Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Stitch had been locked down in the base’s medbay during the siege, along with those of their staff that weren’t field medics, and he’d waited the whole thing out, feeling the ground shake and hearing the far off sound of laser cannon fire and explosives. Honestly it was the closest Stitch had ever been to a real battle. Coruscant was dangerous and the Guard had one of the highest death rates in the entire GAR, but there’d only been a few times the war had ever made it to Coruscant and it was never like this.

It was scary, Stitch had to admit, a different kind of scary from his usual fears; the fear when Fox disappeared again, knowing when he turned up he’d probably be injured or near death; the fear of seeing his brothers brought in looking like they might not make it; the fear whenever anybody was sent off-world on a mission, into a galaxy full of danger without the rest of them there to back them up; the fear of somebody warning him that there’d just been an SOS and that they were about to get a new case, never knowing what it would be until they walked in the door...or were carried in. This was different, now Stitch was afraid they’d lose the battle, that everything had been for nothing and they’d be wiped out or captured and sold into slavery all over again. That and the fear that one of those bombs might get dropped right on top of the medbay and all of them would die. It was different, but the feeling of that fear wasn’t foreign to Stitch, not when he’d lived the last four years of his life in a constant state of terror.

Nothing got dropped on their heads however. Fox and the other Guard commanders managed to protect the base and it wasn’t destroyed or overrun, even if apparently there’d been some close calls. They didn’t lose the battle either, they won, but Stitch was too busy being swamped with injuries to celebrate. A lot of clones had been hurt in the fight…and they’d lost some too. The idea that those brothers had died for this, during this fight after everything else they had survived, made Stitch want to sit down and cry. It wasn’t fair, none of it was fair, not what any of them had suffered, even the GAR troopers. The war had destroyed all of their lives, lives they had never thought would be worth anything to begin with, and now that they’d had a sliver of hope, a taste of freedom, they had had to fight all over again, to lose brothers all over again, and for what?

Palpatine was dead. Stitch had to take solace in that. He was dead, and at least this time their fallen brothers got a funeral. This whole thing had been stupid and unnecessary, all of it, but at least they’d been able to mourn their fallen properly for once and at least that evil son of a bitch could never hurt anybody ever again, could never take anything else from them, could never torture Fox in body and spirit ever again. For now, it seemed like they were safe, and there were celebrations mingled with shows of grief. 

Even once they’d treated all the battle injuries, Stitch didn’t expect to be anything but swamped for the foreseeable future, not with over a thousand clones to dechip, more than any of them had ever had to do at once. The rest of the Guard were focused on keeping their chipped brothers captive, keeping them from escaping and keeping them healthy, if not in good spirits, but the medical staff were mired in back to back brain surgeries. Stitch had lost count of how many he’d done in the last week, it had to be at least fifty, and they weren’t even an eighth of the way done. 

At least nothing else had gone wrong. There’d been several scares, operations where there were sudden complications, even some where the brother they were trying to free had nearly died, but so far nobody had been lost. Stitch was being as careful as he possibly could, taking the time he needed to do each operation, even when all he wanted was to finish them as quickly as possible. 

Fox’s idiot little brother, Rex, had asked if it would help for them to see if they could acquire some automated surgical suites, which had sent Stitch on a whole tirade about how shitty those fucking things were and how they couldn’t be trusted for shit, at which point he learned that apparently not just Rex, but the Bad Batch, and at least twenty or thirty other clones under Rex’s command had had their chips removed by the machines with not so much as a field medic overseeing the operation, let alone a real surgeon, which had been so completely horrible and infuriating that once Stitch had got done yelling about it he kicked a hole in the wall of his office and collapsed into his desk chair in tears, exhausted from the constant helplessness of the last four years.

Rex had not tried to touch him, like some of the other GAR troopers had when they’d seen him upset, like Commander Cody had, but he’d stood on the opposite side of the room and spoke in calm gentle Mando’a, assuring him that if he didn’t want to use the automated surgical suites that nobody would force him, that Stitch had control over how these procedures were done and if something wasn’t safe then they didn’t have to do it, and that everyone who had been under the knife of those dummy surgeons had come out unscathed. That last bit was pure luck, Stitch knew that viscerally, but hearing that nobody had been permanently fucking lobotomized by the things did help a little. Rex talked to him softly until Stitch’s breathing evened out, and then offered to get him something to eat, which he accepted in defeat because he’d missed his last meal, too busy with the back to back surgeries to step away for it.

It was hard, trying to get used to being around the GAR troopers all the time, even with all that the commanders and everyone had done to try and mend fences, to close the gap. Things might be okay now, batchmates finally reconciling after years of nothing but hostility, but Stitch made no effort to let any of them in. He didn’t like or trust any of them, even Needle, who had been the previous CMO and whom Stitch worked with constantly. Maybe everyone else had forgotten what it had felt like to be isolated, and just who had made that necessary in the first place, but Stitch wouldn’t, couldn't, forget. He’d had that lesson, the fact that GAR troopers just fundamentally couldn’t understand them and that none of them had ever made any effort to try until it had been spelled out for them, engraved on his heart by his own shitty batch.

Tally, Stitch’s closest brother, his closest batcher, another medic with whom Stitch had studied and trained on Kamino and who had been the only one of Stitch's batch to ever understand what it was like, even without knowing what was happening on Coruscant, was dead. He had died early on in the war, had died saving a brother in one of so many endless battles none of them could keep track anymore, had died with the spent stim still in his hand, and when Stitch had wanted nothing but to mourn him, his batch had shut him out, had told him he didn’t deserve that, because he wasn’t a frontliner and had never done anything to help anybody.

He’d disowned them on the spot, could only disown them, because nothing had ever hurt him as badly as those words, as being told to his face that he was just a worthless pencil pusher who sat behind his desk all day and put bacta on flimsicuts, who’d never helped anybody, who didn’t deserve to mourn his own brother because he could never understand what it was like to be a real medic.

Stitch hadn’t spoken to his batchmates since, had smashed his comm so even if they had wanted to call him, they couldn’t, and frankly good riddance. Who needed brothers like that anyway, not him, that was for sure…but then Stitch finished scrubbing up for his fifth surgery of the day and stepped into the OR, only to find Buzz, one of those same batchers, his littlest brother, unconscious on his table, a mask over his face, a face whose expression was slack in sleep. Stitch had stood frozen in place for so long that it took Needle snapping his fingers in his face for him to do anything but stare at his unconscious baby brother, at one of the people who had destroyed his life, who had ripped his heart out of his chest and crushed it beneath the heel of his GAR issued boot, laying on the table while everyone else waited for Stitch to unfreeze.

“Stitch?” Needle asked him gently, “If you’re too tired for this, I can take over.”

“No,” Stitch rasped, “No I’m okay it’s just…he’s my batchmate…”

The expression of the other medics cleared and several of them nodded in understanding, only they didn’t understand, they’d taken it for the opposite meaning than what Stitch had intended, because Kix said, “He’s in good hands, vod, he’ll be good as new before you know it.” 

Stitch saw the way Sawbones, the only Corrie medic in the OR for this surgery, winced. He knew about Stitch’s batchmates, everybody in the Guard knew about Stitch’s batchmates, because it had been used as the prime example of why talking to one’s GAR brothers was dangerous. That said, Sawbones didn’t correct any of them, even if he gave Stitch a look of real understanding, of real sympathy, while Stitch shook himself out and finally approached the table.

Buzz was the only one of the three Stitch had treated so far and he was suddenly reminded that he had no idea if Scratch or Mosco had even survived the war. Even so, Stitch treated Buzz the same as he had treated every other brother he’d ever done surgery on, even though after it was done he had to retreat to his office, biting back angry tears. Sawbones had called Fox in to talk to him and Fox had assured him that he’d talk to the other commanders about it and see if something could be done, if there was some way to make sure he never had to interact with his batchmates. Stitch had simply nodded, only for Fox to reach out and pull him in for a keldabe that he held for a long long time, that he held until Stitch’s breaths had stopped rattling in his lungs. 

Stitch didn’t know how to feel, because he couldn’t say he’d ever wished his batchers had been killed like Tally had, but at the same time some angry hateful part of him wished he could trade them for Tally, for the only batchmate that had ever actually cared about him. He couldn’t though, and it was his duty to care for them the same way he cared for every other brother…so he did, he cared for Buzz, setting him up in the recovery room to rest with Kix as the attending medic when his surgery was finished, then braced himself for the other two, for whenever they would appear on his table like Buzz had. He would care for them…and hope that somehow he’d never see them again afterwards.

As if anything he’d ever wished for had ever come true. As if anything he’d ever hoped for had ever been anything but totally futile.

It was stupid of him, of course it was, and he should have known better.

***

Buzz woke up feeling groggy, felt like something was wrong with him, and he tried pushing himself upright, only to end up flopping over sideways with a groan. He blinked blearily around the room and some still sluggish part of his brain said medbay. Had he been hurt? He couldn’t remember…

What had he been doing?

For a moment he just laid there in the hospital bed and tried to piece the murky strands of his memory back together. The war…it had ended, hadn’t it? It ended, the Jedi were traitors…something happened to Commander Bacara and he betrayed too, was arrested. It was strange that Buzz hadn’t been shocked by that, by the idea that Commander Bacara, who was so determinedly upstanding and perfect, would betray them…but it had happened. He remembered seeing him escorted off the flightdeck in binders after shooting an officer…

Why?

And after that…they hadn't promoted anybody to take Bacara’s place, they’d just folded what remained of the Nova Corps in with several other legions that had survived the rounds of decoms that had thinned their numbers so heavily.

The decoms…

They’d been killing them, the Empire was killing them en mass…after everything, everything they’d done, everything they’d sacrificed…like they were worthless! Buzz had to lay there for a second and just try to keep breathing, just try to get his head around it. He didn’t know why now was the first time he’d ever cared, why this was his first time ever even thinking about any of it. It had…had made sense before…

He was sure it had made sense, but now it didn’t, now none of it made sense.

And then everything got stranger, more nonsensical. The Empire was gone, they were thrust back through time, but the commanders had banded together to find the Emperor, young as he may have been, and then…they’d gone after more of their men, trying to rally their troops to set it right, to win the Emperor back his empire.

They’d—they’d fought them instead, their own brothers, they had tried to kill them!

Buzz shoved himself back up on shaking arms, only for somebody to put a gentle hand on his shoulder, a familiar voice speaking in soft Mando’a. A clone’s voice.

“T-Tally?” Buzz mumbled, overcome by the smell of antiseptic and the sound of beeping machines, but he knew it was wrong the second his fallen batcher’s name left his lips. Tally had been dead for years, he was gone.

Instead he looked up into the face of a brother he didn’t know, one with armor that was painted in 501st blue and had the medic’s symbol on the pauldron. “Easy, vod,” the medic said, a little stern, but not hard, not unkind.

“Where…?” Buzz mumbled.

“Let’s get you sitting up properly,” the medic said instead of answering his question, helping Buzz to settle back properly in the bed before taking a seat beside him on the edge. “I’ll explain, just…it’s a ride, so buckle in I guess.”

All Buzz could do was nod. It was a ride, as it turned out, he wasn’t lying. It had…it had all been a lie, all of it, the war, the Republic, the very reason for their creation, all of it was one giant trap that had snapped shut on all their necks. Buzz ended up sitting in silence once the medic, Kix, had finished explaining it all, his ears ringing, as he stared blankly down at how he’d knotted his fists in the blanket covering his lap.

“What about my batchmates?” he asked almost numbly, “Did they make it?”

“We don’t know exactly who we’ve got yet,” Kix told him, “But if you come up clear in a couple hours, you can ask one of the Corries to walk with you through the occupied cells and see if you find them, okay? They’ve done that a bunch now as we’ve been dechipping more and more brothers.”

“The–the Corries?” Buzz gasped, his eyes jerking up and his heart leaping into his throat.

If the Corries were here that–that meant Stitch was here…if he'd made it, but—

Buzz deflated a second later as reality came back and hit him in the face. Even if he was here, Stitch wouldn’t want to see him. If he had wanted anything to do with them, he’d have reached out at some point in the last four years…but he hadn't, not once. It wasn’t…wasn’t right. They’d been too harsh, they never should have said those horrible things to him, even…even if he did have a good post, they shouldn’t have used that as a weapon against him, not when it wasn’t his fault, not when he’d never asked for that post, even if there had been times during the war when Buzz couldn’t help but be jealous thinking of the safety of triple zero, that haven they only got to see after months and months of endless fighting. No matter what, Stitch had deserved to mourn Tally’s death just as much as the rest of them, he had a right to it, and yet they’d denied him that.

“Is Stitch here?” he asked through numb lips, but the frown that flickered across Kix’s face made his stomach twist.

“Yeah, he’s our CMO, but…sorry, vod, I don’t–I don’t know how to explain this, but the commanders have put you on…probation, I guess would be the word. You’re not going to be allowed back in here after this, unless you’re hurt.”

“Probation?” Buzz asked him with a confused frown, “What did I do?”

“I don’t know,” Kix admitted, “Nobody seems to want to talk about it, but I think Stitch asked them to…or something. He’s been even more withdrawn since he first saw you on the table. There’s something there I’m guessing, right?”

Buzz drew his knees up to his chest and rested his arms on top with a sigh, that was it then. Stitch had seen him and asked the commanders to separate them, to keep Buzz away from him, and they’d considered him enough of a danger to Stitch's wellbeing that they’d agreed.

Fuck.

“I’ll keep away from him,” Buzz sighed again, his heart heavy in his chest, so heavy, like it was waterlogged with tears he was too tired to cry, tears that were too little too late, that wouldn’t change anything.

Kix just frowned even more, looking over his face for a second before he spoke up again, “Vod,” he said in a low tone, “We were wrong about them, really wrong…”

Buzz blinked back up at him in confusion, not understanding, but Kix sighed and launched into a second explanation, one that had Buzz’s stomach hit the floor. The Senators had been torturing the Guard, raping them, killing them…and this whole time the rest of them had written them off as pencil pushers, as useless desk jockeys who hadn’t suffered a day in their lives and couldn’t understand what it was like to be a real soldier, a real medic, a real commander, a real brother…

He felt like he’d been hit in the face with a brick, had that been happening from the beginning? All those times Stitch didn’t answer his comm, or showed up late to a call and claimed there’d been an emergency…had somebody been dying on his table? Had he been elbow deep in a brother’s guts trying to keep them alive…only to get ridiculed by the people that should have had his back the most?

During their fight…he had screamed that he had seen just as much death, had been trying to save their brothers just as much as Tally…and they’d spat it back in his face, had told him he wasn’t a real medic, that he’d never understand what it meant to help anybody, to fight, any of it.

All Buzz could do was take a shuddering breath and bury his face in his arms. He’d known it was wrong, had had second thoughts as soon as he came to his senses, as soon as Stitch had shattered his comm with that final cry that they weren’t his brothers, the last thing Buzz had heard him say in four years. The last thing he’d ever thought he’d hear from him. It had been wrong, would have been wrong even if Stitch had just been sitting at his desk handing out micropatches all day, but for them to have said those things to an actual medic, a fucking surgeon, who had been desperately trying to keep his men alive against all odds…it was unforgivable.

No wonder Stitch had asked for Buzz to be separated.

“How long until you can let me out?” Buzz mumbled when Kix reached out and put his hand on his shoulder again. He’d respect that, that distance, he’d give Stitch the space he wanted, even if the need to apologize burned in Buzz’s stomach like lava. Stitch deserved more than some pathetic half-assed apology that came years too late to matter and Buzz couldn't think of anything he might possibly be able to give him that would even begin to be what he really deserved after how they'd treated him. 

“Are they gonna kick me out?” he mumbled, the sudden fear of it shooting through him as the possibility occurred to him. He’d deserve it if they did, but…but he didn’t know how he would survive without the GAR, without his brothers. And what about Scratch and Mosco? If they’d made it here, would they be kicked out too? All three of them dumped in a ditch on the side of the road?

Kix frowned at him, but let out a heavy sigh, “If you pass your physical, we’ll let you out later today and…and I don’t know, vod, nobody is telling us what's going on. The Corries all seem to know, but they’re so fucking cagey about everything already and getting them to talk to us about this has been kriffing impossible, but…you did something bad right?”

“I’m dar’vode…” Buzz admitted, the words dropping from his lips and hitting the floor like bile, like maggots, like the most foul rotten thing imaginable, and Kix’s brow creased, but he didn’t argue or deny it.

“I don’t know,” he said again, “but I don’t think they’d just–just throw you to the wolves…”

Buzz sighed, but nodded his head against his arms, “I guess…if they’d at least let me check if Scratch and Mosco are here, whatever else they do with me is okay. I probably deserve it…”

“I’ll make sure you’re allowed to check,” Kix vowed, “I promise.”

“Okay,” was all Buzz could think to say, “Thanks.” He didn’t know what he’d do if they really did throw him out and it felt cruel to hope that if they did, they’d throw Scratch and Mosco out too, because he couldn’t wish for them to be abandoned like that, but…he didn’t want to be alone…even if he deserved it. 

Even if he’d earned it.

Chapter Text

Buzz passed his physical, as it turned out, and once Kix unhooked him from all the machines, he led him out of the recovery room into the medbay, where a Guard stood by the door. The Corrie was wearing his helmet and his posture gave away nothing, but when they stepped out of the room he reached out and roughly took Buzz by the elbow, starting to drag him towards the door.

“Wait,” Kix cut in, his voice hard, and the Guard paused, turning his helmeted head back towards him. “He needs to check if his batchers are in the prison block,” Kix explained in a tone that left no room for argument, but the Corrie was unmoved.

“The commanders have ordered him to be put in the empty block under iso,” he replied, his voice cold and Buzz’s stomach dropped. They were putting him in iso?

A thunderous look took over Kix’s expression at the words. “Iso’s a fucking Kamino punishment, since when have we ever done that?” He snapped.

The Guard just shrugged his shoulder, his posture still empty, “I have orders,” was all he said.

“Call Rex,” Kix snapped, his voice just as hard as the Corrie’s had been, “This isn’t right.”

For a moment it seemed like the Guard wouldn’t do it and Buzz grimaced at the way the brother’s grip on his elbow had turned into a vice, but after a moment he pulled up his vambrace and made the call.

Kix waited impatiently, but behind him, on the other side of the medbay, somebody came out of the room that had the OR sign above it and Buzz sucked in a breath.

It was Stitch. Buzz hadn’t seen him in years, he had a tattoo on his face that he hadn’t had before, but Buzz would never mistake him. He opened his mouth to call out to him on instinct, a thousand apologies running through his head, but then Stitch turned. For just a second their eyes locked and Buzz saw exhaustion, he saw despair, loss, and…and he saw hate.

When their gazes met, Stitch’s eyes flashed with hatred for that single split second, like he’d tear Buzz’s heart out with his hands if he only could, but all he did was turn sharply away, literally turning his back on him, and Buzz just stood there frozen, wanting to cry. He’d have been deluding himself to expect anything else and yet…yet he had hoped…

But Stitch hated him.

His brother hated his guts.

Why had Stitch even saved him in the first place?

“The Commanders have agreed to discuss the matter in the empty block,” the Corrie said, snapping Buzz back to reality, as he started dragging him back out again, although this time Kix followed them.

None of them talked as the Guard dragged Buzz through the base, but Kix looked like he had thunderclouds in his eyes, lightning in his face. It seemed like, somehow, Buzz had ended up with an advocate.

The three of them marched wordlessly through the base, passing security patrols as they went, until the Guard buzzed them into an empty block, as he’d said, and dumped Buzz down on a bed.

“The Commanders will be here shortly,” he said stiffly before turning and leaving the bunkroom, taking up a place outside the door.

“Th-thanks,” Buzz stammered, looking up into Kix’s thunderous expression, “I don’t—I mean, I probably deserve this but I—”

“Did you kill a brother?” Kix asked him sharply and Buzz sucked in a breath.

“N-no!” he gasped, “How could I ever—”

“Then this is banthashit. Whatever you did, other brothers have done worse and weren’t treated like this,” Kix grumbled, folding his arms across his chest.

Buzz could only let out a shaky sigh and run his hand through his hair. “They’re just-just trying to protect him…” he murmured, and an uncertain frown crossed Kix’s face.

“Would you hurt him? If we left you alone?” he asked next and Buzz shook his head furiously. Of course he wouldn’t, he never wanted to hurt his brothers again, never. “Did you hurt him?” Kix pressed.

“Yeah…” Buzz admitted, looking away, “Early on in the war we…we were never good to him at all, we treated him so badly and…then one of our other batchers died and we—we said the cruelest possible thing to him, said he didn’t deserve to grieve Tally…that he wasn’t real medic because he was posted on Coruscant and could never understand what Tally went through. That he could never be the kind of hero Tally was and…and he disowned us. We deserved it, obviously, but…I wish I could take it all back…”

Kix let out an enormous sigh and dropped down beside Buzz on the bunk, “That’s terrible,” he grumbled, “I can see why they’re treating you like this, especially if Fox is involved. He and Stitch are close and Fox is really protective, but…it’s still not right, they’re going too far.”

“What’re they supposed to do?” Buzz asked him numbly, “Either they lock me up or they lock him up, no way they could keep us from ever crossing paths otherwise…unless they just kick me out entirely…and he didn’t do anything wrong, but I did.”

Kix scowled and opened his mouth to say something, but he was interrupted by the door whooshing open. Five of the commanders entered the room, Wolffe, Rex, Fox, Bacara, and Appo, more than Buzz had frankly expected, but he shot to his feet and saluted. The only one who returned the gesture was Bacara, although Kix’s salute was returned by all of them.

Seeing Commander Fox though, was like a kick in the teeth. Buzz had seen him a few times over the years, although mostly over holo and never with his helmet off, but back then he’d been…been okay, or at least it seemed that way, but now he was in a wheelchair and…his face…

The reminder of what Kix had told him had happened to the Corries slammed into him like a speeding train, that it had been this bad, that their commander had been disabled and wounded and covered in more scars than Buzz had seen on anybody other than one or two brothers over his entire life. Maker, how had Stitch ever held it together like that, under those conditions? How had he survived this long?

“Captain Buzz,” Bacara said as his brow creased, snapping Buzz back to the present once again, “I wasn’t aware you were the one at the center of this…”

“He yours?” Wolffe asked him, his voice a dark low growl, but if Bacara was at all phased by the tone, he didn’t show it.

“Yes,” he replied evenly, “And I can vouch for his character. He’s a good soldier, a good man, and this happened years ago didn’t it? He’s grown since then, I can vouch for that too.”

Kix nodded emphatically, “Maybe I’m out of line, sirs,” he grumbled, “but this is going too far.”

“He’s a danger to my men,” Fox snapped and Buzz ducked his head on instinct, but both Bacara and Kix bristled as one.

“And you aren’t?” Bacara shot back and somehow it felt like all the air left the room at once.

“You really think—” Wolffe snarled, both he and Rex bristling in return on either side of Fox, who looked like he’d just been kicked in the gut.

“Yeah,” Bacara cut him off, “I do think, actually. If my word means nothing then what good is his? If sins committed years ago, no matter what’s happened in the interim, are getting treated like this then he deserves iso just as much if not more than Buzz,” he growled, jerking his chin at Fox, who had turned his face away, even as Rex rested a hand on his shoulder.

“That’s different,” Rex hissed.

“How?” was Bacara’s rebuttal, “How is that different? The only difference I see is severity and in those terms my captain is less of a problem.”

“So what do we do?” Appo spoke up, folding his arms across his chest and looking over at Buzz, who averted his gaze, “My hands aren’t exactly clean either.”

There was a long span of silence before Bacara let out an irritable huff, “I’ll take him,” he said, “He’s mine anyway, and when we’re on base he’ll stay with me.”

Buzz jerked his eyes up to Bacara’s face in shock, but his commander’s expression was solid, determined, his mind made up.

That seemed to be a decision made, although Fox did speak up again, his voice bitter, but small, tired, “Keep him away from my men,” was all he said.

Bacara let out an irritable snort, “How?” he snapped once again, “Your men make up the security in every part of this base and you don’t get to lock him up just because you don’t like him.”

“I-I’ll stay away from the Corries, sirs,” Buzz spoke up, unable to keep the anxiety out of his voice, “And I won’t go in the medbay at all. If I get hurt, maybe Kix can see to me elsewhere.”

Kix let out a breath through his teeth, “So long as it’s minor we can do that,” he said, “but there are things that would require the medbay and Stitch has shown that he’ll be true to his oath. He gave good care, despite everything.”

“If he has to go to the medbay then I’ll be his chaperone,” Bacara cut back in, “but this is all banthashit. None of us came out of the war clean, all of us fucked up somehow and I want the record to state that I don’t karking approve of this. We don’t get to pick and choose who’s a brother and who’s not just because they did something fucking stupid four years ago, or three years ago, or kriffing yesterday. Our brotherhood is worth more than that.”

Rex, Wolffe, and Fox all looked away, their expressions tight and unhappy, but Appo let out a breath and nodded in agreement. “Maybe we can just do this temporarily,” he suggested in the tense silence, “like a probationary period. That way he has a chance like I got, and like Fox got. That way it’s fair.”

Bacara nodded along to this and Buzz hunched his shoulders, but Kix spoke up, directing his words at his own commander. “All it took for Fox and Appo to be treated like they belonged was having somebody vouch for them, commander, so I think even a probationary period is unfair. Commander Bacara has vouched for his character and I’ll vouch for him too; he feels guilty, he called himself dar’vode, that’s not how somebody acts if they haven’t reflected on their mistakes and tried to be better, no matter how terrible the mistakes were.”

“Either way, I’ll take him,” Bacara declared, “We’re rarely on base for more than a couple days anyway, so it’ll be a nonissue.”

“Wh-what about my batchers?” Buzz spoke up, barely above a whisper.

Bacara turned his head to frown at him, “Were they involved in this?” Buzz nodded, so Bacara asked the follow up, “and they’re here?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Buzz mumbled unhappily, “Kix said I could check the prison block but…”

Bacara nodded, “I’ll walk you through and if they’re here I’ll take them too. Can you vouch for them?” 

Buzz let out a shaky breath, but nodded, “They were…awful, we all were awful, but—but we’ve all tried to change, all three of us, because our behavior cost us a brother we never should have lost. They’re not perfect, still, but they’re not bad men either, or at least they’re no worse than I am.”

“Who were they with?” Appo asked.

“Commander Doom, sir,” Buzz answered and Bacara huffed.

“No word on him yet,” he said, “He was marked as MIA pretty soon after the war ended, so he might be dead, but maybe he’ll turn up.”

“His legion got folded in with Neyo’s I think,” Appo jumped back in, “At least those that survived the rounds of decoms, so they might be here.”

Rex sighed and gave Fox’s shoulder a squeeze, but it was Wolffe who spoke up. “So long as they stay away from Stitch,” was all he said and Buzz nodded.

“I will, sir,” he murmured, “And if Scratch and Mosco are here, I’ll make sure they do too. We won’t cause trouble.”

Wolffe grumbled something under his breath, but looked over at Fox, who was avoiding meeting anybody’s eye, his face lined with stress, pain, but also anger.

“If that’s all,” Bacara said, “then I’ll take him through the prison block. If his batchers are here, then we can run them through surgery and I’ll take them when we head out in a couple days.”

The other commanders nodded in agreement and Kix let out a relieved sigh, but Bacara just turned to Buzz. “Follow me,” was all he said as he turned and marched back out the door.

Buzz did as he was told, although he gave Kix a grateful nod as he passed him, one that Kix returned. He walked in silence behind his commander for several minutes as Bacara led him back the way they had come, getting buzzed through several doors without the Corries doing more than giving Buzz some looks that he sensed even with their helmets on, the scorn an almost physical force.

“They don’t trust us,” Bacara said out of the blue as they walked from one block to another across a small courtyard, “I’ll admit this is bad timing, tensions are already high between us and them.”

“I’m sorry, sir…” Buzz murmured, but Bacara just let out a huff.

“It’s in the past, captain, nothing to be done now,” was Bacara’s level response.

“I-I’m glad you survived, sir,” Buzz managed to say, “I was worried, or I guess once I could think straight again I was worried…why did you shoot that officer? You must have known they’d get rid of you.”

Bacara paused for a second halfway across the courtyard, turning his head to give Buzz a solemn look, although his expression tightened with irritation a second later and he huffed. “Shithead ordered me to execute one of my own men. The brother was a fuck-up, sure, but…”

His commander didn’t finish the statement, but Buzz nodded nonetheless. Bacara was strict, was admittedly a total hardass, but he did care, he did love his brothers just as much as the rest of them, he just wasn’t the best at expressing it…although him sticking his neck out for Buzz the way he had was definitely a good demonstration.

“Maybe it’s not my place to say, sir,” Buzz murmured, “but I would have done the same thing, I think you made the right choice. Did they try to execute you? Did you escape?”

Bacara let out a snort at the heartfelt praise, but turned and started walking again, giving a nod to the Corries that stood on either side of the door to the prison block. They hesitated for a moment, but did eventually buzz them in, so Bacara strode past them with Buzz on his heels.

“No,” he grumbled, “They sold me to slavers.”

Buzz sucked in a startled breath, his eyes jerking up to his commander, but Bacara just kept walking, pausing only for the Corries to buzz them through two more security gates. “You escaped though…” Buzz murmured and Bacara actually laughed, something that was rare for him, but the sound was bitter.

“Not really,” he said, “Believe me I was working on it, but I hadn’t gotten there by the time that damn Jedi artifact zapped us back here. No slavers in sight then, even if we still had the collars, but Fox’s men took them off us and since then we’ve been going after the stragglers.”

“We?” Buzz asked, mystified.

Bacara looked over his shoulder at him, his expression dry. “Yeah,” he replied, “I picked up a couple stray brothers…and two Jedi along the way, so we’ve been running retrievals for the other commanders. You’ll be helping us out from now on, you and your batchers if they’re here.”

“Oh,” Buzz said, unable to think of any other way to respond to that. “W-well thank you, sir…for sticking your neck out for me. It-it means a lot…”

The commander snorted, “It was banthashit, like I said, my word should have been enough, since their kriffing word means so damn much. Now pay attention, this is the block.”

“Yessir,” Buzz responded hurriedly as they were buzzed through a final security gate and started walking down a row of cells, each with a Corrie standing outside it, as motionless and expressionless as stone statues. Bacara ignored them all, but he paused in front of the first cell so Buzz could examine the faces of the brothers inside. There were four troopers per cell, all of them shackled hands and feet to their bunks, and each with an IV hooked up to their arm, which if Buzz had to guess he would say was a nutrient drip so nobody had to try and force-feed them.  They snarled at the pair of them when Buzz met their eyes, but he shook his head after looking over all four faces and not recognizing them, so Bacara walked a couple feet down to the next cell and Buzz followed him.

They went down four rows until Buzz sucked in a breath, “That’s Scratch,” he said, pointing out the ARC trooper on the top left bunk, whose long hair was unruly and hung across half of his face, partially obscuring his features, but not so much that Buzz didn’t recognize him.

“Are you alright, Scratch?” Buzz called into the cell.

“I’ll be better when I rip your fucking guts out, traitor,” Scratch hissed back, but Buzz let out a breath, at least he’d responded to his name, if nothing else. Bacara just turned to the Corrie that stood beside the cell.

“What’s his number?” he asked.

“It’s 7778,” Buzz spoke up, but both of them ignored him.

The Corrie hesitated a second, but then turned and tapped on the panel that was embedded in the wall behind him, bringing up a display that showed all four captive’s numbers, confirming Buzz’s statement. Bacara nodded, “Expedite his surgery,” he ordered and the Corrie again hesitated, but then nodded and tapped something into the pad before turning his back on it again and returning to his original position.

“Yes sir,” was all he said, but it was enough and Bacara turned and moved on to the next cell so Buzz could try and find Mosco. They went up and down every single row of cells, but the closer they got to the back, the more Buzz’s stomach churned with anxiety. It hadn't occurred to him that the twins might have somehow gotten separated, but…but if Mosco wasn’t here? What did that mean? Had he not ended up with them because he had died? Or–or was he just a straggler, like the ones Bacara had been searching out? Maybe Scratch would be able to tell them when he got dechipped, maybe…

They got to the back and Buzz let out an unhappy sound, unable to suppress it. “He’s not here,” he wheezed, the words coming out strangled with panic, and Bacara sighed.

“I’m not going to lie to you, captain,” he said evenly, “there’s a good chance he didn’t make it, but–”

Buzz took a shuddering breath that trembled in his lungs, his vision going wobbly around the edges. He–he couldn’t have lost another batcher just like that, and without even knowing it until they were all out of the nightmare the old galaxy had become. The grief slammed into him and he teared up, couldn’t help it, only to start when a firm hand came down on his shoulder and held him there. Buzz looked shakily up into Bacara’s face and found he was calm, certain.

“But,” the commander emphasized, “We don’t know for sure and we won’t until we either find him or run out of people to find, which we haven't. I've still got plenty of leads to investigate. There's a chance, captain, even if it's a slim one.”

Somehow, it did shore him up, and Buzz scrubbed at his face before looking back up at his brother and nodding. “Y-yeah,” he murmured wetly, “You’re right.”

Bacara just nodded in approval and gave his shoulder a firm squeeze before releasing him and turning back the way they had come. “For now, there’s nothing to do but dechip your other batchmate and see if he knows anything, but until that happens I may as well get some food in you and introduce you to my ramshackle team of wild dogs.”

“Okay,” Buzz agreed, “That-that sound’s good, sir.”

Again Bacara nodded in approval, one corner of his mouth going up in what almost looked like a fond half smile, what might have been pride, before he started walking again and Buzz followed him the way he had followed his commander in every battle they’d fought in the war, trusting him the way he had always trusted him.

Chapter Text

Buzz sat with his back to the wall in the bunk Bacara had assigned him, running his fingers over Tally’s hand guard. He’d had to plead with the commander to help him find it amongst all of the confiscated armor, but of course, for as much as Bacara was a total hardass, he’d understood when Buzz explained why it was important.

Frankly it was a miracle the hand guard was still there at all. Buzz had been chipped and had followed the order to trade his old phase 2 armor for the new TK stuff…but somehow, even then he’d known he couldn’t trade the hand guard. He’d known it was important, even if he hadn’t known why.

So he’d kept it and just scrubbed the paint off so nobody would notice. That alone sat in his gut like a stone. He’d scrubbed off the designs Tally had so carefully painted, he—he’d ruined it, but…at least he had it at all. Maybe he could repaint it. He wasn’t sure if that would be better or worse than leaving it blank, but either way he felt a sense of disquiet about it.

“What’s that, vod?” Ando asked him from his bunk across from Buzz. Commander Bacara had introduced him to the rest of his retrieval team, with whom he’d be working and living, and the impression Buzz got was goofy, cheerful, and perpetually driving his poor straight-laced and serious commander up the wall.

“Piece of my batcher’s armor,” Buzz mumbled, “Somehow I managed to keep it, even if the paint’s ruined.”

“Oh,” Ando sighed, glancing at Ace and Aeon who were bickering heatedly over which of two characters in a show Buzz had never heard of would win in a fight, ignoring the officers. Bacara was out doing whatever it was commanders did late at night, formwork probably, knowing him. 

Ando gave him a solemn look, “I’m guessing he’s not around, since you kept it.” 

“Yeah,” Buzz mumbled, running his thumb back across the back of the hand guard, “He died in the first year, only a couple months after we were deployed. He…he was a medic.”

“What’s his name?” Ando asked him gently, “I’ll add him to my remembrance."

Buzz blinked at him, a little startled by the offer, but he smiled after a moment, touched. “Tally,” he murmured, “We called him Tally because he insisted on keeping a count of how many people he saved, that way he’d never lose confidence in himself even when he couldn’t save everybody.”

Ando nodded his head and pulled his legs up to sit cross-legged on his bunk. “I’m surprised you managed to keep that honestly. I mean you can tell the difference between a TK hand guard and a phase two hand guard, they’re a different shape.”

Buzz smiled at him weakly, “Only reason I found it in that big pile of confiscated armor,” he said, “And thankfully nobody noticed while we were chipped. I’m not even sure how I convinced myself to keep it. I just…I knew it was important, even if I couldn’t figure out why.”

“You did good, vod,” Ando told him, the words blindingly sincere, “From what I can tell, that’s more resistance than most men were able to give.”

“Thanks,” Buzz murmured, giving the sergeant a tired smile. They all collapsed in bed not long after and Buzz slept fitfully. He was worried, aside from the whole situation with Stitch, Buzz was terrified that they might never find Mosco, that he had died and Buzz just hadn’t known, so when Bacara reappeared in the morning with Scratch, he let out a long shaky breath. The only person who might know would be Scratch.

Buzz got to his feet and tackle-hugged his brother before Scratch could do more than open his mouth, but Bacara looked down at Buzz and jerked his chin back towards the door, so Buzz slung his arm around Scratch’s shoulders and steered him out of the room after his commander with the rest of Bacara’s team - the Triple As - on their heels.

“How do you feel, vod?” Buzz asked his batcher, but he already knew he wasn’t going to get a positive response, not when Scratch looked so run down.

The wobbly fake smile he got in reply did nothing but make his stomach lurch. Scratch needed Mosco. The two of them had always been a little on the codependent side, and one without the other was unheard of. “D-don’t worry about me, Buzz,” Scratch murmured with that cracked fake smile on his face.

It answered Buzz’s question even with the non-answer Scratch had given him, because the look on his face told him very clearly that the answer was ‘not good.’

“D-do you know what happened to Mosco?” Buzz asked him, keeping his voice low as they all followed Bacara to the mess and into the meal line. “He’s not here.”

Scratch let out a shaky breath, “We—we got separated," he rasped, “Commander Doom had us and another team of ARCs helping him search for a Seppie leader, some senator, who we’d been trying to capture. He went to ground, escaped his manor and made it out into the jungle. Doom, Mosco, and another of the ARCs were in the front and the ground it—it just gave.” Scratch’s voice broke on the final word and he scrubbed furiously at his face. He hated crying, had always hated anything that made him look weak, as weak as he feared he was, and Buzz looked away from him while he tried to regain his composure, pretending not to see, even with the way his words made his stomach twist.

“He—we weren’t able to find them, even when we went into the tunnel system. It was too extensive, the damn things went through pretty much the entire planet and we—we couldn’t find them. Comms didn’t work down there, the rock killed all the frequencies and General Tiplee called it after a week of searching once we caught the Seppie and we—we withdrew.”

“So he’s MIA with Doom,” Bacara sighed, making both Buzz and Scratch jump. Neither of them had realized he was listening, even if they probably should have given he was standing less than three feet ahead of them in the line.

“Y-Yeah,” Scratch mumbled and Buzz gave him a squeeze, “And then the war ended and just…”

Buzz nodded, even though Scratch didn’t finish his sentence. They were silent all the way up until Bacara led them all to a table and sat down. Buzz couldn’t help but hunch his shoulders at the glares he caught from some of the Corries at tables around the room, but he tried to ignore it. Instead he listened to Bacara introduce Scratch to the Triple As, with the three of them moaning loudly that Scratch’s name didn’t start with A, the same thing they’d done when they’d been introduced to Buzz. Scratch looked away, he seemed tired, but the three of them only got rowdier as the meal went on until they seemed to be inches from starting a food fight.

A muscle in Bacara’s jaw jumped, he hated loud noises, hated it when his troopers got carried away, so Buzz took pity on him before he had to intervene himself. After all, Buzz was one of his captains, this was his job.

Aeon reeled back and chucked his bread roll full force at Ando’s head where he sat at the other end of the table, but Buzz reached out to snatch it out of the air.

“Enough,” he said, his voice calm, but dark, as he set the roll down on his own tray, “Are you kidding me? Last I checked you were soldiers, not kriffing tubies.”

Buzz saw Bacara’s shoulders drop with relief when the three of them settled down, embarrassment on their faces, but Scratch let out a quiet huff of laughter at Buzz’s side, a half smile on his face, even if it was smaller, weaker, than the big grin he’d normally have sported.

“Ori’vod Buzz is something I never expected to see…then again, obviously Buzzkill is still going strong.”

“Yeah well,” Buzz sighed, “the commander shouldn’t have to wrangle kriffing Loth cats. There’s more important things for him to worry about.”

Of course Buzz caught the subtle nod of thanks Bacara gave him, before he turned his eyes back to the rest of them. “We’re taking off after this meal,” he announced, “I’ve got a lead and it seems like slavers are involved. We’ve gotta jump on it before the brothers disappear into the Sorrowlanes.”

“What information have you got for us, sir?” Buzz asked him as the Triple As nodded along and Scratch looked back up from his food.

“This one actually came from Rex rather than Fox,” Bacara obliged, “He says he had a comm code spread around back in our own time for brothers to call if they need help, said it helped him pull out a decent amount of men. He didn’t expect anybody to call here, but apparently the code’s still circulating and somebody sent him a message.”

“What did it say?” Ando piped up, at which point Bacara slipped his projector out of his belt and set it on the table. All five of them leaned in to see the image as it flickered into the air. What it displayed was a clone, his hair short but spiky, wild, and his eyes even wilder. There was a collar around his neck, but the thing that struck Buzz most was how young he looked. He couldn’t be more than eight, was probably deployed just before the war had ended, might never have even earned his paint.

“If anybody can hear this,” the kid murmured, checking anxiously over his shoulder before looking back at the camera, “We need help. I—I don’t know what’s going on, I just—we passed out all at once and when we woke up we were little, but not where we’d been before. My brothers they—something is wrong with them, something’s wrong with everybody. We got split up and I was picked up by some kriffing Zygerrians and I—osik I gotta go. Send help if you can, if anybody hears this. Please!”

“They’ve gotta be chipped,” Scratch noted, pushing his food listlessly around on his tray with his fork, “Except him, his must not have worked.”

“That would be my guess as well,” Bacara agreed.

Buzz frowned at the now frozen face of the kid that hung in the air over the projector, “How are we going to find them, sir? He didn’t give a location…” 

“He did not,” Bacara huffed, “But I asked Fox to see if he could backtrace the location from the comm’s metadata and he did, so we do have a location anyway.”

“I’m…a little surprised he just did that for us,” Buzz mumbled, looking away, unhappy, “With me on the mission, and how you had such a bitter disagreement.”

“We talked it out,” Bacara replied disinterestedly as he turned off the comm and stowed it. “He’s usually pretty reasonable. I think he’s just rabidly protective of his troopers and overreacted…plus he understood that I only said what I said to prove a point.”

Buzz couldn’t help the relieved sigh he let out, glad that he hadn't caused a permanent rift between the command staff, as if he hadn’t caused enough trouble already.

“More than that,” Bacara went on, “That trooper was one of his, he recognized him. He’s an ARF shiny named Scout.“

“And he’s okay with us rescuing his man?” Scratch asked the commander dubiously, gesturing to himself and Buzz, at which point Bacara fixed him with a bland look.

“And the alternative?” he asked and Scratch let out a huff of laughter at that.

“Yeah, I guess you’ve got a point, Commander.”

“So where are they?” Ace piped up. He was an ARC, at least according to Ando, him and Aeon both, for all that they never acted like it…but then again Mosco and Scratch were also ARCs and tended to be just as bad when they got excited. Seeing Scratch so subdued was more than a little concerning, for all the Bacara probably preferred him quiet, if not depressed the way he clearly was.

“Kowak,” Bacara told them, looking over them all, “General Tholme is preparing the shuttle, so hurry up and finish eating. We need to leave immediately.”

“Yessir!” The Triple As chorused and then started wolfing their food down at a frankly concerning speed. Scratch sniggered at Buzz’s side, but Bacara just put his head in his hands.

“Not that kriffing fast,” Buzz scolded, if only gently, “If you choke and we have to take you to medical then it won’t have done us any favors will it?”

The three of them gave him a slightly sheepish look and slowed down a little while Scratch laughed outright beside him and Bacara just sighed and gave Buzz another grateful nod.

They managed to survive the meal and both Buzz and Scratch followed Bacara and the Triple As as they trotted through the base until they reached the ‘hangar,’ which was really more of a garage than anything. Either way though, there was a Jedi shuttle inside, parked beside a starfighter and a gunship that looked like it was in the middle of some kind of upgrade, parts of it disassembled and scattered on the ground around its landing gear.

Bacara stepped up to the bottom of the Jedi shuttle’s boarding ramp and gestured them all up. Buzz was the last of the five and he started slightly when Bacara reached out and put a hand on his bicep to stop him. He pulled his hand back immediately, the touch short, but Buzz still stopped and turned to him.

“You didn’t deserve the way they were treating you,” Bacara told him in a low voice, “and you’re proving that. You’re a good captain and a good brother, tat’ara. Thanks for the help. I hope we find your last batcher, but either way we’ll keep looking for him until we do…or until we know he’s not out there for sure.”

Buzz gave him a slim smile and a nod that Bacara returned, although Buzz hesitated on the unfamiliar word. He’d heard a few things like that from Bacara over the years and he knew Bacara wasn’t especially fluent in Mando’a, that he had learned some sort of variant, but he’d never actually asked before.

“Tat’ara, sir?” he questioned, but immediately realized he shouldn’t have, because for a single split second Bacara’s expression crumpled, for a single split second Buzz saw profound loneliness in his face, as if he’d just been told he wasn’t a brother at all. Buzz sucked in a breath and reached out automatically, but Bacara dodged around him and went up the ramp.

“Load up,” was all he said, suddenly sounding tired, exhausted. Buzz stood on the bottom step, his stomach churning with anxiety, but after a second he followed his commander up the ramp. 

Buzz and Scratch were promptly introduced to their Jedi teammates and while General Tholme was nice enough, was like every other Jedi Buzz had ever known, he could tell immediately that Bacara kriffing hated his padawan from the annoyed look he got on his face whenever Vos spoke…and Buzz could see why, because Vos and the Triple As started winding each other up almost immediately.

“General, we’re on the clock,” Bacara said, still seeming almost rundown.

The general frowned at him, but then seemed to banish it and replace it with something patient, “Of course, Commander, although please, for all that I may have held that rank in your war, I am Master Tholme here and now.”

Vos snorted loudly, “Does that mean I’m Commander Quinlan Vos?” he asked, a shit eating grin on his face as he looked at Bacara, “Are we the same rank?”

Buzz didn’t miss the way Bacara’s eyebrow twitched or the look of absolutely unfathomable annoyance on his face, only for Scratch to open his mouth, a nasty grin on his lips that matched Vos’s. Buzz already knew what he was going to say and he clapped his hand over Scratch’s mouth instantly, although unfortunately Ando had had the same thought as his batcher.

“You were a general actually, sir,” Ando told him cheerfully, with no apparent maliciousness, but certainly a lack of situational awareness in evidence, “So technically you actually outranked Commander Bacara.”

The glare Bacara turned on Ando could have stripped paint and the sergeant gave him a sheepish smile, only for Vos to reach out and clap Bacara on the back. “Oh c’mon we’re only joking, Commander! Master Tholme barely even lets me fly the kriffing ship, I’m lower than pond scum!”

“That is because you have crashed a total of four shuttles since I took you on, Padawan,” Tholme put in evenly.

Buzz appreciated that Vos and Tholme at least could read the room, but then again they still missed the way Bacara stiffened slightly at being touched, although the way he let out a heavy breath through his teeth before turning and stalking straight out of the room was pretty hard to miss.

“What’s his deal?” Scratch muttered, “Is he always this pissy?”

Buzz frowned at Scratch and shook his head, “He’s not pissy, Scratch, he just…he gets overwhelmed.”

Scratch let out a huff like he was about to say something else, but when he saw Buzz’s frown he let it go, shaking his head. 

“Well you know him I guess,” was all he said instead.

General Tholme had been busy scolding his padawan for giving their commander a hard time, but once Vos was sufficiently chastened Tholme turned back to them. “Commander Bacara said we’re headed for Kowak, correct?”

“Yessir,” Buzz confirmed and the general nodded.

“Very well, I’ll lift us off,” he said and Buzz thanked him before taking a walk around the ship with Scratch, the both of them familiarizing themselves with its features. There were only two bunkrooms each with six bunks, so Buzz figured they’d all be in one room while the Jedi took the other, but after a while he drifted back to the cockpit to talk to the Jedi about the previous missions they had run with Bacara and his team.

Of course there was no day or night in space, but they went to bed in the night cycle anyway and Buzz had been right that Bacara was sharing the room with them. He still had seemed a little more subdued than usual, even for how quiet he usually was, although Buzz didn’t know why, but it was Scratch who sent the alarm bells ringing in his head when he woke up in the middle of the night and heard his batcher’s low stifled sobs, almost silent, but not completely. Maker, he must have missed Mosco so much. The twins had never been separated this long, not once in their lives…and they didn’t know if they’d ever find him at all.

Buzz’s immediate instinct was to comfort him, of course it was, but…Scratch’s self-esteem was horribly fragile. That was the thing that had always made him overcompensate, that had turned him into a bully when they were young, had made him lash out. He couldn’t stand anybody thinking he was weak, because he had always been terrified that he was, and Mosco was the only one with whom he’d ever been truly open about his feelings. Then again, Buzz couldn’t stand to listen to him choking down his tears in fear that he’d wake somebody up, so he got out of bed and summarily pulled himself up into Scratch’s bunk so he could scoot into his side.

“B-Buzz wha—” was Scratch’s strangled reaction while he went stiff as a board against Buzz’s chest. “I’m f-fine you don’t—” he started to protest, but Buzz shook his head against Scratch’s back.

“Had a nightmare,” he lied, pitching his voice only just loud enough for Scratch to hear him and nobody else in the room full of sleeping brothers. “‘S hard without Tally,” he mumbled and that at least was the truth. It was hard, he missed Tally all the time…and he knew Tally wouldn’t mind being used as an excuse for this. He’d probably have done the same thing if the roles had been reversed and it was Buzz who’d been killed.

Scratch’s hackles lowered just as Buzz had hoped and he hurriedly scrubbed the tears from his face, even if he was still hiccuping a little, then turned and threw his arms around Buzz and pulled him in. “Nu kyr’adyc, shi taab’echaaj’la,” Scratch reminded him, his voice gentle, kind, for all that there was still a waver in it, and Buzz let out a breath and pressed his face into Scratch’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” Buzz agreed, “but we’ll find Mosco. I don’t—I won’t accept that he’s marching too unless I see a kriffing body. We will find him.”

There was a long span of silence after those words, but eventually Scratch broke it. “Thanks, vod,” he whispered into Buzz’s shoulder and Buzz just gave him a squeeze instead of answering. They’d lost Tally, Stitch was as good as lost, so they had to find Mosco. Buzz wouldn’t accept them being knocked down to a batch of two, not if there was anything he could do.

Chapter Text

Fox had had to sit for a long time in his office, just staring out the window and waiting for the hurt to subside, the hurt and the anger, after their argument in the empty block. He wished he could say Bacara was out of line…but of course he wasn’t. 

For as much as Buzz had done irreparable harm to Fox’s vod’ika…well he’d never killed anybody. Even if Echo had eventually forgiven him, that still stood. Then again, if his brothers had wanted to put Fox in iso he’d have understood. He probably should have kept that thought to himself, but he’d voiced it when Wolffe and Rex had walked him back to his office.

The scowl that took over Rex’s face was pitch black and Wolffe looked, not for the first time since Fox had reunited with them, like he wanted to punch somebody’s lights out…although in this instance it was probably Bacara he’d have hit.

“You don’t deserve fucking iso, Fox,” Rex bit out, his tone furious.

“Bacara is right,” Fox mumbled in response, but Wolffe lengthened his steps so he could stop Fox in front of him.

“He’s kriffing wrong,” he hissed, “You did what you did because you were literally forced, his man did it because he’s a fucking asshole.”

Fox gave Wolffe what he hoped would be a convincing smile, but Wolffe’s expression only darkened. “We’re gonna talk to Cody about this,” Rex cut in, still scowling. “Maybe Bacara is right about iso at least, that it’s not fair to put anybody in iso. It…it is a Kamino punishment, so I’ll admit maybe it’s too severe, but…that’s the only thing he might have been right about, Fox, you hear me?”

“I hear you, Rex,” Fox sighed, but again his brother’s expression didn't clear. Something about the way he said it must not have been sufficiently comforting. “I hear you,” Fox tried again, emphasizing it more, hoping it would work. He hated seeing them like this, he hated it when people were upset on his behalf, and Rex finally sighed and nodded his head.

“Alright,” he allowed, “I’m gonna go check on Bly and talk to Cody about this, see what he says. I’d ask Bly too but…”

“He doesn’t need the stress,” Fox finished for him and Rex just nodded, his expression suddenly solemn, tired.

“Fox and I have gotta talk about the garage,” Wolffe added, glancing between Rex and Fox, “See if we can’t figure out a way to turn it into a real kriffing hangar…or if we’re just gonna have to build a whole other structure for our ships.”

“Sure,” Rex murmured, “Lemme know what you decide.”

Both Fox and Wolffe nodded, so Rex gave them both a hug and then retreated, headed back towards the medbay where Bly was still staying under observation. They’d been taking turns keeping him company, always making sure one of them was there, just so Bly knew they weren’t letting him go, that they still loved him even after everything. Fox didn’t know how long he’d be there, how long it would take him to be able to function even a little bit normally, but as it was he could barely even get himself out of bed. He was too depressed to do anything but sleep.

Fox led Wolffe back to his office and they talked about the garage, and then Wolffe had to go do more of his duties and Fox spent about twenty minutes just staring out the window, waiting for his stomach to settle from the way the hurt had twisted up his guts.

Bacara was right, about Fox at least, and Fox wasn't even going to try and argue that. He didn’t have a leg to stand on anyway.

But then again, it seemed Bacara still had something to say to him, because a few hours later he appeared and knocked on the frame of Fox’s open door. Fox looked up at him, trying to hide the stress in his face, and he saw the way Bacara frowned, but when Fox invited him in, he stepped over the threshold and set his projector down on Fox’s desk, activating it.

The moment the familiar face popped up Fox sucked in a breath. Scout, from one of the groups of Corries that had been deployed at the front with some of the Jedi to act as an envoy, ones he’d never gotten back and had assumed were dead. “He yours?” Bacara asked him, sharp as ever, and Fox nodded.

“One of my ARFs,” he agreed, “named Scout, he was so new he never had a chance to get his kriffing paint.”

Bacara sighed, but let the message play, then said, “I was hoping you could pull a location out of this, he didn’t give one.”

“I might be able to get something out of the metadata,” Fox agreed and Bacara just waved him on, so Fox rummaged around in his desk drawers until he found a suitable datapad, then unspooled the cord and connected it to the projector. It took him a moment of combing through the complex data attached to the recording to find the exact coordinates it had originated from, but he sent them to Bacara’s comm once he had. 

“That should be enough,” Fox told him and Bacara nodded, only to pause. 

“Buzz is coming with me,” Bacara told him cautiously, “Him and his batcher, they’re mine now.”

Fox let out a breath, “I’d rather have him with you than on base frankly,” he muttered and Bacara frowned, but nodded.

“I’m sorry,” the Marine commander said out of the blue and Fox started, jerking his eyes back up to Bacara’s face, only to find his expression calm, but earnest. “You know I didn't mean that, about you,” Bacara went on, “I was just trying to make a point. All anybody needed for you to be accepted was somebody to vouch, and that’s fine with me, I agreed to that, but it’s not fair that that wasn’t enough for my captain. It has to be fair.”

All Fox could do was sigh, “Yeah,” he murmured, “Yeah I understand.”

Bacara let out a relieved breath and nodded back, Apparently that was enough for him, so he accepted his projector when it was handed back and stowed it. “We’re taking off in the morning,” he said, “So barring unforeseen complications we’ll be back with your ARF and the other men he mentioned soon enough.”

“Thank you, Bacara,” Fox told him and he meant it, he meant it for more than just Scout’s sake. If Bacara caught his meaning, he didn’t comment on it. He just nodded and then paced back out of the room.

For as much as Fox didn’t want his men to be left in the custody of Stitch’s kriffing shithead batchmates and the Jedi of all the goddamn people, this was still preferable to the alternative. Fox would just have to have Stitch do a mental health check on them (along with the rote physical) when they got them back, to see if there was anything they could do for them after the ordeal. Fox did at least trust Bacara to keep Scout and whoever else was with him safe, so there was that.

“Ori’ori’vod?” asked a tiny voice and Fox started, realizing he’d been staring out his window again, only to turn and find all four cadets peeking their heads in the door.

“Yes, Maro?” Fox asked the cadet gently.

“We saw some brothers painting the walls outside! Can we paint the walls too?” Dak asked him when Maro seemed to hesitate, his expression a little uncertain where Dak’s was blindingly hopeful.

“I wasn’t aware anybody was doing that,” Fox huffed, “Where’s Lock?”

“H-here, Commander,” Lock replied as he stumbled up to his cadets a moment later, breathing heavily like he’d been running to catch up with them. Fox couldn’t help but laugh.

“You shouldn’t lose him,” he scolded the kids just a little, “You’ll scare him, think of his poor old man heart.” The cadets giggled, but nodded their little heads. “C’mon,” Fox said as he wheeled back from behind his desk to the door, “Show me who’s painting the walls.”

“Okay!” the four cadets chirped as one, only to immediately take off down the hall. Fox laughed but called after them.

“Wait! I’m old too! Slow down so I can keep up!”

The kids slowed marginally, just enough for them to sort of keep up, and they made it outside, at which point the gaggle of cadets and their keeper brought Fox across the base to the yard in the back, where there were in fact brothers painting the walls, a lot of them. Some were his own men, which Fox wasn’t surprised to see, after all they’d painted all over the insides of their original base, but the thing that startled him was the loads and loads of GAR troopers that were helping them.

His men had painted their armor since they’d come here, most of them anyway. The GAR troopers’ idea to help them come up with designs for their batchmates had spread and most of those with brothers in the GAR they would still talk to had wound up taking part in the bonding activity, and those who either had no batchers left or who were truly no longer on speaking terms with them, like Stitch was, had been pulled into the activity by their brothers in the Guard instead.

Fox couldn’t help but smile when he saw them proudly wearing their own special designs for the first time since they were deployed, but somehow this new art project seemed to be another bonding exercise. When Fox wheeled up to the group, most of them got out of his way, and when they stepped back from the wall, brushes in their hands and paint on their faces and hands, he found none other than Stone and Thire in the center of the group.

“Ori’vod!” Thire chirped when somebody tapped him on the shoulder and pointed out Fox. Stone turned as well and got a big goofy grin on his face.

“You like it?” he asked Fox, who ran his eyes over the mural they’d been painting. It was enormous, looked mostly complete, and while it definitely had the same style as the wild colorful murals they’d painted in their old base, he could see the cleaner more precise influence of the GAR troopers, likely a product of their painting having to be a lot more careful when it was their armor they were used to working on.

The subject was also similar to one that had been on the hall outside their barracks back on Coruscant, one that depicted vode marching, but while they both were of vode, both were colorful and joyous, this one showed rows up rows of them, all in different colors, standing at attention with their weapons in their hands and their helmeted heads tilted upwards. Above them was a field of stars, within which hung three Venators. 

Fox couldn’t help but smile, because his men were in the mural too, he could see the Corrie red interspersed with all the other colors in the rows of men, and it made his heart swell with warmth to see them accepted. “It’s perfect,” Fox told his kih’vode and the gathered brothers let out a cheer at the approval. “Whose idea was it?” he asked and Thire sniggered before turning and gesturing a pair of his shinies forward. Kole and Archie, who both smiled shyly at him. 

“I hope this is okay, sir,” Kole said, putting his arm around Archie’s shoulders, “Our batchers helped us paint our armor,” he gestured to his and Archie’s designs - red starbursts on a white background for Archie and white starbursts on a red background for Kole - “And we thought we oughta show them how we paint.”

All Fox could do was chuckle and nod his head. He liked that and seeing them all getting along so well, despite the new point of tension that was the reappearance of Stitch’s batchers, was heartening. “We wanna paaaaint!” Ty whined, running to Fox’s side and climbing right into his lap so he could pull on Fox’s chestplate.

“It looks like they're almost done out here, ad’ika,” Fox told them as the other cadets came and clambered all over him like their brother, “But I’ll tell you what, how about you and some brothers paint my office instead, it’s boring right now.”

This, apparently, was acceptable as they let out a cheer, four tiny voices crying “Oya!” 

“I volunteer as tribute!” Hound called from the crowd and there was a smattering of laughter.

“Good idea,” Stone said, “We’ll help too.”

“Sure,” Fox told them with a nod, “You can talk to the cadets and design it together, and then show it to me when you’re done. I’ll stay out of my office for a couple days so it’ll be a surprise. How does that sound?”

“OYA!” the rest of them roared, mimicking the kids, and Fox laughed. Maker, he was glad it seemed like his men really were recovering, really were being accepted, for all that there were still tensions over certain specific things. His office would be beautiful when they were done, he was sure.

Chapter Text

A day passed peacefully enough in hyperspace. It would be only one more before they made it to Kowak and both Scratch and Bacara seemed to have recovered their spirits, but while Buzz knew why Scratch had been out of sorts, he still wasn’t sure exactly how he’d fucked up the interaction he’d had with Bacara that had been so painful for his commander. He kept turning it over in his head, but no matter how he looked at it, he came to the same conclusion, that it had to be that foreign word, tat’ara. Something about it was really important, but Buzz asking had been some kind of rejection, or at least Bacara had taken it that way, even if Buzz didn’t know why. 

Late meal would be in an hour, but for the time being the rest of them played sabacc on the ship’s dining table, Bacara and the Jedi included. Buzz had opted out, even if he still sat beside Scratch at the table. Instead he was using a datapad he’d borrowed to scour the holonet. He needed to find out what that word meant, he needed to make up for whatever he’d done wrong to his commander, who had done so much for him over the years, and who had once again really stuck his neck out to help Buzz this time around.

He figured tat’ara was probably some form of Mando’a, that it was from one of the many offshoots of the language, but he didn’t know which one and he didn’t dare ask about it, so he went searching the net for a list of all the known dialects, and then searched out a dictionary for each one before entering the word and seeing what popped up.

It was clearly a compound word, if Bacara’s dialect followed normal Mando’a structuring, and most of the results turned up with ‘tat’ meaning ‘twin,’ although the results he got for ‘ara’ were all wildly different from each other and even then, Bacara calling him some kind of twin didn’t really make sense…so that couldn’t be it.

Buzz paused when the noise level of the room suddenly skyrocketed and looked up to find that Aeon was accusing Vos of using the Force to cheat, which Vos took with heated outrage. Buzz sighed, but was diverted by Scratch, who nudged him in the ribs and leaned over in his seat to whisper to him, “That’s the overwhelmed face right?” he asked, nodding his chin at Bacara, who did in fact look like he was centimeters from snapping at somebody.

“Yeah,” Buzz replied just as quietly, “He doesn’t like loud noises, it's the fastest way to bother him. I think he modded his helmet to help with it on the battlefield, but obviously he can’t wear his helmet all day long…he might not even have it anymore anyway.”

Scratch huffed, and then pursed his lips and let out a short sharp whistle that stopped the argument in its tracks. “We’re not even kriffing betting anything, vod,” Scratch told Aeon when he looked at him, “Let him cheat if he wants, he’s a kid.”

“May I remind you,” Vos told him irritably, “That you’re younger than me.”

“Maybe,” Scratch replied in an even tone, unimpressed, “But I’ve also been in more kriffing wars than you. As far as I’m concerned you’re shiny until you do something worth doing.”

General Tholme let out a huff of laughter at that, resting his hand on Vos’s head fondly, “He does have a point, Padawan, and I will say that while cheating at cards is not against the Jedi code, for a Shadow at least, doing it badly is.”

The pout he got from Vos in return was mighty, but the argument seemed to be settled and things had quieted back down. Buzz snuck a glance at Bacara and found him looking calmer, less stressed, which was a relief. The thing was, Bacara didn’t need them to intervene on his behalf, he could and would shut the nonsense down himself if it got too out of hand. He didn’t have a reputation for being extremely strict for no kriffing reason, but…well Bacara’s tolerance far exceeded his actual patience and for all that he was strict, he’d still put up with that sort of thing far past the point where it actually started bothering him.

It was just better for somebody to intervene before it got to that point, saved everybody grief, as far as Buzz was concerned, but with the matter settled he gave Scratch a grateful nod and went back to his datapad.

Tat…

Twin.

Twin.

Clone.

Copy.

Shadow.

…

…

Brother!!!

Buzz had to bite his lip to keep from letting out a noise of triumph. Brother! That made sense in the context Bacara had used it in, so maybe that was it! Buzz checked what dialect that was and found it was the one spoken on Concord Dawn, which explained why it was so dissimilar to all the others, it was a rarely spoken backwater dialect that was slowly dying out as newer generations integrated more with the other more modern trends of speech in the Mandalore sector.

That said, knowing what dialect it was should make this a trivial matter. Buzz searched for the suffix, because he was reasonably sure that was what ‘ara’ was, but didn’t find it in the dictionary. Again he bit his lip, stifling his sound of annoyance this time. Maybe…maybe it was slang? Tat’ara was a slang term?

He searched from that angle and spent twenty minutes combing through the scant lists of slang catalogued on recipe pages and travel blogs, only to finally strike gold.

‘‘Ika’ is a common suffix one might hear in the Mandalore sector, and its purpose is to turn the attached noun into a delightful term of endearment, one reserved specifically for sentients - or even animals and objects - that are either adorably small or younger than the speaker, but especially close. Unlike the term ‘copikla,’ which also means little and cute, you can safely call a Mandalorian girlfriend ‘cyar’ika’ and she will probably not tear your guts out for it. There are several dialectal variants of this suffix, including ‘aika’, sometimes seen on the more isolated moons of Shukut, and Concord Dawn’s even stranger variant, ‘ara’!’

Buzz read the blog post over several times, trying to make sure he hadn’t read it wrong, then went back and searched for the suffix using those parameters and let out a relieved breath when he confirmed it. Tat’ara. Little brother.

Bacara had called Buzz his vod’ika. That was…was massive. Bacara was so reserved with his affections that Buzz hadn’t been sure he even considered himself to have vod’ike, and yet he’d offered that, only for Buzz to not understand the gesture of love for what it was, which was as good as a rejection. No wonder he’d been hurt.

If this dialect was so uncommon and drastically different from the Mando’a they’d all learned, that would explain it even more. Bacara probably couldn’t really talk to any of them in Mando’a, not with what was in essence a language barrier in the way. It must be horrible to be the only one of three million brothers to not understand what the others were saying around him, or how to say any of those important things back.

At least the mystery was solved. That just left what exactly Buzz could do with this information, how he might be able to make up for his lack of understanding.

He spent a moment thinking it over, but still the question lingered of why Bacara hadn’t just learned the more common dialect if it was such a huge issue, even if it wasn’t the one he’d been taught by his trainer…then again, there was a pretty reasonable explanation for that if Buzz really thought about it. They’d all be taught Mando’a in their first couple years of life, when the brain was the best at picking up languages, so if Bacara hadn’t learned the regular dialect that everyone else used at that time and had only gone back and tried later, when he was older…well if languages were already a weak subject for him, it might have been impossible to bridge the gap. Maker how frustrating that must have been! Bacara was smart, was talented, but of course nobody could be good at everything, and for that to be the thing of all things that stumped him, the thing that he needed to relate to his own brothers…

Kark.

This was important. 

Buzz frowned down at his datapad, tuning out how his brothers and the Jedi chatted around him, and then made up his mind. Maybe Bacara wasn’t any good at languages, but Buzz was pretty decent with them, so if Bacara couldn’t learn Buzz’s Mando’a, then the obvious solution was for Buzz to learn Bacara’s.

That…surely that would be a good gesture, a good way to return the love Bacara had offered him: bridge the gap, reassure his commander that he wasn’t an outsider, that there was nothing wrong with him.

He made up his mind and spent the entire rest of the day trying to memorize what words he could find and make sense of, determined to give the love back after everything Bacara had done for him over the years.

It was when they were again headed to bed that Buzz realized Scratch wasn’t in the bunkroom at all. Bacara raised an eyebrow at Buzz as he passed, but Buzz just murmured, “Gotta talk to Scratch,” and Bacara nodded, turning back to his bedtime routine.

Buzz found Scratch slumped across the table they’d been playing cards at earlier, awake, but with a solemn look on his face.

“Hey,” Buzz murmured, sitting down beside him and resting his hand on his batcher’s back.

“Hey,” Scratch mumbled back, before he let out a huff and smiled crookedly at Buzz, the expression bitter as poison.

“You really grew up, baby brother,” he sighed, “I remember what a chickenshit you always were…”

Buzz let out a huff, unoffended. It was the truth after all, he’d been a coward. “Commander Bacara turned me around,” he said and Scratch frowned.

“I thought it was because of Stitch,” he probed.

That was correct too, so Buzz nodded, “That too. Losing Stitch…it was just as much my fault as yours. I was too scared to stand up to you, even when he desperately needed somebody to stand up for him, with Tally no longer able to. I just—I was a coward and it cost us…everything.”

“My fault more than yours,” Scratch muttered, “I was the one that said all the horrible shit to him. All you did was just not deny it.”

“That’s just as bad, vod,” Buzz sighed, “but regardless. I was just…devastated. I knew I could have stopped it, that a better man, that Tally, would have challenged you, would have told you to stop, would have reminded you that Stitch was our batcher too, that that was never what Tally would have wanted, but I…I wasn’t a better man.”

“And Bacara turned you around?” Scratched asked him, lifting a tired brow. Buzz just let out a soft huff of laughter.

“Yeah, he made this horrible complex snarl into something simple, a simple choice. He said courage is a choice. He gave me that choice to make, the chance to be better when I had never thought that was even possible. I always thought being brave was just…just this thing some men had and some didn’t, that it was inherent, but Bacara saying it was a choice made it reachable, made it possible. If courage is a choice, then that means even I could be brave if I made that choice, and…I did.”

Scratch smiled at him, “You called us back and told us we were out of line,” he reminded him, “Was that why? Was that when you made the choice?”

Buzz nodded, “Yeah,” he said, “Me being a coward, being afraid to stand up for Stitch when he needed it the most, cost us another brother. If I had stood up to you when I should have, maybe we’d have had a fight, but we might have worked it out later, when everybody was calmer.”

“He never told us about Coruscant,” Scratch mumbled, “I—I gave him so much shit for it, why didn’t he just tell us?”

“We never let him talk, vod,” Buzz reminded him, “Maybe if we had he’d have said…something, given us some clue, even if he didn’t tell us outright that he was suffering.”

“Can’t believe I cost us two more brothers,” Scratch muttered, sounding angry, “I’m the worst squad leader ever…” his voice cracked on the final word and he buried his face in his arms, but Buzz ran his hand up and down his brother’s back while Scratch stifled a sob. 

“If—if courage is a choice, vod,” Buzz tried, speaking so quietly nobody but Scratch would ever hear, “Maybe kindness is a choice too.”

Scratch snorted derisively, but even though he spent another moment hiccuping, stifling his tears, he turned his head and looked back at Buzz with damp tired eyes.

“You think so?” he asked him so so quietly, “Nobody would ever accuse me of being kind, but…”

“You could be,” Buzz assured him, “If you want, if you choose that.”

Scratch seemed to spend a moment thinking it over, before he gave Buzz a wobbly smile, “I guess—I guess it’d be hard to fuck this whole situation up worse than I already have, so…maybe I can give that a shot.”

Buzz beamed at him and nodded encouragingly, “The galaxy could do with more kindness,” he murmured, “And if everything is dark, maybe we can be the light.”

Again Scratch seemed to consider that, before he gave Buzz a soft look and nodded, “I’ll—I’ll give it a shot then,” he decided and Buzz grinned, reaching out to pull his brother into a hug.

“You can do it,” he promised, “If I can be brave, you can be kind.”

Scratch let out a shaky breath into Buzz’s shoulder, but nodded.

“Scratch 2.0,” he said, trying to be wry and only missing by a little bit, “Mosco will be shocked.”

“Stitch too,” Buzz said with a laugh, “When we see them both. I don’t—I don’t know if we will get a chance with Stitch, but…I hope we do.”

“Yeah,” Scratch murmured, “Yeah, me too.”

*** 

It wasn’t until they’d made it to Kowak that Buzz managed to gather enough courage to actually try out a couple of the new words. They’d landed on the planet’s surface only a few klicks from where the message to Rex’s comm had originated, and all of them had geared up and were striding down the ramp out into the jungle.

“Sir!” Buzz spoke up just as Bacara, dressed in a set of phase 2 armor that was definitely not his original with his helmet under his arm, was starting down the steps. The commander turned and paused to allow him to speak, frowning, but there was nothing truly unhappy in his expression. It was just the way his face looked at rest while he waited for Buzz to tell him what he wanted.

Easier said than done though. Buzz sucked in a nervous breath…and took the plunge.

“Av-avar’e…o-ora’tat…” he stammered out, praying it was the right thing to say when he’d screwed up so badly last time. The Concordian version of ‘vor’e, ori’vod,’ was what he’d been going for, thanks for the kind words Bacara had offered when he’d first said the endearment, and for all the kindness he’d given before and since then. Bacara had looked so crushed when Buzz hadn’t understood his gesture, the sign of love he’d given him, so Buzz had to make sure he could give it back, that Bacara knew he’d gotten it, that he wasn’t alone even when surrounded by brothers.

For a moment Bacara just blinked at him, shocked, before he smiled, really fully smiled for the first time since Buzz had met him, and then laughed. The delight lightened his features considerably, made him look younger, happier, and Buzz couldn’t help but grin back at him at the sight, relieved. Bacara actually reached out and clasped Buzz on the shoulder, still smiling.  “It’s ‘avar’i’, tat’ara,” he corrected far more gently than he normally would have, “‘i’ is the plural suffix.”

“Avar’i, avar’i,” Buzz repeated to himself, trying to make sure he’d remember, and Bacara let out a huff, but he was still smiling.

“Juti,” he said and Buzz could tell it was praise even if didn’t know the actual definition, although it seemed that this time he wouldn’t have to look it up, because Bacara went on to say, “That means ‘good’…and bo’ged’yi, Captain, that means ‘you’re welcome.’ Keep practicing.” He gave Buzz’s shoulder a squeeze and then patted him on the back once before slipping his helmet on and turning to walk down the steps into the jungle. Buzz followed him, pulling on his own TK helmet as he hurried down the ramp, bursting with pride and breathless with relief that he hadn’t wildly misjudged the situation, that he’d done something right for once. 

Chapter Text

Kowak was, apparently, covered entirely in thick jungle. The air was hot and heavy, unpleasantly damp in a way that already had Buzz sweating in his armor and he could tell immediately that Scratch was on edge. It made sense, if Buzz really considered it, because it had been in a jungle probably not unlike this one that he and Mosco were separated. If it had been Buzz, he’d have been scared that they’d get separated yet again, that he’d lose his last batcher the same way he’d lost his twin.

Buzz lengthened his strides enough to catch up with the others, passing the Triple As to catch Scratch near the front and sling an arm over his shoulders. His brother’s face wasn’t visible with the helmet on, but Scratch looped an arm around Buzz’s back to give him a quick side hug, fast enough that it might be missed, before he withdrew his arm and settled his hands back on his blaster rifle. Buzz let out a breath, but released him, fairly certain he’d managed to get his point across and not wanting to embarrass his older brother too much.

They trekked through jungle in silence for a while, for all that the terrain was awash in the calls of animals both close and distant, but Vos jogged up to the front from where he’d been taking up the rear with General Tholme and said something short to Commander Bacara. Buzz didn’t catch the words, but he saw the way Vos rolled his eyes at whatever the commander had said back.

Either way he seemed to have said what he’d wanted to, because Vos slowed down a little and started drifting back towards his master in the rear.

“V-Vos,” Scratch spoke up. There was a quiet shake to his voice that Buzz didn’t miss and he saw the way Scratch had clenched his fists on the grips of his rifle, suddenly even more nervous than before. In a flash, Buzz realized why and he turned to his brother to give him a nod of encouragement. Scratch seemed to catch it, and he forced out the words he was trying to say.

“Y-You were a good general…I mean I didn’t know you, I never even met you, b-but that was what I heard…” he trailed off, obviously cringing at himself which, fair, the statement was painfully awkward and Buzz was cringing just as much beside him.

Both of them expected Vos to laugh, to give him shit, but Vos just turned a 10 kilowatt grin on them.

“Yeah?” He asked, “I mean I am the coolest Jedi.”

Scratch let out a startled bark of laughter and Vos pouted theatrically, but there was no true hurt in his expression. Scratch stifled his laughter a moment later, maybe worried it wasn’t nice, second guessing everything he did now that he was trying to change his behavior and instead forced something else out.

“Your hair was the coolest…a-at last…y’know th-the dreads…” again the compliment was almost painful, but Vos just grinned wider and nodded, obviously happy to receive a compliment at all no matter how horrendously awkward it was. The conversation trailed off there, although thankfully not in a painful way as Vos rejoined General Tholme at the back. Scratch put his head in his hands.

“I’m going to fucking kill myself,” he wheezed and Buzz could only let out a quiet laugh and knock their shoulders together. 

“None of that, ori’vod,” he chided gently, keeping his voice low so the words were private, “You’re trying and that’s so much better than before, even if it takes a little practice to get it down, to figure out what exactly kindness means to you and how you can do that. There was a learning curve for me too. I—it was really really hard to stand up to you that first time, but it got easier, the more I did it.”

Scratch sighed heavily, turning his head slightly to look at Buzz, “That’s a bad thing, Buzz,” he muttered, “I was such an asshole my own vod’ika was scared of me...”

Buzz couldn’t deny that, so what he said was, “Well you’re working on it. That’s what matters.”

His brother let out another heavy sigh, but nodded again, although not without a complaint of, “This is gonna be harder than I thought…”

“Nothing worth doing is easy,” Buzz told him cheerfully and Scratch scoffed.

“Who told you that osik?”

“Commander Bacara,” Buzz replied, unbothered as Scratch threw his hands up in defeat.

“Gods just marry the guy, why don’t you?!” he hissed and Buzz couldn’t help but laugh.

“Scratch I’ll have you know that that man is my brother and you’re a degenerate for even suggesting it,” he teased and Scratch snorted and punched him playfully in the shoulder.

“You’re the nasty one for kissing his ass all day. If you keep it up your lips are gonna get stuck.”

“Hasn’t happened yet,” was Buzz’s retort and they both laughed. Scratch seemed better, a little less nervous and certainly less embarrassed, so Buzz would call it a success. They walked along in amiable silence for a while until Bacara put his fist up and they all froze. The Commander crept carefully forward and then crouched down against the trunk of a tree, peeking his head around it to check again on whatever he’d seen before he pointed towards the trees around him with two fingers.

For as much as they were all goofing off a little, three of them were ARCs and the other two were officers, so they followed Bacara’s instructions and took up the places he had indicated, also peering out to figure out what they were dealing with. Tholme and Vos hadn’t been given explicit instructions, but they followed suit and took up a place hidden amongst the thick undergrowth.

Buzz realized immediately why Bacara had had them take cover. In amongst the jungle ahead of them was some sort of complex, a three leveled building with no windows other than balistraria slits where the fortress’s defenders might fire down on would-be attackers. There were four watchtowers, one at each corner of the wall that enclosed the whole place, all topped with their own turbolaser battery that would be enough to take out even a large cruiser, and even from there Buzz could see the patrols that walked along the walls.

“What’re you thinking Commander?” Buzz asked Bacara in a hushed voice.

For a moment the commander didn’t respond, probably thinking it over, before he did finally speak up. “We need to draw their attention away long enough to infiltrate.”

Buzz nodded and glanced at their three ARCs, “Got any ideas?” he asked them and Scratch just snorted, but Ace and Aeon both piped up in unison.

“Light a fire!” Aeon chirped.

“Piss off a big animal!” was Ace’s simultaneous suggestion.

“Both~” Vos added, much to General Tholme’s apparent amusement.

“You need kriffing dry tinder for a fire,” Bacara griped, “This place is damp as hell and no guard is going to leave their post to fight some vornskr in the jungle.”

“Well…” Ando murmured, glancing around at them, “We…could set the guards on fire…”

Scratch audibly stifled his bark of laughter while Bacara just sighed, but Buzz jumped in. “He might have a point actually. If we make a firebomb that would be really kriffing distracting. Even if nothing in the jungle really catches, an explosion is pretty damn noticeable.”

“Plasma is hot enough to light a lot of shit on fire,” Vos chirped, while Tholme let out an amused snort.

“...Point,” Bacara huffed, “but even then we need fuel.”

“Rhydoniam is pretty karking combustible," Scratch pointed out and Vos perked up.

“Starship fuel! Good idea! Can we spare any, master?” 

“For a bomb?” General Tholme replied, his voice dry, but Vos’s grin didn’t dim, in fact it just sharpened.

“What’s a good bomb between friends?” was his counter.

General Tholme huffed out a laugh, “Very well,” he said, “We’ll send somebody to the ship to fetch a small fuel canister and bring it back, then make your firebomb, sound good?”

“I’ll go,” Buzz volunteered. Scratch sucked in a sharp breath from beside him and spoke up, his voice almost panicked.

“I-I’ll go too! It's safer if we can watch each other’s backs.”

Bacara tilted his helmeted head in a way that seemed to Buzz unnervingly perceptive, before he simply nodded, “Don’t blow yourselves up. We’ll stay here unless somebody comes too close, but if we move I’ll comm you, captain.”

“Yessir,” Buzz replied and then turned to jog back into the jungle with Scratch on his heels. They moved much more quickly this time then they had walking the other direction, at a half-run, but Scratch seemed to have calmed down a little from his moment of sheer panic when it seemed like they'd be separated.

Buzz said nothing about it, since all it would do was embarrass his brother. They made it back to the ship and Scratch even followed Buzz up the ramp, helping him pull one of the small containers of fuel out from under the floor panels in the maintenance crawlspace. Buzz handed it up and Scratch led him back out into the jungle, checking over his shoulder every couple minutes to ensure Buzz was still there.

They’d made it about halfway back when something broke out of the brush, something huge, and made a lunge for them. It was an animal, although Buzz didn’t recognize it given he’d never even read about Kowak’s wildlife. The thing looked like some kind of cross between an akul and an akk dog, an enormous predator with black lidless eyes, thick furry hide, and claws each the length of Buzz’s forearm.

Scratch tackled Buzz out of the way when the beast charged at them, then shoved the canister of fuel into his hands and rolled back to his feet, opening fire on the animal as it turned and lunged again. Scratch ducked away from the attack, aiming his blaster rifle to fire at its eyes when the bolts seemed to do nothing to penetrate its hide. 

Buzz got back to his feet and secured the canister of rhydonium to his belt, reminding himself to avoid jostling it too much, given how unstable rhydonium was. By the time Buzz was on his feet and had his blaster rifle back in his hands, Scratch had blown out one of the cat’s eyes, leaving blood pouring down its face…and yet that only seemed to make it angrier rather than chasing it away.

“Kriffing rabid piece of shit!” Scratch swore as it lunged at him again and its claws raked across his helmet, shattering the visor and nearly taking his eyes out. He stumbled back with the force of it against his little body and shook his head, his eyes shut tight, to try and clear the broken fragments of his visor out of his face so they wouldn’t blind him. 

“I’ve got an idea,” Buzz said, “but you’re not going to like it.”

“Great,” Scratch grumbled, but fired on the cat when Buzz asked him too, baiting it to lunge at them as Buzz pulled a shock grenade off his belt.

It did lunge, claws out, but Scratch swung his rifle like a bat, aiming for its wounded eye. The cat recoiled from the hit, letting out an enraged shrieking sound, but Buzz charged forward and shoved his whole arm into its open mouth and down its throat. It choked and Buzz let go of the grenade, wrenching his arm back out, even as its teeth caught against his flesh in the gaps of his armor. 

The both of them retreated then, trying to get distance, and the cat shook its head, but then turned and made to pounce again, only for the shock grenade to go off and cause it to convulse violently for a second. It collapsed and Scratch shoved Buzz forward until he’d broken into a run. Hopefully it’d be out for a good couple minutes, long enough for them to get away, and hopefully it wouldn’t come after them when it woke up.

“You okay?” Scratch asked him seriously as they pelted through the jungle back to their team.

“My arm’s a bit shredded,” Buzz huffed out, it hurt pretty bad and he could feel hot blood soaking into his blacks, but they could deal with it once they were back with the others, “but otherwise I’m okay. You?”

“I’m good,” Scratch replied, “Visuals are all fucked up with my visor busted, but its probably still better to keep the helmet on in case I get shot.”

Buzz just nodded and a second later they made it back to the others. “Took you long enough,” Vos teased, only for a frown to take over his face when he saw the state of them.

“What happened?” Bacara demanded even as he reached out for the rhydonium canister.

“Big pissed off animal,” Scratch told him and Bacara just sighed.

“Captain, you’re bleeding,” General Tholme pointed out and Buzz nodded, shucking the armor off that arm and turning it to see if he could tell how bad it was. 

“I’ve got some bandages,” Ace said, hurriedly pulling a medkit out of his pack. None of the Triple As had armor, there probably wasn’t enough to go around and it made sense to prioritize the commanders, but they had packs full of supplies on their backs. Scratch took the medkit and pulled out the antiseptic, which he dumped over Buzz’s arm, making him hiss, then Scratch ripped the sleeve of his already torn blacks off so he could bandage the wound. It only took a minute and Buzz put his vambrace, rerebrace, and glove with the handguard that was fortunately intact back on.

“Good?” Bacara asked him and Buzz nodded. The commander turned his attention to Scratch, “You hurt?” Scratch shook his head and Bacara nodded, but asked a follow up question. “The busted visor gonna affect your performance?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Scratch replied and Bacara let out a huff, but nodded again. He had the rhydonium canister in hand, but he held it out to General Tholme.

“You think you can chuck that far enough to make it close to one of the watchtowers?” the commander asked.

“I believe so,” Tholme answered, accepting the canister.

“Good,” Bacara said, “When you’re ready.”

General Tholme nodded again, but Bacara froze stiff when he turned back to their target, sucking in a breath, “Wait,” he said and General Tholme froze even with his arm wound back for the throw, “The guards are gone–” but before he could get anything else out, all four of the turbolaser batteries exploded in unison.

All of them flinched, ducking for cover automatically, but even from their position they heard a claxon go off. Still there weren’t any guards, and Vos spoke up, “Well they’re distracted,” he noted dryly, but Bacara just nodded and got to his feet.

“Keep the rhydonium!” he barked as he took off and they took off after him, “We can use it to breach the wall!” It was just as they made it to said wall that Buzz heard the sound of engines and looked up to find some kind of kriffing cruiser descending on the fortress. Apparently there were some slavers left, because the Cruiser started taking small arms fire, but it tilted and Buzz saw a sygil on the side.

“That’s Mandalorian!” he gasped.

“Mereel didn’t tell us he’d be here,” Bacara hissed, only to pause and tilt his head, “That’s not his sigil.”

“Well I wouldn’t say we’ve got oodles of time commander,” Scratch pointed out, “ Best to take advantage of the chaos and extract our man.”

Bacara nodded and gestured to the wall, “Canister,” he said and General Tholme obediently set the canister down against it. The lot of them backed off a good twenty meters and Bacara fired a single shot. The bolt struck the canister and it blew in a huge violent explosion that left an enormous crater in the ground and shattered the surrounding wall. Bacara waved them forward and they followed him into the fortress, only to find it in total disarray.

Again they took advantage, shooting their way through any Zygerrian they found and making it inside the building proper. They swept the three floors, finding no slaves at all, only to run into somebody unexpected in the control room at the top. 

“Delta Squad,” Bacara greeted as they made it into the room and found four clone commandos, small, but in the iconic Katarn class armor, all painted. The one in orange, who was positioned to guard the door while the one in green obviously sliced the control console and the other two covered the balistrarias, had pulled up his rifle when they made it to the room, only to lower it again when he recognized Bacara’s phase 2 armor.

He nodded in response to Bacara’s greeting. “Fancy meeting you here,” Scratch noted dryly and the commando in yellow and gray sniggered.

“We’re extracting Omega Squad,” the one in orange said, his voice clipped and serious, “They got picked up by slavers when they…appeared here.”

“And the Mandos?” Buzz asked.

The commando tilted his head in Buzz’s direction, “The Skiratas,” he said, “The Nulls found us a couple weeks ago and they’d already made some friends. What’re you here for?”

“A brother sent us a distress call,” Bacara told him, “Where are the slaves? We didn’t find them anywhere in the building.”

“They have a psycho dungeon in the basement,” the yellow and gray commando spoke up, “The Skiratas and the Nulls should already be down there, but we have to deactivate the bomb collars before we can hope to get anybody on the cruiser.”

“Working on it,” the green commando muttered and Buzz let out a huff.

“General Tholme,” the orange one noted after a moment as the two Jedi jogged up behind them, having cleared the adjacent hall so they couldn’t get ambushed, “and General Vos…I assume.”

Vos laughed, “That’s me alright!”

“Your last kriffing mission almost cost us Sev!” the yellow and gray one snapped, “You and kriffing General Yoda told us to leave him!”

“Shit!” Vos gasped, “I’m sorry!”

“Doesn’t matter now,” the red one finally spoke up.

All three of his brothers made identical frustrated noises, but none of them challenged the assertion. “Got it!” the green one announced after a moment, “Collars are deactivated, Boss.”

“Good, comm Ordo and let him know,” the orange one, Boss, replied before turning back to the rest of them, “If you can help us clear the way for our extraction, commander, generals, it would be appreciated.” 

Bacara just nodded and the Jedi agreed a moment later, so without further ado they took off again, sweeping back through the building and clearing the path from the ‘dungeon’s’ apparent entrance to the courtyard where the cruiser waited. Buzz could hear the thump thump of its laser cannons even from inside the fortress and with the turbolasers destroyed, the slavers were pretty much toast.

The slaves started appearing before long, herded forwards by three of the Nulls. Buzz only recognized them because they were older than everybody else, looking closer to sixteen than the commanders’ fourteen, but nevertheless, together they, Bacara’s team, and Delta squad broke through the fortress and cleared out the courtyard between the building and its surrounding walls. There had to be at least five hundred slaves, but Buzz craned his neck, searching for the faces of brothers. He found four, dirty and with collars around their necks, but only because Delta Squad tugged them out away from the rest of the slaves.

“There,” Scratch spoke up from Buzz’s side and when Buzz followed where he was pointing, there was indeed another clone, the young face familiar from the message he’d sent. His eyes were wide and his expression scared, but hopeful as he watched the cruiser descend until it had landed and the slaves were coaxed on board by the Nulls and the Mandos that disembarked to gesture people up the ramp.

Bacara had apparently followed Scratch’s gesture too, because he wove his way through the crowd and put his hand on the kid’s shoulder. He started and looked up at him with wide eyes, but Buzz couldn’t hear what was said between them. When Bacara came back, the kid followed, and Buzz reached out for him, putting an arm around his shoulders in the hope that it would calm him down. He was jumpy, trembling slightly even then, but Buzz didn’t say anything and the kid seemed to take a few seconds to just breathe.

“Captain,” Bacara greeted one of the Nulls as he walked passed, waving slaves forward, “The rest of us have set up a base, you and your brothers are welcome to join us there.”

The Null captain snorted, but shook his head. “No, we don’t need to be tied down like that, we can operate better independently…and we’ve got some plans in the works.”

“Call us if you need help, commander,” Boss spoke up as he trotted up beside the Null captain, “We’ll see what we can do.”

“Only if you do the same,” was Bacara’s reply. They exchanged comm codes, but the mission was pretty much wrapped up at that point. Bacara checked that there weren’t any other clones that were with the kid, but he shook his head, so Bacara turned and led them away, back into the jungle towards their ship.

“What happened to the rest of your squad?” Bacara asked the shiny as Buzz guided him forward, an arm still around his shoulders, “You said you got separated.”

“Yeah,” the kid murmured, his voice suddenly tired. His adrenaline must have been draining. Buzz knew the feeling. “We all…appeared I guess, inside some caves in a canyon on the other side of the planet. There was a cave in and I was on the outside, but when I tried to use my comm to rig up a distress signal it was slavers that came. They didn’t know about my squad, just me, so…so they might still be there. I managed to hide my comm when they captured me and that was how I called the rescue code.”

“We’ll–we’ll take care of you,” Scratch told him, stumbling a little bit, but managing to be sincere. “We’ll rescue your squad and get you all back to your commander. He’s waiting for you,”

Scout looked up at him, but there was hope in his eyes, “My legion is here? Commander Thire?”

“Yes, and its Commander Fox running it, actually,” Bacara cut in, “He survived, although he’s been paralyzed.”

The kid gasped, looking between them with wide honest eyes, but when they nodded at him, a huge grin spread across his face. “He made it…” he breathed, and then wiped his eyes as he teared up. “G-Good, he’s always been so kind to us, it hurt to hear we’d lost him.”

Buzz let out a breath and glanced at Scratch, but neither of them had much to say to that. They didn’t know Fox, but that said, Scratch spoke up anyway, “I’m glad he took good care of you,” he murmured and Buzz knew he wasn’t thinking about Scout, it was their lost batcher on his mind, Stitch. Hopefully…hopefully after everything they’d done to hurt their vod, Fox had been kind, his brothers in the Guard had been kind, so Stitch wasn’t alone.

Chapter Text

Scratch was…well he was trying. He knew Buzz was right, he knew that it was him who'd torn their batch apart at the seams, his arrogance, his anger, his cruelty. He didn't know how to be different and his chest felt so hollow without Mosco there, the sun to his stars, his twin, but…Buzz was right. He was right, something had to change and if Scratch was the problem, then it only made sense for that to be him.

He just…it was complicated. He was used to being harsh, to snip and snap and jab, to never hold back. How was he supposed to–to be somebody else entirely? And…and if being himself ruined everything, why did anybody ever let him stay? Was it just because they were kind? Nobody had ever accused Stitch of being patient, that was for sure, but…Tally had been, Tally and Buzz and Mosco had all been patient with him, had just known how he was and accepted it. Tally had challenged him, had intervened when he went too far…so of course when he was no longer there to intervene their batch ripped itself apart. Without Tally there to reign him in, Scratch couldn't see the boundaries and he went too far. It was his own fault. He'd relied too much on Tally, on letting Tally tell him when it was enough instead of learning to gauge that himself. He'd never had to learn with Tally there…and then with him suddenly gone, with no gauge, Scratch had plunged right to his absolute worst in that moment. In one single moment he'd destroyed it all.

He had to be better.

So maybe Buzz was right. If Buzz could just…just choose to be different, to change so drastically, to face his own worst traits and turn it all around then Scratch had to be able to do the same. He had to. He just…didn't know how to be kind.

His first attempts had been painful, agonizingly awkward and horrible, but Buzz had nodded each time, had egged him on, so Scratch kept going.

When he looked at this new kid, this Corrie, somebody Stitch might have known, one of Stitch's little brothers, there was clawing panic in his chest. If he fucked this up too, if he hurt Stitch's kih'vod it…it'd prove everything Scratch had ever feared true. That he was weak, that he was worthless, that he couldn't do anything right.

How do you be kind? Why wasn't there a kriffing manual or something? Why did it have to be so kriffing complicated?

Scratch walked alongside the new kid and Buzz, and started when Buzz slung an arm around his shoulders, leaning on him and knocking their helmets together just rough enough to make Scratch want to laugh. He missed their batch. He missed those light moments when they were cadets, when Tally saw right through his fears and dragged him in, when Stitch rolled his eyes at a bad joke and Mosco sniggered under his breath…they were gone. 

He'd lost them all. 

All except Buzz. 

He still had Buzz and for all that Scratch was the biggest fuckup in the galaxy, Buzz had really made himself better, tougher, and yet without having to hurt people to do it the way Scratch always had. Buzz didn’t need to make people small to feel big, didn’t need to be better than anybody, didn’t need to look down at people to feel tough. Somehow Buzz had become strong on his own. Scratch had never been strong, not once in his life. He’d always been weak and even more so he’d been afraid that somebody might realize he was weak, that he didn’t deserve to be squad leader, that he didn’t deserve his batchers who were all so much smarter and more talented than him. He was terrified that somebody would look at him and realize that he was nothing compared to his amazing batchers…

But Buzz had been afraid too, he’d been afraid of conflict, afraid to stand up for himself or anybody else, and yet he’d changed. If Buzz could do that, maybe Scratch could too?

Somehow Buzz seemed to read his mind, read the anxiety off of him, and murmured under his breath, "Keep it up. You're doing good, ori'vod."

Scratch let out a shaky breath, but smiled despite himself, even if it was fragile. Maybe…maybe he was overthinking this. Maybe he didn't need a manual. He knew people that were kind. Buzz was kind and–and Tally had always been kind. Maybe he could…but what if it was fake when he did it? What if it didn't fit? What if him pretending to be kind was just as ugly as him pretending to be strong? That horrible attempt to compliment Vos definitely wasn't something he could see himself being able to maintain, not when it was that embarrassing, that forced.

He couldn't be Buzz.

He couldn't be Tally.

Who else was there? Mosco?

No. Mosco had never been as cruel as Scratch, but he was just as sharp, all sharp edges like Scratch. Even when he'd sat with Scratch in his bunk while he tried to pretend he wasn't crying as a cadet, Mosco had still been sharp. He was just careful about who got the edge. He'd cut everyone else down to build Scratch up, even if he didn't necessarily do it in front of them, and that…that couldn't be kind.

The last batcher he had was Stitch and Scratch almost dismissed him out of hand. Stitch was snappy and snarly and quick to anger. He was bossy and never took no for an answer.

But…Scratch had seen that all disappear now and then, had seen how, when somebody got hurt, everything about Stitch went calm and gentle. He'd seen how his snarly vod seemed to pull the razor edges of his personality inward, away from his patients so all they saw was the soft underbelly that they needed to see.

And he'd seen Stitch use his edges too, how he turned all that back on anybody who'd hurt a brother, even if it was the brother themself. He was soft when they needed and brutal when they needed.

Was that kindness?

Maybe Scratch could…could try that instead? Maybe he could try to just direct his edges, his spines, away from his brothers instead of trying to be smooth and featureless?

"Who's your squad leader?" Scratch asked the kid, Scout, Bacara had said his name was. He didn't ask the question like he was talking to a little kid, even if Scout was young. It wouldn't be natural, it would be forced and probably wouldn't have been great for anybody. He asked Scout the way he'd ask Mosco, the way he'd ask a brother he knew and trusted and loved. That–hopefully that was right…

Scout turned wide tired eyes to him. He was covered in grime, his hair not just spiky but full of dirt, his armor nowhere to be found. Maybe the slavers had stolen it. Somehow the thought made Scratch glad they'd killed the fuckers to the last.

"Bark," the kid told him quietly, "Our sergeant…he was acting weird, they were all acting weird…"

"Probably the chips," Bacara noted blandly and Scratch just sighed.

"The Kaminoans lied to us, vod, we were…they made us for the Sith, not the Jedi. They made us to destroy the Republic and…we did. They put these chips in our heads and turned them on so we'd all be slaves."

Scout's face fell and something clenched unhappily in Scratch's stomach. "Everything was a lie?" Scout murmured, a thin shake in his voice.

"N-no…" Scratch argued, trying to think of anything he could say to make it better. How—what would Stitch say? "Just-just the Kaminoans, vod. None of what we ever did for each other was a lie…our brotherhood is real." It came out a little shaky, uncertain, but he tried to make his voice sound certain, so the kid might believe it.

Scout looked away, "None of you ever cared about us before," he muttered, "Where was our brotherhood during the war?"

"I-I'm sorry," Scratch stammered, panicking a little, fumbling for what else he could say. Anything to make it better.

"We were…were wrong. We were so wrong and I just…I wish I could take it all back, that I could just erase all that and start over, but we-we're here now. It might not be worth much, but…" he trailed off, his breath catching when Scout sniffled and wiped his nose on his already filthy blacks. "I'm sorry," Scratch finally just sighed, "I'm sorry for everything."

"You…why did you guys hate us?" Scout mumbled, "What did we do wrong?"

For a second Scratch looked at Buzz, hoping he might have the answer, that he might know the right thing to say, but all he did was nod his head, egging Scratch on again. Scratch let out another shaky breath and reached out gingerly to put his hand on the kid's shoulder.

"Nothing, vod," he promised as vehemently as he possibly could, "It was never you. We just…we didn't understand a-and we never bothered to ask. We just had–had our heads up our shebs. We jumped to a conclusion and refused to see how wrong we were. That's not your fault. It's on us."

Scout sniffled again and turned those soft sad eyes back on Scratch, "You called me vod…"

Scratch winced, shit they really—god how had they fucked up this bad, how had he fucked up this bad? How was he supposed to fix anything?

"W-well you are…you're my brother…" he tried in a voice that might have been a little weak, but Scout just smiled, the expression wobbly on his lips.

"I hope-" he stopped and started, hesitating as anxiety flickered across his face, "I hope you're right, v-vod…"

To Scratch's immense relief, Bacara took over from there. "He's right," the commander told their new Corrie evenly, "We were wrong, we treated you like trash and there's probably nothing we could ever do to make up for that, but whatever you need from now on, we'll try to give you."

Scout gave Bacara the same wobbly smile as he wiped the beginnings of tears from his eyes, "Okay…o-okay, Commander. Thanks, it…means a lot…"

Bacara just nodded, apparently having said his piece, and somehow Scratch unstuck his jaw all over again. "What do—I mean if you need something right now we could—just whatever you need…"

Scout laughed quietly and Scratch hunched his shoulders in embarrassment, only to start when Buzz, who still had an arm around his shoulders, gave him a reassuring squeeze. Scratch's impulse was to shove him off, to snap at him, but—but that might hurt him and he just…he couldn't hurt his batchers again, his only batcher…

The look Scout turned on him was a little brighter, somehow both relieved and just a little wry. "Well if we could save my squad, that'd be pretty good," he said. There was still something wobbly about his smile, fragile and scared, like he was expecting to be dumped in the dirt and left there alone, and something about that had Scratch reach out again, pulling away from Buzz just enough to sling an arm over the kid's shoulders, hoping it was right, that this was the right move. He turned his head back to check on Buzz, afraid he'd hurt his feelings by pulling away, unsure where the line was, what the boundaries were, but Buzz just gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up.

Scratch sighed in relief and gave Scout a squeeze, "We're headed right over," he promised, "We're not leaving without them, are we, Commander?"

Some part of him was afraid that Bacara would say something to the contrary, but he silently told himself to shut up, because he knew Bacara was loyal and Buzz had done nothing but sing his praises hadn't he? Buzz wouldn't idolize somebody who'd leave their men trapped behind enemy lines, Scratch knew he wouldn't and to his relief, Bacara nodded.

"You can give us coordinates once we're back aboard the shuttle," was his even response.

"Th-thanks," Scout murmured, the smile a little stronger, a little more hopeful. Scratch gave him an extra squeeze just for good measure before pulling carefully away, giving the kid time to protest if he wanted…and was glad he did because he saw the way Scout went a little stiff, a little scared, and was able to slump back onto him before the damage was really done. Scout relaxed again, resting his cheek tiredly against Scratch's shoulder and closing his eyes for a short second.

Shit that was close.

Scratch let out a slow shaky breath, but stayed in contact with the kid all the way back to the shuttle. Scout did give Bacara coordinates and the generals returned to the cockpit with the commander on their heels. Buzz seemed to have something in his head, some kind of idea about something, because he somehow drew the Triple A’s into the other room, leaving Scratch standing in the hold with Scout under his arm.

“You-” Scratch tried, hesitating again as he looked down at the kid, “Y-you hungry or…something…?”

It was the right thing to say, thank the gods, because Scout perked up instantly and nodded his head. Scratch let out a relieved breath and tugged the kid along into the galley before sitting him down at the table and opening the cupboards. General Tholme had been giving them actual food, not just rations, so surely there was something worth eating somewhere.

“You’re really…thanks for caring, v-vod,” Scout murmured after a moment, “I’ve never had a GAR trooper be nice…like that…”

Scratch froze stiff in shock, but forced himself back into motion, chewing his lips unhappily as he opened more of the cupboards and started pulling things out, trying to figure out what might be food.

“I’m not,” he mumbled, unable to look at Scout as he said it, “I’m not nice…”

But Scout protested, “You’ve been nice to me,” he said, “None of you guys ever were, after I got deployed. Even my own batch quit talking to me…they said I was a loser who got the loser post I deserved.”

Scratch slammed the cupboard shut so hard one of the shelves inside slipped off the track and he heard all of the items topple against the door. “They’re the losers!” he cried, tears newly in his eyes, “They–they are…not you…o-okay?” Gods, he hated himself! Why was he always like this, why was he such a fucking crybaby?! Scratch sucked in a shaky breath and pried his hand off the cupboard, scrubbing furiously at his face. “Sorry, kid, I–”

He jumped right out of his skin when Scout wrapped his arms around Scratch’s chest, pressing his face into his back, “Why are you sorry?” Scout asked, his voice small, but kind. Kind in a way Scratch didn’t know how to be, could never be.

“I-” he said, choking on the words, “I said all that stuff to-to my batcher. I said the worst things I could think of, I-I was just so angry and it hurt and I–I ruined everything and he–” he stuck his knuckles in his mouth just to shut himself the fuck up. This wasn’t–this wasn’t nice, he wasn’t–he was just dumping shit on this damn kid like a fucking loser.

Somehow Scout just hugged him tighter, sniffling a little against his back, “Are you sorry?” he asked, his voice tiny, “If it was him instead of me, would you say you were sorry?”

Scratch failed to stifle the sob that broke in his chest and he bit down on his hand as hard as he could, bit down until he tasted blood, just trying to crush the weakness out of himself. All he could do was nod his head desperately, tears in his eyes. He-he missed his batchers so much. Mosco would know how to handle this, would know how to get Scratch away and would tell him what he needed to hear so he wouldn’t cry anymore and-and Tally would know what to say to this kid. Tally would know the perfect thing to say.

And Stitch…

Scratch would have apologized. He’d have thrown his body at Stitch’s feet and spilled his guts the way he always had to Mosco, the way he had only done for Mosco, and if Stitch wanted to stomp him into the dirt he’d take it. It would be fair. 

“Is he still alive?” Scout asked him, jerking him back to the present with the taste of blood and the feeling of his damp face, hunched against the counter with the little kid clinging to his back, “Your batcher? If he’s alive maybe you can.”

Scratch sucked in a shaky breath and started again when Scout reached out to touch his wrist. “St-stop, vod, you’re hurting yourself. He-I don’t know your vod, but he wouldn’t want that. I know because if you were my batcher I wouldn’t want that either. Even if you did say something cruel in the past.”

Gently the kid pried Scratch’s knuckles out of his mouth and tugged on him until he let the shiny drag him over to the table and push him onto the bench, sitting down beside him, but holding his hand the whole time. 

“I-I’m trying,” Scratch whimpered, “I-Buzz said I could change, but I’m just–I shouldn’t even be telling you this, you’re just a kid and I’m a fucking loser for putting this on you.”

Somehow, Scout didn’t flinch away from Scratch’s ugly insides. His face was solemn, his eyes soft, as he looked up at him. “You’re allowed to be human,” he said, “You said the Kaminoans lied to us, and if they lied that means that we’re not machines. If they lied, then we’re not cannon fodder, or droids, or resources to be spent and recycled. We’re alive. Maybe if you wanna change, you just gotta stop cutting yourself up to be small and perfect…and then it’ll be easier.”

Scratch sniffled and scrubbed at his face, “If I’m not perfect why would anybody want me?” he mumbled.

Somehow the look Scout gave him answered the question without words. ‘Because you’re our brother’ something in his eyes said and Scratch let out a trembling huff, trying to smile. “I should call you ori’vod, kid,” he mumbled and Scout actually laughed.

“No way!” he cried, his smile much less wobbly than before, “You’re so oooolllddd, I could never be your ori’vod, I’d be in the grave!”

“Hey!” Scratch complained, smiling despite himself, “I’m like four years older than you tops.”

Scout rolled his eyes, “Oooollllddd!” he repeated, drawing the word out to its absolute maximum. Scratch couldn’t help but laugh, pulling his hand back so he could scrub at his face again and then knock their shoulders together.

“Fine,” he pretended to gripe, “Kriffing starve, see if I care.”

“Boooo,” Scout moaned, flopping over sideways and rolling all the way off the bench onto the floor. “Booooo! Hiiiisssss!”

Scratch let out a startled bark of laughter that strangled him when he turned and saw Bacara in the doorway.

“C-Commander!” he yelped, going to attention automatically. Scout immediately jerked himself up off the floor and mimicked him, but if Scratch didn’t know better he’d say there was almost something approving in the commander’s face, even though he wasn’t smiling.

“We’re two minutes out from the coordinates you gave us,” Bacara told Scout, his tone serious, “Time to do something about your brothers.”

“Y-Yesir!” Scout agreed. Bacara just nodded, gave Scratch an unreadable look, and then turned and strode back out.

“Whoops,” Scout chirped, his voice quiet, but not embarrassed even while Scratch felt like his whole kriffing face was on fire. “Well I guess I will starve then.”

“N-No way,” Scratch muttered, forcing himself to relax so he could root back through the cupboard he’d made a mess of until he pulled out a box of ration bars he’d previously ignored. “Just for now,” he said, tossing the kid two of them.

Scout blinked, “Two?”

“You wanna stay a twerp your whole life, kid?” Scratch challenged a little shakily, “You gotta eat to get big.”

The kid blinked at him again, before a lopsided smile crossed his face, “Sure, ori’vod,” he said, unwrapping one of the bars and following Scratch out of the galley so they could rejoin the rest of the team and do something about the missing troopers.

That interaction should have made Scratch want to kriffing die, honestly, he’d cried in front of a karking shiny, but…but somehow it didn’t feel like he’d fucked it up. Scratch couldn’t say he wasn’t embarrassed, but maybe he’d done something…right? Scout hadn’t recoiled, hadn’t told him any of the things he’d always been terrified he’d hear if he showed how weak he really was to anybody but Mosco. Somehow he’d shown all that…and wasn’t rejected.

That had to be a good start…right?