Art had expected many things from this particular mission. He had expected Kriari to get lost in her thoughts the entire time after her last encounter with Wolffe. He had expected Kail to prove he still was the predatory little shit he had been as a kid. He had expected Sinker to blow their cover on his first day as a palace guard. What he had not expected was the job to go smoothly. Art had not expected to get used to his life undercover. He had not expected to like his life undercover.

After three standard months in Ord Anlata, he realized he wasn't so sure he wanted to go back to the GAR. Not that he didn't love his battalion, his brothers and his Jedi fiercely, no. But Art had found beauty in the domesticity of his new life, and was not sure he wanted to live without it anymore. He had fallen in love with the wild nature of a corrupted city, and he found real joy in being able not only to maneuver in it but also to thrive.

They had been doing such an excellent job gathering intel, not one member of the ruling government had noticed. Art was quite convinced he could continue to do this job for as long as he lived and his life would not only have meaning, it would also be fulfilling.

They had figured out the local government was designing machinery that was able to build battle droids at a much larger scale and within smaller time frames. It had been a little jarring to learn, they all realized what this would mean to the clone army, and they weren't keen on seeing these plans come to fruition.

The only part of this plot they were missing was the location where these machines would be sent. There was clearly no room in Ord Anlata for a secret factory, the Republic presence was simply too strong there. But the enemy hadn't been as careful as they had thought. Several members of the Banking Clan had been spotted coming in and out of the main building where the team knew the plans were hidden. But what really had put a wrench in their day had been the appearance of former Republic Senator Rush Clovis, who was now a representative of the Banking Clan.

This was the reason why Art and Sinker had gone in on their own, to try and either steal the plans or make a copy of them before the conspiracy grew even further. They had done everything in their training, they had performed better than they ever had in the battlefield. And still, it hadn't been enough.

…

Brendon had been trying to get into Kriari's good graces for all three months they'd been there. He had realized very quickly his efforts were taking him nowhere and promptly gave up the pursuit. He'd gotten his ass beat once, he knew better than to push her now. Kriari had proved time and time again that kindness was most definitely not a weakness during her stay in Ord Anlata.

She had taken to her job as a bartender like a fish in water, being nice and coaxing information out of drunks with sweet words and firm resistance to their attempts at conquering her. When a particularly insistent drunk refused to let go of the subject, she turned her icy smile at them and said "My partner would skin you alive". Brendon was confused by the lack of deception in the Force around her. The Force, that was a source of confusion to him too, Kriari wasn't using it to coax information out of people, and that confused Brendon to no end.

His musings were cut short when the ground shook, and the sound of an explosion followed. In such a crowded city as Neo Cetara. Kriari shot Brandon a look and he knew what had to be done. He rushed to the back of the pub and up the stairs while Kriari closed down the bar and gathered their things. Brendon grabbed Kriari's rifle and pushed the door to the roof with his shoulder.

The Government building was smoking in the distance. The man grabbed the rifle and brought it up to stare through the scope. Something had gone wrong. Kriari rushed out of the building, carrying every pouch, bag and flannel that contained something important. She didn't pale when she saw the smoke.

"Here, take this and go get the ship ready. I'm going in." She said as she handed him every valuable they all had in that desolate planet.

"They're probably dead already." Answered Brendon, knowing that she was already aware of the possibility.

"No, they're not. But if I don't hurry, they will be," she answered, checking her pouches for ammo, and the inside of her robes for her lightsaber. "get the ship going and meet us on the topmost landing platform, we'll be there."

"Foreas-"

"Do it. You might not be a Jedi anymore, but you were still raised like one. We all have a job, Brendon, this is yours."

Before he could answer, Kriari strapped her rifle to her back and shot out through the roofs and towards the smoking building.

Brandon turned towards the shipyard and bolted without looking back.

…

Art didn't scream. He didn't scream in terror or in pain or in loss. He just stared at the place where his legs had been crushed underneath a collapsed section of the ceiling. He tried to make an assessment of the situation, he didn't think his legs would survive the ordeal.

Once he made sure he had no other injuries, he turned to where his brother had been. Sinker was unconscious on the floor a few feet to his right, Art could still see his ribcage going up and down. He wasn't dead, they weren't dead yet. The mission could still be accomplished.

It hadn't been a mistake on their part, not really, only a madman would have set explosives in a state building as a defense mechanism for machinery plans. Turns out that even if they did have the best engineers in the galaxy, Neo Cetara's ruling idiot still lacked the sense to try and capture an infiltrator for interrogation. No, instead they had decided to blow up half the damn building and hope it would take them out.

But Art knew they didn't have much time. They needed to leave before the smoke cleared and someone came in looking for survivors. If someone did find them, not only would the mission be a failure, they would most probably be tortured to death in an attempt to get information out of them.

Art resisted the urge to sigh. He'd had a feeling that morning he shouldn't have left the bed, the warm body of the man beside him had told him so too. But no, Art had to go and make himself useful to the cause, he had to go and do what was expected of him just because he had been bought even before he had been conceived.

He shook his head. He was getting bitter and being defeatist before he'd even lost. He could still get out of there, they both could. Art grabbed a piece of concrete and threw it gently at Sinker's head with an accuracy that could not have been possible in his state had he not been a clone.

Sinker groaned and whined and coughed his way into consciousness, but he didn't look good. Art had spent enough time on patrol with Twitch, he knew a concussion when he saw one, and this one was bad. Sinker was very disoriented, and if Art had to judge by the noise his brother was making, he would bet his entire non-existent salary he was seconds away from vomiting his last meal.

"You need to get a signal or your ass out of here pronto." He snapped at his brother.

Sinker was too far gone, his head was bleeding profusely, and he had probably lost a lot more even before Art woke up.

Art was about to make another biting comment but was interrupted by the sound of a blaster going off. It was so sudden, one moment, Sinker had been on his hands and knees, crawling towards his brother, and the next, there was a blazing hole in his head, smoking slightly and smelling of burnt flesh and blood.

Sinker's body thumped to the floor and didn't move again.

Behind his brother's body, Art saw the figure of a man by an archway that connected the hall where they'd been to the rest of the palace. Sinker's murderer didn't have the face of a killer, Art realized, politicians rarely had, and he found that this little detail made his fury skyrocket.

He supposed he should have realized this would happen at some point, the Senate had representatives from thousands of planets -statistically speaking, more than a few of them should be traitors. But this fact did not comfort Art, it only made him angrier. He and his brothers had been bred, raised and made to fight a war that wasn't theirs, and now their own masters were killing them in cold blood.

"I should have known the Republic would come sneaking around one of these days, but I didn't expect it to be so soon." Said the smug voice of Rush Clovis, "I guess it doesn't matter since you are going to die anyway. How does the saying go? Dead men tell no tales?"

Art hated dramatic speeches and entitled assholes trying to look impressive in front of a downed enemy.

"Right, you're not a real man so I suppose it doesn't apply to you either way, does it? Clone?" Continued Clovis.

Art would not dignify the insect, the rat in front of him with an answer. If he really was going to die, he would do it with some dignity.

Death, Art didn't think he would be encountering her so soon. He did realize his time would come sooner or later,he was a soldier after all, but he thought he'd be able to experience more of what life had to offer before it happened. He wanted to be able to wake up every morning to the warm body of his partner, to sunlight coming in through the blinds and flooding their room with golden light. He wanted to learn how to cook, how to make art that wasn't on people's bodies.

Art wanted to paint, to write, to sew, to engrave, he wanted to make jewelry and clothes. He wanted to experience the domesticity of life, the feeling of rain on his face instead of his helmet, the heat of summer and the cold of winter. He wanted to fall in love, to build a family, maybe adopt a Loth Cat and plant a garden. He wanted to have his own place, have his brothers visit him, have his Jedi visit. If he and his partner decided to have children, maybe ask Kriari to be their hold-mother. There was so much he wanted to do still.

Art wasn't done living.

"I guess you don't talk much," Said Clovis, bringing his blaster up. "Makes things quicker if you don't have any last words. So long, clone."

Art hadn't said goodbye that morning. Not to Kriari, not to his partner, not to his brother. Sinker was dead, he would be soon enough. All Art could think of was how many regrets he had, how many things he wished he had done. He should have deserted. No, he wouldn't abandon his family, but still, he wondered what would have happened had he been selfish for once. He would never know.

As the power pack in Clovis' blaster warmed up the plasma, all Art could do was close his eyes and hope the Force was real. He prayed, for the first time, that if he were to be reincarnated, he wanted to be a civilian. Maybe he could really become an artist then, study in an academy and make a living out of it instead of it being his only way to distinguish himself in a sea of identical faces. Art prayed that, if he was reincarnated, that his friends and family could meet in the next life too, he had heard some attachments transcended the physical realm. He hoped it was true.