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Sometimes, in the night, Plo felt himself tumbling, end over end, down towards Cato Neimoidia. In the dreams, he always cried out, as he had not done in life. The scream had come from elsewhere, deeper and more integral than his lungs. The scream had been the death of the universe, every Jedi, everywhere, crying out as they died. In real life, Plo had fainted before hitting the ground, had woken delirious, mask half working and blind in one eye from his goggles cracking at the impact. Wolffe had been there already, and Plo had known him even in his armor. In the dreams, Wolffe was always the one shooting him down, laughing as he fell.
During dreams like this, Plo would often find arms wrapped around him again, hot-blooded and steady against fear and loss. He never asked Wolffe how he always knew. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the now familiar press of Wolffe’s steady form against his back. How Mace would have judged this- but, well, Mace didn’t get to judge anything any more.
Plo had always been uncommonly close with his troopers, and uncommonly open about their closeness. Kenobi, at least, had always tried to hide it. Skywalker had been as obvious in his affections as Plo, but even he had died without breaking the code like this for them. Plo thought often about all of them, his brothers and sisters who were gone. He thought of Luminara, who’d been a loyal friend, and old Jocasta Nu who’d so long outlived all her creche-mates, and Ahsoka- well, it was better not to think of Ahsoka.
“Shh,” whispered Wolffe, though Plo was sure he’d made no noise. Wolffe’s lips pressed to the back of his head. “It’s still dark out. Sleep.”
Though the old, Jedi part of him still found it odd, the new Plo, who’d lived with Wolffe for five years since Cato Neimoidia, placed his hands over Wolffe’s, sliding them slightly to rest upon his heart.
After the crash, Wolffe had reported Plo’s death, and had faked his own. He’d dressed another trooper- already dead- in his armor and thrown the body into Plo’s ship before blowing it to smithereens. Then he’d gone to what remained of the Neimoidians on that world and had stolen a small ship, barely an escape pod. For much of this, Plo had slept. Only his tough skin had saved him from certain death, and even then he had struggled to breathe.
With what had then been surprising tenderness, Wolffe had cared for him, first on Cato Neimoidia and then in their ship. Together, they’d repaired Plo’s mask and goggles, though his eyesight in his left eye had never fully returned.
“We match,” Plo remembered saying, reaching up to touch the bottom of Wolffe’s scar, just below his eye. Wolffe had blushed red, and Plo had realized, without a single word spoken between them, that the reason Wolffe was there, that he had left his brothers to be there, was from love. The revelation was still earth shattering, even all these years later.
After Cato Neimoidia, they’d jumped planets for a while, had considered trying to fight the empire, and- at Wolffe’s discretion- had decided against it. They were neither of them young- Wolffe was, too young, but that was not a privilege permitted clones- and alone they would have died.
“You may be the last Jedi in all the galaxy,” Wolffe had reminded him, as they lay far apart on a single, rented bed on some nowhere planet. “If you die against him, even if you win, there will be nobody left to remember.”
“There would be you.”
A shuffle of sheets and the mattress moving under him meant Wolffe was turning over to look at him. He always kept his blind eye towards Plo, a gesture of casual trust that meant the world. Plo didn’t look up at him in return.
“You’re an idiot,” Wolffe had growled, as if the suggestion that he would live one day in this galaxy without him was ridiculous.
So they’d decided to hide, instead. It was easier to pick one planet, one cover story, and stick to it. So they became Lev Kor and Wilber Naak, former bounty hunters who’d decided to settle down and work in more honest professions. Lev went to teaching school, showed an aptitude for it, and tutored reading and writing in Basic. Wilber worked in construction for a while before Lev found him a position teaching Mando’a. After that, their income fairly steady, they bought an apartment. Years rolled together. Everyone assumed they were married and neither of them corrected the assumption. If Wilber’s red hair was obviously dyed, and his dark glasses hid more than just his scars, nobody said anything. When Lev grew quiet on Empire Day, nobody said anything.
“I have a student coming in a couple hours,” said Plo, “we should get up.” Time had passed without much effort or awareness on his part.
They dressed and ate together. Without an atmospheric chamber, Plo hadn’t been able to take off the mask and eat solid food in years. Wolffe always said they would work to afford it, but it was an unattainable dream. More, it would mean functionally living apart, and that was a price Plo was unwilling to pay. So Wolffe ate, and Plo drank, and they prepared for their seperate days. Wolffe mentioned something of his lesson plans, Plo went over his worksheets, and then they parted ways.
Some weeks later, after another nightmare, waking up shaking, Plo and Wolffe had begun to speak freely. They rarely did so, though they had jammers against listening devices and the force against listening people. It was then that Wolffe said it:
“Have you ever thought about children?”
“In what capacity?” They were not of compatible species, and neither of them, to Plo’s knowledge, were capable of carrying.
Wolffe’s tone was oddly nervous. “I mean… you used to look for children who were strong in the force. To train them. Have you ever thought about it? The galaxy is full of orphans, surely some of them are…”
Plo didn’t like to think about it, but he was right. Of course he was. Force sensitive children were still being born every day, all across the galaxy. Likely, many of them were never realizing their remarkable gifts. Likely, more of them were dying from it.
“I could not ask a child to carry on all of this. To be the only Jedi when I am gone.” What a horrible gift to give a child, to carry the future of the order after he was gone.
Wolffe shook his head. “I don’t mean that. I mean…”
Oh. Force. “You mean as our child. Someone who only we could protect.” It made sense, and it was as terrifying as any trial.
Without turning to look, he knew Wolffe was nodding. “I think you would be an excellent father.”
“So would you.” Wolffe was, without question, one of the most loving people in the galaxy. He was safety incarnate, generous in affection. “But before we bring someone else into our home, I think we need to decide what we are, inside the home as well as out of it.”
Wolffe’s hand came up to touch him, tracing the curves and folds of Plo’s thick skin. He said what they already both knew to be true: “I love you. Always have.”
As a Jedi, Plo should have kept away from attachments, but he’d never been good at it. Those children he brought to the creche, his master, his troopers, his padawans, Wolffe- Plo loved them. “And I you.” It was harder to say the word, which made it all the more necessary. “I love you.”
The noise Wolffe made was a choked one, and then he went silent. It took Plo a second to realize he was crying. Turning over, he ran a careful talon under Wolffe’s eye, wiping away his tears.
“I always wondered if you would feel the same,” he whispered, voice cracking. “With the code, I always thought-”
If Plo could go back in time and do one thing, he wouldn’t kill a Sith or end the empire or save the younglings. He would reword the code. Not change the intention, merely reword it. “The code forbids selfishness. Love- real love- should never be selfish.”
He wanted to kiss him, but that wasn’t what they were. Instead, he pressed his forehead to Wolffe’s, like real Mandalorians. This close, he was so deeply aware of Wolffe in the force, as a life form tied indelibly to the rest of the galaxy. Plo had never been like Qui-Gon, so many years dead, breathing the living force, but he was no traditionalist either. He could feel the warmth of Wolffe’s being not just physically but all around him.
“I love you,” repeated Plo, and let Wolffe hold him until he fell asleep.
In the coming months, Plo began to stretch his sense of the force in ways he had not for years. He was careful, for fear of the Sith, but he became increasingly aware of the fact that there were still force sensitive people in the universe. Not everything was ended.
In the end, they adopted a Mandalorian girl, two years old, who they said was Wolffe’s niece. For all they knew, she really might have been. She wasn’t very force sensitive- born a decade earlier, she would have been destined for a life in the Corp- but she was force sensitive enough to be in danger from it. With the force so quiet, now, it was easy to sense her if you were looking. Plo would teach her calm; Wolffe would teach her self-defence.
With Aileen, they both were more alert than ever for potential threats. So, when she was four and there was a pounding on their door, both of them were reaching for blasters before they even knew what was happening.
“Take her and go,” Plo murmured. He wished, not for the first time, that they had not left his lightsaber as evidence of his death. If he had survived, he would have taught Aileen to make her own. But without a Jedi, maybe they would let her and Wolffe be. Maybe.
“Running is incriminating,” returned Wolffe, “this might be nothing.”
It might be, if not for the fact that whoever was at the door was hiding themselves in the force. The knocking came again, loud and steady as a heartbeat. It was good that they’d moved a little out of the city. Neighbours would be less likely to notice, to come and check and put themselves in harm’s way.
“Don’t you dare let Aileen risk her life because of us.”
Wolffe shook his head. “We’d never be able to outrun them anyways, you know that.”
He was right. Force. Unconsciously, Plo felt himself slipping back into the stance of a Jedi master. He would die before he let the Sith lay a single finger on their daughter. Blaster concealed in his waistband, he reached out and opened the door.
He felt her in the force as soon as he saw her. For a single stupid second he thought it was Shaak Ti, much younger than the age at which she’d died. But it wasn’t. They barely looked alike, save that they were both Togruta with a certain presence in the force. She stared at him as much as he stared at her.
“Master Plo?” Her voice cracked on it, a child’s words from an adult’s lips. If there had been any doubt in his mind that this was her, the familiarity would have removed it.
Plo found himself robbed utterly of speech. Instead it was Wolffe who replied, “Ahsoka Tano. We thought you were dead.”
That broke the dam. Her arms came up and around him, and she was crying. Kel Dor didn’t cry with their eyes, but Plo found himself shaking in her arms, air even more difficult to draw in than usual.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped. “You deserved better from all of us, Little ‘Soka. I am so immeasurably sorry.”
Because, despite everything, Ahsoka Tano was good, she forgave him. She forgave his hypocrisy, in esteeming the code and abandoning it. She forgave that he had not come to look for her, and that he did not partake in her rebellion. Wolffe made tea, and they sat in the kitchen together, all three of them. Plo knew that he wouldn’t sleep that night, and Wolffe’s presence at his side was a needed assurance. Together, they unspooled the story of how they’d arrived there. Plo and Wolffe shared the life-green threads of their healing, of their marriage, of their daughter. Ahsoka, proud eldest child, shared her losses and her victories, how she’d come to survive the genocide- Ahsoka gave it that word, and she was not wrong- and how she’d lived after.
Once, she turned to Wolffe and said, “you weren’t the only Vod to survive as yourself.”
Largely, however, she was reluctant to share much information. Even before the death of the Jedi, the war had made them all fearful with their knowledge. Now, with so much danger around every corner, everyone was reluctant to tell truths.
What Ahsoka was willing to share, however, was how she’d come to find them. “I wasn’t looking for you,” she explained, gesturing to the both of them. “I came because I had a tip off of smugglers selling force-sensitive children to the outer rim. The parents let them do it because if the empire finds out what the child is they know they’ll all die. Looking to track them, we started looking for specific children who’d been considered strange and then never seen again in their communities.”
What a terrible, bloody thing. “Nobody will sell her anywhere.”
Ahsoka nodded. “So she’s your… padawan?”
The word seemed lined with loss, now. “She’s our daughter. Whatever she needs to keep her safe, she will learn. Anything else will be her choice.”
“I think,” said Ahsoka, eyes focused down at the table as tears built in them, “that you’re going to give her something better than she would have had in the temple.”
It was a validation Plo had yearned for and been unable to name. Again, Wolffe said for him what he was unable to. “Would you like to stay and meet your little sister?”