Chapter Text
When CC-3636 was four, he pissed off his training sergeant. That wasn’t unusual and in fact was just slightly easier to accomplish than getting dressed in the morning – Luukavii Haestron had the cool, collected temper of a wounded nexu, a penchant for brutal punishment, and no patience with anything that fit his wide interpretation of insubordination. That included ‘holding eye contact for too long’ (which he perceived as defiance) and ‘not holding eye contact long enough’ (which signified timidity). CC-3636 quickly mastered the art of meeting Haestron’s eyes for just the right amount of time before settling his gaze on the inoffensive neutral zone between the man’s unkempt eyebrows, indicating respectful attentiveness. A former mercenary, Haestron was teaching the command clones hand-to-hand combat at the time, primarily by beating them senseless and then pairing them off to beat one another senseless. He’d sent a cadet to the medbay with a shattered collarbone during the previous rotation. But he got results, and he had never killed or even permanently maimed one of his trainees, and that was all the Kaminoans cared about. CC-5052 speculated he was just slightly younger than Kamino itself. And he was a bit of a traditionalist, to use his term, when it came to weaponry – as far as Haestron was concerned, progress should’ve stopped with plasma-core technology. He stalked around Tipoca City with his ancient VL-22 rifle slung over his back and had been known to break fingers if anyone touched it without permission. CC-5052 also speculated he took it to bed with him.
On that particular day, Haestron was in a rare good mood. He supervised target practice for a while, then, once CC-3636 and the rest of his squad had all turned in their scores for the session, he herded them down to the deserted end of the range and let them take some practice shots with his precious rifle. Just in case they ever needed to use a real weapon, he claimed. “Widen your stance,” he’d instructed CC-2224, jabbing the toe of his boot into the cadet’s instep until he was satisfied. “This thing was made for men, not undersized tube rats like you – it’s got a bigger kick than anything you’ve trained with so far, especially those dinky pea-shooters of yours. And move your other hand back, imbecile! You touch that barrel while it’s hot and you’ll get third-degree burns. Finger on the trigger, now – and squeeze hard, it’s tight –”
CC-2224 fired. The bolt went wide, missing the target entirely and dissipating against the reinforced wall. It was probably the worst shot he’d ever made – CC-2224 was the best at everything, which was saying quite a lot in a squad that was almost always at the top of the class. CC-3636, who still sometimes couldn’t remember if cherek faced right and mern faced left or if it was the other way around, envied him. CC-2224 looked put-out, especially when CC-4711 stepped up and managed to put a bolt through the corner of the target. CC-5052 missed too. CC-3636 winged the target and barely had a moment to feel smug before CC-2224 was reaching for the rifle again, jaw set.
It was an okay weapon, CC-3636 decided, but he didn’t understand why Haestron was always gushing about it. Aside from the kickback, it handled a lot like a DC-15A blaster rifle. Old-fashioned plasma-cores chewed through power packs, which was inefficient on a battlefield where supplies were limited. And while he could appreciate being able to fire so fast the bolts were practically one continuous stream, as Haestron had demonstrated once or twice, he’d made that possible by removing the heat sink. CC-3636 would take a slower-firing blaster that was rather less likely to explode a superheated cylinder of plasma into his face, thank you.
Unfortunately, while four-year-old CC-3636 was too intimidated yet by his grizzled training sergeant to voice his opinions, he was also easily irritated. Haestron just kept going on and on and on about how much better the VL-22 was compared to the blasters the clones were assigned. And on the second try, CC-2224 hit way closer to dead-center than the rest of them; CC-3636 handed the rifle over for round three and folded his arms over his chest, scowling. CC-2224 had gotten a perfect score on their last academic module, too. He remembered which way all the letters faced. None of his batchmates ever said anything, but CC-3636 knew they weren’t always at the top of the class solely because he couldn’t read or write as well as everyone else. He got it eventually, it just… took longer. Longer than they usually had time for.
Caught up in his thoughts, CC-3636 was working himself into a proper sulk; he shook his head when CC-5052 offered the rifle again and Haestron didn’t even bother sending him to run laps until his attitude improved because he was still yammering about that stupid antique of his. “– more efficient over long distances,” he said, pausing to swat CC-4711 on the back of the head. “If you don’t watch where you’re aiming that thing, Eleven, I’m kicking you down to practice with the two-year-olds, you hear me? You won’t see a live weapon again until you’re twelve. Not that it’d make much difference….” Haestron scoffed and spat on the glimmering floor. Olan Je, overseeing the rest of the unit as target practice wound down, gave him a frigid look. “Rubbish, the DCs. If they wanted you to have any chance of surviving a galactic war, they’d at least give you some decent blasters instead of mass-produced garbage that’ll crap out in a year – now, this piece of hardware has been serving me faithfully since I was fifteen and hasn’t had a single jam in more than a decade. That’s what good hand-crafted weaponry will get you. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore.”
“That’s because they were made thousands of years ago,” CC-3636 muttered, unable to help himself. “I looked it up.”
CC-4711 sucked a breath through his teeth. Haestron, who’d been pacing behind the line of cadets, stopped, turned around, and took the rifle from CC-5052. He was smiling. CC-3636’s heart crawled into his throat. “Oh, did you now?” Haestron said softly. “Well, if Thirty-Six actually tried to read something for us, we might as well hear him out. Go on, boy. What were you saying?”
Haestron really was the consummate hand-to-hand instructor – he saw every single weakness a person had and never hesitated to exploit them. He knew CC-4711 was sensitive about his lisp. He knew CC-5052 got squeamish around people who vomited. He knew CC-2224 was afraid of failure. He knew CC-3636 never remembered when cresh was supposed to sound like senth and he knew CC-3636 still wet his bed occasionally and he knew CC-3636 snarled and sulked and snapped to hide how bone-deep terrified he was all the time. Sooner or later the Kaminoans would decide he was too dumb for the command class. Probably dumber than the CTs his age, too, so he’d either be sent packing to maintenance or just outright terminated, because it wasn’t like he was good at anything but fighting, and what use was that when you were ordered to scrub the floor in the mess while the rest of your brothers moved on without you?
CC-3636 was afraid. But Haestron’s barbed comments about his literacy made him angry, and anger was stronger than fear. CC-2224, stood behind Haestron and well out of the man’s view, started shaking his head frantically, his eyes huge. It didn’t matter. If he said nothing, he’d be punished; if he spoke up, he’d be punished. Might as well say his piece. Clenching his fists until his nails cut into his palms, CC-3636 ignored his brother, raised his voice to be heard above the intermittent blaster fire, and said, “I looked up your rifle in the library. VR-series weapons were produced by Heliotrope Industries during the Galactic War three thousand years ago. Mass-produced, specifically, just like our DCs. Heliotrope shut down a few hundred years after the war ended and nobody’s made traditional VL-22s since. Yours is either the most well-preserved weapon in the entire galaxy or a replica. And the originals weren’t hand-crafted. And the only reason it does half the stuff you brag about is because you modified it yourself; a DC-15 could probably be just as good if you modded that, and it wouldn’t run out of power after twenty shots.”
Throughout CC-3636’s speech, Haestron’s smile didn’t waver. The other three cadets appeared to be holding their breath. “Would you look at that?” he said, sounding almost impressed. “Guess you’ve got a brain in there after all, Thirty-Six.”
And then, quick as a flash, he seized CC-3636’s hand and clamped it over the barrel of his rifle.
CC-3636 shrieked. His arm jerked reflexively, but he wasn’t strong enough to break Haestron’s grip; the man held CC-3636’s hand against the searing metal for a moment longer, forcing his fingers down until even the delicate skin on his fingertips burned, and then the cadet’s knees buckled and Haestron let go. CC-3636 crumpled to the floor, fighting back both the sobs and the bile that threatened, tears warping his vision. He didn’t want to cry in front of his squad or his sadistic trainer (and he didn’t want to throw up in front of CC-5052 because it’d upset him). But his hand was already swelling with blisters, red-hot skin stretched thin and he was afraid it would crack open if he tried to flex his fingers. Panting, he closed his wet eyes and turned his face against the floor, pressed his forehead to the cool metal, let the tears drip down his nose where nobody could see.
Haestron seized CC-3636 by the collar, hauled him to his feet, and thrust his face right up against the clone’s so he could see nothing but Haestron’s pale eyes and wrinkled, pockmarked skin. He was missing half his teeth and the remainder were brown and rotten; his rank breath churned CC-3636’s stomach when he hissed, “Listen closely, you rabid little wolf.” That was his ‘affectionate’ nickname for CC-3636, who’d been known to bite during physical combat. It may have actually been affectionate. Haestron believed there was no such thing as fighting dirty and CC-3636 won more than he lost. “You think that hurt? That blaster hadn’t been fired in over a minute, boy. It was practically cold. This –” he grabbed CC-3636’s scorched hand and squeezed. CC-3636 couldn’t suppress a whimper. “This is barely a burn. This is nothing. You’re going to serve the Jedi. Those lightsabers aren’t for decoration – I once saw a Jedi carve through the hull of a starfighter with less effort than it’d take me to break your skinny wrist. You hack off one of them, Thirty-Six, and they’ll use that lightsaber on you. And then you’ll be wishing you had to answer to me instead.” He gave CC-3636’s hand one last squeeze before releasing him. “Don’t you mouth off at me again.”
He stepped back, then, straightening up, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. CC-3636 felt cold all over, almost numb except for his stinging, throbbing hand. He didn’t realize CC-5052 and CC-4711 had slipped around behind him until he wobbled and each of them grabbed an arm. And CC-2224… he hadn’t moved, but the sheer fury in his face could’ve halted a rampaging wampa. Haestron had been known to belt them one just for looking at him funny. Fortunately for CC-2224, he didn’t turn around. “Lesson’s over,” Haestron said, any trace of his former good mood gone. “Get out of my sight. Now.”
Six years later, Wolffe met Jedi General Plo Koon, worked with him for approximately two hours, and swiftly came to realize Haestron had been full of shit. Of course, by that point he’d also come to realize Haestron was a raving loon and nothing he said was really worth taking seriously. One of the younger clones – Dill, who’d gone down with the Malevolence – half-jokingly asked the General if Jedi were so disciplined because their masters smacked them around with their lightsabers when they misbehaved. Plo’s antiox mask and goggles didn’t allow for much in the way of facial expressions, but he’d been visibly appalled at the mere suggestion. Apparently the Order wasn’t big on corporal punishment.
Strangely enough, Plo did have to use his lightsaber on Wolffe, once… but not in the manner Haestron probably envisioned.
The 104th was on Dova III, a tiny agricultural planet in the nondescript Loring System, which might’ve gone completely unmolested had it not sat at the intersection of several vital Republic hyperspace routes. The Separatists invaded the system early in the war, encountering almost zero opposition, and they’d been sitting pretty there ever since, taking potshots at Republic attack cruisers trying to refuel. As soon as the GAR had a few battalions free, they moved in to retake Loring before the Seppies built up a base and started bringing down entire fleets. General Plo’s men and the local militia were supposed to be providing backup for the besieged 472nd and 840th. But the tinnies had more artillery than the briefing suggested, the local militia turned out to be in Count Dooku’s pocket, and, just to add insult to injury, it hadn’t stopped raining since they’d landed. Boxer had already treated half of Xesh Company for trench foot. Given how things were going so far, nobody’d seemed too surprised when their command center took a few mortars and was reduced to a constellation of debris across the picturesque countryside. At least it was supposed to be picturesque; the rain made it hard to tell.
They had fallen back to their secondary command (a long shack constructed from sheet metal) and regrouped. Plo, serene under duress as always, contemplated the holomap for a few minutes, and then said, “Captain Arden, is the ridge still secure?”
Arden’s shimmering hologram nodded. “Yes, General. The terrain’s too treacherous for the spider droids to get in close and the clankers are having a hard time as well; we’ve been slowly picking them off for the past few days. No casualties so far.”
“We need to do something about the cannons,” Barrier said, crowded up so close behind Wolffe his chin was practically on the Commander’s shoulder. They were packed into the shack like tinned octo-fish. “We can’t push forward with those things taking us out by the platoon.”
“Indeed,” Plo said, tapping a reinforced claw against his vambrace. “And if we don’t hold this sector and Knight Alrix and her troops are routed, they’ll be trapped in the valley. I think it’s time we take a closer look at that mountain path to the north.”
Arden tipped his helmet slightly. “We were told that route was impassable.”
“Considering the source, that intel may be unreliable.”
“Since I’m pretty sure our informant was the one sniping Powder Squad last night, I have to agree,” Wolffe said dryly, leaning in to trace a finger through the jutting mountain range on the holomap. “If we can get through, we could cut across this forest here, use the trees as cover while we circle around, and hit the Seppies from behind. They probably still have most of the cannons pointed in this direction; they won’t be able to turn them around fast enough to hit us as long as we catch them off guard.”
The General hummed in agreement. “Call Sixty-Four and Tornado in,” he said. “They can scout the –”
That was when the back wall had exploded.
So the ‘impassable’ path wasn’t, as it turned out. Several members of the militia had followed it halfway up the mountain, veered off before reaching a Republic patrol, climbed a ninety-meter sheer cliff-face while carrying the components of their own cannon (their dedication was admittedly admirable), and set up shop somewhere near the peak. Wolffe didn’t know any of that at the time; he was sprawled flat on his back in the dirt, dazed, and his flickering HUD insisted he was standing at a sixty-degree angle to the ground. Through the ringing in his ears, he could just barely make out someone calling his name. “I’m fine,” he wheezed, flailing about in a rather uncoordinated manner until he figured out which way was up and made it to a sitting position. “Ow – I’m fine, just got my bucket hammered….” He was trying to get his legs under him so he could stand, but one of them wasn’t cooperating.
“Commander, you’re – oh. Oh, shit.” Larch had extended a hand to help Wolffe to his feet. His arm drooped, and in the dim grey light pouring through the new window in their tin can, Wolffe watched the color drain from his face. He looked down. A jagged shard of metal as long as his forearm had punched clean through his right cuisse and didn’t even have the courtesy to plug up the hole properly. A puddle of blood was spreading beneath his thigh, more pulsing through the crack in his armor plate with every heartbeat.
Wolffe had taken anatomy and basic field medicine. Nobody survived a severed femoral artery without immediate intervention. Like any other clone, he’d known he would die young since he was old enough to understand the concept of death, and he wasn’t that afraid of it. This was already the fifth or sixth time he’d stared death in the face. Eighty had raised Jolee, but he and Boxer were out on the ridge with the rest of Halo Company, whereas Needle had been KIA during the initial command center bombing and Twitchy succumbed to his wounds not long after. It’d take a quarter of an hour for either of the nearest medics to reach him and Wolffe imagined he’d already be cold by that point.
He was starting to feel drowsy. A rookie whose name Wolffe didn’t know yet was trying to staunch the flow of blood, but the armor and shrapnel made compression impossible. He blinked for a moment too long and Plo was kneeling before him, the ridges in his brow furrowed in a way Wolffe associated with concern. Instead of watching his brothers try to aid the wounded men who were more likely to recover, Wolffe watched his General, because the man had been more of a teacher and mentor to him than any Kaminoan or training sergeant he’d had in the almost eleven years he’d been alive. He thought he should tell Plo that, now that his remaining lifespan could be measured in minutes. Words weren’t coming to him. The rookie’s gauntlets and gloves were already stained crimson, almost the right shade to match the rest of the 104th, before the Malevolence. His armor was the plain white of a shiny who hadn’t earned his colors yet. Wolffe fought the siren call of unconsciousness and dug his fingers into the mud. He had to close his eyes – the entire room kept swaying and it was making him seasick.
One of Plo’s long hands landed on Wolffe’s knee, holding his injured leg firmly against the ground. Even if Wolffe wasn’t intimately familiar with the sound, he would’ve known Plo had ignited his lightsaber by the brilliant blue glow leaking through his eyelids. “Eyes open, Commander,” Plo ordered. Wolffe did as he was told. He was terribly thirsty all of a sudden and the General was holding his lightsaber between them, illuminating their corner of the shack, giving Wolffe a pounding headache. “This will hurt,” he said quietly, “but it’ll stop the bleeding. With your permission?”
Most people wouldn’t have asked. Plo Koon knew these things, yet he did not wield them as weapons, as Haestron had. Wolffe had been on the wrong end of a lightsaber before. Now he was afraid.
Ventress hardly grazed him, that time on Khorm. She’d had ample opportunity to kill him ten times over before General Skywalker’s forces moved in, but the assassin liked to play with her food, and he was the last of his men left standing when she finally decided to make herself scarce. Rather than separating his head from his shoulders like Tase and Triangle, she left him with a little parting gift – “Something to remember me by,” she’d purred, and, with a flick of her wrist, just barely skimmed the very tip of her blade down his face. If she hadn’t made contact, he wouldn’t have felt a thing. Lightsabers were odd that way. Boost had once held an ungloved fingertip a millimeter from General Plo’s saber and marveled how it didn’t even feel warm. But Ventress’s peeled away layers of skin and disintegrated his lashes and vaporized the fluid in his eye… and he was lucky. Wolffe survived the shock long enough to be transported to the Resilience’s medical bay. Punch-drunk on painkillers after surgery (the first of three), he’d tried to focus on Needle while the medic brought him up to speed. His eye was unsalvageable. Enough of his optic nerve remained intact, however, and as long as the next operation to repair and reinforce his eye socket went smoothly, he was a good candidate for a prosthetic eye. TB helpfully calculated a 93% chance of recovery and a 74% chance he would tolerate the cybernetic well enough to return to active duty.
Wolffe made a lot of agreeable noises while Needle talked and swapped out his IV bag and TB checked his vitals, feeling an odd sort of pressure beneath the bandages whenever he blinked. Once they left him alone to rest, he’d hunched into a ball under the clean white sheet and shivered uncontrollably. The idea of anyone getting near his face ever again, even in a surgical context, made him want to throw up. As if he had a choice.
There wasn’t much of a choice here, either – he couldn’t say no, because that was a death sentence and Wolffe really hadn’t made plans to die on this mudball. If he didn’t say anything, he’d faint in about a minute and then Plo would proceed, and he probably wouldn’t even think badly of him for taking the easy way out. It’d been months before Wolffe stopped flinching every time he heard a lightsaber activate. For a decorated commander with a genuinely impressive combat record, he was a bit of a basket case… but he hadn’t gotten where he was today by letting anyone see that. So he raised his heavy head, looked General Plo in the eyes (as much as one could, anyway), and nodded. “I’m not afraid,” he breathed. “Do it.”
“It is better to understand your fear than deny it,” Plo said.
Wolffe didn’t get a chance to puzzle that one out. Everything happened very quickly, like they’d rehearsed it. The rookie pulled his hands away – two quick passes of Plo’s lightsaber and the halves of Wolffe’s cuisse fell to the ground – the rookie ejected his gauntlet blade and sawed at the torn bodysuit until both shrapnel and wound were fully exposed. Barrier had materialized next to him at some point. He removed his glove, rolled it into a tight cylinder, said, “Open wide,” and jammed it between Wolffe’s teeth.
“I don’t know what else this might tear through when I take it out,” the rookie said. Wolffe wanted to tell him it didn’t matter much at this point, wanted to ask if he had a name, but it was hard to talk around Barrier’s glove and he couldn’t take his eyes off the General’s lightsaber. A braver man might have made a joke about keeping that thing away from his groin. He started to hyperventilate, sort of hoped the others would chalk it up to blood loss.
Plo settled his weight across Wolffe’s shin. Barrier sat on the other leg and took both his hands, less for comfort and more so Wolffe wouldn’t accidentally punch anyone in the throes of agony. The rookie got a firm grip on the shrapnel. Before Wolffe had time to brace himself for what he knew was coming, Plo said, “Now.” The metal slid free of Wolffe’s thigh with a wet sucking noise and the blade of Plo’s lightsaber instantly replaced it.
Wolffe didn’t scream, but it was a close thing. He kept it down to a strangled wail, muffled in the glove, jaw clenched so tight he thought his molars would crack. He’d probably already broken a few of Barrier’s fingers. There was an awful sizzling noise as Wolffe’s flesh cooked – he could feel his skin bubbling, melting beneath the blade – it was unrelenting, so much worse than Ventress, he would’ve begged the General to stop if he could just form a coherent sentence –
The smell was what stayed with him, that sweetish, metallic tang disturbingly close to the scent of fried nuna bacon. Wolffe couldn’t stomach the stuff afterwards, avoided the mess hall when they were serving it. But he survived his second encounter with a lightsaber. Having mercifully blacked out, he woke up in the 840th’s field hospital just in time to be sedated for surgery, since splinters of armor, metal, and bodysuit fibers had gotten sealed into his thigh, and cauterizing major arteries wasn’t great for circulation. He limped off the liberated Dova III with a nasty scar and Sinker and Staunch and KK’s blood coursing through his veins.
His third encounter with a lightsaber wasn’t real. Nobody thrust their blade up through his stomach and out between his shoulders, severing his spine and causing fatal internal damage. He wasn’t left for dead on the chilly surface of a sunless planet. He didn’t choke on his own blood. He didn’t breathe his last with his brothers at his side, sending him off the only way they could. He didn’t die.
But Rex did, and Wolffe’s entire world flipped on its head.