Chapter 5:

Suyhuayth

Meaning: Ruminations

"I am not ashamed to say that I took frequent

advantage of the Jedi Council's open invitation

to visit the Temple. It was a privilege afforded to

very few, after all, and I took every opportunity I

could to explore those halls. To see it so empty on

that day was…Well, it was disconcerting to say the least."

– Senator Bail Organa, "The Right Side of History"

The Jedi Temple is cavernous. From recent experience, he knows that there are rooms deeper within – residential areas and training dojos – which are more reasonable in their dimensions, but the major Halls of the Temple reflect a size that, frankly, seems unnecessary. The Entry Hall, the Hall of a Thousand Fountains, the Aviary, the Internal Gardens, the Hall of Music; they are all a conglomerated whole of enormously large, open spaces with ceilings that stretch – in places – hundreds of feet into the air. He recalls age old rumors that, once upon a time, the site upon which the Jedi Temple was built had been a religious sector of Coruscant, housing many dozens of smaller religious temples dedicated to religions older than even the Jedi's. The rumor posited that, when the Jedi came to Coruscant, they coopted the temples already in place, building up their ziggurat around them and connecting them in such a way that transformed the holy sites into naught but individual rooms inside a Temple altogether too big. High, distant windows allow the light of Coruscant's arcing sun to shine its rays down into the Temple of the Jedi, the effervescent light of the star turned square shaped by the cut of the windows. There hasn't been time yet for any prominent amount of dust to accumulate, and the Jedi had been rigorously fastidious in the care of their Temple. What passes through the light to be illuminated is little more than the errant speck of dead skin or dirt. It isn't even enough to look pretty in that special way that only abandoned places do.

And the Jedi Temple is, most certainly, abandoned.

The Fourth Brother's boots fall heavy on the mosaic floor of the Temple's Entry Hall. As with the rest of his uniform, they are such an oily black that even the warm sun of Coruscant's noonday sun can't sap the darkness from them. He is not a brutish man by nature or stature. Indeed, in comparison to many of his Brothers – and even some of his Sisters – he is slight bodied, willowy and thin like an overlong shoot of grass. But here in this empty bethel, the echo of his footfalls is unsettling, not helped by the fact that he is dogged by the march of two of his soldiers, each of whose feet fall much heavier upon the floor than his do.

The sounds of their booted feet bounce across the room, propelled across the stonework floors like a curling shoe on ice, whereupon they bounce off the unyielding edges of a wall to repeat the process over again on the opposite side of the room. He may well be marching an army through here going by the sound, and it makes it difficult for him to think. To understand. A difficult enough process on its own, even when he isn't distracted.

The Fourth Brother wasn't built to understand Jedi. That's not his purpose, not his point. But a foxhound must know the scent of his prey if he is to have any hope of catching it, lest he risk the Master's whip. He must know the length of its legs, that he may judge how quickly it can run. He must know the width of its shoulders, that he may know what crevices to search in. He must know the curvature of its teeth, that he may anticipate a desperate bite.

The Fourth Brother wasn't built to understand Jedi, but he was built to run them down. A task made intrinsically difficult by the fact that no one in the galaxy has a clue where they are.

It was, he is assured, a sight to see. Oh, he has the seen the recordings broadcasted across the galaxy by the insipid media networks that festered on the skin of this planet like a boil in need of lancing, of course, but it was apparently nothing compared to the live show.

A fleet had left the Jedi Temple, bound for places unknown. A dozen, a hundred, a thousand ships of sizes varying from single-man fighters to personnel shuttles to cargo freighters. They had disgorged from the Temple's four docking bays like fireflies, twinkling brightly in the evening light and flying upwards, as if the Stars of Coruscant had grown tired of the earth upon which they stood and wished instead to join the sky again. The galaxy is abuzz, of course. They are calling it 'The Exodus of the Jedi', and by his account it is not an inaccurate name. Clippings of the recordings taken by those news crews lucky enough to have been present are played endlessly on repeat, accompanied by opinions lacking anything in terms of depth or nuance and interspersed only occasionally with subsidiary footage taken by an entirely different stock of news crews at the GAR's maximum security prison.

There are circumstances wherein the Fourth Brother may find it amusing that the Jedi Council's active act of treason against the Senate and subsequent prison break of one of their own is somehow relegated to the second page, but these are not them. He is preoccupied with a hunt he is unsure how to carry out.

There is a question burning on the lips of every spectator in the galaxy right now. Four words of such impact and intensity that the Fourth Brother is certain the history books will laud them as era defining.

Where are the Jedi?

The Fourth Brother is one such person asking, though the question isn't really his. He doesn't think his Master is going to be at all pleased with the report he is able to give.

The Jedi have left frustratingly little in terms of a trail.

He has examined the Living Quarters. The Jedi have left behind spare clothes, unused blankets, the occasional datapad filled with nothing but literature. The creche is filled with children's toys they couldn't be bothered to pack and educational aids they probably had too many of. The Training Dojos seem to have been left largely alone. They are still packed to the brim with vibroblades and combat remotes. The Fourth Brother had even made the journey up to the Council Chambers, but he had found nothing but empty seats and tinted windows.

The walk from the Council Chambers to the Archives had been a long one, its distance compounded by his frustration and rage. He knows the consequences of failure in this. There is too much riding on this – on him. This is unprecedented. It could never have been predicted. Not by him, the Senate, the media, the military, the Separatists. Not even by his Master, blasphemous though he knows the thought they may be. If he – if they – cannot pick up on the Jedi's trail, the consequences will be severe and permanent.

He hopes desperately – for the first time that he can remember – that the Fourth Sister has succeeded where he failed.

He finds her where he expects to. The Fourth Sister is exacting in her work, and he knows that in this process, she has not moved a muscle more than necessary. She is resplendent in the middle of the room, attempting to work her way through the Archives' central computer. Two Purge Troopers mind her perimeter, unmoving as statues. His own take up an immediate watch on the perimeter, adding to the wall of security that surrounds them.

Where he is lithe grace and falling fabrics, the Fourth Sister is brutal edges and hard metal. Shorter than he is by several inches, her armor is thicker than his, centered primarily over her chest, her shins, her forearms – the most prominent targets in duels. Unlike him, her uniform bears no cape. The Fourth Sister prefers a more direct tactic of intimidation in comparison to his subtlety. The mask grafted to the underside of her face beneath her nose assists in that, he knows. It is made of cold, unyielding metal, perfectly sculpted to the contours of the Fourth Sister's face. Angry, glowing lines of red trace the lines of her cheekbones, falling swiftly down the valley of her cheeks to meet at a point beneath her chin. The mask inhibits her ability to speak, but that is of no consequence.

The screams took her voice in the very early days of her construction.

The Fourth Brother knows all of this only in an objective sense, of course. He can't actually see her – or anything. His Master took his eyes in the course of his construction, replacing them instead with cybernetic optronics. The mask affixed to his own face is an exact mirror of the one the Fourth Sister endures. It is flipped, adhered to the top of his face instead, and it communicates the data received by its built in sensor suite to the optronics in his eyes, painting his vision in an echolocated muddle of outlines. He can see a vague depiction of his Sister's curves, though more often than not it is muddled by the folds of her armored robes, creating the image in his own mind of a vaguely woman shaped blob that only occasionally solidifies. Her hair is confusing to him as well, and he does his best not to look often at her head, the better to avoid the hazy, shifting lines of her ever moving locks. The mask, ironically enough, is the most definite part of her that he can see. It never moves. It is never obscured. It is made of rigid, unyielding lines.

Sensing his approach – or perhaps just hearing it, he thinks sourly in the direction of the Purge Troopers flanking him – she looks up. He can't make out the details of her eyes, but by the tilt of her face, she is staring directly at his visor. He wishes he could judge her expression. It may soften the blow of disappointment that he is growing more and more worried is coming.

"Well?" he grunts, slowing his gait as he approaches.

She is silent, of course, but the shake of her head is damningly deliberate.

The Fourth Brother remembers a time when he may have closed his eyes to such news in some desperate need to block out his emotions, perhaps, or just as an outlet to take a moment and collect his thoughts. It's an irrelevant action today. His implants are connected directly to the visual input recorded by his visor, feeding him an ever constant depiction of whatever is in front of him. The only time it stops is if he removes the visor — an action which causes him so much pain, it is reserved exclusively for medical and hygienic purposes.

He cannot shut this out, however much he may want to.

Knowing the consequences of delaying would be just as severe, if not more so, than the consequences of their failure, the Fourth Brother wastes no time. He brings up his wrist pad and fingers one of the topmost buttons. It has only one function.

He waits impatiently, at once desperate for his Master to answer his call and hopeful that he won't.

Of course, he isn't so lucky.

"Report." Master Sideous' voice is low, filled with a fury the Fourth Brother has seldom heard. It lashes out from his comm unit like a whip, drawing a long line of blood across the length of his psyche. Beneath the cover of his visor, the Fourth Brother's lips quiver slightly.

He is grateful that his wrist pad is not outfitted with a holocomm. It is a grace afforded to him only because such a piece of equipment would be entire useless. His visor maps only the physical. Holograms are as substantial to him as thin air, and the lack of them in his communications with his Master affords him the opportunity to exhibit less control, to be more genuine in his reactions without fear of reprisal.

That's a dangerous attitude to have, he knows. Too much of a slippery slope. He has to remind himself constantly to remember that he is always watched. Always observed.

The Fourth Sister, after all, can still see.

The Fourth Brother swallows and bows out of pure habit. "My Lord," he intones. Years of careful refinement, of flaws carved off his brain, keep his voice steady and even despite the terror his own words are instilling in him. "We have completed a cursory sweep of the Jedi Temple. Regretfully," he looks up at the Fourth Sister, but her silhouette displays no anxiety, "we can find no trace of the Jedi." He hesitates, just for a moment, before continuing. "Nor any indication of their destination."

Master Sideous has never been loud in his anger, and for that, the Fourth Brother has learned to fear silence. To wonder what fury may be brimming outside the limits of his awareness. Silence, he knows, is a lie. Life, by the very nature of its existence, creates sound. The unsteady breath of a nervous fool, the shuffling of feet on metal, the swishing of fabric against wood. Silence is unnatural. It is the state of an unliving universe, and any silence on the part of a living, organic being is a conscious effort, disguising so much fury and rage.

Master Sideous is silent for a long series of moments.

At length, his voice emits again from the comm unit on the Fourth Brother's wrist, carefully controlled. "What of the Archives?"

The Fourth Brother tilts his head towards the Fourth Sister. He does not know the answer to this question. In response, he feels agitation echoes through the room, mirrored by the Fourth Sister's presence in the Force and through the language of her body as she raises her wrist pad and begins to type away. She hates using her vocoder.

A series of beeps follows after the sound of her typing fingers, translating the words she is writing into binary for him to listen to. It is the only way she can vocalize.

"Empty, my Lord," he translates to his Master, "of anything of value or worth. What's left behind are culinary texts, or self-help texts, or children's tales, all of which are widely disseminated in the galaxy and of no use to either us or them."

Another moment of silence follows, this one shorter than the previous but no less impactful. Lord Sideous' voice is dangerous when next he speaks. "And the holocron vault?" his Master emphasizes, fury lacing his every word.

The Fourth Brother briefly looks to the Fourth Sister, hoping desperately for some speck of good news. She shakes her head at him again, and he just manages to hide his sigh.

"No. My Lord."

Something thuds in the background, and he thinks that Lord Sideous, in his outrage, has broken something. The Fourth Brother wonders if he has ever witnessed such a palpable example of his Master's anger. He doesn't think so. But then, he has also never witnessed such an immense stymieing of his Master's plans. "Of course," his Master mutters.

Master Sideous' voice is less fury now and more distantly annoyed. The Fourth Brother wonders if he should be concerned by how much that still frightens him.

A voice breaks through the short-range channel of his comm unit, interrupting the tension filled haze of his conversation with Master Sideous. It is buzzed by static and underlined by the deep-throated scrambler overlaying the words that disguises their meaning or purpose to anyone within audible range of the one speaking. "Speeder on approach," a Purge Trooper reports, voice void of emotion.

The Fourth Brother tilts his head, as if in the direction of the Trooper in question despite not knowing where he is, and then moves his sightless gaze to the Fourth Sister. She looks down, prompting the holoprojector in her wrist pad to life and projects the live helmet feed of the Trooper up into the air.

The Trooper's view is made awkward by the necessity of his anonymity. He is crouched behind a statue of some sort, body contorted in such a way as to follow the curve of the shadows cast by the afternoon sun. In this way, the blackness of his armor will not stand out against the cream colored stone of the Jedi Temple. He is staring up into the sky, neck craned as it tracks the movement of an inbound speeder heading directly – and unmistakably – towards the Temple's eastern Docking Bay. The speeder is well designed and high end. She doesn't know what fool may have decided to try their luck at the Temple, but whoever they are, they are not poor.

She narrows her eyes and types a command into the helmet feeds of the Purge Troopers they have positioned on the Temple's roof. She prefers communication in this method. There is no need to debase herself with infuriating and adolescent beeps. The message scrolls across the feeds of their helmets in standard basic. SPEEDER ON APPROACH TO EASTERN DOCKING BAY. ATTAIN VISUAL ON DRIVER, she commands.

Well-constructed, perfect tools that they are, the Troopers on the roof jump to, moving as swiftly as they can towards the eastern edge of the Temple. Their window is short, they know, for the speeder is fast on approach, and if its occupant gets inside the Temple before a visual can be obtained, they will lose their chance to do so. The Temple's internal security feeds are locked behind a wall of encryption tight enough to keep a quantum computer busy for hours, and that security has only tightened since the beginning of the War. Neither he nor the Fourth Sister have been able to crack it.

At last, one of the Troopers attains a vantage point on the edge of the Temple's immense walls and angles the scope of his sniper rifle down into the driver's seat of the offending speeder. It has just landed, and its occupant is crawling up and over the side of it. The Fourth Sister observes the fool, smirking cruelly to herself at the way the Trooper's crosshair hovers unflinchingly over the man's head.

The smirk falls quickly away when he looks up, an unreadable expression on his face in the wake of the Temple's vastness. She works her jaw beneath the confines of her visor, growling bestially in the back of her throat.

If it is possible to snarl in binary, she accomplishes it.

The Fourth Brother, for his part, blanches. "My Lord," he says, voice somewhat faint. "Senator Organa has just landed a personal speeder on the Temple's eastern Docking Bay, and he is making his way inside."

The Fourth Sister's vocoder beeps sullenly at him, and he wishes most desperately that he could glare at her in earnest, but the expression is always lacking without the depth the eyes add to it. He will settle for unpleasantly twisting his lips at her, but he smarts to know that it doesn't have the same impact. The unauthorized execution of a Senator is not something he is willing to report. Most certainly not today.

"Has he seen you?" Master Sideous asks speculatively.

The Fourth Brother shakes his head out of habit despite not needing to. "No, my Lord. The exterior Troopers are well hidden, and both the Fourth Sister and I are in the Archives. Several minutes' walk from the Docking Bays."

He trades a brief glance with the Fourth Sister, wondering if her sullen suggestion will turn into a true life order. He wouldn't be upset. The authorized execution of a Senator – particularly one as obstructive as Organa – would be fun. If the Fourth Sister shares any of these thoughts, she does not display it in her body language. Judging by the slant of her face, she is watching through the Troopers' camera feeds again.

"Retreat immediately," Master Sideous orders suddenly, pulling both of their attentions to his wrist. "And do not be seen. Senator Organa's death at this juncture would ask too many questions. Raise too many eyebrows. Retreat. Return to the Inquisitorius and debrief fully with the Grand Inquisitor."

The words 'Yes, my Lord' are halfway to leaving his mouth when the Fourth Sister beeps at him again. He frowns at her deliberately and rolls his eyes at the snark she puts into her every muscle in response. Their way of communicating is unorthodox, but they have worked with each other for almost a decade now, and they know how to speak to each other in a way they can both understand.

He hates that the question she asked is relevant.

Slowly – so slowly – he asks, "My Lord, what if he does discover us?" He is already cringing in response to whatever may come next.

A brief silence. More speculative than furious. "Then kill him," Lord Sideous says glibly, "and be prepared to die yourselves upon your return."

The comm feed goes dead.

~•~

Padmé lowers the comm unit from her mouth, resting it atop her fingers like she is cradling a baby bird and any untoward motion may snap its wing. She stares down at it, not really seeing anything. Bail's report from the Temple had been short but damning. His words are the death knell in the coffin of her hope.

The Temple is empty.

The Jedi are gone.

Anakin is gone.

She doesn't need to turn on any of the hundreds of Coruscanti news feeds to know that no one knows why. If she had the emotional bandwidth to think on it, she may begin to dread the political shit storm no doubt waiting on her in her office when she returns to work. She does have the soundness of mind to be grateful that she had happened to have today off. She doesn't know that she could have handled it today. Playing politics is hard when your masks are removed, your walls are worn thin, and all you want to do is stab the Trade Federation representative in his overlarge fucking eyes.

Padmé squints her eyes shut so hard that she sees lights and squeezes the bridge of her nose, wincing at the thought even as she has it. Nute Gunray is slime, unfit to so much as step foot on the grounds of the Senate Building, but she would not have climbed to the heights she has in her life if she didn't know how to deal with slime.

Padmé sighs. "Play it again, R2."

R2 whistles worriedly at her, turning the dome of his head slowly in that way of his that denotes unease or concern. Are you sure? It won't help, he is saying, and Padmé has never been more grateful that Anakin had taught her to understand binary.

Her smile is watery. She runs a lightly shaking hand across his dome, grateful to the little droid for a concern she knows that Anakin has fostered in him. She hadn't been sure what to think when her husband's astromech had toddled into her private apartment at first. After hearing the message, it had become all too apparent. He was here to look after her, likely on direct orders from Anakin. She can imagine the two of them together in his quarters aboard the Resolute. "Alright, R2. Now, you know if anything happens to me, you have to protect Padmé right?"

"I know," she tells him. "Please just play it."

R2 emits another beep, long and low. It's his equivalent of a sigh. If it were a better day, Padmé might laugh at what a worrywart Anakin's astromech has turned out to be. She wonders if the little astromech realizes how much he and 3PO are alike, and then almost smiles at the thought of how violently the droid would react were she to say such a thing. Knowing 3PO, she's certain he would take just as much offense.

She wonders when and why she came to be in the possession of such opinionated droids. Surely other Senators didn't deal with such problems. Somehow, she's certain that it's Anakin's fault.

R2's holographic projector starts up in fits and bursts, accompanied by the hum of some internal mechanism she can't begin to comprehend the workings of. Padmé sees Anakin's legs first, and then his right arm, and then a portion of his stomach, and then all at once the image fritzes and he's entirely there. The hologram, recorded by and delivered to her by Anakin's faithful astromech the day before, depicts Anakin in a crouched position, leaning his wait onto one knee whilst his hands fiddle and fuss with something she can't see. Judging by the angle of the recording, she assumes it to be R2 himself or possibly the droid's recording apparatus.

"I don't know why you make this so difficult," Anakin grumbles, and Padmé is able to smile for the first time since the last time she watched this message. That's his mechanic voice, she recognizes. It only comes out when there's a piece of – usually greasy – machinery in his hands. She doesn't know what R2 did to earn her husband's ire, but she's certain he didn't actually deserve it. So too is the astromech himself, if the disgruntled shift he does beside her is any indication. Anakin's hands pass out of view of the recorder, and his eyes are focused on some point about the frame. "Is it working?" A muttered curse falls through his lips, and he suddenly looks directly into the camera. "It is!? For how long? Why didn't you tell me!?" Anakin's arm jerks, and she thinks that he has cuffed the little droid on his dome. She smiles again, but she can't bring herself to laugh as she did the first time she heard this message before she knew where it was leading.

Anakin leans back off of his knees and onto his butt, hands resting atop the caps of his knees. He looks tired, Padmé realizes. She hadn't noticed that before. "Sorry, Padmé. Someone was being difficult." Anakin's gaze shifts to glare off screen, and though the recording is designed in such a way as to inhibit outside audio, she is certain that R2 rebukes him in response.

Anakin shakes his head at whatever heated words R2 came up with, smiling for a moment so brief it hurts. Padmé loves his smile, but she's been seeing it less and less these days.

He sighs deeply, reaching up to run his flesh hand through his sandy hair. "I wish I could do this in person. You deserve to hear this in person." He trails off, eyes drifting to some unknown thought in the distance. "There's a lot you deserve."

Padmé frowns, as she did the first time she watched this message. She hates when Anakin gets like this, like their marriage was charity on her part and that he is undeserving of her. She thinks that most days, he believes her. But, for reasons frustratingly unclear to her, this is decidedly not 'most days'.

Another sigh. He faces the camera more directly again. "Listen," he tells her slowly. "Things are about to get…difficult. For me. For…us." Some light of recognition sparks behind his eyes, and the next words tumble out of his mouth in a rush. It's another habit she's tried to break him of over the years – the automatic assumption that he has offended her. "I mean! Not-uh…I mean 'the Jedi' us. Not-Not 'you and me' us. You should be fine. You will be fine. There's no connection there."

He's rambling, and at this point his words are said more to himself than to her. She wishes – not for the first time – that they had, had this conversation in person. She would have been able to pull him out of his spiral and refocus him on whatever it is that he needs to say.

Luckily, he seems to recognize what he is doing, and he stops – almost mid-sentence – to take a breath and calm himself. For a long moment, he covers his hands with his face, obscuring his eyes, disguising his fears. When he removes them, he is hiding behind the mask of General Skywalker. "I can't give you any details. Even this is a risk I almost didn't want to take, and you have to destroy this message as soon as you've heard it." She will, she promises herself. Soon. "But I couldn't just…I had to tell you at least a little. We're…going away for a bit, Padmé. The Jedi. We've…well, there's some decisions we need to make, and we can't make them here."

Padmé can't begin to fathom what that might mean, and the added detail of last night's events most certainly doesn't help. It's not that she disagrees with the Jedi's actions – though that's an opinion she'll be sure to keep to herself in the coming days – but she can't fathom what would have motivated them to do this. She has met almost every member of the current Jedi Council and worked with more than one of them in close proximity. Anakin is easy to understand. And Obi-Wan, much though he may argue to the contrary, can be just as impulsive as her husband where people he cares about are concerned. But Master Windu, Master Yoda, Master Ti? The rest of them? What possessed them to take such drastic action?

The distant ziggurat of the now empty Jedi Temple catches her eye, framed by the setting Coruscant sun. Above it, she can just make out the outline of the Venator fleet the Jedi left behind.

Anakin is still speaking, and she reattunes herself to the flow of his words, hoping vainly that she may notice something this time around that she did not before. "The people aren't gonna like it." He smiles with just the left corner of his mouth, but his eyes are too distant to shoulder the same amusement. "Don't think anyone is going to like it, actually. And there's an argument to be made – a good argument, dammit – that this is selfish and cruel and…a mistake."

Anakin hangs his head, staring at the palms of his hands as if he will find the answers there written into his heart line. "I don't know."

Silence prevails upon the room for a long moment, filled only with the tandem sounds of her and Anakin's breathing. If Padmé closes her eyes and listens – just listens – she can imagine that he is in the room with her, calm and comforting. Just being with her. She misses the days like that.

But she knows what comes next, however much she wishes it wouldn't. The message is ending. Anakin is out of words, out of ways to try and skirt around telling her secrets she can't know. He makes eye contact with the camera, and though the hologram she is seeing is nothing but blue, hazy hues, she thinks that she can still see the familiar sparkle in them. "I love you," he tells her, and Padmé wonders if her heart should still warm as much as it does when she hears those words from him.

The message shuts off as abruptly as it had before. She doesn't even get the mercy of watching Anakin lean forward to manually turn off R2's camera. It would have been an artificial closeness, of course. Nothing that could have closed any of the monumental distance that now stands between them. But she would have taken it. Just now, she thinks that she would take anything.

Oh, Ani, she thinks, her hand caressing her stomach protectively, worriedly, nervously. Why now?

~•~

The Exodus of the Jedi, they are calling it.

Rex doesn't know whether or not that's the word that he'd use, but for the life of him, he can't think of anything else to say about it.

He is struggling not to settle on 'betrayal'.

It's a rare moment, he thinks, when clones are alone. Despite making up the inexorably vast majority of the Grand Army of the Republic, clones are almost never left to themselves. There are Bridge Officers standing at attention nearby, Admirals doing rounds, militia operatives intermingling, hired hands working docking bays and fueling stations, or Jedi.

Well, there are no hired hands about the bridge of a Venator class star destroyer. Admiral Yularen is away, attending committees and hearings, desperately trying to find the words to assuage the fears of the Senate. The bridge officers are on leave until whatever the hell this mess is gets sorted out – if it ever does, Rex thinks sourly to himself. And the Jedi…

Rex shifts in place, fingers playing with the edge of his bucket. He is holding it tightly to his waist, and the hard edges of its duraplast are digging into the softshell between the plates of his armor.

The Jedi aren't here.

The Resolute is empty of anyone and anything save the clones of the 501st – who are not afforded the luxury of leave – and the cadre of droids necessary to keep a ship of this class running smoothly. Owing to its emptiness, the Resolute's bridge is near silent. Four clones, including himself, have commandeered it. Himself, Appo, Jesse, and Hawk. They are the old guard – the last of the old guard. They are veterans of the War, of the 501st, and of General Skywalker.

There are others, of course. Echo. Heavy. Tup. Hardcase. Kix. Fives. Men – brothers – that those who remain will never forget.

But the rest of the 501st is too shiny, however many months of combat they may have seen. Theirs is a glorious regiment, lauded in the media and touted as the example to aspire to, but the consequences of that reputation are the suicide missions, the stacked odds, the impossible objectives.

The 501st has a high turnover rate.

Half of their numbers are shinies, fresh out of the tube and only halfway sure which way to point the gun. Rex knows their type. They've seen just enough battle to think themselves immortal but not enough to realize that, that attitude will bring the blasters to your doorstep faster than any other.

He doesn't like writing off his brothers, doesn't enjoy the way the statistics of it all feeds into the senatorial dogma that all they are is organic droids. But this War has dragged on for nearly three years, all of which he has been in a command position. You could populate a planet with the number of clones the Republic has buried beneath the metal and oil of the Seppies ongoing march. At a point, Rex has learned, your sanity requires you to just stop caring.

He wonders when he will.

"We are approaching twelve hours now since the event the public are referring to as 'the Exodus of the Jedi', and still the Senate and the military remain silent on the matter of the Jedi's absence." The Resolute's onboard transmissions system has been co-opted by Hawk in the last half hour, tuned to a dozen different stations in a dozen different languages. Rex wonders at this point if he's even listening, or if he's just twiddling his thumbs in some vain need for hope. This station's voice belongs to a young nautolan woman, and Rex is certain that she will have no more of use to say than the eight other anchors before her. "When approached by our reporters, Senators Bonteri, Aang, Chuchi, Gunray, and Taa refused to comment on this unprecedented situation. The military hierarchy has been entirely unreachable, and we have been told only that the Admiralty is in an emergency closed congress, working to address the issue. Former Chancellor Valorum had this to say."

"Turn it off, Hawk," Rex orders and runs a hand down his face. He digs the contours of his fingers into the soft, pliant flesh of his face, hoping he can scrape away the exhaustion. It doesn't work. If anything, he thinks he may be more tired.

Thankfully, Hawk obeys, and the former Chancellor's words die an abrupt death, cutting off whatever impassioned word he was in the middle of and turning it into nothing more than a choked vowel sound. It hovers there in the air for a bit, rattling the insides of their souls.

Jesse's head falls into his hands, and his words are muffled by the cover of his fingers. "The fuck are we gonna do?" he asks to no one in particular, forgetting for a moment – or perhaps just not caring – that he is in the presence of his commanding officers.

Perhaps Rex forgets too, or perhaps he also just doesn't care. Perhaps he just happens to know that the question is entirely valid. "The command structure doesn't stop at the Jedi," Rex reminds them, though he sounds tired just saying it. "We still have Admiral Yularen."

Jesse rocks backward in his seat, face twisted into a mask of mockery. "Oh, yeah!" he cries, an ugly laugh bouncing beneath his words. "Yularen. He'll lead us to victory."

"Watch your mouth!" Appo snaps out a reprimand. He is fingering the edges of his helmet as well, Rex notices. He wonders if all clones do that. If Fett did that. "That's our commanding officer you're talking about!"

Jesse waits until Appo's back is turned and then makes a vulgar gesture using his fist and mouth. Hawk smothers his laugh. Rex should reprimand them for that. He is in command. He has to set an example, particularly now. In the absence of Admiral Yularen and…

Oh, Rex sighs to himself, who gives a fuck?

He doesn't even say goodbye or 'dismissed' or any of the other trite bullshit the kaminoans and the military have beaten into his head over the years. He only turns and begins to walk towards the door. It isn't until the bridge's reinforced blast doors shunk open that anyone notices what he's doing or where he's going.

"Rex?" Appo calls after him. There's concern in his voice, but Rex isn't sure where that's directed. At him, maybe, but for him? That's different. Appo isn't the same soldier he was before his ARC training. He and Rex used to be closer. Time was, Rex wouldn't hesitate to pull his brother in on the haphazard state of his thoughts. But just now, Rex doesn't want to worry about the consequences of things he may say in the heat of the moment.

Yesterday, Rex would never have thought that Appo would report him for an errant word or a runaway thought. Yesterday, things had been very different.

Rex doesn't turn his body, but he does turn his head just far enough to meet Appo's eyes. He nods at him, but he doesn't think the gesture does anything to ease the concerned tension in his brother's shoulders. "Just going to my quarters to," he hesitates, searching for the right word for a moment and settles on, "breathe."

Appo holds his gaze for a long moment, eyes just barely narrowed in what may be concern or might be suspicion. Rex hates that he even has to wonder. Then his brother nods at him slowly. "Yeah," he says, and some measure of the man's tension finally dissipates. "Things are…difficult." Appo hesitates as well, and Rex thinks to himself that perhaps he is overreacting. Perhaps his brother is as lost in all this as he is. Perhaps, at the end of the day, they both want exactly the same thing. Perhaps they're both just jumping at shadows cast by nothing more than bad thoughts.

Or perhaps not.

"Get some rest, Appo," Rex instructs and then departs.

The walk back to his quarters is not short by any means, but it is – blissfully – undisturbed. Most of the rest of the legion are on the lower floors, communing in the mess or jonesing in the barracks. Rank has its privileges, even if they're only granted for practical reasons. As ranking officer of the 501st legion, he needs to be able to respond immediately to any apparent or unexpected threats. He needs to be able to make it to the bridge in as little time as possible. He needs to be able to be readily available to his General. His quarters – and Appo's – are on the upper levels, alongside the General's and the Commander's.

Some ten minutes later, Rex stands outside the door to his quarters, and he very carefully does not turn his head in any way that would bring the door opposite his into view.

What is happening? he thinks to himself. Why? Dammit, why!?

He will find no answers standing like a fool in the middle of the hall, he knows. The problem is that he also knows that he won't find any answers through the door.

The door to Rex's personal quarters – and he is ever so glad in this moment for the privileges of rank – close on a Captain, straight backed, and straight faced. He doesn't know if the walls to his quarters are soundproofed or if the door is. Usually, it's something he'd be concerned about. He can't muster the energy today.

He throws his helmet against the wall with every ounce of strength he can muster through the haze of his exhaustion, and the noise of its clatter against the wall, his desk, and the floor would be more than enough to attract the attention of those in his immediate vicinity. The scream of rage, exhaustion, depression, anxiety, and fear that accompanies would be sure to do so as well.

He is lucky that he left Appo on the bridge. Such an exclamation is probably grounds for a suspension, pending psychological evaluation. In that, he wouldn't be able to blame Appo. He's lost brothers to battle madness before and discharging them is always better than putting them down.

There's a story told in the mess halls, the docking bays, the barracks, and the battlefields. The story is told only when every face who hears it looks exactly the same, and it is never told above a whisper. Battle madness, they will say. A disease. A contagion. They will tell the story of the 313th, a battalion of clones shipped off to battle in the very early days of the War. They will say that they fought like demons on a dozen planets, killed more droids than any other. They will say that they had no Jedi, for they needed no Jedi. They will say that the march of the War was too constant, too quick. That the 313th was moved from battle to battle without time, without rest, without aid. They will say that the battle madness took the officers first. That it polluted them, filled their minds with fog until the sound of a brother's laugh became the whirr of a B-1's motor. They will say that the officers attacked their own, and that they were put down as a rabid dog is, and that the act of brother killing brother seeded the battle madness in the minds of those who had done the act. And they will say that it continued, until every mind in the 313th has broken, every brother had killed another, and the 313th was wiped out altogether.

The veracity of the story is doubtful, particularly to those shinies fresh from Kamino who don't yet understand the nature of the War. Rex doesn't know if it's true, despite always having been able to. He doesn't know if the 313th is still active out there in the War, or if it ever even existed at all. He could. The files are available to him as a ranking officer, easily accessible at any time. Only, Rex has told that story enough times himself to know that the truth of it isn't the point.

He picks his helmet up, inspects it for damage he is sure won't be there and sets it gingerly down upon the desk. His hand lingers on the top of it. His fingers are sloped around the bucket's dome, and even through the contour of his softshell, Rex can feel the cool texture of the duraplast, long since imprinted into the memory of his skin. He thinks that he would forget the texture of his own hair before he forgot what a helmet felt like in his hands, what a softshell felt like against his body. They are all he has ever known. He can count on one hand the number of times he has been in civvie clothes.

His gaze rises up from his desk to – as it usually does – the far wall of his quarters. Per his rank, he has been afforded the luxury of a shelf, though what they expect him to do with it, he doesn't know. It's not as if he has the time to read, so he can't put any books there. Spirits forbid he ever take the time off necessary to watch a holovid – the 501st would burn down around him, not to mention General…

In the absence of any 'extracurricular' activities as it were, Rex has filled the shelf with datapads full of personnel files, the odd power cell, a spare DC-17 he tinkers with in what little spare time he is afforded, and two helmets. Rex has buried more brothers than he can remember, and he does his best to honor them all in any way that he can. Eating Hardcase's favorite food in the mess even though it isn't to his taste. Playing that obnoxious Outer Rim punk station Kix had loved so much. Drinking Tup's customary morning tea in favor of the caf that Rex himself prefers. In this way he can keep them alive, if only a little, long after everyone else has forgotten them.

It's not enough. But it's what he has. Only for two of his brothers was he afforded the opportunity to retain a proper keepsake. Echo's, he had recovered from the battlefield they'd lost him in. And Fives', he had taken back with him the day he died. They are well loved, lacking any cracks or dents the way his own does. They're remarkably cleaner than his is as well, although how much of that is reflective of his own sense of care and how much is reflective of the fact that all they do is sit pretty in his quarters these days, he can't say.

Fives' helmet, in particular, is as pristine as the day he'd taken it off his brother's corpse. Rex would know. He polishes it daily.

"Someday, this war is gonna end, Rex. Then what?" Rex hears the voices of the brothers he's buried every day of his life. He hears Echo complaining about the out of date reg-manuals. He hears Kix whining about the quality of grub in the mess. But he hears Fives more than any of them. "We're soldiers. What happens to us then?"

Fives, he thinks, had known the answer to that question. In the end. And, if he's being honest with himself, Rex suspects that he knows the answer too. He just doesn't like thinking about it. He thinks of the brothers he's trudged through this War with back on the bridge – Appo, Jesse, and Hawk. He thinks of the thousands of brothers scattered throughout the rest of the Resolute. The shinies, fresh from Kamino. The fools, chasing glory that's never going to be theirs. Some of them don't even have names yet.

The only thing that separates them from the 'old guard' up above, is that they haven't yet come to terms with the fact that their life is worthless, devoid of any true meaning or purpose. Most of them won't even get the chance to.

Which is, of course, the point.

"Oh, nightmare. I'm free." Fives' words have echoed in Rex's heart, his soul, and his head every day since the day he died. They haunt him. Fill his dreams with the black ichor of fear and turn them into nightmares he can't escape – nightmares filled with himself, his brothers, blasters, and an order that can't be refused. He doesn't know what it means. He doesn't know what any of it means. What Tup's 'malfunction' meant, what Kix's disappearance meant, what Fives' blasted dying words meant. He doesn't know.

"I'm free."

Rex's thumb traces the block lettering of the '5' stenciled onto the side of his departed brother's helmet. His jaw clenches, and he thinks to himself that for the first time in his entire life, he knows what he wants.

"I'm free."

Rex wants to be free.