Fives knew it was going to end badly.
A Jedi screaming your name and the Chancellor himself whispering barbed treachery hot in your ear.
He slid into the taxi as non-chalantly as he could, a deceit, both hearing the driver and not, offering directions as he glanced out the windows warily. Outside the taxi the buildings and lights and speeders lit trails, and the speeder pulled into one of the many lines trickling through the skies above the endless city. Hum and fumes and flickering neon, blared music and obscenities . Fives was dead to it.
The driver's attempt at small-talk was shot down with a growl and a gruff, wry summation of truth.
"You ever heard that one?" Fives asked. Expecting the man to react with horror , to clam up, fall silent and leave him to his dark thoughts.
But the man just laughed.
"All the time."
And then he turned around and whistled a tune as they took their turn in the line of speeders.
All the time.
Fives sat back in dismay.
If the civilian in the front could see the obvious, as though it was written in a universal neon for all to see , why couldn't he? The people he had passed on the streets heads down, shoulders close, glares to the sidewalk and fellows. He saw it now, in their bodies and their eyes. They knew. They all knew.
But he, an ARC, an elite, bred and trained for secrets and darkness and deceit, hadn't known. Hadn't even seen it coming.
It hung heavy in the dank, recycled air of the cab and in his chest. He smacked the door of the cab before placing his head in his hands. The driver didn't even glance back, having not heard, or perhaps immune to the gesture. That wouldn't surprise Fives in the least at that moment. He doubted if anything would again. His thoughts found Tup and the events of the past night played in his head unbidden.
Tup gone. Lost to a mistake, an irreparable order, a command imbued by his very creators.
At the behest of the supreme.
For some reason that was easier to make peace with then his own blind and misguided loyalty. Why hadn't he seen it? The clues had been all around him and he'd ignored them all, blind to reason. Missions compromised at the last minute with no apparent leaks. The jedi gone bad. The encoded orders themselves. Why hadn't he questioned them before? They all knew them, he and his brothers. Drummed into their heads before they could shoot. So many terrible commands, ordered and filed in their minds like dirty secrets.
Because he had filed them away as nonsense. Another thing that had some crazy reasoning which would never see fruition. Abjunct protocol and nothing more. Meaningless in a long string of nonsensical ones. There were so many things that hadn't made sense. So many wrongs.
Only now did he see them for what they were.
And some for who they really were.
The Chancelor had whispered too quietly for the guards to hear, too softly for his brothers to catch the malice, too subtly for them to feel the malice. But Fives had heard it perfectly, even through the fog of the drug Nala Se had given him. And he had felt it, the weight of that evil pressing in on him as the words passed those wizened lips. He had percieved it like a weighted shadow as Shaak Ti had left the room, had seen the shine in the Chancellor's eyes that was not kindness to match his false words, and felt it in the fingertips at his collar as the door shut.
And then the truth- a new order bred on the fall of the Jedi. Their blood on the hands of his brothers when the time came. The strings and whims of an entire army at his hands.
.
He had hesitated. Stayed a shot that could have ended it all. Fled when he should have screamed the truth, demanded it, fed it into the ears of anyone with thoughts in their heads and breath in their chests.
That might have stirred something within them, planted some seed of the obvious that they were all blind and deaf to. Or it may have just gotten them all killed.
He should have told Shaak-Ti.
But at that moment she had seemed too fierce, too fallible. It had been she who had delivered him to the maw of the beast herself, unwillingly or not. And making her an ally would only have been her death, in that complex peppered with his brothers and their blasters, and orders.
But her voice had spurred him on, had ignited a flame that led him to think that there might be a chance. That there might be someone who would believe him.
Right then he'd take anyone.
...
The cab driver left, bellowing obscenities at the clones who made drunken, amused tosses at the retreating shape. Fives watched as it found its way back to the stream of speeders and in another moment was gone.
A brother on the platform put an arm around his shoulders and for a fraction of a second it was a memory feel-safe. Heavy and warm and familiar. The smile, the eyes, even the alcoholic breath. Memories surfaced of others. Others who had walked with him in dark times and shared a drink or two, laughing off and drinking away things that were better forgotten. Nothing like this, though. Fives was morbidly grateful neither Echo nor Tupp had lived to know this treachery.
He took the hat offered freely, another reminder of brothers and camaraderie. But, even as he accepted it, it fell on his head as a dead weight. And he saw those around him with different eyes. They were all dangerous, tools, deadly. A clack of armor on the platform that wasn't his and a helmeted voice came at his back. Already his own brothers were hunting him down.
Beneath the lights of the bar he scanned for anyone he knew. Anyone who might not turn him in the moment they realized who he was. He wasn't sure then what it might accomplish to find someone among those gathered to confide in. His brothers held no more sway that he himself did.
In the far corner he spotted Jesse and Kix and his thoughts floundere, flickered. Steeped and weighed and reasoned. They had been with him when things had gone bad, the seemingly impossible had happened, they too had walked through fire.
In the bathroom Kix was flashing the mirror a grin when he spoke and the medic whirled, surprised and then embarrassed. But his expression turned to horror when he recognized the ARC, even as every brother on the way in hadn't. But Kix, who operated in the minute, the space of dying which took place in seconds, missed nothing.
Fives told him as little as he could get away with. Allies, he needed allies. But he wasn't willing to incriminate more than was absolutely necessary. Wasn't willing to lose another friend if he could help it.
And through no fault of his own Kix wasn't as steady an Ally as Rex and the General. They were ones who wouldn't as easily be silenced or questioned that he had on a line of absolute trust.
There was no way out of this, and Fives knew he was likely thanking the medic for the last time.
...
"Don't do it! Don't do it, soldier!"
The air was pierced with the whistled absolute of Fox's shot and the ARC staggered, surprised, gasping, hands to his smoking chest plate, and then he fell. A sound, a gasp, a step, a thud. Silence.
Terrible things happened in fractions of a second. Irrevocable things.
Orders. They had had orders. Shoot to kill, from the Chancellor, and on the ride over he had told himself he wouldn't do it. That it wouldn't be neccesary.
He had thought he was better than that. How could he and his men not take one delirious man alive?
Pride had clouded his judgment.
But affection had cleared it. A blaster aimed at his men had been met with a response more primal than orders, more human than could be bred out by training. All else had fallen way at that moment.
And everything came back as the smoke left the ARC's chest and he collapsed to the floor. The ping of Lex's shot, disabling the shield holding the Jedi and Rex captive.
Rex had cried out in despair and fallen to his knees and Fox felt, more than saw, the repercussion of his response.
Rex screamed for a medic instinctively and Surge twitched, but Ravi put a hand on his shoulder and held fast.
It would'nt help. They all knew it. Faced with the truth of Fox's shot, there was nothing that could be done to save his life, even with the best of instruments and equipment right there. The best they could give the fallen and his captain in that moment was space.
The Arc gave a dying confession of regret, the simple yet profound urgency that they all carried to have done their duty, to have served a purpose.
Nightmares. He spoke of nightmares.
It may have been lost on the others, but Rex and Fox, who remained immobile, pistol lowered but still in his hands, understood.
Hatch removed his helmet and stepped forward as they all did, save Fox.
Lex cast a glance back at him now, helmetless and wordless. His face could have revealed anger or triumph or horror, accusation. Or even gratefulness. For the fallen ARC's shot surely would have found the heart or visor of himself or one of his men. But instead he offered only the look that those in command have to master. Conviction when they themselves are uncertain. Comfort when they have no idea how to process a situation themselves.
Fox made no response, visor locked on the forms on the floor, and the sergeant's eyes passed back to Rex and the man on the floor and remained there.
Surge had at last moved in to kneel beside the fallen Arc, to seek a pulse they all knew wasn't there before rocking back on his heels before replacing his helmet, retreating to the silence it offered. Turns, Rex's own once, bent and pressed a hand to the Captain's pauldron.
Rex stayed on the floor, shaking and hands to his head and the Jedi was a statue behind him, a dark silhouette bowing it's head in remorse.
Outside the city thrummmed with life. Vivid, hot, brazen, wild, dark, sprawling. Secrets. Breathed. And inside the warehouse, at the feet of his brothers. Fives did not.
...
I'm so sorry for the long wait! We had such an adventure moving and getting settled, so many wonderful moments and some not so, but good in the end. I really have no excuse for this length of absence though, other than simply not writing when I have had the chance. I hope you'll forgive me!
A deep thank you to my reviewers, and anyone still sticking with TOC this long. This chapter really didn't come out like I imagined, and has had so many revisions and scratches I got to the point that I had to just throw in the towel and move on, or I never will. I'm hoping to touch up later, but want to press on.
See you soon in TOS and hopefully in TOC in hopefully not this long again. :)