The first time Fox met Bacara, Bacara introduced himself as CC-1138.
"Why should I tell you my name?" Bacara asked, body tense and closed off. Fox noticed, because it was a different kind of tense than he knew. When Seventeen was tense, he still stood perfectly straight, still held himself in the way they were all taught to hold themselves. Bacara was… slouching. No, not really. Fox didn't know what to call it. It was the kind of relaxed posture that Fox didn't know humans were capable of, and the only comparison he could draw would be to the civilian Kaminoans. Their entire bodies were so different in anatomy it was hard to tell.
"Because we're brothers," Fox answered. Because it was them against the trainers, them against the Kaminoan scientists, them against Prime. The brothers could trust each other.
Bacara's face froze over, and his arm twitched as if he was going to draw back his fist. He didn't punch Fox. He sneered instead. "There's a million brothers. You can't even count that far."
Now it was Fox holding himself back from lashing out. "I don't care. Brothers are brothers."
"Yesterday," Bacara replied coldly, "one of my batchers talked back. She said she's not a boy. When she got the message to report to decommission, she came up here."
Bacara gestured to where they stood. Inside the dome still, but above the surface of the water. The walls were transparent here, but outside the sky was hardly lighter than the sea. It was raining and storming as usual. Kamino had no moons. They stood on a balcony overseeing a steep drop, the walls covered in little mirrors that allowed for daylight to reach at least some of the chambers deep down.
Bacara didn't need to say that his sister had talked back to one of the trainers, maybe even Prime himself, who had reported her to the Kaminoan scientists. Bacara didn't need to say it had happened before, because at this point the CCs were years into their training, and any flaws appearing now were first studied and then reconditioned. Bacara didn't need to say that his sister hadn't been the first who went up to this level to jump.
"The question," Bacara said, "is what are you doing up here."
Fox was silent for some time. Then, finally, "I saw you come here."
Bacara deflated.
They stood in silence, for a while. Then they sat on the floor, leaning against the transparent wall, and stared into the darkness, gathering more silence.
"I know who you are," Bacara whispered. Fox saw his face was wet. "CC-1010. Fox."
Fox felt as if Bacara had seen right through him, but he kept his mouth shut and didn't ask for a name. But, in his head, he quietly corrected his thoughts.
Not brothers.
Siblings.
The next time Fox met Bacara felt like it was long after, but it really wasn't that long. He just did a lot of things, learned a lot of things, and his body continued to change until he would suppress a flinch whenever he saw himself in a reflecting surface. He didn't yet look like Jango Fett, he still wasn't quite as tall, his shoulders not as wide, but being somewhere between fourteen and eighteen years of developmental age was weird. The flash training included psychology now, complex terms for familiar feelings were right there on the screen, next to utilising an enemy's psychological weaknesses to kill them faster. They called it battle strategy.
That day the Alphas had come up with an idea to let the CCs socialise. It was important to know the other Commanders' strengths and weaknesses, after all. While most of them knew each other already their number was too great for all of them to know everyone. Numbers were really starting to hurt Fox's head, but there was no way not to think about numbers. He never wanted to stop, if that was the only way he could keep his siblings close in his mind.
"Fox," Seventeen called out, "and Bacara!"
The grand plan to socialise and connect was a hand to hand competition, Mandalorian style. Cody and Wolffe had both declared that they'd win the thing, so naturally Fox had to kick their arses, and by extension everyone else's arses.
He recognised Bacara from the night on the balcony after their sister's death, and could finally think of him with a name.
"I like Bacara," Fox told him after he won the fight. "Your style is too defensive. You need to take risks on the offensive, then you'll have a chance against me."
"Fuck you," Bacara answered, and Fox suppressed a smile.
Fox won the thing, but the bruises acquired took longer to heal than the bragging rights held true. There were more trainings to do and new weapons to study.
Every day new clones were decanted, and every day Fox grew more aware of a countdown hanging over all their heads. A countdown nobody knew the end date for.
Made for the Jedi, is what they were told. The Prime was famous among the Cuy'val Dar for killing six Jedi. Fox had learned when not to ask questions. Fox had not learned how to process a sibling's death without feeling like dying, too.
"Love will kill you," Bacara told him. Told him frequently, to the point where Fox smiled and, in the privacy of his mind, agreed.
The first time Bacara told him was on a training mission to an uninhabited, inhospitable moon, where Fox, on a simulated black operation mission, stumbled upon Bacara. Bacara, in charge of multiple ships and multiple hundred siblings, was in the process of treason. Half of Bacara's men took a ship filled with most of the training's supplies, slicers destroying all trackers and locators, medics removing their identifying chip from their brains. Bacara had given his men a choice: leave, or stay. To Bacara's surprise, many stayed. To Fox's surprise, many left.
And Fox… helped.
Helped stage an explosion of another ship, helped scatter destroyed and bloodied armour for the report, and lied.
"You don't really know what you're doing," Bacara told him, still on that inhospitable world, but with some of their siblings gone. Not marching ahead in death, but marching ahead… alive. Probably. As long as the ship hadn't died in wild space. As long as they found a planet where they could stay.
"And you do?" Fox replied. Bacara was right, of course. Fox didn't know.
"Intimately," Bacara was tense, the way he often tensed when they were alone. Fox had figured out that it was a way of being tense that came natural to natborns. Fox had figured out that Bacara had studied civilian human body language to imitate. Maybe it helped him feel more human. Fox wasn't going to ask, though.
"I know the consequences, should we ever be discovered or fail," Fox said.
"Anyone can read the regs."
"So what am I doing? What are you doing? How is it different?"
"I also don't know if it's different. But you're doing everything you do for love. And love will kill you."
"And you?"
Bacara sighed softly. "At this point? Obviously I'm doing this for you."
"Isn't that also love? Then it's not different at all."
In a storm like every other, a Jedi arrived, left, and the orders were transmitted for their first real battle.
After, Fox remembered it all in perfect clarity.
After, Fox was made Commander of the Coruscant Guard, and it was only after he stepped onto solid ground that he realised the finality of it. His siblings were going to war, and dying. He was going to stand… guard. Working for the Senate, it didn't take long for him to realise that the first death in his batch might just be him. Then he wondered if Bacara would be disappointed to know that Fox had died by accident, or died for a senator, or died because he was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.
When chancellor Palpatine started threatening Fox into obedience by holding his siblings' lives over his head, Fox learned that he was late in his realisations: he would die for love. Love for his siblings.
Fox had a reputation. It wasn't necessarily a good one.
Things changed and didn't change at all. The Guard quickly gained a reputation that Fox could not influence, and even on the better days, Fox could not quite stop his heart from aching. Comms with his batch became a rarity in the first year of the war, and the tone became overly formal. Fox had reason to believe that the only reason they answered his messages were their positions as well known Commanders. His siblings in the guard weren't so lucky.
It didn't help that every time the GAR was stationed on Coruscant, even if just for a few days, Fox was forced to arrest drunk siblings. He knew that a night in the holding cells was far preferable to a decommission order from a natborn officer or politician.
"We do what we can," Stone said. "The war has to end one day. Nothing can last forever."
Thire shook his head. "It's been a year. It's almost been one year. Most wars last longer, we need to, to…"
Thorn rested a hand on Thire's shoulder. "We need plans. We're short on medical supplies, and if we can't figure out our fugitive situation, we'll be short on food rations. The war…"
"The chancellor will ensure the war goes on, and we all know it," Fox said. They were in their room, the two bunk beds barely fitting into it. A small window let in some light, which was the whole reason the commanders had chosen this room. "Let's not delude ourselves with the lies he tells the galaxy. We know better."
Fox did know better. He was a Marshall Commander, trained in warfare. He wished he didn't know, but he could not feign ignorance.
Behind closed doors, the chancellor was a sadistic and cunning man, ordering the Guard to do off-the-book assassinations and disappearings, letting the Guard take the fall if it ever failed, and torturing Fox personally for his own pleasure. The chancellor held the siblings' lives in the palm of his hand, and he made sure that Fox knew it. And it wasn't only the chancellor. No, if it were that simple, then Fox would have killed him and accepted the consequences for his and his siblings – he grew up a victim of structural violence. On Kamino, he had hoped to escape it, but the escape wasn't found on Coruscant.
Stone ran his hands through his dishevelled hair. "How many are in our… fugitive situation?"
"Thirtyeight," Fox answered. The fugitive situation clearly needed a better name. The siblings who were 'decommissioned' and had been saved, the siblings who were too injured or traumatised to continue were in a handful of secret locations, were locked away and legally non-existent. At first it had seemed like the ultimate rebellion, a reclaiming of agency. Then they realised that their plan stopped there, and as the number grew, food rations were needed that the Guard didn't have.
"Maybe they'd be safer with a Jedi," Thire said quietly. "Maybe…"
"We have no Jedi," Thorn disagreed. "We won't get one now. We can't put them on a shuttle to evacuate Coruscant either. None of our medics has the education or supplies for plastic surgery, and our face is too recognisable. They'll be caught. If we send them to die on the front with our siblings – if we can find a Commander willing to risk it – they'll still die."
We will still die, Thorn didn't say.
They couldn't come up with a solution that night. Nor the next.
Fox, however, had an idea. He just didn't want to give anybody hope quite yet. Change of subject? "Sometimes I wish Prime was still alive, so I can kill him myself."
Stone groaned. "We missed so many chances back on Kamino."
Bacara had a reputation. It wasn't necessarily a good one.
He was a fiercely competent Commander. He was stationed in the outer rim, where he fought many bloody battles. Under his command, clones died. Clones died everywhere in the galaxy. Bacara's fatality numbers were greater than most other Commanders. Bacara's 21st Nova Corps was known for its competence. Everyone who worked with them walked away seemingly intimidated. By Bacara's ruthlessness. By his battalion's discipline. Maybe by his Jedi General.
There was no need to look closer. No, the Commanders under the most scrutiny were those whose Jedi were under the most scrutiny. Ki-Adi-Mundi, while a formidable Jedi, didn't make any headlines on Coruscant. So everything Fox knew, he knew through the gossip the Guard overheard when the GAR troopers were drunk in their holding cells, and the reports he realistically had no time to read.
A little over a year after the start of the war, Bacara's battalion arrived on Coruscant for the first time. Five days were scheduled for their ships to undergo much needed repairs, and their Jedi scheduled to be in the Temple for his reports in person. Fox spent the first night standing guard in the holding cells, waiting for one of the Nova Corps members to be brought in on charges of drunk violence, or whatever else the GAR was up to in their free time. What he got was a bunch of siblings from the 212th.
The next day, he was coming back from an uneventful shift at the senate dome when he was greeted by Marshall Commander Bacara himself.
"Commander Fox," Bacara executed a sharp salute.
The CGHQ lobby was far from a grand space and the lights were too bright to be comfortable. The two siblings behind the front desk stood at parade rest, and if Fox didn't know them so well he'd have no way of knowing that they were nervous.
Fox saluted. "Commander Bacara. How can I help you?"
"Your office," Bacara said. His posture was perfect clone soldier, all business.
Fox nodded. He was too experienced to show his surprise or hesitation. He hadn't seen Bacara in over a year, and he was too exhausted to think of all the reasons why he would come visit. Yeah, they were friends. Yeah, they both knew enough about each other to get the other decommissioned, if they wanted to die themselves. Fox was fairly certain he'd still beat Bacara in a fight.
The way to his office wasn't long. The troopers they passed all wore their helmets and saluted as they passed, and Fox acknowledged them with a nod. His office was cramped and small, and ever since he inhabited it, not a single natborn had set foot inside. A desk was drowned under datapads and papers, and there was one uncomfortable chair before the desk, and one slightly more comfortable one behind it. An old ratty couch that they found in a dumpster took up the rest of the space. It was covered in armour pieces.
"What's going on?" Bacara took off his helmet. "Why is everyone of your Corries acting like they're at a funeral?"
Fox didn't know what he'd expected. But Bacara never did what was expected of him. He took off his helmet as well, knowing that the grey in his hair was new, and that the bruise on his cheekbone hadn't healed. This was Bacara, and Fox needed his help.
"You look like shit," Bacara grumbled, but his face softened. "Tell me."
He told him. How most natborns demanded reconditioning or decommissioning if they even suspected one of them was stepping out of line. How they were lucky that the natborns didn't care enough to follow up, most of the time. How the chancellor cut their supplies at every corner. How the word clone had become something more vicious than ever.
Bacara listened. That was more than any of Fox's other siblings had done.
"I need your help," Fox ended his explanation.
"You and I can be off this shithole planet and safe towards wild space in five hours," Bacara said. Entirely serious.
Fox swallowed. "Not – not me," and he hated how his voice broke. He looked down to his gloved hands, started to take off the armoured gloves. He felt Bacara's eyes on him as he finished taking off the gloves and set them on a stack of datapads. His hands were scarred, and not from Kamino. "I can't."
"I know," Bacara said. "Four days, and we'll take every clone on Coruscant with us."
"I…" Fox swallowed. Looked up. Bacara was still watching him. Not judging, not demanding. Just offering. "Not that, either," he settled on, and the words tasted like death.
"What can I do, then?"
"Thirtyeight siblings," Fox finally said. "We've been hiding them, but…"
"Okay," Bacara said. He took Fox's face between his hands and kissed him, square on the mouth. His armoured gloves dug into Fox's skin. "Your love will kill you, but joining you is a choice I'm making on my own."
Fox couldn't help the ungraceful snort. "What love? I function on sleep deprivation and pain."
Bacara kissed him again, and Fox kissed him back. "Love for all our siblings, which is a gross generalisation, some of us are real arseholes–"
Fox kissed him again. "You said us."
The Guard's fugitive situation was solved the next day. Bacara ended up taking more than just the promised thirtyeight with him, to be snuck away at the next opportunity. He gifted Fox bacta on his last day on Coruscant, and kissed Fox where both the Guard and the 21st Nova Corps could see.
Fox didn't know if that was going to better or worsen anyone's reputation.
Bacara's kisses lingered.
So did Bacara's declaration of love and death. Fox pushed through the exhaustion and the pain of his healing wounds. He looked out for his siblings, because there were things he could do and things he couldn't do. Killing the chancellor and a third of the senators while rewriting the law were on the unwritten list of impossible things.
"I heard," Stone said on one of the rarer and rarer nights when all four Corrie Commanders could get drunk on illegal moonshine and sleep until sunrise, "that the reason not one of Bacara's 21st got arrested while on leave is because Bacara himself threatened them with life long fresher cleaning if they made trouble for you, Fox."
Fox, half asleep after half a glass of liquor, couldn't think of an argument. "Sounds legit. I can see him doing that."
"What the hell," Thorn refilled his glass. "That's so romantic. I'd say I'll kill him if he hurts you, but you can do that yourself. So, I want to be your best man at the wedding."
"No way, I'm gonna be best man," Thire threw a shoulder pauldron at Thorn, who caught it. "Baby Fox is getting married!"
"I'm not," Fox said, "legally, I'm not even a person. Can't get married."
"Fuck that," Stone hissed, "fuck that and fuck all the natborns. Fuck the Jedi, while we're at it. If an arsehole like Bacara can help some siblings flee from this hell, why is he the only one? Why has nobody ever asked us? Who gave the Jedi the right to choose for us?"
"Bacara asked me to leave with him," Fox admitted quietly. He didn't know what else to say. He knew Stone was right. "He offered to take all of the Guard and his 21st, too. I refused."
"Fuck," Stone breathed, and deflated.
"If not all of us are free, none are," Thire took his next drink directly from the bottle. "But all of us will never break away from the Jedi. Bly isn't the only one in love with his General. I don't think he'll choose us over them."
Thorn let his head fall onto Stone's shoulder. "Either way, he should have a choice. Now nobody does."
"But we do," Fox said. "There's always choices. Ours right now are just limited and fucked up . I'm staying here. With you. With the Guard. Because if we – if I left, then one of you would be in my place… so I'm not leaving. I made that choice for you, when I told Bacara no. I'm sorry."
"Oh, Fox," Thire reached out to hug him. "Even if all the stars die, your love will be our gravity."
Things got worse.
A new state of worse every week, and Fox could do nothing but continue. Take one more step. Leave his blood stained sheets in the medbay, strap on the armour one of his siblings cleaned, and do his assigned tasks. Standing straight, never flinching, never wavering.
In the next year, Bacara came twice more to trade bacta supplies for siblings that needed disappearing. Every time Bacara said love will kill you it sounded more and more like I'll die for you.
Fox wondered if he'd do the same. He'd die if it meant protecting Bacara, but would he die for Bacara's ideals? He'd never know.
The next time he saw Bacara, it was in the chancellor's suite, and Fox stepped aside as Bacara and his 21st Nova Corps killed the chancellor.
Fox followed Bacara's orders, let Bacara's troopers close ranks around him, and followed them onto their ships.
Coruscant was under siege, but with the Guard refusing to fight against the invading, there was nobody to stand against them. No other battalion was stationed at the Jedi temple that week, and Bacara had nothing to say to the Jedi. Neither did any of the Guard.
The galaxy is big. The vod'e found an uninhabited, hospitable moon in wild space. That was where they went, that was where some of their siblings followed. Some didn't stay long, others stayed long and then flew to try to live in the republic. Some stayed with the Jedi. Some disappeared among the stars to find their own orbits.
"I think," Fox told Bacara one night under new stars, "love didn't kill me. Love saved me."
"Delusional," Bacara snorted, but tightened his arms around Fox. "I saved you."
"And I love you."
In another universe, Fox died on Coruscant. In this one, he married Bacara. Stone, Thorn and Thire were his best men.