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alderaani · 30 days ago

Text

Lost

Summary: Wolffe and his squad are having a post-training rest cycle on Kamino when a new and unexpected visitor enters their midst. AO3 | Series

Author's Note: Another part to my 100 one word clone centric prompt fills. It does feel a bit miraculous to be returning to this series for the first time since 2022 but I've said it before and I'll say it again - no piece of writing is ever dead until I am. Hope anyone still around to give this a read enjoys it <3

“Uh...do you guys hear something?”

Wolffe pushed up from where he’d been lying on his stomach, face mashed into his pillow. He cracked his eyes open to glare at Bly.

“Only you and your big mouth,” He grunted, voice rough and groggy. “You gettin’ twitchy, trigger finger?”

Bly was sitting with his legs dangling off the edge of the opposite pod, so Wolffe got a good look at the way his face fell. He refused to feel bad about it. Not when he had fresh bruising coming up purple across his ribs and the shouting of their drill Sergeant still ringing in his ears. Bly sniffed, his eyes going big and round. Wolffe snorted. That tactic had stopped working before they’d even enrolled as cadets.

“I said I was sorry,” Bly muttered, pouting and reaching across to kick Wolffe’s pod when the threat of tears didn’t get him anywhere.

That was an old trick too. Wolffe shot his hand out and grabbed the errant ankle, pulling hard and laughing when Bly shrieked and had to twist to cling on to his bed.

Below them there was a loud groan and an ominous creak.

“Will you guys knock it off?”

Wolffe froze, but was too late to avoid the blunt force that slammed into his lower back. The air shoved out of his lungs, and he dropped Bly’s foot in favour of curling over.

“Kark it, Fil,” he coughed. “You kick like a rancor.”

Fil grunted then jabbed his toes into the small of Wolffe’s back again for good measure.

“You’re ruining nap time,” he said, voice muffled. “We’re supposed to be resting .”

Wolffe scoffed and uncurled slowly, sticking his tongue out at Bly, who had scrambled back onto his own bed and was looking smug.

“Nap time’s for tubies.”

Fil stabbed viciously at the mattress again.

“Yeah,” he said. “And I wouldn’t need it if you and Blitz hadn’t been so kriffing loud last night.”

Wolffe froze and scowled. He’d told Blitz he was making too much noise, but their brother wouldn’t know the meaning of quiet if it punched him in the bucket. They kept failing stealth simulations because he either didn’t know or didn’t care what the difference between a popper and a detonator was, and for all Wolffe’s efforts, he carried over the same attitude to conversation, too.

Bly brightened. “I heard that too, what were you doing?”

Wolffe scowled even more, feeling his shoulders bunch up to his ears. “ Nothing .”

He hadn’t pulled off a lie in his life, but that wasn’t going to stop him from trying. It was better than the alternative of actually admitting that they’d stolen one of the practice droids and been trying to programme it to go for the trainers instead. If his brothers got wind of things, there was no way that Fil wouldn’t sell them out to kiss ass, and Bly just couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

Cody...well, Wolffe never quite knew where he stood about these things. Sometimes he’d veto ideas entirely, the downturn of his mouth a deathknell to even the best laid plans. Wolffe knew when he was beaten. But on better occasions Cody would get a special glint in his eye, one that always reminded him of light bouncing off a blaster barrel, and suggest something that would magnify the chaos instead. He had the best sabaac face of them all, so it was always better to have him on side.

Wolffe had spent many hours trying to figure out what cast the odds of getting Cody to loosen up a bit. Until he knew for definite, it was imperative he kept this one under his bucket. He felt good about the plan; Blitz had done a real number on the wiring, so the job looked seamless. But they’d need the whole squad to pitch in if they were gonna get it to work. He wanted to make sure this thing was airtight before he pitched it.

“Why don’t you pull your pod closed if you’re so tired?” He asked, sticking his head over the edge of his own to glare at Fil properly. He got a glimpse of Fil’s pillow-creased face before a socked foot shot towards his face. “ Hey.”

“You’re deflecting, vod,” Fil grunted.

“ Vod ?” Wolffe scoffed, scrubbing his sore cheek. He wrinkled his nose. “The hell’re you tryin’ to talk like one of those Alpha ARCs for? Hopin’ they’ll adopt you if you ask nicely?”

There was a short silence, long enough that Wolffe chanced another peek over the edge. Fil’s ears had flushed dark, his expression mulish. Wolffe scented weakness and grinned.

“Bet they’d be nicer to me than you are,” Fil said, the furrow between his brows deepening.

Wolffe snorted. “The Alphas aren’t nice to nobody, ‘ specially not scrawny regs like you .”

“That’s not true!” Fil’s voice was shrill.

As Wolffe opened his mouth to reply, Bly made a sharp sound of warning that he was too caught up in amusement to heed.

“The Alpha class get to break the rules , Fil. You just kiss the manual.”

There was ringing silence from the bunk below, instead of the sharp quip that Wolffe had expected. For a second, the only sound was the harsh burr of Blitz snoring on the next level up. He glanced automatically at Bly, who scrunched his face and cut his hand in a line across his throat.

Then Wolffe heard a distinct sniffle, his stomach dropping. He scrambled back to the edge of the bunk and stuck his whole head over the edge, something cold and awful spreading inside him, extinguishing his humour in an instant.

“Hey, are you crying?”

“ No, ” Fil said, wetly, struggling to turn over and hide his face. His breath hitched so hard Wolffe could see his ribs jump.

Kark it. He’d done it again. Pushed too hard and put his great big foot in it. It felt like he’d come out of the tube wrong sometimes, like there was simultaneously too much of him and not enough of the good bits. He’d made Gree cry the other day, too, had pulled just a little too hard when they were sparring and then suddenly found himself trying to calm him down before the trainer noticed. He was always doing that; barrelling straight over the line and not realising until it was dust behind him.

It made him good at simulations. He didn’t think it made him a very good brother.

He twisted his hands together and looked beseechingly towards Bly, who fixed him with an unimpressed glare and gestured at the lower bunk.

The message was clear: Go fix it . For a moment, he was tempted to just retract his pod, but...that would be cowardly. And if he didn’t make things up now, Cody or Blitz would force him to later. Probably from a headlock.

He sighed and dutifully clambered down a level until he was hanging off the ladder by Fil’s head. He was still curled up and sniffling, but with a stiff sort of awareness that told Wolffe he was fully alert and primed to start swinging if he didn’t get this right. They always had to be ready to turn tears into anger, to prove that you weren’t someone too weak to leave behind.

“You can say vod if you wanna,” he began, cringing at the way the words sounded coming out of his mouth.

Fil snorted and didn’t turn to look at him.

Wolffe took a deep breath. “S-just… why ?”

Fil shuffled. “What?”

“Why do you wanna talk like them? They don’t do nothin’ for us.”

Wolffe didn’t know how true it was, but he’d heard that all 100 of the Alpha class were still kicking. Alphas didn’t get sent to reconditioning if their scores dipped, didn’t just disappear . And the trainers even called them by their names.

Wolffe might have respected that more if it had ever trickled down to the rest of them. He’d always be a plain old CC until the day he died and there was nothing anyone could do about that, no matter who he spoke like.

Fil finally rolled over, displaying a damp tear streaked face. He scowled at Wolffe.

“I dunno. It’s not even about them,” he bit out. Wolffe saw the way his shoulders hunched and thought lie . He only just managed to restrain himself from sinking his teeth into it and let go. “I just…they say it like they’re part of somethin’.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“They say it like they’re something…more, I guess,” Fil shrugged, swiping a sleeve under his nose.

“More than us , you mean,” Wolffe said. He’d been aiming for outrage, but was surprised by the meek little voice that came out of him.

Fil had been watching the Alphas for a while. Lots of cadets did. Wolffe could understand wanting better for yourself - hell, he wasn’t exempt from that - but seeing that dream in another clone classification felt a lot like wishing yourself away. Like wishing your brothers away, too.

“If you want another squad just say it,” he muttered, through a throat so tight it hurt. He’d been bunked with this squad since their second cycle - practically batchmates, since none of their original ones had made the cut. That was a long time in the projected shelf life of a clone. Despite his better judgement, he liked them most of the time.

Fil made an exasperated noise. “That’s not what I -”

Above their heads, there was a clang, then a thump. Wolffe shot to attention, but didn’t anticipate Fil doing the same. Their shoulders collided, nearly pitching him off the narrow bunk entirely had Fil’s hand not caught the back of his collar.

“I told you I heard something,” Bly hissed.

The huge ventilation tunnel spanning the length of their dormitory ceiling shuddered again, creaking as it swayed ominously. There was the echoing thud of a foot connecting to the inner wall.

Wolffe snorted.

“It’s just some of the tubies sneaking out,” he said, sinking back to lean against Fil’s pillow.

“Badly,” Bly said. “Have they got a full set of armour on or what?”

Fil was frowning, still craning his head upwards.

“Where the hell are they going?” He muttered, tracking the tunnel to where it disappeared into the far wall. “The only thing that way is the shower block.”

There was another clang, before the maintenance hatch for their dormitory popped open. A small body wriggled out, before swinging to grab the surface of the nearest pod on the uppermost level.

Wolffe studied the cadet that had just dropped into their midst. The gangly, colt-like limbs on 'em made him wince. With legs like that he was either approaching a stint in the growth acceleration chamber or had just come out of one. Wolffe pitied him regardless. Judging by his height and the extra fat he still had in his cheeks, he was probably only a cycle behind them. Most interesting was the shock of pale blond curls in disarray as the cadet nimbly scaled the pod latches on the wall opposite and landed on the floor.

He’d only seen a few mutations before, and none so dramatic as this. No wonder the poor kid had learned how to sneak around - you certainly wouldn’t miss him in a crowd.

“Uh, you lost?” he asked, coughing out a laugh at the way it made the cadet jump and wheel around. He caught a glimpse of the usual big brown eyes, a pair of eyebrows drawn together over them. There was a tight, resolute downturn to the curve of their mouth, a ready wariness in the hunched line of their shoulders.

“ No.” They said, gaze flicking rapidly between each member of their rapt audience. Wolffe stifled another laugh at the squeaky pitch of their voice - it was hard to imagine they’d ever sounded like that. “I have an appointment.”

“An appointment ?” Bly didn’t even try to hide his amusement. “Nobody ever told me this was an office. Who’re you booked in with, kid?”

The cadet kept his back to the wall, and Wolffe didn’t miss the way he catalogued the door, or scoped out possible routes back to the maintenance hatch. His shoulders hadn’t relaxed down from around his ears yet, his hands tight fists at his sides. Wolffe had to admit, he didn’t know if he’d be able to go uninvited into another squad’s dorm with any more swagger. There was something scrappy about this kid - an unpredictable mixture of fight or flight where either impulse might win.

“You’re Cody’s new pet, aren’t you?” Fil said suddenly. “The one he keeps trying to socialize.”

That rang a bell. Cody had been ranting about this new cadet he’d found in the detention laps for the last two weeks, convinced the kid was either going to commit a murder or become the victim of one if someone didn’t do something about it. Wolffe had wanted to question why that someone had to be Cody, but there was no point wasting the breath - Cody was a sucker for charity cases. It was why he was the best of them, unilaterally deferred to when the chips were down. There weren’t many people in this army who you knew would always come back for you, squad or not. Maybe it was because their whole squad had been strays, once. While the choice to be together had never been theirs, the choice to become a unit had. Cody had taken that mentality and run with it.

The cadet brightened a little bit, in a desperately hopeful way that was kind of disgusting. “Is he here?”

Instead of answering, Bly tilted his head, studying the new arrival with rapt attention. “Wow, I thought he was making you up.”

Wolffe wrinkled his nose. “Why would he do that?”

Bly shrugged. “I don’t know, I figured it was just a polite way of telling us to kriff off.”

Wolffe stared at his brother in naked disbelief. “Cody’s never been polite in his life.”

“And he told you to kriff off to your face this morning,” Blitz said, poking his head over the edge of his pod. “I heard him. What are we talking about?”

“Cody’s new passion project,” Wolffe told him. “Apparently they have an ‘appointment’ together.”

The cadet’s expression had been slowly softening into crestfallen the longer none of the other pods popped open, but the moment Wolffe spoke a spark of anger lit again, his teeth coming out.

“My designation is CT-7567,” he snapped. “Cody was going to take me to watch the aiwhas.”

Wolffe caught Bly’s eye - the lack of a name spoke volumes. Either this cadet was so far in the shit he was on performance rotation and didn’t have a set squad of his own, which was practically having one foot over the threshold of the decommissioning bay, or his relationship with his squad was the thing on the rocks. Neither prospect had a long lifespan attached to it.

“He got pulled back by our trainer,” Blitz said, taking pity on the kid. He ran his hands through his sleep-mussed hair and yawned until his jaw cracked.

“Is he okay?” ‘67 asked.

Fil rolled his eyes. “Yeah, he’s fine. Just doesn’t study hard enough for his galactic history modules.”

‘67 folded his hands into his sleeves, scrunching and relaxing the material over and over again. His eyes drifted back towards the maintenance hatch. He was going to try to run, Wolffe realised.

He turned to look properly at Fil, gesturing just the slightest bit towards the kid. It had been a long time since they’d gone aiwha-watching, but it had been their favourite thing to do a few cycles back. They only really swarmed when it was storming, the danger of navigating the slick rooftops worth it for the way the pods drifted lazily on the huge waves and rolled to let the pelting rain tickle their undersides.

Cody had never taken anyone out there, of all the miserable tagalongs he’d acquired over the years. More than anything else, it sealed Wolffe’s decision - whether they liked it or not, 7567 was here for the long haul.

Fil rolled his eyes, but he was almost smiling.

“Sure, been a while since we snuck out,” Bly shrugged, catching the silent conversation.

“Hell yeah,” Blitz said. “Where are we going?”

7567 had gone very still, like he was stood in the crosshairs of a KiSteer rifle.

“To see the aiwhas, idiot,” Wolffe scoffed. “It’s not the kid’s fault that Cody’s late.”

“Hell yeah, ” Blitz said again, stretching until his spine popped. “I’ve got a theory, do you think if I -”

“ No, ” Wolffe said forcefully, in unison with Fil and Bly. Almost as long as he’d been out of his tube, Blitz had been trying to find a way to ride the aiwhas like the longnecks did. They’d been finding ways to stop him for just slightly less time than that.

“Aw, you guys are no fun,” Blitz muttered, but there was no heat in it. He’d swung himself onto the ladder and made it most of the way towards the floor before 7567 found his voice again.

“Why would you do that?” he asked, voice brittle. He was still frozen, eyes darting between them. Distrust was the winning emotion on his face, but there was that unwilling edge of hope again, that even the experience of having a mutation on Kamino hadn’t managed to smother. Wolffe had said it before, he’d say it again: disgusting. He could entirely see why Cody was ready to put his commendations on the line for this little brat.

“Because if you’re one of Cody’s, you’re one of ours,” he shrugged, clambering past Fil to slide down the ladder. He popped open their wet weather locker and yanked out two of the coats inside. He threw one at ‘67. “That’s how squad works. Now suit up.”

They didn’t take ‘67 back through the ventilation shaft - a cycle ago they would have, but in the months that had lapsed since they’d last tried, they’d grown too much for it to be comfortable. They used the maintenance halls instead. Less secure, maybe, but they were on good terms with old ‘99, who in turn kept the droid fleet sweet, so they were unlikely to be ratted out by anyone.

“You don’t have to creep around like that, kid,” Bly was saying to him, as they cleared the stretch underneath training hall 3.

‘67 looked like he might bite. “Don’t call me kid . I’m barely younger than you.”

Wolffe stifled a laugh. He wanted to hold the cadet up by his ankles and shake him around until he really fought back, just to see what would happen. There would be time for that, though, once he stopped believing it was really a matter of life and death and loosened up a bit.

“Gotta find yourself a name, if you don’t want kid to stick,” Fil told him, flanking his other side. “Some clones in our cycle have got some real unfortunate ones cause they weren’t quick enough.”

‘67’s scowl deepened into something more hurt than mad. “No chance of that. My squad won’t even give me a stupid one.”

Wolffe felt that funny wrench in his chest again. Was that what the younger squads were doing? Only taking names when they’d passed group consensus? More proof that a single cycle between clones could be akin to an ocean.

“So pick your own,” he heard himself say.

“What?” ‘67 asked, looking at him like he’d grown a second head.

“Pick your own,” he repeated. “Don’t let ‘em have that over you.”

“You can do that?” ‘67 sounded deeply sceptical.

“Course you can,” Blitz said. “I wasn’t going to let any of these idiots pick for me.”

Wolffe laughed. “Yeah, we’d have ended up as Idiots One, Two, Three and Four.”

“I’d have been Idiot One,” Bly told ‘67, grinning.

“Like hell you would,” Fil retorted. “ I’d have been Idiot One.”

‘67’s voice was flat. “Aren’t there five of you?”

Bly’s grin grew wider. “Yeah, but Cody would have been Big Idiot.”

Their laughter carried them until they were out on the rooftop, when they had to start concentrating to stop themselves getting blown off into the oblivion of Kamino’s oceans. Wolffe went first - he was one of the surest on his feet, and he’d been out here the most often. It took a little longer on this new route, but he figured his way to their usual spot easily enough, where the wind was a little less brutal with the facility fully at their backs. The views out over the long, desolate horizon were best here too, letting you see the huge tidal waves roll in.

“I don’t see anything,” ‘67 muttered, casting a hand over his forehead like keeping the rain out might help him see better.

“Just give it a minute,” Bly said, tracking the rolling water and the loud, slamming booms as each wave hit the platform stilts all those meters below. “Aiwhas like the massive ones, lets ‘em really surf.”

“Got a platform beater coming!” Blitz shouted, gesturing. “Look at the crest on that!”

“I see them, I see them!” ‘67 cried, flapping his hand in the same direction. Sure enough, as the wave swelled, there was the low, carrying croon of an aiwha pod, before their great, grey bodies came shooting out of the frothy wave head, first five, then ten, their huge wings beating lazily to help them keep pace with the waterline.

The pod leader, a huge, grizzled thing with chunks out of its wings, bellowed and rolled as the wave started its downward trajectory, spinning once, twice, before tucking everything in tight and bombing back into the water, the rest of the pod following. The resulting spray was so fierce Wolffe barely had time to get his hand over his face before it got them.

‘67 was shrieking with laughter, a huge smile splitting his face from side to side. “That was amazing !”

A looming shadow fell behind them. They all froze.

“What the heck is this?”

Everyone apart from ‘67 relaxed.

“Hey, Cody,” Bly said, giving him a lazy two-fingered salute. “We thought we’d take your cadet for a walk.”

“That’s my vod’ika, get your own,” Cody growled.

Wolffe groaned. “Not you, too. Why can’t we make up our own word?”

“Do you like karkhead better?” Cody asked. He was still in his training armor, and looked mad as hell about it. He’d clearly hightailed it straight from his remedial to the dorms and then come here directly when he’d found it empty. Wolffe might have felt bad about his panic had it not been clearly rooted in Cody not trusting what they’d done with ‘67 in his absence.

“That’s not very nice, ‘67 has a perfectly fine head,” he retorted, dodging the kick that quickly followed.

“I meant for you ,” Cody said, eyes raking over ‘67. When he was satisfied that his squad hadn’t managed to break him, he sniffed. “Have I missed many?”

“Just the best pod dive we’ve ever seen in our lives,” Bly crowed.

Cody made the mistake of trying to kick for a second time; Bly bypassed the foot and latched around his thigh, and they both went down with shouts and lots of scuffling, clearing out Blitz as collateral.

‘67 stood in the middle of the chaos looking thoroughly bewildered.

“Shouldn’t we stop them?” He asked Fil in a small voice, one arm coming up to wrap round his stomach. “I - I don’t want ‘em to fight cause of me.”

Fil grinned. “This isn’t fighting, kid. C’mere.”

And to Wolffe’s surprise, ‘67 came, scooting to fit into the small space between him and Fil, where he’d clearly figured out the best warmth would be.

Fil turned to look at Wolffe over ‘67’s blond head, satisfaction on his face.

“This is why I call you vod , you know,” he said, gesturing back at where their squadmates were tussling in a puddle. “When I said it made me feel part of something, I meant that when I say it, it feels like this. I don’t want a new squad.”

And standing there in the rain, wet through despite his gear and cold to the bone, with his idiot brothers and their strange new tagalong, Wolffe could almost get it.

“Good,” he said, then turned back to the ocean. There was a new wave coming in.

#commander wolffe #commander cody #commander fil #commander blitz #captain rex #star wars #alderwrites #i genuinely don't know how to tag any more #it has been so long and i am so very not online these days #bone apple tit everyone

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