could live with leaving Cody behind. Plo Koon could not. The things that made him an admirable man made him a terrible general.
Grievous didn't have expressions, but a sense of smug satisfaction spread across his blank face.
"Do you see, now?"
Wolffe parted his lips. "CC-3636, commander of the 104th Attack Battalion. Grand Army of the Republic."
Grievous cackled.
Chapter 4: Lightheaded
Notes:
This is a continuation of my Senator AU. Please read that first.
Chapter Text
Wolffe stared at the silhouettes of clones walking throughout the bar, he heard the familiar voices of brothers, the comforting cadence of someone getting into a spat, the sound of a fight and a resolution and a round of drinks to soothe any hurt feelings.
Something in him hungered for it, some gaping, empty pit in the middle of him, a hole in his whole, an ulcer, a gut bleed.
He turned away and continued walking down the street.
Shore leave for the Guard was different from the Battalion. They had a shore to leave to, not just a bunk on Kamino.
Sergeant Hound had rustled up some shock troopers to go with him to bully a landlord into letting him sign a year lease on an apartment without a background check.
Wolffe had a whole home now. He had a couch and a stovetop burner and a refresher. He had a mattress and a pillow.
He was still sleeping in his bunk in the barracks.
Wolffe blinked away the beginnings of a headache. He turned to head back towards the CorSec barracks, and nearly crashed into a tall figure in a mask.
"Excuse me." A deep, familiar voice slurred.
Wolffe focused, catching the man by his upper arms before he collapsed onto the pavement.
"Senator?" He said, the surprise evident in his voice.
The man grimaced. "Don't remind me."
It was Plo Koon, out of his robes of office, but Kel Dor were few and far between on Coruscant.
Plo Koon's eyes wrinkled in a squint behind the goggles. "I know you."
He tried to take a step, but twisted his legs around each other and nearly took them both to the ground.
"I'm a little lightheaded."
"Woah, sir." Wolffe fought against gravity to keep him upright. "Why don't we find you somewhere where you can sit down?"
Plo Koon must have gotten it in his head that 'somewhere' meant 'right here on the pavement', and sank to the ground in something that was just a touch too controlled to be a collapse.
Wolffe glanced up at the artificial sky. He leaned down over the Kel Dor.
"I meant somewhere else , sir."
Plo Koon was big. Even sitting, he could still reach up and touch Wolffe's face.
"You only had one eye."
"I still only have one eye." Wolffe muttered under his breath. "Let's get you upright, sir. Is there someone you can call?"
Plo Koon sagged. "It was hard enough getting staff before Senator Ma Ega exploded. I don't have anyone."
Something in the way he said it struck a nerve in Wolffe's gut. There was some comfort in a shared wound.
"Come on." Wolffe leaned back and hauled Plo Koon upright. His back twinged in the way that meant he was going to be uncomfortable in his armor tomorrow. "Where's your apartment?"
Plo Koon gestured vaguely. "Seven-fifty Burbank. 3427th level."
It was a mild shock that Wolffe lived on a better level than the senator. Well. No one was going to refuse to offer a trio of heavily armored men a good deal on a lease. And Plo Koon had only been a senator's aide until a few months ago.
"I'll get you a transport." The tram would have been cheaper, but Wolffe didn't trust Plo Koon not to fall onto the electric rail and shut down the entire system. He didn't know how much electricity a Kel Dor could survive, but it probably was less than what was needed to run a planet. Better to call a cab.
Wolffe used the public terminal next to 79's to call the first taxi service in the contact log, and arranged a pickup with a tired sounding woman on the other end of the line.
Plo Koon had managed to get himself to the railing without falling over it. He leaned his forearms on the metal, staring pensively out onto the cityscape.
"How cruel is it that I regret surviving?" He asked, not looking at Wolffe. He pushed himself upright, clinging to the railing like it was the only thing keeping him standing. With the way he smelled, it probably was. "The Republic is pushing to build a production facility on Dorin. Military ships and all that. I know what people think when they see Dorin. What Humans think, when they see Dorin. It's a weather-torn wasteland. It has no resources beyond the atmosphere itself. But it's my home. Do you understand that?"
Wolffe glanced down. "Yeah."
What clone wouldn't? Kamino was dangerous in a way that most other planets weren't. It was desolate, it was sparsely inhabited, it was strange and distant. It was the first thing he had ever known.
"I don't know how to make the decisions that I need to make." Plo Koon said. "I don't know that I can keep the peace and keep my ethics."
Wolffe understood him completely.
Chapter 5: "Stay. Please."
Chapter Text
Lightsaber burns didn't heal. The destruction was too instant, too neat. It was like cutting into skin with a razor hit scalpel, an inch wide. It obliterated tissue; you could stitch up a stab—hell, even a slash from a vibroblade could be repaired.
There was nothing you could do about a lightsaber.
Wolffe blinked, and felt the ragged scraps of his eyelid close over his empty socket. He would have vomited, but the anti emitic they had snaking through the IV stopped him from even that little act of relief.
His helmet had taken most of it, and that was the worst part: this was the best case scenario. His skull was fractured, he had a brain bleed, and his eye was gone .
Maybe dying outright would have been better, but if he hadn't been in the way, if he hadn't drawn Ventress' attention, then she would have just gone for the next weakest target.
"Wolffe."
General Plo Koon's voice buzzed pleasantly in Wolffe's chest. Wolffe breathed in and out, slow and steady, and did his best to feign sleep. He fought down the dark surge of bitter regret. It was easier to frame himself as heroic when he wasn't on the verge of weeping.
There was the soft clunk of a chair being moved, and then the creak of an old cushion being compressed under eighty kilos of Jedi.
He felt a tiny wisp of air across his face, and then, very gently, the press of fingertips against his temple. It was gone as quickly as it had come, but some of the pain leached out of him.
The Force. Or, more likely, some psychosomatic bullshit. He wasn't stupid. He knew that something in him unwound when he was around Plo Koon. It was like taking off a heavy pack at the end of a long march.
He opened his eye. The hollow eyelid sagged upward.
"General." He croaked out.
"Wolffe. You should be resting."
"Can't sleep." Side effect of the mood stabilizer.
Plo Koon reached out with uncharacteristic hesitation and placed his hand over Wolffe's.
"I'm told they have you scheduled for a prosthetic."
"When my skull closes up. Diego said another week of bacta injections and the bone regrowth should be sturdy enough for," Wolffe searched for the words, "the mechanics."
"On Kamino?"
"Yeah."
Plo Koon squeezed his hand. "The 104th is on shore leave. My duties with the council can be performed remotely."
"I don't need a babysitter." Wolffe snapped.
It was hard to read a Kel Dor's face. It was harder to read a Jedi's, but Wolffe caught a trace of guilt shutter under Plo Koon's mask.
Good , Wolffe thought vindictively. Revulsion pulsed through him. He'd been in the same production cycle as Slick. Maybe that traitorous thought was a symptom of the amniotic mix the Kaminoans used.
"I'm sorry," Wolffe muttered, "Sir."
"Don't apologize. I overstepped." Plo Koon patted the back of his hand and made to stand. Wolffe caught his rough spun sleeve.
"Wait." He couldn't meet Plo Koon's gaze. "Stay. Please. I can't sleep."
Plo Koon was hunched, half out of his chair. Wolffe let go of him. Plo Koon straightened his robes, and sat gracefully.
"When I was young, I could never sleep in the creche. Children are curious, of course, and some of my younger peers wanted to see my face. I awoke more than once to my respirator being pulled off."
"That's—" Wolffe hissed. Plo Koon held up a hand.
"Some time ago. I wouldn't hold a child responsible for not knowing. Regardless, I developed a bit of insomnia as a result. One of the creche minders told me a story once. Would you like to hear it?"
"A bedtime story." Wolffe snorted, then closed his eye. "Sure. Why not."
The low drone of Plo Koon's voice washed over him, drowning out the harsh static hum of Ventress' lightsaber that kept playing in his ears.
"A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away…"
Chapter 6: Old Injuries
Chapter Text
His mug clattered to the ground and Wolffe pressed a hand over his eye.
"You alright?" Zeb glanced at the spreading puddle of caf, then at him.
"Fine." Wolffe gritted out, digging the heel of his hand into his prosthetic in a vain attempt to stop the surrounding muscle from spasming. "Fine."
"Don't look fine." Zeb said.
"It—" Wolffe hissed, "it happens. The hardware is legacy."
"They let you have a gun when your eye hasn't been updated in a decade?"
"It's not like I can get it replaced." His vision went white for a second, and then the pain started to recede. "The military surgical center doesn't exist anymore. They don't even make prosthetic eyes like this for civilians."
"They don't make clones anymore either." Zeb eyed him keenly.
Wolffe stooped to pick up the mug, ignoring his creaking knees.
"No. They don't."
Chapter 7: "I didn't have anywhere else to go."
Summary:
More senator AU.
Chapter Text
Wolffe walked, half in mania, lapping circles around the Senate Rotunda. The general comms were exploding, message after message being read in the dry, emotionless voice of his helmet's onboard computing module. Every so often , a CO got on and ordered general silence, but the command was lost in the everpresent surge of messages: have you heard about Sergeant Slick?
He hadn't received a return to barracks command yet, but it was bound to happen soon.
Clones weren't supposed to go below the thousandth floor when they were off duty. It wasn't safe, for the clone in question or for whatever idiots thought they could get away with mugging a Republic Trooper.
Wolffe didn't think. He walked, took the lift system down and down and down. He hadn't plugged the address into his helmet's nav system, but he ended up there regardless.
The side of his fist pounded at the door of Seven-fifty Burbank, 3427th level. It was a long, disquieting moment before he heard any signs of life from within the tiny apartment.
The door opened slowly, and Plo Koon stood in the entryway, holding his mask over his face. His eyes widened when he saw Wolffe.
"Officer?" He sounded wary and hesitant. "How may I help you?"
"It's me." Wolffe said., taking off his helmet. "Wolffe.
The nerves fled from Plo Koon's expression, leaving behind only the exhaustion at the corners of his eyes. "Wolffe! I didn't recognize you. Your armor was painted."
"Regulation." He was indistinguishable from any other member of CorSec. "I—"
He stopped mid sentence. What the hell was he doing? He was harassing a member of the Republic Senate in the middle of the night, on a level he wasn't supposed to be in without a warrant. The order for a general confinement to barracks pinged in his helmet.
"I didn't have anywhere else to go." He managed.
It must have shown on his face. Plo Koon took him by the shoulder, one hand still holding his mask pressed to his face.
"Come in, please."
Wolffe couldn't find the strength to turn around and lock himself in the barracks. A brother would read him like a sheet of flimsi, and he'd be back on Kamino with an electrode poking into his brain.
He stepped into Plo Koon's apartment.
"Should I?" He made to put his helmet back over his head, when he saw Plo Koon strap his respirator firmly over his face. "Never mind."
"Did you want tea?" Plo Koon rubbed his arms, and pulled on a robe he had slung over the back of a chair. The organs on the side of his head expanded slightly, and Wolffe realized that he was yawning.
"It's late." He said abruptly, backing towards the door. "I shouldn't be here."
Plo Koon watched him like he was an airwha about to startle.
"Are you alright?"
Wolffe sagged, leaning against the door and letting his head drop back against the metal with a cold thump.
"No. I'm not."
He didn';t protest when Plo Koon guided him over to the small kitchen table, nor when he took his helmet and put it on a bench in the entryway. He did not refuse the small cup of tea that Plo Koon placed in front of him, but he didn't make a move to drink it.
Plo Koon sat across from him, his hands folded neatly on the table.
"What's wrong?"
"How can I breathe here?" Wolffe asked. "Don't you breathe… nitrogen?"
"Helium." Plo Koon looked thrown for a loop. "It's illegal. A contained atmosphere of helium has to be less than three cubic meters, by coruscant city code. It's a hazard."
"You sleep with a mask on?" Wolffe leaned forward.
"I have a sealed sleeping pod."
Wolffe tried to imagine living in a world where the air would kill you and found himself coming up short. The closest he could picture was being trapped in a shuttle escape pod, alone in a debris field, waiting for the droids to come. A curl of nausea rolled through him.
"A clone…" he began, and fell silent. He drank some of the tea, cringing at the bitter tannins.
Plo Koon chuckled ruefully at his expression. "It's an acquired taste."
Wolffe's face twisted. "A clone turned traitor. Got some of his brothers killed. Tried to kill a Jedi."
"I'm so sorry."
"You don't sound surprised."
"Double agents happen in every war." Plo Koon shrugged. "There are always people who want something that their side can't provide, be it physical or ideological."
"Not with us." Wolffe managed. "Clones don't betray. We don't want. We owe the Republic our lives."
Plo Koon didn't meet his lopsided gaze. Wolffe rubbed around the eye patch.
"I despise this war." He said, eventually.
"This war made me." Wolffe replied.
Plo Koon looked up, panic written across his face. "I didn't mean—"
"I know. But that's my point. Clones don't betray the Republic. There was something wrong with him, and—"
Wolffe cut himself off, nearly biting his tongue.
"And?" Plo Koon asked slowly, curling a cool hand over Wolffe's.
"And there's something wrong with me too." It was barely a whisper. His lips didn't move. "Because I've thought about it too."
Chapter 8: "You look awful."
Chapter Text
"Officer on deck!"
Wolffe was still limping. He hid it as best he could, but these were clones. Same body, same hurts. Every single one of these replacements knew just how broken his body was. The lights hummed overhead; they were a drill boring into his migraine.
"At ease!" He barked, and as one, the crowd of identical men fell into a parade rest.
He limped down the column of troopers. The loss of the 104th hadn't just been a logistical blow. The Triumphant was sixty million credits that the Republic didn't have. It was far more than the seven hundred credits that Wolffe was worth.
"He looks awful."
It was barely a murmur. Wolffe's head snapped around.
"Who said that!"
Silence. Wolffe lurched forward, to the nearest clone. "I asked you a question, Trooper!"
The clone looked nervous. "I—"
"Speak up!"
"Sir—" Another clone spoke up. Wolffe's head snapped over to him. He visibly paled.
"Sir, no one—" he tried again.
"No one?" Wolffe growled.
"No one," the clone managed, in barely more than a mumble, "no one said anything."
Wolffe had rights and privileges as a CO. He had a private room, a luxury on a ship housing nearly six hundred troopers, plus support staff. He took better quality rations in the officer's lounge. His training was more extensive; even his DNA had more time and care put into it than a line trooper. He didn't have the same desire for camaraderie that troopers did.
He could assign unpleasant duties as punishment, hell, he could revoke rations if he needed to. He could scream at a trooper, call him a piece of shit lower than dirt.
He could not, under any circumstances, lay a hand on any of the soldiers under his command.
Wolffe snatched the trooper by his armor collar and hauled him forward. "What the fuck did you just say?"
The other troopers jerked in a wave of surprise. Wolffe didn't notice it.
"I asked you a question!"
"Sir, I—"
"Speak up!" Wolffe shook him. "I said to speak up you waste of air!"
"Commander!" The shout came from behind him. He felt a hand at his shoulder and shrugged it off. "Commander!"
Wolffe grabbed the hand and twisted him into an arm lock. He blinked and looked down, and realized that he was halfway to breaking Sinker's arm.
"Wolffe!" He gasped. "Let me go."
Wolffe dropped him and shoved him away, unsure if he was trying to hurt Sinker or get him out of range.
"You have something to say, Sergeant?"
Sinker rolled his shoulder, massaging the joint with his opposite hand. "You're out of line, sir."
Sinker had been with him since the beginning. That was the only reason that Wolffe broke his nose instead of his jaw.
Sinker landed on his ass, more out of shock than genuine pain. One of the new troopers rushed over to help him to his feet, but Sinker pushed him away. He wiped the blood off his face with the side of his fist, and maneuvered himself into a crouch.
"Wolffe, you—"
"WOLFFE!"
It was a bass rumble that split the recycled air like lightning. Wolffe's spine instantly went straight.
Plo Koon walked down a row of troopers, his robes fluttering behind him. Boost scurried along behind him.
"Commander." He intoned. Plo Koon had never frightened Wolffe. He was an alien, and more distinctly inhuman than most. He was massive, towering a head above even clones, who were not small men. He had claws.
Wolffe felt a spike of fear strike down his spine.
"Sir." He managed, saluting.
Plo Koon stared at him for a long moment, then jerked his chin at Sinker. "Sergeant. You have command. Commander, please join me."
It was not a request. Wolffe swallowed his pride and followed him. He kept his back as straight as his shame would allow.
Plo Koon led him to a small command room, and gently closed the door behind him. Wolffe stood behind one of the chairs. Plo Koon sat on the opposite side of the round table.
"Sir—"
Plo Koon held up his hand. "Sit, Wolffe."
Wolffe's mouth shut with a click, and he sat slowly, stretching his leg off to the side.
Plo Koon was silent for a long moment. He barely breathed, but when he did, it was low and raspy, dragged through his mask. Was he ever afraid? Did he fear the sky the same way that Wolffe feared the endless, endless glittering, empty starfield of space?
"You're hurt." Plo Koon said, eventually.
"No I'm not." Wolffe snapped in instinctive response.
Plo Koon gave him a measured glance.
"My leg is almost healed." Wolffe said. "I have full duty clearance."
"I'm not referring to your leg, Wolffe. You were recalled to Kamino."
Wolffe's cheek twitched.
"May I ask why?"
"Military tribunal." Wolffe managed eventually, very evenly. "Courtsmartial."
"For Abregado?"
"For the Triumphant."
Plo Koon was very intuitive. "You didn't kill those men."
"Of course I didn't. I'm still responsible for it."
Plo Koon rose and pressed his cold hand to Wolffe's shoulder.
"I won't let them decommission you, Wolffe."
"It's not really up to you."
Chapter 9: Hair Pulling
Summary:
Sith au sith au sith au!
Chapter Text
"What do we have here?"
It was a girl's voice. It shouldn't have sent a chill down his spine, but it was the context of it. This was a battlefield. He was surrounded by the bodies of his brothers in gleaming white armor.
Wolffe struggled to breathe through his collapsed lung, staring up at the blinding sun. He was flat on his back in the mud and blood, and he couldn't move. He'd hit the ground hard. It could have been spinal.
A shadow moved over him. Wolffe blinked.
It was a little alien girl—Togruta, judging by the orange skin and vibrant horns. She wore a black cloak that was too big on her. The hem of it was splattered with drying mud.
Her eyes gleamed yellow.
"This one is alive!" She called out, pointing at him. There was a lightsaber on her belt. Wolffe's scalp went cold.
"What is it, little 'Soka?" The voice was harsh and resonant. Wolffe recognized it from the intelligence reports on Kadavo. His eyes rolled wildly in his head, darting back and forth, looking for his gun, a rock, anything.
"It's a clone." The girl said, squatting down next to him. "He's got a glass eye."
She tapped his prosthetic with a dirty nail. He flinched.
"Ahsoka, leave the man be."
A tall Kel Dor in a bronze mask stepped up behind the Togruta girl. He was broad and massive, and walked in near silence. He rested a friendly hand on the girl's head and gently tugged her horn back and forth. It was, Wolffe realized, the non-mammalian equivalent of ruffling a child's hair.
He knelt in the mud by Wolffe's head.
"Can you speak?" He asked.
"Did you steal her from the Jedi?" Wolffe croaked. The Kel Dor tilted his head, almost quizzical, before he carded his clawed fingers through Wolffe's hair.
"I stole her," he said, and wrenched Wolffe upwards by his hair, "from slavers."
Wolffe couldn't bite back the yelp of pain. He gurgled up blood. That was a lung, yeah. Agony spiked down his thighs. At least it wasn't spinal.
"You're a commander, aren't you?" The Kel Dor said, tugging Wolffe this way and that by his hair, in a gross parody of how he treated the girl. "I don't know much about your military. Do you think they would miss you?"
"No." Blood bubbled out from between his lips, tinged with amusement. "Maybe the eye. It was expensive."
"Oh?" He sounded curious. "Well, in that case…"
Chapter 10: Can't Stay Awake
Chapter Text
Wolffe's vision blurred. He shook his head and blinked, and when that didn't work, he slapped himself.
Coruscant always did this to him. The Jedi Temple always did this to him.
Battleships had a constant hum, a constant buzz of activity, of a thousand other brothers patrolling, sleeping, running drills, farting. The engines were a drone of inconstant noise. Alarms were constantly going off. Even just being on a ship was a tension—at any moment, Kuat's finest could fail, and he'd be dead before he realized it.
The Jedi Temple was quiet, and tranquil, and safe.
It was like he'd doffed his armor, but its familiar weight still hung heavy on his shoulders. His eyelids did too.
The Jedi cadets were eyeing him curiously. Half of them looked like they should still be incubating. Wolffe clasped his hands behind his back and longed for his rifle. His head drooped to his shoulder.
"Commander."
Wolffe jerked upright with a sharp inhale. "Sir." He saluted. Plo Koon looked at him with mild concern.
"I'm finished here. Come." He tilted his chin. "I'd like to show you something."
Wolffe's breathing became more and more relaxed as they walked through the twisting hallway of the Temple. He wasn't stumbling—that was trained out of him during officer school—but if he leaned too long against any given surface he'd be out.
"Here." Plo Koon waved his hand in front of a fairly nondescript door, and it slid open.
Wolffe's eyes went wide. It was a massive tiered waterfall, with what must have been a hundred offshoot pools and springs. Jedi cadets splashed in the water—swimming lessons, while the older ones sat cross-legged, or balanced upside down on their hands. The air was warm and slightly humid. Wolffe fought back a sudden pang of nostalgia.
"Sir?"
Plo Koon led him through the room, to a secluded spot at an unused spring.
"I have mentioned before," he sat on his knees, his hands cupped in his lap, "that I'd like to teach you some meditation. Please: sit and close your eyes."
Wolffe could recognized pretense. It burned him that he recognized it.
He sat, and closed his eyes.
Chapter 11: "Just get it over with."
Chapter Text
Wolffe heard armored boots clicking across the command center's smooth synthetic tile.
"Just get it over with."
Rex caught his shoulder and turned him around, and his fist snapped out across Wolffe's jaw. There was soft tissue damage, yes, but Wolffe felt the distinct bite of pain that came from a broken jaw. He hit the ground, hard. The staff looked at them, and one of the shinies was stupid enough to take a step forward before Wolffe held up a hand and his smarter buddies pulled him back.
Wolffe spat bloody saliva on the floor.
"Get it out of your system?" He wiped his mouth with the side of his hand and looked up at Rex.
"You shot Ahsoka!"
"I did my job, Captain ."
Rex had been crying, that was obvious by his red-rimmed eyes. He reached down and hauled Wolffe to his feet by his armor collar.
"You fucker." He hissed, shaking Wolffe. Rex had been an ARC before he made rank. He outweighed Wolffe by a good ten kilos. "She's a little girl!"
"She's a Jedi." Wolffe replied levely, waving down the brothers with their rifles shouldered. "And she's a suspect."
"I know you aren't stupid enough to think she did it."
Wolffe didn't respond. Rex shook him again before shoving him away. Wolffe stumbled. His head swam and his jaw ached. He very desperately wanted to be back on the Triumphant .
"How long until you get all of them killed too?" Rex hissed.
"You're out of line, brother."
" You pulled the trigger."
"I was following orders."
"You're nothing but a drone." Rex spat. "A mindless thing. They took out whatever parts made you human when they stuck that droid part in the hole in your head."
He shoved Wolffe one more time, for good measure and turned on his heel.
Wolffe rolled his shoulders and thought about his schedule. A visit to the onbase medic would have to happen now, wouldn't it?
He felt eyes on his plastisteel.
"What are you all looking at?" He snapped. "Don't you have something to be doing?"
The shinies dispersed.
Wolffe scuffed the blood on the floor out under his boot.
Chapter 12: Rescue
Summary:
Follow up to 'Used as Bait'.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The distant rumble of an explosion shook the wall that Wolffe was leaning against.
Leaning was a confident way of putting it. He clung desperately to the wall, because if he put any less effort into remaining upright, he was going to end up on the floor.
Grievous had been gone for a week, thereabouts. There was no day-night cycle in Wolffe’s cell, only the constantly humming light overhead. He'd resorted to counting days by how often he slept, but that was getting more and more unreliable as the days stretched on without food. A pipe has begun to drip in the corner of his cell on the second day. He had nothing to do but sit under it with his tongue out.
An explosion could mean anything.
The second one threw Wolffe off his feet. The pipe tore out of the wall and began spraying water on the floor. It was icy, but he wasn't so far gone that he wouldn't take advantage when he could. The water tasted metallic, and it was the best thing he'd ever had.
It was also filling up his cell. His black were wicking, but there was only so much the Republic materials science researchers could do when he was ankle deep in hypothermia.
“Hello!” He shouted through the energy bars. They hadn't shorted yet, but it was only a matter of time. The question was if they'd short before he drowned. “CC-3636! I'm a Republic Trooper!”
He heard the echo of footsteps on metal. He recognized the gait. He'd know it anywhere.
Plot Koon’s face appeared in the gloomy haze. “Wolffe.”
“General.” His heart sank and he fought off his shivers. “This is a trap, sir. Grievous—”
“Is on the other side of the galaxy, fighting Obi-wan Kenobi. I am here for you, Wolffe.”
He lit his lightsaber. The warm yellow was the closest thing to heat that Wolffe had felt in weeks. He limped to the back corner of his cell, and Plo Koon cut through the electronics. The laser grid died with a whine.
Wolffe made it to the edge of his cell before he had to admit it. “I won't be able to walk out of here, sir.”
“Did you think I would leave you behind over something as simple as that?” Plo Koon held out his arm and carefully looped around Wolffe’s waist, and lifted him as easily as he would a child. It was a blow to Wolffe's masculinity. He couldn't bring himself to care overmuch.
“Ready?”
“It's your rescue, sir. I'm just along for the ride.”
Notes:
Uh yeah it's been a year. I'm gonna finish this I swear.
Chapter 13: 'I'm Fine'
Chapter Text
Wolffe's eye shot open and for a sickening second, he didn't know where he was. His heart pounded in his chest. Then, the shadows faded into familiarity and his prosthetic eye hummed to life. The world bled from black to the overbright green of night vision.
He was in his bunk in the AT-TE. Gregor was snoring under him and Rex shifted restlessly above him.
He couldn't have shouted in his sleep, because then they would both be still and silent, pretending very badly to still be asleep. His heart was still racing. Wolffe carefully extracted himself from his bunk, picking his way over Gregor's mess on the floor.
It seemed like a year of being a line cook had destroyed the discipline that a decade of commando training had tried to instill in him.
He slipped out of the AT-TE and leaned against the railing. The desert wind was cool and dry, and his lips chapped almost instantly.
Wolffe had visited Dorin once. The 104th was put on reserve; Plo Koon had been injured and needed specialized medical care to recover from it. It stood to reason that Wolffe would go on the escort.
It was a desolate planet, wind-blasted and barren. The Kel Dor lived in low domed houses, with intricate subterranean walkways and parks. The flatness of Seelios reminded him of that week he'd spent underground, hovering over Plo Koon and trying to look like he wasn't.
“Nightmares?” Gregor's voice broke him from his memories. To Wolffe's horror, he found that his eye was wet.
“It's the wind.” Wolffe said, scrubbing his face with his sleeve. “I'm fine.”
Gregor snorted. “Sure you are. I sleep under you every night.”
“You were asleep.”
“You think I can't fake snoring?” Gregor raised an eyebrow. They watched the empty vastness for a long while.
“Rex is a good man.” Gregor said eventually. He didn't meet Wolffe's gaze. “But he doesn't understand. I shot Shaak Ti. I saw the after action report. I know what you did to Plo Koon.”
Wolffe always tasted metal when he thought about it. The sooty tinge of his blaster on his tongue. It took ten pounds of pressure to pull a DC-17’s trigger. His fingers had shaken too much to do it.
“ARC-170, you are cleared to fire.” Wolffe repeated. “I say it every night.”
“It was a group of cadets that arrested her. They didn't give the kiddos live rounds, so they had to call me in to finish it.” Gregor pushed himself upright. “We’re in the same boat, brother.”
“No, we aren't.”
Gregor shrugged. “Maybe not the same one. I can see you over the waves though. Dipping up and down and up and down. Heh-he. Sometimes you dip under, you know. It would kill Rex if it happened.”
“It'd kill me too. I wouldn't be around to care.”
“There's that bastard I know and love.” Gregor elbowed him. “You haven't been bitchy in a long while—thought the fight had gone out of you.”
“Shove off.”
Gregor cackled. “I've gotta get a promise out of you, first, brother. You're fine? Stay fine. Keep your pretty head all in one piece.”
Wolffe exhaled. “Fine. Fine.”
“Pinky swear?”
Wolffe narrowed his eye at Gregor. “Don't push your luck.”
Chapter 14: Headache
Summary:
Sith AU again.
Chapter Text
Plo Koon blinked behind his goggles, and tried to keep from vomiting. The pain behind his eyes spiked up to an unbearable before it receded down to tolerable levels. He did not trust himself to stand, so he remained seated across the span of the massive table.
Count Dooku watched him from the head of the table.
“Are you well, Master Plo?” His voice was rich and resonant, and it rattled through Plo Koon's head like a discordant symphony.
“I am not a Jedi, Count Dooku.”
Count Dooku dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Of course. But then, we leave behind the trappings of the Order so slowly, do we not? Why, you've even taken a Padawan.”
His eyes lighted on Ahsoka, stood half in shadow by the doorway. Her hood was pulled low over her face.
“My ward.” Plo Koon corrected him.
“Of course.” Count Dooku agreed readily. “Men like us must make concessions.”
His assassin, the Dathomirian woman. Plo Koon had seen her at Count Dooku’s side during Separatist meetings. They were entirely professional, but then, the assassin wore armor that was worth more than Dorrin’s GDP. Not the sort of thing you'd give to a disposable tool, and exactly the sort of thing that you would give to a child to ensure her safety on the battlefield.
Ahsoka wore a beskar plate under her robes. Plo Koon had told her that he scavenged it from a battlefield, but they both knew he was lying. The blood on it was still warm when he gave it to her.
He steepled his fingers together and focused on remaining upright.
“I will be blunt with you, Plo Koon.” Count Dooku said. “You are an unknown quantity. You have left the Jedi.”
“Many people leave the Jedi.”
“I know. I count myself among them. You have fallen—I know well enough to recognize it in someone else, but you do not ally yourself with me.”
Plo Koon let him continue.
“I have seen the aftermath of your actions on the battlefield, and you clearly don't number yourself among the Republic. Dorrin is Republican, not Separatist, unless you number among the dissidents, which you don't. I admit that I am perplexed.”
“And what is it that you think inviting me here can answer?” He hated politicking. The Force was not a comfort these days. There was no relief to be found in its murky embrace.
He should have known that he was going to Fall decades ago, when he first called the storm to his fingertips and used Electric Judgement.
“I think my inviting you here is an excuse for dinner.” Count Dooku smiled, and for an instant he was every inch the genial host. He was old blood, old money, old power. “And an opportunity for a fortuitous alliance.”
“Certainly not with you.”
“Certainly not.” Count Dooku agreed. “For a man who hates it, you do have an eye for politics. No, I have a man—well, a clone. He is a useful ally of mine who can no longer remain where he is. I need a place for him.”
“And you think I can offer it?”
“I think it would benefit you to do so.” Count Dooku glanced at Ahsoka. “And I think that you are the kind of man who cannot resist taking in strays. Wolffe!”
Plo Koon was shocked to find that he recognized the clone. They were identical, to a man, barring the odd tattoo or strange hairstyle.
Or injury.
Wolffe—that was his name, the clone on the battlefield, all those years ago—he wore an eye patch now. Of course he did. Ahsoka kept the robot prosthetic on the shelf above her bed, with the rest of her precious things.
“Wolffe was my agent on Christophsis. I think you will come to find a positive working relationship with him.”
Politician talk.
“Wolffe, this is Plo Koon.”
Wolffe's face cracked into a nasty smile. “We're familiar.”
Plo's headache surged.
Chapter 15: Sleep Deprivation
Chapter Text
His fingers were twitching.
Wolffe curled his hand into a fist. There. No more twitching.
He rubbed the sore spot on his thigh—he’d had to switch from left to right, too much bruising—and eased up his blacks. His armor clipped back on in seconds and he popped his bucket back over his head. It was like he was a new man.
Wolffe exhaled as the high powered stims coursed through his blood, shaking off some of the exhaustion. How long has it been since he'd slept? Four days? Had he gotten some shuteye on the ship?
His helmet hid both the deep bruising under his eyes and his pinprick pupils.
“Give me a sit-rep.” He said, shouldering his rifle and stepping out of the relative privacy of the command tent.
Comet ducked next to him. “First battle group is advancing from the east. We have them pinned just south of the river basin.”
“Air support?”
“Still out of communication.”
“Have Sinker move the comm relays up into the ridge. We can't hold the city without air bombardment.”
“We flush one encampment and they scurry into the next one over.” Comet exhaled.
“Take fifteen.” Wolffe ordered him. “Have Boost sub in for you.”
“How long have you been going, sir?” It sounded innocent, but this was Comet.
“Enough lip, sergeant.” Wolffe made absolutely certain that he had his balance before he began to walk. His on-board computer kept alerting him that his heart rate was dangerously high. “How is…”
“Still in the bacta.” Comet caught his question. “He needs a specialist, but Diego thinks that you got him out of oxygen before any permanent damage was done to his lungs.”
“Get some sleep.” Wolffe said eventually. Comet ducked away to the two-man tents. Wolffe waited until he was out of sight before he carefully picked his way over to the medical tent.
Plo Koon floated in the blue haze of bacta. Diego and his crew had managed to jerry-rig a connection port to a tank of Dorin gas. It twisted something deep in Wolffe to see such a powerful man brought so low. Plo Koon looked frail. It was the only time in his life that Wolffe would have ever described Plo Koon as weak.
There was no other command officer. He had Comet and Boost. They couldn't hack it. The droids were backing the local Separatists, and they would bombard the Republic holdings the second a clone turned his back to piss.
“Diego.” Wolffe croaked. The medic glanced up from a walking wounded—a brother with a broken arm.
“Sir.”
“Get me another round of stim auto-injectors. I've got something I need to do before I take a rest.”
Chapter 16: Aftermath
Notes:
I got confused somewhere in my notes and wrote one extra story whoops. Here's the actual final entry, over a year in the making. Thanks for sticking out!
Chapter Text
He was an old hand at losing people by now.
“Gregor.” He said, and tipped his beer to Rex’s.
“Gregor.”
Jango Fett must have been a sullen drunk. There was no other way to explain how every clone got weepy on his tenth beer.
He’s been tone deaf, too.
Rex hummed listlessly under his breath.
“And he's marching far away.” Wolffe muttered when Rex got to the only line he knew.
“In Basic?”
“We had mercs to train us, not Mandos. Jag tried to teach us a few words—he was old stock, first batcher. No one ever picked up more than a few cusses. You know how first batchers are.”
“Fuckin’ weirdos.” Rex concluded. “Gregor was too. It took ‘em a few rounds to iron out the kinks. He did his best, but we had translator droids for a reason. I think was, eh: nu kyradick shi taab—somethin’ somethin’ kaysh gar.”
His voice was gruff from crying and alcohol, and half the words were slurred into nonsense.
“There's no one left to teach it, huh, brother?” Rex was maudlin. Wolffe let him be. He deserved some self-pity for putting up with all their shit.
“Maybe you'll find it at the bottom of another bottle.” Wolffe said, and gestured for another round. There was no way in any of the Seven Corellian Hells that they were making it back to the ship tonight. It would be a miracle if they both made it out of the bar with functioning livers.
“We’re the last of a dying breed.”
“It was bound to happen sooner or later.” Wolffe stifled a burp. “The war wasn't going to last forever.”
“You wish it had.”
Rex had him on that one. Wolffe leaned his head on his arms and gazed into the murky yellow of his beer, like there was some answer floating among the bubble. “I wish,” he began, “that it was the fifth day of Qiilura, forever. Stretch that day into infinity. I'd relive it a million times over.”
“Qiilura?”
“It was a good fight, no brothers lost. The only civilian casualty was a heart attack. We took back the North part of the city. Plo Koon took out the shield generator. It was the perfect campaign.”
“Didn't we lose Qiilura?”
“Only after the 104th pulled back to help at Kadavo.”
Rex grimaced. “That's a day I could go without ever thinking about again. That was after Khorm, wasn't it? You'd give up depth perception?”
“I'd gouge out my eye if I could have it back. Ventress could do whatever she wanted to my face if it meant that the 104th was back at my side. That the Republic never fell. That the Jedi…”
Wolffe trailed off and took a drink to keep himself from saying anything more stupid.
“To the Jedi.” Rex said. “To Skywalker and Ahsoka. To Kenobi and, and—and all the rest of them.”
“To Plo Koon.” Wolffe said. “And the rest.”
“And our brothers—to the first batchers, and the rest of us that never got a kiss on the head from Jango Fett. You think he ever thought about us?”
“I think he thought about his paycheck. He kept a son, didn't he? Some unaltered cadet?”
“Yeah…” Rex said. “I don't know whatever happened to him. Must have gotten lost in the aftermath of it all. Wherever he is, hope he's not as weepy as us old bastards!”
“To weepy old bastards.”
“To us.”
They drank.
That aside, I got this awful ad for some writing contest that was looking for ‘spicy romantasy enemies to lovers’ and it pissed me off so much that I finally got back to writing my original fiction. I’m thinking that I’d love to write a spite story (“my writing is better than this YA trash” as one does), and I might submit it for Shousetsu Bangg Bang. I’ll need to get better at writing smut first though…
Chapter 1: Captivity
Chapter Text
You can't keep me here forever."
"Door's right there," Gregor didn't bother looking up from his project as he thumbed over his shoulder.
Wolffe's gaze flicked to the AT-TE exit. He didn't get up from the bed.
"That's what I thought." Gregor said. "Let's get one thing straight, heh: I'm not keeping you anywhere. Rex isn't either. You want a ride to the spaceport, you just ask."
Wolffe remained silent.
"See? We both know you don't have anything better to be doing, aside from, what? Sucking down a DC-17?"
Wolffe rolled over.
"Ooh, hurt your feelings?" Gregor clicked his tongue.
"Gregor." Rex growled from the pilot's seat. "Lay off him."
"I'm just saying what we're all thinking."
"Oh, you a mind reader now?"
Sticking two commanding officers and a SpecOps clone in a confined space was doing absolutely nothing for the collective attitude. Wolffe had come out of the gestation pod prickly, Rex lost the last of his patience after burying two thousand brothers, and Gregor…
Everyone knew that there was something wrong with commandos. There had always been something wrong with commandos, from ∅-class right up until the end of the production line.
"Yeah," Gregor snarked, "Jedi must have missed me. Good thing."
Wolffe flinched. "Fuck off."
"Big words for a man who only gets out of bed to piss."
"Gregor." Came Rex's voice, low in warning.
"Gonna take a swing at me, captain?" Gregor tilted his jaw, tapping his scruff with his hand. "First one's free. We all know you won't manage a second."
It was Wolffe, not Rex, who broke his knuckles on Gregor's face.
Gregor was wrong for once, because Wolffe managed to knee him in the groin. Gregor yelped in pain, but so did Wolffe when his knee hit cup instead of flesh. Wolffe swung again. He felt Gregor's hand close around his wrist, and then his face was crushed into the anti-skid plate. Gregor had Wolffe's arm twisted up behind his back, just below the stress of breaking.
"Enough!" Rex shouted. "What the hell are you two doing? That's your brother, not a droid!"
"Piss off, Rex, and let the CCs handle this." Gregor hissed between his teeth.
Wolffe closed his eyes, and slapped his free hand twice against the deck. He felt, rather than saw, Gregor and Rex's stunned expressions, and the pressure on his arm abruptly ceased.
"You… alright, Wolffe?" Rex's voice came hesitantly.
"Yeah." Wolffe said automatically. "I'm going out for air. Gregor twitched slightly, like he was going to try and stop Wolffe, but he settled back in front of his disassembled blaster.
Wolffe stepped out into the blazing heat and let the exit hatch slam shut behind him. He propped his arms against the welded railing and stared out into the endless expanse.
It wasn't Gregor or Rex keeping him here. It wasn't a sense of camaraderie, or revenge. It was an unspoken promise, a covenant on whatever souls that clones had: you aren't expendable .
And he was here, marching endlessly onward.
Chapter 2: Collapse
Chapter Text
"Are you alright, Commander?" Plo Koon's voice was deep, resonant, and distant. Wolffe shook his head. The world swam through his visor, then slowly straightened.
"Fine." He grunted, with the absolute knowledge that he was not fine. The internal display on his HUD marked his temperature at 38°, and even if he wanted to ignore that, his armor's climate system was turned so cold that it kept shorting out and resetting itself.
He locked his knees and leaned over the holomap projector.
"If we position two Juggernauts here," he pointed to a mountain pass, "we should be able to control the droid advance long enough for Hunter Squadron to begin a bombing run on the main force." He had to pause to inhale.
"Wolffe."
"Once we've limited their forces," Wolffe ignored the concern in Plo Koon's voice, "we can begin the advance towards—"
He paused to exhale and clear his throat.
"We can begin the advance…"
The command tent tipped sideways. EARTHQUAKE flashed in neons across Wolffe's vision, before his legs went out from under him. His chin slammed into the command table, knocking his head backwards, before he crumpled to the ground.
Sir, get down! He tried to shout, but his entire body felt pinned. His mouth lolled in the confines of his helmet. Just inflating his lungs felt like breathing in a vacuum.
"Wolffe." Plo Koon knelt beside him and lifted Wolffe's upper body onto his lap. He felt the Jedi's fingers press against his throat, searching for a pulse. Wolffe tried to smack him away, but he only managed a twitch of his hand.
"Wolffe, I need you to remove your helmet."
Wolffe tried to look left, towards the sensor that would pop the seals, but he could barely keep his eyes open. Plo Koon's talon slipped between his neck seal and the duraplast of his helmet. It took barely a twitch of his finger to tear the mechanism out of the helmet. The helmet blared that the air filter was compromised, and the climate control shut down. Instantly, Wolffe felt like he was melting inside his blacks.
Plo Koon pulled his ruined helmet off and discarded it to the side.
"Wolffe," he said, his deep voice urgent, "look at me."
Wolffe's eyes rolled, trying to focus on the orange blur in front of him. Plo Koon pulled his eyelid open with the same claws that had torn apart armor not a second before.
"General?" Wolffe managed, although it came out as a mumbled whisper.
"You're ill, commander." Plo Koon pushed the sweat soaked curls off of Wolffe's forehead. His cool hand was the best thing that Wolffe had ever felt. He unconsciously turned his neck to press closer.
"I'll call Diego."
It took a second for the words to make sense, but when they did, Wolffe struggled to sit up.
"The briefing—"
"Will be done by myself. You are feverish, Wolffe."
"I'm fine." He managed. "Let me do my job."
"You can't command if you're dead." The words came out harsher than he'd ever heard from the General. Some of the hurt must have shown in his face, because Plo Koon looked cowed. He pressed his hand back over Wolffe's forehead and brought up the Medical Corp on his wrist mounted holo comm.
"Sir." The orange markings on Diego's armor were flattened to blue in the holo projection.
"Commander Wolffe is ill." Plo Koon said, ignoring Wolffe's breathless protests. "He's collapsed in the command tent."
"I'll be there right away, sir." The holo clipped out, with Diego's usual curt attitude.
Plo Koon repositioned Wolffe so he was lying flat on the ground, then took off his outer robe and tucked it under Wolffe's head.
"I don't need that."
"I think you have a skewed perspective on what you need, Commander." The hard edge was back in Plo Koon's voice.
"'M delaying the mission."
"There will be more missions. There will not be another Wolffe."
"There are eighteen million of me."
"You know I don't believe that."
Wolffe didn't have anything to say to him, so he let his eyes slip shut, losing himself to the feeling of soft wool below his head and a softer hand on his brow.
Chapter 3: Used As Bait
Chapter Text
"It was Ventress who took your eye, wasn't it?"
Metallic steps clattered in the gloom. It was that exact eye that cut through the darkness, and watched General Grievous stalk across the prison, in the flat grey of infrared.
Wolffe didn't answer him.
"You don't need to answer." He continued in his metallic rasp. "It was before my time, but our files are extensive."
He stopped in front of Wolffe's cell. Wolffe felt very small, and very naked, clad only in his black bodysuit. Even his greys would have been more substantial against the burn of Grievous' looming gaze.
"Do you think anyone is going to come for you?"
Wolffe eyed him balefully.
"I think you do." Grievous continued. "There is an inherent flaw in turning monks into military. We are more alike than you realize."
"I doubt that." Wolffe rasped. His lips cracked and bled as he spoke. No comfort for the prisoner. He'd be drinking his piss if he was making any.
"Do you?" Grievous continued pacing. "Deep down, you know it. We were made for the battlefield. We wouldn't know what to do with ourselves without it. What happens to you when the war ends?"
"What happens to you?" Wolffe shot the question back at him.
"If the Republic is victorious, then I die. If the Confederacy is victorious, then I live. I doubt that you are as certain as I am."
Wolffe watched him.
"The Jedi are not military. They are warriors, certainly, and it pleases me when they challenge me, but they don't have the spine for war. That is why I know they are going to come for you, when both you and I know that you should be left for dead. You will never break under torture, which is why I have not tortured you. There are thousands of clone commanders that could replace you. You have no information for them to hide, you have no uniqueness as a commander, and yet, the Jedi are going to come save you. Do you think any of them will die in the attempt?"
"I think you have a strong opinion on your own skills."
Grievous watched him, that bone mask gleaming in the shadows. "I know you don't believe that either."
Wolffe stared past him.
Bait.
If it wasn't him, it would have been some other clone. But if it wasn't him, there wouldn't be a rescue. It would hurt him, but Kenobi could live with leaving Cody behind. Plo Koon could not. The things that made him an admirable man made him a terrible general.
Grievous didn't have expressions, but a sense of smug satisfaction spread across his blank face.
"Do you see, now?"
Wolffe parted his lips. "CC-3636, commander of the 104th Attack Battalion. Grand Army of the Republic."
Grievous cackled.
Chapter 4: Lightheaded
Notes:
This is a continuation of my Senator AU. Please read that first.
Chapter Text
Wolffe stared at the silhouettes of clones walking throughout the bar, he heard the familiar voices of brothers, the comforting cadence of someone getting into a spat, the sound of a fight and a resolution and a round of drinks to soothe any hurt feelings.
Something in him hungered for it, some gaping, empty pit in the middle of him, a hole in his whole, an ulcer, a gut bleed.
He turned away and continued walking down the street.
Shore leave for the Guard was different from the Battalion. They had a shore to leave to, not just a bunk on Kamino.
Sergeant Hound had rustled up some shock troopers to go with him to bully a landlord into letting him sign a year lease on an apartment without a background check.
Wolffe had a whole home now. He had a couch and a stovetop burner and a refresher. He had a mattress and a pillow.
He was still sleeping in his bunk in the barracks.
Wolffe blinked away the beginnings of a headache. He turned to head back towards the CorSec barracks, and nearly crashed into a tall figure in a mask.
"Excuse me." A deep, familiar voice slurred.
Wolffe focused, catching the man by his upper arms before he collapsed onto the pavement.
"Senator?" He said, the surprise evident in his voice.
The man grimaced. "Don't remind me."
It was Plo Koon, out of his robes of office, but Kel Dor were few and far between on Coruscant.
Plo Koon's eyes wrinkled in a squint behind the goggles. "I know you."
He tried to take a step, but twisted his legs around each other and nearly took them both to the ground.
"I'm a little lightheaded."
"Woah, sir." Wolffe fought against gravity to keep him upright. "Why don't we find you somewhere where you can sit down?"
Plo Koon must have gotten it in his head that 'somewhere' meant 'right here on the pavement', and sank to the ground in something that was just a touch too controlled to be a collapse.
Wolffe glanced up at the artificial sky. He leaned down over the Kel Dor.
"I meant somewhere else , sir."
Plo Koon was big. Even sitting, he could still reach up and touch Wolffe's face.
"You only had one eye."
"I still only have one eye." Wolffe muttered under his breath. "Let's get you upright, sir. Is there someone you can call?"
Plo Koon sagged. "It was hard enough getting staff before Senator Ma Ega exploded. I don't have anyone."
Something in the way he said it struck a nerve in Wolffe's gut. There was some comfort in a shared wound.
"Come on." Wolffe leaned back and hauled Plo Koon upright. His back twinged in the way that meant he was going to be uncomfortable in his armor tomorrow. "Where's your apartment?"
Plo Koon gestured vaguely. "Seven-fifty Burbank. 3427th level."
It was a mild shock that Wolffe lived on a better level than the senator. Well. No one was going to refuse to offer a trio of heavily armored men a good deal on a lease. And Plo Koon had only been a senator's aide until a few months ago.
"I'll get you a transport." The tram would have been cheaper, but Wolffe didn't trust Plo Koon not to fall onto the electric rail and shut down the entire system. He didn't know how much electricity a Kel Dor could survive, but it probably was less than what was needed to run a planet. Better to call a cab.
Wolffe used the public terminal next to 79's to call the first taxi service in the contact log, and arranged a pickup with a tired sounding woman on the other end of the line.
Plo Koon had managed to get himself to the railing without falling over it. He leaned his forearms on the metal, staring pensively out onto the cityscape.
"How cruel is it that I regret surviving?" He asked, not looking at Wolffe. He pushed himself upright, clinging to the railing like it was the only thing keeping him standing. With the way he smelled, it probably was. "The Republic is pushing to build a production facility on Dorin. Military ships and all that. I know what people think when they see Dorin. What Humans think, when they see Dorin. It's a weather-torn wasteland. It has no resources beyond the atmosphere itself. But it's my home. Do you understand that?"
Wolffe glanced down. "Yeah."
What clone wouldn't? Kamino was dangerous in a way that most other planets weren't. It was desolate, it was sparsely inhabited, it was strange and distant. It was the first thing he had ever known.
"I don't know how to make the decisions that I need to make." Plo Koon said. "I don't know that I can keep the peace and keep my ethics."
Wolffe understood him completely.
Chapter 5: "Stay. Please."
Chapter Text
Lightsaber burns didn't heal. The destruction was too instant, too neat. It was like cutting into skin with a razor hit scalpel, an inch wide. It obliterated tissue; you could stitch up a stab—hell, even a slash from a vibroblade could be repaired.
There was nothing you could do about a lightsaber.
Wolffe blinked, and felt the ragged scraps of his eyelid close over his empty socket. He would have vomited, but the anti emitic they had snaking through the IV stopped him from even that little act of relief.
His helmet had taken most of it, and that was the worst part: this was the best case scenario. His skull was fractured, he had a brain bleed, and his eye was gone .
Maybe dying outright would have been better, but if he hadn't been in the way, if he hadn't drawn Ventress' attention, then she would have just gone for the next weakest target.
"Wolffe."
General Plo Koon's voice buzzed pleasantly in Wolffe's chest. Wolffe breathed in and out, slow and steady, and did his best to feign sleep. He fought down the dark surge of bitter regret. It was easier to frame himself as heroic when he wasn't on the verge of weeping.
There was the soft clunk of a chair being moved, and then the creak of an old cushion being compressed under eighty kilos of Jedi.
He felt a tiny wisp of air across his face, and then, very gently, the press of fingertips against his temple. It was gone as quickly as it had come, but some of the pain leached out of him.
The Force. Or, more likely, some psychosomatic bullshit. He wasn't stupid. He knew that something in him unwound when he was around Plo Koon. It was like taking off a heavy pack at the end of a long march.
He opened his eye. The hollow eyelid sagged upward.
"General." He croaked out.
"Wolffe. You should be resting."
"Can't sleep." Side effect of the mood stabilizer.
Plo Koon reached out with uncharacteristic hesitation and placed his hand over Wolffe's.
"I'm told they have you scheduled for a prosthetic."
"When my skull closes up. Diego said another week of bacta injections and the bone regrowth should be sturdy enough for," Wolffe searched for the words, "the mechanics."
"On Kamino?"
"Yeah."
Plo Koon squeezed his hand. "The 104th is on shore leave. My duties with the council can be performed remotely."
"I don't need a babysitter." Wolffe snapped.
It was hard to read a Kel Dor's face. It was harder to read a Jedi's, but Wolffe caught a trace of guilt shutter under Plo Koon's mask.
Good , Wolffe thought vindictively. Revulsion pulsed through him. He'd been in the same production cycle as Slick. Maybe that traitorous thought was a symptom of the amniotic mix the Kaminoans used.
"I'm sorry," Wolffe muttered, "Sir."
"Don't apologize. I overstepped." Plo Koon patted the back of his hand and made to stand. Wolffe caught his rough spun sleeve.
"Wait." He couldn't meet Plo Koon's gaze. "Stay. Please. I can't sleep."
Plo Koon was hunched, half out of his chair. Wolffe let go of him. Plo Koon straightened his robes, and sat gracefully.
"When I was young, I could never sleep in the creche. Children are curious, of course, and some of my younger peers wanted to see my face. I awoke more than once to my respirator being pulled off."
"That's—" Wolffe hissed. Plo Koon held up a hand.
"Some time ago. I wouldn't hold a child responsible for not knowing. Regardless, I developed a bit of insomnia as a result. One of the creche minders told me a story once. Would you like to hear it?"
"A bedtime story." Wolffe snorted, then closed his eye. "Sure. Why not."
The low drone of Plo Koon's voice washed over him, drowning out the harsh static hum of Ventress' lightsaber that kept playing in his ears.
"A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away…"
Chapter 6: Old Injuries
Chapter Text
His mug clattered to the ground and Wolffe pressed a hand over his eye.
"You alright?" Zeb glanced at the spreading puddle of caf, then at him.
"Fine." Wolffe gritted out, digging the heel of his hand into his prosthetic in a vain attempt to stop the surrounding muscle from spasming. "Fine."
"Don't look fine." Zeb said.
"It—" Wolffe hissed, "it happens. The hardware is legacy."
"They let you have a gun when your eye hasn't been updated in a decade?"
"It's not like I can get it replaced." His vision went white for a second, and then the pain started to recede. "The military surgical center doesn't exist anymore. They don't even make prosthetic eyes like this for civilians."
"They don't make clones anymore either." Zeb eyed him keenly.
Wolffe stooped to pick up the mug, ignoring his creaking knees.
"No. They don't."
Chapter 7: "I didn't have anywhere else to go."
Summary:
More senator AU.
Chapter Text
Wolffe walked, half in mania, lapping circles around the Senate Rotunda. The general comms were exploding, message after message being read in the dry, emotionless voice of his helmet's onboard computing module. Every so often , a CO got on and ordered general silence, but the command was lost in the everpresent surge of messages: have you heard about Sergeant Slick?
He hadn't received a return to barracks command yet, but it was bound to happen soon.
Clones weren't supposed to go below the thousandth floor when they were off duty. It wasn't safe, for the clone in question or for whatever idiots thought they could get away with mugging a Republic Trooper.
Wolffe didn't think. He walked, took the lift system down and down and down. He hadn't plugged the address into his helmet's nav system, but he ended up there regardless.
The side of his fist pounded at the door of Seven-fifty Burbank, 3427th level. It was a long, disquieting moment before he heard any signs of life from within the tiny apartment.
The door opened slowly, and Plo Koon stood in the entryway, holding his mask over his face. His eyes widened when he saw Wolffe.
"Officer?" He sounded wary and hesitant. "How may I help you?"
"It's me." Wolffe said., taking off his helmet. "Wolffe.
The nerves fled from Plo Koon's expression, leaving behind only the exhaustion at the corners of his eyes. "Wolffe! I didn't recognize you. Your armor was painted."
"Regulation." He was indistinguishable from any other member of CorSec. "I—"
He stopped mid sentence. What the hell was he doing? He was harassing a member of the Republic Senate in the middle of the night, on a level he wasn't supposed to be in without a warrant. The order for a general confinement to barracks pinged in his helmet.
"I didn't have anywhere else to go." He managed.
It must have shown on his face. Plo Koon took him by the shoulder, one hand still holding his mask pressed to his face.
"Come in, please."
Wolffe couldn't find the strength to turn around and lock himself in the barracks. A brother would read him like a sheet of flimsi, and he'd be back on Kamino with an electrode poking into his brain.
He stepped into Plo Koon's apartment.
"Should I?" He made to put his helmet back over his head, when he saw Plo Koon strap his respirator firmly over his face. "Never mind."
"Did you want tea?" Plo Koon rubbed his arms, and pulled on a robe he had slung over the back of a chair. The organs on the side of his head expanded slightly, and Wolffe realized that he was yawning.
"It's late." He said abruptly, backing towards the door. "I shouldn't be here."
Plo Koon watched him like he was an airwha about to startle.
"Are you alright?"
Wolffe sagged, leaning against the door and letting his head drop back against the metal with a cold thump.
"No. I'm not."
He didn';t protest when Plo Koon guided him over to the small kitchen table, nor when he took his helmet and put it on a bench in the entryway. He did not refuse the small cup of tea that Plo Koon placed in front of him, but he didn't make a move to drink it.
Plo Koon sat across from him, his hands folded neatly on the table.
"What's wrong?"
"How can I breathe here?" Wolffe asked. "Don't you breathe… nitrogen?"
"Helium." Plo Koon looked thrown for a loop. "It's illegal. A contained atmosphere of helium has to be less than three cubic meters, by coruscant city code. It's a hazard."
"You sleep with a mask on?" Wolffe leaned forward.
"I have a sealed sleeping pod."
Wolffe tried to imagine living in a world where the air would kill you and found himself coming up short. The closest he could picture was being trapped in a shuttle escape pod, alone in a debris field, waiting for the droids to come. A curl of nausea rolled through him.
"A clone…" he began, and fell silent. He drank some of the tea, cringing at the bitter tannins.
Plo Koon chuckled ruefully at his expression. "It's an acquired taste."
Wolffe's face twisted. "A clone turned traitor. Got some of his brothers killed. Tried to kill a Jedi."
"I'm so sorry."
"You don't sound surprised."
"Double agents happen in every war." Plo Koon shrugged. "There are always people who want something that their side can't provide, be it physical or ideological."
"Not with us." Wolffe managed. "Clones don't betray. We don't want. We owe the Republic our lives."
Plo Koon didn't meet his lopsided gaze. Wolffe rubbed around the eye patch.
"I despise this war." He said, eventually.
"This war made me." Wolffe replied.
Plo Koon looked up, panic written across his face. "I didn't mean—"
"I know. But that's my point. Clones don't betray the Republic. There was something wrong with him, and—"
Wolffe cut himself off, nearly biting his tongue.
"And?" Plo Koon asked slowly, curling a cool hand over Wolffe's.
"And there's something wrong with me too." It was barely a whisper. His lips didn't move. "Because I've thought about it too."
Chapter 8: "You look awful."
Chapter Text
"Officer on deck!"
Wolffe was still limping. He hid it as best he could, but these were clones. Same body, same hurts. Every single one of these replacements knew just how broken his body was. The lights hummed overhead; they were a drill boring into his migraine.
"At ease!" He barked, and as one, the crowd of identical men fell into a parade rest.
He limped down the column of troopers. The loss of the 104th hadn't just been a logistical blow. The Triumphant was sixty million credits that the Republic didn't have. It was far more than the seven hundred credits that Wolffe was worth.
"He looks awful."
It was barely a murmur. Wolffe's head snapped around.
"Who said that!"
Silence. Wolffe lurched forward, to the nearest clone. "I asked you a question, Trooper!"
The clone looked nervous. "I—"
"Speak up!"
"Sir—" Another clone spoke up. Wolffe's head snapped over to him. He visibly paled.
"Sir, no one—" he tried again.
"No one?" Wolffe growled.
"No one," the clone managed, in barely more than a mumble, "no one said anything."
Wolffe had rights and privileges as a CO. He had a private room, a luxury on a ship housing nearly six hundred troopers, plus support staff. He took better quality rations in the officer's lounge. His training was more extensive; even his DNA had more time and care put into it than a line trooper. He didn't have the same desire for camaraderie that troopers did.
He could assign unpleasant duties as punishment, hell, he could revoke rations if he needed to. He could scream at a trooper, call him a piece of shit lower than dirt.
He could not, under any circumstances, lay a hand on any of the soldiers under his command.
Wolffe snatched the trooper by his armor collar and hauled him forward. "What the fuck did you just say?"
The other troopers jerked in a wave of surprise. Wolffe didn't notice it.
"I asked you a question!"
"Sir, I—"
"Speak up!" Wolffe shook him. "I said to speak up you waste of air!"
"Commander!" The shout came from behind him. He felt a hand at his shoulder and shrugged it off. "Commander!"
Wolffe grabbed the hand and twisted him into an arm lock. He blinked and looked down, and realized that he was halfway to breaking Sinker's arm.
"Wolffe!" He gasped. "Let me go."
Wolffe dropped him and shoved him away, unsure if he was trying to hurt Sinker or get him out of range.
"You have something to say, Sergeant?"
Sinker rolled his shoulder, massaging the joint with his opposite hand. "You're out of line, sir."
Sinker had been with him since the beginning. That was the only reason that Wolffe broke his nose instead of his jaw.
Sinker landed on his ass, more out of shock than genuine pain. One of the new troopers rushed over to help him to his feet, but Sinker pushed him away. He wiped the blood off his face with the side of his fist, and maneuvered himself into a crouch.
"Wolffe, you—"
"WOLFFE!"
It was a bass rumble that split the recycled air like lightning. Wolffe's spine instantly went straight.
Plo Koon walked down a row of troopers, his robes fluttering behind him. Boost scurried along behind him.
"Commander." He intoned. Plo Koon had never frightened Wolffe. He was an alien, and more distinctly inhuman than most. He was massive, towering a head above even clones, who were not small men. He had claws.
Wolffe felt a spike of fear strike down his spine.
"Sir." He managed, saluting.
Plo Koon stared at him for a long moment, then jerked his chin at Sinker. "Sergeant. You have command. Commander, please join me."
It was not a request. Wolffe swallowed his pride and followed him. He kept his back as straight as his shame would allow.
Plo Koon led him to a small command room, and gently closed the door behind him. Wolffe stood behind one of the chairs. Plo Koon sat on the opposite side of the round table.
"Sir—"
Plo Koon held up his hand. "Sit, Wolffe."
Wolffe's mouth shut with a click, and he sat slowly, stretching his leg off to the side.
Plo Koon was silent for a long moment. He barely breathed, but when he did, it was low and raspy, dragged through his mask. Was he ever afraid? Did he fear the sky the same way that Wolffe feared the endless, endless glittering, empty starfield of space?
"You're hurt." Plo Koon said, eventually.
"No I'm not." Wolffe snapped in instinctive response.
Plo Koon gave him a measured glance.
"My leg is almost healed." Wolffe said. "I have full duty clearance."
"I'm not referring to your leg, Wolffe. You were recalled to Kamino."
Wolffe's cheek twitched.
"May I ask why?"
"Military tribunal." Wolffe managed eventually, very evenly. "Courtsmartial."
"For Abregado?"
"For the Triumphant."
Plo Koon was very intuitive. "You didn't kill those men."
"Of course I didn't. I'm still responsible for it."
Plo Koon rose and pressed his cold hand to Wolffe's shoulder.
"I won't let them decommission you, Wolffe."
"It's not really up to you."
Chapter 9: Hair Pulling
Summary:
Sith au sith au sith au!
Chapter Text
"What do we have here?"
It was a girl's voice. It shouldn't have sent a chill down his spine, but it was the context of it. This was a battlefield. He was surrounded by the bodies of his brothers in gleaming white armor.
Wolffe struggled to breathe through his collapsed lung, staring up at the blinding sun. He was flat on his back in the mud and blood, and he couldn't move. He'd hit the ground hard. It could have been spinal.
A shadow moved over him. Wolffe blinked.
It was a little alien girl—Togruta, judging by the orange skin and vibrant horns. She wore a black cloak that was too big on her. The hem of it was splattered with drying mud.
Her eyes gleamed yellow.
"This one is alive!" She called out, pointing at him. There was a lightsaber on her belt. Wolffe's scalp went cold.
"What is it, little 'Soka?" The voice was harsh and resonant. Wolffe recognized it from the intelligence reports on Kadavo. His eyes rolled wildly in his head, darting back and forth, looking for his gun, a rock, anything.
"It's a clone." The girl said, squatting down next to him. "He's got a glass eye."
She tapped his prosthetic with a dirty nail. He flinched.
"Ahsoka, leave the man be."
A tall Kel Dor in a bronze mask stepped up behind the Togruta girl. He was broad and massive, and walked in near silence. He rested a friendly hand on the girl's head and gently tugged her horn back and forth. It was, Wolffe realized, the non-mammalian equivalent of ruffling a child's hair.
He knelt in the mud by Wolffe's head.
"Can you speak?" He asked.
"Did you steal her from the Jedi?" Wolffe croaked. The Kel Dor tilted his head, almost quizzical, before he carded his clawed fingers through Wolffe's hair.
"I stole her," he said, and wrenched Wolffe upwards by his hair, "from slavers."
Wolffe couldn't bite back the yelp of pain. He gurgled up blood. That was a lung, yeah. Agony spiked down his thighs. At least it wasn't spinal.
"You're a commander, aren't you?" The Kel Dor said, tugging Wolffe this way and that by his hair, in a gross parody of how he treated the girl. "I don't know much about your military. Do you think they would miss you?"
"No." Blood bubbled out from between his lips, tinged with amusement. "Maybe the eye. It was expensive."
"Oh?" He sounded curious. "Well, in that case…"
Chapter 10: Can't Stay Awake
Chapter Text
Wolffe's vision blurred. He shook his head and blinked, and when that didn't work, he slapped himself.
Coruscant always did this to him. The Jedi Temple always did this to him.
Battleships had a constant hum, a constant buzz of activity, of a thousand other brothers patrolling, sleeping, running drills, farting. The engines were a drone of inconstant noise. Alarms were constantly going off. Even just being on a ship was a tension—at any moment, Kuat's finest could fail, and he'd be dead before he realized it.
The Jedi Temple was quiet, and tranquil, and safe.
It was like he'd doffed his armor, but its familiar weight still hung heavy on his shoulders. His eyelids did too.
The Jedi cadets were eyeing him curiously. Half of them looked like they should still be incubating. Wolffe clasped his hands behind his back and longed for his rifle. His head drooped to his shoulder.
"Commander."
Wolffe jerked upright with a sharp inhale. "Sir." He saluted. Plo Koon looked at him with mild concern.
"I'm finished here. Come." He tilted his chin. "I'd like to show you something."
Wolffe's breathing became more and more relaxed as they walked through the twisting hallway of the Temple. He wasn't stumbling—that was trained out of him during officer school—but if he leaned too long against any given surface he'd be out.
"Here." Plo Koon waved his hand in front of a fairly nondescript door, and it slid open.
Wolffe's eyes went wide. It was a massive tiered waterfall, with what must have been a hundred offshoot pools and springs. Jedi cadets splashed in the water—swimming lessons, while the older ones sat cross-legged, or balanced upside down on their hands. The air was warm and slightly humid. Wolffe fought back a sudden pang of nostalgia.
"Sir?"
Plo Koon led him through the room, to a secluded spot at an unused spring.
"I have mentioned before," he sat on his knees, his hands cupped in his lap, "that I'd like to teach you some meditation. Please: sit and close your eyes."
Wolffe could recognized pretense. It burned him that he recognized it.
He sat, and closed his eyes.
Chapter 11: "Just get it over with."
Chapter Text
Wolffe heard armored boots clicking across the command center's smooth synthetic tile.
"Just get it over with."
Rex caught his shoulder and turned him around, and his fist snapped out across Wolffe's jaw. There was soft tissue damage, yes, but Wolffe felt the distinct bite of pain that came from a broken jaw. He hit the ground, hard. The staff looked at them, and one of the shinies was stupid enough to take a step forward before Wolffe held up a hand and his smarter buddies pulled him back.
Wolffe spat bloody saliva on the floor.
"Get it out of your system?" He wiped his mouth with the side of his hand and looked up at Rex.
"You shot Ahsoka!"
"I did my job, Captain ."
Rex had been crying, that was obvious by his red-rimmed eyes. He reached down and hauled Wolffe to his feet by his armor collar.
"You fucker." He hissed, shaking Wolffe. Rex had been an ARC before he made rank. He outweighed Wolffe by a good ten kilos. "She's a little girl!"
"She's a Jedi." Wolffe replied levely, waving down the brothers with their rifles shouldered. "And she's a suspect."
"I know you aren't stupid enough to think she did it."
Wolffe didn't respond. Rex shook him again before shoving him away. Wolffe stumbled. His head swam and his jaw ached. He very desperately wanted to be back on the Triumphant .
"How long until you get all of them killed too?" Rex hissed.
"You're out of line, brother."
" You pulled the trigger."
"I was following orders."
"You're nothing but a drone." Rex spat. "A mindless thing. They took out whatever parts made you human when they stuck that droid part in the hole in your head."
He shoved Wolffe one more time, for good measure and turned on his heel.
Wolffe rolled his shoulders and thought about his schedule. A visit to the onbase medic would have to happen now, wouldn't it?
He felt eyes on his plastisteel.
"What are you all looking at?" He snapped. "Don't you have something to be doing?"
The shinies dispersed.
Wolffe scuffed the blood on the floor out under his boot.
Chapter 12: Rescue
Summary:
Follow up to 'Used as Bait'.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The distant rumble of an explosion shook the wall that Wolffe was leaning against.
Leaning was a confident way of putting it. He clung desperately to the wall, because if he put any less effort into remaining upright, he was going to end up on the floor.
Grievous had been gone for a week, thereabouts. There was no day-night cycle in Wolffe’s cell, only the constantly humming light overhead. He'd resorted to counting days by how often he slept, but that was getting more and more unreliable as the days stretched on without food. A pipe has begun to drip in the corner of his cell on the second day. He had nothing to do but sit under it with his tongue out.
An explosion could mean anything.
The second one threw Wolffe off his feet. The pipe tore out of the wall and began spraying water on the floor. It was icy, but he wasn't so far gone that he wouldn't take advantage when he could. The water tasted metallic, and it was the best thing he'd ever had.
It was also filling up his cell. His black were wicking, but there was only so much the Republic materials science researchers could do when he was ankle deep in hypothermia.
“Hello!” He shouted through the energy bars. They hadn't shorted yet, but it was only a matter of time. The question was if they'd short before he drowned. “CC-3636! I'm a Republic Trooper!”
He heard the echo of footsteps on metal. He recognized the gait. He'd know it anywhere.
Plot Koon’s face appeared in the gloomy haze. “Wolffe.”
“General.” His heart sank and he fought off his shivers. “This is a trap, sir. Grievous—”
“Is on the other side of the galaxy, fighting Obi-wan Kenobi. I am here for you, Wolffe.”
He lit his lightsaber. The warm yellow was the closest thing to heat that Wolffe had felt in weeks. He limped to the back corner of his cell, and Plo Koon cut through the electronics. The laser grid died with a whine.
Wolffe made it to the edge of his cell before he had to admit it. “I won't be able to walk out of here, sir.”
“Did you think I would leave you behind over something as simple as that?” Plo Koon held out his arm and carefully looped around Wolffe’s waist, and lifted him as easily as he would a child. It was a blow to Wolffe's masculinity. He couldn't bring himself to care overmuch.
“Ready?”
“It's your rescue, sir. I'm just along for the ride.”
Notes:
Uh yeah it's been a year. I'm gonna finish this I swear.
Chapter 13: 'I'm Fine'
Chapter Text
Wolffe's eye shot open and for a sickening second, he didn't know where he was. His heart pounded in his chest. Then, the shadows faded into familiarity and his prosthetic eye hummed to life. The world bled from black to the overbright green of night vision.
He was in his bunk in the AT-TE. Gregor was snoring under him and Rex shifted restlessly above him.
He couldn't have shouted in his sleep, because then they would both be still and silent, pretending very badly to still be asleep. His heart was still racing. Wolffe carefully extracted himself from his bunk, picking his way over Gregor's mess on the floor.
It seemed like a year of being a line cook had destroyed the discipline that a decade of commando training had tried to instill in him.
He slipped out of the AT-TE and leaned against the railing. The desert wind was cool and dry, and his lips chapped almost instantly.
Wolffe had visited Dorin once. The 104th was put on reserve; Plo Koon had been injured and needed specialized medical care to recover from it. It stood to reason that Wolffe would go on the escort.
It was a desolate planet, wind-blasted and barren. The Kel Dor lived in low domed houses, with intricate subterranean walkways and parks. The flatness of Seelios reminded him of that week he'd spent underground, hovering over Plo Koon and trying to look like he wasn't.
“Nightmares?” Gregor's voice broke him from his memories. To Wolffe's horror, he found that his eye was wet.
“It's the wind.” Wolffe said, scrubbing his face with his sleeve. “I'm fine.”
Gregor snorted. “Sure you are. I sleep under you every night.”
“You were asleep.”
“You think I can't fake snoring?” Gregor raised an eyebrow. They watched the empty vastness for a long while.
“Rex is a good man.” Gregor said eventually. He didn't meet Wolffe's gaze. “But he doesn't understand. I shot Shaak Ti. I saw the after action report. I know what you did to Plo Koon.”
Wolffe always tasted metal when he thought about it. The sooty tinge of his blaster on his tongue. It took ten pounds of pressure to pull a DC-17’s trigger. His fingers had shaken too much to do it.
“ARC-170, you are cleared to fire.” Wolffe repeated. “I say it every night.”
“It was a group of cadets that arrested her. They didn't give the kiddos live rounds, so they had to call me in to finish it.” Gregor pushed himself upright. “We’re in the same boat, brother.”
“No, we aren't.”
Gregor shrugged. “Maybe not the same one. I can see you over the waves though. Dipping up and down and up and down. Heh-he. Sometimes you dip under, you know. It would kill Rex if it happened.”
“It'd kill me too. I wouldn't be around to care.”
“There's that bastard I know and love.” Gregor elbowed him. “You haven't been bitchy in a long while—thought the fight had gone out of you.”
“Shove off.”
Gregor cackled. “I've gotta get a promise out of you, first, brother. You're fine? Stay fine. Keep your pretty head all in one piece.”
Wolffe exhaled. “Fine. Fine.”
“Pinky swear?”
Wolffe narrowed his eye at Gregor. “Don't push your luck.”
Chapter 14: Headache
Summary:
Sith AU again.
Chapter Text
Plo Koon blinked behind his goggles, and tried to keep from vomiting. The pain behind his eyes spiked up to an unbearable before it receded down to tolerable levels. He did not trust himself to stand, so he remained seated across the span of the massive table.
Count Dooku watched him from the head of the table.
“Are you well, Master Plo?” His voice was rich and resonant, and it rattled through Plo Koon's head like a discordant symphony.
“I am not a Jedi, Count Dooku.”
Count Dooku dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Of course. But then, we leave behind the trappings of the Order so slowly, do we not? Why, you've even taken a Padawan.”
His eyes lighted on Ahsoka, stood half in shadow by the doorway. Her hood was pulled low over her face.
“My ward.” Plo Koon corrected him.
“Of course.” Count Dooku agreed readily. “Men like us must make concessions.”
His assassin, the Dathomirian woman. Plo Koon had seen her at Count Dooku’s side during Separatist meetings. They were entirely professional, but then, the assassin wore armor that was worth more than Dorrin’s GDP. Not the sort of thing you'd give to a disposable tool, and exactly the sort of thing that you would give to a child to ensure her safety on the battlefield.
Ahsoka wore a beskar plate under her robes. Plo Koon had told her that he scavenged it from a battlefield, but they both knew he was lying. The blood on it was still warm when he gave it to her.
He steepled his fingers together and focused on remaining upright.
“I will be blunt with you, Plo Koon.” Count Dooku said. “You are an unknown quantity. You have left the Jedi.”
“Many people leave the Jedi.”
“I know. I count myself among them. You have fallen—I know well enough to recognize it in someone else, but you do not ally yourself with me.”
Plo Koon let him continue.
“I have seen the aftermath of your actions on the battlefield, and you clearly don't number yourself among the Republic. Dorrin is Republican, not Separatist, unless you number among the dissidents, which you don't. I admit that I am perplexed.”
“And what is it that you think inviting me here can answer?” He hated politicking. The Force was not a comfort these days. There was no relief to be found in its murky embrace.
He should have known that he was going to Fall decades ago, when he first called the storm to his fingertips and used Electric Judgement.
“I think my inviting you here is an excuse for dinner.” Count Dooku smiled, and for an instant he was every inch the genial host. He was old blood, old money, old power. “And an opportunity for a fortuitous alliance.”
“Certainly not with you.”
“Certainly not.” Count Dooku agreed. “For a man who hates it, you do have an eye for politics. No, I have a man—well, a clone. He is a useful ally of mine who can no longer remain where he is. I need a place for him.”
“And you think I can offer it?”
“I think it would benefit you to do so.” Count Dooku glanced at Ahsoka. “And I think that you are the kind of man who cannot resist taking in strays. Wolffe!”
Plo Koon was shocked to find that he recognized the clone. They were identical, to a man, barring the odd tattoo or strange hairstyle.
Or injury.
Wolffe—that was his name, the clone on the battlefield, all those years ago—he wore an eye patch now. Of course he did. Ahsoka kept the robot prosthetic on the shelf above her bed, with the rest of her precious things.
“Wolffe was my agent on Christophsis. I think you will come to find a positive working relationship with him.”
Politician talk.
“Wolffe, this is Plo Koon.”
Wolffe's face cracked into a nasty smile. “We're familiar.”
Plo's headache surged.
Chapter 15: Sleep Deprivation
Chapter Text
His fingers were twitching.
Wolffe curled his hand into a fist. There. No more twitching.
He rubbed the sore spot on his thigh—he’d had to switch from left to right, too much bruising—and eased up his blacks. His armor clipped back on in seconds and he popped his bucket back over his head. It was like he was a new man.
Wolffe exhaled as the high powered stims coursed through his blood, shaking off some of the exhaustion. How long has it been since he'd slept? Four days? Had he gotten some shuteye on the ship?
His helmet hid both the deep bruising under his eyes and his pinprick pupils.
“Give me a sit-rep.” He said, shouldering his rifle and stepping out of the relative privacy of the command tent.
Comet ducked next to him. “First battle group is advancing from the east. We have them pinned just south of the river basin.”
“Air support?”
“Still out of communication.”
“Have Sinker move the comm relays up into the ridge. We can't hold the city without air bombardment.”
“We flush one encampment and they scurry into the next one over.” Comet exhaled.
“Take fifteen.” Wolffe ordered him. “Have Boost sub in for you.”
“How long have you been going, sir?” It sounded innocent, but this was Comet.
“Enough lip, sergeant.” Wolffe made absolutely certain that he had his balance before he began to walk. His on-board computer kept alerting him that his heart rate was dangerously high. “How is…”
“Still in the bacta.” Comet caught his question. “He needs a specialist, but Diego thinks that you got him out of oxygen before any permanent damage was done to his lungs.”
“Get some sleep.” Wolffe said eventually. Comet ducked away to the two-man tents. Wolffe waited until he was out of sight before he carefully picked his way over to the medical tent.
Plo Koon floated in the blue haze of bacta. Diego and his crew had managed to jerry-rig a connection port to a tank of Dorin gas. It twisted something deep in Wolffe to see such a powerful man brought so low. Plo Koon looked frail. It was the only time in his life that Wolffe would have ever described Plo Koon as weak.
There was no other command officer. He had Comet and Boost. They couldn't hack it. The droids were backing the local Separatists, and they would bombard the Republic holdings the second a clone turned his back to piss.
“Diego.” Wolffe croaked. The medic glanced up from a walking wounded—a brother with a broken arm.
“Sir.”
“Get me another round of stim auto-injectors. I've got something I need to do before I take a rest.”
Chapter 16: Aftermath
Notes:
I got confused somewhere in my notes and wrote one extra story whoops. Here's the actual final entry, over a year in the making. Thanks for sticking out!
Chapter Text
He was an old hand at losing people by now.
“Gregor.” He said, and tipped his beer to Rex’s.
“Gregor.”
Jango Fett must have been a sullen drunk. There was no other way to explain how every clone got weepy on his tenth beer.
He’s been tone deaf, too.
Rex hummed listlessly under his breath.
“And he's marching far away.” Wolffe muttered when Rex got to the only line he knew.
“In Basic?”
“We had mercs to train us, not Mandos. Jag tried to teach us a few words—he was old stock, first batcher. No one ever picked up more than a few cusses. You know how first batchers are.”
“Fuckin’ weirdos.” Rex concluded. “Gregor was too. It took ‘em a few rounds to iron out the kinks. He did his best, but we had translator droids for a reason. I think was, eh: nu kyradick shi taab—somethin’ somethin’ kaysh gar.”
His voice was gruff from crying and alcohol, and half the words were slurred into nonsense.
“There's no one left to teach it, huh, brother?” Rex was maudlin. Wolffe let him be. He deserved some self-pity for putting up with all their shit.
“Maybe you'll find it at the bottom of another bottle.” Wolffe said, and gestured for another round. There was no way in any of the Seven Corellian Hells that they were making it back to the ship tonight. It would be a miracle if they both made it out of the bar with functioning livers.
“We’re the last of a dying breed.”
“It was bound to happen sooner or later.” Wolffe stifled a burp. “The war wasn't going to last forever.”
“You wish it had.”
Rex had him on that one. Wolffe leaned his head on his arms and gazed into the murky yellow of his beer, like there was some answer floating among the bubble. “I wish,” he began, “that it was the fifth day of Qiilura, forever. Stretch that day into infinity. I'd relive it a million times over.”
“Qiilura?”
“It was a good fight, no brothers lost. The only civilian casualty was a heart attack. We took back the North part of the city. Plo Koon took out the shield generator. It was the perfect campaign.”
“Didn't we lose Qiilura?”
“Only after the 104th pulled back to help at Kadavo.”
Rex grimaced. “That's a day I could go without ever thinking about again. That was after Khorm, wasn't it? You'd give up depth perception?”
“I'd gouge out my eye if I could have it back. Ventress could do whatever she wanted to my face if it meant that the 104th was back at my side. That the Republic never fell. That the Jedi…”
Wolffe trailed off and took a drink to keep himself from saying anything more stupid.
“To the Jedi.” Rex said. “To Skywalker and Ahsoka. To Kenobi and, and—and all the rest of them.”
“To Plo Koon.” Wolffe said. “And the rest.”
“And our brothers—to the first batchers, and the rest of us that never got a kiss on the head from Jango Fett. You think he ever thought about us?”
“I think he thought about his paycheck. He kept a son, didn't he? Some unaltered cadet?”
“Yeah…” Rex said. “I don't know whatever happened to him. Must have gotten lost in the aftermath of it all. Wherever he is, hope he's not as weepy as us old bastards!”
“To weepy old bastards.”
“To us.”
They drank.
That aside, I got this awful ad for some writing contest that was looking for ‘spicy romantasy enemies to lovers’ and it pissed me off so much that I finally got back to writing my original fiction. I’m thinking that I’d love to write a spite story (“my writing is better than this YA trash” as one does), and I might submit it for Shousetsu Bangg Bang. I’ll need to get better at writing smut first though…
